A/N: Just as a warning, a part of this chapter is quite graphic. So you expect it ahead of time.
Unexpected Encounters
She was a slave – pardon, a House-Witch owner, as if that name made the concept so much more palatable. The thought alone would have been enough to repulse Hermione to the point of illness, but not only that…
She - or this 'My' version of her - was officially a Potter. Or Evans, as it appeared to be in this universe.
Her mind quickly ran through several scenarios. The only one that made the most sense - particularly given she was quite obviously Ron's girlfriend and Ginevra was quite obviously Harry's, at least in Ginevra's mind - was the one in which she had, in the course of her acquaintanceship with Harry, been adopted by his very much alive mother and possibly father. Which also meant that, in the course of her acquaintanceship with Harry…
Something must have happened to her parents.
No, no, no...
Suddenly, everyone to whom Hermione would normally go to enlist help for her less-than-stellar situation seemed wholly untrustworthy, and there was no earthly way she was going to seek out the Dumbledore of this world as if he was the respected, wise old man from hers.
What a sodding, sodding mess.
She didn't know how long she simply sat, trying absorb/accept the wave of nearly overwhelming new information, especially since her head still pounded with the lingering effects of a migraine that hadn't entirely vanished since she'd entered this new reality.
Finally, she took a heavy breath.
She knew what she had to do. And by Merlin, when Hermione Granger was determined to see something through to the end, it would certainly be done.
Then and there, she made a solemn vow:
She would get home again.
No matter the lengths it might take, she was going to survive; she was going to find a way back to the world she loved, a world in which, she was quite certain, the darkest evil had already been defeated.
Primping like a model every morning? Curling her hair? Keeping her hand down and her mouth shut during classes and acting like Lavender Brown for an extended period of time? Not a problem – or, at least, not if it would dispel any suspicion from herself while she religiously staked out the library until she found a counterspell to whatever magic had landed her in Universe B.
It was an undercover approach she had never considered using during the war she had already fought - virtually everyone in her world would have been able to call her out as Harry Potter's brilliant best friend. Here, she was in a completely different situation, and if this world thought she was nothing more than a pretty face and an empty head, it could more than certainly work to her advantage.
Which was why she was now discreetly trailing her way, under the cover of a Disillusionment charm, back to the Head common room along a vaguely familiar and lesser trafficked corridor on the outskirts of the castle, lit wand held in an upright position as she poured over a copy of a Universe B Hogwarts yearbook from My's fifth year.
With a form of curiosity that more resembled dread churning in the pit of her stomach, she opened to the first - and uncharacteristically large – section of the yearbook.
Red and gold blasted off the pages. For the first time in her life, the colors clashed painfully with her gaze. Here, she was quite obviously still in Gryffindor House, and almost instantly, she found at least four photos of herself... well, not herself, per say, but of My, Ronáld, Harry, and Ginevra.
She peered at the first image and frowned - it was solely of Ginevra and herself, Ginevra's hair still streaked black and My's hair still scarily perfect, but this time it was straightened in a feat that Hermione herself had only managed once, at the Yule Ball. Staring at a picture of her well-dressed look-alike doing things that Hermione had never done was utterly surreal. In this photo, the two were posing amidst many onlookers (most of them male) as if the centre aisle in the Great Hall had been turned into a Parisian runway, uniform robes slung partially off their shoulders and lips pursed in an air kiss toward the camera.
Merlin, not at all looking forward to the next few days, Hermione thought bleakly, taking notes on My's apparently promiscuous behavior nonetheless.
Swallowing her distaste, she tore her eyes away from the yearbook long enough to sidestep a particularly ominous ogre statue that she hadn't remembered in this area of the castle in her own universe. To her mild relief, the positively deserted halls were a much-wanted testament that the Welcome Feast was still in full swing.
Quickly turning her attention back to the yearbook – her new form of 'research' - she flipped the page to another image, this one featuring Ronáld-with-the-slicked-back-hair, Harry, and herself. Harry was staring at the camera as if he were trying to break it, Ronáld was too busy planting kisses along My's exposed neck to look at said camera, and My was blowing another kiss toward the viewer, giggling, and giving a saucy wink.
Sweet Merlin, please, please tell me I will never be put in another position where I will have to pose like that!
