{ Chapter Eighteen }
Hermione was nervous. Oh, she hid it well enough. Someone that didn't know her well probably wouldn't be able to tell. She had that same confident air that she always had about her. Underneath that, if a person bothered to look, there was a deep-seeded anxiety coursing through her body. Draco could see it in the way she chewed on her bottom lip. The way her right leg was bouncing up and down in a fast rhythm. The way the fingers of her right hand occasionally picked at the fingernails on her left hand.
He thought back to the meeting with Healer Brunswick weeks days ago. The older witch had been concerned about Hermione. Even though she had been able to control her anger and her magic since the explosion, the Healer was concerned that she has yet to deal with the events of her past on an emotional level.
"She's basically an emotional time-bomb. We have no way of knowing what her trigger will be, but at some point she's going to have to face these demons she has locked away in that brilliant mind of hers."
That conversation was the reason that he hadn't put up a fight when she told him she needed to go clean out her old house and she wanted him to go with her. Did he have a million other things he needed to be doing that morning? Yes, yes he did. But he wasn't going to send her into that house alone. He would be willing to bet all the gold in his Gringott's vault that if a trigger existed for her, it would be in that house. If her emotional time-bomb were to detonate today, he wasn't going to let her face it alone.
They didn't talk much as Draco ate his breakfast and Hermione picked at hers. They were both lost in their own thoughts, both dreading the trip to her old house for the exact same reasons. When the breakfast plates had been cleared they silently stood from the table together and made their way to the floo in the study.
They entered the sitting room of her former home together, both of them dusting themselves off as they glanced wearily around the room. It appeared to be exactly as it was months earlier when they had last been there. Everything was still spotless, sterile almost. Draco was automatically alert. After several weeks of being empty, he would have expected at least a fine layer of dust on the tabletops by now. He wiped his finger across the table just to be sure, and it came up clean.
Hermione saw him investigating the furniture and allowed herself a small smirk.
"Who needs house-elves when a simple cleaning charm set to repeat every twelve hours does the trick just as well?" She ran her hand across the mantle to emphasize her point. "I suppose I'll need to cancel that charm before we leave today."
"You are absolutely brilliant, did you know that?" Draco laughed. He remembered the first time he had been to her house he had noted that she must have spent hours cleaning. Leave it to his witch to find a way to automate the process.
"I've heard that a time or two."
The house itself was eerily quiet. Silence buzzed through the place in an almost deafening roar. Hermione stood in the middle of the sitting room and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath. She listened to the house and she grounded herself. This wouldn't be an easy task, but if she never got started she would never finish it. And Merlin she wanted to be finished with it. One more deep breath and she opened her eyes, finding Draco about three feet away from her, watching, waiting for her to make a move.
"Right then. I'm going to sell the house furnished. I don't need the furniture anyway and they can dispose of whatever they don't want. It really shouldn't take long to pack up the kitchen and bedroom. There isn't much left."
"So let's get started then." He let her lead the way into the kitchen first.
As they boxed items up, they sorted them into three stacks; donations, keep, and trash. All of the non-perishable food items, the dishes, pots and pans, and clothing that had been left behind went into the donation stack. The rest of Hermione's books, pictures and decorations went into the 'keep' stack. The perishable food items and a few other odds and ends that she couldn't see keeping but really didn't think anyone else would want them either, went into the 'trash' stack.
The process went quickly and by eleven o'clock they had entered the last room in the house, the spare bedroom. Draco was starting to think that he had worried over nothing. If Hermione had a 'trigger', this house certainly wasn't it. She had barely batted an eyelash all day long.
In the closet of the spare bedroom they found a few boxes of holiday decorations.
"Finally! I hoped they would be here somewhere." She opened the top box and her face lit up as she looked at the glass ornaments and sparkling angel figurine. Really, you would think she was looking at a box of diamonds and jewels the way her eyes sparkled and mouth tipped up in a smile.
"You know I can buy you a thousand of these glass bulbs that have real diamonds on them instead of cheap glitter." He was teasing her. Her smile widened and he knew that she knew he was only joking. He exhaled quickly in relief. Some people would have taken that statement as him being pompous. Not that it wasn't true or anything. He could afford to buy her any decorations that she wanted. He had a feeling, though, that the only ones she truly wanted were the ones in those two plastic cases.
