Notes: Thank you for all of your support. It means the world to me. We get very real this chapter... but that's pretty much part of this story, isn't it?
WARNINGS: Semi-explicit References to child sexual abuse, child sexual assault
24. Hope of Orphans and Unfathered Fruit
Draco smudges the charcoal, softening the line. It's not quite right. Her hair is wilder than this and her jaw a touch stronger.
He extends the curls, his marks haphazard and dark. The overall effect is closer to reality. Pleased, he continues the technique throughout the length of her tousled mane.
The cottage is quiet. Tom is out doing Salazar knows what and Hermione is at the beach. The two of them returned together one night—the day she stormed from the house—smoke clinging to their pores like perfume. And suddenly, whatever broke between them was fixed. It's been downright pleasant ever since.
The aggression has faded from Tom's lips. His sharp azure eyes border on warm more often than not. Draco welcomes the change, even if it means he loses more of Tom to Hermione each day.
He digs the charcoal sharply into the parchment. The line it leaves behind is a touch too aggressive. Draco runs his fingers over the dark streak, tempering it.
He knew this was coming. Even when they started this madness, he knew Tom was attached to Hermione. But it's different now. She's no longer a broken shell, no longer a ghost without a history. She is snarky and brilliant and beautiful. Tom no longer looks at her with merely tenderness in his dark eyes.
Draco can tell he craves her. Tom will still be her protector, the first to vanquish her enemies, but he wants more. He will no longer be satisfied by holding her close at night.
Draco remembers her lips under his, the way she'd tugged at his hair and plundered his mouth. He knows she was imagining someone else. They both were.
It's only a matter of time before they both know the taste of Tom's sensuous mouth.
The thought upsets him, but not nearly as much as it should.
He never pictured himself as generous in love or lust. When he pined after Potter—on the bad days, he still pines—there were never any others. He was covetous of the other boy's attention, wanting him to desire Draco alone. Even when he imagined a forced future with Astoria, there were no other lovers. He's never been one to share.
But he won't keep Hermione Granger from Tom Riddle.
And he's beginning to suspect he won't give up Tom Riddle either.
The consequence is a dynamic he never imagined. He and Hermione have no desire for each other—they can act the part, nothing more. But Tom is the irrefutable link between them.
He tries to imagine Hermione in their bed, her freckled skin against Tom's dark sheets. He can't. Biology doesn't lie, he can't help who he desires.
He shakes his head, wry smile tugging at the corners of his lips. So no threesomes.
Draco takes a finer tipped piece of charcoal and begins to work on her lips.
A light knock at the door has his head lifting. Tom leans against the doorframe, the picture of careless nonchalance. He's in his usual Muggle clothes, all dark tones and slim fits. Draco hates how mouthwatering the effect is.
"Her eyes are a touch wider," he murmurs, his voice a cool rasp. Draco suspects it's an effect of all the cigarettes he's inhaled lately. If he didn't know better, he'd suspect Tom was anxious about something.
Draco studies the sketch. Hermione's eyes are a hair too narrow. "Too late to fix it now."
"Are you going to show her?"
Draco raises a platinum brow. "Why? You want to give it to her?"
Tom levels his driest glare at Draco. "She knows you're the artist."
"Where have you been?" Draco asks, turning back to the portrait.
He doesn't expect Tom to tell him, but it's worth trying. He runs the charcoal lightly above her eyes, shaping her brows. Tom slips into the room, his boots shuffling over the wood. The bed creaks as he drops onto it. Draco peers at him from the corner of his eye. Tom is sprawled across the mattress, black shirt riding up to expose alabaster skin and delectable abs. He's staring directly at Draco, hooded eyes full of wicked promise.
Draco nearly bites a hole in his lip. Sweet Merlin.
He looks back at his drawing of Hermione and thinks only of the sweep of her cheeks and the line of her jaw. She is beautiful, perhaps not classically so, but in a wild, untamed way that makes his fingers twitch with the desire to find her edges and shadows.
"Stop."
He feels the intensity of Tom's stare boring into him. The bed shifts, but Draco doesn't look. Even so, he hears the pout in Tom's response. "Stop what, darling?"
"You only call me that when you want to annoy me," Draco points out. Their relationship isn't one of endearments and heated vows.
Tom lets out an irritated sigh. "You're no fun today."
