Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This story is not written for profit and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: A special thank you to Harmonic Friction for betaing this piece. I was very fortunate to have the benefit of his good opinion and keen eye.

Dark in My Imagination

He hadn't been back to the manor in years.

As he approached, he could see that the roof had caved in over the library and the heavy gray stone of the exterior walls was overgrown with moss and ivy. There were no more peacocks. The elm trees that hid the back garden from view had a wild look about them, their boughs hanging low and reaching.

It had been such a long time. No one had lived in the manor since the War, but the family hadn't sold it—couldn't sell it. There wasn't a wizard in the world who would buy Malfoy Manor, and Muggles said the place had an evil look about it and stayed away.

The long gravel drive was thick with leaves from many autumns left unswept, but Draco knew the way even without the hedgerows to guide him. When he approached the grand entrance, he saw the doors hung from their hinges, their gilded brass pried away. Even the doorknobs had been stolen.

He pushed the doors aside and stepped inside. The creaking echoed through the bowels of the house like the groan of some aged beast from the depths of a cave. Leaves crunched underfoot as he crossed the grand foyer, its marble floors smashed in places. The only light came in long golden streaks from the broken windows and holes in the ceiling open to the cloudless sky overhead. Draco could smell the rot, the musty scent of decaying leaves and mouldering fabric and parchment. Something else, too, something rancid-sweet, like meat gone bad.

There were signs that someone had trespassed recently, shuffled leaves and dusty bootprints and drag marks from heavy furniture. Probably looters. Draco imagined abandoned old manor houses like this must be like Christmas to them. He didn't even care that the looters may have been Muggles. If they stole a biting tea set or something, it only served them right. Besides, every item that might have had dark properties had been confiscated by the Ministry years ago, both during and after the War.

Draco turned left and proceeded down a dim corridor lined with broken picture frames. Some rested on the floor, leaning against the wall, their canvases destroyed or still stored in the attic. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the Dark Lord had ordered all of the portraits moved to someplace out of the way so that he would have no spies in his headquarters. Draco saw a flurry of movement and wondered if it was a painting still faintly stirring, but it was only a rat. It bolted in the opposite direction from Draco's feet, and he watched it out of site, noticing the fraying carpet gone brownish-green with mould.

The library doors were open when he came to them. Sunlight streamed in from the hole in the ceiling, the rafters jutting down into the bookshelves like broken bones. Books lay scattered across the floor, their pages wrinkled and faded yellow, their bindings warped or torn away. It was like a battlefield graveyard.

Wind rushed in, moaning through the cavernous room, ruffling the books until their whispers were deafening in Draco's ears. He felt the breath of it on his face: cold, sighing a winter that would arrive all too soon, and sour with the dank of decay.

He remembered the hours of his childhood spent sitting with his mother reading stories together. He'd sat on her lap and begged her to do the voices as he stared at the moving illustrations of duelling warlocks and crafty witches.

Nothing about this mausoleum was familiar.

Draco turned to go, but stopped short to avoid stepping on a book. Looking down, he read its faded gold lettering. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. The crimson fabric binding had been stained brown in places. He stepped around the book instead. One did not tread on the bones of the dead.

Back down the hall, Draco stared up the steps of the grand staircase, wondering if it would still support his weight. He could see no real structural damage. He decided it would.

At his first step up, several crows on the landing took flight, their black wings a blur against the shadows around them. They soared overhead and out of a broken window, cawing into the stillness, and the house answered them in echoes.

On the landing, he could see what they'd been doing. There was a dead wolf at the entrance of the guest corridor. By the look of it, the crows hadn't been the first creatures to find it, merely the most recent. The body was no longer wet with blood, but its matted fur, its sunken, empty torso, and the dizzying, festering stench of it were enough to turn Draco's stomach.

He pressed his nose and mouth into the crook of his elbow and breathed through the fabric of his robes, backing away until he ran into the railing behind him. His weight was too much for the rotted wood, and the railing broke free of the landing with a snap. Grabbing at nothing, Draco fell backwards into the grand foyer. His final impressions before he hit the marble floor were a whirl of colours and the cawing of crows. Then there was a sudden, brilliant blackness.

It was night, and Draco's mouth was dry.

