Edit: As of the 28th of April 2015, I have made major changes to this fic, thanks to constructive criticism by a reader. Scenes have been added, and the tone and content of many existing scenes have been altered or expanded upon. I hope that such alterations give a better picture of the dynamic between Draco and Hermione, which previously was not illustrated in a great deal of detail because I was trying to keep this fic short. However, the subject material does not lend itself to brevity, it seems - and in order to make a proper go of achieving what I set out to achieve, I have had to make some changes. I recommend skimming back through the fic from the beginning before reading on, but doing so is not necessary. I hope you find the changes I've made to be positive ones!
Liss xx
Part Five
Twenty-seven days go by since Hermione was first captured, by her count. They are all the exact same in essence since she left the dungeons, and they all drag by with deadening monotony. She no longer has the energy to be truly afraid, or hopeful, or homesick. She feels all these things constantly, but never with any real strength; they are simply the weary background noise to what her existence has become. It is hard to sustain any kind of intensity of feeling when there is no end to anything, when there is no brave escape to keep her going, no possibility of rescue to buoy her up. This is limbo, Hermione tells herself as she stares unseeingly down at the book in her lap. This is purgatory, and she despises it. She is sick of it, of feeling nearly nothing but a hollowed out, aching emptiness. She wants to scream, to scream and rage and tear things apart, because beneath the emptiness that is drowning her, there is a deep wellspring of suppressed, desperate anger.
But Hermione doesn't scream. Instead she just curls her hands tightly together and squeezes until it hurts, the pain both a distraction and a relief. Hermione is rather certain that is not a healthy coping mechanism, and she really doesn't care. The clock on the wall by the door ticks quietly, and she watches the thin seconds hand spin around the clock face with excruciating slowness, the minute hand even slower. Time seems stretched thin like taffy here, and the more she watches the Merlin-damned clock, the slower it appears to move. She waits for Malfoy to return. And this is what her life has become. It is infuriating, that his return is a much anticipated event, but it is frightening being in his rooms without him, where any Death Eater could conceivably force their way in past the wards and locks if they were skilled enough. And…it is lonely.
Malfoy is not the best company, distracted by his duties as he is – it isn't that he is rude, or awful, she just doesn't know what to say to him half the time – but he is still company. Silent company who never speaks of anything but the absolute necessities lately, but she likes to see him there. Once he has finished washing away the blood and filth of his work – metaphorical and actual – he emerges silently and his presence both eases and elevates the tension in the room. He settles into routine, Hermione notices, once the first week has passed. She isn't sure if it was a routine he had before, or if it is one that has come about thanks to her presence. The clock on the wall ticks toward 5 o'clock, and she watches it and thinks he will be back soon, and then the routine will begin.
The routine.
He comes out of the bathroom after washing, in a fresh shirt and trousers. His eyes skim and cast over her, before he moves to the – locked; she has tried to open it – cabinet that holds decanters of alcohol. He hesitates there, and then turns away, rubbing his hand over his eyes. Instead he moves to the row of windows that make up one wall, beyond which the sun lowers in the sky. Malfoy stands with his arms crossed over his chest and his shoulder leaning into one frame, head tilting tiredly to join it after a while, staring out into the bleak gardens below and the afternoon sky above. Hermione finds herself watching him; tall and lean, white-blonde hair going gold under the stain of afternoon sun creeping into the room, a statue that speaks of weariness and defeat, and an odd vulnerability. If he were a statue, she would name him The Loyal Traitor, she decides with dry whimsy one day, as he turns back to the room with a face that is carved in expressions of self-loathing so deep it startles her.
And then he disapparates, and returns only several minutes later with an array of delicious foods, and she creeps from her huddle in her armchair to join him for a silent dinner. They watch each other as they eat. Eyes flicking and joining and breaking apart – guilt, worry, curiosity, and suspicion. They watch each other, in the end, more than they watch their food. But they don't speak, unless there is something that must be said.
Pass the salt.
May I have the gravy boat?
Did you get to the drop point today?
Do you need anything?
And then she escapes back to her armchair and watches Malfoy pile the dirty dishes up, apparating to the kitchens and returning empty-handed usually, although several times now he has come back with an armful of linens – fresh bedsheets and pillowslips for the bed she sleeps in. He changes it using magic, while she watches surreptitiously from behind her book. And then he sits down at the table – after a glance at Hermione – and begins to read. Occasionally Malfoy sits at his desk before he picks up a book, and spends an hour writing a lengthy letter. Hermione doesn't ask who he is writing to, but she suspects it is his mother. She doesn't know who else he has to write to. When Malfoy is finished writing his letter he picks it up by one corner, and sets it alight with a flick of his wand, dropping it in a small rubbish bin by his desk and watching it burn away to nothing, his face expressionless. And then he dashes off what seems like just a quick note, and sets it aside to post the next day – she thinks it probably has to pass inspection by another Death Eater before being posted.
At any rate, they spend their evenings in what she could almost call companionable silence, until 10 o'clock sharp, when Hermione takes a bath and crawls into bed. She is never really very tired, but she shuts her eyes and tries to sleep anyway – because there is nothing else to do, and because although she often wakes with nightmares, she craves the blissful nothingness of sleep that comes before the bad dreams. She doesn't know how late Malfoy usually stays up, but whenever she awakes from a nightmare, she sees him there. Lit softly in the lowered lamplight and sitting uncomfortable at the table; sometimes still reading despite the clock saying it is hours past midnight, sometimes blinking sleepily to wakefulness at her with worry printed in his hazy eyes, and sometimes fast asleep and snoring faintly, face smushed into the table and hand on his wand even in his sleep.
He looks so innocent, sleeping.
Rarely, Malfoy has to leave again in the evening, with his face set cold and hard – that blank, expressionless mask shaping his features. He never tells her when he will be back; she supposes he doesn't know himself. But when he returns his footsteps are heavy and weighted with more than just physical exhaustion, and she curls beneath the bedcovers and for a brief moment is afraid he is someone else. 'It's just me,' Malfoy says to her half-covered form in a rasping voice, and she pretends that she was not afraid, but asleep. She keeps her eyes shut and stays half-hidden beneath the blankets, because she doesn't want to see the blood that she always fears covers him, whether it be his, or someone else's. She falls asleep on those nights to the sound of water running and the knowledge that whether Malfoy is furiously swearing or crying in broken little hitches, he is suffocating in the horror of what he has to do.
She feels sorry for Malfoy, Hermione has realised. Desperately, achingly sorry for the situation he is in, and what he has to do. She could never do what he does, and she isn't sure if that actually makes him much, much stronger than she is, or merely less-good than her. At first she wants to think it is the latter, but she is coming to think that first assessment was wrong.