"I wasn't aware I was supposed to entertain you. Don't you have something dark and nefarious to be plotting elsewhere?" It's only half a joke.
Tom huffs out another lamenting breath. "Unfortunately, I have a meeting with Potter."
Draco gives him a sardonic look over his shoulder. "And what? You want Potter to walk in on us in full fellatio?"
"Well, it certainly wouldn't be boring."
Draco darkens the shadows beneath Hermione's almond eyes. "Because I definitely want to see the boy I've been into for years react to finding me and my current whatever the hell you are in the throes of passion. It's bad enough he knows about us, Tom. Give me some kind of reprieve."
"You can't seriously still be into him."
Draco agrees with Tom, but his heart has other ideas. "It's bloody complicated, okay?"
Tom's boots tap an aimless rhythm on the floor. "I could try and seduce him for you. As you might have noticed, I'm pretty good at it."
The idea of Tom's lips anywhere near Potter's makes Draco gag. "Salazar, no. That's horrifying."
"Good. Because I happen to agree with you on that count."
Draco drops the charcoal beside the parchment and turns to Tom, expression serious. "When was the first time?"
The dark boy slowly pushes up from his position on the bed. "I don't follow."
Draco suspects he does, but clarifies anyway. "The first time you used your body, your looks, to get what you wanted?" Tom's azure gaze skitters away for half a heartbeat and Draco knows he's right. "Who?"
The silence between them stretches until Draco is sure the other boy won't answer. But then Tom chews his bottom lip, eyes boring into Draco's soul. When he speaks, his voice is a rough whisper. "There was a warden at the orphanage. He always took the time to keep the others away from me. I didn't understand my magic yet. I just thought I was strange. And I knew they all hated strange. I tried to be small. I tried to fight back. But there were more of them and I didn't have the power to win. Not yet.
"He tended my wounds. I thought nothing of it. I was young. Flesh was simply flesh. As I grew, he began to let his hands wander. I think I was six the first time he touched me. It didn't hurt that much and it kept me safe from the others." Tom swallows, but his focus doesn't waver. "By the time I discovered my power, he had already taught me a great many things. I suspected he was taking liberties, but I wanted to learn everything. When I came back in the summers, I let him take what he wanted. Right up until I killed him. No magic, just my hands around his neck after he fucked me for the last time."
There's bile in Draco's throat. He forces himself to swallow.
"That's—"
"Horrible, awful, abuse?" Tom shrugs, but the motion is too tense to be genuine. "I never did anything I didn't want to, not once I understood what he was doing."
It takes everything in Draco not to reach out to Tom. "You were way too young to consent to anything."
"I learned what I needed to."
Draco isn't sure he wants to know what Tom thinks he learned. Tom laughs, but it's brittle and wrong. "It was nothing like what happened to Hermione."
No, it is a different kind of rape. The kind that hides in plain sight and is covered up by refined smiles and the pretense of proper behavior. Draco can't help but feel for the boy Tom was, for the child who never stood a chance against darkness. For how can Draco blame Tom for harnessing all the power he could find? For protecting himself in the only way he could imagine?
"You're more than your body."
"Would you have helped me if I didn't look like this? If you hadn't craved my cock in your mouth, buried in your ass?"
Tom's words are crass. Even worse, they're true. Draco likely wouldn't have given in to Tom if he hadn't been so alluring. It's humiliating to realize the extent of his cowardice.
"Well," he pivots, searching for something else to bolster his argument. "The Dark Lord certainly doesn't have anything going for him in the looks department."
Tom gives him an incredulous look, as if he can't believe Draco's made this particular comparison. "He doesn't have my body anymore. But if you want to argue that point, then fine. Imagine how much more he could have done if he stilled looked like me. My father was still handsome when I eliminated him. I imagine I have many more years of being this enticing if I do age, which isn't for certain. So now imagine what I could do if I had all my power and this face. They wouldn't fear me; they'd worship me."
Draco is abruptly sorry he brought it up. Tom's eyes are impossibly dark and his lips have curved into a feral smile that sours Draco's stomach like milk left in the sun.
They're saved from any further discussion of Tom's ascendency by a sharp knock on the door. Potter looks between them with curious green eyes, but doesn't say anything.
Tom hops off the bed as if they weren't discussing the darkest secrets of his past. "Potter. Always a pleasure."