The cold had come over the house like a fog. Watery moonlight filtered through the dust and grime, adding more shadow than light. Draco could hardly open his eyes. It was as though a thick film glued his eyelashes together. He felt atrophied, his skin frozen solid.

Something nudged at Draco's hip, snuffling, its claws clicking on the marble floor as it walked. Reflexively, Draco jerked away from the noise. His stiff and swollen body revolted against the sudden movement, and he began coughing, feeling dried blood crackling against the skin of his cheek and a clotted lump in his throat. He gagged, twisting onto his side, and made a grab for the wand in his pocket.

The wolf growled, and the sound reverberated around the marble foyer. Draco forced himself to focus. He chose one of the two wolves presented to him by his double vision and pointed his wand at it.

"Stupefy!" he thought, and a jet of red light blinded him, erupting from the tip of his wand just as the wolf lunged for his throat. The spell hit the wolf in the face, and it's huge, foul-smelling body landed on top of Draco in a heap. Pain sparked in his chest and lit his muscles on fire. He ignored it, pushing at the beast's torso, knowing that this wolf and the dead one on the landing meant there must be a pack nearby. He had to get up, get to safety.

Once he was upright, he weighed his options, spitting more blood onto the floor and wiping his mouth on his sleeve while he thought. His arms and legs were made of brittle clay; he was afraid he might crumble at any moment. Though he didn't seem to be seriously injured, even slow movements were their own special torture. There was no way he could apparate in his condition. His gaze travelled up the staircase again, thinking about higher ground and doors that he could lock behind him.

A howl rent the silence. The rest of the pack called to their unconscious brother. Draco stopped trying to reason with himself. He stopped worrying about broken bones or the wetness on the back of his head, the acrid smell of old blood. He needed to get up those stairs.

The more he moved, the stronger his legs felt. The shock of the fall must not have done as much damage has he'd feared. As he took the stairs two at a time, Draco reached up and gingerly touched the back of his throbbing head. His hand came away bloody. He would have to deal with it when he was safely hidden.

He was just about to round the second-floor landing and take the stairs to the third when he heard skittering and panting sounds in the foyer. Four wolves had just bounded inside the house, sliding on the floor and collecting leaves into piles at their feet. They surveyed the scene with ruthless efficiency. Their unconscious pack-mate, the human blood next to him, then Draco at the top of the staircase. In less than a second, they were pelting up the stairs toward him.

Draco ran. He ducked into the first open door after the landing and slammed it shut just as a wolf threw its body against it. The middle panel of the door split in half. Draco scrambled away from the it, gazing blindly into the pitch black room.

"Lumos!"

The upstairs parlour blossomed in the light, its dark wood furniture, overturned now, heavy with dust and decay. Draco could hear the buzzing of Doxies filling the silence between bangs at the door, and their beetle-like wings glittered in the harsh white wandlight as they fled to the velvet curtains.

An idea struck him, and Draco strode to the fireplace, but the crystal container that once held Floo powder was chipped and empty. In his frustration, he tossed it aside and disturbed the Doxies, who swarmed around the broken shards to investigate, humming madly.

Draco didn't have long to look for an alternative. Another crack of splintering wood and a bark told him he had seconds before the wolves broke through.

That gave him another idea.

"Repulso!" he shouted, and the wall next to the fireplace broke apart, revealing the study on the other side. Draco leapt over the rubble, aware of another crash at the door of the parlor, but he was already taking aim at the wall behind a desk on the opposite side of the study."Repulso!"

Dust obscured his view of the room beyond. He kept going anyway, leaning his shoulder forward and running full out, only to ram into the inside wall of an empty closet. Desperate, he tried the closet door and fell out into the hallway again. One wolf was still standing guard outside the parlour door ten yards away. He barred his teeth and tore after Draco, who rounded a corner and was met by the back staircase. Taking the stairs in leaps, he threw himself forward into the third floor hallway. Halfway down, he made a right turn into a room whose door was open and slammed it shut behind him, palm splayed against the wood of the door's interior. Something shimmered white and expanded from his hand to the walls and floor and ceiling, until it converged on itself near a window on the other side of the room and melted out of sight.