Here her name was still listed as My Granger, so whatever had happened between herself and the Evans/Potter family had to have occurred quite recently. So too must've whatever reason Harry had for talking to her as if he hated her more than Dementors –
"Eh, Filch! 'ow many more yeh got there?"
Bugger!
The disembodied male yell was dangerously close.
Hermione leapt into the shadows of the nearest wall, wand in hand and spell in mouth, until she remembered that she was still under the Disillusionment Charm. She let out a sharp breath and sagged in relief... only to tense up again as she heard a few self-suffering mutterings and Filch's distinct voice reply, "Erm… this 'uns the last one."
Cautiously, she leaned back out into the hall once more, peering curiously down its shadowed length. As if someone very large was walking about several metres ahead, a large, rhythmical thumping noise sounded and then stopped - coming, she suspected, from a small courtyard there leading out to the grounds that also doubled as a luggage unloading station.
"And which one'a the Fusties do we 'ave 'ere, eh?"
Hermione sucked in a surprised breath.
This time, the voice was unmistakably Hagrid's... except that it sounded much more like a growl than his typically well-intentioned but guttural speech.
She leaned back into the darkness behind the ogre statue, muttering another Disillusionment for good measure. Hagrid had embodied goodness in her world, which, unluckily for her, meant that here he was almost certainly bad.
Meanwhile, there was a distinct but faint sound of something – cloth, maybe? – rustling. Then came perhaps the most terrifying sound Hermione had heard since she'd regained consciousness:
Hagrid suppressing chuckles of pure malevolence.
"Well, well, well. Look 'oo it is."
A thick silence greeted this comment, until...
Crack!
Hermione leapt at the sharp noise.
"That's right, that'll teach yeh ter address yer superiors, ya good-for-nothing whelp," Hagrid's evil counterpart said in an eerily amused voice. "Eh, Filch, c'mere."
Sweet Merlin, whatever they were taunting was a person? Hermione thought, horrified.
Slowly, she began to inch closer to the courtyard. Of course, the wisest, most self-preserving action she could have taken then would have been to turn around and flee immediately, but a mixture of the kind of curiosity that most certainly killed the cat and, now, repulsion at whatever was being done to whoever was in the courtyard kept her in place.
Anyway, she hadn't snuck around undetected in an immense variety of mind-bending scenarios for seven and a half years for nothing.
"Don't suppose His Lordship'll mind if we teach 'im a little lesson," Hagrid's distinct voice continued.
Filch, peculiarly enough, sounded very much the same as her universe's version of him – old and creepy, plain and simple. "Sure looks like His Lordship's already taught 'im a few lessons 'imself, don't it?" he chuckled out.
Hermione tucked the yearbook under her left arm, gripping her wand in her right as she slunk down the last few metres of the hall before it emptied into the courtyard, where the dim light of the hallway faded into the darkness of night.
"It certainly does," Hagrid agreed smugly. "But as the Headmistress says, it don't hurt to give these types another extra taste. Isn't that right, Fusty?"
Silence greeted his question... until the abrupt sound of metal violently striking metal rang out, causing Hermione to involuntarily wince. "Blast it, I told yeh to answer me when I speak ter yeh, filthy slug!"
Great Godric, how can this be Hagrid?
Hermione's heart twisted painfully, longing more than ever for the world from which she'd vanished only a half day earlier, even if the Second Wizarding War had still been in its final stages. As she drew up alongside the edge of the wall bordering the courtyard, she struggled to swallow, and took a breath.
No time for that now. Get through one second at a time. You're going to get yourself home eventually, I promise.
Forcing aside her homesickness, she tried to decide exactly what she was going to do now that she'd reached her intended destination. She dearly wished she had a pair of Fred and George's Extendible Ears as a low, muffled response to Hagrid's demand finally came. It must not have been what he'd wanted to hear, because without a moment's pause, Hagrid howled, "Crucio!"
In her survivalist-tense exhaustion, the word slammed into Hermione like a sledgehammer, triggering a shot of adrenaline through her body. For a moment, her mind ricocheted back to Malfoy Manor as Bellatrix Lestrange perched over her screeching the same curse and laughing manically.
Just as quickly, the distant sound of a sharp but muffled intake of breath here in the present brought her back to her sense of self. Incredibly, it wasn't a scream.
