Draco thought he heard her wrong at first, that he'd somehow taken the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board as words because the idea that Hermione Granger would be saying anything like what came out of her mouth – and to him of all people – seemed impossible.
"What?" he asked.
She clenched her jaw, squaring it up like some pugilist in a bad painting, and Draco waited for her to tell him it wasn't anything, to ask what he was talking about. Instead, she said, or maybe muttered would be a better description of how she forced out the words. "I'm sorry."
He cocked his head to the side. "For what?"
He could think of a hundred things the wretched bitch should be sorry for. She should be sorry for pushing him, for assuming he would ruin the potions on purpose, for thinking he wasn't good at this when he was better than she was, the rule-abiding, directions following grind that she was.
She should be sorry she left them here.
"I didn't." She paused and took a deep breath, then spit the words out as quickly as she could, so quickly they jumbled together into a mixed up stew of regret, and Draco had to pick them out and put them back in order. "I didn't think, we didn't, it wasn't, it was bad, you understand, but I assumed, we didn't know how bad it was, that you, Neville and you and everyone, you all, I'm sorry, I didn't think of what you endured, and I made assumptions."
A slow and steady smile bloomed across Draco's face. He could feel it stretching his mouth up into a position that had become unfamiliar. "Say it again."
It was her turn to ask, "What?"
"I want to engrave this moment in time," he said. "I want to picture you begging my pardon every night as I go to sleep. I want to wank off to it. Do it again."
"Fuck you."
So much for their brief interlude of civility, not that he'd contributed anything to it. Draco turned and kept working on the potion at hand. It was a bone-setting brew tonight. Easy enough to make, not the sort of thing that required intense focus or concentration, so he was able to replay the sound of Hermione Granger stammering out her awkward apology. He chopped and diced and stirred and kept coming back to one thing. She was ugly when she admitted she was wrong. Her face screwed up, and that bold confidence disappeared. She looked afraid, and he'd seen enough fear to hate that. He'd seen her afraid. He didn't like it.
"I'm sorry about my aunt," he said.
Her knife stopped, and when he looked over at her her face had gone still. Her eyes were dead. "It wasn't your fault," she said. The words were automatic. Rehearsed. He wondered how many people had apologized to her for that. Not his aunt, of course. She was dead and good riddance. Not his parents either. His mother, much as he loved her, much as he would do anything for her, wouldn't think to apologize to someone like Hermione Granger. The Weasleys, probably, or Saint Potter.
"I'd hold her down and let you retaliate, but she's dead so it wouldn't matter to her much." He slid the chopped worms into a measuring cup and eyed the proportions. He needed a little more. "I could dig her up, though, if you really thought throwing a crucio or two her way would make you feel better."
"That's disgusting," she said. The words were still dull. She was a schoolgirl reciting the words she'd been taught to say, and she hadn't started working again.
"Grave-robbing's not quite the thing," he agreed. Two more worms and he had enough. He slid them into the cauldron and began to stir. When it thickened up and turned a pearly white, it was time to decant it into the vials, bone hardening potion done. Or it would be done after it sat a week. When she stayed silent, he added, "Or did you mean the crucio."
"Both." She began to gather the dishes and wash them, scouring with magic and then rinsing them with water at the sink.
"You get used to it," he said softly. He didn't mean the grave-robbing, and when she turned to look over at him, her eyes still so blank he knew she was lost in the past, lost in the pain where everything became fire and you pissed yourself and when you came to the world was dust and ashes in your mouth, the rank scent of urine in your nose. It was impossible to be dignified when crucio burned through your nerves. Impossible not to scrabble away. Impossible not to beg for it to stop.
Impossible not to learn to feel the taste of it on your own tongue.
"It's wrong," she said.
He let out a braying laugh. That was one thing she'd gotten to keep. Her sense that anything was right or wrong. Voldemort had been right about that. It was one of the tiresome things he said over and over again, like a skipping record. Reanimation hadn't done his brain any favors. "There is no right or wrong," Draco echoed. "Only power." He shook himself. Voldemort had been crazy, and Granger was more than right. Some curses were called 'unforgivable' for a reason.
