Cursed

Part 2: Crucio

Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own Harry Potter or any related names, trademarks, objects e.t.c. They all belong to J.K.Rowling, though considering what I've done to poor Draco, I doubt she'll want him back now.

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A/N: Exams are decidedly evil and really rather exhausting. But they've been going okay so far, thankfully, apart from a couple of nasty questions… I hate it when you get nasty questions. Ah well…

Speaking of questions, I thought I should take the opportunity to answer some here. I don't always explain everything, mainly because with the characters involved it's rather tricky to do so; to explain things I'd have to step out of the story mid-narrative which would rather spoil the flow of the thing. Basically, if something happens you just can't figure out, think about the curse and whether things could hurt Hermione. Remember that there's emotional hurt as well as physical…

A few other questions: If Draco died, no one from his family would have to protect Hermione. Remember, the curse makes the sufferer protect the most powerful witch/wizard of the sufferer's generation, and Lucius isn't of Hermione's age group. Lucius does have to protect someone else, as does Voldemort – he's descended from Slytherin too, remember? I have my own theories as to who the two of them have to protect, but my betae have managed to come up with tons more ideas, and since it really doesn't matter to the story it's left open. Suggest any theories you may have, they make fun reading!

Draco's father does know, but he can't do anything about it. The only cure is Hermione's death, and if Lucius tried to kill her, Draco would be forced to kill his own father. Patricide isn't nice. He could tell his other classmates, but as you can see he finds the curse deeply shameful and disgusting, which would rather put him off telling anyone – plus what would the Slytherins do, welcome him back with open arms? There's also the possibility that the story of the curse would get round to Hermione, where it has the potential to hurt her – after all, she's had this letter-writer sending her letters since she was five, and though of him as 'my angel'. Finding out that it was a boy she hates under a curse after all this time would be rather disappointing, and disappointment is painful…

You may note that there are references to Norse mythology in this chapter. It hopefully shouldn't be too confusing, if it is, I'll do a little explanation of the myths at the beginning of the next chapter. And as to confusion: Godric didn't die at the beginning of the previous chapter; he was 'unconscious' – i.e. he fainted. Which is only to be expected after the death of a close friend and then the inadvertent casting of that powerful curse…

And that's really enough backstory; I should shut up now and let you read the actual story. Enjoy!

'Malfoy,' Ron muttered incredulously, staring into his Butterbeer. 'I mean… Malfoy.'

The trio of friends had been in the Three Broomsticks for an hour or so now. It had been almost empty when they'd first arrived, nursing various injuries from well-placed curses, and settled into a corner to recover. A couple of medical spells and some bottles of Butterbeer later, the cosy room was beginning to fill with students, flushed from the excitement of the trip and merrily gossiping about the earlier battle – Harry had told Seamus about it when he'd entered with Lavender hanging on his arm, and within minutes everyone had known.

Hermione shook her head, feeling faintly dizzy. 'I should have realised,' she said mournfully. 'His handwriting, it's the same as on the letters… I've seen his writing in Arithmancy, I should have known it was him…'

'Don't beat yourself up about it, Hermione,' Ron told her, 'I mean, who'd have expected Malfoy to be helping you? It's not really obvious, a prat like that being the one who writes to warn you of things… how long did you say you'd been getting those letters for, Hermione?'

'Since I was five.' Hermione replied, and closed her eyes. She wanted to believe that this was all some bizarre and twisted nightmare, and she'd wake up in a minute to find the sun shining through the curtains and Crookshanks curled up at the bottom of her bed, covering her feet with hair.

But why believe something that wasn't true? It was obvious, now. His handwriting, the tone of the letters, the way he'd never been directly involved in an attack until today. It explained how the writer of the letters had so much inside information about the Slytherins' plans – he was a Slytherin. It made sense…

Everything that had once made sense had been turned inside out. Malfoy was their enemy, the letter-writer was their friend, yet they were the same person. The voice that warned her of danger was the bully who'd attacked her friends and insulted her for years. The hint she'd needed to realise that the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was a Basilisk had been given by the very person they'd suspected of unleashing it. It was a complete paradox.

