AN: I've tried to limit graphic descriptions of non-con in this chapter, but some may still find it upsetting to read. So be warned.
Hermione retched into the toilet; distantly she could hear Ginny doing the same. After a few moments, she waddled- her belly too big now to walk normally- to Ginny's bed. Still in her first trimester, Ginny's health had improved a great deal in the last month since her arrival at Bleidd castle, but the poorly executed healing spells her tormentors would hastily apply each time they were done with her, though lifesaving had maimed her for life. Seeing Ginny for the first time since the night they were captured had shocked Hermione even after Draco had told her what to expect.
Hermione watched in disbelief as a spectre bearing a resemblance to Ginny Weasley hobbled into the room. This impersonator possessed none of the redhead's radiance or liveliness as she stood with her shoulders stooped, hands meekly clasped in front of her, head bowed down and eyes trained on the floor. Even her signature red hair was missing, shorn to the point one could see the patches of previously burnt and poorly healed skin of her scalp.
"Ginny," she called out softly, afraid the littlest thing could destroy this frail creature before her.
The spectre looked up, and if Hermione had found her appearance shocking before what she saw in the other woman's face absolutely horrified her. Gone was the light from the witch's eyes that reflected her fiery nature so brilliantly and had caused many a wizard to trip over himself to gain her attention. In its stead was this dead-eyed gaze, watching without really seeing anything. Hermione grew aware of the reedy quality of the other witch's breathing but couldn't tell if it was the result of a damaged lung or an injured voice box. It would have to be the latter, thought Hermione, going by the three lines on her neck- clearly the handiwork of someone practicing their precision with casting a diffindo.
Hermione wanted nothing more in the moment than to hug her friend who looked like she'd been through far too much for any person to endure in several lifetimes. But Draco had passed on Cora's warning that Ginny didn't respond well to being touched so she remained at arm's length. The other witch continued to stare at her for several minutes without showing any signs of recognition so Hermione thought to give it another try.
"Gin, it's me, Hermione. Remember, your bushy-haired friend you've wasted copious amounts of your own personal rations of Sleekeasy to help catch Ron's attention?" Hermione attempted to sound cheery and smile at her friend but it was hard to pull off while her eyes were misty with unshed tears.
Ginny continued to stare at her but Hermione thought she saw something flicker in those dull eyes as Ginny slowly blinked. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out at first, and when it did it was hoarse, most likely from lack of use. "Hermione?" she asked in a whisper, as if afraid the dream would fade if she spoke too loud.
Eyes welling up with tears, Hermione nodded. She longed to hug the other witch so much, her arms physically hurt from restraining herself.
"You're real?"
"Yeah, Gin, it's me, alright."
"Oh thank Merlin!" Ginny cried out and flung her arms around Hermione. "I knew I'd be rescued. I knew you wouldn't abandon me. Where are my brothers?" she asked looking around, "Where's-"
Hermione's heart broke for Ginny; she didn't know how to explain that they weren't rescued.
"Why are you alone? And you're so... pregnant? What's going-" She must've finally realised their plight.
"There's no one else, is there?" she asked. Hermione shook her head. "You didn't escape that night, did you?" She shook her head again. Ginny walked to the closest wall leaning against it for support. "Curse all the gods! We're still prisoners, aren't we?" she asked, but she wasn't looking at Hermione to see her response. Ginny slid down the wall, put her head between her knees and began to sob inconsolably. Hermione rushed to her friend, put her arms around her and held her as the other woman cried her heart out. Hermione didn't know what to say, she thought she was prepared for the worst. She thought she would know just how to console Ginny when they met, but despite everything she had been told, she wasn't prepared to see Ginny Weasley, one of the most strong willed witches she had ever known to be this broken.
Having no words of consolation she simply rocked her friend till she eventually fell asleep on the spot out of exhaustion.
Hermione followed the sound of her friend retching to find her bent over a bucket conveniently placed at her bedside. As she watched Ginny dry heave, she knew from personal experience that her stomach must be cramping. Settling herself on Ginny's bed, Hermione reached out for her. The other woman pushed away the bucket, took a deep breath and accepted her friend's silent offer to hold her. As Hermione wrapped her arms around Ginny, she closed her eyes and sighed into her arms.
