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Hysteria	By : LadyofClunn Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 42590 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Harry Potter; I do not earn money by writing this story.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
AN: I can't believe how long it has been since I last updated! My excuses are numerous, valid, and entirely boring. Life happens and sometimes it happens to kick me in the teeth.

A huge thank you goes to Softobsidian74, MarchDoe, and mre_quecky for alpha reading and cheerleading and to stgulik for the speedy and thorough beta!! All remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.

I am ever so grateful and overwhelmed by how people are actually still interested and following this story! Hugs to all of you!

Chapter 13

Delectatio et Dolor

The bustle of bodies in the Ministry entrance hall felt overwhelming after spending weeks first strapped to a bed and then secluded in the manor.

In front of the courtroom door, Draco took her cold, shaking hands in his.

“It will be alright. Let the barrister do his job. I won't be able to sit with you, but I'll be right behind...”

“You won't be sitting with me?” she blurted.

“No, you have been summoned as a witness, while I am actually being accused of removing you from reach of your, er… future husband.”

“What!”

“Oh, and here,” Draco mumbled distractedly, digging through his pockets. “Ah. Here we are.” He took her left hand gently into his and slipped a slim white gold band with a sparkling sapphire onto it. “Wearing the Malfoy betrothal ring, you are now effectively my fiancée. Don’t worry, we will only use this as a last resort, and I haven’t activated the spell that prevents you from removing it, so you can actually un-betroth yourself at any time.”

Draco grinned at her as he was ushered through a side door by a bailiff.

Hermione stood next to her barrister, a huge wizard by the name of Grey, gaping at her hand. Once again, something momentous had happened and it had required neither her prior knowledge nor her consent.

She was starting to get angry.

Very, very angry.

***

“The magical time stamp on these documents precedes the one on Mr Trebetarry’s documents by a few minutes. The question is, was Miss Granger in a mental state fit to leave the ward at her own risk. Also, why did you not follow procedure and at least consulted the Head of Department before removing her from St. Mungo’s?”

“Madam Chairwoman,” Draco began, “at the time, I had returned from a conference only to find that Miss Granger’s initial referral papers had never been fully processed. Puzzled why this might have been the case, I tried to contact her, only to be informed that she had been sectioned in an emergency procedure.”

Draco took a drink of water from the goblet at his elbow and cleared his throat.

“When I found her, I was shocked to find Miss Granger in a deteriorated state, bound to her hospital bed. When I had referred her to Healer de Belleme, she had been responding well to her outpatient treatment, although it did make her very uncomfortable, being Muggleborn and unfamiliar with certain aspects of Wizarding medicine.”

“I understand that Miss Granger’s blood status made her case very rare?”

“Yes, Madam Chairwoman. The only case of Muggleborn Witches’ Hysteria I have ever come across in my career.”

“How much of your desire to take over Miss Granger’s case again have to do with career advancement, I wonder?”

Hermione’s head whipped around in the direction of the overly sweet voice. Clad in pink tweed, Dolores Umbridge sat among the Wizengamot, wide-eyed and smiling.

“Healer de Belleme is a reputable expert in this field,” continued Umbridge. “We hear that he is due to publish a new book soon. Does this irk you, Healer Malfoy? Did you regret referring Miss Granger instead of keeping this source of valuable research material to yourself?”

“Dolores,” Draco smiled. “How delightful to see you here. While it is true that I would have liked to include her as a case study in my ongoing research, I decided to refer her to Healer de Belleme because of our personal history. As you know, we were in the same form at Hogwarts and although we were never close, we had crossed each other’s path before.”

He smiled a brilliant smile at her and turned back to the chairwoman. “What I found when I consulted Miss Granger’s files troubled me deeply. She had been subjected to sedation and a rigorous treatment plan that her case never warranted. A number of cures had been administered within the time frame of two weeks, which would usually have taken several months to proceed through. I can only speculate that this was done in order to be able to include her reactions as a Muggleborn to all and any currently available treatments of Witches’ Hysteria.” Draco sought out eye-contact with the witches of the Wizengamot. “Her treatment included douches with cold-water jets, sensory deprivation and cruciology. The next scheduled treatment would have been the surgical removal of her womb, subject to her future husband’s approval.”

He let the enormity of the situation sink in.

“I had referred a young woman with a moderate medical condition, well on the way of finishing her course of treatment. I returned to a frightened, tortured patient, due to be forced into a lifelong bond with her auxiliary night care wizard. I found it prudent to remove her from the situation and investigate further.”

“Healer de Belleme, what do you have to say to this?” asked the chairwoman.

The broad wizard stood slowly, drawing attention to his traditional robes and gleaming medals. “I had taken on Miss Granger’s referral expecting a routine case,” he said, “but found a witch on the brink of self-destruction. It was only for her protection that I admitted her to the ward and immediately commenced rigorous treatment to pull her back from the brink.”