But now, now the clock ticks onto 5 o'clock, and chimes five cheery times, and Hermione sits up straighter in the armchair, yanked out of her wandering thoughts. Malfoy will be back shortly, and anticipation always threads a little faster through her blood at this time, because what if he has managed to get to the drop point? Or rather: what if he comes in and says that Voldemort wants to see her? What if he has been discovered? What if she is taken away from his protection? What if, what if? That dull and ever-present background fear in her mind picks up just a little – sharper and more urgent. She shifts in her seat, adjusting the pair of striped green and white boxers of Malfoy's, which he has transfigured to be trouser-length for her because it would arouse suspicion for him to acquire her any ordinary clothing. So, she wears his clothing, sized down to fit her – today the striped trousers, and a black tee shirt that she wishes he hadn't shrunk down so much; it is tight on her, and she feels exposed.
She watches the door, with her breath caught in her throat.
It creaks faintly when it opens at seven past five, and Malfoy limps in, a box under one arm and a look of disgust on his face. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees there is no blood on him, no obvious fresh injury, or sign that he has caused harm. The box is large and flat, scarlet-coloured and tied up with shining silver ribbon, and Hermione is curious peeking over the top of her book. Malfoy shoves the door shut behind him with a careless kick back with one foot, and a wave of his wand resets the wards. He glances at Hermione and his look of disgust blanks away; erased utterly in a second. His eyes go as soft as she ever sees them, which still isn't very, and his mouth shapes into a pressed-together, faint half-smile. There is some kind of deep relief and neediness in his face that she doesn't understand.
"Granger," he says in greeting as he shuts his eyes and sways back into the door, toeing his shoes off with a sigh, breaking his established routine. She stares in silence and his eyes flick back up to hers in her absence of greeting. She manages the barest hint of a smile. It feels strange to speak whenever she does, because she does it so little, but she says his name because he seems to expect a greeting in return, and she doesn't want to seem rude when he is being polite. And it is so odd, Hermione thinks, that even in captivity she still worries about social niceties – how stupid of her. But…old habit dies hard.
"Malfoy." She sounds scratchy and her voice breaks embarrassingly over the beginning of his name, and she flushes and looks down at her hands, all tight on the book she holds closed in her lap. She wonders again at the strangeness that she can be embarrassed over her voice going funny, when less than a month ago the man whose name she stumbles over was forced to rape her. People are so strange, she thinks as she wobbles her stiff little smile at him – so polite, so civil, just how her mother taught her to be. Acting as if they were just two friendly room-mates, and not a spy and a prisoner trapped together. Malfoy looks away, down at the scarlet box he has tucked beneath his arm, all worn-thin weariness, and a shadow of disgust.
"I couldn't get to the drop point," he says rather unnecessarily, and his voice is thin and strained. "Sorry. Voldemort…had me working in the dungeons today. And I still don't think he's likely to let me off the grounds."
"The dungeons?" she asks, watching him suspiciously now. This break in routine is strange. Malfoy shoves his shoes over to one side of the door and nods, eyes skittering away from her, throat bobbing as he swallows, his shoulders hunching a little as though a chill has seized him.
"Clearing out the cells," he says succinctly, jaw bunching and shoulders hunching further and she understands then, why he looked at her like that, coming in. He has been killing the prisoners that have no further use to Voldemort, and burning the corpses, and it was not that long ago that she was down there. She remembers the stench of the flesh as it burnt, and a sudden sickness rises in her belly. She clamps her lips hard together before she answers, and he watches her with steady eyes that look as if he expects her disgust to be heaped upon him. As if he would take it willingly.
"I'm sor-" she begins, but Malfoy looks down as soon as he realises what she is saying as if he can't stand to hear it from her lips, as if he doesn't deserve it, and her chin trembles and her throat closes up, and she can't finish. He stands with head bowed, frozen by the door for a moment as silence falls over them, and then heads for the bathroom, tossing the scarlet box tied with silver ribbon carelessly on his desk as he passes it. Her eyes fix on that patch of brightness, on that distraction from what they had just been talking about.
"What is that?" Hermione uncurls herself from the armchair and steps toward it, still curious, only for Malfoy to back-pedal fast and slap a hand down onto the flat, rectangular box. The air around him smells strongly of death and smoke, and she breathes through her mouth, resisting the urge to cover her nose and mouth.
"You don't touch the things on my desk, Granger," he says sharply, and she flinches back from the hard edge in his voice. It is true; he told her early on never to touch anything on his desk, and she…well, she wasn't sure if he had wards on the drawers so she hasn't done anything more than skim through what he leaves lying out on top of the polished wood surface, which wasn't anything interesting. She clasps her hands together, and her eyes meet his for a long moment, and she feels a spark of silly success when he is the one who looks away first.
"What is it?" she asks him quietly, and there is a long pause before he finally, reluctantly, answers her.
"A present," Malfoy says tautly, but the tone in which he says it makes Hermione wonder if there is a body part in there, or a venomous snake. It doesn't seem like a good present; somehow there is an air of malice and menace that emanates from it. But that makes Hermione no less curious.
"For who?" She spots a label all twisted sideways, and sees her name scribbled on it, and on old instinct reaches out to flip the label over and read what it says more easily, head already tilting as she tries to make out the writing.
"Granger, don't," Malfoy begins in a pained voice as he pushes her hand away at the same time as he yanks the box back from her, but it's too late. Her eyes have already skimmed over the few words inked on the silver label, without even needing to turn it over.
'For the lovely Miss Granger' it read, in a flowing, neat script, 'to wear at her Master's pleasure.'
Hermione's blood runs cold and she lets out a choked gasp and stumbles back a step, as if it had been a venomous snake or human organ. At her Master's pleasure. The words are burnt into her and she cannot make sense of them at all, stunned and shaking. "I…what?" she says, and her eyes are wounded and horrified on Malfoy's as she clutches her hands together in front of her, pressing the clasp of them into her stomach. "What…what does that mean? Who – who is…?" She has sudden visions of being taken away from Malfoy and given to someone else, and in there is…something that…she doesn't even know. She pushes her hands harder into her stomach, feeling unsteady and sick. "My…master? But…who…?" Fear makes her knees watery and her mind blank and stupid. She thinks for a moment Voldemort must be giving her to someone else.
Malfoy flinches; his hand flexes on the box in a little, angry spasm, and he looks away, out the window with sickened eyes. His jaw clenches and relaxes before he answers, and the words sound wrenched out of him as though they physically hurt to say. "Me, Granger. Me. I'm…I'm your fucking master."
"…Oh." Of course he is. Hermione hadn't thought…she is so used to thinking of them as…co-conspirators in stuck in this together, that she forgets that in reality she is his slave and he is her master. "Of course."
They stand silently together a moment, Malfoy staring fixedly out the window at his left, and Hermione staring down at the scarlet box, the awkwardness between them palpable. Hermione is rather sure she shouldn't want to know what is in the box anymore, but…she does, perversely. "Is it from…him?"
