b R o K e n
prologue:
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one
can go."
-- T. S. Eliot
The air was heavy, thick and he could almost feel the emotion caked over his body, limiting his movements. There was static palpability to the air, the smell of lightning and electricity permeating harshly crackling as though the power had still not been fully unleashed: the fury had yet to be sated. Shaking his flaxen head as though to shake of birds of sorrow resting among the unruly cowlicks of his hair, the boy bent down and kissed those deceptively warm lips. Still soft, still pink, still very, very - //whatareyoudoing stopityourehurtingme ohgodohgodwhywhy ithoughtyoulovedme// - dead. He lazily waved a wand over the crumpled heap that was supposed to constitute as a human body. He was silent, no magical words spilling from his lips, but he could feel the power flow out his fingertips. He really didn't need the wand anymore either, let alone silly syllables of incantation, but he held it for the familiarity, the comfort. It wasn't long until he gave the wand up too, with the rest of his humanity.
He hadn't really expected to kill him - //smileohsoemptily runhandsoversoftwarmskin makehimhearhimbegforit// - you know. He'd known the mutilated corpse in life, probably better than anyone else had. Known him under a plethora of different titles: acquaintance, opponent, enemy, obsession, lover (was it possible to call someone your lover if you never really loved him, just twisted his love for you until he lay broken there, now?), victim. Never really were friends, though. Funny, how instead of regret for that inanimate body's current state of ... extinction, he was regretting that there hadn't been more of a struggle; he craved the rage, a person's darkest voice. He wanted to feel that same shadow in another person. Make someone understand ... And who better than his worst enemy - best enemy - to prove that people really are as broken and fucked up and twisted as he is. He hadn't meant to kill him - //wantthishuhyoulittleslut wantmeinyouonyouowningyou nailsscoreacrossunmarkedskin crimsonandscarletlikebloodyoctoberskies// - honestly. He was supposed to be strong. A worthy adversary. Newton said that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He was supposed to be his reaction, his silhouette, his polar opposite. They were supposed to be exactly different, an oxymoron to be sure: surely if he had power, his nemesis could match him fist for fist, word for word, spell for spell. But he wasn't quick enough, was he? Wasn't - //dontknowifitspleasureorpain hisbloodforlubicant hecriedwhenyoufuckedhimrawbut allhesaidwasiloveyouiloveyou// - worthy of his time. Because he was superior in every way to everyone. Dumbledore, his father, the Dark Lord and especially that broken doll of a man lying on that cold stone floor.
And he wanted to dance, laugh, scream. Instead, he stroked an almost-cold cheek, marveling at the sharpness of the cheekbones, the steady jaw. "I almost believed I could love you, beautiful. I thought you were like me. You were supposed to hate me, you were supposed to be just as broken as I am. You were supposed to make me want to be everything you weren't." And he pulled lids fringed with charcoal lashes over deathly green eyes. "Goodnight, sweet prince. Just remember - you were mine."
He stood up and delved in his robes, pulling out a box of doctored cigarettes. Deftly, he lit a fag with the snap of his fingers, and dragged deeply on the sweet, feeling the sweetness of the marijuana as it thrummed numbingly. With a sharp exhalation of breath, he whispered, almost as an afterthought, "Good-bye, Harry Potter. They'll never forget you."
He looked outside and thought it might be raining, as droplets scattered in through the open window. There was moisture on his cheeks to be sure. He thought that maybe he should feel guilty. The world had depended on Harry Potter, and now they were all going to die. He knew this with surety, the same way he knew that the day is coming when the sun forgets to rise, the same way he knew that everyone who loved is going to be scattered and bled dry, the same way he knows that there aren't really and winners or losers because this isn't even a game. A game has a point, a raison d'être, and it never really matters because we're all dead or dying, anyway.
He glanced at the watch on his thin wrist. Slowly, green words scroll along the watch's black face: Time ... To ... Kill ... Albus ... Dumbledore.
