Chapter 5 – Pitch Black
Warning: Blood, Injury, Violence
Spotify Playlist: playlist/3avsZ3zyFGUnYPsYJDmJoY?si=49108299493d4b26&nd=1
"I'll marry you."
Nothing changes.
The words which carried so much weight for her should have been accompanied by something happening outside of the tumult of the emotions inside of her.
An earthquake perhaps, the building falling on top of her, the sky changing colour outside the window.
Something that would match what she felt inside.
Hermione stared at Malfoy for his reaction, an outward result of her declaration that would affirm that she had just taken a leap off a very steep cliff.
He gave her nothing.
She crossed her arms to try and hide the small tremble in her hands which belied her apprehension. "But I have some conditions. Before we marry we need to agree on some rules between us."
Malfoy gestured to the couch behind her. "Why don't you sit down and we can discuss it."
"Your tendency to order me around being one of those. That has to stop."
He raised his brows. "I order you around?"
Hermione didn't answer the question. "I'm perfectly fine standing here."
His eyes flitted upward in an almost eye-roll and he sighed. "I can see you trembling and those ridiculous contraptions on your feet look painful."
Hermione glanced down at the four-inch stiletto pumps she had spent twenty minutes selecting that morning. Against her better judgement she had forgone her normal sensible office heels. But then again she had had a tea shop meeting with Malfoy…
She shoved that thought away before it could take root. They had went well with her trousers and suit, that's all. And they were comfortable. For the most part. Her feet did ache after wearing them all morning.
"I'm fine," she lied. She despised the way he read her body language like he was an expert in everything Hermione Granger.
Or maybe he was just too observant.
He shrugged. "Have it your way."
Then he crossed the room to take a seat on the couch himself. Leaning back, he raised a taunting brow at her as he sprawled himself comfortably on the dark cushioned fabric.
"What conditions do you have? I'm listening." His tone was expectant yet nonchalant as he pushed his hands inside his pockets and regarded her imperiously, looking like the cat that ate the canary.
She gawked at him.
The sly bastard.
Hermione fidgeted awkwardly with her hands for a few seconds. Then decided that now wasn't the time to play mind games with him and plopped herself down on the couch as well, pulling a throw pillow onto her lap.
To his credit, he suppressed his smirk quite successfully.
Hermione ignored the smugness radiating from him. "I meant what I said. My first rule is that you will not interfere in–"
"First? How many rules do you plan to have, Granger?"
"Three or four." She looked at him steadily. She knew she was bargaining with the devil but she would not back down on this. She was already going against every grain of her being by agreeing to a marriage which would be in name only.
Malfoy tilted his head, appraising her carefully.
She took a page out of his book and tried her very best at maintaining a poker face. She had to come out on top this time.
After a long pause, he spoke. "You said you won't need my help after we're married, right?"
Hermione nodded immediately. Glad he understood that.
"If you're so concerned about not owing me, why do you expect me to comply with your rules without some form of reciprocation?" His voice was calculatedly monotone.
Hermione tensed, sending him a suspicious glare.
"What?" he asked. "You're all for fairness till it comes to me? Why should I agree to your demands if you can't agree to mine? Marriage is compromise, Granger."
She let out a deep sigh.
He made her out to be a hypocrite if she didn't agree. But she saw where he was coming from. If this marriage was for the benefit of their reputations as well as for the future of their child, then she couldn't ask him to make adjustments for her if she wasn't ready to meet him halfway.
"Fine."
Malfoy didn't look the least bit surprised at her quick agreement. "Speaking of compromise, we can each make four rules. And to make room for disagreement, we will each be allowed to veto only one rule made by the other. Fair enough?"
Hermione considered it for a moment, before nodding. "I'll go first."
At Malfoy's gesture to go ahead, she took a deep breath before speaking.
"As I was saying, you can't interfere in my professional life at all. Whether you think you'll be doing it out of the good of your heart or not, just don't. I can solve my problems on my own." She placed a hand on her still flat belly. "This was just an anomaly."
Malfoy's eyes flitted down to her stomach. She immediately withdrew her hand, feeling unreasonably exposed under his scrutiny.
They hadn't talked about this. The connection they now shared. For the most part their conversations revolved around the immediate future when everyone would know what had happened between them.
Hermione wasn't ready to talk about it yet. She felt a disconnect, both with the baby growing inside of her and the tentative thread attaching Malfoy to her because of it.