"These were my parents'. Every year they would buy a new set of bulbs to go with their collection, and one special ornament to commemorate the year. I don't have many of their belongings left, but I'm so glad to see these are still here. Deep down I figured he threw them out or something. I haven't even seen them in years."
She looked through the boxes for a few more minutes. Each new item she picked up from the box brought a small smile to her lips. Finally she closed the boxes and added them to the 'keep' stack.
With a deep sigh, she sat down on the small loveseat in the corner. She had made it through the whole house, but somehow she felt like she was missing something. She stared at the wall across the room, trying to figure out what she had missed. The idea of it was tickling the back of her brain, but didn't seem to want to come to the surface.
Draco sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. He watched her for a long moment. Her brows crinkled in concentration, her head tilted to the left, then to the right. He couldn't figure out exactly what she was doing, but he knew she was damn cute while she did it.
"What, exactly, are you doing, love?"
Her brow furrowed in concentration once again and she shook her head in frustration.
"We're missing something."
He raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. They couldn't have missed anything. They had been through the whole house.
Once she said it out loud she realized that it wasn't something they were missing, but someplace. There was some place they hadn't checked yet. Mentally she ran through the locations in the house. Basement, check. Kitchen, check. Dining room, sitting room, master bedroom, master bath, guest room, office, half bath, attic.
She snapped her fingers as it came to her.
"That's it! The attic. We didn't go in the attic."
Draco realized that she was right. He hadn't even seen an attic door while they were cleaning. He had just assumed the house didn't have an attic at all.
"Where's the doorway? I don't remember seeing it anywhere."
"It's in the spare bedroom." She answered quickly, not even thinking about it as she answered. This had been her house before she married Ron. Even though after they were married Ron had forbidden her from going into the attic, she still remembered that there was an attic and the access door was in the spare bedroom.
"Hermione, we're in the spare bedroom. I don't see a door anywhere." Draco stood and looked around the room, but without any luck.
"That's not right. I would have sworn the door to the attic was in this room." She looked at the wall again and suddenly they both understood what was going on. There was a shielding charm to hide the door from view, and a compulsion charm to keep prying eyes away. Draco raised his wand and uttered the counter charms. The wall they had been looking at dissolved and in its place was a different wall with a door in the right hand corner.
The door stood before them, daunting. Hermione felt the same sense of foreboding that she had the night before and felt a cold shiver run down her spine. She involuntarily wrapped her arms around herself.
Draco ran a series of spells designed to check for curses on or around the door. It came up clean, but he was still leery of opening it. He didn't have a good feeling about it. Something close to dread was settling in the pit of his stomach. This door had been hidden for a reason. He was almost afraid to open it now that he knew what kind of person Ron Weasley truly was.
"I don't suppose that's where he kept his porn collection," he joked, trying to crack through the suspenseful atmosphere that had filled the room.
"I have no idea what's up there. I haven't been since before Ron and I were married." She was worried, but still she stepped forward and opened the door.
"Wait." He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Let me go up first."
She turned to look at him and their eyes met. As she looked into the silver depths, she saw concern there, right under the surface. She wanted to tell him that she could take care of herself, but deep down she wanted him to be concerned. She wanted him to take care of her. So she nodded her agreement and stepped back so he could lead the way.
The staircase was dark and narrow. It opened to a large room that was about seven feet tall down the center. The ceiling sloped down on both sides to meet the walls about five feet off the floor. On the right side of the room there were two windows set into dormers that let in enough sunlight to brighten the room.
The room itself was sparsely furnished. A few chairs were set up in a circle around a round table at the far end of the room. A long table set along the left hand wall with stacks of parchment and a couple of shoebox sized boxes on top. A bulletin board set on the back edge of the table and leaned against the sloping ceiling. It was full from edge to edge of pictures and parchment hung with colorful push pins.
Draco stepped into the room slowly, his eyes automatically drawn to the bulletin board and the pictures that were on display. The board was split into five sections. Each section held various pictures and parchment.
His breath caught in his throat when he realized that he recognized the women in the photographs. All of them.
Mariska. Juilianna. Sarah. Victoria. Lauren.
He had been working their murder cases for over two years. He knew their files inside and out. He knew everything he could possibly know about these women. Everything except for one very important detail – who had murdered them? Until this moment, he didn't have any idea.