He smiled. "And the dance goes on."
Later, he'd whispered something in that old man's ear that widened eyes and shocked that self-appointed, omnipotent demigod. He'd killed Dumbledore slowly, muggle-style, gutting him, dissecting him like an animal. After all, Albus loved those disgusting muggles so much - he deserved to die like one. Funny, how "the greatest wizard of our time" bled like any other man, died for stupid reasons like any other man, and was most of all just as weak as any other man. "Even Harry Potter saw through you," he'd hissed as he made the final incision across that wrinkled throat. It was so easy that it was ridiculous, he'd thought as he watched the blood stain the old man's parchment-like skin.
He'd meant to kill Albus. He'd meant to kill Ronald Weasley. He'd meant to kill Severus Snape. He'd meant to kill Sybill Trelawny. He'd meant to kill that oaf Hagrid. He'd meant to imperio Ginny Weasley so she'd kill two first year mudbloods and write their death's on the wall in their blood outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom before locking herself in the Chamber of Secrets. He'd meant to torture Hermione Granger until she'd lost that famously ingenious mind and her brain was scrambled a gibbering mass of insanity. No one was sure what really happened to her exactly, but Hermione's madness was evident enough. He'd meant to rape Cho Chang on the bed of the dead corpse of Marietta Edgecombe until she lay ripped and unraveled under his thrusting hips, left only alive enough to know who he was.
"Draco Malfoy -" she'd whimpered to the aurors who arrived a day too late, beautiful face a ruin of red scars covering like a spider's web. "He told me that - Professor Dumbledore is dead - that - that Harry is dead. He - killed them, didn't he?"
But he'd never meant to kill his broken prince.
March 30 was a day that would spread like wildfire through the wizarding world. It was the death day Harry Potter, and it was the official date for the beginning of the war, though the first battles didn't take place for another three weeks, the fear had descended, and begun to consume.
On March 31, the funeral (with its was seven carcasses and school full of broken people) interrupted by a crimson phoenix bearing a curious package. It dropped it right on Harry Potter's coffin with a dull thud.
The hysterical audience never really understood why Lucius Malfoy's messily severed head chose that moment to grace them with his presence. They understood even less when twelve owls proceeded to rain down more heads. Later, the explosive, best-selling Daily Prophet issue named them Molly Weasley, Percy Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mafalda Hopkirk, Amos Diggory, Amelia Bones and Dolores Umbridge and three unidentified muggles (two male, one female). Five packed newspapers later, the Prophet proclaimed that these muggles were apparently the late Harry Potter's guardian family: Vernon, Petunia and Dudley Dursley. Another corpse was found at their place of residence, and although the biggest chunk of "her" (they weren't entirely sure of the victim's gender) was one crushed eyeball. After tagging and releasing several muggle witnesses, they labeled the woman "Arabella Figg", a local squib. No one was entirely sure why she happened to be in the vicinity at that time.
Life went on, as it always does. The war made people grow up like that. Minerva McGonagall was still there, as was Remus Lupin, as was Alastor Moody. They formed somewhat of a haphazard triumvirate of leadership within the Order. Of course, they were not entirely sure of what to do exactly: Dumbledore had not really let his plans for the future of the Order become known. Of course, even he could not have foreseen his own death and Harry Potter's.
The deputy for Amelia Bones, a former Ravenclaw named Erin Brant, was elected Minister for Magic in a chaotic election. The ministry was a sham really, a puppet government; all of the real power lay with the Order. Or with the Death Eaters, of course.
Luna Lovegood and her father joined the Order, and she was avidly studying several conspiracy theories involving the "Draco Malfoy" incident, as it was wont to being called (no one wanted to say that the only hopes for the good of mankind were now lying under six feet of icy, Scottish soil). She dropped out of school to take on an apprenticeship at the Department of Mysteries with a side job as a reporter at her father's magazine after the fall of Harry Potter, and hadn't looked back.
