Welcome! I'm so glad to share this piece with you. If you're looking for a carbon copy of my other works, this isn't it. I tried to go farther and deeper with this story. The relationships are messy. The characters choices are messy. This is not a work that fits neatly within a "ship."
This, perhaps disappointingly to some of you, is not a Dramione piece. That said, Hermione's friendship with Draco is fundamental to the story and I would encourage you to try reading if that's something that interests you. It's also not a traditional love triangle between Hermione, Draco and Tom. As I said, the relationships are messy.
Perhaps I reached too far here, but I don't regret trying. It's 200,000 words and I'll post a chapter every week. Each chapter will be about 5,000 words. I copy edit right before I post, so that's one of the many reasons I won't post the entire story faster. The others involve the insanity that is my life.
As much as this story is told from Hermione and Draco's points of view, it is a study of Tom Riddle. What made him the boy who became Voldemort? What sort of experiences could change his course? How could he learn empathy and then later love? Can he rise above his darkest instincts? I examine all of that.
There is explicit sexual assault in this story. It is an essential plot point. I will put warnings before any chapter that includes detailed references to sexual assault, abuse or simply normal sexual content. Please note, none of the main characters assault each other sexually. There are also graphic representations of torture and violence. Some characters will not make it to the end of the story. This gets heavy, but that's the way I like it. I hope you enjoy.
Much love, The Corrosive Pen
Note: For the purposes of this story, Harry never received Tom's diary during 2nd year and those events never happened. Everything else is canon compliant up until 6th Year.
Chapter Warnings: Warnings: Canon violence including torture.
Part I: The Earth
1. Oppressed with Melancholy
Plink.
Plink.
Something is dripping. Far away, beyond the bars of her cell. Nearly beyond her senses entirely. She closes her eyes and tries to concentrate, to follow the thread of the steady rhythm through the icy abyss and into the world beyond.
She can't.
She can hear only the rush of blood in her veins and the dull tattoo of her heart in her chest. Her throat is lined with must and sandpaper when she swallows. She tries to remember the last time she felt water flow across her brittle tongue.
Too long.
She knows water is important. Remembers a classroom from several lifetimes ago. Before her life became full and radiant, before she'd mattered. She remembers learning biology from a stern woman with silver hair and square glasses.
She remembers that water is life.
Plink.
Her eyes close as she continues her search. But there is nothing beyond the battered remains of her body and the messy chaos of her mind. She opens her eyes, stares desperately at her hands, clinging to the memories of fingers and lines and skin. But she can't see them.
She hasn't seen anything in hours. Days? She can't tell. Time isn't linear here. It jumps in fits and starts of pain and silence. It burrows its way inside her until she can't feel anything but imbalance. The sense that she is wrong. Or that the world is wrong. Or maybe both.
She is suffering. She is silence. She is nothing.
Her lips move, forming a word. A name. Her name.
"Her…Hermione."
She knows it belongs to her, but it means nothing. Mere smoke in the air, gone before she can truly grasp it. Gone before it means anything.
She shudders. She is always trembling, the cold penetrating every facet of her until there is only a frozen core of despair.
Plink.
The ground is hard and cold where she huddles, arms bare, trousers worn to pitiful threads. She had a blanket, but it is gone now. Taken.
A scuff of a boot on stone freezes her in place. Her heart gallops then stutters, finding an uneven cadence that rattles her frame until her teeth clack noisily in the silence. She scoots further away from the bars until rough stone carves through her ripped shirt and leaves bloody rivulets flowing down her skin. She does not notice the pain. It is nothing compared with the raw thirst and impenetrable despair.
She was strong. She didn't cower when they first brought her here. She spit and cursed and tore at them with every bit of her soul until it was gone and they were still there. Until she was nothing but bones and flesh and hunger. Until she was nothing.