He studied the pictures that were hanging on the board. Some of the photographs were directly from their case files. The others seemed to be surveillance photos, taken by someone that was following these women. There were pictures of them in their homes, out and about in Diagon Alley, or having tea with family members or friends. Personal, intimate moments in their lives that had been stolen and put on display. There were other pictures as well. Graphic, humiliating pictures of these women. Pictures that made his stomach churn and his blood boil.
"Oh, Merlin!"
He turned quickly when she gasped, not even aware that she had followed him into the room and was standing next to him, looking at the same pictures he was looking at. Drawing the same conclusions that he was drawing.
"What is this?" Her voice was barely a whisper. He wasn't even sure if she was talking to him or to herself. Her hand lifted up slowly and her fingertips skimmed across the photographs on the board. "Who are these women?"
Draco was surprised when she asked that question. He had been so tied up in the case that he thought everyone knew about these murders.
"Victims," he stated. "They're all murder victims."
He watched her carefully and saw the exact moment when she made the connection. She had heard about the case, but she hadn't seen the files. She hadn't read the newspapers. She didn't know who the victims were, until now.
She turned back to the bulletin board and pulled a random piece of parchment out of one of the sections. It was the coroner's report for Sarah MacMillan.
Victim was severely beaten and raped before her wrists were slit open and she bled to death.
Evidence of an Imperious curse being present at the time of death.
Hermione's hand covered her mouth as she read the words. Then she put the report back on the table and examined the reports for the other four women. They were all the same. Beaten. Raped. Imperioused. Killed.
Draco watched her as she examined the other items on the board. She shook her head, mumbled to herself, ran her fingers through her hair, chewed on her lip. All the things that he knew meant she was concentrating on the puzzle, putting the pieces together and coming up with a solution. He had always loved watching her work. Even at Hogwart's, she had fascinated him.
He wondered, though, if this was one puzzle she should be trying to figure out. It was awfully close to home for her. He probably needed to get her out of there and collect Potter and Theo to help him bag up this evidence.
"Hermione. Love, we should go." He put his arm around her shoulders and tried to move her towards the door. She shrugged him off, completely ignoring him.
"He was following them. For weeks, he would follow her, learn her schedule, and learn her husband's schedule. Look." She pointed to a list on a parchment that Draco hadn't even noticed earlier. She was right. It was a list of dates, times, places. "He watched, and he waited until the perfect time to strike. He would have approached her while she was out somewhere and cast the Imperious curse, probably weeks ahead of time."
"Why weeks ahead of time?" She had his attention now. He had also come to the conclusion that the Imperious curse had been used to gain access into the houses of the victims, but he had always assumed it was cast right before the murder.
"Look at these pictures. They were taken over a period of time. See? Her clothes change from one picture to the next. These pictures were taken inside her home, so she had to have been imperioused at least several days before she was killed. Who knows? He could have terrorized these poor women for weeks or even months before he decided to kill them."
Draco was surveying the photographs, noting that she was right about the time lapse when he noticed she had stopped talking. He turned to see that she was still standing next to him, but her face had drained of all color. Both her hands were covering her mouth and she was shaking her head back and forth slowly.
Her eyes. Merlin, her eyes! They were wide and sad and terrified and horrified all at the same time.
"Hermione?" He glanced back at the board, wondering if there was something he had missed that would put that look in her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?! Are you serious? Look! Look at this!" Her voice was nearly hysterical as she motioned to the board in front of them. "This is what's wrong!"
"These women…they were…they didn't have a choice, Draco. They couldn't even fight back. They were helpless." Her eyes glittered with unshed tears and her hands shook. She turned her back to him. She didn't want him to see her fall apart and that's exactly what she felt like she was doing. She felt like she was on the edge of a precipice, so ready to tumble off at any moment.
She tried to take a few deep breaths. She ran her fingers through her hair and swiped at the tears in her eyes. Draco watched as she rebuilt the walls. Her face became impassive, stony once again.
At some point she's going to have to face these demons she has locked away in that brilliant mind of hers.
The Healer's words echoed through his mind as he watched her shutting down in front of him. Did she realize that these five women, these murder victims, were not the only ones that had been helpless against this man?
He looked up at the board again and with a sickening feeling in his gut he realized it was the same. The curse to take away her free will. The abuse. The rape. The only difference was that he had murdered five of his victims, and one of them had survived.
