Warning: This chapter contains a potential trigger that I take very seriously. Please scroll to the end to see it, and if you feel at all uncomfortable, please do not feel obligated to read. xx


Don't Look Back

- 17 -

Breathe / Bleed


The night feels endless.

Once again, she's back in the same bed, staring at the same ceiling, and once again she can't sleep.

Every time she blinks, she sees Katie's horror-stricken face behind her eyelids — and now that she's really started thinking about it, she can't make herself stop.

She's terrified of things she can't classify — and the dark curse her subconscious cooked up in that moment has no name. No label. No definition.

She's no closer to making sense of it than she is of Malfoy.

Malfoy, whose expression has been ricocheting off the corners of her mind ever since he made it. Ever since she said it.

And bleeding hell, what a stupid thing to say. Ridiculously risky and self-serving. She'd done it to sate her own curiosity about how he might react, and lo and behold — she's more confused than ever.

Sensing Malfoy in that moment felt like watching an elastic snap. Pulled so far one way — cold, detached, disgusted — only to tear from the tension and suddenly come flying back in the other direction.

He felt consumed and invigorated by her words. Enlightened and awakened. Too many powerful things at once for her to contemplate without going mad.

Which is why she put as much distance between them as possible the moment after she said it, racing back to Gryffindor.

She feels like she's playing with chemicals. Mixing them together until she gets a reaction, no matter how dangerous. And while she can lecture herself about it all she wants, she's not sure she's going to be able to stop.

The mattress sits at a slightly uneven angle beneath her, offset by the book. Somehow, she's even more conscious of it than she was before. Almost like she can feel it through the many layers of cotton and wire springs between them — which is ridiculous, of course.

Still. After another five minutes, she can't resist the temptation to reach for it, drawing her curtains and casting 'Lumos.'

The pages are stained according to the index, she realizes. Half the edges have been dipped in black to correspond with the black rituals, and the other half in crimson.

She steels herself and opens to a page directly in the center. The last of the flesh rituals.

Her wand light spills over the darkly-inked words, bordered by sketches of ingredients and a depiction of an altar.

The Descent

The book describes it as the penultimate ritual to achieving a fully fortified bond, and her eyes are immediately drawn to a note scrawled in the margins — handwritten.

Not to be undone.

Something about the look of the book itself had her assuming everything within its pages was meant to be permanent, and yet someone felt the need to inscribe an additional warning.

Her eyes pass over the words cautiously.

Recitation:

Here, I press my skin to earth

Here, I yield

I forfeit

In your shadow, I kneel to all things

Here, in flesh

In certainty

For this blood is my blood and my offering

This blood is my blood and is yours

The hair stands up on the back of her neck, fingers almost instinctively backing away from the page.

Reading for pleasure?

The wolf's voice makes her drop her wand, rich tone spilling out across her mind without warning. She sucks in a breath and clutches at her chest, trying to calm her pulse.

The book had her nerves ripe for a shock.

"You're…" she whispers, gathering a breath to cast a muffling charm before continuing. "You're back again, then?"

He tisks at her, sound fluttering between one ear and the other.

Already bored of me?

She's terrified of how quickly the word 'never' races to the front of her thoughts — pure instinct — but she's lucky enough to stop herself before she says it out loud.

"No. I'm not bored."

The wolf waits a long time to respond, leaving her eyes searching fruitlessly in the dark for a face she knows isn't there with her.

When he does speak, there's a vulnerability to his tone she's never heard before.

But you don't prefer me after all…

A pang in her chest. The wolf — somehow jealous as well. It seems surreal.

"I don't prefer either of you," she answers, and at the very least it feels like the truth.

Speak freely. Your Malfoy can't hear you.

The words make her sit up straighter, book falling shut in her lap. This isn't something she considered.

But if she concentrates, she can clearly sense Malfoy sleeping.

"You aren't in Malfoy's head?"

Not at the moment.

"How is that possible?"

A musing pause.

One of your books can surely tell you.

"And you won't?"

He laughs faintly. Not the patient sort, are you?

"No, not at all." She pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

It's a natural progression, says the wolf. The longer we're bonded, the stronger it gets. If you remember, there was a time when I could hardly speak to you at all.