Hermione had never heard of anyone withstanding the Crutiatus Curse without a sound.
Her body turned to ice, though her temples throbbed with renewed vigor. In Malfoy Manor, she would have given anything, anything, for someone to spare her of that pain, even if only for a moment. It was neither Ron nor Harry's fault that they hadn't, locked away in the dungeon as they had been, for what seemed like hours.
But there were no bars separating Hermione from whoever was being persecuted in the courtyard right now... though she would surely be severely risking her own exposure if she tried to do anything to help them.
Heart pounding, Hermione closed her eyes and pressed her ear to the cold stone alongside her, praying fervently that Hagrid's unfortunate target had simply passed out. Her heart sank when, sound amplified though the solid medium, she heard a jerky rattling of what could have been chains and another soft, choking gasp, hardly audible over Hagrid's and Filch's raucous laughter.
They were still conscious. And they were being tortured.
Ice turned to heat that burned through her body, searing away the panicked echoes of her months-ago experience with that same torment.
Oh, sod my stupid cover! I can't let this go on anymore!
Steeling herself with a quick breath, Hermione flung her head and wand arm around the edge of the wall and took quick but critical aim at the first thing she saw: the towering, instantly recognizable bulk of Hagrid.
"Oppugno avis!" she hissed.
Instantly, at least four dozen small, yellow birds exploded from her wand. Screeching, they shot toward the two men like brightly colored missiles locked upon a target; in less than three seconds, Hagrid and Filch were swallowed entirely by the cloud of canaries, the birds' shrieking racket enough to drown out any bellowed obscenities... not to mention the concentration required to hold the Cruciatus Curse on a victim.
Hermione allowed herself to sag minutely in relief before she quickly did a hall check over her shoulder to ensure the sudden din hadn't drawn any extra company. Satisfied they were still alone, she grimly turned her gaze back to the courtyard and counted to thirty... slowly.
Once yellow feathers actually began flying through the air around the melee, she pointedly flicked her wand and sent all 48 of the things swarming toward the grounds, but held them tauntingly within visual - and auditory - range.
Filch stumbled to his feet, his once-brown coat splattered with white splotches and a positively shambolic amount of feathers. "Bleedin', bloody, buggering bollocks–"
"Birds're a bloody menace!" Hagrid grunted furiously, red-faced and wheezing as he spat yellow fluff from his mouth.
In any other scenario, the scene would have been absolutely uproarious. Now, Hermione's gaze was simply drawn immediately to what appeared to be a cage behind Hagrid - until Filch, still cursing vehemently, flung a large, dirty sheet over it, blocking her view.
Thankfully, the birds' continued heckling of the two wizards' fragile male egos intervened. Before Filch could get out another round of 'buggering bollockses,' Hagrid easily grabbed the much smaller man by the collar and stabbed his finger toward the Forbidden Forest.
"Go down'a my hut an' bring me som'a that bird killer potion, or whatever else down there that'll work for som'min like this." Brandishing a wand, he shoved Filch toward the courtyard's small, stone-arched entrance to the grounds and shouted after him, "I'll trail 'em 'til yeh get back!"
The ground actually shook as Hagrid crashed out of the arch.
Hermione watched his departure with renewed astonishment: Since his expulsion as a child, Hagrid had never been allowed to have a wand or perform extensive magic, let alone an Unforgivable Curse. But with history as upended in Universe B as it was, she didn't doubt Tom Riddle would've had a better chance of being expelled from Hogwarts than Hagrid, had the two ever gotten in a confrontation.
The sudden, sweet sound of silence, broken only by the cheerful sound of trickling water, some distant bellows from Hagrid, and the faint buzz of late-summer insects nudged her onward. Warily, she scanned her immediate surrounds. Several flickering torches lined the verdant courtyard's stone walls, casting warm light on a few bench slabs, a central fountain shooting a graceful arc of water from the mouth of a magnificently carved dragon... and the waist-high, rectangular-shaped object that Filch had covered.
The quiet felt eerie when one considered there was something – someone – alive under the dark, ripped cloth.
Cautiously, she made her way to it across the grassy expanse, her senses on full alert. In all honesty, she wasn't quite sure what she would find beneath it. Whoever it was, Hagrid had called them a 'fusty,' which she recalled was the insult leveled toward the vanquished conservative insurgents here - those supposedly on the 'good side.'