He tried to think of anything but that. He didn't want to think of Hermione being that helpless, even though he knew that she had been for a long time. His eyes landed on a small box that was sitting on the corner of the table. He checked the box for curses before lifting the lid.
Her eyes followed his movements. She saw what was in the box at the same moment that he did.
Hermione was no stranger to humiliation. She had lived it for five years. She was no stranger to feeling vulnerable or violated either. It had been a way of life for her. Now that she was away from all of that, though, to suddenly feel it all over again was like being kicked in the stomach. She felt like she might throw up.
The box was full of photographs. Photographs of her. She didn't have to look through them. She knew what they were. Ron always did like to take pictures. The more he had to drink, the more graphic the pictures would be.
Draco reached into the box and picked up a handful of the pictures before she registered what he was doing. As soon as he looked at the first image, though, he regretted it. It was an image of Hermione. She was wearing nothing but scraps of lace that had once been a negligee. Her creamy white skin was darkened with various bruises on her face and arms. She was lying on a bed with her arms pulled out to the sides, her legs stretched open. Her eyes stared into the camera, dull, lifeless, and resigned.
His stomach clenched tightly at the sight in front of him. He glanced at a few more of the pictures and knew that they were all the same. In some of the pictures she was posed indecently or performing sexual acts. In others she was showering or sleeping. In all of them she was vulnerable, helpless.
With a sickening clarity he knew that in his hands he held the answers to their questions. The answers that she didn't want them to have. The proof of the hell she had lived through at the hands of Ronald Weasley.
She saw him looking through the pictures. She saw the images that he saw and memories flooded through her mind. Memories that she had locked away for years and never intended to remember again. Merlin, how had she ever allowed herself to become so weak? That wasn't who she was. Hermione Granger was a fighter. Independent, brilliant, brave. She didn't want to face what she had been reduced to. She didn't want to remember any of it.
It wasn't real.
It hadn't happened to her.
It couldn't have happened to her.
She wouldn't have let it happen to her.
Except, it did happen to her.
She was the woman in those pictures.
She was the woman that had been victimized for years by this man.
Beaten.
Raped.
Humiliated.
Mind fucked.
Enslaved.
A cold shiver passed down her spine and suddenly she felt as though she couldn't breathe. A gasping breath ripped through her as the reality of it all hit her full force.
Draco dropped the pictures back in the box when he heard her fighting for air. He turned quickly, just in time to see the walls she had carefully constructed come crumbling down right before his eyes.
In a heartbeat his arms were around her and she was sobbing into his shoulder. She grabbed hold of him and clung to him like a life raft in the middle of a storm. The tears came, huge, sobbing tears that wracked her body and her mind. She cried. She screamed. She yelled and she cursed.
She mourned for the loss of her innocence. She grieved for the loss of five years of her life. And she finally let herself remember the horrors that she had lived through.
For hours the tears fell and he held her. He was her rock, her safe harbor, the lighthouse on the craggy shore that lit her way to safety.
The tears slowed down as the sun began to fade into the horizon. She took a couple of deep breaths and leaned away from his chest so she could look into his eyes. What she saw there nearly broke her heart. His beautiful silver eyes were swimming in pools of tears. A few of the tears had escaped and left dried tracks on his cheeks.
She wiped the tears away gently and kissed him softly on the forehead. There were so many things that she wanted to tell him in that moment. She wanted to thank him for letting her cry on his shoulder for hours, or for the sweet words of encouragement that he whispered in her ear. She wanted to remind him that she wouldn't have survived without him. She wanted to lie to him, tell him it wasn't so bad after all.
She couldn't tell him any of those things, though. As she looked into his tear-filled eyes, she realized something she had never quite realized before. It made her breath catch in her throat and her heart race in her chest. All other thoughts disappeared as she recognized this one fact.
He hadn't saved her because of the token. He hadn't risked his family name and fortune because of a life-debt. She didn't know when, or why, or how, but she knew without a doubt that he had done it all for one simple, unbelievable reason. Draco Malfoy was in love with her.
He saw it in her eyes. The moment she realized what he hadn't had the courage to tell her. Understanding, followed by acceptance.
His lips met hers only moments later in a slow, gentle kiss that tasted of salt and tears, but promised sweet smiles and a lifetime of happy memories.
AN: Just so you all know, this is my favorite chapter of the story. It gave me cold chills when I re-read it. :) What did you guys think?