But it was true.

A voice broke her thoughts: Harry's. She recognised the tone, the Oh! I just realised… tone that she knew too well from endless evenings spent explaining things to him. 'Remember the Quidditch World Cup?' Harry asked. 'The Death Eaters playing with the Muggles?'

Hermione's eyes snapped open wide, the memory clear as daylight in her mind of Draco's silvery hair among the trees, his voice mocking her… 'D'you want to be showing off your knickers in mid air?'

Except, he wasn't mocking, in the light of new information, he was… 'He was warning me,' she whispered, suddenly cold. It was another piece of evidence, another nail in the coffin of the whisper of doubt that kept her world stable. 'He warned me…'

'What?' Ron asked, frowning. 'He sent you a letter at the Cup?'

'No,' Hermione explained, 'don't you remember, when we were hiding and we ran into him and he said…' She paused, feeling suddenly very shaken, the world as she thought it was falling apart, as though the true world could only be reflected in a broken mirror and hers had been whole till now.

Harry finished for her. 'He said that they were looking for Muggles and that they'd have Hermione spinning around in the air if they saw her. Or, in other words: Hide, Hermione, they'll hurt you. A warning.'

Ron was perplexed, his eyebrows almost meeting in the middle of his forehead. 'But he insulted her, he called her, you know a…' He made a vague hand gesture. Mudblood.

'It was still a warning.' Hermione pointed out distantly. 'He hates me and insults me and calls me names, but he warns me away from danger. We'd have been in the Hospital Wing five times over by now if he hadn't been warning us of the Slytherins' plans…'

'He hates you, yet he protects you.' Ron said questioningly. 'That doesn't make sense.'

It didn't: it was a paradox. An enigma, a puzzle, and Hermione found herself longing for a book called 'The Mystery of Malfoy: Explained', or '101 Things You Didn't Know About Draco Malfoy' or even, she thought desperately, 'The Idiot's Guide to Draco Malfoy', because there had to be something obvious, something simple and easy that she'd overlooked.

'What are you going to do?' Harry asked, giving her a worried look. 'Are you okay? You look a little pale.'

'I'm fine,' she said automatically, and wondered what on earth she was going to do. She needed to know what Malfoy's motives were, his reasons, and however much she might wish it she wouldn't find the answer in any books. Which meant asking Draco herself. And he wouldn't answer, not without a lot of cajoling, and she didn't spend enough time with him to coax the answer out of him.

Sometimes they were together on Prefect rounds, and sometimes in Arithmancy or one of the other lessons they shared. But not often, not often enough…

Answer: Make it so that they were together more often.

She knew the teachers well; they knew her and liked her. The same went for the Head Boy, who organised the rotas for Prefect duty. If she asked, and thought up good excuses, she could be paired with him in lessons and for joint homework projects and for Prefect duties… the best part of a day, often. And if she couldn't get the answer out of him then…

Hermione didn't feel adrift anymore, no longer lost in a world that had turned itself inside-out, become impossible and bizarre in a heartbeat. She had a problem, and she had her method of solving it, and that was enough of a foundation.

'I'm going,' she declared in reply to Harry, 'to find out why.'

The Slytherins hadn't forgiven him.

He'd been respected, before, feared for his name and his family and his influences. Now he was hated, vilified: the traitor and turncoat, the one who'd betrayed them to the Gryffindors. They'd told him, standing around him in front of the cold fire with all of Slytherin surrounding them, some mockery of a trial with no defence and no jury, only judgement.

You have betrayed us; we do not forgive. From now and forever more you are not one of us. You are dead to us, and if we see you we shall treat you as a spirit, a shade, a dim and distant and hated memory.

You shall not eat among us: your place is at the end of the table, alone and separated from us, tolerated barely. You shall not sit among us in lessons: sit alone, or with the ones you betrayed us to. You shall not spend time among us in the evening, nor shall you sleep in our dormitory, nor shall you call any among our number by the name of friend. For sleep, you shall come past midnight to the common room, and sleep alone on a couch in front of the dying fire, and you shall leave by dawn.