But what if even the 'good' people of this universe weren't really good at all? What if everyone, everyone, was in some way corrupted by the Dark Arts, or morally bereft?
Her nervousness increased as she stopped directly in front of the covered cage. Holding her breath, she reached down, gingerly grasping the edge of the rough material. As quickly as she began to pull it off, she hesitated, her grip tightening on the worn fabric.
Oh, come on, Hermione! You've escaped Death Eaters; you've been through a war... You can handle whatever's beneath this.
The thought wasn't exactly comforting, but it was enough.
Clenching her jaw and her wand for good measure, Hermione steeled herself and flipped back the cover.
Her heart lurched to her throat.
Before she could stop herself, her hand leapt to her mouth to desperately restrain the contents of her stomach that abruptly threatened to hurl from it.
Within the long, thick bars of what was definitely a cage, something alive also started violently in equal surprise, swiftly curling chained, bloody legs in toward itself in what was most likely the only defensive action it could manage.
And it was human.
Hermione stared down at the man before her in unutterable horror. Nearly every part of his visible body was one ugly purple and blue bruise, more welts, gashes, and discolorations lining what skin she could see that wasn't covered with chains, mud or blood. His face was blackened with grime, the left side of it swelled to an abnormal size, the right so bruised she was positive she could see individual finger marks on the battered skin.
For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.
The person on the other side of the bars, for his part, looked rather frozen in place as well, his entire face utterly exhausted as he mutely returned her shaken gaze with an unmistakeable pair of pale gray eyes.
What seemed like weeks ago but was in fact only hours, Hermione had seen him shooting curses at Order members during the final battle.
"Malfoy?" she gasped in a hushed whisper, blinking in shock as her eyes raked over his form once again.
Were it not for those eyes, she would have never recognized him.
This Draco Malfoy's appearance was as far a cry from the impeccably-groomed, aristocratic Draco Malfoy of Universe A as possibly conceivable. Dressed in nothing but literally tattered rags, he was absolutely filthy, covered in grime and Merlin only knew what else, more gaunt than the Draco Malfoy of her world had been even near the end of sixth year, his trademark blond hair unshorn and matted dark with dirt and blood.
"Draco Malfoy?" she repeated dumbly, unable to reconcile the awfulness of seeing a familiar face so horrendously beaten, no matter how much of a git he'd been in her world. Hermione had seen unspeakable horrors while running from Voldemort, while fighting off tens of Death Eaters and Snatchers, but in this universe, it wasn't even wartime, and she again found herself asking the same heartbreaking question that she had repeated far, far too many times in her relatively short nineteen years:
Sweet Morgana, how can anyone do this to another human being? How can anyone do this to any living thing?
In one fell swoop, everything that had built up inside her since yesterday night, when she, Harry and Ron had finally rejoined with the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix and knew the final battle could very well be upon them, surged within her - every hysterical, panicked, overwhelming emotion that she had desperately tried to suppress both from that fierce rollercoaster of a fight for their lives and her subsequent abandonment in this foreign, terrifying universe.
She allowed it to tear wildly at her mind for no more than five seconds before she quashed it even more ruthlessly than she had in the tense, breathless moments before the final battle began.
What remained inside her in its wake felt cold, and completely numb.
In absolute exhaustion, she sank to her knees in the thick, dewy grass beside the cage, mechanically observing the way Malfoy's arms were awkwardly pulled behind him, as if restrained.
The subjugation she'd read about only minutes earlier abruptly became horrifically real.
This might have been Draco Malfoy, it was true, but he was still a person. Not only that, he had fought with the people who were supposed to be good in this Universe. Was this what had happened to them all?
"Who did this to you?" she whispered.
In response, Malfoy's split, bloodied lips wordlessly parted slightly, his first movement in at least a minute, his breaths audibly growing more ragged, his indecipherable gray stare never leaving hers.
Ronáld.
Ronáld had done this, she realized, a rush of hatred toward her best friend's degenerate Universe B counterpart sweeping through her system with a ferocity that surprised even her. Both Hagrid and Filch had referred to someone called 'His Lordship' who had already taught Malfoy a lesson, and "Lord" Ronáld Weasley owned Malfoy.
