I hope you enjoyed that last chapter. We are about to get some angry Draco, but it will be the only Draco we get for awhile.
I feel like trigger warnings might not be necessary, as this is a story about Hermione dealing with being raped, but... I will put them anyways.
TW for rape flashbacks and attempted suicide.
"What the hell was that, Granger?" Hermione stared at Malfoy. Why was he here? Why did he just haul her back from what she needed? She needed to be dead. She could not deal with being alive. Maybe a true Gryffindor would try to find her way back to who she was before, but Hermione felt that as a Gryffindor, she was being brave by knowing herself well enough that she wanted to die. Malfoy was staring at her in anger. If he was so angry that he saved her, why would he do it? He would be top of their class if she was dead.
"Earth to Granger." Malfoy said while waving a hand in front of Hermione's face. That snapped her out of it. He was too close to her. She understood. Malfoy was the son of a Death Eater. Hermione couldn't take her own life, Malfoy wanted to be the one to do it. That's why he was mad. He probably wanted to fuck her before that, though.
"What?!?" Hermione spat back. "Do you want to fuck me too?!?" Her tears started anew, streaming down her face.
Draco staggered back. Did he... did he want to fuck her? No, well... yes, but not fuck. Make love to her? Yeah. Fall asleep beside her afterward? Yeah. But not fuck. He wanted emotions involved.
"What? You can't speak?" Hermione was raving. He couldn't even admit what he wanted: her cunt or ass and nothing else. She was just a body. "Oh. I get it. You don't want to sully yourself with a Mudblood cunt!"
With that statement, Hermione stormed back to the very end of the train and tried to slam open the door, only to find it magically locked.
"Malfoy! Let me out!"
Draco just stared at her. He had never seen her like this. She spit fire all the time, but this, this wasn't the rational fire she usually had. This was damaged, this was... this was not Hermione Granger. As he stared, Hermione started to pound on the door, not realizing that her knuckles were bruising and starting to bleed. Just he took a step towards her, Hermione whirled around.
"You listen here, you piece of shit! Let me out of here. I don't want to be alive! So let me do us all a favor and get rid of me!" Hermione was fuming in Malfoy's face, but her voice had cracked on almost every word, and he couldn't begin to imagine what had broken the girl in front of him so much.
"No."
"No?!? Malfoy! If you don't..."
"I said no, Granger." Malfoy took a step towards her. "You aren't jumping off this train."
Hearing her suicide plan uttered by someone else cut her deep, and Hermione crumpled to the floor in sobs of defeat.
"Whyyyy? Why won't you let me die!?!" Hermione was curled in on herself, her spine showing through her shirt since she was so malnourished. Draco slowly got onto his knees in front of her, not sure what he was supposed to do.
"Please. Malfoy. Please! Let me do it." Hermione was wailing at this point. Staring up at him, but he was positive that she couldn't actually see with how much she was crying.
Draco took that opportunity to slide across the ground so that he was close enough to touch Hermione. He reached out and slowly moved some of her hair out of her face. With how she was curled up on herself he could see how pronounced her collar bones had gotten, not even mentioning her cheek bones. He shivered and wondered how she even had energy to scream and cry like this. He swallowed hard. He had to talk.
"I'm not letting you kill yourself, Gran... Hermione." At the sound of her given name, Hermione whipped her head up and blinked at Malfoy. His use of it didn't change her mind though. She wanted to die.
"You don't understand. You can't." Hermione was trembling. She hadn't said it out loud. She honestly wasn't sure that she could.
"You're right, I don't. But you aren't dying." Draco again tried to brush her hair out of her face gently, but his hand snagged in her curls, and within a millisecond of it happening, Hermione ceased her tormented sobbing and was as far from Malfoy that she could get, having scrambled back on her hands and feet. Malfoy was shocked, and he stared at her, not understanding the look of terror in her eyes.
"You... You can't have me. I won't be your slave, Malfoy." Hermione spit out, but her words made her recoil into herself. Malfoy could have whatever he wanted, he was a Malfoy. He probably had a sex dungeon too.
Malfoy stared at Hermione in shock.
"What are you talking about? My slave? I don't want a bloody slave, Granger!" Malfoy was practically yelling. This was not how he had intended their first private conversation to go. He had intended to apologize for the role he had played the last four years. After all, his taunts in first year were directed at Potter and Weasley. When he realized Hermione wasn't going to speak again, Malfoy opened his mouth and tried to speak calmly.
"I don't want a slave, Gr... Hermione. Why would I want a slave?" He started to crawl on his knees towards her, but when he saw her recoil, he stopped.