He'd licked the bottom of Amycus Carrow's shoe once. "I'll show you children how you can take even the proudest and make him beg," the man had said.
Draco knew as soon as he heard those words it would be him. His father must be on the outs again. When the Malfoys were in favor, the Carrows went after easier targets. When the power shifted, they turned their attention back to him. He'd risen, walked to the center of the classroom, and smirked. Might as well give a show. We who are about to die, salute you. We who are about to grovel, mock you.
Fire. Fire along his skin, fire along his bones, fire through his blood. He'd meant it. Oh, god, how Amycus had meant it that day. Draco understood, as his knees buckled, as he fell, as his head hit the stone floor, how Neville's parents had gone mad. They'd tried to fight this. They'd been brave and good and everything he wasn't because he just rode the pain. He clung to the life raft of laughter, and when Amycus had settled down in a chair, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, he began to cry.
"Now that I've gotten him warmed up," he said, "let's talk about how this curse can be used to motivate your subject to do anything you want."
Pansy had stuck her hand up. "Like tell you where the Muggles are?" she asked. She was trying to divert the lesson, trying to give him a break.
"Yes," Amycus had said. "But I doubt our boy Malfoy here has ever spoken to a bit of filth like that, has he?"
Draco shook his head, desperate now to please.
The foot kicked him in his face, and another bout of pain sent him to retching. "But we can be a bit more creative, just to demonstrate." The shoe smelled terrible. Badly washed socks, unwashed feet, old leather. and something foul and decaying. When he'd been told to lick it clean, he hadn't even hesitated. He'd have done anything to make it stop. Anything to get the pain to end.
Everyone broke.
Except for Neville's parents.
Except for Hermione Granger, who was washing his dirty dishes with dead eyes.
"I accept your apology," Draco said. His voice was shaking. He could still feel the curse. Could still taste the shoe. He counted to ten, kept stirring, then said, as levelly as he could, "Do you think you could finish this? I seem to be feeling a bit ill."
He made it to the hallway before he wanted to scream. Pulled at his mouth with curled, clawed hands to keep the sound inside and wept and wept and wept as he huddled against the wall. "Crucio," he said to the uncaring stone. "Crucio."
. . . . . . . . . .
excerpt from a letter
… really wrong with Draco Malfoy. I sound like Harry, don't I? But I don't think he's up to something. I think he's falling apart. One more hit and he's going to shatter. I know how that feels. Some days I want to…
. . . . . . . . . .
Theodore Nott starts appearing in the greenhouse when you're working. You don't have a herbology class. Not exactly. You're 'pursuing independent research', according to Madam Sprout, and 'wasting your time' according to your grandmother. She has ambitions for you now that you aren't a near-squib embarrassment. You'll marry a nice witch, and have nice, magical babies, and go for a career in politics. Or you will as soon as you start to stand up straight and clean under your nails and shine your shoes.
She'd like Draco quite a lot if he weren't so penis-y. He has perfect posture and his shoes never fail to gleam.
Yours do not gleam.
And your nails are filled with soil because you only feel at peace when you're here, with the plants, alone.
Except you aren't alone because Theodore Nott seems to have decided that the white iron table at one end of the greenhouse, the table where Madam Sprout sometimes takes tea, is an excellent place to study. It's not that he's wrong. The greenhouse has always been your favorite spot on campus. Warm even in winter. Smelling of dirt and life and rot.
"What do you want?" you ask the third time he's there. Three of anything is a fairy tale number. It's bad. Or good. It's when thing change, and it's when you're tired of avoiding asking.
"You," he says. It's so blunt. So utterly lacking in romance or subtlety or even flirtation you sit down on the opposite chair and stare at him, mouth actually agape. He looks amused.
When you find words, what you say is, "I'm seeing Draco."
"No, you're not," he says. "You're fucking Draco. And he's basically straight, so there's an expiration date to that little fling."
He stands up, smelling of licorice. "Are you always like this?" you ask.
