Nine
Draco
Consciousness returns in waves.
Slow. Hazy.
Everything feels just out of reach.
Awareness strikes like a bolt of lightning.
Followed by a blinding pain.
Hermione cannot react or express her shock. She cannot even move.
Rigid binds hold her tight. A cold breeze rouses her senses, making her shiver. Numbness tingles her feet and hands.
Her vision slowly clears but the world is still disjointed.
Blue fire floats above the middle of a clearing, casting the forest in its dangerous glow. Beneath is a dead unicorn with its throat torn. Silver blood stains its coat and pools on the ground.
Hooded figures are everywhere; only a few are without the protection of anonymity.
A woman with wild, black hair.
A familiar face from her childhood.
And another. Rabastan.
Hermione wants to laugh, but mirth is stuck in her throat.
Quirrell turns. And there is a… face on the back of his head. But that cannot be right.
Is she hallucinating?
"Go." The voice speaks, though it is but a sinister whisper. "Find the other."
Several hooded figures leave to do its bidding.
Hermione is desperate to flee, but her legs are weak and her feet throb, as if she were dragged here without care. Rough wood pokes at her back, scraping her skin.
And the binds.
Pulling tightens them to the point of breathless discomfort. She gasps, eyes adjusting further to her surroundings. Tied to a tree, Hermione is bound with glowing, golden ropes. She is barefoot, stripped of her royal gown, and left in only an underdress.
There is no time to feel ashamed.
She notices Daphne is gagged, stripped, and tied to the tree next to her with ropes that do not glow. Dirty and roughed up, Daphne bleeds from a gash on her forehead, and one eye has the start of a bruise. She breathes with barely controlled terror and stares directly at Hermione before cutting her eyes as far as she can.
She is trying to communicate. It takes a second to figure out what she is saying.
Elm is hard at work biting through the ropes. The bowtruckle is not alone, others scuttle down the trees to help.
One pulls the cloth from Daphne's mouth before she whispers, "Thank you, little friend."
It preens.
"Where is Luna?" Hermione keeps her voice low.
"She is the one they seek." Daphne grimaces. "Your head bleeds."
"So does yours." Peering down at the bowtruckle trying to chew on her gold binds takes much effort. It tries to pull but movement tightens them more. She hisses in pain.
"Our guests are waking up. Let us greet them."
"Step aside, Wormtail." The woman shoves a short man out of her way. "My niece is awake."
Cold hands seize Hermione's chin. The grip is too tight, craning her neck painfully. She stifles her need to scream.
"Rodolphus tells me you are but a common, mud blood. Draco was raised better." The barest hint of rotten teeth makes her skin crawl. "My sister with her soft heart, betraying her family so Draco can sully our blood with the likes of you."
Dread sparks in her chest as a cold realisation hits her.
"You are…"
Queen Bellatrix.
"I—" Hermione forces out. "You died at sea."
"Is that what they tell everyone?" Bellatrix's laugh sounds like a nightmare. "Rodolphus and I were adrift in the ruins of our defeat and floated north. Azkaban is large. We hid on the island amongst those who were banished for years before we were found. We slew everyone." She smiles with black teeth. "Draco got my call directly but searched from the skies instead of the ground. I expected better."
"Do not," Rabastan hisses. "He is a coward who hides behind the might of his dragon."
Oh. The arrow Hermione pulled out of him was hers.
"Now, now Bella." The face on Quirrell's occipital morphs into something akin to a charming smile. He approaches, his movements oddly smooth and confident despite moving backwards. "While my body rests after feeding, you will have your fun. There is much I need to know."
Bellatrix instantly humbles. "Apologies, my king."
Hermione's blood turns to ice.
Voldemort.
Inhabiting Quirrell like a parasite.
"What do you want from me?" Hermione asks.
"Wormtail saw you when you were a child."
The short man steps closer. Wormtail is more than a familiar face; he is the man who disguised himself as Ron's pet rat for years. "Did I do well, my king?"