She remembers. Those desperate syllables, over and over. Nothing but take, take, take.

I am strong enough now to speak when I please, to whom I please, he continues. And I dearly love speaking to you.

A blush spreads across her cheeks, and she wonders whether he's aware of it. She can't sense him the way she senses Malfoy, but she can somehow feel him breathing.

Are you going to speak freely now? he prompts.

"I — I told you the truth."

And yet you call me a stranger.

The words are wounded, turning the confident, debonair edge she's always seen him wear on its head.

"But you are a stranger," she murmurs, suddenly catching herself trying to be gentle.

After what you let me do to you…

The blush deepens, staining her cheeks with heat.

"It wasn't meant as an insult."

Oh? His voice deepens. How was it meant?

"I'm…" She tries to choose her words carefully. "Well, I'm still trying to sort you out. Learning you as I go. Until I do, you're a stranger to me." After a moment, she adds, "But a good sort of stranger...I think."

The wolf hums in thought.

A good stranger, he echoes, like he's testing out the words on an invisible tongue.

"Yes."

Another moment's pause, and then —

Very well.

His tone is teasing. More like it was before.

I can be your stranger.

She feels his weightless presence vanish in the words' wake, leaving her alone in the darkness of her four-poster. The book still rests against her thigh, heavy in more ways than one — and she decides she'd rather stare at the ceiling than read another one of its pages tonight.


It doesn't surprise her that she's the first of the girls out of bed the following morning. What little sleep she does manage to get is fitful and restless, and by the time the sun creeps up over the mountains, she gives up trying for any more.

Neville, though — he does surprise her. Already awake and sitting in the common room, a pot of miniature dirigible plums resting in his lap. He stops sifting the soil when he notices her, throat bobbing as he swallows.

They're alone. A rare opportunity to speak.

"Good morning," she says, coming to sit in the armchair opposite. She decides to get it over with before he even has the chance to respond. "I'm sorry again about last night — all of it. You shouldn't have to be involved. I know the whole thing's a mess, and I know you were only trying to help—"

"Hermione?" Neville sets the plant down on the table so he can see her better, eyebrows lifted. "It's alright. Okay? Really, it is."

The relief wants to wash over her immediately, but she realizes she might have to cut through a veneer of chivalry to get at the truth.

"Neville, you can be honest with me." She leans forward in her chair. "I can go to Dumbledore. Tell him you don't want anything to do with this. I know how you feel about Malfoy. And Adrian is—"

"Adrian's not all bad."

Her mouth falls shut, brows furrowing.

It's not the first reaction she expected from him. Not a reaction she expected from him at all, actually.

Neville scratches awkwardly at his elbow, gaze suddenly fixed on his dirigible plums. "He, erm — I sort of...well, I sort of know him."

She bites back on her questions, waiting for him to elaborate at his own pace.

"I spend a lot of the summer at St. Mungo's," he says, going a little pink. "My parents are there — I don't know if you reme—"

"No, right. Of course," she nods, feeling her chest sink.

"Anyway, erm…" He scratches at the back of his head now. "He's there a lot, too. Adrian. To see his mother." A shy half-shrug. "Sometimes we sit in the waiting room together."

"Oh." She nods again, trying to hide her surprise. "Of course. His mother's a Healer, isn't she?"

Neville's eyes find hers, expression suddenly grim. He winces. "Not anymore."

"Oh."

"I — well, I mean, I really shouldn't say. It's not my story to tell."

She just keeps nodding — the only appropriate response, it seems — all the while wondering if it's the truth she already knows, or something more.

"He's alright, though, Adrian," Neville says, huffing a laugh. "As Slytherins go, at least."

She echoes his laugh, seeing an expression in his eyes that has all those strange interactions between the two of them making sense.

"So...you don't mind, then? Being involved?"

He shrugs again, and his smile is brighter now. "Wouldn't be the first mess we walked into together."

The words send a warmth through her veins that remains the rest of the day.


A week passes, and Katie Bell remains in a magically-induced coma — this one not her doing, but Madam Pomfrey's.

"To give her mind space to heal," she says when Hermione works up the courage to visit, terrified of the damage she might see.

But Katie only looks like she's sleeping, no physical evidence of a dark curse marring her features.

Madam Pomfrey tells her more than once that they're very, very lucky.