Their one night together had been a brief foray into the forbidden that was meant to be taken to the grave by both of them.
They were still as cold with each other as they had been in Hogwarts.
Malfoy's eyes skittered off her and he found the pendant lights above them suddenly infinitely interesting. "Alright. I won't try to help you," he agreed in a soft voice.
Hermione let out a breath of relief. If he was going to be as amenable as this throughout the whole discussion, she would feel better about her agreement to marry him. "Your turn."
Malfoy glanced back at her, holding her eyes hostage with his own.
Hermione suppressed a shiver.
"You will change your last name to Malfoy."
She opened and closed her mouth in indignation, not knowing what to say to that.
"Why?" she settled. "Is this a pure-blood thing?"
"No, my last name just sounds better than yours," he drawled, dryly.
"Malfoy!"
"You didn't say anything about having to explain ourselves. Either you agree or you don't. If you're so against being called Mrs. Malfoy, you can veto it."
No, she didn't want to veto the first rule he had. What if this was a trick to get her to waste it while he had a trump card up his sleeve.
She dithered. "How about Granger-Malfoy? Marriage is a compromise, after all, like you said."
He grimaced."That sounds even worse than Granger."
Hermione rolled her eyes, not phased at the petty insults to her last name. Before the war, her last name had been a way for her to assert her muggleborn identity loudly and proudly in a world that deemed her an outsider. Now, it brought forth hollow sentiments of sycophancy, favours exchanged on the weight of her name and her war heroine title.
She hadn't felt attached to her last name in a very long time. Not since her parents had changed theirs to Wilkins.
Hermione shook off that thought, not wanting to go down that spiralling road down to depression, not when she was basically playing verbal chess with Malfoy. She needed her wits about her.
"Whatever. My second condition is that I won't move to Malfoy Manor after marriage. Not under any circumstances," she declared, making sure her voice was steady and intransigent. "I know I've been there for the galas that you've thrown but those were for short periods of time, knowing that I would return home at the end of the night. I can't actually live there. You can't ask me to–"
"Granger," he cut off her impassioned request. "I understand."
Hermione's surprise was written all over her face. He wasn't going to fight her on this? "You do?"
There was something in his expression, she couldn't quite pinpoint but his face had softened for some reason.
From her previous excursions to the Malfoy Manor she knew that the drawing room where she was tortured was still there. Exactly the same as it had been on that day.
The one time she had accidentally stumbled upon it at a fundraiser ball for rebuilding Hogwarts, Harry had thankfully followed her. He had dragged her away and she had narrowly avoided a panic attack.
"You will need to come with me so that I can change the wards and for the estate's magic to recognise you as the new Lady of the Manor, but apart from that, I don't really expect you to live there," he informed her softly. "We can live here instead. If you want."
Hermione glanced around, cataloguing the penthouse with a new perspective. It was a little dark for her tastes, but overall she liked the spacious expanse of the high ceiling and the view of London's skyscrapers from the floor-to-ceiling window. Her whole apartment could fit into the drawing room easily. She had always wanted more space for her personal library of books that she was currently building. Maybe Malfoy would be amenable to giving her a room where she could finally begin setting them up. Right now they occupied every spare surface of her small flat.
She nodded. "Yeah, okay."
That had been remarkably easy.
Malfoy leaned forward, resting his elbows on his parted thighs and steepling his fingers below his chin. She couldn't tell why he was suddenly looking at her with such concentration until he spoke.
"My second rule is that you will not argue with me about money."
Hermione was immediately nonplussed. "What the hell does that mean?" she asked, offended.
"Listen to me before you have a fit," he chided with a stern expression and she stifled what she was about to say. "I don't want you to nag me every time I buy you a piece of jewellery because I want you to look good on my arm when we go out as a couple."
That was the wrong thing to say if he wanted her to listen to him. "Look good– What are you saying? That I look bad right now?"
Malfoy gave her a bewildered look. "What?"
Hermione remembered the countless willowy witches with perfect skin and long legs that he was usually seen with. He was trading them for her with this marriage.
She suddenly understood his rule perfectly.
He was making do with what he was getting with her.
She considered arguing about it, to let him know exactly where he could shove his expensive jewels. But she did not want to air her insecurities in front of him, did not want to give him any ammunition to see any chink in her armour.
Hermione tried her hand at a different tactic instead. Showing anger and displeasure rarely got her what she wanted.
"Is that all?" she scoffed, doing her best to appear bored. "You want to deck me in jewels and that's why you don't want me to mention your overlarge wealth?"