"I saw you follow Brown in here. You looked upset. Then I saw her leave, but you didn't. I came... I came to see why." Malfoy had sat back on his feet and had his palms facing up. He was trying to make himself look as non-threatening as possible. As Hermione still had her back practically pasted to wall, he wasn't sure it was working.
"Oh? You wanted to see why?" Hermione started. With each word, her voice got a little stronger. "You just wanted to make fun of me. You say you saw me upset and you just wanted in on it!"
Malfoy exhaled heavily, letting his shoulders slump forward.
"I didn't want in on it." Malfoy murmured at the ground. He then picked his head up to look at her, leaving one hand on his leg and using the other to brush through his hair in frustration. Hermione humphed, not believing him.
"You haven't been eating." Hermione looked away and scoffed. She knew that, but she didn't think anyone had noticed, although Lavender had.
"You are little more than a skeleton. Have you actually eaten anything the past three weeks? Because three weeks ago, you looked normal. Hell, I think your hair has even gotten thinner!" Draco huffed out. Hermione's eyes whipped to Malfoy's face. She had been loosing hair. Malfoy noticed? What was happening. Ron and Harry hadn't even noticed. Madame Pomfrey had, she had even threatened to start spiking her water with nutrition potions. But Malfoy noticed. A Pureblood noticed that a Mudblood wasn't taking care of herself.
When Hermione didn't say anything, Draco tried again.
"Something happened. This isn't about exams. I know you couldn't have failed. Something happened." He tried crawling towards her again, and this time, Hermione did not recoil. He managed to get right next to her. When she just looked at him, he settled next to her with his back along the wall.
"Hermione. What happened?" Draco pleaded with his voice and his eyes. Turning his head to face her to watch her face.
"Nothing. Nothing happened." stammered Hermione. Malfoy would just use the truth against her. He was only being nice to get the upper hand.
Draco couldn't help but let out a rough laugh.
"Bollocks. Hermione Granger doesn't just decide to kill herself because nothing happened." Draco was starting to get exasperated by her antics. Something had obviously happened. Anyone could see that. Hermione shot him an annoyed look.
"Let me rephrase. Nothing happened that you would care about or that I'm going to tell you."
Draco just stared at her. Was she kidding? He obviously cared. He was sitting on the floor of a train car with her. He had stopped her from killing herself. And she thought he didn't care! In what world?
He reached out to brush the hair off of her shoulder, causing a confused look to come his way.
"I do care. Please. Tell me what happened." Hermione was staring at his face, and he tried to look even more concerned than he was, which he wasn't sure was possible since he was incredibly worried. Hermione shook her head no. Okay, Draco knew he just needed to try to harder.
"Okay, I'll tell you what I know. The day after father got arrested, you profusely apologized for bumping into me. Something you would not have done a week before." Hermione bowed her head down. That was true. The old her would not have done that.
"Soon after that happened, you started loosing weight, and quickly." He heard Hermione let out a choked sob, but he had to keep going. "Everytime the Weasel goes to touch you, you flinch. You look guilty every time you do, but you can't seem to stop. I always thought you would be an affectionate witch with your wizard, but you look sick every time he touches you." Hermione had buried her head in her knees and continued to sob. Draco had to swallow past the lump in his throat. He reached out to play with some of her curls as he continued.
"For someone who is always touching you, Weasley is dumber than I thought he was. He doesn't seem to even notice that he can feel all your ribs and your shoulders are basically just bone with skin over them." Hermione let out a choked laugh through her sobs at that. Draco just continued.
"Here's another thing I know. There is no love between you and Lavender, and yet besides me, she is the only other student to have seen your decline. Why is that? hmm?" Draco waited patiently. Just maybe she would answer that. After a minute, he was rewarded with Hermione raising her head to look at him. He was thankful that he had been on alert for her voice, or he would have missed her utterance.
"She found me." Hermione whispered. She just continued to stare at Malfoy. "She found me asleep in the shower. She saw the... nevermind." Hermione turned away. Malfoy did not need to know that Lavender had seen the poorly healed lashings, which apparently the witch recognized as whip marks and not wounds from Crookshanks.
Hermione felt Draco's hand still in her hair. She sighed. His playing with her curls had calmed her down. It kept her rooted in the present.
"Saw what, Granger? What did Brown see?" Draco murmured, staring at her face, hoping with all her heart that she would answer.
Hermione swallowed, tried to speak, and then closed her mouth. Could she say it out loud? She hadn't said it yet, said anything that happened to her. Not even during the exam at the hotel in London.
"Thewhipmarks." Hermione stammered out quickly. She just hoped that Malfoy would accept that as an answer. Of course he wouldn't, though.