The two of them spend far more time together than Draco anticipated, but he isn't about to argue. This was, after all, his plan.
Potter is touch shorter than Tom, their height difference unnoticeable unless they're standing side by side. Where Tom's dark hair maintains an elegant coif no matter the abuse it endures, Potter's grows wilder with every second. But their eyes are matched gemstones, varying only in hue.
Potter shifts to block Tom's exit, his arms crossing in front of him. "I want to see her this time."
Tom shoulders past him into the hall. "Believe me, she doesn't want to see you."
"Last I checked, she wasn't speaking to you."
Tom spins abruptly on his heel, azure eyes edged with flint. "Last you checked a lot of things were different. Bloody give it up. We have more important things to do."
"She's not here," Draco offers from his doorway.
Potter's focus snaps to him briefly before returning to Tom. "But one of you knows where she is."
Tom strides forward until he and Potter are nose to nose. Draco tenses. Nothing good is going to come from this.
"The answer is no," Tom snarls. "You can't see her today. You can't see her tomorrow. You can't see her any day of any year until eternity. Not unless she wants it."
"You're not her keeper," is Potter's equally heated reply.
"No, I'm not," the taller boy agrees, drawing up to his full height. His shoulders are broader too, his entire frame more intimidating than the boy he faces.
Potter has his wand at Tom's throat a heartbeat later. Tom smiles. "You really don't want to do that."
The wood presses into the junction of Tom's smooth neck and angled jaw. "I have every right to talk to her!"
Tom bats the wand aside like an errant fly. "No, you don't."
Potter gives up all pretense of civility as he launches himself at Tom. They crash into the wall. The entire cottage shudders from the impact. Draco curses under his breath and dives forward into the melee. Someone's elbow glances off his jaw with a crack. He groans. The blow will surely require an episkey.
Draco manages to get an arm around Tom's waist. It takes all his strength and a lull in the scuffle for Draco to pry him off Potter. Both of them are flushed, their breaths coming in heavy pants. Tom strains against Draco, but he keeps his hands clasped rigidly around the boy's waist.
"Let me go," Tom growls, chest vibrating like a cauldron on the verge of an explosion.
"Get you head on straight," Draco hisses into his ear, his breath hot against Tom's neck.
Potter's fists clench at his sides. He glares at Draco and Tom with equal ire. "You've ruined her life! Both of you!"
"No," Tom says, his voice dangerously controlled. "That was you."
Potter's jaw is stiff. He shakes his head, wild hair exploding outward. "I didn't—"
"She can't have children, you ass. What they did to her? It had consequences." Tom takes a step forward and Draco lets him go. His hands are limp with shock. He had no idea.
Draco looks to Potter. He's frozen in place, his emerald eyes cracking.
"What?" Potter's voice is barely audible, the single word raw agony.
"Malfoy told me what you chose."
Splintering green flits to Draco for a fraction of a second. Draco can't find it in himself to regret sharing the truth of Potter's choice with Tom. It's clear the half-souled boy cares more for her than her ex-boyfriend did. There is much Draco still admires about Potter, but he was no good for Hermione. Not when it mattered.
"And your choice had consequences. You may be a bloody selfless martyr most of the time, but you were selfish when it came to Ron Weasley. And even though it was only one choice, she paid the price." Tom's lips purse into a severe line. "So no, Potter, you don't get to see her. Not until she wants to see you."
Potter's head bows, both his hands clawing into his raven hair. "I didn't know."
"And now you do," Tom replies, toneless.
The Savior of the Wizarding World inhales deeply. His emerald eyes rise to the boy he's destined to destroy. He swallows, but when he speaks, his voice is clear, devoid of the emotion clouding his gaze.
"Then we have work to do."
Tom nods. "We do."
Potter and Tom don't return for hours. Draco finishes his sketch of Hermione. His subject returns shortly after, her skin flush with heat and sun. She gives him a lazy smile and slides onto the counter beside the fridge.
Draco raises a brow and she shrugs, legs dangling easily over the edge.
"You're in a good mood."
"I read a good book," she reveals with a giddy grin.
Draco groans. "Please tell me it wasn't another one of your trite romances."
"They aren't trite. They're salacious." He rolls his eyes and she laughs, free and light, like chimes in the wind. "You should read one. It might come in handy during our great Romeo and Juliet deception."