Neville Longbottom was being trained by the Order intensely. A loosely recorded prophecy (none of the witnesses of the prophecy were alive, none of the complete records were left intact) proclaimed that the one who had the power to kill the Dark Lord could only have been killed by the Dark Lord himself. Not only that, but he had to have been born at the end of July. Ergo, Harry Potter wasn't the destined one, Albus Dumbledore was wrong, and Neville was actually the boy who could make or break the Dark Lord.
Minerva McGonagall knew that Neville would never be strong enough. He doesn't have the power in Harry Potter's littlest finger. She knew Albus Dumbledore would never have been wrong about something like that, and she knew that the hope of the people hung on a thread. She knew that Neville Longbottom is the only reason there isn't anarchy and chaos. So she kept her mouth closed and taught Neville as best as she can. She knew that the battle was lost. She knew that there was something very, very wrong. She knew that the day is coming when the sun forgets to rise. She knew that she'll soon lie broken and twisted and dead. But at night, the wizarding world prayed to Neville Longbottom the way they'd once prayed to Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. And Minerva McGonagall, quietly, meekly, prayed, too.
St. Mungo's fourth floor ward SPELL DAMAGE held three former Hogwarts students: what's left of Cho Chang, Hermione Granger and Virginia Weasley. Ginny can still at least make competent sentences - Hermione Granger hasn't said anything rational at all, and stares vacantly, emptily, like a placid vegetable. Cho was the only one who shows signs of rationality - she'd originally been in the CREATURE-INDUCED INJURIES ward (apparently her rape injuries constituted as "bites, stings, cuts, etc." It fit; Draco Malfoy was a creature.). However, she wanted the company of the only two other people to face Draco Malfoy after the .... incident ... and live. Granted, they weren't exactly in the best of health (mental, physical or otherwise), but they were alive. That first night with the three of them together, when the nurses have finally ceased their endless clucking, Cho stared at those two pairs of vacant eyes, one pair tawny, the other deepest brown, and wondered why they were left alive. Surely even Draco Malfoy had heard of mercy. She didn't wonder for much longer.
The next day, Ginny Weasley committed suicide. That's the nice way of saying she had bitten through her veins in the night and splattered words onto the bed-sheets: Some chambers will never stay shut. Some scars never fade. The Daily Prophet has colored pictures to go along with that particular issue. They even brought up previous business involving Ms. Weasley and the Dark Lord back in her first year of Hogwarts, connections that had previously been labeled Confidential by one Albus Dumbledore. But the dead can't protect very much, now can they?
Somewhere else, a being (he couldn't really be termed as just a man anymore) formerly known as Tom Riddle looked at that article in the Daily Prophet. He laughed, something that caused Peter Pettigrew to visibly flinch. "Little Ginny Weasley. And I had hope that I would have the pleasure of meeting the brat before her demise." Wormtail always had been a fidgety little rat. "What is the ministry coming to these days? They're letting that boy go rampant, you know."
Draco Malfoy hadn't been heard from since his consolation gifts and the Potter, Dumbledore, Snape, Hagrid, Trelawny, Weasley and Edgecombe funeral. The Order had their suspicions, of course, though Voldemort was the primary focus of their efforts. Draco Malfoy (the Dark Lord's supposed new left- hand man) was almost the source of as much fear and hatred as Voldemort, after his bloody baptism of blood and fire into notoriety. Rumor had it that he had taken to Muggle victim; Britain had recently been wracked with "mysterious, unexplainable, violent and Muggle deaths" (as the Daily Prophet spouted). A serial killer was suspected, but the wizarding world didn't have time to properly begin an investigation for the renegade killer. Nymphadora Tonks and her partner Izanami Raidon were assigned to search for the teenage slayer, though all they found was a random series of pieces of Muggles. Literally.
