.


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Draco sat in the Muggle bar and snorted into his pint glass, not even bothering to stifle his laughter. A few people turned their heads in his direction; they too seemed to be enjoying the melancholy of their own solitude and did not seem to appreciate it being interrupted with any sound of mirth, however false it was. He had never been a "good drunk" but then again, few people were.

How many pints had he had exactly? No one could say. The bartender was quick to whisk away the empty glass and plunk down another and Draco certainly hadn't been keeping count. He could hardly contemplate exactly how he had arrived here, at The Swan Dive pub and idly twirled a paper coaster with his free hand on the bar top. Visions of the past week skittered inside his brain, here and there, but the one persistent thing on his mind was what the hell he was going to do now that life as he knew it was over.

He certainly couldn't go back to St. Mungo's.

Harry Potter strikes again, he thought bitterly. The man had an uncanny knack for slowly turning Draco's way of life on its head, ever since they were children. At least this time it hadn't taken very long. Just when he'd been making headway with Hermione and getting down to the essential details of what exactly had caused the aurors at the Ministry to take ill the way they had, here comes the bloody Chosen One, with his wand waving, blasted scar set firmly in place, all set to ruin Draco's agonizingly slow progress.

Why did he have to show me that unaltered memory? What could possibly be gained by it?

Draco was furious with him and much to his embarrassment, he was now even more curious about her. She'd fantasized about him before she'd been possessed? He was pretty certain that malicious succubus could only turn into the thing a person wanted most and for Hermione, at that particular moment, that thing had been him? How the hell did that work out? After seeing the intact memory he'd found he actually felt jealous of the creature. To know how it felt to make Hermione Granger come...to taste the salt of her skin...

He shook his head vigorously. This was no time to be thinking about that.

But then again, he found there was little else he could think of. He hung his head, hating himself and his circumstances.

"So, wot's 'er name?" came a voice from the far end of the bar, interrupting Draco's feverish thoughts.

Draco let his half lidded eyes drift over to his right and spied a man sitting in the shadows. He snorted into his glass once more before draining it, and sighed,

"Hermione. Her name is Hermione."

"Hmm...that's not common, issit? Pretty tho. Ya drinkin' teh remember or firget?"

"Oh...that I could forget," Draco said with a sour yet wistful note in his voice.

The stranger had meandered over to where Draco sat and clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

"Me wife passed eight year ago this day. There's only one ting tet lets me firget. Lyle!" the man said, getting the attention of the barkeep. "We'll have two set ups," he said, holding up two chubby digits.

Draco watched in blurry fascination as "Lyle" opened a few overhead cabinets and set before them a sort of beautiful fountain-like decanter full of ice water, a pair of small, ornate glasses, and two spoons with decorations cut out of their bowls. He poured an almost glowing green elixir into the small glasses, then placed the strange spoons on top of them. The glasses were then put directly underneath the fountain spouts and a single cube of sugar was placed atop each of the spoons.

The subtle yet deft artistry was not lost on Draco. In fact, he found the whole whimsical ritual very beautiful and felt his breath catch as the barkeep turned the handle on each spout simultaneously and ice cold water flowed onto the sugarcubes, dissolving them over the spoon strainers into the jewel like green below. It was like watching snow melt over an emerald pond.

"Absinthe," sighed Draco's strange companion. When Draco furrowed his brow the man explained dreamily, "The Little Green Fairy," and he offered Draco one of the small, crystal glasses the barkeep had slid over to him.

Draco brought the glass close to his face and peered into its jeweled depths. Would it really make him forget?

The fact that it was Slytherin green seemed mildly serendipitous. He sighed thinking about everything he'd seemed to have lost in a matter of minutes and everything he'd lost in the last decade. His status. His family. His prejudice. His job. His mind. When he really thought about it like that, really what else was there to lose?

Not a bloody damn thing.

His new friend lifted his own glass up in salutation and nodded in Draco's direction but instead of saying, Cheers, as was custom, he breathed a single toast,

"Charity," before draining the contents of the crystal.

Draco thought this an odd sort of sentiment but paid no mind to it, perhaps he'd simply heard him wrong. He raised his glass before dropping the carved crystal to his lips, tilted it back, and entirely surrendered to the idea of letting this Green Fairy be his guide tonight.

.


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Hermione was beside herself with worry.

"How could you let him leave? He's in danger! What if Lucius finds him?" she shrieked at Harry who was pacing around her room.