The muscles in Malfoy's jaw bunch up again, and his face is set in a grim kind of glare at nothing as he nods shortly. "Yes. He thought…I don't know what the fuck he thought. Rewarding me for doing such a Merlin-damned good job –" His fists bunch and he snarls the word and looks for a moment as if he might lose control of himself, before sucking in a short huff of air and leaning forward, splaying his hands flat on the desk and hanging his head. He doesn't seem to care how wretched and nakedly miserable he looks to her. "– Doing such a good job today, maybe. K-killing all the prisoners that…that are dying, and…and burning… Burning all the fucking bodies. Fuck." He sounds as if he is going to cry as he lifts a hand and slams it back against the desk, breathing hard through parted lips.
Hermione doesn't know what to say. She just stands there awkwardly, with an odd little ache behind her eyes that tells her she wants to cry, only nothing is coming out.
"What's – what's in the box?" she asks after a long moment, and he stares at her with red-rimmed eyes and makes a funny, choked laugh of surprise. His mouth is a slew of bitterness.
"I – I don't know, Granger. Why? Have you decided to play your part prop–"
"Don't," Hermione warns him sharper than she thought she was capable of right now. "Don't you dare."
Malfoy deflates instantly, apologetic and slumped-weary, shame radiating off him. He lifts a hand from the desk again, this time to wipe at his eyes, which are damp grey and bloodshot.
"Sorry. Sorry," he says thickly, and sniffs wet. "Sorry. I…" But there is no excuse, and she is glad he sees that, trailing away to silence without giving one. His lips press together and he makes a little shaky inhale-exhale that sounds like he is trying not to cry, and on instinct Hermione lays her hand lightly over his on the desk. She isn't thinking at all, just giving comfort as she would to anyone she knew, who she wasn't comfortable enough with to hug. Her fingertips are cool and his are warm. Their eyes meet, and lock. This isn't just anyone; it is Malfoy, and her fingers are settled gentle over his on the desk, and she sucks in a sudden, dizzying breath at the realisation.
"It's okay," she says weakly to Malfoy, and then pulls her hand back, squeezing it discreetly into a fist to get rid of the lingering feel of his skin on hers – warm and dry and soft, it wasn't unpleasant, but… Well, it feels strange. She looks down at the box instead of at him – she can feel his eyes on her – and reaches out, dragging it over toward her.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to see what it is," she says, steeling herself for the sight of something awful, but she wants to know. Needs to know. Even if it is awful and she wishes she hadn't seen it, her curiosity right now is overwhelming and needs to be sated. If she doesn't know what it is exactly, she'll always imagine the worst, most abhorrent thing it could be. She'll always wonder. She needs to know.
"Granger…I really don't think that's a good idea."
"You're probably right," she agrees, and pulls the ribbon free with several sharp tugs. Malfoy is silent at her side, and she can feel his uneasy disapproval, but he makes no move to stop her. She lifts the lid off, and opens out the silver tissue paper to find an array of things that make her eyes go wide and her cheeks flush hot. She is afraid to touch them, mostly lest the items be charmed or cursed somehow, but even after Malfoy performs an unasked for scan that finds them clean of curses and charms, she still doesn't.
Laid out on top of what looks like lingerie – all peach-coloured lace, silk, and ribbon – are things. Hermione is certainly not experienced, but she is hardly ignorant or naïve about sex, either. She is rather certain she can guess what most of the things are; fine silver chains and clamps, soft black rope and a blindfold, what looks like a collar, and other…even more embarrassing things designed to inflict pain and pleasure, along with a few frightening instruments that look purely designed to inflict torture.
Hermione slams the lid back down, caught somewhere between embarrassment, because Malfoy and sex things and oh my god, and disgust, because Voldemort had given these to Malfoy to force her to wear while he raped her repeatedly. She wonders if Voldemort thinks Malfoy has her docile under an Imperius, or if he thinks Malfoy likes her to fight, and scream, and…
"Oh Merlin…" she gasps, as the disgust wins out by a landslide, and she feels ill, flattening a hand to her middle and turning away. "Get rid of it. Please."
"I can't." The words snap out of Malfoy brusquely, angrily, and she looks up to see him with his eyebrows all drawn down together and his lips pursed slightly, frowning fixedly at the box. Like it is a maths problem he cannot solve, instead of a little box of horrors.
"Why not?" The words rush out of her, hurried by fear, because she knows why already, although she cannot admit it to herself.
"My master might expect us to…" Malfoy pauses and his mouth works without a sound coming out, his features strained and cheeks flushing faintly. He stops, and looks out the window again, squinting into the sunlight that streaks his face. Hermione's hands ball up into fists as she expects with a sense of dread what will come next. "Use it," he finishes coldly but with a slight unsteadiness to the words, unable to look at her as he says them. "At – at another revel, or something similar, perhaps. He…likes his entertainment."
"No. No. No, Malfoy, I won't. I can't…" Panic bubbles up in Hermione as she remembers what it was like last time, with the pain, and the humiliation, and the violation of having her control over her own body taken away from her. The actual act of Malfoy…penetrating her…had been the easiest part to bear. It was everything else that went with it that…that she couldn't stand. That is what makes her want to scream at the thought of going through it again. She shakes her head hard. "No." Her eyes are pleading on him and she catches at his sleeve without thinking, fingers twisting in the white cotton. Begging him. "Malfoy. Please. I can't."
He stares at her blankly for a moment.
"Please –"
"It's not up to me, Granger," he says harshly, the blankness on his face breaking into defensive anger, and a hint of hurt. "It's not – if it were up to me you wouldn't have to do anything you didn't fucking well want to. But it's not. If the Dark Lord tells me to bring you to a revel and – and use th-those…" Malfoy stutters to a halt, and rubs a hand over his brow, head bowed and shoulders slumped, other hand using the desk as a prop. He is pallid and his eyes are sick, his mouth is all twisted and shaped with anger and revulsion. "Then I will, if it is the only way to keep us both alive. Whether you like it or not." He pauses after saying that – freezes a moment – and then swears harsh and angry under his breath and turns away sharply, muttering something that Hermione can't make out as she stares at him, arms hugging herself tight. His shoulders flex and hunch, his back to her, and his hands sweep up through his hair in frantic little motions.
"Fuck," he swears then, loudly, and turns enough to lash out and knock the box violently off the desk. His whole frame vibrates with anger, and his breath comes hard, face contorting in a grim anger. "This is what I have been reduced to! This!" Hermione stumbles back a hasty few steps, hugging herself tighter and staring at him with big, worried eyes. She doesn't know if she should retreat and let this sudden rage run its course, try to soothe him, or tell him briskly to snap out of it. She doesn't know if he's angry at her, or…
"He's got me fucking playing his games…got me being part of…'Whether you like it or not' –" Malfoy quotes what he said only a moment ago, apparently disgusted by his own words. Hermione watches him cautiously, eyes flicking between his wand hand and his face. "I – I didn't mean that, Granger. I'd really rather you didn't get us killed but – but I'm not going to force you to do anything. I'm not going to let him make me…any more a part of this than I already am." He means the words he says – she can tell by the resigned, nearly relieved tone he has, and the determined set of his shoulders. And it surprises her, her eyebrows arching.
"If you want me to get rid of these –" He waves a hand at the contents of the box, now strewn around it on the floor. "– Then I will."