You are no longer a Slytherin.

Draco's hand tightened on his quill, a sharp stab of pain running through him at the memory, as though he'd taken the quill and stabbed its silver nib deep into his heart. He was a Slytherin; the blood flowed in his veins like snakes, and if he cut himself he half-expected he would bleed in green and silver. Slytherin was his home, his family, his friends and his self. Everything he was, everything he had ever been had its roots in Slytherin.

Now it wasn't. His roots had been torn away and he had fallen.

And all because of her. That was the worst part – not merely that he was a traitor to his own kind but that he had betrayed them for Granger, the filthy, ugly, unworthy Mudblood…

What he wouldn't do to her in an ideal world. She'd pay for unknowingly forcing his servitude, his protection, pay with blood and screams and pain a thousand times over. He'd tear her body, her dirty flesh, spill her tainted, unnatural blood on the ground till she begged for mercy, an animal with a human voice, an aberration, abomination in his eyes and fit only to torture; amusement for the pure ones.

He dreamt of it, thirsted for it. He had no control over his actions, but in his thoughts he had free reign and he could torture her again and again, listen to her screams, feel the satisfying slice of knife through flesh until he could almost believe he had control of himself, could do whatever he wished to her…

'Malfoy?'

He knew the voice; how could he fail to? It was the hated voice that filled his every burning moment of rage, the voice that shrieked and cried through his sweetest dreams. Granger.

He didn't look up, but his hand tightened on the quill, and he knew what he'd do if he could. With the point of the quill, scratch deep lines through her skin, her flesh, mixing ink with her unworthy blood. Scratch and scratch and scratch till he was down to bone. Write 'Mudblood' on her forehead in letters of blood, so the whole world would know what she was. Take her eyes out, perhaps, and leave the feather quill stabbed through her heart.

Protect.

'What do you want, Granger?' he spat harshly, not looking at her, scratching away at his essay, trying to imagine the soft parchment was her dirty skin.

To his revulsion, she sat down, sliding into the seat opposite him. Bluntly, she asked, 'Why did you help me?'

He didn't answer. At the back of his mind, he felt the twisted violent anger caused by her presence, so black and fierce that it wasn't really a feeling at all so much as an echo of a dream of torture, of screaming, of her filthy blood staining and soaking and splattering everything around. And because he hated her, he let the echo grow till it made pictures in his mind, pictures of what he would do if he were able.

'Malfoy…' she sighed, and even her sigh was a detestable thing to him, weak and pathetic and repulsive. 'Don't ignore me. I won't pretend I have a clue as to why you've done any of this… You've been sending me letters, warnings, since I was five. You've protected me more times than I can count, and I'm grateful for that, I really am. I always have been. I just feel… I deserve an explanation, that's all.'

Scratch. He wasn't even aware of what he was writing anymore; just focused on his imagination, the mental image of Hermione screaming in pain as he drove the point of the quill through her flesh again, and again, and again until it hung from her bones in crimson ribbons.

'Malfoy? I'm not going to be angry, if that's what you're thinking. And I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to. I just want to know why you did it. Why you did it.'

Her hands, ugly Mudblood hands: he'd take the quill to them too. Stab through the tendons on the backs of her hands, the ones that moved her fingers, making her hands useless immediately. Then slice away the skin around the knuckles, right down to the bone, and when they were visible, crush them, shatter them into pieces. Yes. He wanted it.

In front of him, her hands still unharmed, Hermione was frowning. 'Alright. Have it your way. But don't think I've given up,' she said, before standing and walking away. He looked up at that, watching her as she left, and any chance observer – though there were none on such a bright Sunday afternoon - would have seen the bloodlust in his eyes, the way he gripped his quill like a weapon.

He'd become a project, almost, a fascinating enigma, a silver-haired question mark that she needed to know the answer to. She'd even heard Lavender asking Ron about it, 'Don't tell me Hermione's taking up SPEW again! She's got that look in her eyes… tell me it's a new research project or something, please?' Ron had evasively replied that yeah, it was research, and left it at that.