But she still hasn't given them any answers. She is still an untapped vessel. Still unbroken in the only way that matters to them despite the pieces of her cleaved away with every passing day. They don't care that she can hardly remember her name. They only care she hasn't told them… something.
She no longer remembers what she is supposed to be hiding. But perhaps that is better. They can't break her open if she no longer has anything inside.
The footsteps grow louder and she buries her head beneath her battered arms, imagining she can burrow through the frozen ground and into the arms of oblivion. The rasp of the key in the lock sends her nails digging into her flesh. She still doesn't feel the pain.
"Get up, Mudblood filth."
The voice is muffled, but male. She doesn't move. She never moves.
"For Salazar's sake." This voice is higher, almost shrill. "Just let me deal with her."
There's a brief shuffling, the air shifting in unfamiliar patterns. "No. I know what happens to the those you put your wand to. We're supposed to leave her intact."
There's a sigh from behind the two voices in her cell. Another. This is more than they've ever sent. Even when they'd—
She cuts off the memory. Some things are too—
"If even the Dark Lord can't crack open her mind, there's no way either of you are going to do it."
The voice is almost familiar. Not from her time in the dark, but from before. From the life she can't remember.
"No one asked your opinion, Little Malfoy."
Her pulse skips in recognition, but her mind can't place the sensation. Does she know the speaker? This Malfoy? Or it something else? She holds in the whimper of frustration that threatens to tear past her parched lips.
"I can't see a bloody thing down here," gripes the first speaker.
A sigh and then the young man, Malfoy, murmurs, "Lumos."
She can't help the whimper that tears from her lips now. Can't help the incoherent rasps of shock that continue to explode from the depths of her chest.
She has not seen… anything for ages. The dim light of his wand burns her eyes. A memory of the sun. Of light so bright it warmed her skin and left spots seared into her pupils. Of laughter.
Her chest heaves again and a raw scream tears from her lips.
She wants it to stop. She wants it to burn the darkness from her filthy husk.
Malfoy shifts and the light grows faint as it casts looming shadows from behind his back. He has hair the color of pure light, so pale it glows ethereally. She can't see well enough to make out his face; her eyes still oversaturated and raw. But she can tell he is tall, taller than the other figures. And younger too.
Did she know him once?
She still can't say.
"Well if she isn't a drowned kneazle," the shrill woman mutters, her dark hair flowing in waves as she turns to her companion.
The man gives a cruel laugh that makes her skin crawl. Makes her almost remember that which she will not. She retreats, covering her face once more with her too-skinny arms.
"Pathetic," the woman scoffs. "I don't see why we don't simply have done with her."
"She's not entirely useless," the cruel man replies. "The Dark Lord is sure that holding her will draw Potter eventually."
His words should mean something. But they don't. She knows they are talking about her, but she doesn't understand, can't quite fuse the broken pieces of her mind together again. So she ignores them. Lets the words slide over her skin like the musty air that clings to every facet of her cell.
"Then I don't see any point in keeping her intact," mutters the woman in annoyance. "It's no fun this way."
Malfoy sighs again. She can tell it's him. He lacks the overt disdain of the other two. She has no illusion that he is good or kind, but her body does not instinctually curve away from him. "Why are we even down here, Aunt Bella?"
"I was bored," Bella replies primly. "The last battle was over a week ago and you know I don't like to go more than a few days without exercising the Cruciatus. You're more than welcome to leave, if you'd prefer, Draco."
She can feel the tension rachet up in the cell, the air suddenly charged and thick. She risks a peak from beneath her grimy arm.
Malfoy—Draco—sneers down his nose at his aunt. It is an ugly expression made more drastic by the dramatic shadows cast by his wand. She swallows as silently as possible and looks away.
There was a time she feared the pain. A time she might have shied further into the darkness to escape the promise on Bella's lips. But she no longer remembers to be afraid. Pain is permanent now. It ebbs and flows, but she is always tossed about in its wake, always powerless against its relentless current. It takes more energy than she has left to fight back, to crawl out of the depths of its misery.