He highly doubts it, but there's no harm in humoring her. "Fine."
She plucks the volume from her tote bag and drops it on the counter as she slides to the floor. "Enjoy."
She gives him a plucky grin that warms the bruised edges of his soul. He would never guess how much pain lingers within her petite frame. Nausea coils through his gut as he remembers Tom's revelation. She is so much stronger than he will ever be.
He hates to spoil her mood, but she deserves to know Potter plans to return with Tom. "Harry's stopping by later."
If he didn't know her so well, he'd miss the hitch in her step. "When?"
"Not sure, I just didn't want you to feel ambushed."
Hermione nods, her hands clenching rhythmically around the handle of her tote bag. "Thanks…" She waves a hand toward her room. "I'll just be… busy."
So, Tom was right. She doesn't want to see Harry. Draco should know better than to doubt Tom by now. His sense of Hermione is unparalleled.
"Have a good night."
Her shoulders relax a hair as she indicates the book on the counter. "You should really read it. The male love interest is toe-curlingly steamy."
He has enough toe-curling intensity in his love life already. But he offers her a bemused grin as he lifts the book. "I'll keep that in mind."
Draco ends up reading the trashy novel, if only to make the hours melt away. Tom and Potter arrive back in the dead of night. A sheen of sweat coats both of them and they wear twin expressions of satisfaction. Draco knows better than to ask.
Tom gives him a nod as he makes a beeline for the washroom. Potter collapses into the armchair across from the sofa where Draco reads.
"Did you know?"
Draco doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "No, but it's not exactly surprising."
The other boy nods, lips twisting in mute distress. He's silent for a long time before he asks, "do you blame yourself?"
Draco tilts his head, considering. He hasn't given himself leave to examine the morass of misery that lies between Draco and the answer to Potter's question. He doesn't want to feel that deeply.
But Hermione has to live with this. The least he can do is make himself feel it.
Draco takes a shuddering breath and reflects. Hermione was taken hostage by the Death Eaters without his knowledge. The act of her capture is not his fault on any level.
From there it gets complicated, a tangled web of cowardice and neglect. He didn't know what happened to her for months. Not because he didn't know where she was, but because he couldn't work up the courage to visit her. This is the first moment Draco knows he could have acted, could have made a difference. If he'd visited her earlier, if he'd found a way to distract McNair whenever his thoughts drifted to the girl in the dungeon. Draco knew what terror lay beneath his feet, but he opted for safety, for the security of her suffering.
And perhaps that can be excused. There were no allies in the Manor, no one else to support any attempt to free the Dark Lord's prize. If Draco acted, the price would have been sudden and agonizing death. And Hermione Granger would still be in her cell. Tom Riddle would simply not exist, his diary never delivered into her hands.
So he doesn't feel guilty about that, not exactly.
But later, when he did visit her is a minefield of missed opportunity. He vanished her waste and gave her the barest necessities. But he could have done so much more.
Draco has no idea when the damage to her body became so severe. It could have happened the first time. It could have happened the last. He might have made all the difference or no difference at all. But it's clear to him that this is where he can no longer claim inaction protected either of them.
He and Potter met for months. Tom willed him to act the moment he regained control over his body. They both wanted the same thing, to free Hermione.
But Draco hesitated at every turn, fear shackling him. He will never be free of those moments, when he cared more for himself than a girl on the brink of destruction.
"Yes." He bites his cheek to keep the emotion the word holds at bay.
Potter's hands close into fists. "Me too."
The mirror of his own torment in Potter's face drives him to kneel beside the boy.
"We may never atone for this," he whispers, his hands hovering over Potter's spasming fingers. "But we can fight for her. For all those they seek to destroy."
Potter flips his hands up and their fingers lace together. In another lifetime, this would make Draco's pulse sputter with joy. All he feels is the cold sweat coating Potter's clammy skin.
"I don't think I'm going to survive this," he murmurs, fingers digging into Draco's skin.
"Potter—"
"Harry. My name is Harry."
Draco swallows. He once craved this moment, now it is merely a stepping stone on a long and perilous road.
"Harry, you have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord." He knows he's quoting the prophesy, but he means it from the bottom of his twisted soul. "You have the power to change this world into something better. You and Tom together can rewrite everything."
