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