The duo didn't know that they weren't the only ones searching for Draco Malfoy. His murders against the Death Eaters (including his own parents) sparked a search warrant for himself among the Dark side as well as the Light. Lucius was a high-ranking Death Eater, as well as Severus Snape. And the Dark Lord doesn't forget crimes against his own.
However, Draco Malfoy continued to elude both Death Eaters and Aurors alike. Hidden in the Muggle world like a snake in a prairie dog tunnel, he had, for lack of a better word, disappeared.
Except to one person. Every chain has one weak link. Every man has a weakness. And he had one, and it would loose him his anonymity, his secrets.
Hermione Granger stared at the wall in St. Mungo's. She felt dirty: raped, pillaged, burned. But she knows that the one to afflict her was paying for it. It was her single mantra these days, the satisfaction of retribution. Hermione could almost feel the fetid stickiness of his sin as it clung to her skin. It was thick, viscous and it haunted her dreams until she began to hate sleep. Until she began to hate those who could sleep.
Nights were when they bled, tingeing reality to the dreams and the time of perfect sense. Some things could only be understood in her own hidden consciousness. During the day, Hermione had gotten quite good at that time- honored game of pretend. (Smile emptily, giggle thoughtlessly, spill those meaningless oh-so-secret thoughts to the world.) As if she cared about who was the new Minister for Magic. As if she cared that the war had begun. As if she cared that the death toll had reached the hundreds and would most likely be in the thousands by Christmas. As if God was watching her and smirking. As if she knew what she felt. What love was. Layered fragments shifted through her mind and even she recognized the chaos, the one pattern in her life: her own undeniable insanity.
Oh, and Hermione wanted. She wanted many things so badly. To be able to talk and say something. To understand how someone once wrote we're all the same underneath, when he was such a monster. To understand how someone could violate her the way he did and just go on. Her deepest fantasy was to reverse the roles between them. To claim him. To hold him down, drink him in, shred pieces of his skin under Hermione's own fingernails, then pick them out and eat them. Just a little taste.
Hermione knew that she was sick. Earlier, she'd learned to play the game, live the lie. Smile emptily, giggle thoughtlessly, spill those meaningless, oh-so-secret thoughts to the world. Except, she had no more thoughts to spill. She was all dried up and had nothing left to give. So she sat and stared in silence, trying her very best to ignore the shadows, ignore their cries. Feign sanity. But she's forgotten what sanity is, exactly.
Life was fucked up like that for her. It was always going in a fucking spiral and it wouldn't end. Nothing ever did anymore. (You want to know hell? Welcome to its cruelest form: this never ending infinity.) Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. Dante was right: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. If people always got what they wanted, there would be no point to heaven. There would be no point to life. Death. It was all the same fucking spiral in Hermione's head. They were all the same underneath. She walked in someone else's shoes and realized that they're too small, too thin, too meager. Just like her own. Each happiness seemed uniquely different, but all pain is the same. And they were all in pain.
Hermione sat in St. Mungo's, alone with her thoughts. Alone, save the non- people. They still returned, from time to time, but they smell of old blood and betrayal and childhood. Every time they left, she felt that they ate another part of her away. Soon she fears she will have nothing left to give. Give and give and give. The spiral again.
She was nobody. She talked to her shadows like everyone else; everyone was dripping in darkness. She could scrub it with all her might, but it wouldn't leave. She was dirty, just like the rest of the world. Everyone had been raped.
The healers say she's lost in her own nonsensical world. She sat there alone often. Alone until the monsters in the shadows become real and begin to talk to her. Alone, except not at all. He was always there, he was always watching.
She is one of the few people left who could understand his darkest voice, his rage. His connection to her would get him caught, but he'd known that from the beginning. Come and find me, Thomas. he'd taunt. I'm waiting.
It was almost a kind of game.
And in the mean time, before he was caught, he enjoyed the chase. For hours and hours, he talked to Hermione Granger, spending time with her contemplating that which consumes.
prologue:
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one
can go."