And she was supposed to pretend to be his girlfriend.
She was supposed to believe in what they believed in.
But who could even pretend to believe in this?
How can I live in this world?
Suddenly, Malfoy's swollen lips parted once more, and Hermione was jerked back to the waking nightmare that had inexplicably engulfed her.
"Lady... Evans," he croaked hoarsely, his incomprehensible gaze swiftly dropping toward the cage floor. "What-– "
Abruptly, his shoulders lurched forward as a ragged cough burst from his mouth. Concern flooded her as he turned his face into his far shoulder, coughing roughly against it, and she instinctively reached toward him - to do what, she didn't know - but she quickly drew her fingers away a moment before they could brush the metal bars, suspecting he wouldn't welcome any form of touch after what he'd clearly experienced at the hands of others.
Through her hesitation, Malfoy's coughs faded. He swallowed visibly, briefly closing his eyes, before he attempted verbalization again. "Come for a - bit more – fun at my... expense, have you?" he rasped in broken speech, his voice either gravelly with disuse or over-use. As if, even though he had hardly made a sound during the Crutiatus Curse, somewhere, sometime in the relatively recent past, he'd been screaming for hours.
It took considerable effort to force the ghastly conjecture from her mind, but it was quickly replaced by another equally horrid one. What did he mean, 'Come for a bit more fun at my expense?' Had she – or My – done something to him before?
Swiftly, Hermione offered up a small prayer that she hadn't been the one who had inflicted this abuse on him, though she somehow doubted it: her impression of My was that of a selfish, spoiled, and somewhat idiotic girl who wouldn't want to get her hands dirty. But even still…
For the second time that day, Hermione Granger had absolutely no idea of what to say.
She finally managed to bury her nausea and choke out an intelligible response. "I haven't, actually," she answered softly. Her eyes landed on the lock to the cage's door. Though she expected not even a daft halfwit would have put a simple lock on the cage that held their slave, she nonetheless aimed her wand at the lock. "Alohomora!"
Nothing happened. Bugger all, of course it's specialized, she thought, seething.
Malfoy finally lifted his head again, his tangled hair loosely falling into his face, a far cry from the usual slickness that was typically favored by him rather than Ron. As his tired, red-rimmed eyes impassively followed her motions, the lifelessness in them unexpectedly began to glimmer with the tiniest sprig of emotion. Hermione suspected that it was either bewilderment or confusion. Or both.
"You can't... open it, you know," he suddenly murmured, the few, gravelly words voiced in a heavy, wholly defeated tone that she had never dreamed she would hear pass the arrogant and proud Draco Malfoy's lips. "Though - it's... rather nice of you for trying."
Any sneering contempt seemed to have been replaced entirely by an almost unnatural, exhausted evenness she had never heard from someone her own age, but was unnervingly reminiscent of Remus Lupin's voice:
One that had experienced a lifetime of suffering.
Hermione shook herself from the deeply unsettling comparison and turned back to the task at hand. Calculatingly, she regarded the lock with narrowed eyes before glancing back at him through the bars. "What kind of alteration did that weasel of a redhead put on it?" she practically spat out, her eyes darkening the instant the very thought of Ronáld re-entered her mind.
Malfoy's gaze flew toward her. "You'd - I'm to... answer?" he croaked out after a moment, the smallest tinge of bafflement shining through his even voice.
"Yes, that might be helpful!" she responded more forcefully than she'd intended, unable to keep her anger at the monstrous filth that was this world's version of Ron Weasley from escaping her lips. To her horror, Malfoy instantly flinched and shrank away from her as if her words had physically lacerated him, poorly concealed dread flooding his injured features.
Guilt wrenched at her chest.
Bloody Morgana, Hermione, he's clearly been imprisoned by a sadist for months, possibly years! You can't just raise your voice at him!
She lifted a shaking hand to her forehead and let out a breath. "Malfoy, I'm sorry; it isn't you I'm angry with," she said, desperately hoping she hadn't destroyed his willingness to speak with her.
His heavy stare didn't move from where it'd landed on his knees, his hunched shoulders tense. After several seconds, he choked out hoarsely, "Auditory," and again began coughing softly.
