Notes: One major difference between Crumple and Aftermath, is that this time we'll get to see some of Draco's perspective. Where Crumple was focused on Hermione, I felt like Aftermath needed to explore both their recoveries. I hope it works!
Part Two
He paces the cell at a pitching limp, abdomen and chest aching from a flurry of heavy boot kicks, left knee swollen, the skin of his face feeling hot and taut where Creevy's fists had landed during the short beating he'd endured before another wizard had pulled Creevy off him with a sharp word of reproof. He doesn't blame Creevy for it. Draco had killed Dennis, after all. Last year, during a skirmish, he'd opened Dennis's throat with the cutting curse after Nott Sr. had set him alight. Colin was entitled to get his kicks in, Draco thinks as he lurches slowly from wall to wall in some kind of mindless attempt to stay calm. What he's feeling now is a loving embrace compared to what he'd be feeling if Hermione hadn't blown all Draco's plans out of the water. A few bruises are nothing.
Hermione; he thinks of her and worry fizzes under his skin like a badly made potion. She's safe now, and that's the most important thing, but the way she'd looked at him as they'd bound him...the way she'd begged for him not to go... He worries. She's not who she was before all of this. Draco has broken her. She's still Granger, all determination and steel and snappiness, with that wicked intelligence, but the spine of her is snapped; Draco has taken her, and he has broken the thing that held her together. She's a shadow of herself; all her essential, brilliant qualities still there but without order or stability now, and he doesn't know if she can hold herself together with people who don't understand that.
But then maybe that's what she needs. To be free of him. Draco loves her. Merlin, he loves her so much that he had aimed to die for her – not even to save her, but to pay for what he's done to her. To her, and to so many others. And maybe that would've been better, he thinks as his left knee goes out, and he makes a strangled sound, catching himself on the wall heavily and then surrendering to a seat on the bed. Sinking down with a groan. He loves her, but he's the one who ruined her. He saved her life, but Merlin, the price she'd had to pay. Maybe he should've just killed her the moment he saw her unconscious body in the dungeons. Draco buries his head in his hands. His fingers grow wet.
He hadn't killed her, though. No mercy from him. No. Instead, he'd mauled and beaten her. Stripped her and raped her. Forced her to dress like some fuckdoll and be violated by other Dark Wizards... Bile rises in his throat and he swallows it down, not sure if he's more sickened by what he did to Hermione over the months, or by the dark, possessive rage he suddenly remembers feeling at that dinner, as they'd hurt her. Possessive. Jealous. Draco pants and swallows down vomit, like a dog. He's disgusting. He's sick, and he's loathsome, and he should never have thought he had the right to tell her he loves her. That secret should have died with him.
Hermione will be better off without him, he thinks, straightening and wiping his face. She might find it a shock because she feels like she loves him, but she'll adjust. And then she'll realise that what she thought was love was just the fawning of a captive, and then she'll never want to see Draco again, and that will be for the best, he tells himself. She will hate him, and that will be good. The thought makes him wish desperately that he'd died because what else is left for him. There is nothing. Nothing at all. Only a sea of self-hatred and blame because he's been the Order's monster, and he deserves it. Draco groans, wishing a thousand things that will never happen.
And he doesn't really believe a word he thinks, even. Because ultimately, if Hermione walked in here right now, he would do anything she wanted at all, as long as she wanted him to, even as he kept hating himself for the way he'd broken her. Because he loves her more than morals, more than goodness, or rightness. He loves her more, even, than he loathes himself. Draco shuts his eyes, thinking that he would willingly destroy what was left of his stained, pitiful soul for her. The only problem is, he'd take her down with him.
"I want to see him," Hermione says with calm clarity, hands laced together and resting on the table in front of her as she meets the eye of the wizard sitting opposite her. Lupin. Hermione isn't sure why he's been appointed the job of debriefing her and handling the situation. Maybe because she knows him. Or because he's known for being compassionate and gentle with damaged people.
Not that the meeting is private; Hermione is aware of the procedure and knows every word she says will be seen by others.
A self-writing quill is on the table to Lupin's right, laying across a ream of parchment, and will document everything Hermione says, to be read by any Order member with sufficient authority to request it. Which is probably around a couple of dozen people, including Harry. So Hermione has, with a weary pragmatism, told Harry and Ron they can sit in if they're quiet. But first, she needs to set the terms and conditions of her briefing, so to speak.
