Wordlessly, they returned to the castle. Wordless; without words, but that was not quite true. They existed, scuttling within the coils of her mind, slipping between the cracks; a sieve, that was what her mind had become. Soft and full of holes, weak, with nothing to stimulate it. She used to know plenty of words: somnolence, jaspideous, dealate; an insect divested of its wings.
The castle's shadow leached warmth from the air, summer breezes dashing themselves to pieces on the heartless stone. She hugged herself, feeling, finally, the icy sting of the lake in her damp hair, on her skin. A heavy, dark green cloak fell around her shoulders, smelling of meadowsweet and something else, deep and familiar, like the woods she explored as a girl, a tree stump already fresh with new life, a scent she could smell on her tongue.
Malfoy walked beside and slightly behind her. Say something, she begged him, silently. A prayer in vain. Her arm smarted, scratching against the bandage. Already scabbing over.
They would go up to the castle and…
She could not envision it. Would they pretend as though nothing had happened?
What was supposed to have happened?
It was the longest conversation she had ever had with someone who was not Crookshanks.
Dinner would be a dour affair, held in the cavernous Great Hall, the vaulted ceiling a gaping maw poised to snap her up. Please, do. She would keep her eyes on her plate. The air would smell of indulgent, untouched food; underlying it, notes of moist flesh and fear, a bitter tang.
Lord Voldemort's courtiers feared him. And why shouldn't they? His voice, whisper-soft, but threaded with such malice it was nigh impossible to prevent one's bowels from turning liquid when he spoke.
Someone may try to speak to her and Lord Voldemort would answer in her place.
This conversation is not for you, he would say without having to use words. Sit there, look pretty, and smile while the real people talk.
Reduced to a plaything, an ornament. Stay quiet and look witless, she would tell herself. Smile, vacantly, and nod. She would smile, vacantly, and nod like she always did, and they would all soon learn to ignore her.
Maybe it was better that way. To see but not be seen, flitting on the periphery, fading into the stones—its own sort of freedom. She felt rather than saw Malfoy's helmet move, facing her, eyes on the back of her neck. Burning; she felt that look.
He saw her.
She turned her face to him but nausea surged through her gut with enough force she stumbled, catching herself on the castle steps, cloak sliding to the ground. She sucked in air through her aching throat, bringing the sickness to a rolling boil. It pounded in her stomach like a second heartbeat.
A heartbeat. For one horrible moment, she felt it, bright and clear and pure, a seed of light inside her, trembling like a dying flame.
Harsh cackling pelted against her shaking back. She lifted her head to find a sneering face framed by wild, wiry black hair. A dark lion, a true witch. Where there had been a quivering candle in her belly, there was nothing. Bellatrix watched the realisation creep into her eyes and loosed another crazed roar of laughter.
I'll kill you. Hermione struck out, fingers like claws poised to attack, rip, tear, but dark tendrils curled around her hand and twisted, a sickening crack. A short, piercing scream; her own, but she didn't feel it in her throat. Pain was distant and insubstantial as morning mist.
Heaving waves of magic battered against her ribcage, seismic in their intensity but with nowhere to go, nothing to do but consume her. Faintness rose like a tidal wave and she slumped to the side.
Malfoy, sword raised, sprinting. Her stomach twisted, a silent scream tearing through her lungs. No blade could contend with magic. He would die.
He would die.
No, no…
Darkness pressed in on her. Crawling forwards, scraped knees, scuffed palms, blistering agony. Blood on her legs. A scarlet stain blooming on her white dress, between her thighs. Reaching for him, shards of bone crunching in her ruined hand.
Him, pinned to the stone by great pillars of twisting dark. She breathed in, out, glass fractals in her throat. Tried to yell a warning; Bellatrix's arm swept down—
And caught on the air.
"If you attack my son again, I shall ensure that it is the last thing you ever do, sister or no."
White-blonde hair, an emerald green dress whipping about the woman's ankles in an unnatural wind. She clenched her fist and Bellatrix staggered to her knees as though forced there by invisible hands.
"Take Her Ladyship to the tower room," she said to Malfoy. "The Dark Lord approaches."
Bellatrix whimpered.
Hermione's fingers twitched. She listened to it all as though drowning again. Floating in a deep, deep lake, water above and below, smothering light and sound. Drifting down to jagged rocks.
She'd lost her baby three days ago. Much to lay bare in that thought: her baby; she'd had a child blossoming inside of her, now lost. Extinguished.
