"So?" asked Draco, wanting to hear Cora's verdict after her official examination of the new prisoner.
"In terms of physical health, she's doing fine," said Cora. Draco thought she was done, but after a brief pause, she resumed speaking. "Beauty like hers is a curse in these dark times," she said, her voice heavily tinged with pity. "They used her repeatedly and, if the build up of scar tissues I saw is any kind of indication, quite brutally." Draco did not miss the way she shuddered when she spoke. "It's clear they attempted to heal her afterwards, they just did not leave her alone long enough for the healing process to complete."
Draco did not need to hear the specifics from Cora. As one of the branded, numerous revels had demanded his attendance in the past where he had a front row seat to what was considered entertainment by so many Death Eaters. If he had not already begun to question the rightfulness of their cause before, he certainly did after attending one of those depraved events. However, back then things were still relatively tame compared to now, without fear of reprisal, there were no longer any restraints on the Death Eaters inhumane acts.
"Here," said Draco, giving her the scroll he held in his hand. "It came in today's owl post. He's listed the things she was treated for in the last month alone."
Cora skimmed the text quickly, the look of horror on her face increasing as she read each detail. Her reaction was unexpected, considering what she knew of the atrocities committed against their own kind in the dungeons.
"But this is so senseless... Why would they do such a thing?"
Ah, it wasn't so much what was done, but the fact that it served no purpose that upset Cora more than anything else.
"Who are these monsters?" she asked with a shaky breath.
It was a rhetorical question. Draco attempted to answer anyway, it was better if Cora knew what they were dealing with. "Seeing as how Lucius chose to hide her here of all places, my guess is they're high-ranking Death Eaters, part of the inner circle most likely." At Cora's questioning glance, he added, "Only a member of equal rank would dare touch something belonging to the Malfoys without their consent." The only exception, as Draco knew all too well, was unless they were acting under orders from the Dark Lord.
It was the protection offered by their evil overlord's command that lend lesser wizards, like his former housemates Flint and Pucey, the audacity to bind Draco and throw him in a pit of werewolves during the full moon. When the Dark Lord had effectively sentenced him to death or a life as good as, Draco had quickly realised how friendless he truly was with Severus gone. His father had stood to the side, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible lest the sins of his son be visited upon him. His mother had looked devastated and poised to speak in his defence but was temporarily petrified by the Dark Lord himself, while his crazy Aunt Bella gleefully tossed a crucio at Draco making it that much easier for others to overpower him.
"Whatever your father's reasons—"
Cora's voice drew him out of his grim musing.
"—keeping her here will do her a world of good. The males of the pack won't take any interest in a pregnant human even if they go into a rut. And, I hear our guests have not been alerted to her presence."
He nodded. As much as the Death Eaters thought they ran Bleidd Castle, they only saw what the pack and Fenrir allowed them to see
"Are you okay with her being here? She's carrying your father's heir, surely—"
"Two years ago, I may have felt differently. As things stand today, I pity her."
Unbelievable though it sounded, it was true. Draco was certain Lucius did not care for the woman or the child in her womb. Tasked with producing a proper heir by his Lord, Lucius was only afraid someone would break the toy he had been gifted for that express purpose, before he was able to do so.
"I'm glad to hear you say that," she said, shiny eyes reflecting how proud she was of him.
He looked away, unsettled. Moments like these only reminded him of just how much he missed his own mother.
"Have you given some thought to moving her in with Hermione?" she asked him a little later.
"Yes. I'm going to tell Hermione. Let her decide."
"I came, as soon as I heard," said Draco, rushing towards Hermione while she was taking a stroll in the courtyard.
These days she had little supervision when they let her out for her walk. Either they must trust her to remain compliant or they considered her harmless. She took advantage of this newfound liberty to discreetly explore areas along her daily path. Every vantage point she could gain access to, she used to develop a mental map of the castle, paying close attention to the activity of birds and other small animals on the grounds surrounding Bleidd to narrow down spots where the magical barrier might be most susceptible. Hermione strongly believed in being prepared so she memorised the quickest and least guarded paths that would lead her out of the castle, should she ever find an opportunity to escape.
The destination of today's amble was a tall tower, which appeared to be unguarded the last time she had passed this way. She was looking forward to checking it out as the looming structure promised an unimpeded view of the adjoining lands. She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Draco's voice. She started to walk away from the tower, hoping he had not noticed her attention in it.
"They said you had another one of those spasms while I was away. Are you okay?" he asked, easily falling in step beside her.