So she doesn't try. She lets it wash over her, drown her until her body doesn't exist and her mind is suffused with suffering. Until she is pain and nothing else.
The first blast of the curse does not even surprise her. Her head cracks back against the stone and darkness crowds her vision. But it is not enough to spare her this moment. Her body twitches and dances beyond her control, her throat tattered with the remains of what once were screams, but now are mere echoes, powerless and weak.
She lets go and it all distills to one searing ember of torment. She does not know when it ends.
Draco Malfoy does not enjoy torture.
He supposes this would have been useful to know before he'd pledged his life to the Dark Lord and followed in his parents' footsteps. But he also doesn't see how it would have influenced his decision in any measurable way.
He isn't standing in his family's dungeons watching what used to be Hermione Granger flop uselessly against the bloody stone because he wants to be here. He is here because this is his destiny. He was born a Malfoy, with pureblood and privilege running in his veins. Except it doesn't feel much like privilege now.
But it still feels like destiny.
Only not the type of destiny he imagined as a young boy. The type with honor and respect. The type that didn't leave a trail of blood and horror.
Draco bites his lip and forces himself to watch Granger twitch uncontrollably below.
He knows his aunt is watching, searching for any sign of weakness.
She won't find any.
Draco may not enjoy torture, but he has built up an immunity to that fact. He has done what is necessary to protect himself in this hell he's destined to inherit. So she'll see the cruel smirk that creeps across his lips, the manic gleam in his eyes that begs her to go further, to strike harder. She will see the makings of a madman.
He holds the expression, lets it turn feral and twisted as the girl continues to thrash at his feet. She is worse than he imagined. Draco knew she was captured, brought to the Manor, but in the five months she's been held, no one but the Dark Lord himself and a handful of his loyal Death Eaters were allowed below.
When Aunt Bella recruited for her afternoon torture session, Draco jumped at the opportunity to finally see for himself what had become of the Gryffindor princess.
Now he wishes he'd stayed away.
She is unrecognizable. Her matted hair has either fallen out or been torn from her skull, leaving bald patches that ooze. Her skin has shrunken in on itself, giving her a skeletal appearance, her cheekbones razor sharp. And her eyes. The eyes that had once been a warm cinnamon brown are bloodshot pits of darkness. They send chills down his spine every time her sightless stare twitches his direction.
He knew what he would find when he illuminated his wand. Knew he shouldn't. But he also knows hiding from the truth does him little good. He is a killer. A murderer. A torturer. To deny it is pointless. To hide from it is foolish.
Granger has stopped screaming—if the broken rasps coming from her throat could ever have been called screams—and now his aunt's spells merely cause her limp body to twitch.
Draco wants to go to her. Not because he cares what happens to her, but because it's human to want to comfort her, to want to take her pain away. But he doesn't move a muscle in her direction, forces his expression into one of boredom as he pivots toward his aunt.
"Are we done?"
Bella edges closer to the fallen almost-corpse and kicks her in the ribs. Granger doesn't make a sound. "Looks like the deary doesn't want to play anymore, Draco. Such a shame. I do love watching her squirm."
Avery levels an annoyed look at Bellatrix. "He's not going to be pleased about the damage you've inflicted."
She pouts. It's revolting and Draco has to swallow down the urge to gag. "He understands my need for a little… release every so often."
The double entendre is lost on neither of them, but Avery avoids the implication, merely replying, "then you'd best explain to him yourself."
The two of them retreat from the cell. Bella glances back at Draco. "Coming, love?"
His legs are frozen in place and he can't seem to muster the strength to retreat. "I thought I'd admire your artwork for a moment, Aunt Bella."
She grins, maniacal and all teeth. "Of course, love."
Avery gives him an odd look, but drops the key into Draco's hand without protest. "Lock up when you're done. Not that this one will be going anywhere."