-- T. S. Eliot
The air was heavy, thick and he could almost feel the emotion caked over his body, limiting his movements. There was static palpability to the air, the smell of lightning and electricity permeating harshly crackling as though the power had still not been fully unleashed: the fury had yet to be sated. Shaking his flaxen head as though to shake of birds of sorrow resting among the unruly cowlicks of his hair, the boy bent down and kissed those deceptively warm lips. Still soft, still pink, still very, very - //whatareyoudoing stopityourehurtingme ohgodohgodwhywhy ithoughtyoulovedme// - dead. He lazily waved a wand over the crumpled heap that was supposed to constitute as a human body. He was silent, no magical words spilling from his lips, but he could feel the power flow out his fingertips. He really didn't need the wand anymore either, let alone silly syllables of incantation, but he held it for the familiarity, the comfort. It wasn't long until he gave the wand up too, with the rest of his humanity.
He hadn't really expected to kill him - //smileohsoemptily runhandsoversoftwarmskin makehimhearhimbegforit// - you know. He'd known the mutilated corpse in life, probably better than anyone else had. Known him under a plethora of different titles: acquaintance, opponent, enemy, obsession, lover (was it possible to call someone your lover if you never really loved him, just twisted his love for you until he lay broken there, now?), victim. Never really were friends, though. Funny, how instead of regret for that inanimate body's current state of ... extinction, he was regretting that there hadn't been more of a struggle; he craved the rage, a person's darkest voice. He wanted to feel that same shadow in another person. Make someone understand ... And who better than his worst enemy - best enemy - to prove that people really are as broken and fucked up and twisted as he is. He hadn't meant to kill him - //wantthishuhyoulittleslut wantmeinyouonyouowningyou nailsscoreacrossunmarkedskin crimsonandscarletlikebloodyoctoberskies// - honestly. He was supposed to be strong. A worthy adversary. Newton said that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He was supposed to be his reaction, his silhouette, his polar opposite. They were supposed to be exactly different, an oxymoron to be sure: surely if he had power, his nemesis could match him fist for fist, word for word, spell for spell. But he wasn't quick enough, was he? Wasn't - //dontknowifitspleasureorpain hisbloodforlubicant hecriedwhenyoufuckedhimrawbut allhesaidwasiloveyouiloveyou// - worthy of his time. Because he was superior in every way to everyone. Dumbledore, his father, the Dark Lord and especially that broken doll of a man lying on that cold stone floor.
And he wanted to dance, laugh, scream. Instead, he stroked an almost-cold cheek, marveling at the sharpness of the cheekbones, the steady jaw. "I almost believed I could love you, beautiful. I thought you were like me. You were supposed to hate me, you were supposed to be just as broken as I am. You were supposed to make me want to be everything you weren't." And he pulled lids fringed with charcoal lashes over deathly green eyes. "Goodnight, sweet prince. Just remember - you were mine."
He stood up and delved in his robes, pulling out a box of doctored cigarettes. Deftly, he lit a fag with the snap of his fingers, and dragged deeply on the sweet, feeling the sweetness of the marijuana as it thrummed numbingly. With a sharp exhalation of breath, he whispered, almost as an afterthought, "Good-bye, Harry Potter. They'll never forget you."
He looked outside and thought it might be raining, as droplets scattered in through the open window. There was moisture on his cheeks to be sure. He thought that maybe he should feel guilty. The world had depended on Harry Potter, and now they were all going to die. He knew this with surety, the same way he knew that the day is coming when the sun forgets to rise, the same way he knew that everyone who loved is going to be scattered and bled dry, the same way he knows that there aren't really and winners or losers because this isn't even a game. A game has a point, a raison d'être, and it never really matters because we're all dead or dying, anyway.
He glanced at the watch on his thin wrist. Slowly, green words scroll along the watch's black face: Time ... To ... Kill ... Albus ... Dumbledore.
