Chapter 10
Draco watches Hermione sleep, listens to her soft, even breathing, feeling the warmth of her exhalations against his shoulder. Her hand lies on his chest, and he brushes a stray curl off her cheek. He sleeps in Hermione's bed more often than not these days, Apparating to his office in the morning after showering and dressing in Hermione's quarters. There was a time when they tried to be discreet, to hide their affair from his wife, but Pansy was too clever by half, and was soon onto them.
Once she was, she told the Dark Lord, thinking he'd Crucio Draco and Avada Hermione. Instead, with the three of them kneeling in front of him before a circle of onlookers, Voldemort told Pansy he didn't care what filth Draco wanted to stick his cock in, as long as he kept Hogwarts running successfully and had produced an heir. No one had any idea yet that the boy would turn out to be a Squib.
"A wife should know her place," the Dark Lord said, with a hissing sibilant at the end of place. "Teach your wife her place, Draco."
It took Draco a moment to understand, and when he did, he felt a cold wave of dread. As angry as he was at Pansy, as much as he'd grown to despise her, he didn't want to torture her with the Cruciatus curse. But an order from the Dark Lord was not to be disobeyed, so he stood and took out his wand. With a look of apology at his wife, he cast the curse, imagining it was the Dark Lord himself at the end of his wand as he always did when compelled to cast an Unforgivable. You had to mean it, and that snake-faced maniac was the only person he really wanted to Crucio. He kept the intensity of the curse only as high and the duration only as long as it would take to satisfy the monster he served. If he went too easy, he knew the Dark Lord would curse her himself, or perhaps choose someone else to do it, and that person would take no chances with excessive leniency.
When Draco lowered his wand, Pansy was convulsing and vomiting on the ground.
When Voldemort hissed, "A whore should know her place, too," Draco's eyes snapped to the Dark Lord's hideous face, and he managed to shore up his Occlumency shields only just in time. "And a whore's place is lower than a wife's. Consequently, her lesson must be more severe."
Draco forced himself not to look at Hermione, who emitted a low whimper from where she knelt beside him.
"Much more severe," said the monster. "Do you understand me, Draco?"
"I understand, my lord."
"Excellent. Then teach your Mudblood whore her place, down in the filth and muck with the rest of her kind. Teach her well, Draco, or I shall teach her for you."
Draco wept and begged Hermione's forgiveness for the two days he nursed her back to health, days in which she drifted in and out of consciousness and he didn't know from one moment to the next whether she would wake up as mad as the Longbottoms. The thought of her beautiful, brilliant mind reduced to babbling incoherence by his own hand filled him with a dread that kept him awake and watching her obsessively. The Deputy Headmaster ran the school for those days, and Draco didn't leave Hermione's side. The Mediwitch was back and forth from the Hospital Wing, but no Healer could be brought from St. Mungo's because the Dark Lord had forbidden it.
On the third day, Hermione spoke. "I do," she said.
"You do what?" Draco asked.
"I do forgive you."
"How can you possibly?"
"He'd have killed me if you hadn't done it, or tortured me into madness," she said.
"I think you must be mad, if you can forgive me," he said. "By all rights you should hate me."
"He wanted you to hurt me too little, so he could take over."
"I know," Draco said. That's what had happened to Yaxley's son. The Dark Lord had told Yaxley to punish him, and when Yaxley held back, the Dark Lord cast the Cruciatus himself, and held it until the boy lost his mind from the pain. He's been in the Janus Thickey ward since, lying next to Alice Longbottom in the bed that her husband Frank had occupied until his death the year before. Everyone knew the story, and bore it in mind when they were ordered to cast the curse against a loved one themselves.
"You saved my mind," Hermione said.
"I hurt you so badly," Draco whispered, his face a mask of anguish.
"You didn't hurt me," she said. "He did. You were only the instrument he used."
"Someday I'll kill him," he said. "For you. For this."
Now, watching the woman he loves sleep, Draco wonders if these children from another timeline are the means of keeping his promise. In their world, the monster is dead. If restoring that timeline is the only way to destroy the Dark Lord, does he have the courage to do it? When he made that promise, he had no idea that keeping it might cost him Hermione.
Author's Note
Many thanks to Fragilereality and turtlewexler for beta reading. Read their wonderful stories if you haven't yet!