Thank you all for giving this a try.
Chapter Warnings: Descriptions of torture, references to sexual assault.
5. Th' Offender's Sorrow Lends But Weak Relief
Blood spurts from her nose. It trails warm rivulets down her chin and then her neck. Nothing hurts. The pain is so great it has ceased to exist at all. She knows it will return. Knows she will eventually feel every last vestige of the curse spilling from the madwoman's lips. But right now, she is nothing and so there is no pain.
Her head knocks violently to the side, propelled by an otherworldly force she cannot see. This is all she knows of magic. Its power to control, to destroy. She cannot imagine ever knowing how to fight these invisible monsters that crawl beneath her skin.
Her mouth opens in a silent scream. She imagines she can hear her throat ripping to shreds with every labored breath she takes.
Her body jerks again, invisible marionette strings drawing her into a macabre dance she cannot escape. More blood flows, from her eyes now. She knows because her tears taste of iron, not salt. And her vision is tinted, what little light her tormentors have provided now glows a hellish vermillion.
She feels the ghost of breath on her face and her vision snaps into focus. Tom lays beside her, his sapphire eyes even with her blood-soaked ones. Her body spasms again. He shifts closer, nearly on top of her. If he were more substantial than air, she would be pressed against him from hip to shoulder, their breaths intermingling with every rasping exhale she endures.
She knows she can't possibly feel his breath on her cheek, but right now her senses aren't the most reliable and she imagines he truly breathes beside her. He holds her gaze, never blinking, never flinching, as they do their worst.
She begins to feel pain again. Her body is an inferno of suffering. Her nerves are beyond repair. They fire only one signal. They tell her they can bear no more.
She bears it.
She stares into luminous sapphire until her world implodes from within. Until she is consumed by agony and born anew, a phoenix risen from the ashes of her torment. She has never allowed herself to feel the horror before. Has never had the strength to face the truth of her anguish.
Now she sees. Now she cries tears of salt and iron while he holds her gaze.
The voices recede. The light extinguishes. But she is no longer lost in the dark.
"I can feel it, you know."
She turns, muscles screaming in protest. Tom is lying beside her on the cell floor, the dim light of the taper casting shadows over his arresting features. She is reading about Quidditch. She finds the idea of the game interesting now that she knows the rules. She wants to see a match, but knows better than to expect such a miracle.
"What?" Her voice is hoarse and inside out. It's been days since the last scuff of boots on the stairs, but her throat is still a raw mess of leftover screams.
Tom rolls onto his side, his cheek propped on one hand. The position makes him look younger, vulnerable and innocent. She knows not to fall for the bait.
He sighs as she turns back to the book. "I can feel your pain."
Her fingers tremble and she loses her spot, pages fluttering shut as she moves to face him. She barely notices the pain that follows the sudden shift in position.
"What in the bloody hell are you talking about?" She can't possibly have heard him correctly.
An ebony curl falls across his brow as he motions toward her hand, the one with the jagged scar across its palm. She swallows around the emotion clotting her throat.
"We're connected. It's not how the ritual is supposed to work, of course." He purses his lips and stares directly into her eyes. "I'm supposed to drain the life from you entirely, but that didn't seem particularly advantageous…"
He trails off, but she knows what he means. If he kills her, then he's the one in the cell. She wouldn't trade places with herself either. She decides to leave that particular detail alone for now. She already knows he values his own life above hers.
"What do you mean by feel my pain?" she asks.
Tom's gaze drops to her throat, then her ribs. She's reminded of the particularly ferocious kick that ended the last… session. "Even now, I know your throat feels like it's been sliced to ribbons and then doused with Firewhiskey. My ribs feel like someone took a bludger to them more than once."
She is proud she now knows what he means. Although she has no memory of ever being hit by a bludger, she feels his description is astute.
"And when it's… worse?"
"I feel every second of the Cruciatus the same as you. And whatever else they decide to add."
It is odd to feel joy at his words, to find such relief in the suffering of another, but she does not fight the feeling, does not shy away from this knowledge that she is truly no longer alone.
But an undercurrent of fear chases the tide of joy. What if he leaves her? What if he finds a way to escape his limbo and she is left in the darkness once more? Wouldn't she want to escape this hell if she were in his position? Wouldn't she be willing to do anything not to endure this torture again?
"I'm not going anywhere, Hermione."
She narrows her eyes at him. Does this connection between them mean he can read her mind?
"And no, I can't see inside your head. At least not in the way you're surely thinking. I feel what your body experiences. I perhaps even get a sense of your general mood, but I am unable to discern your individual thoughts."
