Ch2 Seeds of Doubt
Nothing made sense.
No! Oh G_d please stop! No!
Pain. A burning sensation across her chest.
Beyond that is fuzzy, like an out of focus video.
Pain.
Questions that made no sense. Relief from pain.
Seeing Draco Malfoy looking at her in fear.
Answers she believed. Truth given.
Pain.
More questions. Relief from pain. Answers that made no sense.
Brown bushy hair in her face, stinking of sherry and sweat.
Pain.
Stench filled breath assailed her nose. The tang of sweat, blood, and testosterone battered her senses, making her retch from it.
More pain.
Darkness beckoned.
A scream ripped from her throat.
Fenir Greyback whispering in her ear, threats should she survive Bellatrix. Both were hideous in their own way.
Pain. Teeth tore at her throat, tearing the skin. She felt the blood seeping from the gaping wound.
Pain.
More poured from her arm, her back.
Blood filled her mouth, choking her.
Something coarse, cold, and wet smothered her face. She tried to spit, and it went down her throat.
Chalk bound her lips. She couldn't scream from the pain because of it.
"It's the only way."
She tried to scream before the comfort of oblivion welcomed her in death.
'So cold'. It's nothing more than a feeling, but pervasive. She shook. The pain from the cold competing from the burning of her skin. 'How can cold burn?
'So cold.'
Such a rhetorical thought when the pain threatened to overwhelm her once and for all. Death would be easy compared to this. A breath, followed by another one.
Pain.
Darkness beckoned. She embraced it like a lover she never took.
"Je sais pas."
"That's the worst of it."
"Mudblood"
'How am I alive?'
Taunts chased her while dying.
Pain again made her retreat to the darkness.
Darkness wrapped around her like a flannel duvet.
'Mudblood Whore'
Cruel taunts from a nasty voice, promising more torture. Threats to her body in ways that only a man can hurt.
A place of safety and refuge was needed. She needed to hide.
Darkness called her again. She ran for it.
'She doesn't need you.'
'Mudblood.'
'Just be quiet and hold her still.'
Intense heat seared her skin.
"No!"
Bright light burned her eyes. Blue eyes taunted her, tempting her with temporary solace.
'Water,' so her mind said. A buzzing her ears made what those blue eyes said incoherent.
Darkness rolled over her
Warmth enveloped her hands. They hurt like the rest of her. Heartbeats hurt. Thinking hurt. Breathing hurt.
Her throat was raw. 'How?' a rogue thought wandered across her mind. Rogue thoughts hurt.
Warm hands still encased her own. Clean air tickled her mind, salty tang mixed with soap.
Warm hands hurt.
Mud coated her mouth. Painful bright light seared her eyes. She squinted the lids closed, trying to retreat from the pain.
Warm hands held her, pulling her from the darkness.
A scream hurt her ears.
'Drop it on her arms.'
'It hurts,' she thought. Dear G_d stop!
A quiet voice answered, strong and full of life. 'Living hurts. Dying's easy.' It sounded like her father, the one that wasn't there.
'I don't want to live, not like this. It hurts.'
'Do it for him. He needs you. He loves you.'
'Mudblood whore. You aren't worth the shite on his shoes.'
She retreated from the pain back into the darkness.
"Please, Hermione, say something."
Ron sat in the chair, holding her hand in his own. She slept still, hours after the last pain potion was given. Each time she woke, from a nightmare or in pain, they dosed her with all of the medications possible: skele-gro, blood replenishing, pain, and a sleeping draught.
Fleur said she would need one more day of the skele-gro, to repair her ribs and collar bone. The remaining three would be used as long as she needed to heal. According to Bill, who had come in last hour to check her bandages, she was slowly healing physically. The carving on her arm was now just weeping rather than bleeding, and the stitches on her neck staunched the blood on her neck. Ron understood, even if only on a base level somewhere in his mind, that the scars from yesterday would be with her the rest of her life. The burn on her chest was raw, angry, vibrant red like Charlie's hair. The paste, green in contrast, made her look like a Christmas gnome that was once on their tree.
His brother spoke about goblin silver, but it didn't make much sense at all. Why couldn't they heal it with magic? Magic fixed everything except dying.
Fleur said she wasn't dying. Bill said that if her mind was broken, they should wish for it.
The last day didn't make much sense. Harry broke the taboo – they were cornered by the snatchers, kidnapped and taken to Malfoy Manor. Greyback was there, whispering nasty taunts in his ear for standing up for Hermione. Pettigrew died before their eyes while they were impotent to stop his demise. Their efforts were in vain to save the traitor.
Ron saw his best friend, lying on the marble floor of the drawing room, unconscious, and possibly dead. He saw the monster holding that knife to her neck, threatening her life. 'She called her a mudblood.' The nasty voice taunted his memories after the destruction of the locket.
'Go find another.' The taunting continued.
"There is no other I want. She's it." He growled to no one in the room.
He squeezed her hand, feeling the chill from her fingertips. Almost a year ago, those delicate ink stained hands rested in his at Dumbledore's funeral. The warmth from them contrasted with the cold breeze on that fateful May morning.
Now they rested in his hand, two small ones that fit in his one. Hours later, and she was still draped only with a sheet to give her some modesty. What he wouldn't give to have seen her in her kit for any other reason. 'Not how I thought I'd see her tits and bits for the first time,' he thought bitterly.
"Damn it, Hermione, wake up!" His bellow bounced around the room.
