Salt in your wounds

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry potter or anything else in this blastered Fic except the plot line.

CHAPTER

Only statues

The days kept passing, not a word was spoken between Hermione and Draco since their fight. When they saw each other Hermione would look away, not wanting to see the only person that possibly understood how she felt inside, dead and alone. Draco would continue walking, not glancing at her or her two comrades who were often with her, talking about nothing in particular.

At night Hermione would sit in her new room rocking back and forth as she listened to the dark melodies that emitted themselves out of her CD player. She would sing quietly in no more then a whisper as she stared sadly out the window.

Draco would sit alone in the Slytherin common room, watching the fire crack as he drew in a worn out notebook. He didn't find the same release in it as he usually did, he would often find himself drawing the tear stained face of a girl who once had frizzy, mouse-brown hair but now was in tight ringlets cascading down her back, coloured in the blackest black.

Often when he realised who he was drawing he would rip the page out and throw it into the fire watching as it burned other times he would sit and look at it thinking about the times when she would smile and laugh with her friends on the other side of the Great Hall.

'Hw dare she call me that, how could anybody think that it's just a name, its more then a name, it was my being, it was who I was, I was a Malfoy and Malfoy's live by particular rules. 'Malfoy' isn't just a name, it's a race of being, uncaring and heartless, a being that would do anything that got them what they wanted. How could anybody call me by that?' He thought bitterly to himself as he looked at her from across the Great Hall, she didn't try and hide her pain like she did at the start of the year, she sat sullenly at the table staring down at her plate, often not eating. She wouldn't laugh when her friends did stupid things or tell a joke, the most she would do was force a small smile onto her face, but it never lit up her eyes. 'She's slowly turning into me, emotionless, senseless, dead to the world' he looked at her again and caught her looking back at him; she looked away before he had a chance to react. 'And what's worst is nobody will notice, just like they didn't notice me. Our deaths will be recognised, but not cared about. To the world...' he looked at her again and saw her flinch openly to a hug from Ron as he and Harry ran off towards the door. 'To the world we are only statues.'

Never had life been hard before, 'Take the blows, they'll make you a man.' 'Don't speak unless spoken to.' 'Don't say a word of your scars.' 'Don't tell a soul about what you've seen.' That's all Draco's life had been, full of rules and lies and beatings. He had taken out his anger by having sex, never caring who the girl was, they were all willing, that how he got the name "Sex god of Hogwarts", he didn't care for the girl, often he wouldn't even know their name.

He had wished since he was younger that it was all a dream, and that some day he would wake up and be in a nice cosy house with a mum and dad that loved him. That dream had died the night he had apperated away from his beating.

Before he had found Natasha and Tommy he had hated existence, hated all the pain, hated all the things that he didn't have, he hated the happiness that other people had and didn't even know. After he had found them, their images would haunt him in his sleep. He remembered how he held Natasha's body close to his own willing her to come back to him, he sat with her for an hour before retrieving Tommy's body from where he hung, rocking him backwards and forwards singing a soft lullaby as though he was only asleep before lying him down onto his crib and leaving both of the people he had loved most in the world alone in the cold house.

Draco shuddered at the memory of their lifeless bodies hanging in his arms, 'None of them would ever understand.' He thought before exiting the Great Hall and heading up to the astronomy tower to escape his last couple of classes.

Hermione watched as Draco left the hall, he spared her a glance as he left. She wanted to reach out to him and tell him she was sorry for the way she acted and that she hadn't been angry at him, but at the two people who thought knew her. They weren't even close, they didn't notice her tear strained face when they woke her in the common room at one the other night, they didn't notice her pain that she tried to hide. Draco was the only one that saw her panic, saw her reach out and trace his scars.

'Why the hell should you bother living if all you can do is lie to your friends and hurt the person who already hurts and yet understands you?' she shook her head slowly as she herself raised from her seat and exited the hall. 'Why the hell should I continue to feel guilty for not missing the people who you barely knew after their death? Maybe that's the reason why I wake from my dreams of reliving my rape, and am constantly reminded of it every time I see my body in the mirror; because its my parents fault that it happened. If they had taken the time to make plans for me if by chance they died then I wouldn't have been sent to that place.' These thought brought a wave of guilt with them, 'its not their fault, I cant blame anyone except him.' she thought silently of the girls she left to endure it, she hadn't been able to take them all. Each time she thought of the girls she had seen bruised and scared and bleeding from after their turns tears would well up in her eyes, but they would never fall, she refused to let them fall. She thought of the story the girls had told her about a girl who had died after he had gotten annoyed by her and had beat her in the head repeatedly until she lost consciousness, but even then it had been to late and she was already dead. She shuddered as she remembered the looks on the older girl's faces as they remembered the screams that had emitted from the closed door.