Tom could be lying, but she doesn't think so. Hermione files the thought away for later. She does not trust him, but she can no longer imagine this misery without him.
"Don't you want to escape?"
His perfect lips pull into a half smile that makes her heart flutter. She finds she doesn't mind the odd sensation. "Of course I do. So do you. But I won't leave without you."
She reminds herself he isn't here to save her, no matter what he seems to promise.
"Do you know how to leave?"
He nods, chin slipping from his hand. He collapses against the ground, but keeps his luminous stare directed toward her. She is stripped bare beneath his eyes, but finds she doesn't care. "It's simple enough. A life for a life. Of course, it has to be a witch or wizard. I suppose it could be a Muggle, but then I'd have no magic."
Hermione tilts her head at him. "Could you live that way? Without magic? Would it be worse than how you currently exist?
She doesn't remember what having magic is like, so she supposes her own answer to that question is easily found. She watches Tom chew his bottom lip slowly, her eyes drawn to the supple contours of his mouth. She thinks about his lips on her skin and her heart skips a beat then gallops. She quickly looks away, finds his eyes focused on some point far beyond her.
When he finally speaks, his voice is rougher, more honest, than ever. "I think I would prefer to be trapped like this forever than to live out my life without magic. Magic is who I am. Magic made me. If I am without it, then I am nothing."
"I am already nothing." The words slip out before she can stop them.
The full force of his hypnotic gaze now rests on her. "You are so far from nothing, Hermione Granger."
She does not believe him. "Everything has been taken from me. My body. My mind. My memory. My soul. I am merely waiting for Death to take my final breath as well."
The words sound even more twisted with her labored rasps coating every syllable. She tries to picture death, a nothingness more complete than even this. She can't quite imagine it.
"No." Tom says the word more forcefully than any being of merely air should be able. He's directly in front of her again. She can count the feathery lashes lining his bright eyes. "No," he repeats, hand hovering against her cheek. She feels nothing but the cold air of the dungeons. "You are strength and you will rise up from this and destroy them."
"You're only saying that because you need me alive. You need me fighting," she counters. "If I finally find the courage to die, then it's over for you."
She can see the truth of her words ghost across his features, but he doesn't relent. "Maybe when I first came out of the diary. Maybe for that first week, my survival was all that mattered to me. But that was before I knew your suffering. Before I lay beside you and felt every second of what you endured. I am not a good man, Hermione, but neither am I a monster. I will not leave someone as strong as you to languish in this pit."
Hermione wants to argue, but she is sapped. She lets her head loll across the stone. She wants so badly to believe him, but Hermione knows the world is ugly and this beautiful boy is no exception. After all, they've both already admitted to being monsters.
She blows out the candle and he is mercifully silent.
The coin burns Draco's hand. He keeps his fist closed, relishing the feel of the heat searing into his skin.
A floorboard squeaks further down the hall and he peers into the shadows beyond. He can't see anything through his Death Eater mask. It's a wonder any of them are still alive with the mask's flawed design. He can't believe someone hasn't tried to fix them either. Which means it's another one of the Dark Lord's horrifying delights; watch his half-witted followers bumble around blind and tally up the number of Cruciatus curses he'll need to distribute. All an afternoon's entertainment for that maniac.
Draco is abundantly thankful for the torturous lessons in Occlumency his father forced upon him from the time he could successfully levitate a feather. It means that although he is a coward, he is a coward who can think whatever the hell he wants.
Which is especially important as he peels away from the rest of his cohort—thankfully, Aunt Bella is elsewhere—and follows the stairs to the attic. He sees the vestiges of the Order safehouse as he ducks under the gables. There are still cots up here, clothes strewn across the floor with other personal momentos left behind during the emergency evacuation.
The Order wasn't quite fast enough to get away before the first Death Eaters apparated, but the majority had already cleared the area. Some of his fellow Death Eaters muttered something about a leak. Draco didn't comment.
He knows exactly why the Order knew to expect company.
The coin digs into his hand as he steps into an empty wardrobe and swings the false back open. He steps into the room beyond and the hidden door clicks shut.
His skin prickles with awareness, his breath hitching as he searches the shadows.
Potter steps forward. His hair is more disheveled than usual and his strong cheekbones are streaked with grime. His glasses reflect the moonlight from the single window in the tiny garret.
"Were you followed?"
Draco crosses his arms. "We'd both be dead by now." He takes a step closer to Potter, unable to resist the temptation. "It's a bold choice to stay behind."
The other boy shrugs, "Are you a danger to me?"
