Are You Scared?
Disclaimer: You know the drill. Not mine.
A/N: This fits with Satisfaction, another of my one-shots. Read it first.
Water trickled down the wall of stone in a slow, unending, kamikaze mission to reach the bottom of it, where it would collapse and melt in, disintegrate into a puddle of many of the same others, which would in turn spread across the floor in the same paths market by slime, decay, and a faint musty smell of both fungus and dust, which would in turn soon reach Hermione.
At first she had cringed at the feel of it, the dirty wetness, the craving inside of her body for the very liquid she was now flinching from because of the disgusting dirtiness of it, the way the chill seemed to seep from it into her bones, from which it emanated into every inch of her body, the way it seemed to permanently state how dirty she was for her.
Now she barely noticed it, except to focus on it, to latch onto it and nothing else as a sort of haven, a last refuge for the shreds of her sanity still intact after Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort were done with her. She still could not call him Tom—that was Harry's prerogative, almost it seemed, but calling him by his assumed title was a feat she had mastered years ago, and she no longer had the least trouble calling him that.
Few of them in the same prison as Harry did now, really. Living with him in close contact tended to do that to people. Even now, Hermione could muster up a faint smile at the naivety of Harry when it came to his own magnetism and charisma. Yes, he had never won over Professor Sn—Severus, but the man had been bitter, blinded by prejudices that should have been left behind in Godric's Hollow eighteen years ago, when Lily and James Potter fell to Voldemort's wand, spy or not. And Harry had no idea of the devotion and loyalty he could inspire in people with the touch of his hand, the sound of his word.
It had been his innate leadership, something he did not recognize himself, more than his status as the Boy-Who-Lived, that had made Hermione reach out to him in first year, and after that their friendship had sealed all ideas of her turning her back on him, even if her identity as a Muggleborn had not selected her for it by default.
And look where that has gotten you, whispered the insidious voice that had cropped up from time to time. She refused to listen to it, aware that she was living in obvious denial but not caring. Why should she? She had gotten very good at denial after three months of being in captivity to Voldemort, not knowing from day to day what would happen to her.
Sometimes she found herself wondering why Voldemort dragged it out so, why he would not simply do it and get it over with. Surely with his track record at keeping Harry prisoner, he would want to kill him as soon as possible? But then again, he had always been a sadistic bastard, and three months of keeping Harry prisoner, with no trouble from it, would have heightened his self-confidence, always a problem with him to begin with.
And then sometimes she found herself wishing that he would do it, found herself craving the peace that death would undoubtedly bring. For what was it that Dumbledore had said?—To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure, or something like that. It sounded something like what she had read in one of her Muggle classics, the Lord of the Rings, always one of her favorites, and she had treasured it, tucking it away in her private place where even Voldemort with all his Legilimency could not take it from her.
But now—it was only now, when she heard from the prison grapevine that their executions were scheduled from her—that Hermione Granger discovered that she was afraid to die.
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(Here, if you haven't already, read Satisfaction by me first. Just click on my author's name, and it'll lead you to my profile, if you don't know. It fits. Trust me.)
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It was unwise, she knew. It was foolhardy, and stupid, and ridiculous, and every other synonym in the book. But she had to know, the same crave, the same driving, overpowering need for knowledge that had once driven her at Hogwarts, now drove her to the cell against hers, her face pressed against the bars, staring at the man she knew was Draco Malfoy, for all that he looked like Harry now.
"Malfoy?" her voice was quiet, but his head snapped up and whirled around to her, glaring at her, his green eyes possessed with a frenzy she had never seen in Harry's eyes.
"Potter," he snapped, but she understood. "Harry?" his mouth twisted as though he had bitten into something unpleasant, but he nodded.
"Why did you do it?" There. She had said it, and she paused, watching to see what he would do now. Not that he could hex her, he had given his wand to Harry, and she had to wonder what that had done to him, giving up his wand, but there were ways of hurting people, even in chains and contained in iron. She had seen the force of his will, and knew that if he really wanted to, he could probably hurt her without his wand.
His eyes snapped up to hers, and held them for an immeasurably long moment, calculating, weighing, judging, measuring. They were the eyes of a man who has seen too much and suffered too much, not an eighteen-year-old boy, and suddenly she felt an aching pang that they should be so.
Then he nodded, a curt, short nod, and said, "For lots of reasons." Suddenly, all his poise, his dignity, his Malfoy-ness went out the window, and he collapsed, a slumping, haunted figure with ghosts in his eyes she did not want to see as he continued. "Because Voldemort is a half-blood. Because he's stupid. Because I don't want to live out the rest of my life as an automaton, never thinking anything unless he wants me to. Because I don't want to have children if they have to grow up in a world like the one outside. Because my parents are dead, tortured to death by the fucking Dark—by Tom, because I failed my mission and didn't kill Dumbledore. Because Smith is so damn good at wiping out all your beliefs from under you with a single question." He sighed, a long drawn out sigh. "Because I woke up one morning and looked in a mirror and realized something very important about myself."