"No, that's not all," he replied promptly. "I know the disparity between our incomes is too much to ignore. I know how much Ministry jobs pay. I don't want you making a big deal out of it."
She glowered at him. "Why would I make a big deal out of it? I don't care about your wealth, Malfoy. You can do with your galleons as you please. If you think I'm going to be that wife who counts pennies, you're dead wrong."
A satisfied gleam appeared in his eyes, bringing her up short. Hermione suddenly felt like she had misstepped somehow. She straightened, frowning at him in confusion.
"Great. Then you won't complain if I buy you a whole new wardrobe or transfer a hundred thousand or so galleons in your vault then. Glad we cleared that up."
Hermione shook her head frantically, sputtering, "That's not what I meant—"
"You just told me you won't nag me about finances, Granger," he cut her off in a sardonic tone. "Keep your word or I won't keep mine."
Hermione scowled at him, her vitriol clear on her face.
"You want to veto this then?" Malfoy taunted as she continued to bore holes in his face with her narrowed eyes.
"No," she bit out after a minute of making him know exactly what she thought about his underhanded ways with anger clear on her face.
"If you're so keen on throwing your money at me," she challenged. "I get to spend it on whichever charities or fundraisers I want."
Malfoy laughed. "Sure, Granger. As you wish."
Hermione pursed her lips. "However much I want," she tried raising the stakes.
Malfoy gave her an indulgent look, like she was a little kid asking for candy. "However much you want," he agreed easily.
Hermione gave up with a roll of her eyes. He clearly did not care if she threatened to make him destitute. Made her wonder just how much he had in those vaults.
She moved on with a long suffering sigh. "My third condition. Since this is not going to be a real marriage, we should be free to see other people. As long as we keep it discreet."
Malfoy stared at her, unblinking. Other than then the almost imperceptible way he tensed for a second, he did not show any other outward reaction to her words.
Truth be told she hadn't considered bringing this up until she remembered those women he liked to show off so much. She didn't mean it as any kind of exemption to allow him to date whoever he wanted, rather it was more of a concession for herself.
She had only ever been with two men, one of whom was sitting right in front of her. If she was going to be stuck in a loveless marriage with Malfoy, she would rather he not force himself to play house with her.
Hermione clearly wasn't his type.
Not that she cared. She just did not want any expectations placed on her to emulate those women.
Malfoy had already alluded to doing just that when he had divulged that he wanted her in expensive jewellery when she was on his arm.
She refused to allow him to make a pure-blood, elite society wife out of her.
He could continue being with the women he actually liked, she did not care as long as she had one less thing to worry about.
She took a shuddering breath, reaching up to rub at her sternum as she fixed her gaze on the wall behind him.
"Alright."
Her eyes snapped back to his. "What?"
"I said alright. I agree. Shall we move on to my third condition?"
Hermione swallowed roughly. Of course he would agree. What else had she been expecting. She tamped down the strange emotions bubbling inside her and gestured at him to continue.
"We won't date other people as long as you're pregnant." He said it so casually that for a minute she almost didn't make sense of the words.
She crossed her arms, annoyed. "If you wanted to veto the rule why didn't you say so."
"I'm not vetoing it. If you don't have any intention of taking this marriage seriously, I won't keep you from doing what you want to," his voice was surprisingly serious, no trace of the earlier deviousness when he had successfully trapped her in her own words. "As long as you do it when you're no longer pregnant."
Hermione didn't like how he worded that. "You say that as if I would be the only one benefitting from this rule."
Malfoy chuckled. "Benefiting. That's a nice way to put it."
"What are you trying to say?" Hermione questioned impatiently. "Or is this another one of your things that you don't feel the need to explain?"
All of a sudden, Malfoy's jaw clenched as he narrowed his eyes scathingly, levelling a searing look on her. "You can do whatever the fuck you want, Granger. Just don't involve my child in your whimsies."
Her hands turned into fists on top of the throw pillow. "It's my child too, Malfoy."
"Then act like it," he snapped. "You can involve yourself with whoever you want, but I don't want our child's parentage coming into question."
He threw the word "our" like an accusation and suddenly realisation dawned on Hermione.
His words at the tea shop came back to her.
"You will have our child be called a bastard then?"
Whatever her misgivings about him, he had given every indication that he was entering into a marriage with her for the sake of the child. She doubted the elaborate tale he had spun about conquering the Ministry together. He had everything already.