“Healer de Belleme,” Dolores Umbridge twittered from her seat far above them. “What would be your recommendations, in your capacity as an expert in this field?”

“Marriage. Clearly, being Muggleborn, she had not the support of a wizarding parent to guide her in seeking out a mate in a timely manner. I hear in the Muggle world, the average age at the time of marriage is rising, and it is not unusual at all for Muggles to remain unmarried well into their mid-life expectancy.”

“And would you blame wizarding society’s lack of guidance in this matter?”

“Most certainly, Dolores. Compulsory wizarding studies at Hogwarts for Muggleborns, as well as possibly an assigned godparent of sorts from the old families, would have prevented all of this, I believe.”

Dolores Umbridge pursed her lips pensively. She twirled a lock of her hair and looked around the chamber with wide, innocent eyes.

“I wonder,” she said, “would laws for Muggleborn protection be a way to prevent those hapless creatures from injuring themselves? Such as, maybe, marriage laws to encourage bonding within, let’s say, a year or two after leaving Hogwarts?”

De Belleme smiled with all his teeth. “What a wonderful suggestion, Dolores. You always think of the most vulnerable among us first.”

A low murmur broke out among the seated wizards and witches.

“Thank you, Dolores, you may be seated.” Chairwoman Berrycloth cleared her throat and the conversations around the room trailed off. “How do you explain the delay in filing your paperwork, Healer de Belleme?”

He straightened and puffed up his chest. “Only time constraints and putting priority on my patient’s wellbeing led to the unfortunate circumstances of delayed paperwork.”

The chairwoman shuffled some of the parchments on her desk. “You have written a book, Healer de Belleme? I believe it is due to be launched in the bookshops tomorrow, am I right?”

“Indeed Madam Chairwoman, the general public have a right to know about the abyss our Muggleborn witches are unknowingly walking the edge of, in danger of falling in at any time.”

Again the level of noise swelled as spectators whispered excitedly. Chairwoman Berrycloth flicked her wand and had her gavel pound the desk.

“You were most concerned for your young patient,” she continued, as de Belleme nodded sagely, “yet, you found time to write up an elaborate treatment plan, dated the day after Miss Granger was admitted. This treatment plan shows all of the treatments she received, including the planned hysterectomy. I see here you marked this with a little arrow and ‘find idiot husband’.”

“These are not the copies I submitted!” de Belleme bellowed. He tried to move out of his seat row but he was blocked by spectators.

“No, Healer, these are the yellowprint copies that I have authority to summon. They show all of your corrections.”

Sweat started appearing in small droplets on his forehead and upper lip. With stiff fingers he fumbled for a handkerchief to mop his shiny face. “I-I can explain!”

The chairwoman ignored him. “Not only did you find time to write the treatment plan, no, you also wrote an entire book, contacted publishers and negotiated contracts. You advertised Miss Granger’s case among St. Mungo’s Healer apprentices, ensuring a growing interest in her case. Word spread, so I hear, to medical institutions across wizarding Europe and beyond.”

“It was important to draw attention to this ground-breaking research…”

“Yet, you could not find time to file referral papers?”

De Belleme opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it and snapped it shut with a resounding click of teeth.

“Healer Malfoy, what is your treatment plan for Miss Granger?”

Draco blinked out of an intense stare at the other Healer. “Madam Chairwoman, as it happens, Miss Granger and I have been conducting intense research ourselves.”

A startled, high-pitched shriek of laughter out of the audience was quickly muffled. Draco waited for silence to return. “My treatment plan for her at the moment consists of rest, exercise and what the Muggles call talking therapy, a concept in which, to put it very simply, the patient verbalises experiences and feelings in order to better understand and process certain events. Her condition has rapidly improved since she left St. Mungo’s, and while my treatment plan is rather loose and unwritten as of now, we have indeed brought our findings to paper – a combined account of patient and Healer. Malfoy Publishing was gracious enough to publish on short notice, and our account of what occurred, as well as the compiled research of both the wizarding and the Muggle world, is available at Flourish and Blotts as well as Tomes and Scrolls as of…” He smiled and twirled his fingers, casting a wandless Tempus spell. “Right now.”

De Belleme leaped out of his seat. “How dare you!”

“How dare I? You nearly killed a patient in your lust for publicity and gold!”

“You are a disgrace to Pureblood medicine!”

“You are a disgrace for thinking there is different medicine for Purebloods!”

“Mudbloods are not the same! They need to be kept on a short leash because they grow up outside of our culture!”

“A leash to strangle them with?”

“Simul delectatio et dolor*,” Umbridge shrieked into the fray, spittle flying from her lips. “Protect our values!”

A wave of powerful magic crashed over the room, plunging pandemonium into shocked, stark silence.

“Out.”