Moonlight poured in through the window. The glass was still intact and the thick damask curtains were open to reveal a stunning view of the overgrown gardens below. Draco knew all of this without turning around. He knew because this was his bedroom. The wolves could throw themselves against the door all they liked. They'd never get through that Shield Charm. He'd cast it himself years ago for protection against the Death Eaters who had overrun his home.

He breathed again. He was safe.

"Draco?"

Draco whirled around, his eyes wild. "W-who's there?" But he knew who it was. He'd know that voice anywhere. He'd know it if he was deaf.

"Draco?" she said again. Agonizing hope hitched in his throat and found release in a sob. It couldn't be true. It wasn't real.

But he could almost see her slight movements deep in the dark corner near his old wardrobe. She was denser than the shadows.

"Draco, please..." There was so much pain in her voice, so much need. His panic mounted. Was she hurt? What was she doing here, in his room of all places and now of all times? That didn't matter. Nothing mattered but seeing her again. When he tried to approach her, however, he found that he was rooted to the spot, too petrified to move.

"H-Hermione," he said. It was more of a whimper. Begging. Please.

She stepped forward into the moonlight. The ache of relief and fear held him in a vice, and all he could think was Merlin, she was beautiful. She wore a plain white nightgown that almost glowed silver in the light. Her hair had grown past the middle of her back and was dark with soft curls. Her face was thinner, her eyes hollow and absent as they had been the last time he'd seen her, but they flickered with something at the edges now. Something like hot coals just before they burst into flame.

Her mouth opened a little as she gazed at him, taking him in as well. Her gaunt hands reached for him, and he was there at once, holding her, terrified to let go. "Hermione." She was weight in his arms. She was real. She was there.

He sank to the floor with her, and she lay cradled in his arms, pressed against his chest.

"Draco, where were you?" she said weakly. His fingers brushed her cheek. She was cold, yes, but there was real, living warmth under the chill of her skin. She was there, really there.

"Where was... where was I?" Draco replied, drinking in the sight of her, losing himself in the wave of her hair, the line of her jaw, the curve of her ear. His chest ached with the pain of his injuries; that was nothing compared to the molten lead of emotion pouring into him, threatening to burst from his gut at any moment. Outside of the door, the wolves were barking and howling. Draco forgot they were even there.

"I waited," Hermione said. Tears beaded up in the corners of her eyes and slipped over her cheeks.

"No, don't cry, don't cry," Draco soothed, wiping her tears away.

"You're hurt," she said. She stared at the dried blood on his neck and shoulders.

"No, I'm fine," he said, waving this away. She nodded, but she didn't stop crying. "Don't worry. Please don't cry. I'm here now. I'm here." He kissed her forehead, his own tears falling into her hair.

Hermione took his hand into hers, her touch delicate, and placed it on her belly just below her diaphragm. "Too late."

Draco lifted his shaking hand from the heat of her stomach and saw the shocking red illuminated in the moonlight. He felt the blood, hot and sticky on his hand. Not his, but hers. There was so much blood. "No," he said. "No, no, no."

The wolves were howling and scratching and pounding.

"Too late," she whispered, and her perfect lips were chapped and dry. "You're too late, Draco."

"No," he repeated stupidly. He pressed his hand into her stomach again, this time to stop the bleeding. "What happened to you?" He remembered his wand then. "I can heal you. Tell me what happened!"

"You're too late." She closed her eyes.

"No!" he shouted, his voice filling up the room. "Tell me what happened and I'll heal you! Hermione!" He shook her, and she lolled helplessly in his hands. Her head hung against her shoulder. Blood trickled from her mouth and onto the sleeve of her gown.

"NO!"

He hugged her limp body against his. How could she have been here all this time? How could it be that he had arrived here moments before her death? It didn't matter. None of it mattered. She was dead. She was gone again, gone so soon. "Hermione," he pleaded. Tear tracks formed on his dusty cheeks. His felt dizzy with grief. "Please come back. Please." He pointed his wand at her. "Renervate!"

She stirred, and Draco felt a thrill of elation and then panic wash over him. "Hermione!"