"Find out?" It's an invitation, and you're left speechless again as he gathers his things and leaves you in a greenhouse that suddenly feels empty.
. . . . . . . . . .
It's a matter of some historical interest that, of her three wishes, Neville's grandmother was destined to have one come true.
Probably not the one she would have picked, but that's why you should be careful when making wishes. They come true on the slant.
. . . . . . . . . .
"The problem," Hermione said – and Draco took a moment in his head between swallows of the whiskey she'd brought to wonder when, exactly, his brain had decided she was Hermione and not Granger – "is that there's going to be another one."
"Another one what?" Theo asked. He was sprawled on the couch, knees spread and one arm thrown over the back. He couldn't have taken up more room if he'd tried, and Draco had been effectively relegated to one of the beat-up leather chairs.
"Another dark lord," Hermione said. She leaned forward from where she sat, feet curled under her on the floor, and as poorly as he knew her, Draco could tell she had an argument to make. She'd probably been rehearsing it in her head for days. "First there was Grindelwald," she said. "Then Voldemort. There's going to be another."
"One was enough," Neville said. He seemed to be ignoring the way Theo had commandeered two-thirds of the couch in favor of Hermione's discussion point. At least she hadn't brought notes, though Draco would have bet she had a neat outline in her head explaining her reasoning.
"Two," she said. "And no one ever wants to talk about it. I've been all through the old copies of The Daily Prophet, and as soon as Grindelwald was defeated, he pretty much ceased to exist."
"Well, he wasn't exactly news anymore," Theo said.
"But he should have been." She actually held up a finger as she said, "One," and Draco had to smother his laugh with a cough. She flicked a displeased glance at him, but didn't allow herself to be stopped. "He based his whole appeal around how wizards were better than Muggles, and, two -."
She held up a second finger and Draco's coughing fit became so bad Theo mouthed, "Are you all right?"
"Fine," he muttered with a wave of his hand. "Go on, tell us your second point."
"Two," she said again, "Voldemort based his appeal on the inherent value of power."
"Yeah." Theo drawled the word out. "Not following you here."
"Both of them used bias against the non-magical as the basis for their appeal," she said. "It's a prejudice that goes incredibly deeply in the wizarding world. If you aren't magical, you're worth nothing. Look at squibs -."
"Do we have to?" Theo asked.
"See," she said triumphantly. "You don't even want to talk about squibs."
"They're handicapped," Neville said. His smile was so sharp, so bitter. "Better a dead child than a squib."
"And three." Draco was expecting the third finger so this time he kept control and merely looked interested. "No one wants to talk about this prejudice that just permeates your society."
"Yours too," Draco says. "This is your world too." She looked at him. Was it amusing or awful that he'd managed to shock her with that? He shrugged, and she swallowed so hard he could see her throat bob.
"It is true," Theo said slowly. "We aren't supposed to talk about last year."
Hermione nodded, clearly happy to have dragged at least one of them into agreeing with her. "Professor McGonagall –"
"Headmistress," Neville said.
" – wants us to just let it go. The war was last year. It's time to focus on exams and the future, but unless we do something, the future is just going to be another war. Another dark lord who comes up because no one wants to talk about anything that matters."
"So, what do we do?" Draco couldn't argue with her basic premise. He knew he was drunk. He came up here to get drunk, and to sit with the three people who didn't seem to want to pretend everything was fine. For just a few hours it was a relief to be able to say the world was shitty without anyone telling him it would be fine, or that it was over, or worst of all, would he like to talk to someone. He didn't want to talk to some head healer, who'd take notes in a little book and ask him how he felt about that and did he plan to hurt himself or anyone else.
God, if he told someone he could still feel the way casting crucio felt, if he told them sometimes he missed those moments when everything was so simple, they'd lock him up. Some things you could never tell anyone who hadn't been there. No one wanted to hear it was easier when all you had to do was beg. Easier when all you had to do was hurt someone.
Hermione Granger's eyes shone with the gleam of every fanatic ever. "We fix things," she said.
. . . . . . . . . .
A/N – Many thanks to Megan and Sulisaints for betareading!