Nobody dared move.

“Out!” Chairwoman Berrycloth roared. “All of you! Case dismissed. And do not think I will let this mockery of a hearing go uninvestigated. I will not be used as a public relations stunt!”

The bailiffs began herding reluctant spectators out of the doors furthest from the chairwoman’s gavel.

“De Belleme, Malfoy, you are both banned from the Ministry building for two weeks,” continued the chairwoman. “I have noticed and invalidated your requests for press conferences after the hearing. Go find a place more fitting to your spectacles before I start ordering arrests!”

Every single person in the room was on their feet. Hermione tried to stand against the flow of bodies trying to reach the doors, but she was washed along with the tide. She turned in search of platinum-blond hair, and made eye contact with Draco across the room. It only lasted a second, then she was jostled hard and had to fight to stay on her feet.

In the hall outside the courtroom, she worked her way to the side but couldn’t find leverage to be able to stop walking with the crowd.

A hand gripped her arm hard and pulled her behind a tapestry into a disused stump of a corridor. Her arms were caught and a heavy body threw her into the stone wall behind her.

“You little bitch. Did you think I would let you get away with this? I will not let you run from me.” De Belleme pressed into her and let her feel his bulk against her breasts and hips. “Trebetarry would have been easy to manipulate. He would have given me free access to you for regular treatment.”

Her skirts hitched up high, he thrust a knee between her thighs. Hermione felt frozen in fear, frozen in shock.

Conditioned to hold still.

“Don’t try to tell me that you didn’t enjoy my hands and my wand on you. You were gagging for it, you little whore. Coming and coming again, no matter who was watching. Did you like that? Your legs forced open and exposed in front of everyone?” His knee ground upwards into her crotch. “I heard that Muggles are much more libertine in their attitudes.” He licked her frantic pulse along her throat.

Pushing her left fist into his gut, she screamed. It took him a few seconds to overcome his surprise at her resistance, then his lips formed a weirdly small ‘o’ in his meaty face. The breath seemed to rush out of him. Clutching his abdomen, he staggered back.

Ripping down the tapestry, a wizard stood in the archway, wand extended towards a de Belleme, who clumsily tried to get to his wand, hands moving as if under water.

Trebetarry shot a bright orange spell at him, moments before Draco and Harry tore around the corner.

“Are you alright?” shouted Harry.

Draco was tugging and patting at her frantically, silently, his hands shaking while feeling for injuries.

“I am now,” replied Hermione. “He didn’t get very far.”

Draco’s head fell to her shoulder and he let out a long breath that could have been a sob.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I should have foreseen this. I am so sorry.” He had found her hand and held tightly to it. The Malfoy betrothal ring felt hot against her skin and dug into her fingers, but she welcomed the sting.

“I think,” Harry said slowly, looking from de Belleme to Hermione to Trebetarry, who stood to the side. “I think the Healer here--” he poked him with the tip of his shoe-- “has been resisting arrest after assaulting an innocent witch in front of witnesses.”

Trebetarry of all people was the first one to catch on. “Indeed. It was quite the struggle you had on your hands there, Auror Potter.”

Harry nodded sagely. “In the interest of everybody’s safety, I will be forced to make use of my Auror emergency Apparating privileges.”

Draco spoke into Hermione’s neck, breath warm against her skin. “What are you waiting for, Potter?”

With a pop, Harry released the Stunning spell from de Belleme. Before the sluggish wizard could react, they vanished from the corridor.

Trebetarry inched backwards, wringing his hands, uncertain of his welcome.

“Thank you,” Hermione said firmly. Trebetarry nodded and fled.

Draco was still holding on to her, fingers threaded through hers, thumb on her ring.

“Draco?” He nodded and lifted his face, eyes a little red. “Please take me home.”

***

Owls had started arriving mere minutes after their return to Malfoy Manor. None of them were sent by close friends and family, obvious by their lack of security clearance. An ever-growing flock of scroll-bearing birds sat patiently in the trees around the building. The birds had first sat staring at her through the French doors of the drawing room, when she had fled their uncomfortable presence. They had to have moved with her, finding a convenient tree just outside her bedroom.

Not ready to ask the birds inside, she searched for a distraction.

Her boxes were stacked along the wall in a corner of her room. Most of them were marked 'books.' Two had 'kitchen' written on them in Harry's messy script. One 'miscellaneous,' whatever that was supposed to mean. The boxes looked heavy, unshrunk by the house-elves but not unpacked because, really, there were no book shelves in her ... in the bedroom she occupied in the manor. Neither was there a kitchen, and obviously not enough storage space to put miscellaneous objects.

Indecisive, Hermione stared at her belongings from a safe? distance. Should she re-shrink the boxes?

She still hadn't asked for her wand.

What was wrong with her?