"You a'right, Ginny?" Hermione's voice was hoarse.
Ginny grunted in response. "You?"
"Fantastic," said Hermione, curling her body around Ginny's and wiping a fleck of spittle or bile from the corner of her mouth. "I just hate the constant puking," she said. "Worst part of being pregnant."
"There is no worst part," said Ginny. "The whole thing's the worst part."
Hermione clenched her jaw and mentally cursed her thoughtlessness, again. Nearly a month of sharing quarters and she still kept footing her put in it. When commiserating with Ginny about her pregnancy woes she often forgot that while Ginny's pregnancy had also been forced upon her by a Malfoy that is where all similarity between their circumstances ended. Hermione blamed Voldemort for her forced pregnancy- what happened to her was rape, but she didn't think of Draco as her rapist. Furthermore, as upset as she was to have her choices stolen from her, in the days before Ginny's arrival Hermione had come to terms with her pregnancy. While she disliked certain aspects of it she bore no resentment towards the babies growing inside her and didn't think of them as a product of rape. How very, very different from Ginny's nightmarish ordeal.
"They left me down in the dark dungeons," said Ginny, speaking of her experience with the Malfoys, "because Narcissa didn't care to see her husband's whore flaunted about her precious Manor.'The master's whore' is how she had their elves address me as if I wasn't being held against my will to be defiled by her husband. If not for her, I'm sure after Lucius got me pregnant he would've simply ignored me, left forgotten in my cell till it was time for me to deliver his precious 'heir'. If not for Lady Malfoy feeling so offended by my presence in some rotten, stinking corner of her mansion, I would never have been shoved into the hell that was Chateau Lestrange."
From the way she shuddered, it was clear to Hermione Ginny was remembering some of her worst moments. She tried to wrap an arm around her friend to comfort her but Ginny shrugged it off, shaking her head. "Don't," she warned Hermione, "just- I need to finish first. I want it out of me. I need to say it."
Hermione nodded, not knowing what she was meant to say. Ginny nodded back before she continued.
"Chateau Lestrange was... It was not good. I was used by different people in different ways, in life-altering ways," she said looking at her right leg. "But, it didn't matter by then, not really. Because, I was already broken. Sometime during my time in the Malfoy dungeons I was reduced from Ginny Weasley, someone who was loved and cherished by her parents and six brothers, to a hole. You see, of all the people who violated me, Lucius Malfoy was the gentlest of them all. But what he did- the way he treated me..." Ginny trailed off, her voice choked with emotion, but from the stubborn tilt of her chin and the way she clenched her jaw, Hermione could tell her friend was unwilling to cry.
"He was the worst," said Ginny once she was able to continue. "Every night he'd come down to the damp dungeons of his fancy Manor. There was no reason why any corner of such a fancy Manor would be damp, except of course as proof of the cruelty of the Malfoys. They must've known what it does to their prisoners to sit in one of those dark cells, where you can't even tell if it is day or night, surrounded by the scent of rot, with nothing for company but the noise made by drops of water hitting the stone floor. That sound, that awful sound that reminded me I was alone, that made me question if I was even still living as I simply lay there every day till it was time for Lucius to arrive and use me as the hole I had become.
"He had a routine, it was always the same. Even before he entered my dank cell, he'd cast a silencio at me. While the others enjoyed hearing me scream, Lucius had no need for my voice- a hole doesn't need a voice. He'd use a binding spell to keep me on my fours like some animal waiting to be bred before pouring some kind of potion down my throat. He'd get behind me and vanish my clothes only once he was ready to violate me. He never looked me in the face. I doubt he ever saw me at all. I was nothing to him, just some chore he was given to do. He'd stick his prick inside me and thrust with all the passion one may feel while reciting arithmancy tables. He'd pump into me till he climaxed and dash off soon after. But, not before making sure I was spelled to remain in the same position for the next hour, arse sticking up in the air so his seed didn't slip out.
