Part Seven
Hermione spends the next several days doing her best to appear like she's doing better, and thinks that she sort of succeeds. Maybe. It's hard for her to judge; she doesn't remember what normal feels like anymore. She thinks of normal, and imagines Malfoy's grim face as he walks in, smelling of smoke and stained with blood, shutting the door behind him and toeing off his boots, and the way his expression shifts as he looks at her. She thinks of him standing and staring out at the gardens, a pale statue, radiating a self-hatred Hermione can't even begin to comprehend. She thinks of waking up in the middle of the night to see him slumped over the table, having fallen asleep watching over her. She thinks of lying curled in his arms and wishing she could kiss him properly instead of trading in little touches and kisses to odd places that feel more platonic than anything.
Normal isn't something Hermione thinks she understands anymore. The person she was is dead, and now she is someone new made up out of the remnants; a blade melted down and re-forged into something that can't help but be different. And not stronger, either. She is weaker than she was before, spider-webbed with cracks, and sometimes it feels like one firm tap will send her shattering. What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger, and Hermione is so, so fucking damaged. But she tries her best to hold herself together without Malfoy there, and she figures she does well enough while she's around everyone else – she figures they can't expect miracles.
In the mornings, Hermione can't handle the idea of facing people, so she sits in her room until midday before she forces herself downstairs to pick at lunch with Harry and Ron, when they're not out on missions. Food sticks in her throat, and she eats only enough to make them think that she's fine, pushing the food around her plate. Hermione never thought she'd be someone who suffered from anorexic tendencies, but right now, food is the only thing she can control. She can't see Malfoy, she can't use her magic – she's impotent and isolated, and it's fucking horrible. Not eating more than the bare minimum feels like a rebellion, and the fact that everything tastes like metal and ashes doesn't exactly stir her appetite.
In the afternoons, she makes herself curl up in the sitting room, in a chair tucked away back in one corner near the bookshelf. It makes her think of her chair in Malfoy's bedroom. Their bedroom. If Harry and Ron are there, or anyone else, then she'll respond to questions, and pretend to read, the print a blur on the pages as she sits there, lost in obsessive, repetitive memories. Loops of Malfoy tucking her hair behind her ear. Falling asleep, his head pillowed on her knee. Laughing in the maze as he falls into the hedge. Kissing the top of her head. A kaleidoscope of tiny, happy fragments of memories.
Her mind is fixated and cracked. She watches Harry and Ron play wizarding chess, and talk about friends and Ron's family and stupid random topics like what they'd take to a desert island or fantasy Quidditch leagues, and she smiles when they look at her but says very little.
Sometimes Hermione escapes to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and makes inane conversation with Mrs Weasley about what she's cooking, or how the rest of the family are, or what Mrs Weasley is reading – she favours historical romances – which is nearly restful.
Or she ducks out onto the back porch with a hot drink and enjoys that she can walk outside whenever she likes; the cold biting into her and making her feel alive. She can spend hours out there bundled in a jacket, a hat, and mittens, until she's shivering and cold, fingertips and toes going numb despite her warm clothing. When she's outside, Hermione's mind tends to wander to other things; her parents in Australia, in the suffocating Sydney heat because it's summer there, maybe with a dental office, and a new life.
She thinks of school; how things had played out, and whether she could've changed things for Malfoy, like some intellectual exercise – if only she hadn't brushed off Harry's concerns, and had figured out what he was doing and stopped him, if only Dumbledore had told them about Malfoy. And why didn't he? She hates Dumbledore a little bit, for everything he put on them, and every way he let them down, and the way he must have known for so long the path Malfoy was heading down, and had never cared to save him. Malfoy had been a pawn, sacrificed to Dumbledore's greater good. Hermione despises the greater good. It's hypocritical and cruel.
Sometimes she rests her chin in the hollows of her palms, elbows on her knees, and imagines ridiculous things. Winning Malfoy over at school. Helping him. Seducing him away from the Death Eaters before he ever took the Mark. Kissing him in the potions cupboard, or one of the secret corridors, or empty classrooms, free of painful, horrible baggage. Just innocent, hungry kisses and shifting, searching hands.
Occasionally, she goes upstairs and pretends to nap, or has very long, hot baths in which she tends to scrub her skin nearly raw until it hurts, and red patches blossom on her arms and her thighs and breasts, stuck in a loop of dirty dirtydirtydirty. Why would he ever want you? You're filthy. Mudblood. Tainted. Violated by objects and fingers and mouths that didn't belong to him, that weren't wielded by him. While he watched, disgusted. She's disgusting, she thinks, knowing that it's an entirely, wildly irrational thing to think even as she thinks it and yet still thinking it.
