A/N: This was originally written for Hermione's Haven roll-a-prompt. My prompt was Hermione/Rabasatan and life debts. I've since expanded on it and it will be 9 chapters in total. This is a short story, chapters won't be very long, but my hope is that I'll have the first four chapters up today and the last five up in the next week or so.
The lovely and talented AlexandraO beta'd this work for me! She's an amazing writer in her own, so go check out her works!
Find me on Tumblr at crochetawayhpff! And reviews are life, so if you like this, let me know!
"A what?!" Hermione Granger spat at him coldly from the other side of the visitor's table. Rabastan grimaced and shrugged his shoulders, trying to get comfortable on the hard metal chair. But with his hands shackled in front of him, it was hard to forget exactly where he was. Azkaban Prison, the place he'd spent over half of his life by this point.
The Second Wizarding War was over and won, five years ago now. Harry Potter had finally defeated Lord Voldemort for good, and Rabastan was back where he belonged. His home. He sneered at the thought. What he wouldn't give for his real home: Lestrange Park. If it still existed and hadn't been sold off that is.
"A life debt, Miss Granger," he explained once more as he eyed her from the other side of the table. He shifted his head a bit so that his raggedy hair hung in his eyes. Giving him more cover to look the woman over. She was dressed neatly in business robes, and her famous, wild-hair was tied back in some sort of updo.
"You owe me a life debt? How in the world would that have come about Mr Lestrange?" She frowned at him and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair. Rabastan looked down at his shackled hands before answering.
"Probably when you stunned Antonin Dolohov before his killing curse could be unleashed at me in the Department of Mysteries several years ago," Rabastan snapped, suddenly pissed off at her and everything she'd come to represent. "Or maybe when you escaped from Malfoy Manor so dramatically, that my lovely sister-in-law and Master forgot about me for a few days."
Granger pursed her lips and shifted in her chair, her brow furrowed. She looked deep in thought. Rabastan breathed heavily through his nose, willing himself to calm down. Getting riled up would do nothing for his cause, except maybe anger her to the point of not returning. He almost didn't know whether he wanted her to absolve him or let him die instead.
He boldly met her gaze and said, "Or, how about during the final battle when you pulled me from the rubble of that wall collapsing."
Granger went white, her face draining of colour, and whispered, "You remember that?"
"I do," Rabastan confirmed. He shivered, whether from the cold or the emotions swirling about in the room he didn't know. It did have the effect of tossing more hair over his eyes though; he looked at her through it. She was looking just past his left shoulder, biting her lip. A random thought crossed Rabastan's mind of what that lip would taste like, and then she was speaking again.
"So three life debts then." She uncrossed her arms and laid them on the table, leaning toward him.
"At least," Rabastan answered.
"Fuck," she whispered, dropping her head slightly. "Why did Dolohov want to kill you?" She pierced him with her gaze, and he found he couldn't look away from her whisky-coloured eyes.
"Things aren't always what they seem," Rabastan said cryptically and forced himself to turn away from her.
"Let me see your arm," she demanded.
"What?" Rabastan looked at her. Why in the world would she want to see his arm?
"Give it over, your left one." She held out her hand, clearly expecting him just to let her examine his Dark Mark. He tsked at her and leaned as far back in his chair as he could go, he wasn't going to give some chit of a girl a free glance at his most private shame.
"No. What are you going to do?" he asked suspiciously. He would have backed away from the table entirely, but his feet were conveniently shackled to a ring in the floor.
"I'm going to look at it," she said slowly as if she were speaking to a child.
"Why?" Rabastan glared at her.
Granger sighed and rolled her eyes at him. "Draco Malfoy's Dark Mark never set properly. It reddened and swirled angrily on his arm like his body was trying to reject it. After the Dark Lord fell, I noticed that his Dark Mark looked different than the rest of the Death Eaters. It's what got him off, actually," she informed him. "I want to look at yours." She nodded to his arms, still in his lap.
Comprehension dawned, and Rabastan felt a lightening in his chest that he hadn't had cause to feel in at least twenty years. He reached out both arms since they were cuffed together, across the table toward her, turning them, so his hands were palm up.
Tentatively, she pushed the sleeve of his grey prison uniform up his left arm. Her fingers were warm against his skin as she slowly revealed his greatest shame. When she had been describing the Malfoy boy's Dark Mark, she could have been describing his own. He never wanted to be marked. He never wanted to follow the Dark Lord, but he'd been dragged to it by his brother and his father.
"Woah," she breathed as she took in his almost white Dark Mark, it had finally ceased moving in the Dark Lord's death and now just looked like a pale scar on his arm. Although it still had the perfect outline of the skull and snake that made up the Dark Mark.
"It looks just like Draco's." She trailed a finger across it, and Rabastan shivered, despite the warmth of her skin against his. He wanted to ask what a Dark Mark looked like on someone who wasn't him or Draco. Maybe Dolohov's? Or his brother, if Rodolphus was still alive, but he didn't. That felt like too much of a vulnerability to show before this woman. She seemed as hard as steel, and he was afraid that if he got to close, she'd cut him to shreds.
Rabastan pursed his lips and pulled his arms from the table and her warm fingertips. "So you've seen it. Now what?"
"You tell me? You summoned me here," she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest once more.
"I summoned you because I can't leave. And I can feel the life debts pressing down on my soul. They want to be paid. Absolved."
"Are there any traditional ways a pureblood would absolve a life debt?"
"Property or marriage. Sometimes both," Rabastan shrugged.
"What if I got you out of Azkaban? Would you owe me another life debt?"
Rabastan grimaced, "Probably." Definitely, he thought.
"Might as well add it to the list. You can't stay here with a Dark Mark like that. I can't believe they put you in here the after the war to begin with. Did nobody even look at your Mark?"
Rabastan shook his head.
"Bloody idiots," she muttered, running a hand through her perfectly coiffed hair before she seemed to realise it was up and patted it instead.
Rabastan quirked an eyebrow at her, hoping she'd explain herself.
"It proves that not only were you an unwilling participant in everything that took place but that your soul is too light to have accepted the darkness of the Mark. We proved it with Draco. We'll prove it with you too."
Rabastan's breath caught in his throat at her words.
"Will I have to testify?" He did his best every day to forget about the horrors he'd experienced during both wars and did not want to relive them in front of an audience.
"Most likely," she nodded.
"Then leave me here." Rabastan shook his head. He wasn't going to lay his soul out like that for the Wizengamot to judge whether he was fit or not. He'd rather live out the rest of his life in Azkaban.
"Mr Lestrange, you've been falsely imprisoned for most of your life. Don't you want out?" She narrowed her eyes at him.
"This is what I know. I don't want to testify," Rabastan reiterated.
"Fine. I'll see what I can do." With that, she stood and walked out of the room without another word.
The weight on his soul seemed to increase, just a little bit more.