"Put it all away. Somewhere out of sight," Hermione says before she can rethink the decision, her jaw tight and her fists clenched at her sides. She feels all numb and stiff, and she wants to curl up into a ball and cry until she runs out of tears, but instead she lifts her chin and looks Malfoy in the eye. Her voice is unsteady but certain. "I – I don't want to die."
So now she has another possibility to dread.
But the look Malfoy gives her, as she forces herself to kneel down and help him gather up the contents of the box, is filled with a deep respect. It makes her feel stronger, somehow.
The next day he comes back without blood on his clothes and with a large brown paper package in his arms, tired and weary but with something good glinting in his eyes, unlike the last time he'd come back with a package. Hermione gets up at the sight of him, laying her book aside and wandering closer, hanging onto one of the posts at the end of the four-poster bed and eyeing him curiously. Malfoy stops by the table, looking nervous and uncomfortable as he meets her eyes.
"You haven't been out of these four walls in…in a very long time. I - I should have thought. This is hard enough for you without being stuck in the same room without end. Especially when I'm gone most of the day," Malfoy begins apologetically, still holding that large brown paper parcel in his arms. "And while I can't exactly take you wandering around without suspicion, or attracting attention we don't want…well, I got you these," he says hesitantly, holding out the parcel to her, and she takes it, curious. It's soft and squishy, and Hermione lays it down on the table and tears the paper open, to reveal…a soft grey woollen cloak, and a pair of warm, practical boots that look very close to her size. He shoots her a hopeful look. "I thought maybe you'd like to walk in the gardens tonight? After everyone is asleep?"
"I…" Hermione lifts the cloak out of the paper wrapping, and marvels at how soft it is. She looks out the window at the gardens, stained in reds and pinks by the setting sun, and then at Malfoy, standing there tired and pallid in the evening light, watching her hopefully, all anticipation. He looks nearly sweet, if exhausted and worn, and that he noticed how claustrophobic she is feeling and wanted to do something about it is sweet, inasmuch as anything in this situation is sweet. "I - yes. Yes, I'd like that."
"Good." Malfoy relaxes a little, and then turns away, scooping up his wand with a sigh as he straightens his shoulders. "There's a, ah, I have to go out, tonight. A mission. But I should be back here around midnight, if all goes to plan. I'll wake you up when it's a good time to go out, shall I?"
"I… Are you sure? We don't have to go out tonight if you have to um, do things." Hermione doesn't like thinking about what he does on those missions; she tries not to think about them at all, if she can, which isn't as often as she'd like. Malfoy shakes his head, fiddling nervously with his wand, and for a moment Hermione feels stupidly as though she's been asked on a date. She chases away the silly thought and takes out the brown boots in the package. They're low-heeled and ankle-high lace-up boots, lined with soft pygmy puff fur, and they look very slightly too big for her. It will be easy enough to shrink them if need be, though. They're lovely and luxurious, and like the cloak, undeniably expensive. Hermione doubts Malfoy had to pay for them though; Death eaters get things for free, one way or another.
"No, it's fine. I want to. I probably won't be able to sleep tonight anyway," he insists as he backs away, and her stomach turns. Will he come home - back, not home, she corrects herself - drenched in blood? Or wounded? Or…at all? A catch of fear leaps up in her at the thought of Malfoy being killed on a mission, and she being…thrown to the wolves. "I'll see you tonight." She nods, clutching the boots to her like a teddy bear.
"B-be careful, Malfoy." He gives her an odd look, eyes resting heavy on her for a long, taut moment.
"I always am." The door clicks quietly shut behind him, the sound of the lock clacking home coming next, and then Hermione is alone in the evening light.
She puts the boots down on top of the cloak, strewn over the table on top of the torn paper wrapping, and walks to the window, parting the net curtains and peering out over the gardens. They look so pretty by the evening light…but she imagines they'll look pretty by the moonlight too. Her nose is nearly pressed to the glass as she surveys the herb garden, and rose bushes, and the winding pathways screened by flowering shrubs and bushes, and right in the very centre, the small hedge maze she has memorised the route of. She thinks of being able to be down there, and it feels good, like a little fragment of freedom.
Malfoy closes the side door of the huge manor quietly behind them, and then turns to Hermione, the dark stains of exhaustion and strain beneath his eyes highlighted by the moonlight. She had been sitting awake waiting for him when he'd come in, and there had been blood stains on his clothing. Hermione had told him then that they didn't have to go out, but he'd said he wanted to, and so did she, of course. But he looks like utter shit, half-dead on his feet, and it worries her. "Well. Where do you want to go, Granger? It's up to you, tonight."
It's half past one, and Hermione stands bundled in her cloak and boots, feeling the fresh, cold night air whisk over her cheeks and chill her nose, and looks around. This part of the garden is open to the night, with the formal low herb garden to the left and the perfectly well-manicured roses sprawling out at the right. It's lovely, and beautiful, but very…exposed. Hermione feels naked and vulnerable. It's a horrible feeling to have, and it infuriates her that she feels it. But she feels it nonetheless, and she doesn't see the point in making herself feel nervy and miserable just to try to get over this agoraphobic feeling. This trip out of Malfoy's room is supposed to be fun, not another ordeal.
"The - the maze; I want to go into the maze," she says quietly - uncertainly, feeling strange about asserting herself so bluntly. But Malfoy just nods agreeably, shoving his hands in the pockets of the coat he wears instead of a cloak. His hair shines white beneath the moon, and his eyes are little black pools ringed with silver.
"As you wish," he says with a dry sort of charm, and she sets off in that direction, leading the way until he catches up with just three long strides, before falling in at her side.
They walk there in silence, close beside one another - close enough that their arms bump together now and then. It's…nice. The only sounds are those of small nocturnal animals, their footsteps whispering on the dew-damp grass, and their breath, puffing softly in and out. Hermione feels like she can breathe easily for the first time in over a month, and it's amazing. She nearly feels like she can forget, the weight of everything that's happened lessening, just a little. Her cloak is warm, and her boots are warmer, carefully shrunk by Malfoy to the exact right size as he'd knelt at her feet, hair still damp from his hurried shower. She hugs herself and smiles faintly, eyes drifting up to the big round moon unhidden by cloud - the night clear and still and smattered with bright stars. Sometimes, everything is all right, even now. Even here.
"Do you know the way to the centre?" he asks her, a sideways glance down at her in the moonlight as they near the maze entrance, and she nods slowly.
"I think so. I've been studying it, from our- your room." She swears inwardly at the stupid slip of her tongue. It makes things sound all…wrong. It's not their bedroom, not really. It's his, and she is a prisoner, no matter how comfortable or safe he tries to make her feel there. But he doesn't make any sign that he even noticed her slip, thank Merlin.
"I have been too, for months and months. Not on purpose - it's just the only interesting thing to look at out the damn windows. I've never bothered coming down here though." He grins briefly, and it's a transformation that makes him look suddenly young and happy for a flicker of time. "Do you think we'll be able to figure it out between us?"