He smiled. "And the dance goes on."
Later, he'd whispered something in that old man's ear that widened eyes and shocked that self-appointed, omnipotent demigod. He'd killed Dumbledore slowly, muggle-style, gutting him, dissecting him like an animal. After all, Albus loved those disgusting muggles so much - he deserved to die like one. Funny, how "the greatest wizard of our time" bled like any other man, died for stupid reasons like any other man, and was most of all just as weak as any other man. "Even Harry Potter saw through you," he'd hissed as he made the final incision across that wrinkled throat. It was so easy that it was ridiculous, he'd thought as he watched the blood stain the old man's parchment-like skin.
He'd meant to kill Albus. He'd meant to kill Ronald Weasley. He'd meant to kill Severus Snape. He'd meant to kill Sybill Trelawny. He'd meant to kill that oaf Hagrid. He'd meant to imperio Ginny Weasley so she'd kill two first year mudbloods and write their death's on the wall in their blood outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom before locking herself in the Chamber of Secrets. He'd meant to torture Hermione Granger until she'd lost that famously ingenious mind and her brain was scrambled a gibbering mass of insanity. No one was sure what really happened to her exactly, but Hermione's madness was evident enough. He'd meant to rape Cho Chang on the bed of the dead corpse of Marietta Edgecombe until she lay ripped and unraveled under his thrusting hips, left only alive enough to know who he was.
"Draco Malfoy -" she'd whimpered to the aurors who arrived a day too late, beautiful face a ruin of red scars covering like a spider's web. "He told me that - Professor Dumbledore is dead - that - that Harry is dead. He - killed them, didn't he?"
But he'd never meant to kill his broken prince.
March 30 was a day that would spread like wildfire through the wizarding world. It was the death day Harry Potter, and it was the official date for the beginning of the war, though the first battles didn't take place for another three weeks, the fear had descended, and begun to consume.
On March 31, the funeral (with its was seven carcasses and school full of broken people) interrupted by a crimson phoenix bearing a curious package. It dropped it right on Harry Potter's coffin with a dull thud.
The hysterical audience never really understood why Lucius Malfoy's messily severed head chose that moment to grace them with his presence. They understood even less when twelve owls proceeded to rain down more heads. Later, the explosive, best-selling Daily Prophet issue named them Molly Weasley, Percy Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mafalda Hopkirk, Amos Diggory, Amelia Bones and Dolores Umbridge and three unidentified muggles (two male, one female). Five packed newspapers later, the Prophet proclaimed that these muggles were apparently the late Harry Potter's guardian family: Vernon, Petunia and Dudley Dursley. Another corpse was found at their place of residence, and although the biggest chunk of "her" (they weren't entirely sure of the victim's gender) was one crushed eyeball. After tagging and releasing several muggle witnesses, they labeled the woman "Arabella Figg", a local squib. No one was entirely sure why she happened to be in the vicinity at that time.
Life went on, as it always does. The war made people grow up like that. Minerva McGonagall was still there, as was Remus Lupin, as was Alastor Moody. They formed somewhat of a haphazard triumvirate of leadership within the Order. Of course, they were not entirely sure of what to do exactly: Dumbledore had not really let his plans for the future of the Order become known. Of course, even he could not have foreseen his own death and Harry Potter's.
The deputy for Amelia Bones, a former Ravenclaw named Erin Brant, was elected Minister for Magic in a chaotic election. The ministry was a sham really, a puppet government; all of the real power lay with the Order. Or with the Death Eaters, of course.
Luna Lovegood and her father joined the Order, and she was avidly studying several conspiracy theories involving the "Draco Malfoy" incident, as it was wont to being called (no one wanted to say that the only hopes for the good of mankind were now lying under six feet of icy, Scottish soil). She dropped out of school to take on an apprenticeship at the Department of Mysteries with a side job as a reporter at her father's magazine after the fall of Harry Potter, and hadn't looked back.