Thank Godric for small mercies, said her head. Not so her heart; it cracked, hot lava pouring forth and solidifying, volcanic glass in her chest, again and again until she was hard and brittle and sawlike inside.
She wanted to hit something. Unleash her magic and lay waste to the whole damned castle, crushing them all, and herself, under the rubble. She searched for the power in her core and felt it glistening beneath her sternum, a small golden kernel. Out of reach, always just out of reach, so close she could skim her fingertips against the edge but never latch on.
The tower room was cold—even in the height of summer—with thin, stale air. Gauzy curtains around the bed swayed, stirred by draughts seeping through fissures in the window frame. Empty shelves along the walls. A washbasin. A changing screen, once colourful but now faded, depicting a man and woman in a coiled, Hellenistic embrace, pomegranates and cornucopias around the edges.
She imagined raking her fingers through the curtains, rending them like fragile cobwebs, tipping the shelves, shattering the basin, blood-stained ceramics in a halo around her feet.
What's to stop me?
She flexed her bandaged fingers—or tried to; the bones had been set and splinted, wrapped tightly enough she could barely move them. No pain; the healer's tinctures saw to that.
"Your hand will be healed in a month or so, My Lady." The healer moved behind her; musical chiming, glass against glass, fabric whispering into leather. He cleared his throat. "After a few days of bed rest, you'll be ready to conceive again."
She wanted to hit something; why not let it be him? Instead, she breathed, agitating the sheer lace bordering the windows.
Beneath, the castle's angled roofs rose and fell like hills, limned with honeyed morning light, contrasted by the bruise-dark storm brewing on the horizon. It would be here by nightfall.
"What happened to Bellatrix?"
"I'm surprised you cannot feel it from here, My Lady."
The bitter character of the tea still coated her tongue. She was insensate, torpid, incapable of feeling anything beyond the harsh grating in her breast. She skimmed a finger along the window ledge and rubbed the dust with her thumb. Silken, vaguely chalky.
Sense oozed back into her once she opened herself to it. First, the crack of distant thunder tumbling through her nerves. Then the vibration through the soles of her feet, raw power shuddering up through the castle's belly, carrying with it the howling echo of an inhuman shriek.
She smiled, lips peeling back from her teeth. "I can feel it, now."
What had she become? A withered, twisted, spiteful little creature, something within her so irreparably broken that frissons of delight ran through her at the long, high-pitched wail reverberating between the stones and within the confines of her skull.
Vicious loathing soared through her gut. "Leave me."
She stayed by the window long after the healer had left, pinching at her decolletage until it went numb, heat prickling behind her eyelids, but she was so very sick of weeping. What good were her tears but to make her pillow wet?
Soft rustling at the door made her turn, and only then did she realise that day had given way to dusk and long shadows fell across the room like cage bars. She approached the door; the wood was cool against her forehead.
"Is it you?"
A beat of quiet. Which did she dread more: the echo or the answer?
"It's me."
Stone limbs dragged her to the floor, wisps of pale fabric fanning about her legs. She leaned her head back and let her voice drift through the keyhole.
"I don't even know your name."
Nor did she expect to ever know. Shadows inched over her bare toes, skimmed the hem of her nightgown, stalking with purpose; corrosive, these shadows, prone to leaving macerated, syrupy slops wherever they passed. Her gaze turned inwards, pitching into the soporific depths she had so feared but now found welcoming, a place to find forgotten pieces of herself.
The cut on her arm seared, hurling her from her mind and back into her body. Metal scraping against wood made her head snap up. Malfoy, sliding down the door; her obverse, her mirror.
A long, rattling sigh, then pregnant silence.
"Draco," he finally said.
Her breath hitched. Draco. Such power did a name hold, she felt already the red thread wefting, twining first around her wrist, then her breastbone, then his ribs, his fingers. The mirrored sphere wavered and she saw for a single heartbeat into his mind: shadows, silver serpents, blood-stained steel, her own face, glistening, blue-tinged lips.
A strangled grunt through the door, armour barking against stone; he staggered to his feet, she saw it all through his eyes. She blinked and the room shimmered sporadically into focus. She was on her feet, swaying.
"Don't do that again." His voice was low but hard, quavering.
The door, flat against her back, him on the other side, somehow burning her skin through the wood. A pink flush swept up her throat, her heart pattering impossibly fast.
"I'm sorry."
No response. He moved silently but she felt him leave, the red thread pulling taut, tugging at her sternum and the tender heart beneath.
She threw open the door at the same moment a thunderbolt quaked through the tower room. He turned, a hand on the pommel of his blade.