"Hermione, please calm down. Let me think," Harry pleaded in frustration. He felt like this whole week had been turned up on its arse and he hadn't even been able to go home and see his pregnant wife or his son, yet. Now the chances of him being able to tonight was slim to none. There was no one else here save for a couple of Junior M.W.'s, one on call Healer, and Narcissa Malfoy.

What had upset Draco so much he would just abandon them all like this? Why had he quarantined St. Mungo's when there was no need to? Maybe to get rid of nosy staff? Or focus on Hermione and Hermione alone? Or perhaps...

"No," Harry said aloud.

"What?" Hermione asked giving him a searching look.

Harry, not entirely sure how much of his suspicions he should reveal to someone who might still be under the influence of an ancient, almost completely unknown creature's possession, let alone a dark magical curse from a dark, magical object, shook his head and suggested,

"Let's look at the books again. We can't just rely on Malfoy to direct this."

Hermione sighed and nodded ascent. She had to get her priorities straight. If they could find a way, some sort of method to defeating this madness, they might be able to save many others, and not just Draco. But it was so hard to know where to begin when they weren't even sure what Lucius was using the creature for exactly or what he had been trying to accomplish with all this blood magic business.

"Fiend Fay, or demons, as Muggles call them, are usually summoned in blood magic rituals in order to exercise control over an impossible task or large group of people. What I know about Lucius is that he advocated a Pure Blood agenda. His family crest is Sanctimonia Vincet Semper. It means, Purity Will Always Conquer. It would seem he took great measures to ensure success. It says here, the Succubus can be enticed to make one vow with a human, if seven Unforgivable Acts are completed within a specific number of full moons," Hermione read aloud.

"Even if it is a Succubus, we have no way of knowing when Lucius brokered this bargain with the thing, though," Harry replied glumly. "And what exactly are the Seven Unforgivable Acts?

"Who's to say Lucius was the one who started it? Perhaps he was finishing someone else's work..." Hermione's voice trailed off uncertainly.

Harry immediately caught on to where she was heading.

"That's true. The man was always more puppet than master. But he was a scheming puppet...very clever. He could pull his own strings, that was certain."

The room filled with an awful silence as they both remembered another book; a diary, written by a young man that stealthily found its way into Harry's own wife's first school cauldron one fateful day in Diagon Alley. A very deceptive diary that proceeded to possess her mind, body, and almost, her very soul.

This whole series of events had been orchestrated by none other than Lucius Malfoy himself. It was very Slytherin of him. Hermione had told Harry of what Draco and she had seen in the Pensieve after pouring one of the black filled vials into it and Harry had gone noticeably still. Hermione wasn't exactly shocked. It was beyond disturbing to confess what she had seen, aloud to her friend. Oftentimes when a child popped up on the radar of the Auror department Harry would ask for the assignment himself. He'd helped to reorganize the entire Protections Division to help it become less cold and intimidating to their younger charges. He'd always had a soft spot for children, having been abused himself as a child.

Hermione was about to open another book but Harry interrupted her train of thought.

"Tom Riddle was a pedophile."

The simple way Harry said the sentence was misleading; his words fell onto Hermione's ears like so many stones upon the floor.

"Oh my god, Harry," she said, horrified. Then she went back to her previous thoughts. "You don't mean...Ginny?" she whispered hesitantly, hoping she was wrong.

"It was years before she felt like she could confide in me, about all those terrible things that happened to her, her first year at Hogwarts. Voldemort destroyed her trust in people. She'd told that damn diary everything, spilled her heart onto the pages and it used everything it learned about her, against her. To fulfill some sick desire of his."

They both shuddered visibly. Ginny was Hermione's closest female friend but she'd never confided anything to her like this.

"He didn't just violate every thought in her head or try to possess her soul, he violated her body, Hermione. When the diary opened its pages to me and allowed me passage into its depths, I thought, like a Pensieve, I was a mere spectre spectator, unable to touch or interact with anything inside it. But that was just what he wanted me to believe. The damn thing was a Horcrux! It wasn't bound by the same magical properties of transference. She had nowhere to hide from him and was barely aware what was happening to her at the time. He could lure her in and touch her in there! And when he'd drain a little bit of her life force, he began to interact with her outside of the diary as well. It would be months before he was strong enough to cast out his whole body, but parts of himself he could..."