Her feet led her down a corridor that headed towards the astronomy tower, the tallest tower that the castle possessed. It faced towards the hills; below you was a sheer drop on to overgrown grass. People barely went to that side of the castle grounds.

As she reached the top of the stairs she breathed in the crisp air, and closed her eyes as she headed towards the edge, she opened her eyes and smiled a true smile at the view; slowly she stood up onto the hard stones. She let the wind rock her body in a rhythmic motion and finally became aware of the other person who stood looking out at the view. Draco stood half concealed by shadow staring at the far-off mountains.

He looked up at her pondering whether to let her stay there, he himself had stood up there for a while when he had first come up pondering the very same thing she now thought about.

"What would happen if I jump?" she asked him not looking away from the sky. She heard him sigh softly before replying

"Your death would make people wonder, make them wonder what made the perfect Gryffindor head girl jump," he said slowly.

"I'm not perfect" she stated absently as if she had said she liked cream better then custard.

"I know your not, you told me yourself, but others aren't as observant as I am, they see your life as all colours and rainbows, your best friends with potter, he's so fucking loyal and trustworthy, they don't even notice that you've stopped smiling, they don't notice that the 'golden girl' of Gryffindor doesn't laugh with their hero.

The other possibility is that potter wont believe his 'golden girl' would do that to herself, since he doesn't seem to notice the fact that your barely eat, and you seem not to sleep that much. Then he would become possessed trying to find the person that had forced you to jump, he'd insist that someone put you under the imperious curse to get to him" he sighed softly again.

"How long would it take them to find me?" Hermione asked quietly after a moment of silence, Draco looked up at her again; no smile was evident of his pale face.

"As long as it takes for them to notice your absence" she nodded slowly before saying no louder then a whisper

"Give it a day, maybe two" she looked down at Draco who nodded slowly closing his eyes.

"To jump from the tallest tower to escape the evil that dwells in the world, seems like something that you'd read in a fairytale, sick and twisted like they are." Draco let out an airy laugh that held no emotion. Hermione looked down at the mountains in the horizon.

"What would you do if I jump?" she asked quietly looking at him again with nothing in her eyes. Draco let out a sigh and looked down at the ground below the tower.

"I'd join you in the sky" he said finally looking back up at her, she nodded slowly but didn't get off the ledge.

"I used to wish for knowledge, I used to thirst for it, want the very thing in my blood. I don't know why I stopped that need, I don't know how I got over the addiction of finding out more" she said absently. Draco sat down on the edge letting his legs hang over the side.

"Maybe you realised that knowledge is the thing that kills us softly from inside. Knowledge can be an amazing thing at the beginning, but then you realise that to gain more of it, you have to experience what they speak of, numbers and theories are all well and good, but that's all they'll ever be, you have to experience to gain the true knowledge." Draco paused and leaned far over the edge. "And sometimes the experience is not good, the things it does to your mind and your body, the way it can treats you, treating you like a piece of filth, like you are nothing. Soon you begin to fear the thing that you had seeked for all that time." He leaned back and looked at Hermione who was staring at the sky contemplating his words; she nodded slowly and sat down on the edge next to him.

"Why is it that no one sees?" Hermione asked after staring at the ground beneath them for a couple of minutes, not once did draco move from his position, staring out past the hills.

"because they don't want to, they don't want their perfect lives destroyed by the truth, that's why people fear evil, evil is all the things people banish from their lives, all the things they ignored all the peoples pain that passed them by, its all in there, all in evil. They don't want to see it so they pretend it isn't there" Hermione nodded and leaned her head onto Draco's chest; she didn't flinch or shy away when he lifted his arm around her shoulders instead of being immediately bombarded with images of her painful past she felt comforted and safe.

If a passer on the ground would look up they would see two bodies sitting on the edge of a tower, and would think absently that it is a couple in love. How far from the truth.

But if someone was to pass by, on a broom or in a plane, they would see two sad looking teenagers dressed in black sitting on the edge of the tallest tower not bothered by the wind that lapped at their bodies, neither smiled or spoke, letting their thoughts take control, seeming to fill the air around them with a feeling of pain and regret..

A/N there the latest chapter!

Thanks to my proof reader- lost in his eyes

And also thanks to my reviewers

TearsoftheInnocents

dramaqueen72

potts()- I answer with no not a yes and no not a no.

someone()

firehottie

damned for eternity

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