Success, Fame, Power, Wealth.
Her mere involvement in an imaginary coup that would — in practice — do him more harm than good seemed unlikely to be something he actually wanted.
No, it was plausible he thought that that was something she needed in order to be enticed into marrying him.
Nothing else made sense.
Questions barraged her thoughts.
Why was he actually doing this?
He could spin whatever tall tale he wanted about his involvement when the news of the pregnancy got out to the press. He could make her out to be a gold digging liar. He had the means.
The only thing that made sense was that he cared about his child. That he wanted this child and was thus, protective over it. No matter who its mother was.
At long last she agreed. "Okay. No involvement with others till after I've given birth."
Malfoy sat back, the menacing visage that had come over him lifted as if it had never been there in the first place.
Sometimes his quick mood shifts gave her whiplash. He could be playful one second and threatening the next, with no in between.
"My last condition," she started. "We'll divorce after sufficient time has passed. Around four to five years should be appropriate."
"Vetoed."
She was about to explain a tentative strategy to make their divorce look natural but the words dies in her throat. "Excuse me?"
"Vetoed," he repeated. "I have one veto and I'm using it."
"Why? You don't want to divorce?"
"Malfoys don't divorce, Granger," he told her as if it was a rule written in stone. "We never have."
"Well, we can be the first ones then," she threw back laconically. "Start a new era."
"My family name has already been dragged through mud, Granger," he smiled crookedly, and she wondered perhaps he had used the word mud purposefully. "Through immense effort on my part it has finally escaped the dregs of disrepute, I'm not going to sabotage that."
"I don't care, Malfoy."
"You don't need to. I'm just using my veto, that's all. Or are you already going to renege on something we agreed on?"
Hermione furrowed her brows, thinking hard. Divorce wasn't something she had to worry about for years to come. And although she was pretty steadfast on her morals, she could also be underhanded and deceitful when it was for the best.
It was no point hashing this right now. She would make sure that they divorced. Malfoy himself would get fed up with her before long.
They could revisit this later.
Burn the bridge when they crossed it. She was prepared to let him think he won. For now.
"What is your last rule?" she asked instead of replying to him. Not giving any verbal confirmation that she had agreed with his veto.
There was a knowing look on his face but he let her change the topic.
"My mother would want a lavish wedding at the Manor. With lots of guests and the press—"
"Vetoed." She shut him down real quick.
Malfoy shrugged. "As you wish."
Hermione blinked, narrowing her eyes at him. "Did you really have that as a condition in mind or did you just throw that out there for the sake of it?"
He widened his eyes comically. "Have you met my mother? She would have my head if the wedding of her only son wasn't a front-page event."
He was lying. And making sure that she knew he was lying too.
Narcissa Malfoy had fled Britain after the end of her house arrest, when the travel ban on her had finally lifted. She hadn't returned since. Not even once.
Hermione highly doubted that the woman wanted to come back and be seen in front of all of her previous peers just because her son was marrying.
Hermione would think his mother would rather insist on the wedding being held in France instead.
No.
Hermione would think Narcissa Malfoy would insist on her only son not marrying a mudblood. Not under any circumstances.
Not for the first time, Hermione tried to guess at his motivations.
"Why are you marrying me, Malfoy?" she asked out of the blue, studying him closely.
He raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. "A little late for that question, isn't it?"
She ignored his attempt at deflection. "You could have had me killed. Discreetly. Had someone else do the dirty work for you. Stage an accident for me, a fall down some stairs perhaps. Or poisoned my tea." Hermione tilted her head back to stare contemplatively at the ceiling. "You could have had me face down in the Thames, drowned to death."
When Hermione looked down at Malfoy again, he was staring back at her in mild amusement.
"That's awfully descriptive, Granger. How often do you think about me killing you?"
She scowled at his jovial tone. "I don't, I'm being serious. You had a hundred different ways to get rid of the problem."
Except if she was right and he really was doing all of this just because he wanted his child. Half-blood or not.
There was no other explanation she could think of.
Malfoy didn't answer for a few moments, flicking his eyes away from her as he sighed. She wondered if he was going to tell her the truth.
Not likely.
When he finally met her eyes again, he was uncharacteristically somber.
"Do you really think I'm capable of murder?" he asked, a strange note in his voice that she couldn't quite pinpoint.
The way he said it, it made her contemplate his question seriously.
The answer came to her without much thought.