"Yes," said Hermione, dismissing his concern with a wave of her hand. She'd had one of those episodes yesterday, but Draco was only hearing about it now... What had taken him away from Bleidd for a whole day? As far as she knew, he had not left the castle since she arrived.
"I called for you, but an old man arrived instead." And what a peculiar old man he had been. Long grey hair with a distinct white streak that looked like it ran all the way down his back; regal and graceful bearings despite his stooped frame and casual clothes; and clear blue eyes that twinkled in a manner so similar to her old headmaster, it made Hermione stop to wonder what kind of secrets this man would carry to his grave someday.
"Did he say or do anything?" asked Draco, his tone implying he knew whom she spoke of.
"Nothing alarming. He said you were away and asked me to remain calm ...then he placed his hands on my belly"—it still struck her as odd that she had felt no apprehension over a strange man touching her uninvited—"and spoke in some European language... Norwegian... or Swedish perhaps?" Noticing his body grow tense, she quickly explained, "It wasn't anything bad. Soon after he spoke, the pain subsided. This may sound crazy, but I got the feeling he somehow told the babies to behave." Things like that were unheard of, but so was a wolf impregnating a witch.
"That's Oskar, my sire," Draco explained.
Curious.
Hermione had presumed Fenrir to be the culprit. The old man who had visited her, Oskar, did not strike her as the kind of unhinged individual who went around biting and infecting people with lycanthropy on a whim. Interested though she was in the story, there were other questions she wanted to ask him.
"You know, I never see any of you use your wands. Don't you miss magic?"
He appeared to contemplate answering her question before he spoke.
"House-elves don't use wands either, do they?"
Hermione paused mid-step and watched him, dumbstruck as the meaning of his words sank in.
"You're able to perform wandless magic!"
"Not all of it," he said, turning around when he realised she had fallen behind, "just the more basic day-to-day spells."
But Remus always uses a wand.
"I think you'll find our old professor is an exception in many ways," said Draco, correctly guessing her thoughts. He came to her so they were walking side-by-side again. "I can't say if Lupin's abilities didn't develop because he hasn't accepted his nature or lived in a pack—or if he's simply concealing his abilities around others—all I can say for certain is that I had little if any success casting spells without a wand, until I bonded with Fenrir and the pack. Now, performing wandless and nonverbal magic feels about as complex as casting a lumos in third year."
Hermione thought to ask Draco where he kept his wand, or any of the wands for that matter. The only wandmakers alive had either escaped to safety overseas or gone into hiding with the Order, leaving Voldemort's minions in short supply of wands. Consequently, they began recycling confiscated wands, no longer able to afford the luxury of crushing their enemy by destroying their wand. Hermione was certain her dear ten and three-quarters inches of vine wood with a dragon heartstring still lay intact somewhere. If the werewolves had no use for their wands, the Death Eaters might have claimed them too. Maybe through some subtle enquiries she could get Draco to reveal where her wand might be.
Before she could ask him anything, Draco dropped a bombshell on her.
"There's something I need to talk to you about," he said, hands held stiffly behind his back while he stared into the distance ahead.
"Oh yeah?" Hermione tried to sound casual despite the ominous tone of his words.
"It's about—" he started, then stopped, then opened his mouth, looking like he was going to say something, only to slam it shut again.
He walked quicker, appearing mildly agitated as he ran his long fingers through his hair. His hair was a bit longer now and unkempt compared to how he wore it at school. She thought it made him look far more appealing than the well-groomed version of himself. Twice since the night of the full moon, Draco had helped relieve her sexual frustration and both times, she had enjoyed tugging on his hair, relishing the feel of the silken strands between her fingers.
"Well, perhaps I should give you a little background first," said Draco, coming to a stop and interrupting her thoughts before they took on a more lascivious tone.
"Okay," she said, recognising his need to get something off his chest.
"You may have deduced from my current circumstances that my position in my family has been altered dramatically since my change—"
She nodded in acknowledgment.
"But, I doubt you've given much thought to the impact my change has had on my family. See, my status as a werewolf means I'm not Pure enough to be the Malfoy heir. Lucius Malfoy has a sacred duty to uphold our family traditions. He must produce a proper heir, but my mother..."
He looked away and began to walk again. "My mother," he began, then swallowed hard and was silent once more. Though his face remained a blank mask, Hermione suspected he was feeling emotional.
They turned a corner, walking in silence for a few minutes before he attempted to articulate his thoughts once more. "See, after me, my parents conceived another child," he told her in a quiet voice. "Unfortunately, the baby, my sister, was stillborn. There were complications due to which my mother cannot have any more children. I suppose it's why she's always doted on me so much." Draco stood still, silent again. There was a distant look in his eyes and one corner of his mouth turned up as if he were lost in some fond memory. She patiently waited for him to continue.