She'd invented a huge range of excuses. She'd persuaded Louise, the sweet sixth-year Hufflepuff prefect, to complain to the Head Boy about having to patrol with Malfoy, and then bravely offered to swap partners with her. Professor Snape had been her next target: she'd annoyed him on purpose one lesson by acting 'far too keen for your own good, Miss Granger' which was followed by an irritated Snape vindictively pairing her with Malfoy.

Professor Aett, who taught Ancient Runes, had been harder, but Hermione had succeeded by telling her that she thought Hannah Abbot, who she sat next to in lessons, was trying to get Terry Boot to notice her – not, in fact, a lie: Hannah's attraction to Terry, and Terry's complete obliviousness to the fact, had been discussed by Lavender and Parvati at great length for the past week. As they'd all discovered when translating ancient love-stories written in the runic language, Professor Aett was rather a romantic, and had instantly agreed to help play matchmaker by swapping Hermione with Terry – leaving Hermione next to Malfoy and Terry next to Hannah.

The third and final subject that the two of them shared was Arithmancy, and she'd been unable to think of a better excuse to persuade Professor Vector than the one she was currently attempting to persuade him of, five minutes before class started.

'I mean, I think Padma's a really nice person,' Hermione was saying, giving the teacher an earnest look, 'but - I don't know how to put it - she's rather… distracting in lessons. Please don't tell her any of this, I'd really hate it if she found out and got mad at me. But I'd like it if… if you could move me to sit somewhere else, Professor. I really feel my studies are important, especially with NEWTs coming up…'

'Hermione, you're top of the class already,' Professor Vector pointed out. 'But I suppose, if you feel uncomfortable, I could move you…'

Hermione felt a bubble of excitement as the professor checked the seating plan. 'Hmm. It looks like the only space free is next to Draco Malfoy… Blaise Zabini used to sit there, of course, but then she asked to be moved too. Oh dear, you students… Well, do you mind sitting with Malfoy? I know you two don't get on…'

'I'm sure we can manage it,' she replied with a smile. 'We both work very quietly, we won't even notice the other's there.'

'Alright then, Miss Granger,' Professor Vector said, making the alteration to his plan. 'You'd better go and sit in your new place, then. If you want something to do while you wait, I suggest you take a look at page 312, we're doing more work on graphical numerology today…'

She smiled her thanks, and slid into the new seat, pulling her textbook out of her bag. She opened it to the right page, but didn't read more than the first few lines; paying attention instead to her plans, to Malfoy, to how she was going to persuade him to talk to her.

It would take time, but that didn't bother Hermione. Making the Polyjuice potion in second year had taken a month. SPEW still hadn't achieved its aims, and wouldn't for years, possibly decades. With this project, with Malfoy, it could take any amount of time, from days to years. All she felt was the anticipation of a challenge, the excitement that came with puzzles and tests, and she smiled to herself at the thought of it.

The students arrived in twos and threes, taking their accustomed seats next to friends and acquaintances, some of them giving Hermione a cheery greeting as they walked past. She smiled back at them all, but today her friends and classmates weren't of interest to her.

He was.

Malfoy tossed his bag onto the floor, scowling darkly at her. He leant over his desk, hands flat on the smooth wood with the wrists facing inwards, and asked with anger in his voice, 'Why are you sitting here?'

She kept her cool; too intrigued by his paradox to be afraid. She trusted the latter-writer implicitly, and Malfoy was the letter-writer; thus she lost any fear that he would hurt her. 'I asked Professor Vector to move me away from Padma,' Hermione explained, 'and this seat was the only spare…'

'Why are you stalking me?' he demanded, his voice like a snake's would be if it learnt to speak, and his eyes were the colour of silver set on fire, of burning ice: in that moment he looked like an angel of Hell.

Still, Hermione knew – by logic, by intelligence, by instinct – that he wouldn't hurt her, and his rage only made her the more fascinated. 'Because I want to know why you helped me,' she said simply.

His expression darkened like a cloud passing over the sun, his eyes closing. 'I'm not going to tell you, Granger.'