Knock Knock
Luna quietly entered the room, carrying a tray with her. The smells of hot food made his stomach grumble in want. "I knew you wouldn't come down, so I brought this to you. Eat."
He looked up, finding her iceburg blue eyes meeting his cerulean ones. "I – "
"Nonsense. You need to eat. She'd want you to. Hermione always said that you wouldn't quit eating, yet I see you've not had a bite since we got here."
"Not hungry," he muttered in reply.
"But your stomach says he is, and he must be fed. He helps you think better."
Ron shook his head, trying to ignore the pang in his stomach.
"How about I bring the tray over, and feed you, since your hands are busy?"
He looked up, and saw her for the first time. Luna's eyes were bright, yet shadowed by the hollows under them. She was more pale from her months of confinement. The expression on her face was what belayed her appearance. Unlike the dreamy manner in which she normally carried herself, this one was hard, tempered and angry, not unlike the burn on Hermione's chest.
He didn't want to take a chance and wake Hermione. "Sure," he whispered.
Luna brought the tray over to the other side of the bed, putting it on a small side table next to the bed. She lifted the linen napkin from the tray, and his nose was buffeted by the smells of hot soup, fresh bread, and a chunk of pork and potatoes with gravy. After the months of scrounging so little to sustain them, the food in front of him was a feast.
As promised, Luna fed him. She also snuck a bite of the hot buttered bread loaf she had on his plate. He didn't care that she did. "Did they feed you there?"
She looked at him with sad eyes. "I ate. It was cold porridge and stale bread. It wasn't delicious like the meal I just had, but it was sustaining. I do miss having father's plum pudding."
She turned her head so Ron wouldn't see the tears leaking from her eyes. In such close confines of the miniscule bedroom, he afforded her the privacy she could take.
"Fleur went to a lot of trouble to feed us breakfast," she said. "You need to eat, so she will keep cooking such outstanding things for us."
Ron looked back at Hermione, finding no comfort in the meal he was eating. He needed it, but it tasted like the ashes of the potion she had to have. Yet Luna continued to feed him, sopping up the gravy from the plate onto the remaining pieces of bread.
"Ronald?"
He looked back at her. His hands never left Hermione's.
"I'll stay here while you get a shower. I think you could use it."
"But Hermione – "
"She'll stay here. I'm sure that you're rather fit, but I don't think that she'll reciprocate just yet. I don't think she's ready to see you in such a state yet."
"What are you going on about Luna?"
"She loves you. Dearly. But she's not ready to see you out of your trousers. Some things just take time."
"But she's never – "
"Yes she has, but you were too busy snogging Lavender to notice."
Ron turned bright red. Luna wasn't distracted.
"I wouldn't worry about it. She can be rather forgiving when it comes to you. She's fancied you for years."
He put her hands on his head, hoping she'd thread her fingers through his matted ginger locks. "Why didn't she ever say anything? Why?"
"She was waiting for you to notice her."
"I did, but she was already going to the Ball with Krum."
"Are you still frustrated about that? It's been years."
He dropped his hands back on the bed, still holding hers within them. "Should have been me. Why didn't she wait for me?"
"She did. You were too busy being Ronald to notice."
"But she snogged Krum!" Ron growled through his grief.
"And who told you that?"
"Ginny did. Why would my sister lie about something like that?"
Luna blinked, looking dreamy for a moment. "Ginny was mad at you. You were foolish and made poor assumptions. You were too busy trying to protect someone who didn't need your help and ignored someone who wanted you."
Ron sat there a moment, looking at Hermione nestled into the bedclothes. Her pale lips blew breath on occasion, making a stray hair wisp in front of her face. The bruises under her eyes and the crack in her bottom lip made her look like a broken doll. "So tiny," he whispered.
"Only for a moment." Luna came to stand behind him, putting her petite hands on his broad shoulder. "You see her broken now. She'll recover with your help. She's strong, and powerful in mind. Rigid unlike myself, but powerful nonetheless."
He looked back up at her expressive eyes, and wanted to weep. "Will you?"
She looked at him and her expression changed. Anger rolled across her features.
"Do you want a shower or not?" Disdain dripped in her voice.
He recoiled. This wasn't the Luna he knew. Her change of topic scared him. "Sure," he muttered. "I'll be back in a few. Thanks."
Ron scurried out of the room so he wouldn't be on the receiving end of her temper also. Fleur was bad enough. Ginny was scary. This new Luna was as bad as Mum.
Luna sighed in resignation. "Ronald should find his backbone. He needs to be strong for you. He loves you, even if he can't tell you yet. You'll resent him if he can't stand up to you and for you."
Luna looked down at the permanently ink stained hands that were resting in hers. No one had bothered to clean her up when they brought her to this cubby of a room hours earlier. Her hands were covered in dirt, soot, and blood. Bruises dotted the backs of her hands, and the nails were torn and ragged.
"Do you know that, Hermione? You were screaming in agony, and he tried to bring the dungeon down on our heads. The walls shook until Dobby arrived. Did you know that that beautiful elf was our rescue? No, you were probably busy trying to stay alive at that point. Your wails hurt me too."
Luna shook her head, trying to will away the grief she felt welling inside her throat. "They kept me there, with Ollivander, torturing him. They didn't bother me much really. I was bored mostly, until one day a week ago. He…"
Luna shook while holding Hermione's hand. She couldn't hold back the torrent that consumed her. She put her head down on those cold ink stained hands and wept. It was the first time in nine years that she truly hurt.