Defeated We Rise
Chapter Two: What Disguise is This? Can I Trust You?
Sighing, I pulled back the large, white bandage covering my arm. It had been two weeks since my parents death, two weeks since Draco Malfoy had said a word to me, two weeks since I slashed up my arm, two weeks in which I was, by all accounts, healing, and surrounded by kind, caring, loving people.
Yes, it had been two weeks. It had been two weeks since Voldemort had brutally minimized my family to a size of less than one (for he killed part of me as well, and got some of my blood on the Gryffindor carpet to prove it). It had been two weeks in which Harry and Ron had abandoned their girlfriends to the extent that they threatened to break up with them (at which point Ron ran off, chasing Lavender and yelling to her.........he didn't return for a good 48 hours). Parvati had hoped Harry would do the same, but Harry had stayed, until I forced him to leave me alone because I wanted some peace, and I didn't want to wreck his other relationships. It had been two weeks in which the closest thing Malfoy did to acknowledge my existence was sneer, then turn back to his rather cold and gloopy morning porridge.
It had been two weeks and I was feeling sufficiently healed. Today I would return to my classes, beginning with double Potions. I knew I didn't have to go, but, truth be told, it had been two weeks full of obsessive dreams of Malfoy. They always made me feel sick, and it was, more often than not, these dreams that kept me from eating, not the death of my parents. I figured if I returned to the hellish dungeons and heard his cold sneers once again, they might cease to exist.
I pulled my black robes over my head, blew dry my long, thick, wiry hair, actually bothered with a bit of makeup to hide my under-eye shadows, then practically tripped down the stairs to breakfast. Recently, demons had lurked in every shadow. In every closet, in every classroom, in every empty moment of every empty day. They were mainly figments of my imagination, quite often demons inside of myself, wanting, begging me to lash out and see my blood once again. I felt, sometimes, the urge to cut simply to get out blood that my parents never got to shed upon their deaths.
Pushing darker thoughts as far back in my mind as they would go, I fought off the incessant cooing of every girl in the entire school. They clung to my arms like ticks to a dog's scalp. I just wanted them to act like nothing was wrong. More than having no one to comfort me, I hated having people pretending to comfort me, when really, they didn't give a shit. It was all too much when Pansy Parkinson joined in. Forgetting breakfast I let out a slightly strangled scream and headed straight for the dark, dank, and normally lonely, dungeons.
They still smelt of mildew and peppermint, they still looked like the world with the last ray of sunlight peeping through, the floors were still grimy, hideous cobblestones that tripped your feet and your chair legs. For the first time, I connected with them. The picture they painted before me replicated the picture painted within myself. I let out a small grin and slid into my seat. Snape was nowhere to be found.
Pulling out quill and ink and parchment and notes and books, I found myself too preoccupied to notice the sound of footsteps echoing off the stony walls.
***
I saw them cling, I saw her cringe. In the past two weeks I had silently watched, resigned to returning to the role of who I was. I watched as Pansy went forward, pretending to console as I knew she inwardly gloated at the destruction of Granger-she had told me her dad had been there to see them die.
Granger always was smart, and knew that this was a lie of false affection. She let out a strangled scream and ran. Ron and Harry looked after her, but she motioned for no one to follow. No one did.
As casually as I possibly could, I slid back my chair. Pansy asked my in a slithery sort of voice where I was going. I replied calmly that I had a headache and I was going to repose in my room. After all, the Slytherin house is in the dungeons. It wasn't a lie, really. I did have a headache. But I wasn't about to make it past the first dungeon-the Potions one.
Walking as quietly down the steps as possible I came and was almost level with her before she noticed she wasn't alone. I saw the way she gripped the pen and ink, and knew that no matter what I said she would attack, because she was angry and she was sad and she was still very much alone.
"Granger." I didn't say more. I didn't need to. I wasn't worried, really, about her hurting me. She had no intention of using her wand. She just needed a punching bag of sorts.
She whipped herself around, glaring up at me with a strange look in her eyes. I couldn't decipher it for the life of me. Then she had stood up, her eyes level to my shoulder blades, glaring up at me with hate and passion and want. Yes, that was the look in her eyes. I'm sure mine mirrored hers exactly.
"Malfoy!" She lunged, scratching my body with the point of her quill, making designs of ink and blood upon my pale skin. Then she threw it aside, along with a full ink bottle, and commenced to punching and hitting at my chest with all her might. She had her ink, and my blood, all over her fair little hands, and I knew that she would collapse in a moment. So, when she did, I grabbed her by both arms, and hauled her through door after door to the 17th dungeon, where the Slytherin common room lay.
***
I didn't notice him until it was really too late. He spoke my last name in a harsh 'Granger.' I lunged. I don't know why; I don't hate him, really I don't. But he haunts me, and his father hurt me, hurt my family, maybe even witnessed the death of my own father. And so, I had to strike back. I was sick of not feeling, tasting, seeing blood. If not my own, then his. I scratched and wrote and dug and felt it well up and I felt it smeared against my palms and on my face and in my mouth. Then that was done, and I was left to crying and hitting, hopeless, shattering pounds.
I felt myself weakening. Maybe I should've stayed in my room today. He steadied me with his bleeding arms, and in his touch I felt no hate and felt immediately remorseful for what I had done. He carried me along. It was a long trip. I felt myself slipping. He cleansed my hands in a bucket of ice cold water, washed my face gently with the tip of a terry-cloth towel, and lay me down on a bed. All I remember is the green.