But she doesn't feel lucky at all.

Especially considering the absolute catastrophe that is the end of the week.

She's been doing her best to keep her distance from Malfoy, if only to give both of them a bit of respite. She brushes off strange sensations when they come and focuses her attention on her studies, the occasional wayward glance notwithstanding.

But it's possible in putting so much effort into avoiding him, she's turned a blind eye to almost everyone else — which is exactly how McLaggen manages to catch her off guard.

Halfway to the Great Hall for dinner on Friday evening, she turns a corner and walks directly into an immobilizing jinx. Her limbs lock and her eyes freeze wide, and before she can comprehend it, a sweaty pair of hands drags her into a broom cupboard.

"Hello, Granger," Cormac's lazy voice sounds just beside her ear before he steps into her field of vision, and her stomach promptly starts to tie itself in knots.

One hand training his wand on her, he uses the other to brush the hair out of her face. She's only had someone do that one other time in her life. And this feels entirely different.

Entirely unclean.

"Funny story," says Cormac, and he smirks, eyes a little wild. "I was in Herbology today when a memory I seemed to be missing hit me out of nowhere."

Her stomach feels like it launches into her throat.

"Memory charms are tricky that way." He starts to trace the length of her arm with his wand. "If you don't perform them correctly, sometimes they wear off."

She can't swallow the saliva pooling on her tongue. Can't blink to hide him from her sight. She feels exactly how she felt with Greyback — a way she swore she'd never feel again.

"Not a very nice thing you did to me, is it?" And now it's his hand traveling lower, dropping from her forehead to her collarbone and starting to trace sickly circles into her skin. "Especially after I treated you so well…"

Where are you?

The wolf's voice suddenly drowns Cormac out, and it's the most welcome sound in the world in this moment.

Where are you? What's happening?

Her lips can't part to speak, tears welling up in her eyes — she's not sure if it's from the sting or from the look on Cormac's face.

She can hardly focus her thoughts, racing wild and panicked, and it takes every ounce of concentration just to manage one word.

Help.

Barely a moment passes and Malfoy's running. She can feel it.

But Cormac's already got his hand on her thigh, clammy fingers feeling at the hem of her skirt. "I think it's only fair I get a repeat performance," he's saying, voice starting to tremble with anticipation. "Maybe even a little extra. What do you think?"

He's so excited.

She wants to be sick.

Help me.

She wants to help herself. Wants to gouge his eyes out. Wants to cut out his tongue with a dull knife and then ask him what he thinks.

But she can't even wipe away the drool trickling down her chin.

Cormac steps back, hand dropping from her thigh to work at unzipping his trousers, and it's like God sees her out the corner of his eye.

He miscalculates his footing and trips over a broom.

Spell compromised, as he falls, so does the enchantment — and the moment the life explodes back into her limbs, she's reaching for her wand.

Cormac sees it, scrambling to disentangle himself from the pile of brooms, face suddenly white with panic.

And if she weren't shaking so badly, she'd have hexed him in a millisecond.

As it is, she's barely able to train her wand on him before he's lurching to his feet and bursting out the door, her stinging jinx striking the flagstone next to one of his ankles before he vanishes from sight.

Vaguely, she hears his rapid footfalls as he escapes down the corridor, but they're soon drowned out by her own gasps for air.

She can't catch her breath, lungs closed up — practically shriveled. Her hand fists in her shirt over her chest, pressing hard and trying to force herself to take in oxygen. The little room around her spins, and she slides down to the floor, wand clattering against stone.

The air feels hot and suffocating, sweat beading on her forehead, vision swimming. For a moment, she wonders if she might actually pass out.

But just when everything starts to tint black, the door to the broom cupboard gets thrown open — and Malfoy's there.

It's like a splash of water to the face.

Suddenly her lungs inflate and her vision clears, and at the very least she's able to turn her head and glance up at him.

He's panting — breathless, his tie still slung over his shoulder from what must've been a breakneck pace.

"What happened?"

A thick silence follows, only their staggered breathing to fill it. And as she stares up at him, all the pain and all the fear feels like it ferments in her stomach.

She will not cry.

The tears already streaming down her face are from having them forced open, she's sure of it. And she is not going to cry in front of him.