"Excellent." He pets Wormtail like a prized animal, red eyes on her. "You carry secrets, Queen Hermione. The burden of this makes you unnaturally anxious when you are around too many with the skill to notice."
"I—I know nothing."
"I believe you. I do," Voldemort says with spine-chilling gentleness, every word soaked in charm and tinged with dark magnetism as he nears. He comes close to touching her but recoils. "I see the block on your memories so clearly. A web so perfectly woven. There is but one way to free you. I am afraid this will not be painless."
Bellatrix's smile widens as she taps her wand against her sunken jaw. "This is going to be fun."
"Do not play too hard with your food, Bella," Voldemort says as he retreats. "I do not want her to break."
Hermione braces herself, looking at Daphne's horror-filled eyes.
"Crucio!"
As if from the outside, Hermione hears herself screaming.
White-hot pain explodes behind her eyes. It rattles her head and runs rampant through her veins.
It clogs her senses until time slows to a crawl. It could be seconds or minutes or hours. Each would equally feel like forever in the grip of the visceral agony. Pressure builds and crashes through every nerve. Her world burns with a pain worse than anything she has ever felt.
Ice and fire slice through her skin, shredding muscles then nerves, and cracking open her bones to melt the marrow until every cell is twisted with torment.
Her lungs attempt to pull in air, but she cannot breathe.
She cannot stop feeling. Cannot stop wailing. Cannot stop convulsing.
Black spots flicker in her vision when the pain suddenly ceases.
Hermione tries to move, desperate to flee or fight, but her will to fight has dissolved to dust.
"There is nowhere to run, my love." The endearment burns like acid. "I am only getting started."
Like ocean waves, pain pulls Hermione into the abyss.
Each time she thinks it is over, more follows. In and out, she fights the current with all her might, but it drags her back. Enduring is her only option. The alternative is giving in.
She fights and claws.
Relents and sobs.
An endless cycle.
That stops.
Hermione drifts.
Let me into your mind.
Splotches dance in Hermione's eyes as she breathes. Her lungs are screaming, begging for oxygen.
She remembers what little of Draco's teaching she can and builds her wall high.
No.
The anguish starts to pull back like water reaching the shore.
"She is unyielding. Again."
The water is gone, a figment of her imagination. Only reality remains.
"Crucio!"
And then the pain returns. One word robs her breath. Her body goes rigid as the claws of agony flay her open to the bone. Hermione's heart thunders.
Torment burns her senses and something starts to rip inside her mind.
No.
Screams tear from Hermione.
She cannot stop.
She cannot stop.
A mournful cry is a bristling alarm that sweeps through the pines with a shivering sigh.
Like smoke, it fades away, leaving garbled voices to tell broken stories of past and present.
Faces flood her mind. They flex and change, bend and compress, until the world tilts and colours bleed into a mass that forms a face she knows.
Her father.
A memory.
"There are those who seek to prevent a future by destroying the potential."
"I thought you were telling me about my parents, Father," Hermione says with a nudge and a smile, hoping to alleviate the serious mood he has been in all day.
"Prophesy is fickle and uncertain. You cannot rely on it, but you must not ignore it. Some run their course and change nothing, others never come to pass, but there are some prophecies that entwine, and together, they can change the world."
"Father, I do not understand—"
Hermione's memory blurs. Her skull throbs.
Reality bends until someone new stands in her father's place.
This man does not belong here.
Intuition whispers his name: Voldemort.
A blend of the parasite he is and the king he once was, he is handsome with dark hair and red eyes. Something makes her want to trust him, but a deeper impulse eclipses this.
He is darkness pretending to be light.
"Do you wish to be free?" Voldemort's fingers graze her face like she is a precious thing.
Hermione shudders, chilled from the icy trail of his touch.
This is no longer her memory but they are still within the confines of her mind. She summons every bit of strength she possesses to push him out but he will not go.
