Another nightmare awoke Draco from his slumber that night, except this time it wasnt some horrific version of a fairytale his mind conjured to torment him, nor was it the memory of watching the death of his parents. No, this time his mind had presented him with something he had fought tirelessly since the night it had happened to lock deep within the recesses of his mind.
Chestnut curls escaping from a hair tie, matted with blood and vomit.
Firewhisky eyes searching, pleading for someone to intervene.
"Please Draco, we were classmates, please help me"
The smell of urine as control of the bodily functions are lost.
"Please, I don't know anything, I swear."
The sounds of bones popping and cracking as her body twists and turns into unnatural angles trying to escape the pain.
"It's just a fake, please believe me."
Blood, so much blood as the words "mudblood" and "whore" are carved into skin.
Screams that shake the entire manor, from the roof, right down into its foundation.
A cowardly boy with grey eyes and white blonde hair, too afraid to help, no matter how much he wants to.
Sobbing while his mother begs him to occlude, lest he be next.
He knows the pain of the cruciatus as intimately as a lover. His aunt's favourite practice target being her darling nephew should he not meet her expectations, and he never does.
That knife she is carving into Grangers skin he knows all too well, the evidence of the lines, "I must do better" and "I must not disappoint the dark lord" carved into his own legs by his own hand, another punishment his dear aunt is fond of, forcing him to self mutilate with a cursed blade he knows the scars from will never heal.
He knows the agony, can feel it crawling across his skin more and more personally with every blood gurgled scream coming from Grangers mouth, yet he is frozen with his back turned, so cowardly he can not even as much as look at her while she suffers in his family home, by hand of his family.
All he can think is better her than me and he immediately recognises the cruelty in this thought, but he can not seem to find the lie in it.
He dragged himself from his sweat soaked bed once again, pulling on his bottoms and making his way towards his bedroom door to head out towards the balcony for some air and a still measure of firewhisky. He wonders if seeing him today has spurred the memory of that night for her as well, if she is currently padding outside wherever she is located to try and gulp down fresh, cool air to steady her breathing. He always knew she was a force to be reckoned with when it came to her magic, the brainless duo would have been dead after first year if not for her intelligence and her talent with magic, which of course had annoyed Draco to no end, given that she was supposed to be inferior to him because of her blood.
She had always been formidable but he always remembered her as kind and forgiving (well from what he had observed over their years as classmates). It seemed the war had taken that part of her away and created something much, much different. She had evolved with her inability to use magic and had instead turned her body into a weapon.
Bellatrix had played with her mind, taking her parents as she did. Played with her body, permanently reminding her of her blood status with the unremovable scars marred into her skin. His aunt had tried to break her in any way she could and instead of giving up she had adapted.
He wonders if Bellatrix had any inclination of the monster she has created. If there is anybody that can be the undoing of the dark lord's reign of terror it was Hermione Granger, and it seems that his aunts torment and games have given Granger all the explosive material she needs to craft a ticking time bomb that was sure to take as many of of the Dark Lord's army down with it when it finally blew.
He recognised the look he had seen in her eyes, the look that also existed in Longbottoms. Neither of them intended to make it out of this war alive and they were going to make damn sure that they took down every single last person they could when it came down to judgement day.
Draco was mused from his thoughts by a faint light coming from the direction of the sofa and the insanity inducing beeping every couple of seconds that he was sure would have driven him mad by now, had he not already lost his mind to anger and revenge.
"For fuck sake Theo! Will you put that stupid fucking game down?! I swear to Salazar that sound will hunt me even in death."
Theo didn't even glance up at him as he continued with his game.
"Do you really think they will have snake in the afterlife? Honestly i don't know how muggles ever get anything done when they have this available to them on these mobile communication things. How do they not just spend all their time trying to beat their high score? Which, in case you were interested, I have done no less than two times tonight."
The worst thing he had ever done was to allow Theo to play around with the phone box thing that Severus had given him to communicate. He had always been so eager to explore things and find out how they worked. In another life, one not plagued by war and commands from a megalomaniac, Theo would have made a great Unspeakable. Maybe after the war was over he would have that opportunity.