"I think so," she says again, still shy and uncertain when she speaks, because that's how she always feels now - even now, as close to freedom as she's been in a month. And then they are at the entrance, and she leads the way at Malfoy's urging, going in without a pause, reviewing her mental image of the small maze confidently in her mind's eye. "Come on then…let's see how well we do, Malfoy."
They get horribly lost, and it takes them nearly an hour to find the middle, but oh, it's fun. Hermione even laughs, when Malfoy scrambles undignified up to the top of the hedge, then accidentally steps on a twisted branch that's too weak to support his weight - and falls straight into the hedge, requiring her to haul him out bodily. She giggles despite herself then, as she tries to pull him out of the hedge, half-hysterical little sounds she tries to stifle in the folds of her cloak, and when he collapses beside her his chest is shaking from quiet, wheezing laughter too..
Hermione sprawls down on the grass in the centre of the maze, when they finally reach it. Malfoy dries up the dew for her with a charm before the wet can soak into her cloak, and the charm makes the ground feel like it's been soaking up the midsummer sun. It's warm beneath her, and the stars and moon are bright, and she lies on her back and looks up at them while Malfoy settles beside her, sitting tailor-fashion and plucking idly at daisies. They don't talk at much, just whispers back and forth now and then about constellations, and shooting stars, and there - right there, that's a Muggle satellite. She lies with her head pillowed on her hands and the sky soaring up above her. Time passes without meaning, and peace settles in her bones.
Then a dark shape whisks across the sky, and Hermione frowns, tension seizing her as she props herself up on her elbows. "What's - what was that?" Malfoy looks up, eyes tracing the sky until he spots the dark shape as it sweeps back into sight from behind some trees.
"Patrol," he says succinctly, and then reaches out and gently lays a daisy chain crown over her hair, with an awkward little smirk, his cheeks darkening slightly in the moonlight as he arranges it to his satisfaction. Her own feel overheated too, and she lowers her gaze, feeling oddly tight in her chest. "There. Perfect," he says dryly, of the daisy crown he wove for her, then: "We should go back in. It's nearly three, and I have an early start tomorrow."
Hermione is woken from hazy dreams of good things and white petals to swearing and pain – not her own for once, thank Merlin for small favours. But there is still a moment where she is filled with half-asleep panic that terrible things will happen, shaken rudely into wakefulness as Malfoy hisses out her name amongst a slew of curses.
"Fucking Merlin this fucking hurts. Granger. Wake the fuck up, Granger, I need – need some ass-ass-assistance here," he gets out thickly, and she is struggling upright and rubbing her eyes, staring at him with frightened, bleary eyes.
"Wha'?" she slurs frantically as she shoves the last stubborn locks of hair off her face, and then her gazes focus on him; Malfoy, shirtless, with blood smearing his face, and pain crinkling his brow. "Malfoy! What in Merlin's name –!"
Her mind flashes and flickers before she remembers everything coherently. He had gone out shortly before she'd gone to bed. There had been a revel planned, which Malfoy had told her about over dinner earlier in the night. Voldemort had apparently told Malfoy to bring Hermione to it, and he'd made excuses to Voldemort – said that she wasn't up to the task, as he'd been rather too rough on her the night before. Which had put a mental image in Hermione's head that had made her feel sick – but besides that she had also been worried that Malfoy would get in trouble for not giving Voldemort what he'd wanted. '
I said – I said I would," she had offered uncertainly, with her appetite suddenly vanished to nowt as nausea raged up. Malfoy had just shaken his head and shrugged as he'd forked up a green bean, and said, 'Don't worry about it, Granger; he didn't seem to mind.'
Apparently, he had minded.
"Malfoy!" Hermione scrambles up out of the bedcovers, onto the cold rug beside the bed in bare feet, and he is staring at her glazedly with huge grey eyes, his face all blood. Her hands hover in the air, wanting to reach out and steady him – touch his face, grab his arm, but she isn't sure where or how he is hurt. He coughs – there is the heavy scent of alcohol on his breath bursting in a suffocating cloud against her face – and then nearly doubles over, his hand flailing out and landing on her shoulder. He leans heavily on her for a moment, gasping raggedly, before pushing himself upright once more as she says his name again, urgent. The stench of alcohol makes her crinkle her nose as he lifts his head and stares blindly at her.
"Malfoy. What happened?" She is clear and firm, like a teacher talking to a rather dim preschooler. He blinks and staggers back a step unsteadily, hand grabbing not at her now, but one of the bed posts, fingers clenching white-knuckled around it as he wrenches in wobbling gusts of air. He looks gone behind the eyes; glazed and stunned, and she is overflowing with a sharp, bubbling worry.
"I – he had me – had me fucking flogged, Granger," Malfoy says dazedly, swaying on his feet, and her lips part as she sucks in a shocked breath. "He had me flogged," he repeats, and his pupils are pinpricks in his irises and he is shocky and shaking. "For - forty lashes. Salazar's sake, it hurts so fucking bad." He sounds almost ridiculously indignant about it all, and if the situation weren't so serious Hermione would nearly want to laugh at him.
Instead she makes her sleep-dulled body move, rounding Malfoy to take in the damage to his back – one hand gripping his upper arm to keep him from turning with her, which he tries to do. He is not just half-dead on his feet, but most definitely very drunk. Hermione's eyes pop wide as she takes in the devastation to his back, and she makes a strangled, sick sound. The pale skin of Malfoy's back is now a crisscross mangled quilt of raw, bleeding flesh – laid open to the yellow fat beneath the skin in some places, and she gulps down bile. It must be agonisingly painful – she is amazed that he made it all the way up to their room without passing out.
Their room – she realises she'd thought, blanching at how easily it has become that in her mind, and then pushes such irrelevant things out of her head and focuses on the man barely staying upright in front of her.
"Lie down," she tells him, because if he falls he will regret it, and she isn't sure if she will be able to get him upright again without magic, and she isn't sure that she should rely on his wand working properly for her. She would rather not try to levitate Malfoy and end up exploding him accidentally.
"Wh-where?" he asks through gritted teeth, looking uncertainly over his torn up shoulder at her. She gives him a scathing look that Ron and Harry are well familiar with. They call it the 'just do whatever she says, mate' look, and cower beneath it, always complainingly obedient when she levels it on them. Dealing with men who have been hurt – usually through their own stupidity – is second nature to Hermione, and she slips into the role of the bossy caregiver with ease, forgetting herself in it. It is nice, in a strange kind of way, to don the mantle of carer and have everything else cease to matter, for a little while at least.
"On the bed, you idiot!" She pushes at his upper arm – skin warm beneath her hand and marked with sticky blood spatter – and it is like trying to shift a boulder; he is essentially immovable, because although he sways forward slightly at her push, he rocks back into place again immediately. "Malfoy, you git. Stop it! You need to lie down before you fall down," she snaps at him, and he twists and throws her a confused, amused, pain-drenched look.