"I have the power to give you what you desire, to make you a queen in your own right. I can make a world where you can control your own destiny. You would answer to no man."
"Except you, tyrant," Hermione sneers. "I would answer to you."
"A small price to pay." A haunting smile grows as he tilts his head, looking at her with different eyes. "True power awaits once you are rid of the thing that holds you back."
"I will never bend." She jerks away but he seizes her by the throat. First, his hand is a burning caress, then his grip is stronger, firmer. Hermione tries to pull away and fight as he cuts off her air, shaking from the effort.
"You will or you will die."
Hermione screams Voldemort out of her mind.
It shakes the earth.
Nature hears her cry, but does not answer.
"Crucio!"
Hermione grits her teeth and shakes.
Sobs.
Help me.
"There is no one here but you and I." Voldemort's voice is faint in her mind. "You will lose."
Light burns the darkness out.
Hermione.
The familiar whisper is a comfort that does not last.
"Crucio!"
Torture is the deranged's choice of art.
With practised ease, Bellatrix joyfully traverses the line of pain and endurance, life and death, bringing Hermione to the brink of unconsciousness then back.
The lines blur between each and teach her that torture is not always physical.
It is mental. Emotional. Spiritual.
Bellatrix curses her until her vision blurs, but she also shows benevolence by healing her bitten tongue and strained muscles. She fills Hermione with magical euphoria before snatching it away all over again.
The true torture is that she makes no move that ends with mercy.
Hermione wishes she would.
Bend to me.
No.
Pain returns.
Numb, cold to its call, Hermione sputters and coughs.
"Crucio!"
She can no longer scream.
Both in her body and floating above, she is aware of the world and apart from it.
Sounds meld and morph together but she can still separate and identify them. Bellatrix's cackling. Daphne's shuddering, whimpering breaths; her pleas for mercy that draw insults and scorn. She can hear the laughter, the amusement and glee of the robed figures who gather around and take pleasure in her pain.
Voldemort is always in her mind, trying to strip it bare.
"Why?"
"The identity of the lost chosen one is within my grasp. You know who they are."
"I do not know what you are talking about!" Hermione's throat is raw.
"You do," the voice in her mind whispers. "His line bears my cursed mark."
All she can think of is war.
In sudden realisation, she opens her eyes to darkness.
Is this what she does not see?
The truth only hinted at by those around her?
"You are like me. Born with common blood yet given the world," Voldemort whispers. "You see a world that is better. I want it, too. Under one banner—my banner—we will build a new realm and scourge the filth of kingdoms. All you need to do is let me unlock your mind. You will be safe as long as you give me what I need."
What Voldemort seeks, Hermione knows she will not give. She will die before she allows him to have it.
"Very well. I will tear it out myself."
Hermione imagines death is like biting into fresh fruit.
It is like taking a walk on a misty morning in a field, laughing at nothing with Ginny, listening to Vasades talk about the stars. Death is the scent of flowers and pine, the breeze in her hair, the ease and joy of feeling the sun on her face.
This is her paradise. Her sanctuary. Her dream.
Death is not drowning, the ebb and flow of crushing suffocation, or even the torrential misery undermining all resolve. It is not the gargled cries and wails, the begging and brokenness, the wetness of tears and blood.
No, it is a reprieve.
Hermione embraces the inevitable without fear. She is at peace knowing there is freedom from this hell.
Then the torture begins again.
Time bends against all reason. Thoughts and memories twine together as she slips between life and death.
It stops. It starts.
Cyclical. Endless.
A different scream stops the pain.
The world fades and returns in a rush.
Hermione wakes to a battle.
Clashing metal, magic, and might.
War.
Hooded figures fight with soldiers, knights, and centaurs. People on both sides fall before her eyes. A white spell strikes the blue flame. The forest descends into darkness as the flame rises high above the trees then explodes in the sky.
Fire falls like raindrops.
It spreads.
Something nudges her leg desperately and she squirms, looking down only to find a shaggy dog.