Harry trailed off and Hermione's imagination went wild as a sick feeling twisted in her stomach and she remembered the little girl she'd seen in cellars of Malfoy Manor. She didn't want to hear this. Still, Harry continued.

"Remember, how he was obsessed with the number seven? How he'd tried to make seven Horcruxes?" Harry asked bitterly and Hermione nodded. "Well, as soon as he found out she was the seventh child born to a set of pureblood parents, he became relentless. This consecrated her to him, made his desire to possess her even more insatiable. She told me sometimes she'd wake from one of her trances and find the bloody diary under her robes, between her legs, always open, pressed against her bare skin."

Hermione was shocked. She could not believe such a loathsome creature as Voldemort was allowed to exist on this planet. What was scarier though, was that he wasn't a monster. He was just a man, just a person like her. What he chose to do with his magical power was just...unimaginable.

"The Horcrux version of himself that had been preserved was young and still had human desires. He'd intended to use Ginny to lure someone else to suck the life out of so he could keep abusing her, but once he learned her entire family were "blood traitors" and she wouldn't shut up about how much she liked me, he became angry with her and decided to use her own life force to make himself corporeal. In his eyes, using her life force to fuel his own meant they would be together forever. It was romantic to him. After I...after the events that happened in the Chamber of Secrets, she was really messed up. She just bounced in and out of entanglements with guys she didn't even really care that much about. She just longed for..."

"For?" Hermione queried, urging him to go on.

"Well, we see this a lot with abuse in the Auror department. When it happens at such a young age and it's the only form of...physical affection outside the bonds of family...the victim associates that abuse with arousal and it's hard for them to separate it simply because they've had nothing else to compare it to. She was in and out of relationships at Hogwarts because she was trying to use those boys to forget what she'd gone through, lose herself in them, but they didn't understand her and while they were keen to accept the physical rewards of her forward and surprisingly experienced nature, they were in no way ready for the kind of patience it would take to build her trust back up and it soon discouraged her from trying. Ginny and I have...come a long way."

"Harry, you sound like a bloody therapist," Hermione sighed.

Harry cocked an eyebrow at her. It seemed Malfoy was rubbing off on her and he smiled knowingly at his friend who had the decency to blush once she realized what she'd just said.

"But seriously, you two are really lucky to have found each other. You were both the obsession of a mad man, the same mad man, who used your mind against you in order to try and take control away from you. You understand one another in a way no one else ever can. Not exactly, anyway," Hermione said with a sad smile.

The correlation between Hermione and Draco was not lost on Harry and he was reminded of something Luna had said to him.

"Don't be too cross with him. Remember, they've both lost their own families, too."

"You and Draco, too," Harry responded quietly.

"Yes," Hermione whispered looking down at her lap again. "Us too."

Harry licked his lips thoughtfully trying to come up with a tactful way to broach his next topic of discussion.

"Do you know what Malfoy thought of, Hermione? Do you know what the creature turned into for him? Did he tell you?" Harry asked quietly, trying not to sound suspicious but if his suspicions were correct, there would be no way to ignore it or dismiss it as mere coincidence.

Hermione continued staring at her lap but she could feel Harry's expectant stare, sizing her up, holding her in what could only be the keen scrutiny of an accomplished Auror. She could not give him any more half truths.

"He didn't have to. I was...well, I was sort of there," she confessed.

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Draco's arm was looped around his new unlikely friend's shoulder, as they both sang a familiar verse.

"Then in comes bouncing Sally,
Her cheeks as red as blooms
Move up me jolly sisters,
And give young Sally some room
Then I will be your equal
Before the night is out
And these four drunken maidens,
They pushed the jug about!"

He still had no idea how it was he came to be here but this man had accepted his company, bought him an amnesiac nectar of the gods, and knew all the lyrics to every drinking song Draco could think of, so he didn't dwell on the how or why of the moment. Because right now, he was enjoying himself more than he had in the last decade. He couldn't even spare a thought to anything that happened twenty minutes ago, let alone the last ten bloody years of his life and that was just fine with Draco.

The unflappable Healer in him was being drowned out but something in his head warned him to tread carefully, that he had missed an important bit of information about his new companion. Was it his name? That must be it! Draco hadn't asked him his name at all.

"So," Draco drawled. "Who, might I ask, am I being blessed with the company of?"