"What happened?" Malfoy asks again, because she still hasn't answered. Only this time, his voice is softer — and with an attentiveness she didn't know he was capable of, he sinks into a crouch at her side. Evens out their eye level.

She opens her mouth to speak but the words get trapped in her throat.

She knows what Malfoy will say.

He'll say they need to report him. He'll say it was a close call and maybe even that he's sorry he didn't get to her sooner.

But in this moment she's realizing she needs more than that.

The sickness in her gut is rapidly morphing into something else. Something poisonous and white-hot. Something that boils and writhes.

She doesn't want to report him.

She wants…

She wants—

Operating on pure instinct, she abruptly rocks forward onto her knees and leans towards him. Malfoy's expression of concern melts into confusion as, all at once, she takes his face in her hands.

"Granger…" he says, eyes a little wide beneath furrowed brows. He sinks down onto one knee — whether to fix his balance or to accommodate her, she isn't certain. "What are you—"

"I need your help," she says, searching his eyes. Knowing she's already made up her mind. "And you're not going to like it."

"What—"

"Stranger?" she breathes, knowing no other name to call him by. "Where are you?"

Malfoy has only a moment to stare at her, realization flooding into his gaze far too late. And then his pupils bleed out their black onto his irises, and she's looking at the wolf.

Immediately, his hands reach up to cover hers, taking them away from his face to clasp in front of him. His grip is warm. Safe.

"What happened to you?"

Tears prick at her eyes, and she resolutely forces them back, swallowing before she speaks. "Cormac McLaggen." Her voice is as steady as she can manage. "He jinxed me, and then he tried to—"

The wolf lets out a sharp breath, hands suddenly tightening around hers. She feels the fury explode inside of him like a controlled demolition. No warning. No build-up. Just there. Instantly.

His voice is a hiss. "Did he?"

"No." She shakes her head sharply. "No. He didn't get the chance. But I — I need your help."

The rage falters in his gaze, somehow making way for tenderness. "Anything," he says. One of his hands slips free to brush the curls out of her face, and the reminder of it — the comparison of it — solidifies the urge in her gut beyond anything else.

"I don't want to report him," she says, and now her voice is firm.

A brush of his thumb across her lips. "What do you want?"

She releases a steady breath, sure of it. Needing it.

"I want him to bleed."

A flicker in those dark eyes grows steadily into a wildfire as he processes her words. For a long moment, he searches her gaze, as though he's waiting for her to take it back.

But when she holds firm, unblinking — unwavering — the hard set of his lips lifts into a grin both faint and somehow vicious. She doesn't really get the chance to analyze it.

A few seconds more, and he leans forward to kiss her.

A different sort of kiss. Soft. Unmoving. A promise.

He speaks against her lips.

"Take me to him."


They wait at the entrance to the Great Hall as students slowly trickle out, leaving dinner, and all the while the anticipation simmers right beneath her skin. She flexes her fingers, unable to keep still.

The wolf is much the same, only for an entirely different reason.

When she first notices the tension in his jaw, she thinks it's more of that rage she'd seen before. It's only when she sees his fingernails digging into his palms that she realizes he's fighting against something.

"Malfoy?"

The wolf nods, voice tense but reassuring. "I can hold him off as long as I need to—"

"There," she cuts in, seeing Cormac's overlarge frame step into the Entrance Hall. The wolf doesn't recognize him as Malfoy would, but once she's certain he's fixed those blackened depths on the right person, she slips back into the shadows — out of sight.

"Hey, McLaggen!" the wolf calls out, and she's impressed by the casual edge he's worked into his tone.

Cormac's head jerks to the side, brows furrowing at the sight of Malfoy. She can tell that he's nervous. Waiting for consequences.

He knows what he's done.

But he'd never expect consequences from Malfoy.

"Can I have a word?" the wolf asks, voice as calm and even as the still water of the Black Lake. He jolts his head in the direction of the Courtyard, still accessible to students for the next hour or so.

But it's doubtful anyone would venture out into the cold.

"...Sure?" Cormac hedges, meandering away from the crowd to follow him. He looks suspicious, but not suspicious enough.

Hermione waits until they've both disappeared around the corner before she follows.

She wants to see it.