Neville Longbottom was being trained by the Order intensely. A loosely recorded prophecy (none of the witnesses of the prophecy were alive, none of the complete records were left intact) proclaimed that the one who had the power to kill the Dark Lord could only have been killed by the Dark Lord himself. Not only that, but he had to have been born at the end of July. Ergo, Harry Potter wasn't the destined one, Albus Dumbledore was wrong, and Neville was actually the boy who could make or break the Dark Lord.
Minerva McGonagall knew that Neville would never be strong enough. He doesn't have the power in Harry Potter's littlest finger. She knew Albus Dumbledore would never have been wrong about something like that, and she knew that the hope of the people hung on a thread. She knew that Neville Longbottom is the only reason there isn't anarchy and chaos. So she kept her mouth closed and taught Neville as best as she can. She knew that the battle was lost. She knew that there was something very, very wrong. She knew that the day is coming when the sun forgets to rise. She knew that she'll soon lie broken and twisted and dead. But at night, the wizarding world prayed to Neville Longbottom the way they'd once prayed to Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. And Minerva McGonagall, quietly, meekly, prayed, too.
St. Mungo's fourth floor ward SPELL DAMAGE held three former Hogwarts students: what's left of Cho Chang, Hermione Granger and Virginia Weasley. Ginny can still at least make competent sentences - Hermione Granger hasn't said anything rational at all, and stares vacantly, emptily, like a placid vegetable. Cho was the only one who shows signs of rationality - she'd originally been in the CREATURE-INDUCED INJURIES ward (apparently her rape injuries constituted as "bites, stings, cuts, etc." It fit; Draco Malfoy was a creature.). However, she wanted the company of the only two other people to face Draco Malfoy after the .... incident ... and live. Granted, they weren't exactly in the best of health (mental, physical or otherwise), but they were alive. That first night with the three of them together, when the nurses have finally ceased their endless clucking, Cho stared at those two pairs of vacant eyes, one pair tawny, the other deepest brown, and wondered why they were left alive. Surely even Draco Malfoy had heard of mercy. She didn't wonder for much longer.
The next day, Ginny Weasley committed suicide. That's the nice way of saying she had bitten through her veins in the night and splattered words onto the bed-sheets: Some chambers will never stay shut. Some scars never fade. The Daily Prophet has colored pictures to go along with that particular issue. They even brought up previous business involving Ms. Weasley and the Dark Lord back in her first year of Hogwarts, connections that had previously been labeled Confidential by one Albus Dumbledore. But the dead can't protect very much, now can they?
Somewhere else, a being (he couldn't really be termed as just a man anymore) formerly known as Tom Riddle looked at that article in the Daily Prophet. He laughed, something that caused Peter Pettigrew to visibly flinch. "Little Ginny Weasley. And I had hope that I would have the pleasure of meeting the brat before her demise." Wormtail always had been a fidgety little rat. "What is the ministry coming to these days? They're letting that boy go rampant, you know."
Draco Malfoy hadn't been heard from since his consolation gifts and the Potter, Dumbledore, Snape, Hagrid, Trelawny, Weasley and Edgecombe funeral. The Order had their suspicions, of course, though Voldemort was the primary focus of their efforts. Draco Malfoy (the Dark Lord's supposed new left- hand man) was almost the source of as much fear and hatred as Voldemort, after his bloody baptism of blood and fire into notoriety. Rumor had it that he had taken to Muggle victim; Britain had recently been wracked with "mysterious, unexplainable, violent and Muggle deaths" (as the Daily Prophet spouted). A serial killer was suspected, but the wizarding world didn't have time to properly begin an investigation for the renegade killer. Nymphadora Tonks and her partner Izanami Raidon were assigned to search for the teenage slayer, though all they found was a random series of pieces of Muggles. Literally.