Sirius.
Hermione tries to move but cannot, still tied to the tree with magical binds. He tries to free her but the binds do not relent.
Bellatrix lies unconscious at her feet.
Daphne is nowhere to be found.
A wolf tosses a soldier like a ragdoll and bears down on them. Hermione screams and Sirius moves in front of her with protective fury. They battle with teeth and claws until the dog has the wolf by the neck. Jaws locked, Sirius rips into the pelt and tears out its throat. The death rattle is louder than the clang of weapons and magic around them. The wolf morphs into a naked man before he hits the forest floor, his eyes still open and unseeing.
Sirius is thrown into the trunk of a nearby tree with force.
A sneering Quirrell appears in front of her and undoes her binds.
"You are coming with us." Voldemort's voice infiltrates her thoughts.
Hermione clumsily surges forward. Her legs shake. Her body aches, but she refuses to accept this fate.
When she catches Quirrell's arm, his skin sizzles beneath her fingers. He screams.
They both stumble back in stunned shock.
And then she lunges.
She grabs his face, pushes her thumbs into his eye sockets, and holds on as his skin burns beneath her grip. He tries desperately to wrench himself free. Hermione does not let go, digging in with all her might.
Quirrell screams.
Voldemort's agony smells like smoke. Or perhaps it is the fire.
His host's cries do not stop, even as his skin melts at her touch. Blood splatters on her and bones disintegrate into dust.
The remnants spread in the breeze, rising, gathering together.
Voldemort's body reforms from the dust.
It is not quite corporeal, but Hermione's heart clenches in terror nonetheless. Still, she pushes through. With wild determination, she stumbles forward, chasing the ghostly figure through the chaos of magic spells as it fights to melt into Rodolphus' body.
"Rodolphus," the shadow calls to a man that looks like Rabastan.
"Yes, My Lord." He stretches and shakes.
Then seizes.
His head snaps to her.
Brown eyes glow red in the flames.
Rodolphus' grin is no longer his own.
Hermione jumps, falling backwards into something—no, someone.
Daphne.
Elm sits on her shoulder; they both look worse for the wear. Behind her is Goldstein, fighting off three Death Eaters. For a second, she is stunned by what she witnesses, but then the knight's voice snaps her out of her daze.
"Daphne! The king's regiment is not far. We will hold them back, get the queen and go! Hide! We will find you!"
Daphne surges into action, pulling Hermione away from the fight. Adrenaline gone, Hermione leans heavily on Daphne, who gasps at her weight.
A hand grabs her ankle. Bellatrix yanks with enough force to drag Hermione to the ground.
The hard landing steals her air.
"Not so fast—"
A rock strikes Bellatrix in the head, rendering her unconscious.
Stunned, they look up and find Luna hanging upside down from a thick tree branch. Her dress is torn and hair wild, but she appears unharmed. Hermione nearly laughs from relief when Luna flips over and drops, landing safely on her feet.
Waving, Luna points at the bowtruckles gathering in the next tree over. They are cutting and munching on another limb, which misses Bellatrix but crushes a rat scuttling towards them.
It transforms into Wormtail, now injured beyond repair.
Bowtruckles flee from the cursed fire, running from tree to tree by overlapping branches as it spreads. The first person the fire touches is the enemy. It engulfs him in mere moments, leaving ash that corrodes the earth.
Luna steps over Wormtail's body and picks up Bellatrix's wand.
"Periculum!" Red sparks burst from the tip of the wand, racing towards the sky and exploding like fireworks. Luna is wide-eyed. "Wow."
It continues to explode, which alerts everyone to their presence.
"Do not let them escape!" Rodolphus' barks.
Voldemort has complete control.
Panicked, Daphne helps Hermione to her feet as Luna shakes Bellatrix's wand again. "Petrificus Totalus!"
The spell strikes another robed person stalking towards them with a white light.
They freeze solid.
