The holidays passed with little fanfare. The New Year started, Nott Manor played host to a steady, revolving stream of a small group of trusted friends. Hermione continued to decline, though she tried her best to keep it hidden. She sometimes believed she was able to hide it from Harry, Blaise and the rest. Sometimes she couldn't and would spend days in bed. There were no more accidental bursts of magic around her. She had learned, after waking up some three days after the Draco/Blaise confrontation in the library, that Blaise had lost control of his magic for a brief moment - his emotions were running particularly high (though he refused to speak of it to her). As always happened now, the magic near her person caused a visceral negative reaction. After falling unconscious, Blaise had carried her to her room and Susan had spent the next ten hours trying to stabilize her. Apparently (and she had only learned of this days after the fact) her heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar, of all fucking things, had been all over the place. Her kidneys had started to fail and it had taken all of Susan and Theo's combined knowledge and prowess to get her healthy again. Well, healthy-ish. Hermione was certain she'd never be "healthy" again. Blaise had been devastated, apologetic, contrite. She'd yelled (talked as fiercely as she could) at him over the altercation with Draco, demanding to be told what had occurred between the two. He hadn't told her, of course, and she was hardly in any position to work the answer out of him by less savory means.