She promised herself she'd never feel helpless like that again, and he broke that promise for her. She wants him in agony.

Stepping out into the icy night air, she turns in the direction of the torchlight, finding the wolf standing a foot or so from Cormac, hands in his trouser pockets.

He's waiting for her.

"Well?" Cormac demands, tone back to its usual arrogance. The way they're situated, he can't see her behind him.

But the wolf meets her eyes, gaze soft and indulgent for just a moment.

Then he points casually to the stone wall behind Cormac's shoulder and says, "Look."

Cormac looks, fool that he is, and in that split second it takes him to turn towards the wall, the wolf gnarls a brutal fist into his hair and slams his face into the stone.

The crunch of his nose as it breaks isn't sickening to her ears — no, it's almost soothing. His high-pitched yelp of pain works wonders on the knots in her stomach, untying them one by one.

And as his bright scarlet blood starts to spill down the length of the wall, she takes a step closer.

The wolf has his face pressed up against it so hard, it appears he can't breathe. The blood gushing from his nose starts to spill into his open mouth, and his body jerks as he starts to choke on it, palms slapping desperately against the stone on either side.

"Look at her," the wolf demands, somehow managing to angle Cormac's head enough to the side that one of his watering eyes fixes on her.

Fear and panic washes over the look of pain in an instant.

"Do you see her?"

It looks like his eyes can barely focus. He's starting to spasm, drowning in his own blood, and it sprays everywhere as he desperately tries to spit it out.

She stares at him and feels nothing but satisfaction.

"She is everything," the wolf growls, leaning forward — right up to his ear, ensuring Cormac doesn't miss a word over his own squealing. "You owe your life to her. If she'd asked me to, I would've ripped the lungs out of your chest and lain them at her feet."

A pulse of something intense and raw rides up her spine. Something indescribable.

Cormac splutters and gags, starting to seize up without the air to breathe.

So the wolf yanks him back, spinning him around only to force the palm of his hand against that freshly broken nose and shove the back of his skull against the wall. "Now look at me."

Cormac screams, clawing at his arm to no avail, thick blood leaking out through the gaps between the wolf's fingers.

"Consider me the fucking executioner." A deadly hiss. "And if you breathe a word of this to anyone — if you come anywhere near her again — I will burn you alive."

He lets go all at once, and Cormac somehow manages to stay upright for a few seconds.

"Do you understand?"

He falls straight forward with the weight of an anvil, sprawling out unconscious on the flagstone. The wet patch on his jeans is visible even from the back.

The wolf turns to look at her, blood all over his right hand — splattered across his shirtfront. He smiles sweetly as he rolls up the soaked sleeve. "I think he understands."

And for the first time since she was dragged into that broom cupboard, she gathers a full, satisfying breath.

Only, it's just then that the wolf's body gives a jerk — and she knows what's coming.

The repercussions she expected but didn't plan for.

Black leeches away to grey, and all at once that casual posture turns feral.

Malfoy comes at her fast. Her feet can't keep up, scuffing on the stone as he abruptly crowds her into the adjacent wall. That blood-soaked hand takes her by the face, pinning her there and stealing the breath she regained right back.

"How could you do that to me?" he demands, gaze livid. "How dare you?"

She opens her mouth, but evidently he doesn't intend to let her speak.

"I felt what was in your head." A jerk of that hand, forcing her eyes to focus on him. "You disregarded me. Discounted me. As if you know fucking anything about me."

"I—"

"Why didn't you let me do it?"

Her mouth hangs slightly ajar, words on her tongue evaporating.

"I... what?" is all she can manage after far too many seconds of silence.

"I would've gladly knocked his fucking teeth out," Malfoy seethes, grip tightening. "I would've done it in front of the whole fucking school. Why did you take that away from me?"

Blindsided, she can only blink at him. "I…"

"Fucking hell," he rips his hand away, forgetting the blood and wiping that palm down his face. Smearing it everywhere. "You trust him more than me."

She tries to shake her head. Tries to form a response.

He huffs. A disappointment. A dismissal.

"You can't trust him more than me."

He brushes past her shoulder and disappears into the Castle — leaves her there with the unconscious, soiled mess that used to be Cormac McLaggen.


TRIGGER WARNING: attempted sexual assault, graphic violence