Lupin meets her gaze steadily, pale eyes unreadable, expression mild. "I believe Harry has arranged for that after your debrief. Although, you may wish to take another Calming Draught and rest directly afterwards, Hermione. I can't imagine it will be easy on you." His voice is steeped in empathy, and Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat, her pulse suddenly picking up and her breath catching. She has been trying not to think about this. That she will have to tell her friends about what happened.
They won't understand, she thinks, her hands pulling back to her lap, her shoulders tensing. They'll look at her differently; how could they not? The thought of telling her friends everything makes Hermione feel grubby and ruined. But, she reminds herself, she doesn't have to tell them everything. This is not a church confession or a therapy session – they're looking for a basic outline of what happened and any useful information she may have gathered. Not a biopic retelling of her ordeal.
She straightens, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear and licking dry lips. She wears the same clothes she'd arrived in, and her hair is back in a messy bun. She's wandless still – "We'll take you to find a wand after the debrief and...your visit to the cells," Harry had said when he and Ron had collected her from her bedroom that morning, after she'd spent a long, awful night sitting in the corner of the room wedged between the dresser and the low, slanting wall, sleepless and stupidly frightened. She wonders what they did with Malfoy's wand. It never worked well for her, but it was better than nothing – she feels she knows it now.
"I'll be fine," Hermione says stiffly to Lupin, although she's not entirely sure. She can't afford to fall apart though; if she does, they'll use that as an excuse to keep her from Malfoy. "I insist on seeing Malfoy."
Lupin's return look is sad, and oddly understanding. He nods, and there is a brief pause where the small, cramped room Lupin uses as his office is utterly silent, the air hanging still and thick. Even Harry and Ron are quiet, not shuffling or fidgeting. And then Lupin picks up the quill and sets its tip to the parchment where it hovers, trembling slightly like an eager dog, and clears his throat, eyes on Hermione.
"Please tell me your name and date of birth, for the record."
And so it begins. "Hermione Jean Granger. Nineteenth of September, 1979."
"How were you captured?"
"I was part of a small team performing reconnaissance in Ottery St. Catchpole," Hermione says numbly. It feels like that happened a lifetime ago. She'd left in autumn, and now it was nearly spring. She runs through the mission; they'd been observing activities in the area, suspecting that Fenrir Greyback's people had a base of operations there, kidnapping Muggles and Muggleborns to turn and feed upon. They had been supposed to observe from a distance, but a member of the four-person team had set off a Caterwauling Charm one evening.
The team had become separated in the ensuing chaos of dark wizards and werewolves boiling out of several houses like disturbed ant nests, and in a stroke of sheer bad luck, Hermione had fallen down an embankment trying to dodge a werewolf and broken her wand. Unarmed, she'd been forced to flee the area and, in an even worse stroke of bad luck, had been scooped up by a group of snatchers, and portkeyed to the dungeons of Voldemort's current place of residence.
"Did you see any other Order members, living or dead, in the dungeons?" Lupin asks, a calming kind of dispassion in his voice. Hermione is grateful for that; she is already on the verge of tears, and she thinks sympathy might send her over the edge.
"Not that I recognised, no." She swallows hard and begins her campaign for Malfoy's freedom. "I was in the, er, dregs of the dungeon. In the cells that mostly held Muggles who had outlived their usefulness. The snatchers didn't recognise me, you see, and Malfoy was there when they brought me in. He put me where he hoped no one would notice me. He hoped to get me out from the start."
The quill scratches away quietly beneath her words, stopping when she stops. Harry is frowning – for some reason, he clearly hates that Hermione is attached to Malfoy. It irks him, she can see it, whereas Ron seems more worried than irritated. Hermione supposes she should be able to understand their dislike and discomfort; Malfoy is, objectively speaking, halfway to a monster. The things he's done to maintain his cover while in Voldemort's service are nothing short of horrific. She knows it. She's not blind to what he has done for the Order, and the Merlin-damned greater good.
But from Hermione's perspective, that means the blood is on the Order's hands too. Because Malfoy was only there doing what he did, for the Order's sake, under their direction. Otherwise, Hermione rather thought he would have run long ago. Or just died, like he'd planned to last night. Her skin crawls at that thought.
"I understand," Lupin says, but slides a slim folder into the centre of the table anyway, flipping it open and extracting a sheaf of magical photographs. "I'd appreciate it if you could look through these anyway. Just in case. They're missing Order members, Order sympathisers, and their family members."
Hermione nods and takes them, shuffling through the – too many – photos with care, and shaking her head, mumbling a 'no' at each one she studies. It hurts that so many people have been taken, never to be seen again, their ages ranging between the very, very old and a dozen at least who are younger even than Hermione. One small witch was only five or six and Hermione remembers her first revel with a sick lurch; the skinless body of a child lying discarded on the floor. But there is no way to tell if that dead child was the grinning girl in the photo.