Draco's eyes finally rested on her and he appeared to remember where he was. He shook his head and resumed their stroll.
"You may find this hard to believe, based on what you know of Lucius, but he loves my mother. So much, he'd never consider leaving her or taking another woman ...but he also cannot ignore his duty." He paused again, this time his expression more pensive.
"Excuse my seemingly disjointed thoughts. I'm trying to decide what facts are relevant ...or even facts at all. There's so much disinformation out there, and with my lack of standing with the Death Eaters, I can't know for certain what is true and what is propaganda. The thing I do know is that the number of Pureblood women of childbearing years is startlingly low. Low enough, it is now forbidden to execute any fertile Pure women, whatever their crime. Instead the Dark Lord has taken to rewarding his most loyal servants by gifting them female Pureblood prisoners to breed."
So she wasn't the only one, thought Hermione. While Voldemort may have found her too dirty for the Death Eaters, apparently they were other women out there in a situation similar to hers.
"Quite recently, Lucius was given just such a prisoner—a Pureblood witch, he could breed to beget a Pure child... She now carries Lucius's heir."
Ah, so that's what this was about; he was upset over being replaced so easily and looking to vent.
It had not skipped her attention that Draco did not refer to Lucius as father anymore. However, conflicted as she was regarding her feelings for Draco, did she at all feel bad for his loss of status as the Malfoy heir?
Not really.
While Draco was different now, as the Malfoy heir he had shown himself to be a gullible, easily misled, bigot who for a while was happy to adopt his Pure family's genocidal ideologies. If there was anyone Hermione felt any compassion towards, it was for the poor woman forced to carry his father's child.
Finding it hard to feign sympathy, she avoided eye contact by staring at the ground and nodded.
"Lucius decided to move the prisoner since her presence upset my mother. I imagine she didn't like seeing proof of her husband's infidelity or the reminder of her own inability to have children. It probably didn't help that the woman is the same age my sister would be, had she lived."
Under different circumstances, Hermione might have pitied a woman in Narcissa's situation, but she could not pity Narcissa, not when she remembered Luna's descriptions of how the woman had only cared about her precious carpet being ruined by the bloody mess Bellatrix was making while she tortured Neville, a boy the same age as her son, with the cruciatus curse. If not for Dobby's sacrifice in helping Harry and the rest escape captivity in Malfoy Manor, Neville would have certainly ended up in the same state as his parents. Even now, Narcissa stood by while some innocent suffered at her husband's hands.
"This particular witch belongs to one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight," continued Draco. "She possesses a unique beauty the Death Eaters find appealing, despite her blood-traitor status—"
Hermione racked her brains as she struggled to keep up with Draco's longer strides. There was no Sacred Twenty-Eight Pureblood snob she would describe as a 'unique beauty', certainly no one sympathetic enough to the Order's cause to have earned a blood-traitor status.
"—Even though others were supposed to wait their turn and not touch her till she gave birth to Lucius' heir, on several occasions they forced themselves on her."
His words made Hermione selfishly ponder her own future; what would become of her after she gave birth to Draco's babies. What was it Greyback had said to her the first night ... something about using her to breed litter after litter until she could no more...
She shuddered, but Draco was too caught up in his tale to notice.
"People who know the location of Bleidd Castle have certain ideas about werewolves. They don't come here, unless on a mission from the Dark Lord," he said, walking faster than she would have liked as they began to circle back to where they had begun their stroll. "For those reasons, Lucius decided to move his prisoner here. He thinks this place can serve as a safe haven for his future heir. As a Malfoy, he expects me to do my duty to my kin and keep a watchful eye over the witch."
Hermione was taken aback at the venom in Draco's voice. As a young boy, he had always been so proud and boastful when speaking of his family, his father in particular. She could not imagine how much they must have disappointed him to cause such a drastic change.
"There is a point to telling you all of this," he said, tilting his head to look her in the eye. "I want you to understand—I think it's important for you to understand her circumstances if you are to live with her." He ran his fingers through his hair, nearly yanking on the strands in his aggravated state.
"Live with her?" she asked, puzzled.
"Yes, I thought you may like having some company."
That was a complete non sequitur. What did she have to do with this woman? Although he did have a point, she would like some company, and if the woman was a prisoner, she had quite likely done something to piss off either the Death Eaters or Voldemort himself. Hermione could picture herself getting along just fine with such a person.
She hummed in agreement.
"I don't want to alarm you, but I believe you should know what to expect when you see her. I'm going to give you whatever information I've gathered, based on what others have told me, including Cora's inspection of the prisoner."