Her eyes opened just a little and she tried to speak, but he shook his head. "No, you're weak. Don't try to talk." He moved her to the floor in front of him, and the light shone on her skin; it glistened on her blood. "I'm going to look at your injury, all right? I'm going to heal you. Stay still."

He held his wand between his teeth to free up both hands. Slowly, gently, he pulled the hem of her gown up over her thighs, her hips, over her stomach to reveal a gaping wound.

Draco swallowed hard and took his wand back in his hand. His head throbbed. "I can... I can fix this," he said with more confidence than he felt. She watched him with half-closed eyes, beyond even pain. She was in shock.

Pointing his wand at her belly, Draco said, "Sanalivor." Deep in the wound, something mended. There was a wet noise, a gut-churning squelch, and blood oozed up over her flesh to trickle down her side. "Coalesco." The muscles of her abdomen knitted themselves back together. The skin grew back smooth and hot.

When it was done, Draco ran his hand over her stomach. It was perfect. "We caught it early," he said. "No scar."

Hermione opened her eyes. Her lips trembled. "You saved me." She smiled. Still weak, she struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. "I'm alive."

Through his happiness, Draco felt another thrill of fear. What now? Everyone thought she was dead. What would happen if he returned from his childhood home with her? Why was she here to begin with?

"Hermione—" he began, but she stopped his mouth with a kiss. Her lips felt smooth like warm honey against his, and he lost himself in her. Her tongue darted between his lips to taste him. He closed his eyes. She was real. She was alive. She was kissing him. It was all that mattered.

Hermione pressed herself against him, urging him toward her, deepening their kiss. Draco might have been spinning in circles, spiralling out of control with only the feel of Hermione against him to know which way was down. It was all he could do to keep from crushing her with his weight. He needed to be gentle. She was healing. She was precious.

He broke their kiss to look at her. She gazed back at him, eyes coal-bright, and he trembled, his body coiling tightly around a tiny glimmer of hope. She wanted him.

"Draco," she murmured. It was all there in her voice. She wanted him. Finally. After all this time.

Slowly, achingly slow, Draco slid a hand up her side, feeling the soft expanse of her thigh, the lace of her underwear, then more skin as he continued along the dip and curve of her stomach. Her ribs protruded a little more than they had before. How long had she been waiting for him? He glanced down at her perfectly smooth stomach. Where had she gotten that wound?

He could fill in the blanks later. There would be plenty of time.

Touch light, tentative, he grazed his fingers over her breasts, and she gasped, her eyes boring into him, urging him on. He grew bolder. He slid his thumb and forefinger around her nipple and pinched slightly, softly. She moaned and arched her back to him. His lips parted. She smiled.

"More," she whispered.

His eyes widened and his stomach lurched, but Draco continued, moving to caress her with both hands. Hermione sighed. She covered his hands with hers. This was moving too fast.

"Wait," Draco said, trying to pull away. Hermione pressed his hands onto her body and writhed beneath them.

"No," she said. "No waiting. I want you now."

Draco was starting to panic. This was too much at once. His head ached and his body was sore from the fall and the added stress of running. His breath came in sharp, painful pants. This was too intense. "I can't."

She moved so fast that he couldn't think how to defend himself. Her fingers clasped around his wrists, and she shoved him hard against the foot of his bed, straddling him with practised ease.

"Hermione..."

She ignored him, grasping his throat in her thin fingers. She tilted his head up to face her and bit his chin before licking the long line of his jugular, her tongue grating on his day-old stubble. "Is this what you imagined?" she breathed into his ear, taunting him. She grazed the angle of his jaw lightly with the tips of her fingers, then dragged her broken fingernails down his chest, tearing the fine material in some places. Draco barely noticed.

He boiled with desire and fear and confusion. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Not in an abandoned house. Not with them both injured and broken. But he could feel his own body betraying him. She leered at him, and he knew she could feel it, too.

"You want me," she said. It wasn't a question. She already knew the answer. They both did. Of course he wanted her. It had been years...

She pulled the nightgown over her head, and her sweet-smelling hair fell around them in curtains, tickling his face. She turned his head again to look him right in the eyes. "Take me."

Draco drew a long, steadying breath. This was wrong. This shouldn't be.

She was reaching between them to free him from his robes.