"So kitten has remembered she has claws?" Malfoy gets out with a choked half-laugh. "And all it took was me getting – fuck – shredded to bloody bits. Shit. Well worth it. A bargain, really." Sarcasm tints his last few words, and the half of his mouth that she can see makes a rictus of a smile. Hermione just tsks and shakes her head at him, out of patience and half-worried he is going to say something that will hurt, that will ruin everything, that will remind her, that will send her into a tailspin of flashbacks and horror that ends with her huddled in the armchair and him without any help.
"You're drunk, Malfoy. Shut up," she says with barely a shake to her voice, and for a miracle, he does. He doesn't resist her subsequent awkward manhandling of him either, although it takes several minutes and a great deal of pained whimpers and grunts to get him facedown on the bed. She places his wand on the bedside table, with an aim to try using it after she has gotten Malfoy comfortable; it feels friendly enough in her hand, but she thinks she will practice with a few simple charms before she attempts to heal him with it.
"'s warm…" he slurs muffled into the bed, lying where she had been before he'd woken her, and she shifts uncomfortable on her feet at that. "Nice," he mumbles, the half of his mouth that she can see curving up in a wounded, drunken smile, and she stares at him helplessly for a moment. Still in his shoes, arms bent so that his hands make loose fists by his head, which is turned to one side so that he can breathe – and gaze at her with one bloodshot, bleary eye.
"I'll take your shoes off," she tells him instead of making the quip about how it was nice and warm because he'd stolen her spot, which had risen automatically to her tongue. She stays herself from saying it because he is Malfoy not Harry or Ron, and it makes her stupidly, suddenly, uncomfortable right through. He gives a grunt of affirmation, and she fumbles with his shoes and keeps being distracted by his back. It is still bleeding here and there, sluggish seeping that makes her stomach turn, and her fingers slip and stumble on his shoelaces as her eyes keep flicking back to the destruction wreaked on his once-smooth skin. His breath comes in shallow, hitching gasps, and his lips are pressed hard together, and that distracts her too as she struggles to yank his shoes off.
A thought occurs to her as she gets water from the bathroom, having rummaged through the cabinets and cupboards in fruitless search of any disinfecting agents – of course a wizarding residence wouldn't have any handy Muggle things like that. It is a thought that Hermione doesn't like much, and she gnaws her lips full of worry over it.
"I can heal you, can't I?" she asks Malfoy nervously, as she sets the bowl of warm water and a soft cloth down on the bedside table. His silence says enough. Oh god no. "Malfoy." His name is a plea on her lips, filled with sympathy and horror and soul-deep weariness. But then what did she expect; she should have realised that from the start. Stupid.
Hermione's fists clench at her sides in her anger, and water from the cloth she had dipped in the bowl runs down her green and white striped trousers and drips onto her foot. "Shit," she says, and she is talking about more than just her wet trousers. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she looks at him again, Malfoy's fringe has fallen over his one visible eye. His face is little but a fall of hair and bitten lips. She shifts the wet cloth from her right hand to her left, and leans forward and pushes his fine, pale hair back for him with warm, damp fingers.
"So. What can I do?" she asks Malfoy as she straightens, angry but resigned, and she doesn't understand the nuances of his expression before he speaks again.
"Cleaning the wounds and binding them up should be acceptable to – to my master," he tells her in a quiet tone, lone grey eye thoughtful on her behind the pain.
"All right," she says faintly, her eyes skimming over the brutality inflicted on his back, feeling sick to her stomach at the thought of touching it, at the thought of causing him pain, of… She swallows hard and nods, voice firmer. "All right. I can do that."
His wand works well for her – if well means that she doesn't blow anything up. It feels friendly enough to her hand, but is weak – the charms she tries only work about half the time, and when they do work, they are pitiful compared to what she could accomplish with her own wand. But several numbing charms later she is left staring at his back with her hands fisted at her hips, biting the tip of her tongue lightly and wishing she had taken the time to learn some kind of cleansing charm - complicated spells - rather than having lazily relied on her ability to always have Muggle antiseptics on hand. It's too late now though.
She raids Malfoy's alcohol cabinet in the end – it will be wasting the firewhiskey to use it on his back, he laments through gritted teeth, and she – flushed with a bolstering shot or three of the stuff herself – pours a generous drizzle of it into his mouth. He laughs and mumbles something incoherent after swallowing, her name in the muddle somewhere, his eyes shut and skin damp with sweat, shivering from reaction to having his wounds cleaned of debris first with magically boiled water.
Malfoy hasn't made any of the process easy, despite his odd, drunken cheerfulness in the face of what has to be sheer agony. He had refused to let Hermione stupefy him, and she had said that she couldn't trust him to keep still and she couldn't have him moving, and in the end they had settled for magically lashing his arms to the bedposts in some awful mimicry of bondage. It keeps him still though, which is the important part. The sight of his arms stretched across the bed in a horizontal parody of crucifixion is unsettling though.
"Just fucking do it, Granger," he mumbles, and she makes a whimper, stand at his back with the bottle tilting nearly enough, but not quite.
"I don't know if the numbing charms took well enough."
"It'll have to do. I've taken worse. Done worse." He grits out the last bit with an angry self-loathing, and although the words make her burn hot and think of what he did to her, with an embarrassed sort of violated horror, she doesn't think he is talking about her. Actually. She bites her tongue again, harder this time – enough that it twinges reproachfully at her. "Just do it."
So she does.
He clamps his mouth shut on a scream - a yell of pain that makes Hermione jerk the bottle back up and stare at him wide-eyed and apologetic, her hands trembling, sweat making them clammy. The alcohol runs in rivulets over his ruined back, seeking out the channels of his wounds, and he turns his face into the pillow and yells again, stifled and wordless. The wiry muscles in his shoulders and arms flex and slide beneath the skin as he wrenches at his bonds, and Hermione swallows hard and watches him in misery.
She should just keep going, Hermione supposes. Get it all over with quickly, rather than draw it out. She would ask Malfoy what he would prefer, but he is rather too busy making anguished sounds into the bed. Sweat breaks out under her armpits and on her forehead, hot at the nape of her neck and above her upper lip, and she apologises as she bathes his back in alcohol, and listens to his screams. She tells him to hold on. That it won't take much longer. That he's doing so well.
She isn't sure if it helps him to hear that or if he even notices through the pain, but it helps her a little. Helps her cope as she trickles the liquid on his skin and watches him tense as stiff as if she has sent electricity surging through him, hears him make anguished sounds into the bed. Hermione is weak and wobbly as a half-set jelly by the time she is done, tears stabbing up in her eyes. Malfoy is silent, except for his sobbing breaths.
"It's done," she says feebly and lifts the bottle to her lips. It burns a path down to her stomach. "It's done." Relief saturates her and she can see Malfoy's muscles unwind and he stops pulling at the binds holding him still. Collapsing all boneless and letting out a shaky sigh from a throat screamed horribly hoarse. The sheet around him is patched wet with water and alcohol, and she nearly forgets to release his bonds as she stares at one splotch which looks like a hummingbird.
