Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (only 1 ch)

The room was whitewashed, sterile. After three years hidden away in Lucius Malfoy's clandestine priest-hole—a suffocating stone room tunneled under the hearth of his fireplace—the stark white was nearly anesthetic. Her mind, splintered into mere slivers of what it had once been, ached with exhaustion and fragility.

Alone in the room, the silence began to close in on her from every direction, pressing into every inch of her being with all of the force of a vice. From her hideaway, she'd listened day in and day out to the Malfoy family and their servants' hustle and bustle. She'd been forced to hear as her love wept countless hours over her falsified departure; as he began to heal and laugh once more; as he made love and proposed to Astoria Greengrass.

As Lucius took and stole and devoured Hermione each night, Hermione closed her eyes and imagined it to be Draco. But it was all wrong; everything had been so wrong. His touches weren't the soft caresses of Draco's fingers over her skin. His breath didn't carry the pleasant cool of Draco's spearmint candies. The body rutting over her wasn't the trim and agile frame Draco had trained so adamantly for.

Lucius Malfoy was a monster.

Hermione picked at the tender skin alongside her thumbnail, drawing blood as she peeled back a hangnail. The blood rushed behind her ears creating a melancholic buzz as though an infestation of bees lived just behind her eardrums. Every beat of her heart brought a throb to her eyes, swollen in their sockets from prolonged years of sleep deprivation.

The door knob rattled, the metal clicking as it stuck and had to be forcefully jiggled a few times to relent. The sound was reminiscent of the iron latch that Lucius pulled to disappear beneath the Manor. Saliva began to build in Hermione's mouth as she fought the urge to vomit. As she clenched her eyes closed she could smell the musty earth of the room, taste the damp air in her mouth.

The door swung open and Harry stood in the doorway, blocking another figure to no avail. Hermione could see the undeniable swath of cornsilk hair, hear the agitated timbre in the bass of his voice as he ordered Harry out of the way. "Don't...don't overwhelm her, Malfoy," Harry muttered, shooting Hermione a guilty look. "He wouldn't take no for an answer. He nearly got himself locked in Azkaban."

Hermione gave a single nod and Harry moved out of the way, revealing Draco at last. Her heart should have skipped a beat, her hands should have reached out for him, her long-dormant magic should have caressed his. Instead, Hermione simply stared blankly at him, eyeing him as the gaze of wounded prey would trace a stalking predator.

He took one step in before he came to an abrupt halt just inside the door. Harry moved to close the door after him, sympathy painting his features. Draco stood where he was, his eyes roving over her hunched body, taking in every scratch, every inhuman angle of her skeleton, every violet and yellowing bruise.

A sob, guttural and grotesque, tore from Draco's chest, the sound of it nearly deafening after the silence of the room and gentle buzzing in her head. He still hadn't moved his feet a single step closer, unable to as his legs quaked under his weight. Giving in to weakness, Draco dropped to his knees, tenting his hands over his nose and mouth, his glassy eyes staring at her over his fingertips.

His breaths were ragged as he fought to steady them, his hands shaking uncontrollably as he drew them away from his face. "I had no idea. You were there the whole time and I never knew." His voice broke on the last word, anguish and grief overtaking him.

Hermione knew what he was saying was the truth—Lucius had forced her to pen a letter of farewell to Draco on the eve of their wedding—but she couldn't help feeling an uneasy bitterness toward the man she'd once called her soulmate.

Lucius was his father, after all. It had been in his home where she was stowed away. It was he who should have saved her from this evil.

Draco, unable to stand, crawled on his knees toward her, crossing the room slowly. Her gaze followed his jarring movements and when he stopped at her feet and took hold of her hands between his two trembling ones, she closed her eyes to him. She didn't want him to see into their depths, past the dullness that had settled there and into the fractured remnants of her soul beyond.

His forehead dropped to her hands, his hair tickling over her wrists and his tears splashing over her knees as he begged for forgiveness, for understanding, for her to say something—anything. She felt his head lift from her knee and she opened her eyes, aching to feel something beyond the severed connection they'd once shared.

Looking up at her, Draco lifted his palm to touch her face, gingerly swiping her hair away to run a thumb over her cheek. All the burdens of Atlas showed through his gaze, the weight of his father's sins smothering the fiery anger that burned there. His stare softened and he searched her face uncertainly, touching her with all of the care used in handling a newborn.

"I'm glad you killed him," he told her, his voice rife with conviction. "I would have done it myself, if I'd had any inkling or heard a whisper in the walls. I don't even know what to say to you—"

Hermione lifted her hand, placing a single finger over his lips. Her own emotions warred upon hearing the despair literally choking him. No tears fell from her eyes, no words from her lips.

She simply dipped her head and placed it on his shoulder, allowing his arms to wrap around her in a crushing embrace.