'You will,' she said confidently.

With visible reluctance, he slid into his seat, pulling out his books. 'Believe what you want. Mudblood.'

The insult meant nothing, and they both knew it. Hermione had the power over him here.

'I'm not sure which myth is my favourite. I mean, all the stories are really fascinating, and the Norse pantheon contains some really intriguing characters. I always liked Thor,' Hermione said, tapping the tip of her quill against her lip thoughtfully, 'because he got into such interesting adventures. Like the time he went to Utgard with the giants, and they tricked him with all those competitions. Like making him drink out of that horn that turned out to be the ocean, and making him wrestle with Old Age, or lift the cat that was really the Midgard Serpent – Jormungand, was it?'

Draco didn't reply. She hadn't expected he would – after all, she'd spent the entire lesson talking to him and meeting with a stony silence.

It was getting rather annoying. Hermione knew she'd be mad to expect to find out anything so quickly; that was why she was talking to him about meaningless things, in an attempt to tempt him out of his silence, to make him used to speaking to her so that, when she asked him why he helped her, he'd answer.

But he wouldn't speak. It had been five days since the Arithmancy lesson, when he'd refused to tell her and spat an insult, and since then he hadn't spoken a word to her, no matter what she spoke to him about. Currently, she was onto Norse mythology.

'I hated Balder's death though. Before I read that one, I really liked Loki. He was… witty. Amusing. And then he turned out to be a murderer…' Hermione sighed and scribbled for a minute. 'Have you read any of the Norse myths?'

Silence.

Hermione began to feel desperate. He couldn't keep silence forever, stone-grey eyes fixed, unmoving, to white parchment. He seemed to hate her, yet he had to have a reason for protecting her all those years, for trying to keep her safe. So why did he refuse to at least speak to her?

She looked at him, closed her eyes. Please, please, please just say something Malfoy, let me know you can be reached, you'll speak to me…

'What did you think about the death of Balder? Tell me that much,' she said, unable to keep a note of pleading from her voice.

To her amazement, Draco's stiff shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch, and though he didn't move his eyes from the parchment, he spoke – actually spoke. 'I thought Frigg was an idiot. She got everything in the world to promise not to harm Balder and, not only did she neglect to ask the mistletoe, she told the first mad old woman who came wandering along that she hadn't asked it.'

His voice was bitter, he hadn't even looked at her, but he'd spoken, he'd responded, and Hermione couldn't help but grin. 'I thought that too,' she said.

Draco had thought he'd hated her as much as it was possible to hate; a hate born as a child and brewed to bitterness as he grew older, simmered slowly through his veins, his skin, his eyes, his bones, his heart, until every particle of his being was burnt black by hatred for her, raw and bloody and ready to kill.

He'd been wrong.

Because now, after a week forced to spend time with her, a week as an outcast because of her, a week spent talking to her and laughing with her and acting civilly to her, he hated Hermione even more.

He didn't want to act civilly to Granger, he didn't even want to speak to her. Ideally, in his most beautiful of dreams and wished-for of desires, there was a dagger and a wand and blood and screaming…

He couldn't do that. He had to protect her, and the word was filthy to his tongue.

It was night. Usually, he'd have gone to the library and studied, Granger-free, until he was certain the Slytherin common room would be empty, then stolen in late to what had been his home and sanctuary, to which he was now a pariah.

Because of her.

But tonight he had Prefect duties, patrolling the halls and ensuring no student was breaking the rules, and the Mudblood bitch had arranged it so he was forced to patrol with her. She walked beside him now in the moonlight, looking like some filthy creature that had crawled out of the slime in the bottom of a cauldron, and he felt almost sick to look at her.

'So Dean was saying that apparently one in ten people has a third nipple-' Hermione gave a little snort of laughter, 'and of course there were ten of us at the table. So Seamus said, 'Alright, own up, whoever has a third nipple stand up now,' –and then Ron hadn't been listening, you see, and he stood up to go…' Hermione dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Draco laughed too, a false laugh because she would be upset if he didn't, but though outwardly he was amused, inwardly the hatred burnt away. Even her laugh was repulsive, an ugly sound to his ears, coarser than a donkey's braw and more irritating than nails on a chalkboard. Her very voice grated on his nerves like a discordant song played on a scratchy, out-of-tune violin. And why did she annoy him with such petty, ignorant, stupid little stories?