"What was it?" her voice was gentler than she meant it to be, tempered perhaps by the weariness in his posture, or the sacrifice in his actions, or the dullness in his eyes. Or maybe by the fact that at the moment, he looked like nothing more and nothing less than an eighteen-year-old boy, scared out of his mind, confused, twisted, foundering, but with enough good in him to sacrifice his life for someone he hated, so that the world could survive.
"That I hated the person who looked back." His voice was quiet, so quiet that she could barely hear the words. They might have been the scrape of his chains against the floor, or the drip of water on the wall, but. But that she thought that she could not have imagined the self-loathing in his eyes when he raised his eyes to meet her gaze once again.
She nodded, once, and returned to her spot on the floor to wait for the first rays of red light seeping in under the window that would signify that dawn had come.
Wait for the execution, that, somehow, no longer seemed quite as frightening as before.
Morning came sooner than she had expected, and she had not slept when the guards came to pick her up, banging on the door and calling out in rough voices even as the small, skinny one cast the unlocking spells. The other prisoners huddled in a group, and there was hugging, and kissing, and ruffling of hair, and all the various touches that they had so needed to do and have. Human beings need touch, Hermione thought happily as she relaxed in the warm arms of Charlie Weasley, pounded on the behind by Seamus, and Alicia Spinnet. And then her eyes slid across to Malfoy.
He was standing, alone and uncomfortable, on the outskirts, holding his arms to himself as though unsure of how to act. His sacrifice had traveled like wildfire through the cells, and everyone knew who he was, and what he had done. Molly Weasley attempted to hug him, but he shied away, stiff, awkward, and Hermione saw the flinch he had tried to conceal under guise of coldness, and she whimpered softly in sympathy.
"All right, that's enough!" It was Goyle the elder. No sense of finesse at all. Hermione watched dispassionately as he kicked the couples apart, and shoved with his brawny arms at the group hugs and hurried them all up the corridor, distracting herself by wondering which form of death Voldemort would deal out with them, and hoping that she would die by the Killing Curse, then realizing what she had just thought and wincing at the idea.
It didn't really matter though, she thought as she went to seek out a certain someone with green eyes and black hair. In a short while, nothing would matter anymore.
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"Stop following me." His voice was blank, but it carried more overtones of frightening hate than his malicious drawl at Hogwarts ever had, and Hermione swallowed slightly in fear. He could still hurt her, now more than ever, as he was unchained, guards or no guards.
"Please," she whispered softly, and something in her voice must have called out to him, because he turned around and stared at her, his green eyes wide and incredulous, softer in Harry's form than she had ever seen the cold Malfoy be.
"Why?" he asked, and they both heard the unspoken words hanging in the air. Why me?
"Because," she murmured. "Your back is straight." Both of them knew what she really meant: you're not Harry, you'll never be Harry, and that is both why you and why not you, and you know it as well as I do.
"I don't understand," he half-murmured. "What does that have to do with me?" And then he whipped around again, and grabbed her chin in his hand, and forced it upward, meeting her eyes in a flash of green that somehow seemed like grey. His hand was cold. Very much so, and she winced and shivered, but he gave no sign of noticing, and somehow she was glad for this yet another sign that he was not Harry.
She felt his eyes peering, probing, and knew that he was a Legilimens, but somehow what he was doing did not feel like Legilimens, only a careful soul-searching that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the soul.
And then he found whatever it was that he was looking for, and dropped her chin so abruptly that her teeth met, and made a sort of clicking sound.
"You're scared of dying." It was breathed softly, incredulously, but it was no more a question than were his eyes.
"Yes," she admitted, tears glistening and shimmering on the tips of her eyelashes, ready to fall and trace a clear, shining path down her cheeks.
And I need to know why you are not, and how you can give up your life, because what I heard yesterday isn't enough, and you know it, and I know it too.
"Come here," he said, even as the Death Eaters herded them faster and faster toward the ring of onlookers waiting for the promised spectacle, like hounds surrounding a kill. "Look at the sky. Really look, not just glance."
She did, raising her head for the first time in months, staring at the sky. It was dark, surrounded by a cloud, fog, and smoke, evil and twisted and unnatural, choked by the sheer evil that was Voldemort's twisted magic. Shuddering, she twisted her head to look at Malfoy, who nodded.
"Yes," he said. "Now look again." And even as she twisted her head, she felt a faint surge that she knew was his wandless magic, and she spared a brief part of her thoughts to wonder at the strength of his will and power of his magic before she turned all her attention to the sky.
Wordlessly she gazed at the huge expanse, dark as it had been before. Except now it was clear, the awesome power of the Dark as it was meant to be, not the perverted version of it that Voldemort practiced, the beauty of the night in all her glory and splendor, the stars adorning it, the moon shining above it, and the majesty of it all whispering about it, and she knew. It was beautiful.
"This is the Dark as it once was," whispered Malfoy from beside her, his breath warm in her ear. "This is how it should be. This is how it will be again one day soon, when Potter returns to defeat the Dark Lord.
"Do you understand?"
"A little," she admitted. "I'm still scared."
He smiled, a real true mysterious smile, and inclined his head. "That's okay," he said. "So am I."
Are you scared?
Are you scared?
Cause if you're scared—
You're not alone.
I once thought I was brave
But I can't stop
Crying.
(Second Day by Kendall Paine)