A frown creasing her forehead, she crossed the room and hefted a 'books' box from one box tower to the next so she could open ‘miscellaneous.’ A watercolour set, a magnifying glass, a long-abandoned knitting project, dried flowers from her cousin's wedding ... She closed the box and moved it to the side.

'Deco' proclaimed the writing on the next box. Decoration? Her cottage had been furnished, which included curtains and even pictures on the walls. She had never been home enough to change much; had Harry packed her landlord's landscape oil on canvas paintings?

Objects of varying shapes and sizes wrapped in bubble magic were tightly fitted into the box. Hermione lifted one out and unrolled the magical wrapping only to see it vanish as soon as it had been fully removed from the little figurine it was protecting.

'First Day at Hogwarts', of the Hedgewitch Children Collection, sparkled at her. She had received the first one from Ron after they had finished school. She had smiled and hugged him and put the garish thing on the mantle of the fireplace in the drawing room of the shared flat she had moved into during her apprenticeship. Then Molly had latched onto Hermione's apparent new-found passion for collecting and had made sure to gift her appropriate little statues at every opportunity.

'Lovebirds' and 'Secret Hope' had been the last additions to the crowded shelves of her cottage, right before her relationship with Ron had ended so badly. A little witch and wizard pair was chasing after one another around a tree, carving their initials into the porcelain bark – H & R, of course - then stood hand in hand, admiring their work before starting over again. The other was even worse. The little witch would take a bridal veil out of a trunk and try it on in front of a mirror, startle as if she heard somebody coming and quickly hid the headpiece inside the trunk before taking it out again and turning left and right, smiling at her reflection.

Hermione didn't want the kitschy things in her bedroom. She set 'First Day at Hogwarts' on top of a box and looked around for a substitute for the bubble magic wrap. The excited little witch ran to the Sorting Hat as she had done countless times before and overbalanced the trinket, falling off the edge of the box and landing hard on the polished wooden floor. The little figurine broke into three pieces and stopped moving.

Hermione let out an annoyed huff. She really had to ask Draco for her wand sooner rather than later. She couldn't even cast a simple Reparo.

Bending down to gather up the broken pieces, she suddenly stopped mid-motion. Nibbling on her lip, she reached inside the box and took out another wrapped figurine. 'Little Housewitch' was a witch with rosy cheeks, sporting a checkered apron and carrying a steaming Sunday roast. There had been somewhat of a pattern in the figurines Molly had selected. Somewhere in the pile of wrapped shapes, there should be a flour-covered witch baking happily and a witch learning to knit with magic, tangling herself in multi-coloured wool.

The Sunday roast didn't only break, it shattered.

Quickly, the lovebirds and secretly hoping witch followed. The baker, the knitter, the gardener, the witch doing needlepoint and the one resting her cheek on her wizard’s shoulder joined the growing pile of shards.

The empty decoration box very efficiently vanished.

“Feeling destructive?” Draco leaned against the door-jamb of her room.

“No,” she replied, surprised by her own answer. Looking at the symbolic remains of a relationship that clearly had been doomed from the start, she felt oddly peaceful.

“No, I actually feel like putting things back together.” Smoothing down her robes, she straightened and took a deep breath. “I think we should let the owls in and I’ve been meaning to ask about my wand…”

***

“Look at that!” she cried, waving a handful of unrolled scrolls in his face. “They want me to come research with them!” She flung her arms around his neck.

Draco exhaled slowly. “Who is they?” he asked tentatively, patting at her arms awkwardly.

Cheeks flushed, she leafed through the parchments. “The wizarding section of La Salpetière in Paris, the Grey Cloister Institute in Berlin and the Stregheria in Rome!”

Draco seemed to still under her embrace. “These are excellent academic institutions. An honour to be invited. A great honour.”

Not hearing the leaden quality of his words, Hermione clutched the parchments to her chest and twirled. “Oh, what should I do? What should I do? So many possibilities!”

Not paying Draco’s less than enthusiastic reaction any mind, she danced out of the door and ran to her room, already weighing pros and cons of the inviting institutions and drafting possible letters for a reply by express owl.

Late in the evening she found the manor deserted. Uncertain what to do, she stood in front of the large unlit fireplace in his study, where they had spent so many hours researching and writing. She drew a shaky breath and swallowed hard. Taking a clean sheaf of parchment from a stack, she accepted a quill from the white queen of the chess set on Draco’s desk.

Dear Draco,

I am very sorry that I did not get to say good-bye properly.

I need to at least look at what they are offering.

Thank you for everything.

Yours,

Hermione

After a moment’s deliberation, she slipped the Malfoy betrothal ring from her finger and placed it on her note.

* Simul delectatio et dolor – Simultaneous pain and pleasure, cure against hysteria as recommended by Giovanni Matteo Ferrari da Grado (1436 – 1472), royal physician
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Hysteria