"Not currently," Draco allows.
"I'm in constant peril, Malfoy. One meeting with a spy isn't going to change that and I'd rather not have anyone else know that you and I are connected."
Draco's brain stalls on the word spy. He realizes Potter is correct. He is a turncoat. He knows. Knows exactly what he agreed to in that muddy field, but he's never thought the word.
He is surviving. The rest is semantics. But sometimes semantics matter.
He swallows, throat coated with an unsavory cocktail of truth and dread. If he is caught. If Potter is found. His stomach churns and he reaches out to steady himself on the wall.
The move brings him closer to Potter. Close enough to feel the stir of his breath against the nape of his neck. The chills that rush across his flushed skin have nothing to do with the deadly line he must now walk. He rips his mask off, gasping for breath, needing space, but finding none in the cramped room.
He needs to be far away from Potter. He needs to remember his life hangs in the balance. But he can barely think over the pounding of his heart.
Potter clears his throat and sends a wary look in Draco's general direction. "You okay, Malfoy?"
No, he is bloody not okay. He wants—
Draco bites his tongue so hard he draws blood. "I'm fine. This is just new to me."
Potter looks at him like he's just declared he wants to marry a Muggle and burn his wand. Draco ignores him entirely, which is impossible to do when he's mere inches from Potter, but he does his best considering the circumstances.
The other boy lets out a sound halfway between a sigh and a scoff, but mercifully doesn't pry. "So what can you tell me about Hermione?"
Draco's shoulders lose some of their tension. This is familiar ground.
"She's being held in solitary confinement in a cell. She is being fed, but she hasn't…" he pauses, bile climbing his throat, but he forces himself to finish. "Hasn't been treated well. My aunt enjoys torturing her. But that's not the worst of it. The Dark Lord has allowed a number of the more… vile Death Eaters to use her as they see fit."
Potter moves faster than Draco can react. His arm is crushing Draco's windpipe while his wand digs into Draco's ribs. The darker boy's emerald eyes gleam with a fury that has Draco's breath rattling in his chest.
"Did you just tell me that vile serpent has let multiple degenerates rape the woman I love?"
It takes Draco several moments to process the entirety of Potter's statement. The woman he loves. Hermione Granger and Harry Potter are an item. There were rumors. Draco ignored them. None of it seemed relevant, even when he'd learned Granger was in the Manor dungeons. He hadn't truly thought anything of it when he'd explained to Potter why the Dark Lord kept Granger as bait.
But now, feeling the press of Potter's forearm and seeing the agony behind his eyes, Draco knows everything has changed. He can't ignore that Potter has a living, breathing woman he loves.
For one horrible moment, all he can feel is the burning fury of envy curdling his blood. He hates Granger for what she has taken from him. A heartbeat later he remembers her corpse-like form shuddering on the floor, blood dripping from her cracked lips. His blood freezes and clogs, the heat gone as suddenly as it came.
He can't hate her. So he hates himself instead.
Potter leans into him and Draco remembers he's gasping for air, on the brink of suffocation. He glares across the space between them, saying a prayer to whatever entity might be listening that his thoughts aren't written across his shadowed features.
Potter's wand slips into the space between his ribs, the skin pulling taut. He knows he ought to protest, but despite it all, he can't find the strength to force the other boy away from him. Not when he craves this, the moment a dark kaleidoscope of his desire.
A frazzled chunk of Potter's raven hair falls across burning emerald eyes and it takes all of Draco's control not to reach out and trail his fingers through it. He digs his blunt nails into the soft skin of his palms. The pain doesn't help.
"Lost your bloody voice, Malfoy?" the other boy hisses, every ounce of his suffering coating the venomous words.
Draco thinks he probably couldn't speak, even if he wanted to. Potter is doing a number on his throat. It will bruise. The thought makes Draco disgustingly happy.
He blinks at Potter, lost in the haze of his own thoughts. The other boy abruptly drops his arm and steps back, as if stung. Draco's stomach fills with lead. He knows. Somehow, impossibly he knows.
But Potter only says, "I know you aren't responsible. You're too bloody cowardly for that."
The words sting like an army of ants marching across his bare flesh, but he ignores the feeling and the slight. The truth should hurt and he is not so cowardly as to shy from that.
"I wish I could have done more."
It is a refraction of the truth, turned through so many prisms it might as well be a lie. But he wishes it were true, and that must count for something. But Draco is terribly sure no one is keeping score and that if someone is, he is too far behind for it to matter.
"Then do more now," Harry hisses, some of the fire returning to his compelling features.
