Disclaimer: I can't think of anything to say. It's 2 in the morning, I just saw War of the Worlds, and there's a thunderstorm outside that sounds like the big tripod machines that kill everybody. I'm scared. My muses are scared, and are hiding under the bed. I think I might join them if the lightning doesn't stop flashing right outside my window.
A/N: This chapter got very intense very fast, and I had no idea it was going to happen. It had a mind of its own, I swear. I finished writing it and felt completely emotionally drained. I really debated about keeping it in, because even when I've let this story get more intense during the memory parts, I don't think it's gotten quite this dark. Also, I'm afraid that this memory makes Draco seem a lot more messed up than I originally intended. I'm wondering if we're going to have to do some serious psychological healing to get this boy to fall in love with Hermione, and that really wasn't in my game plan. Then I decided to post it anyway. I put a lot of emotional energy into this, and it seemed like a waste of all that if I didn't put it in. Also, this chapter came so easily and was so vivid in my mind, I'm taking it as a sign. Brace yourselves, and on to the chapter!
Chapter 7: A Tragic and Terrible Beauty
Hermione sat in silent contemplation for a long while, watching Malfoy finish his toast with an aristocratic elegance that rather annoyed her. She was still having trouble accepting the extraordinary piece of news that Malfoy had so nonchalantly revealed. She wasn't used to other people knowing more than she did, and she wasn't taking it as well as she might have hoped.
"Don't feel so dejected," Malfoy said suddenly, dabbing the corner of his mouth delicately with a napkin. His trademark smirk was firmly in place. "You are a sore loser, aren't you?" He was baiting her, and she knew it, just as she knew that he was getting immense enjoyment from provoking her and watching her reaction, but that didn't stop her from swelling with fury.
"I most certainly am not!" she exclaimed indignantly. "And I wasn't aware that we were competing, Malfoy." He laughed softly, but it was a cold laugh, and there was no humor in it. He leaned toward her, and his voice was deceptively soft. Only his eyes, which she had once thought to be icy and unreadable, belied the sneering arrogance and vindictive desire to hurt her which pulsed off of him and clouded her senses.
"And they say you're a clever witch. We're always competing, Granger." He leaned back, eyes so sharp and jagged-edged that they stung her. "And yet, no matter the outcome, I will always be a Malfoy, and you will always be a second-class Muggle-born excuse for a witch." His smirk turned somewhat sardonic. "How quaintly ironic that that just yesterday you were feeling sorry for me."
It had been a long time since she had allowed Malfoy's taunts and insults to cause her any real pain. She supposed the last two days had brought down her guard, because she suddenly found her eyes stinging with tears, long-buried self-doubt tearing at her heart. If she had not been swallowed up by painful feelings she thought she had left behind in her insecure childhood, she might have noticed the tremor of surprise, the foreign flash of guilt, that jolted through Malfoy, making his quicksilver eyes widen ever so slightly.
The worst thing Hermione could imagine in that moment was allowing Malfoy to see her cry. She stood quickly and began to walk away, but in her haste, she stumbled. Instinct made her snatch at the first thing she could reach to break her fall; in this case, Malfoy's shoulder. The world spun and whirled, and as she struggled for breath, she wished desperately that she'd just let herself hit the ground. She shut her eyes, telling herself over and over that, when she opened them, she would be in her own time, sprawled on the floor of the Great Hall and impossibly grateful to be exactly where she was.
When she opened her eyes, she felt despair, but not surprise, to find herself in a dark clearing, the air thick with wood smoke and the excited, whispering voices of several dozen restless people. The night sky above them was clouded and ominous, and the eyes of the black-robed and shifting crowd seemed to flash in the light of a fire she couldn't quite see. Apprehension, anticipation, and uneasiness tightened like snakes around her rapidly beating heart. Hermione did not want to know where she was, did not want to see this memory. Whatever Draco Malfoy had done in the woods in the middle of the night with a crowd of Death Eaters, she knew she could go the rest of her life without knowing what it was.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and started ever so slightly as she turned to look up at the owner of the offending hand. Lucius Malfoy looked down at his son with a proud smile that made Hermione's skin crawl and Draco's heart swell with pride.
"How much longer, Father?" Hermione asked in Draco's lazy drawl, still high-pitched and slightly whiny, as it had been when she first met him.
"Not long, Draco. You must be patient," Lucius said indulgently. Draco pouted, obviously unused to his desires not being met immediately. If Hermione had been in control of her eyes, she would have rolled them. She wondered if it was possible to be annoyed by oneself.
Hermione wandered over to a small pond and stared down at her reflection in the still water. Her face was Draco's face as she remembered it from their childhood, pale and pointed, with a perpetually unimpressed expression. She guessed his age in this memory to be no more than nine or ten. The night was balmy, though an uneasy breeze whistled through the trees, and she suspected that it was the summer before their first year at Hogwarts. She furrowed her brows, and knew Draco was trying to decide if his fear showed on his face. She realized with a pained heart that if he was frightened of whatever was to come, he absolutely terrified that his father would notice his fear and punish him for it.
The whispering, restless crowd suddenly began to buzz with excitement, and Hermione turned. They had formed a circle around something, and at the outer edge of the ring, Lucius's face glowed eerily in the darkness beneath his black hood. He held out a hand to his son, and Hermione went obediently, the reluctance in her heart completely unapparent in her calm strides. Lucius parted the crowd easily; Hermione might have imagined it, but she thought the people might be making way for him with something almost equivalent to reverence, or perhaps abject terror.