"No," he said, catching hold of her hands and pulling them away. She spread her arms instead, inviting him to look at her naked body, her breasts full and nipples erect. She rocked into him, teasing him, and he was more afraid of her in that moment than he'd ever been of anyone in his life. No one had ever demanded such control; he'd never tried to resist so much.

"We can't do this. Please. Let's just wait—"

She hissed in frustration and climbed off of him. It was all happening so fast. She was at the bedroom door in a second.

"Maybe I should just—"

"NO!" Draco lunged forward to stop her, his body screaming in protest. "No, Hermione. Don't go out there. It's not safe. I'm sorry, all right? Please, come back."

She rounded on him. "Come back? Like you came back?"

"What?" he said, confused. Behind the door, the wolves had renewed their efforts to get into the room. They'd heard Draco shouting. Their growling and scratching terrified him. He couldn't let Hermione go out there. He couldn't let her die.

"It took you long enough to find me!" Nearly naked and half in shadow, Hermione looked unlike herself, almost inhuman. She hadn't been like this before. She would have understood.

"I didn't know to look," he said.

"I hate you!" She spat on the ground in front of him.

"Please, Hermione. Please don't say that."

"It's true, Draco. I hate you. I never wanted to be with you. Kissing you disgusts me."

"Hermione," Draco said, afraid of her words, the glare of her ember eyes. He could feel a cold sweat breaking on his brow. "Please."

"You are everything I hate. You are a liar and a cheat and a murderer."

"No, Hermione. No."

Her voice was a croak. She was like one of those crows cawing, beating their wings, pecking at putrefying flesh. "Murderer."

"Please," Draco begged. "Just listen to me."

The wolves were howling outside of the door, and Hermione stalked closer and closer to him. There was something not right about her. Something not quite...

But Draco wouldn't see it. He couldn't understand why she would say those things. Didn't she want him? Hadn't she waited for him?

This was all wrong, all wrong, all wrong.

Draco shook his head to clear it and pointed his wand at her. "Stay away from me," he said. She grimaced at him, baring too-white teeth that gleamed in the moonlight.

"Stay away..." she echoed, a menace in her voice now. She took a step closer.

"Stop it, Hermione," Draco said quietly, retreating to the window. "Don't make me do this. Not again."

"Don't make me..." She was almost upon him, her fingers splayed and long and clawed. She was a monster, a ghoulish version of the woman he had loved.

Tears blurring his vision, Draco forced himself to laugh. The creature cringed in pain, reeling back, screeching. "I'm not afraid of you," he said, then swished his wand through the air and shouted, "Riddikulus!"

The creature screamed, and it was Hermione's scream and a thousand others until it was all crushed together into one high, cruel note. The wolves outside the door made noises of fright and ran away, their whimpers and heavy footfalls disappearing down the hallway.

Draco forced the thing back into his wardrobe. The doors slammed shut with a bang. The key turned in the lock.

"No," Draco sobbed, stumbling forward into the shadows until he reached the wardrobe. "We were close this time! We were so bloody close!" He punched the door, its thick wood resonating like a drum. "Why do you do that? Why did you do that, Granger? Fuck! We almost had it!"

The Boggart inside the wardrobe rattled its prison in reply.

Draco moved away, falling back against the bed with his head in his hands. He stayed there, his head bleeding and his knees weak, and wept until the room went quiet.

A long time later, Draco revoked the wards around the room and strode down the hallways and stairs to the grand foyer. He didn't worry about the wolves. He didn't bother to close the front doors. The gravel crunched underfoot as he continued down the drive.

He would come again tomorrow like the day before and the day before that. Whatever it took to find her again. And every day it was as though he hadn't been back to the manor in years.

A/N: This story was inspired by an interview that Tom Felton gave wherein he mentioned that he thought a good Boggart for Draco would be Hermione because she's "scary." That got me thinking about all the different ways Hermione might scare Draco, and lo, a fan fiction was born!

The title of this one-shot is in homage to "Dark in My Imagination" by of Verona. It's a great song, and the story's tone was written to match the music, so I hope you'll give it a listen.

Also, Sanalivor and Coalesco are not canon spells. I made them up.

Thank you so much for reading, and don't forget to review!

—Abbs