Luna stares at the wand in awe. "This is incred—"
"Never mind that, run!" Daphne grabs her hand and takes off.
Words and voices bleed from her mind between fits of pain and confusion.
Chosen… Prophecy… King…
They make no sense.
Hermione grits her teeth and tries to wade through. The blaze from the fight is barely a speck behind them. The forest is damp, drenched in a ghostly shade of blue that dims the farther they flee.
Exhausted, hurting and numb, more broken words fill her mind.
They cannot know…
She is losing grip.
"Where are we?" Daphne looks around as they keep moving, putting distance between themselves and the battle.
It is too dark for even the moon to light their path. Trees sway and branches scratch her hands and arms. Bare feet make every step miserable. Rocks and twigs dig into her already tender soles, and shattering pain shoots up her legs.
Hermione's body is beyond its limit. It hurts to breathe, but she does not stop. She cannot.
Secrets… Charms… Your memories… Vow…
"They are coming!" Luna warns.
She turns to find robed figures closing in behind them.
Hermione hears a bird overhead.
Then an answering roar.
"Wand!"
Luna gives Bellatrix's wand to Daphne and picks up a large branch to use as a weapon instead. More proficient with a wand, Daphne casts a spell to make those who chase them trip and fall over their own feet. When they try to get up, they fall again.
They run farther, leaving the path and finding another. This one is much darker. Hermione tries to wandlessly conjure an orb of light, but it fizzles to nothing. Her magic is weak. Her hands tremble as badly as her legs.
"I do not know where to go," Daphne says. "I do not know the forest that well."
Hermione does not—wait.
She inhales a familiar sweet scent.
Looking closer, she focuses on what she can see and feel versus what she cannot.
The soft dirt beneath her feet.
The smooth bark of the tree she leans again.
The thick vegetation.
And then she hears it.
The sound of water.
She knows this place.
Hidden… Rain… We came to this land…
Hermione shakes the fragments away just as they are accosted by two figures who emerge from the trees. Luna swings the branch as if it is an axe, striking one in the head. Daphne stuns the other. They wait with bated breath for another attack, but there is only silence.
It gives them a blessed moment to stop, breathe, and think.
"Keep watch while I figure out where we are."
Luna wields her branch like a sword.
Daphne holds Hermione's waist. It feels like the only thing keeping her upright.
The truth is that…
She wills the voices to stop and turns her focus to the sky. Here, the trees are thin enough to give her a clear view. Hermione reads the stars with a desperation she has never known.
True North gives her direction. The positions of the constellations orient her.
A realisation and an idea.
"This castle is that way. North. At least three miles. You two take the wand and go, follow the path, and use it to prove Bellatrix lives." Hermione turns east with her plan fresh on her mind, not knowing at all how to execute it.
"Where are you going?" Luna asks.
"For help and a diversion."
"I refuse to leave you. I cannot!" Daphne argues, looking close to tears. "You are not well. I watched Bellatrix torture you until your heart stopped. I watched you bleed and sob. I cannot leave—"
A branch cracks.
They are no longer alone.
"You cannot escape us." Robed figures approach in the near darkness. More come from the trees and into their path.
A revived Bellatrix pushes through the group, screaming for her wand. "Get them!"
Hermione, Daphne, and Luna split up.
Everyone converges on her.
Dead leaves crunch beneath her feet as Hermione hobbles away, using the darkness to duck behind a large bush. She closes her eyes, trying to steady her breath as steps draw closer.
A snapping twig sends her pursuers running towards the sound.
Hermione takes several seconds to pull herself together before forcing herself to her feet. She limps through the underbrush, which grows thicker on the downhill slope she tries to navigate.
Vision swimming, she trips. It gives her position away.
"Over there!"
Panic makes her clumsy.
She falls the rest of the way.
Helpless to stop the fall, Hermione clips a tree stump before landing sprawled in the clearing. She pants from the pain, but nearly sobs her relief with her next breath.
The sound of water means she has made it.
