Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter because I am not JK Rowling. I wish I was, but I am not. Even if I were to one day change my name to JK Rowling, I would still not own Harry Potter. Oh well.
A/N: I was in the mood to write something dark with a lot of imagery, so I ended up writing this story. Other than that, I don't really have anything to say, but I always feel the need to write an author's note of some kind. Apparently, I'm addicted to them. Anyway, instead of rambling on more about nothing, I will let you get on with the story.
Draco sat in a chair made of leather, but it might as well have been stone. He would not have felt a difference either way. He was cold. His body was cold, his hands were cold, his chest was cold. His heart seemed to have slowed to a nonexistent pace, no longer beating. With the deactivation of his heart, his blood had stopped moving, frozen within his veins. He could not breathe. The air was frozen within his lungs. He watched as they dragged in the prisoner.
He knew what was coming.
He should not have felt like this in his own home, sitting in his own living room. He should not have felt this kind of fear, freezing him in place. He knew he had to keep his composure. He was a Malfoy after all. Malfoys do not feel fear. Malfoys do not feel emotion. Malfoys most certainly do not show emotion. Malfoys inflict pain without guilt. Malfoys do not feel guilt at all. Malfoys definitely do not feel guilt over a simple prisoner.
The prisoner was before him, her dark brown eyes filled with fear, although she tried to hide it. He and the prisoner both held fear that was destroying them as surely as any spell could do. Her fear was a different kind of fear then the type that filled his soul, but it was fear all the same. While his fear froze him like ice, her fear burned within her like fire. Her fear was not hidden behind a mask like his, either, because it was too consuming to hide. It burned through her eyes, destroying her mask like the flame it was. She was dying before him, before he had even raised his wand. In the same way, though, he was dying before her. He knew what he had to do.
"Draco," his father said. "You have had the chance to grow older. You are seventeen now. I have sheltered you for all these years, but now it is time for that shelter to end." Then Lucius looked at him. His eyes were cold. Draco could not imagine how he had never noticed just how cold they were. They were as cold as his own, but it was a different kind of cold. Draco's were cold with fear. Lucius's were cold with indifference toward him and hatred toward others.
"It's not so hard to kill," Lucius said.
Draco did not shudder. Inside he shook, but he kept his face smooth and his body immobile. He had known that this was coming. His father had been hinting for a while that this day would soon come. When Lucius left that morning, he had said that he and the other Death Eaters would return that day with a prisoner. The prisoner would be Draco's responsibility to dispose of. Knowing it was coming, however, could not staunch Draco's fear. There was no way around it. Draco stood up and drew his wand, pointing it at the prisoner.
He managed to keep his voice steady, but there was nothing he could do to increase its volume. "Avada Ke —"
"No," his father interrupted him. "You aren't doing it right. You can't just kill her right away. Where would be the fun in that?" His voice was cold, just like his eyes. How could Draco not have noticed how cold he was? "No," Lucius continued. "You have to start with torture first. Here, I shall demonstrate." He paused, then walked toward the prisoner purposely.
"Crucio," he said, his voice much stronger than Draco's had been.
The prisoner screamed, a gut-wrenching sound. She flailed in pain, her body thrashing violently. Her motions were uncontrollable, wild. Draco could not watch, but he could not look away. To look away would be to show weakness, and he could not do that. He felt guilt bubble in his stomach, but he tried to push it away. He was not the one performing the curse. Not yet anyway. Besides, he knew how the Cruciatus Curse felt. It had been performed on him before. Performed on him by the Dark Lord, by his own father, by any number of Death Eaters. He was hardly inexperienced with pain, so why should it bother him to see a prisoner experience it? Then again, maybe that familiarity was the real reason he felt guilt. He knew pain. He knew how it felt to be tortured. How could he ever accept it being directed at someone else?
After a seemingly endless period of time, his father ended the curse. "It's your turn," he said with a smirk, a smirk much more terrifying than Draco's. "Do it right this time."