The one time he was given the chance to murder someone in cold blood, he hadn't been able to do it. Snape had to do it for him.
"No. I don't," she answered. There was conviction in her voice.
"Then you have your answer."
They spent the rest of the time working on a plausible story for the press. He told her that she didn't need to worry about negative backlash from them, that he would handle it. She was more than happy to not add the likes of Skeeter to her ever growing list of things to stress over.
When they were done discussing their imminent marriage like the contract it was, she stood up to Apparate home.
"This Saturday. 10 a.m. At the registration office," he reminded her as she straightened her blouse.
Hermione nodded in confirmation, taking out her wand from her pocket.
As she did, Malfoy's eyes dropped to her hips.
"Wait, Granger," he called before she could concentrate enough to Apparate away.
She dropped her wand arm. "What is it?"
He approached her slowly, stopping at just inches away from her. She tilted her head back to keep looking at him.
That crooked, half-smile was back. "We forgot something."
She frowned. "What?"
His right hand moved forward and her eyes widened as he pushed it inside her trouser pocket.
"Malfoy!"
He retrieved the emerald green box to hold it up in defence as she raised her wand to hex him on the spot.
Her expression turned deadpan. "Really?"
"Really." He opened the box and took out the ring. "Hold out your hand."
She complied, raising her left hand.
He held her by the palm — steadying the faint tremor of nervousness she felt — as he pushed the beautiful diamond and emerald ring in place.
Hermione stared mesmerised for a few seconds. It fit her perfectly and the emeralds twinkled like they suddenly shone brighter somehow.
She took a deep breath. "That's that."
Malfoy let go of her hand and stood back.
The last thing she saw before she Apparated away with a crack was the familiar enigmatic gleam in his pale eyes.
About a hundred and fifty miles west of London, in a sprawling country house near Ottery St. Catchpole, Helena Hornby sat at her home office desk, sipping Irish Coffee from a well loved mug that had the glowing words "My Mum Is A Superwitch" magically emblazoned on the porcelain.
The mug had been a gift her elder son had given her two years ago when she had first been promoted to head of department.
Helena heaved a tired sigh as she discarded another unsatisfactory profile from the stack her secretary had hastily compiled that afternoon.
As it was turning out, replacing Hermione Granger was not going to be a simple task. Helena had gone through thirteen profiles so far, none of them came even remotely close to giving the curly-haired and supposed "Brightest Witch Of Her Age" any sort of competition.
But Helena was determined. She would not allow one witch to undermine her authority and drag down the DRCMC for selfish reasons. She had worked too hard, climbed the appropriate ladders — through hook or through crook — and pulled herself out of the drudgery of being a paper pusher in the Ministry, all by herself.
Helena was not going back down, not now, when she finally had the power, control and prestige she had sought after her entire life.
She took another fortifying sip of her alcohol laden coffee and pulled forward the next profile from the stack.
She was perusing the candidate's list of publications on magical creatures when an unexpected chill enveloped the room.
Slowly at first. So slowly Helena didn't notice anything amiss till she shivered and looked up, frowning at her fireplace.
Her face smoothened as she got up from her chair.
The fire was out, only a few glowing embers remained in the hearth.
She turned to the briefcase she had stowed on the side table, searching the pockets for her wand.
When her search came up empty, she turned to look around the room. Helena didn't remember taking out her wand from her bag, but she had been stressed from this morning's ordeal. She could have forgotten in her haste to find Granger's replacement.
She looked everywhere. On the desk, beneath it. On the chaise and couch, around the fireplace. Even in her desk drawers.
She clearly remembered putting it in her briefcase when she had left her office. She always double checked that she had it with her at all times after she had lost her first wand in her fourth year at Hogwarts.
Helena's heartbeat increased steadily as her search came up futile.
It was when she dropped to her knees to check beneath the couch when it happened.
All the lights went out in her office with a soft pop.
Suddenly, she was kneeling on the floor in pitch black.
The temperature dropped down so drastically she could feel goosebumps forming on every inch of her skin.
She swallowed roughly. A strange trepidation was growing in her gut. That sixth sense that tells you that something has gone horribly awry before you see any physical, tangible evidence.
Struggling to her feet in the dark, she felt her way to the centre of the study, shivering all the while.
Helena opened her mouth to shout for her husband.
"Not a sound."
A low, gravelly voice whispered from behind her, the faint words carrying in the air like noxious fumes.
The scream she let out cut off in her throat abruptly, her vocal chords jammed closed.