Hermione stopped as the last black-robed figure moved to the side, allowing her to see the reason for the Death Eaters' presence in the forest. A young woman was lying, magically bound, near the edge of a roaring bonfire. Her hair was very long, and a reddish blonde in the flickering firelight. Despite her battered appearance and her helpless position, her eyes were defiant and fierce, a stunning shade of sapphire blue. The Death Eaters were hissing at her, muttering furious obscenities and chilling threats. Hermione felt a tremble of foreboding as she looked down at the woman, who could not have been much more than a child herself. She almost jumped out of her skin when she felt Lucius's breath on her ear, his voice dark and hate-filled as he whispered to her.
"A filthy Mudblood bitch," Lucius hissed his son's young ear. Draco did not flinch at the obscenities, but Hermione was appalled and disgusted, and now more terrified than ever for the helpless girl on the ground before her. "They are spreading, Draco, like a deadly plague. They are a disease that slowly poisons our world. They taint it and twist it. Worse still, they use their crude cunning to poison our minds, and now we have begun to give to them freely all that our ancestors have spent centuries building for our use." Lucius's voice had reached an almost feverish pitch, and it dripped with a venomous hatred that chilled even the heart of his adoring son. "They would steal from you your rightful place as the future of the wizarding world. Now you will see what the servants of the Dark Lord are doing for you, Draco, you and the rest of our children. We will cleanse this world for you, make it yours. Do you not feel honored?"
Hermione nodded her head, but she realized that Draco was waging a terrible battle in his young heart. Ten years of Lucius's maniacal propaganda had made his mind believe, but his heart cried out that this was wrong, and cruel, and Hermione's heart broke for him. She barely noticed when Lucius stepped into the circle and a hush fell over the crowd. A burly man, his face hidden by his black hood, dragged the poor girl to her feet and released her bonds. She jerked herself away from him and stared Lucius Malfoy in the eye, her chin tilted defiantly.
"Bow, you insolent Mudblood!" Lucius roared, wringing appreciative cries from the crowd. The girl stared at him for a moment, and then spat at his feet. The Death Eaters shrieked with outrage, and then with delight, as Lucius pointed his wand and shouted "Crucio!" A single scream was torn from the girl's throat, and she doubled over in pain, but did not fall. Both Hermione's and Draco's hearts went out to her, the memory of being put under the same curse by the same man still fresh in their minds. Eventually, Lucius ended the curse, and seemed utterly outraged that the girl still stood, though her legs trembled weakly beneath her.
"Come here, Draco," Lucius said in a somewhat breathless voice. Hermione went forward on legs that trembled almost as much as the brave young witch's. Lucius turned Hermione to face the girl, who was just beginning to straighten up.
"Look at her," Lucius demanded, and Hermione had no choice but to do as he asked. Hermione -- or, rather, Draco -- was both fascinated and appalled by what was happening, and she watched, entranced, as the girl's huge eyes met hers. A single tear was trailing down her cheek, and her eyes were sad and resolute, but quite beyond fear. As if from far away, Lucius's voice drifted to Hermione's ears, and the hatred was gone from it, replaced by a kind of awe.
"Look at it's eyes," Lucius said, no small amount of wonder in his words. "No soul at all." Hermione did not agree, and neither did Draco, but before she could protest, Lucius and too many other Death Eaters to count screamed, "Avada Kedavra!" The dark night was alight with brilliant green, and Hermione was blinded for a moment. When her vision returned, the girl lay on the ground, her body unmarked, and her sapphire eyes staring up at Hermione. There was no soul in them now.
Hermione was too appalled to speak, to even move. The dead eyes of the pretty witch gazed up at her, accusingly, she thought. The tear was still on her cheek. Hermione could feel that Draco's mind was ready to rebel against its teachings when faced with the horror of the Death Eaters' actions, but just before that could happen, Lucius' poisonous voice was in her ear again, soft and reverent and strangely hypnotic.
"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, Draco?" he asked, and when Hermione looked into his cold eyes, she saw that he believed what he said. She looked back at the staring eyes of the dead girl, at the tear trailing down her cheek, and felt Draco's mind lose the battle.
"Beautiful," she heard herself echo. And in that moment, she realized, it was true. There was a tragic and terrible beauty in the girl's wide, empty eyes. They were so blank now. Hermione could feel that Draco was already beginning to doubt that they had ever been anything else.
The girl's tear finally fell to the dust beneath her cheek, and disappeared.
Hermione opened her eyes and found herself sprawled on the floor of the Great Hall. She didn't have to remind herself to let go of Malfoy this time; her grip became too weak to hold on, and her hand fell limply to the floor beside her.
She couldn't tell if the horror and shock that seemed to saturate the air around her had originated with her or with Malfoy; she suspected it was both. She could still see the lovely, staring eyes of the dead Muggle-born witch, and they seemed to transpose themselves over the pained, horrified eyes of a very alive Draco Malfoy. Sapphire and silver seemed to meld together, until Hermione couldn't bear to look anymore. She scrambled to her feet and all but fled the Great Hall. Draco didn't try to stop her.
A/N: I don't know about you guys, but I'm wiped out. That was some deep stuff I touched on there. And is it just me, or does Lucius in this story scare the living crap out of you? I've never had any undue hostility toward him before this; I wonder where this nasty characterization of him came from. He's one sick, crazy dude in this chapter, isn't he? No wonder Draco's so messed up.
Just so you know, it might be a little longer than usual before the next chapter's out. I don't have it written, and I'm not entirely sure how I want them to deal with the ultra-intense stuff that just happened. It still shouldn't be too long. For all I know, another chapter will grab hold of me and write itself, like this one did. Till then, review, review, review!