All at once, Hermione grew aware of the red flags that had popped in her head throughout Draco's telling. She could not tell what it was yet, but sensed this other prisoner was significant in some other way.
"You probably have some idea what takes place during the Revels?" He waited for her nod before he continued. "Well, Lucius' prisoner is connected to the Order. After she was captured, they held a huge revel in Godric's Hollow. They made a public spectacle of her rape, hoping to draw out members of the Order."
Alarm bells sounded off in her head, the significance of Godric's Hollow not lost on Hermione. She did not know of any Order member being raped there, which meant this took place after her own capture.
"She was given to Lucius shortly after the event at Godric's Hollow. She was placed in a magical sleep for nearly a month to treat her initial injuries." A chill ran down Hermione's spine imagining the kind of torture the poor soul must have endured to need so much time to recover in the magical realm where bones could be made to regrow overnight.
"Because of how much it upset my mother, Lucius moved his prisoner to Chateau Lestrange as soon as the pregnancy was confirmed—" Order members were well acquainted with the history and habits of members of Voldemort's inner circle; Hermione knew Draco was referring to the countryseat of the Lestrange brothers, Rodolphus and Rabastan. "—I hear some of the higher ranking Death Eaters grew obsessed with the witch after the revel at Godric's Hollow. Since Lucius didn't reside at the chateau, they took advantage of his absence; she was repeatedly raped and abused. Cora says they were careful with her face, but the rest of her..."
Hermione struggled to repress the terror the half-painted picture evoked in her. Was this the fate she escaped when she was given to the wolves ...or was it a fate only delayed until Draco was done with her?
"I wanted to prepare you, give you an idea of what to expect. I don't want you hurting yourself from the shock of finding her so altered."
Draco kept dropping hints she personally knew the mystery witch. Someone who was a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight with close ties to the Order, a unique beauty who was a little younger than Draco and raped publically in Godric's Hollow of all places—
Merlin! How could it have taken her this long to figure it out?
"Ginny!" she gasped. Draco looked at her with compassion in his eyes and nodded.
"No," she said, shaking her head. All of a sudden, it was too hard to breathe.
She was glad for Draco's arms around her that lend her support as he guided her to the nearest bench.
"But she escaped!" Hermione was certain Ginny had slipped away during her duel with the Death Eaters.
He shook his head. "The two of you were captured the same night, from the same spot. They made a big deal about it—special edition of the Prophet, special news broadcast on the radio. While Death Eaters no longer see the Order as any kind of threat, the capture of two high-ranking members, especially ones directly connected to Potter, was celebrated as a huge victory. There was quite the build-up before Godric's Hollow. I suspect they only gave you to us because they had her as bait for Potter."
She caught the unspoken implication; if Ginny had not been captured, Hermione would have faced a similar fate, or worse. One thought kept nagging away at her, if the Death Eaters had turned Ginny's rape into a publicised event, surely news had reached the Order, surely some of the Order members had attempted a rescue, definitely one of the Weasleys, or even...
"...Harry?" she asked, grief-stricken, unable to fathom what it meant if Harry had taken the bait and got himself caught. Her chest constricted at the idea of anything happening to Harry. He represented the living hope that they would defeat Voldemort someday.
"Potter never showed up. As far as I know, no one from the Order showed up."
Hermione inhaled sharply, trying to figure out what it meant that none of the Weasleys had attempted a rescue.
"I'm sure, now more than ever, you're eager to escape from here," said Draco, with uncharacteristic tenderness. "But, Hermione"—she looked up, startled; she didn't think he had ever addressed her by her given name before—"right now Bleidd Castle may be the safest place for you to be."
She was ready to protest, except, he did have a point. She could not imagine what kind of adversity would have prevented the Order from attempting a rescue of Ginny. Even if she did manage to escape and find the Order, she would only be a liability in her pregnant state ...and who knows how they would treat the babies once their father's identity became known. Lastly, she had yet to work out who could be the traitor in the Order, the one who had led Ginny and her into the trap that resulted in their capture.
She could stay here and gather intelligence until it was time to give birth. After the babies were born, she and Ginny could plan their escape. While she hated the idea of abandoning her children, it would be for the best. The werewolves would welcome her babies and no doubt, Draco would make an excellent father.
Thinking of the grim options before her, and Ginny's current state, Hermione sagged in defeat, only to find herself propped against Draco's sturdy chest. She let out a sigh at the feel of his arms wrapping around her reassuringly, the tightness in her chest eased by his gesture. How strange was this new world they lived in, where Draco Malfoy had become her source of comfort and strength.