***
She sat in a stupor, muttering vague 'I'm sorrys' to me every few minutes, and as soon as I had her hands clean she would reach out to my own wounds with a look of hurt in her eyes as if she, too, was feeling my pain, as if it were her own, and I believe it was. Then her hands would come away, covered in blood once again. The process repeated for God knows how long. Finally she became too tired, and as I cleansed her face I watched her eyes close and soon she had fallen over, and I pulled her up and tucked her under my green comforter and I went to tend to the wounds her quill had caused.
***
The first thing I saw, clearly, were his eyes. I let out a small shriek of shock, and he pressed his finger to my lips to quiet me. Then I remembered and I realized that the reason I was seeing green was because I was far, far away from the Gryffindor common room.
I wondered how long I had been asleep, how long I had been in Draco Malfoy's dorm room. But my brain was still fuzzy, and I couldn't bring myself to articulate a question.
***
She was just sort of sitting there, on my bed, halfway looking at me, and halfway looking far beyond. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, so I decided to talk. I had a theory about her. I was beginning to think that if someone didn't help her, really help her, love her, treat her well, she would go insane. The fact that she had attacked me only proved my point. However, I didn't bring any of that up.
"So, Granger, you feeling better now?" I tried to keep the sneer out of my voice, but it was such a habit I found it sneaking up on me.
She sniffled and turned towards me. She came and sat next to me on the bed, and asked, in a dazed way, "Why did you do that? Why put up with me?"
I pondered this. I couldn't tell her that it was because I felt like in some way this was helping to repent me for all the evil things I had done. I didn't really know what to say.
"I guess I understand, somehow, what you are, uh, going through. Yeah, I still have two parents...but I...I dunno, Granger, I dunno..."
She gazed thoughtfully at me, and then reached out her hand and traced the long, jagged mark she had made across my right arm.
"So, Malfoy, you're a Death Eater..."
I didn't expect that one. I jumped, and didn't know what to say. So I stayed silent.
"I saw the Mark when..." She didn't finish the sentence because we both knew the rest. She continued on. "Did you know my parents were going to die? Were you, in fact, there, witnessing it? And why, being what you are, are you here, being nice to me? What do you plan to do to me, and why don't you just get it over with?" She was now completely focused and I saw the intensity, the strength, and the all-too-familiar hate burning in her eyes.
I turned to her. I wasn't sure she would believe me, but I had to try my best.
"Hermione, I swear to you that I had no idea that He planned to do that to you. I'm...new...at this, and so they don't tell me very much. I have no...evil....intentions with you. I just happened to be there when you fell out of the portrait hole, and I happened to see how much you needed help. If you would prefer me to leave you alone, and silently watch you drive yourself insane, then, fine, I will. But for your sake, and mine, come on, admit that you need help."
She stood up and stared down at me. "Yeah, right, I need help, and the only one who can help me is a fucking Death Eater, who, through association, basically killed my parents!"
Then I realized that my life was in her hands. If she told anyone, I would be sent to Azkaban for life. Obviously, I didn't want that.
She was backing out of my room, with her eyes constantly on me.
"Hermione, that's not fair, come back here and at least hear me out!" I stood up, beginning to get angry myself. After all I had done for her!
Lunging forward, I grabbed her by both arms, and pulled her back to the bed. She was now sufficiently scared.
"I-I just want to go to P-Potions..."
"Shouldn't have attacked me, then, hmm?"
"But, Malfoy, I honestly didn't mean to...I just..."
"You just?"
She hung her head. "Malfoy, I don't understand you and don't believe I ever will." She was using her last reserve of strength. "But the only thoughts going through my head at the moment I attacked you were of hate, and of want...for blood. And it had to be yours, or my own. Sorry." She shrugged her shoulders non-commitally.
"Granger, I still don't fucking get it. Sit down." I shoved her down.
She whimpered. I remembered that her wand was in the Potions room.
"Malfoy, haven't you done enough to my family as it is? Can't you at least let half a person live?"
"Finally accepting that mudbloods don't count as wholes?"
"Hell, no. What I'm saying, is, that you didn't just kill them. You killed part of me, too. Which was, of course your intention. So, congratulations, you've succeeded, can you please stop messing with me now?"
"No."
She fairly gawked at me.
"Because I didn't do it. And I'm sorry they did. But I feel its my duty to not let them succeed in destroying you...so I'm going to bother you, and mess with you until you're back to being as close to who you were before. You may not want me to, but I'm not satisfied with Potter's efforts, so you'll just have to live with it."
"I can't believe you. How do I know you didn't do it?"
"You'll find out that the time that it took place at was around our dinner time. And I was at the Slytherin table...waiting for those dungbombs to go off beneath your own..."
"That's your alibi?"
"Yes."
She sagged from the exhaustion of arguing with me, and lazily traced over the jagged scar on my arm again. I liked the feeling of her skin touching mine.
"Do you have the faintest idea what you're doing? How do you know how to help me, Malfoy?"
"I don't know. I just...read you. I understand. You've just gotta trust me."
"I might find that hard to do."
"Trust me, and if, in a month, you aren't at least a little better than you have been, you can tell me to stop and I will."
She sighed. "Alright, Malfoy, I'll trust you..." She looked at me with the exhaustion of someone who not only spent all of their energy, but went into great debt borrowing more from the bank. It was catching up on her and she was declaring bankruptcy. So when her eyelids started to close, I wasn't shocked, and I watched her, watched the stricken Messenger, fall asleep in the Dragon's lair...