"Of course, aural-targeted locks," Hermione muttered, nodding as she re-familiarized herself with the rather standard security charm addition that would only open if Ronáld's or Ginevra's voice commanded it to. There weren't many ways to circumvent it short of being the person for whom the charm had been tailored, or using Polyjuice Potion, of course… if an alarm hadn't been set up to ward against such deception, which it very easily could have been.
She frustratedly raked a hand through her abnormally smooth hair. Anyway, even if you would have gotten it open, what then? she thought sardonically. Free him and run away into the night?
Somehow, she doubted escape would be that easy. And, anyway, she still couldn't quite yet sort out how different this man was from her version of Draco Malfoy, or whether he was a good person, even, a person here she might actually be able to trust… save for his eyes.
Even unreadable as they were, his eyes were filled with more benign emotion than she'd ever seen in Draco Malfoy's eyes.
Hermione analytically shifted her gaze back toward the blond wizard, and started slightly when she found he was already surveying her in a surprisingly perspicacious manner. She couldn't blame him, and could only imagine she wasn't acting at all like My Evans usually did, either. He swiftly averted his searching gaze, shifting with a small wince, the clinking noise of metal scraping against metal accompanying even this small motion.
Compassion shot through her heart, jarring her from the lingering shock that was dulling her responses more than she would like. What was she doing, staring at Malfoy like this was an awkward social call? This man didn't need her dumbstruck gaping, he needed medical attention, and that - that - was something she could actually-
A deep, hearty but not at all comforting chuckle rang out in the not-so-far distance, sending an electric shot of adrenaline through every nerve in her body.
"-uddy birds won't be a problem anymore, that's fer sure."
Sod it!
Hermione leapt to her feet, while Malfoy stiffened as well, jerking back against the bars of the cage. Instantly, he sucked in a short, pained gasp, which quickly turned into a hacking cough that he desperately tried to muffle.
Instinct screamed at her to run. Instead, biting her lip so hard she would surely draw blood, Hermione crouched back down at the side of the enclosure. "Malfoy. What hurts the most?" she whispered urgently, ignoring her mind's panicked chants of Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
For a moment, Malfoy's gaze listlessly shifted in her direction without quite finding her face. Then, as if her words had just sunk in, he suddenly repeated swiftly between coughs, "What - What?"
He squinted up at her without bothering to hide the disbelief scrawled across his features.
"I want to help you," Hermione said, hastily glancing through the archway out of the courtyard and the narrow view of the grounds it gave. Nothing yet, but Hagrid's vociferous complaints were getting louder and louder...
Looking back down at him, she enunciated lowly but clearly, "You're obviously injured; please tell me: where is it most painful?"
Malfoy abruptly went still beneath her gaze, lips parting slightly. His clearly exhausted gray eyes suddenly filled with so much tangible, overwhelmingly perceptible emotion that Hermione felt the strange sensation she was being given a rare view directly into another human being's very soul… and that what she was seeing there was the farthest thing from wicked.
Abruptly, her own eyes filled with tears.
This was not the Draco Malfoy she had known. This was a good person. She knew it… she could sense it.
And they had tortured him.
But before she could speak or even think of something to say, to ask, to offer, his vision shuttered as quickly as it had opened, leaving her at a very well-guarded wall. "My… back," he whispered, his gaze briefly searching hers before he looked away.
Her lips tugged into a frown. She could name about thirty other injuries not on his back that appeared absolutely excruciating, but she nodded and drew her wand nonetheless, praying that Hagrid moved as slowly in this world as he did in hers. "Show me. Hurry."
Raw fear that pierced something deep inside her sprang to his expression, but Malfoy haltingly bowed his head away and, clenching his jaw, awkwardly shifted around until he was facing away from her. Hermione narrowly restrained another hot wave of anger when saw his hands were indeed chained behind him, the grimy skin around and beneath the tight bindings bleeding and rubbed raw...
But none of it mattered the instant she looked at his back. Through the many jagged tears in the tattered, blood-soaked material that was his clothing, it was impossible to miss the multiple bloody, inflamed lines crisscrossing the bruised skin.
Whip lashes.
It brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes and the desperate urge to be sick.
His right cheek pressed against the bars of the far side of the cage in an attempt to keep himself upright, Malfoy's gaze wordlessly slid sideways as if trying to gauge her reaction through his peripheral vision, his chest raggedly rising and falling more quickly.