She shoves the photos away. "I – no. I don't know. I didn't recognise any of them."
Lupin leans forward, examining her face with a worn kind of care, his light brown hair falling over his eyes. He peers through his fringe, intent and thoughtful. "But?" he asks, seeing the hesitation Hermione tries to hide.
She swallows hard and steels herself. "The bodies I saw weren't always identifiable," she says in a small, pained voice, as if the words are thorns plucked from her flesh.
"Which one made you think twice?" he asks, teasing out the information doggedly. "Which one did you question?"
Hermione shakes her head. "It's not –" She doesn't want to say, when really it's just a guess, a similarity, not an identification. "When Malfoy had to bring me out to – to the Dark Lord during a revel for the first time, to claim me," she says thickly, remembering, "there was the body of a child who might have been around the same age as this one." She sorts through again and slides the girl's photo out of the pile. "When I saw her photo, it made me remember. But the child at the revel could've been any girl. The body wasn't...identifiable. It just made me think of – that. That's all."
"There were no identifying features at all?" Lupin probes, and Hermione suppresses the urge to scream, or slap him.
"It was skinned," she says crisply, stomach churning, and she hears a small, sickened noise come from the corner where Harry and Ron are sitting. Lupin doesn't flinch, but he does sigh and nod, sitting back in his chair as he gathers up the photos, slotting them neatly away again. His eyes are filled with a deep, weary sadness.
"I understand. I'm sorry, Hermione."
She trembles, an ache vibrating in her chest as she bites down hard on her tongue and tries to use the sharp pain to focus as wild, wracking sobs claw to get out of her. It takes her a second before she trusts herself to speak. "I survived," she says tightly, shrugging. And the child didn't, is the unspoken half of her sentence, and she can see everyone is thinking it as clearly as if she'd spoken it.
Then Ron speaks, breaking protocol, a frown furrowing his brow and his blue eyes sharp on hers. "What do you mean Malfoy claimed you, Hermione?"
She flinches. Oh god, did she say that? She doesn't remember saying that. And she can see, in the burgeoning horror lurking beneath Ron's features, that he already knows what it means. Her pulse becomes a thrum of panic, and there is a buzzing in her head, her fingertips tingling as she clutches her hands hard together in her lap.
"Ron..." she says, a pathetically weak protest. Begging him to let it go as he stares her down, desperate for her to deny his suspicions. Harry's jaw is tight and she can see him putting the pieces together in his head as his expression turns grim and furious at once.
"Hermione," Ron says, "tell me what that m–"
"Let's focus, please." Lupin saves her; his voice clear and firm, and Hermione drags her eyes away from Harry and Ron's pale, sickened faces and looks at Lupin. His expression still has that mild, faintly sympathetic set that is masking his true feelings well, and it's a relief to look at. He demands nothing of her, save for the facts. "You're here to silently observe, with Hermione's permission," Lupin makes clear, glancing at the boys – men, really. "Not to ask questions."
Hermione feels as though she's had a stay of execution. And now she dreads leaving this room, dreads the debriefing ending because she knows that Harry and Ron won't let that go. She feels like vomiting. She takes a sip from the water glass to her right, which stands on a tray with another tumbler for Lupin and a jug of water. The world seems very distant and unreal right now, and she suspects she's dissociating. It's not so bad.
They move on. Lupin feeds her a litany of questions, focusing on information, but Hermione really knows very little. She tells him about the Death Eaters she saw at the mansion. She tells him about the nightly patrols of the grounds. About the cells, and how they burned prisoners. About the house elves, who run the mansion's household operations, and the squib servants. And she tells him all she knows about the American wizards who had dinner with Voldemort.
Lupin probes further about the Americans, looking for more than just names, and Hermione knows he's only trying to tease out scraps of information she may not have realised she remembered, but she hates it. She hates remembering that dinner, her skin crawling and her hand going to her throat, where the collar had dug into her flesh. Constricting her breathing, making her gag.
"I wasn't exactly paying attention to the conversation," she says, strain making her stumble over her words, voice high and faint. "I was the e-entertainment, not a f-fly on the wall. I wasn't – I don't remember it well."
"I know, Hermione. I know." Lupin is horribly kind even as he cruelly persists. "But anything – anything you can recall might be valuable."
"I blanked out, okay?" Panic crawls up her body like a physical force. "I dissociated. I don't – don't remember." It isn't quite true. Hermione remembers parts of it well enough. When she thinks of the dinner, she can never stop seeing Malfoy sitting there with a mask of unconcern on his face as the others used her as a torture doll, for instance. But that's not what Lupin wants to know.