"The what marks?" Draco was hoping that he hadn't heard that second word correctly. Granger had been whipped? What? By who? When? Hermione just stared at him through her teary eyes. Maybe saying out loud that the cuts were not from Crooks would help her. She could try. It couldn't make it worse, not really.
"The cuts." Hermione whispered, and when Draco opened his mouth to tell her that's not what she said, she continued. "The cuts all over my body..." Hermione choked out a sob. "They... they weren't from my... my cat."
Draco felt sick to his stomach. Hermione was trying to tell him something. Merlin, he could see that she was trying, but her sobbing was starting to get uncontrollable again. He almost wanted to tell her that he didn't need to know, but before he could open his mouth to tell her to stop, she continued.
"They weren't from my cat. Oh, god. No. I had already tried to heal... to heal them. After I... I went to a muggle hospital." Hermione couldn't bare to look at Malfoy anymore. She would loose her nerve if he saw the look in his eyes.
"They... they were..." Hermione swallowed her sobs. She needed to say it. Just say it out loud, and maybe she would feel better. "I had... I had been whipped." Hermione sighed. She needed to say it. Could she say who? Would Malfoy want to know? She hazard a look at Malfoy, he looked sick.
Draco's world was spinning. Hermione had been whipped. She had gone to a muggle hospital instead of St. Mungo's. Why? When had this happened? Who had... Who did it? Before he could stop himself, he was asking who. Hermione flinched at how cold his voice was, but she felt in her bones that it wasn't at her. She swallowed. Malfoy wouldn't tell anyone. He had nothing to gain from it. But telling him, it terrified him. She started sobbing even harder. Draco's hand instantly flew to her hair and started to play with her curls; it hadn't escaped his notice that it had calmed her.
Draco was still listening intently. Although her face was buried in her knees yet again, he thought maybe she would say it. He wasn't wrong. Only shortly after starting to play with her hair again did Hermione's head whip up and her streaming eyes catch his worried ones.
"Dolohov." Hermione basically breathed out.
Draco's hand froze. He couldn't swallow. He couldn't breathe. He had heard what Dolohov liked. He had heard the stories of women who had been dumped at St. Mungo's after Dolohov had his fill. They were never whole again. They spent years in St. Mungo's learning their basic functions again. Some never recovered. Dolohov had whipped Granger. How had she gotten away? How was she still walking? How could she function at all?!?
Hermione saw the horror in Draco's eyes and knew that he knew the truth. Only someone who knew the true sadistic tendencies of Dolohov would look that terrified and pale after her uttering his name. Her tears broke anew, and instead of hunching back over her knees, she slumped into Draco's side, grabbing his blazer tightly in her hand, and sobbed into his chest.
As soon as Hermione's head hit his chest, his arms were around her. What he really wanted to do was throw up, but Hermione needed comfort. He guessed this was the first time she had admitted to anyone what had happened, even if Draco knew that it was not the whole story. His one hand rubbed her outer arm, while the other hand continued to play with her hair.
Her sobs were relentless. Her whole body was shaking. He wasn't sure if she would ever stop. He was thankful that she wasn't trying to throw herself off the train anymore, but he understood why she wanted to. He would also want to die if Dolohov had turned his eye on him.
Draco sat there rubbing Hermione's arm and playing with her hair while she cried. After a while, her sobs quieted into heavy breathing. He tipped his head and could see that she had fallen asleep. Her puffy eyes were gently closed, and her mouth was just barely parted. He supposed that he couldn't judge her for being a mouth breather when she had just cried so hard.
He was worried that if he stopped playing with her hair, she would wake, so he started slowing down. She didn't seem to notice the slow down, so he ceased completely. When she didn't stir, he wrapped his arms tightly around her and pulled her tightly against him. The only sound she made was a contented sigh. He looked down at her, hoping that his embrace would protect her from nightmares, and sighed.
Hermione Granger was strong, that he knew. Would her strength be enough to pull her out of the hell that Dolohov had created for her? Would Weasley wake up and realize that she was hurting? Would Potter? Would they help her? Would she tell them? With all these thoughts racing through his mind, he let his head fall back against the wall he was leaning on. He hoped that she would get help. She was a mess. As he thought of how he could help her, he allowed his eyes to close. Listening to Hermione's gentle breathing, he drifted off to a troublesome sleep. His dreams consisted of Hermione being whipped and burnt. His subconscious delivered the worst possible scenarios for what Hermione had endured.
They stayed that way for the majority of the train ride: fast asleep. Hermione's hand still clutching his blazer and Draco's arms wound tightly around her, as if they could keep her safe for eternity.
The End! LOL, IM KIDDING! This is not the end. I promise. I hope you enjoyed the first Draco chapter! Where will they to from here? Will he see her over the summer? What will happen with Ron? So many questions! So much story to write!