"But not her," Harry breathes. "We can't give Hermione back her body, her ability to create life. We don't have access to that kind of power, not right now. Maybe not ever."
The coil of nausea writhes, becoming a raging beast within his gut. Potter—Harry is right. Like Hermione said so many times, this is something they can't fix. He can't go back and give himself a different family, a different upbringing free from hate and violence. A world where his father didn't terrify, but rather inspired his son. A world where he didn't hide behind fear until it cost him everything.
But he's not the one who's paid the price. His sins are borne upon Hermione's shoulders and that is so much worse.
Draco stares down at where his fingers weave between Harry's. That they have gotten this far has to mean something.
"Harry." The other boy stares down at him through glistening lashes. "I'm going to tell you something. And it isn't because I want you to do anything about it. It isn't because I want anything from you at all."
Harry's mouth turns down in a puzzled frown, but he nods.
Draco forces air into his lungs. He exhales deeply, tightening his grasp on Harry. "In school, you might have noticed I took a particular interest in tormenting you and your friends."
Harry raises a sardonic brow.
"Okay, more than an interest. I made a bloody production out of it. But there was a purpose to all of it, beyond regurgitating all the blather my father stuffed in my head." Now Harry's brow furrows in confusion. It's an adorable expression on him. Draco swallows down the dregs of his latent affection. Now is absolutely not the time. "I did it to mask how I truly felt, Harry."
"But you like…" he trails off, green eyes blown wide as he looks from their clasped hands to Draco's face and back again.
It's clear he understands, but Draco finishes his confession. "I fancied myself in love with you. I realize now it was more of an obsessive lust, but I could barely admit my feelings at the time, let alone examine them."
"That actually…" Harry pauses, his head cocking to the side, gaze distant. "That kind of explains a lot."
A surprised laugh escapes Draco's lips. He's disturbingly calm in this moment. He takes it as further proof that his feelings for Harry have faded to tepid pangs of their former ardent vigor.
"No, really," the other boy continues. "I couldn't understand why you put so much energy into harassing me. It makes sense you were overcompensating for a schoolboy crush."
Draco lets out a long sigh and slowly extracts his hands from Harry's. He sits back on his heels as Harry relaxes into the armchair. "I had no idea what to do with myself. The business about the Dark Lord didn't help. My father encouraged me to make friends with you before first year and I was punished accordingly when I failed to secure such an alliance. And then, suddenly, he was answering the Dark Lord's call and swearing his allegiance as a Death Eater once more. It gave me bloody whiplash."
"You were a kid, Draco. Your father was larger than life. It makes sense you did everything you could to please him. Including…"
Harry doesn't have to call out his choice to join the Death Eaters. But he's wrong about Draco's motivation. Lucius Malfoy never motivated his son through any sort of fatherly means. There was only obedience or pain. Draco learned early to shy away from suffering.
He won't waste his thoughts on his father, on memories better left buried.
"I convinced myself that if only you fell for me, all my sins would be absolved. The feeling adapted as I aged, as I became your enemy. I started to believe I could somehow save you and that in doing so, you would save me." The laugh that escapes his lips is cold and self-deprecating. "Not that I ever tried to help you. I couldn't even bloody save myself. There was no way I was ever going to help you."
"Except you did," Harry points out. "You became a spy for the Order. And you did that for me, didn't you?"
It seems so helplessly naïve in retrospect.
"Yes."
"But you don't feel that way anymore."
"No, not in the way I used to," Draco admits. He holds Harry's haunted stare as he continues, "but that doesn't mean I've stopped believing in you. For the first time ever, I can see a path out of this hell our parents—let's be honest, mostly my parents—allowed. I can imagine a world where we're not fighting for our lives. Where a madman doesn't dictate the future of an entire country. And that future requires you, Harry. It requires you to fight and it requires you to survive."
The other boy's lashes flutter closed. When he opens them, his eyes are a brilliant emerald that takes Draco's breath away. Not because he feels the hum of desire beneath his skin, but because he sees the future reflected in Harry's gaze.
"Okay, but I need to know one thing." Draco cocks a platinum brow as Harry swallows thickly. His tone is devoid of judgment as he asks, "are you in love with Tom Riddle?"
Draco wants his answer to be no. But he's beyond lying to himself. He wills his hands steady and his face blank as he replies, "I don't know."