Lupin has succeeded in dredging up some memories Hermione had been unaware she'd retained, though. And she wishes dearly that he hadn't as they spin through her head like a horrifying movie reel. She sits very, very still, recalling for the first time being splayed on the dinner table on her back with her legs hanging over the edge, within Malfoy's reach as he'd drunk his wine. A wizard had pulled his fingers from her abraded vagina, fumbling to replace them with his erect penis, and Malfoy had reached out a hand placidly and placed it over her vulva. "No," he'd said, cool and blank, his first and only intervention that evening. "No one puts their dick in the Mudblood's cunt except me."
Oh Merlin, oh god, why did she have to remember that? Tears spring to her eyes and she is aware she makes a horrible, animal sobbing cry, one fist pressing to her stomach as she gasps and gags, and then twists in her seat, a small puddle of watery vomit splattering on the floor beside her. She hates Malfoy with a sudden, startling fury that stampedes through her – but it passes as quickly as it comes when Hermione remembers that he had no choice but to do what he'd done. And the hatred vanishes, leaving her hollowed out and wretched, longing for the hot comfort of his arms.
She's so messed up, Hermione thinks hysterically. So fucking messed up.
"I don't remember," she chokes again. Lupin leans over the table and wordlessly vanishes the vomit before sitting back down, chair squeaking on the floor. Harry has his hand pressed to his mouth, and Ron is leaning forward with his head in his hands. She almost feels sorry for them; they are the picture of impotent devastation, and Hermione knows they long to take away her pain. But they can't. No one can. Not even Malfoy. She straightens her spine, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Bile is burning in her throat, and she gulps more water.
"Sorry," she says. Ron makes a choked, miserable sound.
"Don't apologise, Hermione," Lupin says, calm as ever. "I'm sorry you have to go through this. I know it can't be easy. But it's important –"
"I know," she cuts in sharply, getting sick of his platitudes, anger seeping into her words. "I don't remember anything else of use about the dinner unless you'd like the details on how they tortured me."
There is a thick silence in which Hermione counts to three. "No," Lupin says. "That won't be necessary. Although you may find it useful to talk to a healer about it, Hermione."
Hermione begins to wish fervently that he would stop saying her name. Over and over. She nods an abrupt acknowledgement but says nothing on that. She won't be speaking to a healer, but to say so might make Lupin try to argue in favour of it. Instead, she refocuses on the debriefing.
"Is there anything else you need to ask me?" she queries coolly, holding herself together by sheer force of will and the knowledge that if she collapses, there's no way she'll see Malfoy.
The need to see him itches beneath her skin. Hermione is no longer capable of judging whether that's normal or not. She loves him, so she thinks it's probably normal to hate the idea of him locked in a cell, with them separated from each other. On the other hand, she thinks it might not be normal to feel a constant clawing anxiety that hovers on the edge of full-blown blind panic, over that separation. That part of it might be trauma-related, Hermione suspects. But what does she know? She's probably half-mental at this point. She's not even sure she should love him, after – everything. She clasps her hands together, digging her nails into her own flesh.
Lupin scans the dictation the quill has taken at this point, pale eyes thoughtful. "There's nothing else you can think of?"
She's told him everything she knows that might even vaguely be helpful; anything Malfoy told her, which was precious little, everything she saw and overheard at the two revels and the dinner – also precious little. She is not a font of knowledge. She spent over three months locked in a room, not spying from behind paintings with holes cut in the eyes, she thinks wildly.
"Nothing," she says flatly. "Except that I would like it on the record that Draco Malfoy saved my life and protected me as best he could from torture and abuse, suffering severe punishments and torture himself in the process. I wouldn't be alive without him. As far as I'm concerned, he's a hero."
A complicated expression flickers across Lupin's face then. "Noted," he says. "You can wait outside then. I'd like to speak to Harry and Ron for a moment." Then the mild expression Lupin has masked with drops away completely, and Hermione sees a deep, pained sympathy and understanding. It cuts to her core. She bites her lip to stop the tears from coming and nods, shuffling numbly from the room.
When Harry and Ron come out a few moments later, both have suspiciously red-rimmed eyes, and neither one will look her in the eye. "Let's go then," Harry says shortly, voice hoarse as he holds out his wrist for Hermione to take, to side-along apparate. Neither of them asks her about what Malfoy claiming her means as they stride through the halls of the grand old manor house they've disapparated to, and Hermione thinks perhaps she should thank Lupin for that.