A silencio.
"I said, not one fucking sound."
The words sounded like they came through a barrier, or from the throat of a chain smoker. There was a warbly tone to the voice that somehow made it sound more sinister. More frightening.
Helena tried screaming again, her hands coming up to circle her throat, tears of fear and frustration already forming in her eyes.
"Turn around."
She obeyed slowly, shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm.
This must be a robbery. Whoever this was could take her valuables, she would give it all up as long as he let her go.
When she finally faced the intruder, the pleading face she had adopted in hopes of some form of negotiation froze in place. She went as still as a statue.
Her eyes had somewhat adjusted to the dark and in that moment she desperately missed her blissful ignorance in the pitch black a few seconds ago.
It was a horror unimaginable.
Helena stopped breathing, felt her heart thunder in her chest like a frightened hummingbird in a cage.
It was the teeth she saw first. Serrated, jagged white rows with long canines that sharpened to deadly points. In the dark, they almost glowed with lethal intent.
A vampire. There was a vampire in her house.
Even as the head of the magical creatures department, there were only a handful of times she had actually seen one. A handful of times too many.
Helena tried to think rationally and sift through the heightening fear to remember what she knew about the dark creatures.
But then the said creature stepped forward into the faint moonlight coming through the window.
Helena's legs buckled, gave way from underneath her as the moonlight fully illuminated the vampire.
"Looking for this?" Only those sharp teeth moved up and down with the amused question, the creature had no lips.
Beneath the nose, there was no skin covering its mouth, jaw and neck. Muscles, sinew and nerves were exposed to the air in a gruesome display of gory flesh. It made the sight of the sharp teeth even more appallingly spine-chilling.
It was holding her wand, one end in each hand and from the way its blood-red eyes glinted, it was smiling at her.
Helena's petrified face was her only answer.
The 10 ¾ inch willow gave a squeak of protest as it bended easily under pressure.
Helena flinched as her wand broke in two with a crack.
"Here, have it." The vampire threw the two pieces at her, the wood making a hollow clack as it fell to the floor before her.
She had no way to defend herself anymore.
She tried to speak, found she could barely squeeze out a whisper. Tears ran down her cheeks as she pleaded, pathetically.
"P-please, please. Don't h-hurt– I'll d-do any—"
"Ah." The vampire shook its head, brows furrowing in a mockery of concern, offset by the way those permanently exposed canines flashed at her in warning. "Don't tell me you don't remember me, Hornby. The last time we met you didn't seem quite so... accommodating."
The creature took slow, predatory steps forward. Helena craned her neck to look at it, she knew her legs were as good as useless.
A look of confusion passed her terrified features, mixing in with the dread in a useless concoction of emotions. She would remember seeing that horrifying face, it wasn't one you could forget. Nonetheless, she tried to access her memories to the last time she'd seen a vampire.
Helena's eyes went wide.
"Ardelean?" The alarming realisation was all over her face as she muttered the long forgotten name in terror.
This was no robbery or any other ordinary act of crime.
This was vengeance.
"You do remember, then." He crouched, his red eyes catalogued her kneeling self with deranged glee. "Oh how the mighty have fallen."
One long pale hand with claw tipped fingers reached out, clenching around Helena's jaw in a deceptively soft grip. "I was worried you wouldn't recognise me. What with the way your henchmen carved up my face last time."
"Th-they weren't—"
He dug in his sharp claws till Helena's cheeks bled, red flowing down to her neck and pooling in the jugular notch between her collarbones. She tried to shriek around her constricted throat but all that came out was a hollow whine.
"Are you trying to tell me you didn't send those ministry bastards after my coven when we wouldn't give up our land? It was your signature on the evacuation order, wasn't it?"
Helena couldn't stop the sobs that spilled out, her tears mixing with her blood in a grotesque combination. "I h-had to. Please."
Ardelean chuckled, the sound off-putting on his skinned mouth and jaw, his blazing red eyes were the only indication of his expression. "You had to," he snarled. "You also had to give them permission to exterminate us if we didn't comply, of course."
Helena shook her head frantically, only making him sink in his claws further. She cried out at the searing pain.
"You know what they did to those of us who wouldn't leave?" he asked, his warbly voice dangerously low as he brought his deformed face close to her tears and blood streaked one. "They sewed our mouths permanently shut with the suturusspell after herding us to Azkaban. Left us to starve in one dingy little cell with our hands and feet shackled to the walls."
