Sooo this has been, what, two months? I would say I'm sorry but suddenly there were things to do, work and fun stuff and moving out and back to school and besides that, not having any inspiration whatsoever. So I'm providing you with a short chapter which is a filler at that because this one is needed in here, and I hope it will not take this long again. Sorry.
"What's it like? Being a coward?"
"Harder than you'd expect, really." A smile played around his lips and he knew how unsettling it must be for the other. "Although you should know, wouldn't you?"
The man stared at him, long and hard, but didn't respond except for the anger in his gaze.
"Yees, I thought so. It takes a lot of anger to be a coward, doesn't it?" He smirked. "Oh, I know you a lot better than you think, Weasley."
Her footsteps—for he could tell by the sound of them that it was her—were coming closer as she came to inspect them all for her morning rounds; or so he thought, for there windows were hardly useful below ground level. But this had been happening for a while now; her showing up when she was supposed to, but never speaking, not ever uttering a word. He hated it. He hated her.
Maybe he'd hoped she'd be different. Scratch that, obviously he'd hoped so. He'd already been calculating his next step in his head, one that he didn't know where it'd lead, but he'd been willing to try.
He'd try it anyway.
"I knew you'd be scared." She'd reached number 46 and stopped dead in her tracks when he spoke. "I thought you were so brave, Granger, but in the end you weren't any more than everyone else."
He could hear her brains working from a distance. She was contemplating her options; answer, or ignore again. Hermione Granger had never been one to ignore, though, and indeed she didn't. "Excuse me?"
"That's not the most intelligent comeback I've ever heard you have, is it?" He shook his head, smiling. "You know I'm right though, don't you? You've looked into the face of monsters before but they never ceased to scare you."
She didn't reply to that because she knew he was right. Because she still, sometimes, when she was alone and the nights were especially dark, dreamt of monsters and there would be no one to save her. But he didn't need to know that.
"You're pathetic, you know that, Granger?"
She spluttered. How dare he—
"You can't even look a dying man in the face."
And it were not so much the words that did it, as the tone of his voice. For where he had always been indifferent, she did now notice the crack halfway and thoughts of fear and empty abysses filled her head, and it was right then that she decided something.
"At least tell me something." Her voice was thick—with nerves or pity, she could not say. "Tell me why you didn't fight your sentence. Tell me why you let them convict you for things you didn't do."
He turned around again, but she was prepared this time and even though it still came as a shock, she did not back away. His left eye was burning into hers as if he were trying to figure her out, but didn't manage to do so. His right eye did nothing and probably never would again. She ignored the nasty feeling it imposed on her and continued staring at him, not planning on leaving before he provided her with a satisfying answer.
The answer came in his shortly closing his eyes, opening his mouth but not being able to find the words. She knew. She'd seen it before in people who had resigned themselves to their fate and he was no different, not special at all.
"Guilt," she whispered, the one word saying it all. "What for, Draco?"
He stepped forward and gripped the bars through which he could see her, in a manner as if he were ready to attack her. She wasn't afraid. She felt eerily calm.
"Do you know," his voice raspy, "what it's like to live with the consequences of your actions? What if those actions imply that people have died, because of you, what you have done? I can tell you don't, none of you people do. You know why I don't mind my fate? Because it will make me forget it. Stay away from me, Granger." His eyes widened and he moved his arms in a manner as if he wanted to rattle the bars, which was impossible. "Stay the fuck away from me!"
She did step back now, because he looked somewhat mad in this way. "You're taking the easy way out."
"You don't know what you're talking about," a harsh whisper. "It's not easy to accept you will end up like a sponge being sucked out of water. It's not."
"Then don't."
He snorted. "It's not as if I have much of a choice, do I?"
But that wasn't true. She had grown up in the conviction that there always was a choice, even if it seemed like there wasn't. Even in this situation; this she knew, because she had made a difference before. And she could do so now.
The man was glaring at her with a hate she hoped wasn't directed straight at her. This man who had lost half his face in the war, burned away so badly magic hadn't been able to heal it. It made his right eye look scarily out of proportion, as if it were placed in no more than a skull, but a red and crumpled one. She thought of how he'd looked before and if there was anything to change his appearance, and if he would even care. This, however, all was the least she would be worrying about.
"I can give you a choice."
It was silent for a while.
"Why would you? I'm a coward, Granger, I deserve no more than this. And what choice would you have me make? Get the Kiss, or stay in here for life? Because honestly, I know what I'd prefer. I don't like being aware of this hellhole for another Merlin knows how many years."
She understood that. She had been up there before, the rows of cells where people sat out their life sentences. It was the most awful place she had ever been, and she worked down here.
"I wasn't talking about that. Not a life sentence." She took a deep breath and gathered the courage to say what she was about to, to speak of the only easier way out than he had now. "I meant death."
He stared at her, and a slow smile crept on his face. "I think we have a deal."