He had to speak. He could feel her waiting for it, the pressure from inside his own self that told her she would be hurt, embarrassed, if he didn't speak, that compelled him to say something…

'Silly. He should have been paying attention,' he said, with a smile and a shake of the head. What the filthy Mudblood wanted: what wouldn't hurt her. She beamed, and he hated her smile.

'Ron's like that,' she said, 'Silly sometimes. He's a really good friend, though.' Her eyes flickered towards him, hesitant. 'What about your friends?'

She gave him a soft sort of smile, and he wondered how fast it would turn to a gasp of horror if he put his hands round her disgusting neck and squeezed, how her eyes would turn from gentle warmth to horror to desperation and at last to the glaze of sweet death…

He shrugged. She would be hurt if he lied to her, so, 'I don't really speak to any of my old friends any more.'

Sympathy, and he wanted to claw her to ribbons for it and leave her bleeding heart lying in… 'Why?' Hermione asked. 'Did you argue with them, or…'

The curse didn't require him to answer, but always it pressed on him, be civil, be kind, laugh when she needs you to. What he would do without that curse…

'Is it…' Realisation crossed her face. 'Because they found out you were helping me?'

He didn't reply at first, cursing her, yes it is, filthy, disgusting, all your fault, all because of you and this curse and claw tear rip shred blood skin flesh bone pain screams…

'Is it?' she asked, softly but with a pleading note to her tone, tell me Draco, and the loathsome curse pressed on him and forced the words to his mouth lest he hurt her with his silence.

'Yes, it was. Don't blame yourself. None of it was your fault,' he said firmly, because she was already looking guilty and he couldn't let her be hurt however much he desired it, and she bit her lip and looked up at him and he wanted a dagger to tear through lip and cheek and jaw…

'I'm sorry. Really,' she was saying. 'I don't want… I mean, I wish they didn't know, that you could still be friends with them. Will they ever forgive you?'

Never, but she didn't want to hear that, however much he wanted to scream at her and tear her apart with his bare hands, look what you did to me, you made them all hate me, you made me a traitor and an outcast and look at your blood on my hands in my hair…

'Eventually,' he said with a soft smile, 'None of it was your fault. Don't talk to me about them, they're foolish idiots who judge people on their alliances and friends and enemies as if that were all that mattered. Talk to me of something else, Hermione.'

They walked on through the endless prison of the night, Draco smiling and talking and laughing, hating and loathing and wishing for the sweet music of her screams as he drowned her in her own blood.

A/N: You may have noticed this already, but Draco's a little… er… nuts. In fact, to quote my dear Delta and Weasley twin,

Wow. Draco is so psycho. P-S-Y-C-H-O. PSYCHO. Mental. Insane. Several knuts short of a sickle. Several galleons short of a bank. Many bristles short of a broom. Freaky. Whacked out. So far over the 'Insane' line that he couldn't see it with Omnioculars. Mental.

Will things get any better for our poor Draco? Can they get any worse? Well… you'll have to wait and see, won't you?

I'd also like to note that the line about stabbing his quill through the tendons in Hermone's hands was inspired by a Maths lesson when a decidedly insane friend was stapling the back of her hand and hit a tendon. I, of course, moved so far away from the madwoman I ended up in the aisle... The briefly-mentioned Louise is a nod to my wonderful Delta and friend of that name, and my invented name for the Runes teacher - Professor Aett - comes from runic terminology: an 'aett' is a 'family' or group of runes in the Elder Futhark, the most common runic alphabet. Hermione's 'third nipple' incident is also from real life: it happened one lunchtime at my school, which me in the unfortunate part that Ron played...

And of course, there's still another week's worth of story to go. While you're waiting, review! For every review, Draco gets two hours away from Hermione. How can you refuse that poor, tortured boy?

Review!