"Well, I'll be blurved! Me mother would scold me something terrible if she ever found out I hadn't made introdooctions before getting drunk with a man! Me name's Toison. Toison Behbage. Pleased to meet 'cha!"

The man's surname vibrated in his head dully. It almost felt as if he had met him before. Draco narrowed his eyes at Tyson. He took in the man's disheveled appearance. Perhaps he had. Someone he had treated or met in passing. Draco hardly made it a point to remember anyone unless it was strategic. But before Draco could muse on this further, the man picked up the hand not holding a drink and shook it heartily. Something clattered to the floor during the exuberance of the handshake and when Tyson's eyes drifted from Draco's face to what it was, Draco almost pissed his pants.

It was his wand.

He'd just dropped his wand in a muggle bar! And this muggle man was stooping to the floor to pick it up for him. But to Draco's suprise, Tyson was stealthy about retrieving it and slipped it up into Draco's coat sleeve before he could even blink.

"Eh, beggin' yer parton, but yeh don't want to be waving something like that about. Nawt in a place like this. You bein' one of them folks," he said quietly, cautiously scanning the room at the other drunk patrons. When Draco gaped at him, he chuckled softly.

"Me wife. She was one of you, er...special folk. Moidured by a monster...for loving a wretch like me."

Tears started to fill his eyes but a sick sensation began to fill Draco. It spread throughout his stomach, all the way up into his throat and he was momentarily frozen. Burbage. The man had given a toast only moments before...he'd said 'charity', like 'cheers', so Draco's thoughts hadn't pursued what it might mean, drunk people say all kinds of nonsense. But the truth was Tyson was actually paying homage to his dead wife by toasting her name.

Charity.

"She was one of you, er...special folk," he'd said.

And Draco's eyes widened with dawning realization.

Charity Burbage.

A woman who had been murdered, yes. Not eight years ago, but nine. Not on this date, but another. In his very home, in front of his very eyes.

And he had not done a thing except watch it happen.

Is this what the Ministry did to inform the muggle spouses of witches and wizards of their newly widowed status? Give them a phony date and a story which placed the blame entirely upon them? Wouldn't it have been kinder to Obliviate them? His knees buckled and suddenly he could barely stand. The contents inside his belly roiled within him and it felt as if the last decade was rising up like a bloody serpent, burning his throat as it made its way up to be unleashed upon the world once more.

Every horror he had done and witnessed.

He saw Charity's levitated body above the great dining room table. He saw the tears trailing down her face, reflected under the cold light of the Manor; the way they fell to the table with barely audible splats, dotting the matte stone in dark spots. He saw the man who was a monster, raise his wand and cast his Unforgivable Curse at her body. That's all she was to him; a body. She was not a person to him, no, not to this man. She was just something he could snuff the life out of, like a candle.

Draco remembered cringing with sick horror because it was so easy for Voldemort. There was no struggle or thought in his actions. He just killed her. Her body went rigid and tight for only a moment before it went limp on invisible strings, like a marionette and Draco was forced to watch the giant snake, Nagini consume the dead woman. Her body robbed of life. The memory bubbled up within him, desperate to be free and wreak its terror out into the world once more.

"Yes, let me be rid of it, I don't want it anymore," Draco thought as he spewed forth everything he'd just downed in the last hour all over the floor of The Swan Dive.

.


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After Hermione had explained what had happened in Draco's encounter with the woman made of fire, Harry could only lift his glasses, rub his eyes, and bid her goodnight.

"It's just been a long day, Hermione. We should both get some rest. Tomorrow I'll try to go find that nitwit, okay? Do me a favor and take this," he said, offering her a stoppered vial of Dreamless Sleep.

When she gave him a quizzical look, he gave her a sheepish grin.

"I keep them for when I have to travel out of my time zone. My sleep schedule is completely buggered up."

She seemed satisfied with this answer and obediently downed the contents of the vial. The familiar workings of the potion soon took hold of her and she settled into the covers. Harry drew the privacy curtains around her bed and then made his way to his own room which he had decided was necessary to sleep in after Draco had confirmed Hermione had indeed been possessed.

He didn't tell Hermione any of this, of course, just like he didn't tell her he'd concealed a baby monitor under the sheets of the bed he had been sleeping in. Possessed or not, she was still Hermione and he knew she wouldn't take kindly to the protective gesture.

As her mind became dusky with sleep, Hermione thought of Draco and the more she thought of him, the more he seemed to become an active part of the dream she wasn't supposed to be able to have under the influence of the potion.