The most likely outcome would be that they all died horrible, painful deaths, but Draco couldn't help but hope for more for his friends, for a somewhat normal life for them once the Dark Lord was gone. The only problem was how he knew they would follow him anywhere, as would he for them and in this life the only place he was heading was towards a certain death. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing and punching Theo's legs off the sofs to make room to sit.
"Give it here so I can show you how much more superior I am at this than you."
Hermione gazed up at the sky picking out each constellation that was visible as she tried to get her breathing under control. Nightmares were not new to her. In fact she regularly re-lived everything that had transpired since the start of the war. It had, however, been a very long time since she had to relive that particular night.
Her nightmares normally just fuelled her anger further, reminding her of everything she had lost and all the reasons she needed to fulfill her quest for revenge. She awoke from these with an intense urge to hurt those who had wronged her, to watch the life leave the eyes of her enemies. Strangely they made her feel stronger and her drive to kill was more fierce than ever, her entire body vibrating with energy.
The memory of being tortured in Malfoy Manor left her feeling the complete opposite. Reliving the most degrading, humiliating and weakest moment she had ever experienced in her entire life. She hated these emotions, any emotion that wasn't anger in general was to be completely avoided in her opinion. The reminder of this night made her feel more human than she could tolerate these days, preferring to shut everything she felt out completely.
She knew running from emotions was not healthy and had she been a normal person living a normal mundane life she may have been afforded the opportunity to work through the abnormally high intensity for which she had always felt every emotion.
When she felt happy, it was pure euphoric bliss.
Sadness was like completely debilitating anguish.
When she loved, she loved with every single molecule of her being.
Anger had always felt like total uncontrollable rage,this being the one useful emotion she had in her current position.
And grief was the worst of all. It festered into every part of her, every molecule, every cell that made her up. It tore her apart so much that she simultaneously wanted to die, whilst also wanting to exist in a state of constant torture, because of course no matter the cause, she always found a way to pin it somewhat on herself.
When she was ten, her aunt on her mother's side had passed away after an ongoing battle with alcoholism. Logically, she knew there was nothing that could be done, especially at her young age, if her aunt had not wanted to be helped, and no way she could have made any difference to the outcome, but the intrusive thoughts came anyway. What if she had tried to understand her aunt's problem more? What if she had been more lovable? Would her aunt have wanted to quit then? Maybe if she had been smarter she could have figured out a way to overcome addiction for her aunt. Maybe if she had insisted she and her parents had paid a visit that weekend they could have gotten her help in time? The whats if, buts and maybes had driven her into such emotional overload her brain had shut off her emotions and sent her into a state of dissociation, and her parents had to seek medical intervention to bring her out of it.
In a normal life, had she not been a witch, perhaps she could have overcome her issues with emotional instability and found healthier ways to manage. But she wasn't a normal person and the life she was living was far from mundane. Allowing her emotions to control her would get her and the others around her killed if she let them and she often thought to herself if she had shut them off and focused fully on the rage inside sooner, would the outcome have been different? Had she been more cruel and loved less would she have been able to steer Harry in a different, more ruthless version of himself? She supposed she would never find that out now he was dead.
Shutting out her grief had been a way to stop herself from becoming a shell of a person from the soul shattering pain of it all, but really was this sanguinary version running on rage and bitterness any better? She supposed at least she could function as this version of herself and maybe make some difference in this god damned never ending war. Yes, this version was much more preferrable which was why she shut memories such as the one of her torture at the hands of Bellatrix out completly.
Her mind forcing her to relive it had stirred feelings she had worked too hard to block out and she would be damned if she allowed a silly nightmare to push her to feel again. Obviously seeing Malfoy again had cracked a brick in the wall she had erected in her mind, allowing a slither of her old self to seep through. She closed her eyes and concentrated on pushing everything back in and sealing the gap of the fracture.
She took a deep breath and reopened her eyes feeling her control returning once again. She lit a cigarette and allowed the smoke to fill her lungs as she considered how working with the slytherins was going to affect her in the future, particularly Malfoy. Severus was right that it made sense for them to work together, at least from a strategic point of view.
She took another long drawl of her cigarette, noticing it burned her lips slightly as she took a drag and looked down to see it was down to the butt. Flicking it from her she resolved to have a proper conversation with the others tomorrow to decide their best course of action going forward ,and to ensure that she spent more time on her occlumency if they teamed up with the slytherins to ensure she wouldn't have a moment of weakness like this again.