Black sand is beneath her.
The rush of a familiar waterfall sounds like hope.
She knows what lives on the other end of the lake. But Kaida is not here.
A hippogriff flies overhead. White in the darkness. More begin to circle. They squawk.
Winged horses answer their call.
Hermione struggles to her feet, bones popping, ankle turned painfully from her fall. She limps closer to the water, desperately hoping one of them will notice her.
A stinging pain buckles her legs.
Magic seizes her limbs, forcing her to turn around.
Dozens of robed figures surround her in a semi-circle, blocking every direction except the water behind her.
Bellatrix smiles like she has already won.
"Stupid girl." There is a dagger in one hand, and a murderous gleam in her eyes. "Return my wand or I will retrieve it myself."
Hermione holds up her empty hands.
"Find the others." She snaps her fingers. "Retrieve my wand. Kill them."
Four hooded figures leave.
"Luckily for you, I do not need a wand to—"
A roar shakes the earth.
Kaida.
A wall of fire separates them, the spell loosens its bind, but a sudden stabbing pain stops Hermione cold.
Stunned, she looks down.
The scorched hilt of Bellatrix's dagger sticks out of her stomach. Fresh blood blooms on her filthy undergown. The smell of poison is putrid.
Pulling the dagger out makes it worse but she must. The stain spreads.
A hippogriff swoops down. Hermione faintly hears Bellatrix's sharp, terrified scream.
The Death Eaters scream their pleas for mercy, but Kaida offers none, incinerating every hooded figure with a single, fiery breath.
Hermione struggles to focus, trying desperately to heal herself.
There is little relief.
She carries nothing that will save her life.
You are destined…
The air is thick with the acrid scent of burning flesh. The stench is unforgettable. Shadows of the enemies burning alive twist inside flames hot enough to melt sand.
Hermione feels no sympathy, only vindication. In mere seconds they all collapse and everything is silent except the crackling flames.
Kaida continues her rampage into the forest.
No one will escape.
Fire begins to close in. It roars with the same need for vengeance as the dragon deep in the forest.
Hermione drops to her knees on the sand and manoeuvres to her back, panting as she stares up at the smoke-filled sky. The stars twinkle, calling to her soul.
We speak of you…
But they cannot save her.
She has done all she can to protect everyone from Voldemort—for the safety of her friends and the kingdom—her life is a fair trade.
The pain is unimaginable.
Death is a welcome reprieve she embraces with open arms.
But fire turns to ice.
And explodes.
Draco appears—a ghostly, translucent hound at his side that vanishes like mist in the blink of an eye. Streaked with dirt and blood, he rushes to her side, hands shaking as he applies pressure on her wound.
Warm magic spreads.
He is trying to heal her. She can feel the skin knitting together, but it is not enough.
"Poison," Hermione whispers with chattering teeth.
There is no time. She sees the moment he realises it, too.
Draco shifts from anger to sorrow to pain.
Emotions Hermione has never seen before.
She covers his hands with hers. Shivering from spreading numbness, she smiles through burning tears. "Y-you came for me."
"I am a fool." He looks raw, pained with tears gathering in his eyes.
When she coughs, it rattles her to the bone. "And I-I am lost."
Draco picks her up as if she weighs nothing.
Determination fills his eyes. "No, you are not."
Hermione's body goes limp and her eyes roll back.
She thinks she must be dreaming when she hears Draco call an unexpected name.
"Vasades!"
-Draco represents Ladon, the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the gardens of the Hesperides.
A/N: *vibrates* We've been waiting for this chaotic chapter since the start. Honestly, this is the first time I've ever looked at an idea and been like how am I gonna write this?
-All the clues and set up has led to this and the coming chapters as we breakdown what transpired.
-Will say one thing, re: Hermione. Weaponless, at a disadvantage, and tortured. She was in distress, but she was no damsel.
-Also with the holidays coming, I'll be traveling and updates will be a bit more chaotic/sporadic than usual.