The duo didn't know that they weren't the only ones searching for Draco Malfoy. His murders against the Death Eaters (including his own parents) sparked a search warrant for himself among the Dark side as well as the Light. Lucius was a high-ranking Death Eater, as well as Severus Snape. And the Dark Lord doesn't forget crimes against his own.
However, Draco Malfoy continued to elude both Death Eaters and Aurors alike. Hidden in the Muggle world like a snake in a prairie dog tunnel, he had, for lack of a better word, disappeared.
Except to one person. Every chain has one weak link. Every man has a weakness. And he had one, and it would loose him his anonymity, his secrets.
Hermione Granger stared at the wall in St. Mungo's. She felt dirty: raped, pillaged, burned. But she knows that the one to afflict her was paying for it. It was her single mantra these days, the satisfaction of retribution. Hermione could almost feel the fetid stickiness of his sin as it clung to her skin. It was thick, viscous and it haunted her dreams until she began to hate sleep. Until she began to hate those who could sleep.
Nights were when they bled, tingeing reality to the dreams and the time of perfect sense. Some things could only be understood in her own hidden consciousness. During the day, Hermione had gotten quite good at that time- honored game of pretend. (Smile emptily, giggle thoughtlessly, spill those meaningless oh-so-secret thoughts to the world.) As if she cared about who was the new Minister for Magic. As if she cared that the war had begun. As if she cared that the death toll had reached the hundreds and would most likely be in the thousands by Christmas. As if God was watching her and smirking. As if she knew what she felt. What love was. Layered fragments shifted through her mind and even she recognized the chaos, the one pattern in her life: her own undeniable insanity.
Oh, and Hermione wanted. She wanted many things so badly. To be able to talk and say something. To understand how someone once wrote we're all the same underneath, when he was such a monster. To understand how someone could violate her the way he did and just go on. Her deepest fantasy was to reverse the roles between them. To claim him. To hold him down, drink him in, shred pieces of his skin under Hermione's own fingernails, then pick them out and eat them. Just a little taste.
Hermione knew that she was sick. Earlier, she'd learned to play the game, live the lie. Smile emptily, giggle thoughtlessly, spill those meaningless, oh-so-secret thoughts to the world. Except, she had no more thoughts to spill. She was all dried up and had nothing left to give. So she sat and stared in silence, trying her very best to ignore the shadows, ignore their cries. Feign sanity. But she's forgotten what sanity is, exactly.
Life was fucked up like that for her. It was always going in a fucking spiral and it wouldn't end. Nothing ever did anymore. (You want to know hell? Welcome to its cruelest form: this never ending infinity.) Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. Dante was right: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. If people always got what they wanted, there would be no point to heaven. There would be no point to life. Death. It was all the same fucking spiral in Hermione's head. They were all the same underneath. She walked in someone else's shoes and realized that they're too small, too thin, too meager. Just like her own. Each happiness seemed uniquely different, but all pain is the same. And they were all in pain.
Hermione sat in St. Mungo's, alone with her thoughts. Alone, save the non- people. They still returned, from time to time, but they smell of old blood and betrayal and childhood. Every time they left, she felt that they ate another part of her away. Soon she fears she will have nothing left to give. Give and give and give. The spiral again.
She was nobody. She talked to her shadows like everyone else; everyone was dripping in darkness. She could scrub it with all her might, but it wouldn't leave. She was dirty, just like the rest of the world. Everyone had been raped.
The healers say she's lost in her own nonsensical world. She sat there alone often. Alone until the monsters in the shadows become real and begin to talk to her. Alone, except not at all. He was always there, he was always watching.
She is one of the few people left who could understand his darkest voice, his rage. His connection to her would get him caught, but he'd known that from the beginning. Come and find me, Thomas. he'd taunt. I'm waiting.
It was almost a kind of game.
And in the mean time, before he was caught, he enjoyed the chase. For hours and hours, he talked to Hermione Granger, spending time with her contemplating that which consumes.