Whatever she does, the hours tick by very slowly until dinners, which she eats with everyone else, again forcing small mouthfuls of food down, and making dazed small talk that she only hopes sounds normal. And then, after dinner, she sits in the lounge listening to the wireless for an hour before she goes upstairs, the food sitting heavy and sickening in her stomach. She gets good at making it look like she's eaten more than she actually has, and no one seems to notice how little she consumes, in reality. Hermione suspects she may qualify as anorexic, now. She also suspects the wizarding world doesn't have a medical term for anorexia – it was a surprise that they had a Healer who seemed so well-versed in psychological issues, even if Hermione does disagree with her prescription.
And that's her routine. It's not so hard the first few days, especially in the early afternoons, but gradually, the strain builds up throughout each day until Hermione feels like a pressure cooker by the end of the evening.
Then, at nine pm every night, Hermione lies down on her side of the bed and downs a Dreamless Sleep, and then – without even really understanding why – cries until the potion yanks her down under the surface of sleep. She doesn't dream, of course, but it seems like the memories just crowd around her as she sleeps, waiting to fall upon her and devour her when she wakes, like a delayed effect. She wakes to thoughts of the snatcher in the dungeons prodding his penis against her, the feel of a Dark Wizard's fingers shoved in her mouth, Malfoy screaming as she brings the lash down on his back, the pain of his bite sinking into her breast.
She learns to scream silently into her pillow, curled in a ball and waiting for a comfort that she knows won't come.
Lupin escorts Draco back to his cell, hands cuffed behind his back, leaning on the older wizard unwillingly as they go down the stairs. It was a bad one today. He's sweating and feels feverish, his feet numb beneath him, although that might be from five hours sitting chained in that damned chair. He desperately needs a piss because they didn't offer him a toilet break, and he couldn't bring himself to ask. His head feels like one giant, throbbing pulse, his orbital bones tight and sore, his jaw aching from being clenched, the pain running around behind his ears and up the base of his skull. There are small, bloody wounds at his temples.
Draco's head is thudding, crushed in a vice, and he feels like crying.
It's hours of question after question, and even when it's not him who committed the horrors that Lupin asks him about, that he has to relay to the Order member, he still has to remember it. To picture it clearly in his mind, the memory spilling from his lips ungainly and brutal, awful, disgusting horrors that he remembers standing by and watching. Not intervening. Pretending it didn't bother him in the slightest as he sat at a revel and made small talk, watching as Greyback ripped people apart, or Rodolphus raped children just metres away, or Bellatrix took people apart piece by bloody piece. Laughing and smiling as they screamed. As they died. He can't stand the memories. Who could? He thinks they may drive him insane.
He hates himself. So much. He's disgusting.
And then, after reviving his every nightmarish memory in abhorrent detail, they don't give him Dreamless Sleep.
It's getting harder to deal with. He's coming apart at the seams. The iron self-control he'd kept in place every day while a Death Eater is slipping and slipping, and beneath it, he is nothing but a broken ruin. At one point today Draco just stopped talking with his head dropped to the table and clutched in his hands, fingers digging into his temples, the veritaserum causing the itching compulsion to build and build to unbearable proportions. His fingers clawing at his temples helped him fight it, as sweat poured down his face and his back, and wet his chest and armpits. He'd tried to speak. Tried. But the words just wouldn't come out.
He kept thinking on a loop; and I smiled, and said, well, just don't leave this mess on the floor, and it was a pregnant woman, it had been a pregnant woman, and they'd – they'd –
How could Draco say the horrible, inhuman things that they'd done to her aloud? He couldn't. Lupin was sympathetic but implacable. He demanded answers. And in the end, Draco gave them to him, and then vomited in his own lap, gagging and retching and shivering like a beaten dog, taking gasping, sobbing breaths into the silence as Lupin struggled with his own composure, the older man's face ashen and devastated as he scourgified Draco's mess, swallowing thick and hard himself.
He hates Lupin's pitying face.
It seems the lycanthrope has the dubious pleasure of being Draco's handler now. Now that he's used up and useless. Shacklebolt has no time for assets that can't be deployed; he's moved focus to his active agents it seems, leaving Draco behind in this purgatory. Leaving him to sit and rot in a stone cell, hauled out only to be questioned relentlessly, a process that he has come to fear and loathe more than Voldemort's torture. Draco is unsurprised. Shacklebolt is ruthless and effective in nature and deed, unlike the unhelpful compassion and sympathy Lupin displays. But they are two sides of the same coin.
He hobbles down the stairs like a crippled old man, stumbling because the way his wrists are chained puts him off balance. He wonders when Creevy will push him down the stairs and claim it's an accident. He imagines it will happen eventually, and while he's resigned to the possibility, Draco isn't looking forward to it. When Lupin has unchained Draco, he sits down heavily on the narrow cot like his legs have gone out from under him and squints up at the older man. He stands in the doorway silhouetted by the light, irons draped over his left arm, wand in the other hand.