"Right. I'll take care of it," Hermione choked out after her heart had begun beating again.
She inhaled a sharp, short breath to steady herself and lowered her wand on the torn skin. Malfoy visibly tensed, closing his eyes, which led her to wonder if he expected the spell that she would utter to be more along the lines of something 'fun at his expense' rather than one that would heal a part of his pain.
To squelch his doubts, Hermione nonverbally performed a fast healing spell, one of many she'd picked up during the war. A soft orange glow settled over his rough clothing, if it could even be called that. The cuts and welts covering his back quickly vanished, leaving in their place nothing but thin, deep scars that Hermione, unfortunately, could not prevent without the help of an actual healing potion. On second thought, she hurriedly added another incantation to clear his lungs of any invasive fluid that might have been behind his cough.
As the glow soaked into his skin and then faded completely, Malfoy's eyes flew open. Slowly, he looked down at his chest and visibly, experimentally took a deep breath. Hermione held her own, then released it with a weak, relieved smile when he didn't start coughing.
Slumping against the bars, the Slytherin twisted back toward her. His glistening eyes held an unexpected, unreadable intensity that caught her completely off guard, that she had only seen in the eyes of her Harry, and even that occurred only very rarely.
"I don't understand," he whispered hoarsely, true emotion breaking up the defeated levelness of his voice.
Something about that moment caused Hermione to believe more firmly than ever that she was not at all dealing with the same Draco Malfoy that she had once slapped and despised.
She stared back down at him, her eyes still reflecting her horror at the violence inflicted upon him. "That makes two of us," she managed to breathe.
"- take care 'a this runt up here an' then we're done fer the night!"
Abruptly, another bark of laughter rang out from just beyond the courtyard wall. Without another word, Hermione flung the discarded cloth cover over Malfoy's cage and sprang to her feet, casting a swift Disillusionment Charm on herself so anyone with an untrained eye who looked in her direction would only see whatever was behind her.
As she'd hoped, neither Hagrid nor Filch were Mad-Eye Moody material, as neither detected her presence in the middle of the courtyard when they came into sight, nearly to the crest of the thankfully dramatically long climb back up to the castle.
"Keep this secret, Malfoy," she whispered lowly to the rectangular-shaped cloth.
It wasn't much of a command, but it was all she had to rely on. Though any response that might have come from the cage was drowned out by the animated conversation marking Hagrid and Filch's return, she had a sneaking suspicion that he probably wasn't going to go running to his 'Master' about My Evans' suddenly advanced magical healing ability.
Silently, Hermione carefully backed away from the center of the courtyard, quickening her retreat as Hagrid proficiently flicked a wand at Malfoy's prison and said, "Locomotor cage!"
At Hagrid's effective use of wand magic, she couldn't help but shoot another startled glance his way. Everything here, wherever 'here' was, was so bloody different... how would she learn enough about this place to survive like one of them without ending up in a cage just like Malfoy was?
No, Hermione, she countered firmly. There's got to be a way out of here, and you're going to find it and take it. You're going survive, and you're going to get home.
Despite the determined vow, Malfoy's battered face flashed through her mind like he was still directly in front of her, staring at her with those unfathomable eyes loaded with more benevolent emotion than any other person she'd yet encountered in this world, let alone the Draco Malfoy of her own universe.
Clenching her hands, she fought tears, swallowing back yet another urge to vomit. Sweet Morgana, his treatment was horrendous - horrendous! Had all Light witches and wizards been condemned to the same level of abuse? Why? Why did the obvious victors need to be so horrific, so cruel to people who sounded like they'd never really had much of a chance to begin with?
But once Hermione returned to the shadowed castle hallways, basic escape and evasion instincts took precedence over her troubled thoughts… and, clutching the yearbook, she ran for the Head common room without looking back.
A/N: For those of you who are curious; Draco's not going to be a mirror image of Universe A Harry at all; he's definitely his own unique person here. Feedback is good; I'm always curious to know what you think! Thank you so much for all of your support on the previous chapters, including bearing with the influx of new information/surroundings… There's a lot of new stuff to absorb, and I'll try to keep it as straightforward as possible.
Do be kind and leave a review behind!