Draco again pulled out his wand. This was not only his first time killing someone. It was also his first time torturing someone. In a way, this was his first experience being tortured as well. Draco had been tortured before, of course, but never in such an internal way. It had never been a torture that existed within his own mind, destroying him one fragment at a time. This time he knew what he had to do. "Crucio," he said, his voice barely shaking. Nothing happened.
"Idiot boy," his father said, his voice sharp. "Don't you remember your lessons?"
Draco did remember. He remembered his aunt's voice. It echoed in his head now. "You have to mean it," she had whispered to him. "You have to mean it." Oh, he remembered. How could he ever forget, when just after she said those words, she had reinforced them by performing the curse on him? Draco knew that if he lost his composure now, it would all be lost. His father would not accept a weak son. He could not be weak. He had to cast this curse.
"Crucio," he said again, his voice powered by fear.
The prisoner began to scream again. This time, the screaming was worse. He had not believed that was possible, but it was. It was much worse. This time, he knew he was the one who had caused it. He had cast the curse. He had cast it with the wand that he held in his hand. He could not blame anyone else.
He was the torturer now.
Draco watched the prisoner thrash before him, her screams gaining in volume. Time passed slowly. He tried to distance himself from her pain, but he could not. He watched as the fear in her eyes disappeared, replaced by nothing but pain. He watched as the pain in began to fade, replaced with numbness, as she slipped toward unconsciousness. He watched as her movements slowed, as if her body had realized that moving was useless. He watched as her screams began to gradually decrease in volume, as her throat became raw from screaming. With a feeling of horror, he realized that not only had he caused this, but he also held the power to end it. He held the power to end it, yet he had not. He had let her pain continue.
With a flick of his wand, Draco stopped the curse. The prisoner went limp, no longer moving. She was almost unconscious but still clung to awareness. His father gave a thin smile and began to slowly clap, in an ironic sort of way. "Good job, Draco," he said. "That was a well cast curse. Of course, you could have held it longer, but that was still a decent length." He walked over to the prisoner and swiftly kicked her in the ribs. Her eyes had been filled with a dull pain after he had ended the curse, and when his father kicked her, Draco saw a flash of sharper pain enter her eyes for a moment.
Draco pretended not to see the tears that soaked her face. He knew she had not meant to cry. She would not want to seem weak before them, just like he would not want to appear weak. The tears were an involuntary reaction to the pain. He knew she was strong. She had always been strong. She had never let him upset her with his caustic remarks, and he had never seen how show fear like this before today. He looked away from her tears and continued to try to block out the guilt. If he felt guilt, he would fall apart. If he fell apart, he would be punished. He would probably die. It was as simple as that. He could not have a conscience. He was a Malfoy, after all.
Draco did have a conscience, however. He had always known that he did, but he usually managed to keep it locked up. It sat within him like a stone, weighing him down but with no way of reaching the surface. It was mostly dormant because he had never done anything awful enough to bring it out. Petty insults were nothing compared to torture or murder. Still, his conscience was within him. It had been chipping away at him, gnawing at he for a long time, ever since he knew this day was coming. He had done enough now to activate it, to break it from the box in which he had trapped it. He had done enough to bring it to the surface. The guilt was already beginning to swallow him, and he had barely even started yet. He had only cast one curse. He had only cast one curse on one prisoner.
One curse and he was already falling apart.
Draco felt the mask slip from his face for a second, and he quickly put it back in place, hiding the terror that he felt freezing he from the inside. The fear was so much worse now. It was no longer an abstract fear of what was to come. No, now it was a fear of what he had done. It was the fear of what he was becoming. It was the fear of being trapped. It was the fear of knowing that he would be made to torture again and again and kill again and again. It was the fear of knowing that this prisoner would be dead at his feet soon enough, and it would be he who murdered her.
He was a torturer. He was a monster.