"Thank fucking Merlin it's over," Malfoy croaks, lifting his head from the mattress. "Took you bloody long enough to do it," he complains then, and he sounds so much like Ron for a moment that Hermione makes a startled noise that could be a laugh, or maybe a sob. It hurts in so many different ways.
Everything hurts, for a moment. Everyone hurts, and Hermione hugs herself tight and tries not to cry. She fails. She sits down on the damp bed by Malfoy's hip and lets the sobs shake her shoulders and the tears trace runnels down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. She clutches the firewhiskey bottle pointlessly in one hand and shakes with the force of her grief and hurt. For Malfoy, and for Ron and Harry and the others who she knows must think her dead or worse, and for the dead women in the dungeon, and the people Malfoy has hurt and killed, and - and for herself.
"Damnit," Malfoy complains and then hisses, and the bed shifts and Hermione struggles to keep her balance, glancing up and swiping at her salt-sticky damp cheeks even as her tears continue to fall.
"Oh! Be careful!" she cries in a snotty, gasping voice, and grabs at his arm as he struggles onto all fours. "D-don't – you'll hurt yourself!" Her breath whoops unevenly in and shudders out again involuntarily; embarrassingly caught in her sobbing fit and unable to quell it completely. "Oh god I'm a wreck…Jesus…I'm sorry…" she says through a veil of tears, in wobbling fluctuations of breath, shoulders hitching and chest catching and hurting. It is as though the floodgates have been opened, and she can do nothing but ride out the barrage.
She can't even stop long enough to take a swig of firewhiskey, and Malfoy nicks it neatly off her as he settles on the bed beside her with a strangled groan. He sits back a little bit further than her, so that his knees settle as tidily over the edge of the bed as hers. Wrinkles from the bedding are imprinted on his cheek and temple, and his lips are raw and bloodied, and alcohol makes a sheen on them over the blood. "I-I-I'm suh-suh-sorry, Malfoy," she hiccups through her flood of crying, and unexpectedly he smiles with those bloodied lips, lopsided and gentle, all written through with drunkenness and hints of pain.
"You – you do this when – when I'm pissed and hurt," he says of her sobbing, and necks the bottle. Coughs and makes a harsh little ha as the firewhiskey no doubt blazes a trail through his innards. She looks up to meet his eyes, and his eyelashes are spiky with wetness and his irises look dark by the lamplight. "Have to do it right now when I'm –" he goes on, and she moves to apologise through her miserable, embarrassing tears, and he swears and explains. "– Fuck. No, no it's fine. Don't apologise. Really, Granger. Just…"
She jolts in her skin with sudden fright as his arm snakes naked and hot around the back of her shoulders, and his voice is scratchy and dry. "…I'm not quite with it, am I? I can't give you proper comfort, and such. Or whatever. You know." She doesn't really know, but she nods anyway, and goes with Malfoy's unexpected tug as he pulls her close to him. She bumps up to the feverish heat of sweat-damp skin, the hardness of spare fat and lean muscle beneath. Malfoy. And she can't think. He is all pulled and pushed and pressed against her like then, only it isn't then it is now.
"Oh," she says on an exhale, because he is hot and solid and real, and Merlin it is nice. His fingers curl around her upper arm, his arm bracing along her back as it shudders with sobs, and if she lets her head rest – she does – then it tucks neatly beneath his jaw, her cheek pressed to his chest just below the faint jut of his collarbone. She can feel the rise and fall of his breaths rasping in and out, up and down. She can feel the pump of his heart; all that blood, ever-moving, never stopping. Lub-dub. Her hands stay curled back in her lap and she doesn't touch him, and she cries with pathetic wretchedness until her nose is running snot over her lip and she feels sick to her stomach.
And Malfoy does give Hermione proper comfort with that silent, tight half-hug – not that comfort is much good to her. It doesn't change anything. But…he is there, and that is something.
Finally her tears dry up, and with a last shuddering breath, her wretched sobbing comes to a hitching close. She can hear the reverberation of Malfoy's heart beating against her cheek and ear, and his fingers rub little circles on her upper arm through the tee shirt of his that she wears. The position suddenly seems horribly, horrendously intimate, and awkward beyond belief. Hermione gulps down a lungful of air and jerks away from him – his arm eases away from her immediately, and they are left sitting side by side, thighs and knees nudging together on the bed. She lifts eyes that feel swollen and tender to his, and his face is still and solemn, his gaze digging into hers with an intensity that swiftly melts away to a cool, detached kind of concern. The air is thick, and Hermione feels hollowed out and insubstantial in it, like an empty seedpod. Tears gone, she is an exhausted, worn husk, and his eyes are too clear and too steady on hers. She drops her gaze.
"I should bandage your back," she says abruptly, and stands up with jerky, awkward movements, feeling stiff from sitting awkwardly, and oddly off-balance. Malfoy doesn't say anything, just grunts acknowledgement and takes a long swig from the bottle of firewhiskey, which is now nearly empty; she doesn't know how drunk he is exactly, but she suspects the answer is: very. She clears her throat and then tries to use his wand to transfigure a pillowslip into neat rolls of stretchy bandage, and it only takes her several tries, a little swearing, and Malfoy's obvious amusement.
"Do you want me to do it?" he asks at one point, a corner of his mouth tipping up.
""No! You're drunk, and that makes things go wrong. You certainly won't do any better than me, and you're more likely to blow us up," she snaps back, frustrated at the stupid transfiguration spell now and made snippy with it. She catches his lopsided flash of a grin out of the corner of her eye, her own lips twitch in response. She forces them down into a concentrated frown, and focuses on the bandages, getting them right this time. Hermione's crow of success is involuntary and swiftly stifled, but she knows he hears before she bottles it, and her cheeks flame up.
But Malfoy just sits obediently, wincing as she gets him to lift his arms up slightly so she can wind the bandage around beneath them. Her fingers brush over his skin as she bandages his torso, from shoulders to lower back, and she is acutely aware of all the little touches. Of the smooth, hard angles and planes of his chest and abdomen under her palms, and the ragged, uneven wounds of his shredded back as she so carefully smoothes the bandage down into place. It takes an awful lot of bandaging, and she isn't sure it's the best thing to do – his wounds will weep overnight and that will make the bandage hard to remove – but she doesn't feel right about just leaving them open to the air while he is sleeping either. He could hurt himself, couldn't he?
So bandages it is, and if she needs to soak them off, then magic will help with that, won't it, Hermione thinks. "All done," she says quietly at last, and falters a small half-smile, eyes flicking to him and fast away again.
"Thank you, Granger," he says simply and too sincere. She shrugs, staring down at her bare toes, twiddling his wand around and around in her hands. She both wishes that she hadn't cried herself to a snotty wreck on him, and feels better for doing so. As if some small part of her burden has dissipated, and it feels easier to stand straight. She doesn't know what to say or do now, though. She feels as though something crucial has changed in the dynamic between them. Like one of the walls separating them has just been demolished, and while she has extra room to move, she isn't sure she likes it. And then Malfoy seizes the tip of his wand in a pincer grip to still her aimless twirling, and automatically she looks at him.