"He stuck to this routine every night till the pregnancy was confirmed. But in all those times he never once looked me in the eye or ever uttered a word to me. He didn't care that the potions he fed me left me feeling so aroused I'd end up with torn muscles from my attempts to break free of my binding and touch myself, or how despite the silencio I'd beg him to touch me, to fuck me properly, to give me some kind of relief. I'd cry to the point where my throat would be sore for days... But he never saw any of those things. I was just some cumbucket he had been ordered to fill. While the others took delight in my torment, I never felt more helpless or less like a human than the times Lucius forced me to endure his indifference."
The sound of the door creaking open drew Hermione's attention back to the present and Draco presence in the doorway. The creaking sound, a recent addition, was Draco's idea. He thought Ginny would benefit from a system that served to alert them to anyone entering their quarters. At first Hermione had thought it unnecessary, but after being reunited with Ginny, she came to appreciate Draco's thoughtfulness. The first few nights Ginny refused to sleep at all, insisting on keeping watch lest the Death Eaters catch them off-guard while they slept. When exhaustion finally caught up she refused to use the bed, preferring to sleep in the corner of the room in a sitting position, facing the door. She was always on edge, and more than once ended up nearly catatonic from the shock of having Hermione absentmindedly approach Ginny without alerting her of her presence first.
"Is this what it's like for everyone?" Hermione had asked Draco. She wanted desperately to believe that Ginny's case was an anomaly, that this wasn't what happened with all the prisoners.
"They knew about Potter's relationship with her, so they may have made it a little more public hoping to goad him into doing something foolish. But, they were probably nicer to her; she's a Pureblood witch of fertile age after all." Hermione was quick to catch on to what was left unsaid, though, she couldn't imagine how anything could be worse than what Ginny had already experienced.
"A sea of black cloaks and silver masks," said Hermione, repeating Ginny's words to describe what took place at Godric's Hollow, "and every one of them using their own unique brand of torture to ensure they were 'serviced' by the Chosen One's fiancée." Hermione took a deep breath as she struggled to compose herself. Some of the tension left her body at the feel of Draco's hand drawing soothing circles over her back, an action he wasn't even consciously doing. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome, but she found herself feeling grateful to have him there. Whatever their future, she could tell she would miss him, this version of him, if he wasn't a part of her life in some way.
Draco stood in the doorway while Ginny stared in a different direction, clenching and unclenching her hands at her sides. Conscious of Ginny's discomfort with his presence, Draco never entered the room. He would usually leave upon announcing his arrival to wait for Hermione in the passageway outside. However, today, he continued to remain in the doorway. He glanced back, then took a deep breath before he spoke. "I'm sorry, for everything that's happened to you." He didn't need to say her name; it was clear which of the two witches he was addressing.
Ever since her conversation with Draco a couple of days ago where she shared with him details of how Ginny had been treated by members of his family, she could tell he was troubled by their actions, even if he was no longer considered one of them.
"Stop," Ginny said. "You're just like them; don't pretend like you're any better. We get that we're your prisoners, but stop trying to act like you're a friend when you're just like daddy."
Draco's mouth pressed into a thin line. He looked at Hermione and tilted his head to the side, "I'll wait for you outside." Without waiting for a response he turned and stormed out.
Ginny's hostility, though justified, was making things uncomfortable between them, not so much between Hermione and Draco as it was between Hermione and Ginny herself. She refused to see that Hermione's situation was different, or that Draco was nothing like Lucius Malfoy or any of the other Death Eaters who raped and tortured her. Ginny believed the blond was simply a different type of sadist who enjoyed making his victims complicit in their own torture.
Hermione didn't blame Ginny for not seeing Draco for himself, he looked so very much like Lucius Malfoy it was hard to look at him and not see his father or think of the cruelty of the Malfoys. She herself had unfairly lashed out at Draco on more than one occasion.
"As if Godric's Hollow wasn't bad enough, that bastard figured out a way to make it worse!" Hermione told Draco. "Because she's Sacred Twenty-Eight, something the Weasleys have never given two hoots about, Voldemort thought she'd make an excellent broodmare for his Death Eaters. As the Dark Lord's most loyal follower, your father got to be the first to use her to get an heir for himself. He raped her every night till she got pregnant, and only moved her to Chateau Lestrange because your mother didn't want her husband's whore in her house." Hermione's tone was biting as she practically spat the words at Draco.