Draco would very much like to promise Potter he will do whatever it takes to save Hermione Granger, but he knows he can't force the lie between his trembling lips. It is one thing to express insincere regret. It is an entirely different thing to make empty promises when they are not required.
Potter is too close again and Draco can't help studying the swirling irises surrounding his wide pupils. A thousand jewel tones shimmer within the sea of green, verdant moss wars with luminous chartreuse. He could get lost in that sea, swept away by the swells of emotion and misty shadows. The sudden rush of desire is a spindly hand that squeezes all the air from his lungs until his breath is short and wrong.
"Tell me where she is."
Draco is on the verge of hyperventilating and Potter is angrier than ever.
He forces syllables across his numb tongue. "No. You know I won't give you to him."
"I won't fail."
"It's a trap he's been setting for over six months. You'll fail."
Potter lets out a roar of frustration and digs his hands into his unruly hair. He pulls violently at the strands as he paces in front of Draco. The garret is only a handful of square meters and he resembles a frantic finch trapped in a gilded cage, desperate for flight.
Draco has no idea what to say. He watches the other boy's movements with a desperate hunger, savoring the shift of lean muscle. He knows he should do something else, anything but leer at Potter from the shadows, but once again, he has no idea how to help.
That's not entirely true. He has no idea how to help without endangering himself or the boy who he drinks in like a parched pilgrim stumbling upon an oasis.
His teeth grind and he hates everything about himself anew. He is a pathetic excuse for a Malfoy. The thought takes on his father's tone and Draco's gut roils.
"You have to give me something, Malfoy. She's sitting there suffering, maybe even God damned dying, and you're standing here free and healthy. You owe me something."
Draco stomps on the madness of his thoughts. "I gave you the raid."
"No. Something that helps her."
"I gave her some books and a candle." It sounds pathetic aloud.
Potter blinks at him, the silence between them growing more laden by the second. His full lips work silently for another infinite moment before he spurts, "You gave her a bloody book? She's been tortured and raped and you gave her a book?"
Definitely pathetic. "It was all I could manage. I showed her how to hide it."
Potter continues as if Draco hasn't spoken. "A book! Not a wand, or healing salve or dreamless sleep potion or anything bloody useful. Are you completely daft, Malfoy?"
He certainly might be. "I remembered she liked books."
"Would you want a bloody Nimbus after you'd been tortured to the brink of insanity and had your arse torn open by a horde of deranged Death Eaters?"
Draco shakes his head mutely.
"I didn't bloody think so." Potter sighs and yanks at his hair again. "Give her something she can use, not a bloody book."
Draco nods his head frantically. This is something he can actually do. He's already imagining the healing potions he can brew in his private potions lab. The other… residents of the Manor will be none the wiser and he will have succeeded at something Potter wants. His pulse flutters giddily, like the moment before unwrapping a gift.
Potter scowls at him and the feeling dies.
"The next time I see you, you better have Hermione by your side."
Draco swallows around the lump in his throat and gives a nondescript grunt in response. Potters expression hardens and Draco's heart spasms, but he doesn't promise what he knows he can't deliver. Not this time.
"I'll be in touch. I better get every last scrap of intelligence you hear."
This Draco can agree to. He knows the Death Eaters will eventually search for the mole, but he also knows they're prone to infighting and shameless politicking. They won't care if they find the true spy, only that one of their own—preferably a member presenting some sort of roadblock to power—will be presented to the Dark Lord for extermination. Loyalty to any but the Dark Lord simply does not exist.
"I'll let you know," Draco assures, as calmly as he can manage in this proximity to Potter.
The brunette gives him one last nod, the lines of his face severe enough to be carved from marble. Then he apparates away with a pop, leaving Draco bereft, his chest too tight to breathe.
A thump in the rooms below brings him back to himself and he carefully pries back the hidden back of the wardrobe. After checking the coast is clear, he climbs back into the main section of the attic and makes his way toward the stair.
A gasping Death Eater meets him halfway down. "Malfoy? What are you doing up here and where is your mask?"
Draco goes completely still for a second before he remembers his mask is tucked into his robe pocket. He retrieves it and pulls the vile thing over his face. His vision shrinks to the meter directly in front of him. "There was no one up here and I wanted a bit of fresh air."
The Death Eater grunts in acknowledgement and motions for Draco to follow him. "I could use a breath of air myself. We caught a few stragglers and Bellatrix is holding a demonstration on the lawn."
The wave of nausea that consumes him is a visceral, breathing beast, but he doesn't let his steps falter.
He fills his voice with a maniac glee that sears his throat and says, "Lead the way."