His cackling chuckle of amusement reverberates through the dungeon as he and Bellatrix make their way back up the stairs.
Draco waits until he's sure they're long gone before sinking to the ground beside Hermione Granger. His fingers twitch. Once, twice and then he's touching her, brushing the tangled mats away from her forehead. She doesn't move.
He places his hand in front of her nose and mouth. For a moment there is only stillness and then he feels the faintest hint of air against his trembling fingers. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He can't care. He doesn't have the luxury of caring.
But he gently moves her, her skin paper thin and delicate where he grips her. Her head lulls to one side, then the other. He frowns and attempts to align her body properly.
It does no good. She's beyond repair.
He whispers a simple healing spell into the darkness, his wand still illuminated, as he traces the litany of wounds written across her skin. He can't heal too many. Can't afford to have her look any different, but she's so covered in filth his ministrations are hardly visible. He takes his time on her scalp, making sure the oozing sores are fully healed before adding a simple hair growth incantation.
There is no hiding that change, but Draco can't bring himself to be sorry. She has lost all dignity. He is glad to return at least this.
He bites his lip and stares at her, trying to see, to understand what lies beneath her battered flesh.
She never once broke. Not when the Dark Lord turned his finely honed legilimency against her and then the full wrath of his Cruciatus. Not even when Rosier and McNair emerged from below with flushed cheeks and lewd hand gestures.
Draco doesn't know what they did. No, that's not true. He only wishes he didn't know. He wishes he could have…
What?
Stopped them?
Then he would share this cell with her. Or perhaps he wouldn't even merit that. Perhaps he'd simply be eliminated. Either way, it's not a risk he's willing to take. He's cowardly and selfish like that, but it doesn't bring him any shame. Not after the amount of blood and screams he's endured.
It's time to go. He should have left immediately. He can't save her. Not now.
"Draco."
Her voice is a torturous rasp, his name a plea he does not understand. He sinks to his knees in front of her and stares into bloodshot eyes that speak of nothing but suffering.
She swallows. It's painful to watch.
"Water?"
He conjures a goblet and fills it with water before he can think better of it. Her hands shake too violently to grasp the cup, so he holds it to her lips and waits as she swallows before dribbling more liquid across her parched lips. They repeat the process in silence until the goblet is empty.
He needs to leave.
Draco vanishes the goblet and rises to his feet.
"Do I know you?" Her question is barely audible, but the rasp of her voice has improved.
He blinks down at her. He saw what had become of her body, but to understand what has become of her mind? He can't help the gag, the bile rushing past his lips and into the corner of her cell by the fetid waste bucket. He vanishes the foul contents of the bucket and his disgust with a wave of his wand.
Her bloody eyes are still on him, her pain emblazoned in their depths. He doesn't want to answer her. He doesn't want to admit he could allow this to happen to someone he knows. It does not matter that her blood is tainted, lesser in ways he doesn't quite understand. He still stood by and let this happen. But he will not lie to her.
"Yes. We knew each other."
"But you are not my friend."
"No," he murmurs, pressure squeezing across his chest until he can hardly breathe. "No, I am not."
"You healed me."
It is not an accusation, like his mind makes it. It is only three words. It is a truth that should not be. He wants to lie again, but all she has left is truth. So he says, "yes."
"Help me."
He squeezes his eyes closed, utterly unwilling to watch her face. He will not help her. He will likely watch her die. The weight on his chest is almost unbearable as he replies, "no."
She doesn't say anything after that and he rises to his feet without looking down, without even opening his eyes. She is an annoying know-it-all. She's the enemy. But he tastes the lies on his tongue. Knows that she is nothing at all now.
Perhaps he should turn his wand on her. It would likely be a kindness compared to what awaits her. But he's too much of coward for that kindness. The Dark Lord would know and then what would Draco be, if not another body beside her?
He bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood and focuses on nothing but the metallic taste in his mouth as he turns the key and climbs the stairs.