The silvery-black of his helm gleamed, reflecting muted lamplight and storm flashes. Tall, sombre, that blank metal face dangled her over the abyss again, one step from careening over the edge, no certainty that she would ever reach the bottom.
The moment stretched between them, voiceless and swollen. Another crash of thunder; she startled, pulse hammering in her throat, bare feet whispering over the stone towards him. Her hand stilled in the air, so close to his helmet that the cool nip of metal bled through her bandages.
Anxiety had a stranglehold on her stomach but she relished it, this powerful sensation after long stretches of a drugged, bottomless existence.
With the soft rasp of metal, she lifted his helmet. His eyes dipped to her, strained, the skin of his face cut from stone. Her eyes roved over him, his cheekbones, jaw, hairline. Mouth. Followed soon after by her fingertips, tracing him, committing every detail to memory.
To hold on to, in whatever moments she might need to disappear within herself.
Standing flush against her, he swept his palm across her cheek, smoothing hair behind her ear. Two heartbeats, galloping in concordance behind metal and bone.
She swallowed heavily and dove into the abyss.
Taking his hands, she walked backwards and kicked the door closed behind him.
Armour, shed as petals do, black marks on the stone in a breadcrumb trail. Cobweb curtains swaying, stirred by their air as they moved into the room, the backs of her thighs pressed against the bed, teetering; the precipice looming. Before she fell, she peeled off his gloves and pressed their palms together.
A tremor went through him. He closed his eyes, captured by an unnatural stillness, choked breaths ruffling her hair. She drew his hand to her lips, kissed his inner wrist; his eyes snapped open.
Enveloping her, he held her with a clockmaker's delicacy, leaning her back ever so carefully. The florid glow of the storm cast his face in light and shadow, reflecting in the silver and steel of his eyes.
It was as though she had known him forever. Known and would know. Her chest hollowed: breathtaking, breathless, her lungs without air.
Lips, dragged down her throat to where her flesh ended and the nightgown began, hands skimming down the fabric, dragging it up, cool air and flashing thunderlight on her bare thighs.
Meadowsweet. Leather and iron. The fresh, familiar, nameless scent curling on her tongue. With every sigh and gulp of air, she tasted him, drew him closer, sweet humming in her head blotting out the rain.
He hugged her against him, a fist curled in her hair, his mouth brushing her shoulder. She tugged at the laces of his gambeson until it opened for her, revealing pale skin crisscrossed with scars, warm and firm beneath her palm. Her ruined hand lay beside her head. Electricity skittered through her veins when his calloused thumb brushed the delicate skin of her inner wrist, fingers coiling around the bandages, intertwined, that small point of connection enough to make her belly heat.
The lightest brush over her stomach, waist, hip left her damp skin scored with his touch, feverish and glowing. She hoped he left marks. Sigils on her flesh, memento caritate. Not a dream, not a dream. Real, real, real her blood sang as she pushed his trousers down past his hips.
Her chest tightened. Quickly, quickly, they must be quick. To be caught like this would mean death, and she had never felt so alive. She clung to him, face buried in his neck, and canted her hips.
A nudge at her entrance; she stopped breathing. He pressed into her, wringing a shaky sigh that tumbled from her lips like water. He leaned forwards, pressing their foreheads together, rocking into her at the deep, rolling pace of the thunder.
Gasping breaths mingled in the hair's-breadth of space between their parted lips. Close enough to kiss, but he turned and buried his face in her hair. His low, ragged groans pulsed through her, running in spasmodic patterns from her ear to her aching core.
Her world had shrunk. There was only the feel of him and the crashing storm.
Nails digging into the bedding, silk and shadows, her hands skating over his sweat-slickened shoulders, gripping, urging. Toes curling, back arching, heels pressed deep into quivering haunches, heartstrings pulled tight and pluck, pluck, plucked, melodic between the lightning strikes.
Toppling over the edge of the abyss was sweeter than death. The ground soared to meet her and she shattered, head thrown back, the curtains lurching like snow flurries.
Draco stayed with her until her trembling eased and his harsh breaths slowed. He gathered his armour, naked flesh luminescent in the intermittent lightning, and left the tower room empty, cold, and laced with the fading scent of their lovemaking.
A/N: Big thank you to VulgarAssassin and amilyx over on the DoF Discord server for giving me some feedback on that last scene. I really appreciate it!
Credit:
"If you attack my son again, I shall ensure that it is the last thing you ever do." (Narcissa in The Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 6)
"The echo or the answer" (A magnet poem by shminsington on Twitter)