"There are still so many curses to try, Draco," his father stated, and Draco realized that he had not moved in some time. He had become lost in his thoughts. He knew now what was expected of him. His father was expecting him to torture her with curses even darker than the Cruciatus, curses so dark that light witches and wizards were unaware of their existence. He had known all along that he would have to kill her. He had even known he would have to torture her. But this? He could not do it. He knew he could not do it. He realized that thinking over his options was pointless. He had no options.
"No," Draco whispered, his voice raw
He saw the prisoner jerk her head toward him, regardless of the pain it must have caused her. A flash of surprise appeared in her dark eyes.
"What?" his father said softly, his voice dangerous. "Did he just defy me?"
There was nothing Draco could say to defend himself. "Yes," he replied. There was nothing more to say.
"I will torture her then, and you will watch," his father said, stiff with anger. "You will be punished suitably later." His voice was wrapped in fury, but he did not shake. He had too much control over himself for that. He raised his wand and muttered a dark curse that Draco did not recognize. The prisoner began to writhe, screams tearing from her throat. They were louder than they had ever been. Draco did not know what was happening. He just knew he could not watch. He knew the curses would only get worse. His father was dangerous. He was ruthless and without pity.
Draco had to stop this. The prisoner was dying slowly, painfully, before him.
He again heard his aunt's voice, reverberating within his scull. "You have to mean it." He could not block out the sound of her voice. He was not sure that he wanted to.
There was no way that he could save her, not really. No way but one.
"You have to mean it."
He raised his wand. His father was not watching. The prisoner was not watching. No one was watching. There was no one to see the pain that filled his eyes. No one to see what he was about to do. Still, his father had the reflexes of a snake, as did the other Death Eaters. They would stop a curse directed at them in a second. He knew there was only one thing he could do. There was only one way he could save the prisoner.
"Avada kedavra," Draco said, finally completing the curse he had begun to speak hours before.
Time slowed as the spell left his wand, the green light moving sluggishly through the air. He watched as it hit her. He watched as her body stopped moving. He watched as her eyes went blank, and her face became permanently frozen. He watched as her screams turned to silence. He watched as the flame within her burned out, until there was nothing left of her, nothing except her body. That was when the pain truly began, pain more excruciating than anything he had ever experienced. He felt his soul rip, leaving nothing but tatters. He felt the world begin to blur in front of him. He felt his head spin slightly and felt the ground move beneath his feet. He reached his hands slowly toward his eyes and felt water. What could it be? Tears? But Malfoys do not cry.
"What have I done?" The words slipped through his lips. He was unaware that he had spoken.
The taste of guilt and self-loathing filled his mouth. It tasted like acid, burned like acid. It burned his tongue and then spread throughout his body, but he deserved to be burned. He felt as if he had put out a fire by putting his hands into the flame, and in a way, he had. The prisoner was fire, and he had killed her. Now, there was nothing except flame surrounding him. He could feel the smoke smothering him. He could not breathe. He could feel nothing but fire, smell nothing but smoke, and taste nothing but the guilt choking him, but there was no sound. There was no sound but that of silence.
The world was going red and black. He was drowning in color. He looked at his hands and swore he could see blood. It could not be blood. The Killing Curse killed without leaving so much as a mark. Still, there was blood there. His hands were red. His eyes were red. Everything was red. Everything was red except the black dots that swarmed his vision.
He had killed her. That was what they had wanted all along. He had killed.
Draco did not see the faces of his father or the other Death Eaters. He did not hear their voices. There was nothing but the red and the black and the silence that filled his ears.
The darkness claimed him, and he fell. He fell beside the body of the prisoner. He fell beside the body of Hermione Granger.
A/N: Okay, so as I said, this was rather dark, but I love writing dark stories. It's more fun to get into the character's head that way. I'm also kind of curious when people realized that the prisoner was Hermione. I'm guessing it was either right when she was first mentioned or at the end, since I didn't really drop that many hints haha. Anyway, thanks for reading! I love to hear what people think, so reviews are very very welcome =]