Ardelean bent low, those knife-like teeth an inch from her face. Helena whimpered as his red tongue slithered out to lick her cheek, tasting her fear and pain.
He spat on the floor beside her, making her flinch. "Filthy fucking bitch."
"P-please. I will take it back-the order—"
He let go of her face to circle her throat instead, cutting off her pleading mid-sentence as he crushed her trachea.
"By the time we were rescued, we were half dead. Emaciated to within an inch of our lives. The sutures on our mouth had been left in for so long, they fused with our very skin and bones," he hissed, increasing the pressure on her neck till she started turning blue. "Half our faces had to be skinned to free our teeth. So that we could finally fucking feed ourselves."
Helena reached up to circle his bony wrist, tried to tug the hand away to no avail. Vampires, like other magical creatures, possessed unnatural strength.
Helena had herself overseen the creation of chains and shackles which could withstand the supernatural strength of dark creatures as part of the classified post-war project for advanced magical weaponry funded by the Ministry's research and development wing.
Widespread arrests and captures of Beings and Beasts in Voldemort's army after the war had necessitated the endeavour. The R&D division had also included plans for building a separate containment floor for magical creatures in Azkaban. Plans which had come to fruition under Helena's diligent supervision.
Helena's penchant for being covert and exacting had been the reason she had risen up in the ranks to lead the entire magical creatures department.
The fact that her husband was on retainer as the Ministry's primary contractor had helped matters along.
Before Helena could squeak out any compunctious words, he shoved her back so hard that her head slammed against the hardwood floor with a crack. She moaned in pain as blood pooled beneath her from where her skull had split open.
"You parade around pretending you give a fuck about magical creatures. While giving orders for execution just so your lily-livered husband's company can steal our land to build a worthless fucking Quidditch stadium of all things," he snarled before abruptly laughing in delight, a maniacal gleam in his eyes. "Look at us. You starved me for months. Now you're bleeding out and I don't even crave one drop of your blood."
He crouched down on his haunches, examining Helena's whimpering form like she was vile roadkill.
"You thought you could escape the rat race and make it big? Lay down the law for us lesser creatures?" His voice was a foreboding whisper, but she heard him clearly through the roaring in her ears. "Guess what, Hornby. You fucked up. Even I didn't think you could be this much of a halfwit."
He stood up straight, an abrupt seriousness falling over his petrifying, ghastly face. "Listen closely. I'm here to give you a warning."
When Helena didn't respond he clenched his hand into a fist and suddenly, an invisible weight pressed down on her torso, slowly crushing her lungs.
"I'm-I'm listening," she choked out, but the pressure on her ribs didn't let up.
"If you try to threaten Hermione Granger again, I have the impunity to tear out your spine and garrote you with it."
Helena stopped breathing what little air she could inhale, her mind stopped working. She couldn't comprehend Ardelean's graphic depictions of her gory death after the name "Hermione Granger".
He nudged her cheek with his shoe. "I hope you're listening, Hornby. I won't give you the privilege of explaining what I do next time before I set about rearranging your organs."
Helena knew, even though she could only see those razor-sharp teeth, that he was smirking down at her. "Just upset Hermione Granger one more time, Hornby, and I will get to crush your skull under my foot as your own fucking children watch."
Her gaze snapped to his eyes at the mention of her children and she forced a heaving breath. She was succumbing to panic more than the lack of oxygen reaching her lungs. "Please. P-Please. Not my children. Please. I'll do anything."
Ardelean laughed. "You just need to mess up one more time, Hornby. One more time and I will quarter and hang your bloody children on the hoops in that stadium your husband built over our land."
Helena was crying again, shaking her head as she blubbered half-coherent pleas of mercy and forgiveness.
Ardelean stepped back into the shadows. "I will receive no consequences for what I do, Hornby. No punishment. No Azkaban. No death sentence. I promise you that."
"One more time," he warned in a coaxing voice — as if he was urging her to make a mistake — before vanishing into thin air, the echo of his ominous words lingering in the dark.
Malfoy Manor was eerily silent. The high ceilings and emptiness of the space below made it hauntingly beautiful. Outside the tall, arched windows storm clouds had settled, thunder breaking the quiet every few minutes.
Draco's steps echoed throughout the long hallway, the slow rhythm of the taps making the ancestral faces lining the walls go rigid in their respective portraits.
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips.