"Do you want a drink?" he asks her, a smirk twisting over his mouth like mischief and invitation, and emboldened by a new sense of freedom, the stress of the last hour, and the drink she has already had, Hermione bites her lips and nods.
"All right."
Malfoy is a quiet drunk, and so is she. Two sheets to the wind – no, four, at least she decides in a hazed attempt at drunken pedantry. She giggles, madly, hysterically, lying on the bed with a glass of firewhiskey and feeling as blitzed as she has ever been. They don't talk. But he lies on the bed beside her – close enough that she could reach out and trace the straight line of his nose if she wanted, which she doesn't – and it is companionable. There is a strange pleasantness to this sea of emotion churning through her. Sadness and grief and anger and a hazy, mellow absence of caring. Hermione revels in it as she stares up at the canopy of the bed. She charmed it to look like a Muggle visualisation before she got too drunk. It is colour-changing swirls and whirls, mesmerising and hypnotic, and she feels like she is swelling and expanding and contracting again with the image.
"Will I ever get home?" she asks softly, the question coming up from nowhere. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip immediately after it escapes, and then lifts her head enough to take a wobbly sip of firewhiskey. "Shit."
Malfoy is silent for a long moment. Then he rolls his head to the side, to face her, and she follows suit, blinking at him owlishly. His eyes glow silver-purple in the glow of the charmed visualiser, and his tongue is dark purple-pink when he wets his lips before he speaks. "Yes. I promise."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," she tells him, feeling tears try to come crawling up again, and inside her head she swears at herself furiously and blames the alcohol. "Truly, Malfoy. Don't. Please."
He is silent for another few moments that seem to stretch out forever, and Hermione watches the thoughts cross over his face, fleeting and highlighted by the changing colours. "You'll either get home, or we'll both be dead."
A beat.
"Oh." That is…acceptable, to Hermione. She nods and looks back up at the ebbing and pulsing of the image above them, gnawing on her lip and thinking. "What – what about you, Malfoy. Will you ever get home?"
"I don't have a home, Granger." It should sound trite, but it just sounds horribly sad.
"You – you could come with me," she offers stupidly, lilting, hopeful tone like a child's, and he makes a soft noise that could be a huff of laughter, bitter, but not aimed to hurt her, and it doesn't. It just makes her sadder. She stares at him in profile, all lit up green now. Slytherin. His face is sharp and sad, and there is a set to his jaw – a bunching of the muscles there, a measured swallow – that speaks of a grim determination that Hermione has seen in Harry and Ron. That they claim to have seen in her. A sense of duty in the face of unspeakable awfulness. He shuts his eyes for the count of ten, because she counts in her drunken fuddle – and when he opens them again he still doesn't look at her.
"If I can retain my position, I have to stay. I am –" Malfoy's voice breaks slightly and his cheeks darken, he clears his throat and takes a sip of firewhiskey from the bottle he has claimed his. She doesn't know how he is still conscious with the amount he has drunk, and Hermione suspects that perhaps he spent a great deal of his time drinking before her arrival in his life. That would explain the longing looks at the liquor cabinet, at least, and his considerable tolerance to it.
He tries again: "– I am too valuable a source of information for the Order to lose, with Severus dead. With what I can give the Order, they are able to make strikes that damage my master's efforts greatly. Infrequent, yes, because otherwise he would know there was a rat, and soon discover it was me, but still. I am an…asset to your precious Potter." The venom in Malfoy's voice is overwhelming; all resigned, hateful bitterness, and Hermione finds herself wanting to recoil from it. She doesn't.
"It's wrong, that you have to do this," she says instead very quietly, stating the obvious – oh marvellous, Hermione, she thinks sarcastically in a daze of liquor, her eyes darting from Malfoy's mouth to his eyes and back again. His throat clicks dryly as he swallows, and his voice is thick.
"Yeah," he says.
"I – I don't blame you. I did, but –"
"I know you did."
She frowns at his interruption. "I did, but I don't anymore."
Malfoy attempts a smile, or at least she thinks he does, because he fails miserably. "I'm…that's good. I'm..."
"You're what?"
"I'm really not a monster, you know. I have to – have to do monstrous things, but I'm not a – not really. Or that's what I tell myself. Maybe I'm just lying to make myself feel better." He props himself up on one elbow, staring into her eyes with an intensity that only the very, very drunk can achieve. Hermione feels as though he is looking for absolution in her face, and she doesn't know if she has the right to give that to him. "Am I a monster, Granger? Do you really not blame me? You – you'd have every right to blame me. To hate me. Would you? I suppose…after what I did…" Malfoy is rambling and lost in his head, eyes glazing over as Hermione pushes herself up on an elbow too, gulping down the last of her firewhiskey for courage and feeling her stomach gurgle and lurch in protest.
She drops her glass to the bed between them, and reaches out, bridging the gap.
Hermione lays her hand along Malfoy's cheek, conforming it to the shape of him, and his eyes lift to hers startled and glazed-intent, like he is trying to find her through a sea of fog. She sways in toward him unintentionally as he shifts on the bed and the landscape changes beneath her. A startled gasp and she is drunken and her reflexes are slow, and her nose is bumping against his before she can stop herself. She chokes a giggle, but his breath stutters in and his hand comes up to push gentle into the tangles of her hair, as if to push her back and steady her. And then there is electricity in the air, and her lungs suddenly feeling squeezed to nothing, her breath catching in her chest. His fingers curl deliberately and slowly, and his fingertips scrape light at the base of her skull.
What.
What? Hermione thinks in a stunned-frozen sort of way, trying and failing to process what is happening. And there is a moment, before she pushes back a little. A handful of heartbeats, where their eyes lock until she goes cross-eyed, and all wobbly in her stomach from the drink. The firewhiskey. She shoves a few inches away, using the front of his shoulder for leverage, her fingers holding tight to the heat of him, his bare skin and the jut and hard lines of skin and muscle-swathed bone. Her thumb grazes the base of his throat, and his hand is in her hair. Tentative and light, ready to pull away at the slightest sign from her it seems, because his eyes are cautious on hers through the drunkenness, and his muscles taut. She is glad of that caution, but she doesn't give him a sign.
"You're not a monster, Malfoy. I promise," she tells him instead, while his fingers start soothing through her hair and she lets him, because why not, if he wants to? She is too drunk to care about things like that, any more than 'ooh, it feels so nice, mm, just like that,' which she definitely doesn't say, because things are already weird enough. She feels like they probably shouldn't be doing this, but it feels so nice. Their noses nearly bump again as his drunken fingers give a too-enthusiastic scritch and push her head forward, and she grins, and they are both lit green-blue in the light of the visualiser, and he grins back lopsided and achingly earnest. Her eyes linger on his mouth as his grin fades, his fingers moving rhythmically and his mouth relaxing into a shape that…that is almost a pout but not quite…and…
And.
And.
And then she throws up on the bed between them.
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