"I'll have them bring you a change of clothes and a small tub," Lupin says, running his eyes over Draco, tight-lipped and unhappy. The man doesn't like causing pain, physical or mental. "You can strip-wash at least, and get clean." Draco bobs his head in a ragged nod, and sets off ringing bells of pain. Shit. It hurts so badly. And he can't stop shaking. It's pathetic. Lupin takes a deep breath. "I know this isn't easy, Draco. But what you're doing is invaluable. Aside from vital information for the war effort, you're giving families closure. And that matters. So thank you."
"Don't have much choice," Draco rasps flatly, "do I?"
"No," Lupin says, "Not really. But I feel like you'd do it anyway."
Draco shrugs. "Maybe," he says laconically, but he knows he would. Merlin-damnit, he'd do it. He fucking hates it – cataloguing every horror he's borne witness to, or contributed to, or committed outright, and fuck, there are so, so many. He despises every bit of it, and it makes him want to die, and he thinks that without the veritaserum, he might not be able to force himself to do it. But he knows that ultimately, given the choice, he'd take the veritaserum of his own free will and walk back into hell willingly. If he ever hopes to not be a monster, he has to.
Lupin eyes him hard and piercingly, and it feels like the man is reading his mind even though he can't be, not literally. "I think you would," he says thoughtfully, and Draco doesn't argue.
There's a question on the tip of his tongue that he's been holding back for a while. Not sure whether he should ask. Not sure if he has the right, or wants to hear the answer. He lets it slip as Lupin nods a goodbye. "When will I see her again?" he asks, quickly and breathlessly, his lungs suddenly an avalanche of shallow breaths and his chest tight, and he doesn't have to say who her is. "Is she okay?" There's an edge of fear he can't tamp down with the second question, heart in his throat. Surely, she has to be okay, and yet he's afraid.
Lupin's expression is unbearably sympathetic. "Hermione is fine. She seems to be doing remarkably well still, taking into account her ordeal." Lupin pauses. Adds, almost questioningly: "Both of your ordeals."
"Don't. I don't need your pity, dog," Draco bites furiously, lashing out without thought. The slur is greasy and bitter on his tongue, and he immediately regrets it. Lupin looks sad as he stands in the doorway, and not even a little insulted.
"Okay, Draco," he says with a quiet, tired placating tone. "But I've sat with you long enough over the past week to know how terribly what you had to do has affected you. I am sure Hermione's capture was an ordeal for you both."
"I'm fairly certain you won't feel that way after we get to that part of the debrief," Draco says grimly, a bitter smile twisting his mouth, "so save your sympathy. You'll only have to retract it."
"Sympathy doesn't equal approval of – of whatever bond has grown between you in a hostile environment," Lupin says matter-of-factly, and that latter imagery sinks into Draco's mind. "Which somewhat leads to the answer to your other question. The Healer has recommended that Hermione have some space from the interdependent dynamic that clearly exists between the two of you." Draco's empty, sickened stomach begins to sink, and twist. No; he doesn't want to hear the rest of this. "A month apart. Twenty-eight days, to be precise. Which means you have nineteen days left. By then, you'll already be out of here," Lupin says with encouraging brightness, as though Draco gives a single shit where he is. "We'll find an appropriate safe house for you – with conditions, of course. You won't be automatically allowed a wand, for instance."
"But after the month is up?" Draco pursues, a twitch starting in his right eyelid, tension and dread a jittering surge in his veins.
"After the recommended time is up, we'll arrange for you to meet –" Lupin pauses "– should Hermione still wish to."
Should Hermione still wish to. The words echo in Draco's head like a death knell after Lupin has left, seeding doubts deep under his flesh. He finds himself wondering if she will wish to as he stands naked in a shallow wooden tub filled with cold water to mid-calf, shivering as he washes himself with a cloth, his hair plastered to his head, goosebumps all over from the icy chill. Why would Hermione want to see Draco if she's doing well without him? His only value, as far as Draco sees it, is that he has been able to keep her from shaking apart. If she doesn't need that anymore, he's redundant. Which should be good.
Freezing water slides down his chest.
Draco represents all her trauma, all her pain. Her abuser, even if he was unwilling. Even if he hated it.
The fresh whip scars on his back burn and smart as he bends to wash his lower legs.
How could she stand to be around him? After the way he'd failed to protect her. The way he'd hurt her.
The frigid cold makes arousal unlikely, but Draco's still rough and impersonal as he palms the cloth over his dick, afraid of sliding into a repeat of the other day when he'd cum thinking of how –
He raped her. It would probably be best for her if she does never see him again, like he'd originally planned. For her to go and rebuild her life without Draco, free of him and everything he represents.
He steps out of the tub onto the cold stone floor, wrapping the towel around his waist.
Whatever has grown between them has done so in a poisonous, twisted environment, as Lupin so aptly pointed out. And how can something birthed in the rotten dark ever develop into something good, he thinks, a bitter, resentful sickness rising in him, his jaw clenching. Maybe he'll feel differently later, but right now – head aching, shivering from cold and the day's interview, horrors fresh in his mind – Draco feels only a tired, grim despair.