Over a decade ago they used to sneer down at him from their framed perches whenever he would sprint down the hallways as a child in pretend chases with the paper dragons he would charm to fly behind him.
He remembered one of his great-great grandfathers complaining to his father about the commotion he would make while playing around the empty Manor all by himself.
Lucius' beatings hadn't stopped him. Even then.
Now, his ancestors looked at him like they were afraid of letting so much as an exhale escape their lips without his permission.
Draco ignored their pale faces, like he usually did. They were no more than ornamental decoration for him, and just as silent too.
He slowed when he reached the end of the hallway, turning right and unholstering his wand from the strap on his right forearm. With a barely susceptible flick of his hand the wall that appeared to be a dead-end un-glamoured itself, revealing the painting he prized the most in the Manor.
It wasn't a portrait.
It was a scenic landscape of a sunset over rolling hills, done in blues, oranges and reds. It would have been nothing out of the ordinary if not for the silhouette of an enormous Hebridean Black circling the sun, almost eclipsing it.
It wasn't an imaginary view. Draco had given the artist his memory in a pensieve to paint it exactly the way he remembered it.
He kept his voice low, barely reaching his own ears as he murmured the password.
The painting swung open like a door. Draco reached inside the small space. The wards rippled for a moment in agitation before stilling at the feel of his familiar magic.
He took out the ledger, swung the painting closed and glamoured the wall again.
The book in his hands was thick, several hundred pages of the most expensive parchment he had been able to find. It had also been one which allowed only the purchaser to see what was written on it.
Closing the door to his study with a soft click, he moved towards his desk, setting the ledger atop it.
The thick red leather bound cover immediately flipped open on its own, the pages flying by in a blur till the book settled on one particular entry.
Quincy Hornby and Helena Hornby.
A Ministry couple through and through. One the head of the magical creatures department and the other a construction contractor for the Ministry.
Their debt wasn't the glaring red numbers some of the more prominent members of the Wizengamot and his business rivals had. They were mostly insignificant, all things considered.
That just made this all easier for him.
All of a sudden, the room chilled to a freezing degree, the already frigid air becoming impossibly colder.
Draco didn't bother to glance up. "Ardelean."
It wasn't a greeting. Just an acknowledgement.
"My lo-Malfoy."
Draco rolled his eyes.
Old habits die hard.
He pushed the ledger closed, turning around to face the vampire bowing before him.
"Stand up straight," he commanded.
The vampire straightened his spine, meeting Draco's eyes for a second with his red-tinged ones before dropping his gaze to the floor.
"It is done."
Draco had gotten used to that tremulous voice and the expressionless up and down of the serrated teeth when Anton Ardelean spoke. After all, Draco himself was the reason for the half skinned face, though the disfiguration had been necessary to save the vampire's life.
"She understood, then?" he asked.
From the way Ardelean's eyes lit up, Draco could tell he was grinning.
"Yes. She won't forget. Although—"
Draco's eyes hardened as he raised his brow questioningly at the qualifier.
Ardelean swallowed. "I was wondering if — if I would get to follow through or not?"
His tone was almost pleading and Draco suppressed the urge to smirk at the desperation written all over his deformed face.
Ardelean wanted his vengeance. Draco, more than anyone, could understand the sentiment.
"In time," he said, staring at the man he had rescued from the brink of death with a contemplative expression. "How's the coven doing?"
The question was uttered casually, but it carried a world of meaning.
Don't get ahead of yourself. Remember your debts. Remember that you'll never be able to pay them back.
Ardelean immediately looked chastised, dropping his gaze back to the floor. "The new land is bigger than our last. The coven is thriving. Thank you, my lord."
"Malfoy," he corrected. "I'm no one's lord."
"Malfoy," Ardelean repeated, eyes wide at his slip. "I apologise."
"You can go."
After the vampire left, Draco poured himself a tumbler of firewhiskey from the decanter he kept atop the bar.
He felt a pair of familiar pitch black eyes on him. He always did when he was in this room.
He took a swig, letting the burn warm him from the inside as he moved to stand before the only portrait that hung in his study.
The dark eyes stared down at him in an impassive expression not unlike the one he adopted most of the time.
"What do you think you're doing?" the man in the portrait asked.
Draco wasn't surprised at the question but he was surprised that his godfather had deemed to break his usual perpetual silence this time.
He reached up to lightly grasp the carved unicorn horn dangling from a cord around his neck, studying Severus Snape's painted features carefully.
"What you should have done years ago," he answered.