He visibly flinched in response and even then, she was aware she was being unfair to Draco, but she was just so angry on Ginny's behalf she didn't care to restrain herself. So it spoke volumes about the kind of man he was now, that instead of losing his temper or saying something hurtful, either behaviour justifiable, he always stoically tolerated the things she said, understanding her need to vent.
"He's just like them, Hermione," said Ginny, watching Hermione get up off the bed to go meet Draco. Hermione only nodded in response, tired of trying to explain why that wasn't true without causing Ginny offence in some way. In the past month, Hermione had come to discover that she could no longer share her thoughts and feelings with her friend like she once did. Ginny made Hermione feel like an accomplice to the Death Eaters who hurt Ginny anytime she spoke of Draco in a positive light. She made Hermione think she was cheating on Ron, even though their brief relationship had fizzled out a while back. She made her feel guilty about the fact that she was still able bodied, that she wasn't violated by several different people. She doubted Ginny meant to do any of those things, but the pregnancy already left Hermione feeling exhausted and having to constantly watch what she said or did around Ginny was an added strain.
Upon exiting her quarters, Hermione spotted Draco leaning casually against the wall outside, his entire profile illuminated by a stray sunbeam in the dark passageway. An apt metaphor, thought Hermione, since Draco was beginning to feel like the only tether to her sanity these days. Each day they spent more time together now, with her feeling closer to him- he was the only one who could understand where she was coming from anymore. She no longer saw him as just a means to escape. And the attraction between them wasn't just about sexual relief, though there was a whole lot of that going on as well.
"Fuck Merlin, you're killing me Hermione." She enjoyed watching him moan as she slowly took him inside her. Sensing her need when she came out of her room he immediately took her to a corner of the castle they could be together unobserved. Once at their destination, she wasted no time in pushing him down flat on the bed and releasing his cock from the confines of his trousers. There was no hesitation in her movements, over the past few weeks Hermione had several opportunities to become intimately acquainted with his organ.
"Let me use my fingers instead," he offered once more, his plea falling on deaf ears. With her pregnancy having advanced to the extent it had, he constantly worried about hurting her or the babies during sex, though it was clear to her he was desperate to give her the good hard fuck she needed. But, climbing on top of him and riding his cock wasn't just about the sex, it was also about the control it gave her, if only in some brief and limited way, in a world she otherwise had none. No, she preferred it this way- here, with him, like this, it was the one time Hermione felt in charge of her own self. She could feel the burn in her thighs from holding herself suspended above his cock, but the physical pain was worth the mental satisfaction she received knowing she had him at her mercy.
Hermione lowered herself on his cock but stopped before she could sheath him completely. She raised and lowered herself again, just enough to tease the head of his cock. As much as he wanted to put her on her back and fuck her till she squealed for mercy, as he liked to tell her, she knew he wouldn't; he'd let her have this. Hermione marvelled at the muscles beneath her palms as she braced herself against his chest, continuing to shallow fuck him till her legs gave way and she couldn't hold herself up any more.
One look from her was all Draco needed to understand what she needed and act accordingly. He held her by the hips and raised her slightly in a sheer display of strength before proceeding to thrust with abandon from under. She merely held on, gazing into his eyes, lost in beauty of the expressions fleeting across his face as he fucked her.
"Just wait till our pups are born, Granger," he told her. "I'll give you a real fucking then," he swore.
Hermione let out a whimper as he grew harder inside her. She sensed he was going to climax; she was close too but not quite done yet. She scratched his chest, making him growl, before reaching for the headboard. She clutched the headboard, using it for leverage as she attempted to move herself while enjoying his thrusts from below.
"Salazar's balls, witch. Take it easy," he scolded while continuing to furiously fuck her from below, "I'll give you what you need." And the way he looked at her Hermione thought he was referring to something more than just an amazing orgasm.
Later, as she lay sated on top of him, his fingers absentmindedly traced a distinct pattern on her skin. When she asked him what it was he looked at her sheepishly before admitting it was a rune. Much later that night, alone in her bed, Hermione suddenly remembered an interesting piece of information about the rune Draco traced on her skin that day and smiled. That rune was also a marker for his name.