.


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"There we go," Tyson said as he opened up the small attic room. "I reckon that Green Fairy is a sneaky little bugger to take yeh for a ride. Best to sleep it off, my lad."

Draco turned himself to look in Tyson Burbage's eyes. They were yellowing, Draco thought it must be cataracts and promised himself he would fix it for the man if he could do anything by the time he recovered.

"I'm sorry," he hiccuped drunkenly.

"Don't even think on it, young man! Why, if I had a pound for every time someone had to take care of me pissed arse..."

"No! I'm really sorry! You have no idea..." Draco interrupted in a choked sob as he wildly flailed in the arms of the man who still held him upright.

"Come now! Don't be like that. This here is karma is what this is!" Tyson said merrily as he hefted Draco onto the small spare bed.

That's exactly what this is, thought Draco. He could hardly muster a goodnight response as Tyson bade him pleasant dreams and he felt relieved when the older man turned out the light and left him to his brimming blackout. His last hope was that he would not have anymore unpleasant memories sneak up in his dreams and he didn't.

No, what he dreamt was much worse.

He was in a darkened hallway of St. Mungo's. He recognized it by the smell of Disinfectant Douse. He heard a noise down the other end of the corridor. Labored footsteps coming toward him. Draco could not control the impulse that took over him. He heard her, it was her. His body responded almost immediately, the fire in his veins surging down to his loins. He could hear the sway of her hospital gown as she searched the dark hallway.

Sensing how close she was, he flattened himself against the doorway, preparing for her to pass and not notice him. He watched completely mesmerized as the paleness from her gown entered his line of vision and then drifted past him, like a ghost; the dark outline of her curls cascading down the open back. Draco could not repress the sudden urge he felt, as soon as her vulnerability became obvious, the force driving his erection compelled him to lunge forward and grab her from behind.

She let out a startled gasp and he pulled her close against his body, grinding his hardness against her backside. His hands wandered in separate directions, one gliding up to latch itself against her throat and the other nestled itself deep within the joining between her thighs.

Draco's pants were near bursting at the seams as he pressed his fingers into her intimate flesh and Hermione moaned with shock and to his surprise, what sounded like lust. He knew he had to make her his, fill her with his seed. Just thinking about opening her, squeezing himself into the wet velvet of her -it was driving him barking mad!

And suddenly, a voice slid from his throat, one he could not recognize as his own.

"Now that we've taken care of the Weasley welp, let's put something worthy of being inside you. I'm gonna make you feel good, Granger. I'll make you feel so good you won't want to do anything else but feel me come inside you. Over and over. Again and again."

And at these words, Hermione's body went slack against him. He pushed her head back against his shoulder and brought his lips to her throat, going through the motions of choking her one handed without actually applying any pressure. His other hand pushed harder against her womanhood, sandwiching the lower half of her body between it and the throbbing steel between both of them.

"I already know that you're so wet for me. I already know all your favorite ways to be taken. And I already know you're ready to conceive a child again, you've healed enough, I've been waiting so long to be inside you."

She felt her hair move against her skin as he whispered all this in a voice deeper than his own. It seemed to pull her out of this reverie momentarily.

"What...what's happened to you?" she groaned weakly, struggling against her desire.

Draco laughed in a conflux of voices.

"You silly girl, haven't you figured it out, yet?" he asked with mock reproach as he lightly traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. It felt so good she could barely pay attention to anything else but then he pulled the proverbial rug out from underneath her. "You're not the one who's possessed. Draco is."

Hermione's eyebrows shot up her forehead in complete and utter horrified shock.

"But I...I offered myself...to save him!"

"Yes, you offered yourself to her but not me. So I will take you now."

Before she knew it, the gown had fallen forward and was edging down her arms as she felt the cool air of the hospital against her naked back.

"Isn't this is what you want? What you've always wanted? Me buried deep inside you, pouring deep inside you. Pumping my cock in and out of your slit, while you surrender to the ecstasy of irresistible domination?"

The words had a hypnotizing effect on her and she closed her eyes, letting herself press against him. She felt his hardened flesh dip between her legs and then she felt it pushing against her, parting and stimulating her own slick tenderness. And his fingers began to work with exquisite subtleness, the little bud of flesh at the center of her weeping delta as quick, sharp jolts of pleasure eked up into her core until she surrendered to him.

Just like she knew she wanted to.

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