Thanks as always to my amazing beta Pidanka!
Nine
Draco catches the vial automatically, although he fumbles it slightly; a testament to the state of him after his final interview with Lupin. The worst yet, perhaps.
They'd gone over the past three months. Lupin hadn't asked much about Hermione. "I don't think she would want me knowing details of – what happened. " the older man said delicately, but he had asked some things, and sometimes the subject of Hermione bled into other areas. Too many. It had been...difficult. Draco had found himself sliding into talking about her entirely by accident at times, the tenuous links between topics making him think of her, and what he did to her, and then the words came sliding out until Lupin stopped him.
The horrors of the dinner had come up briefly, as well as the revel where she'd been forced to torture him, and Draco had tried to choke the words back, fighting the veritaserum until Lupin told him to stop, or rephrased the question. And then there were all the small, unrelated moments that made Draco feel violated by being forced to reveal something so innocently intimate, or feel so disgusted that yet another horrendous thing had happened or been done.
He's sweating and shaky again, and there's a throbbing behind his eye sockets, a persistent tic in his jaw muscle again, and his body is stiff and sore from being chained in that damn chair. And his chest hurts from holding back the messy, pathetic sobs that threaten whenever he talks about Hermione. His pulse is fast, his heart thudding hard and discordant. In short, he's a wreck.
After the final interview, Lupin had sent him back to his cell to pack up his few belongings – a change of clothes, several books, and a pack of cards – while the older wizard finished up the paperwork and checked on available placements for Draco. And now Potter and Weasley stood in his doorway, having thrown him a vial of veritaserum.
"Drink it," Potter says, looking very set-jawed and determined as the taller Weasley lurks behind him.
Draco examines the liquid; definitely veritaserum. "I still have veritaserum in my system," he tells the two other men flatly. "If you're planning on interrogating me, you can just go ahead. Otherwise, I'll end up overdosing." A small overdose isn't dangerous, but it isn't great either, and Draco would rather not experience it. Disorientation, nausea, lack of coherency, and even less control over what one says, followed by hangover-like symptoms.
"You took it five hours ago. It'll be wearing off," Potter retorts. "Take the damn dose."
"Why?"
"Why do you think, Malfoy?" Weasley is scathing, and Draco's jaw twitches, his pulse picking up. He knows why they're here, and he knows there's nothing he can do about it. He has to cooperate. Fuck. It's like walking to his own execution. He already felt like shit, and now he feels worse; black spots dance behind his eyes and he sits down, staring at the vial.
"It won't make a difference," Draco tries. He's met with stony silence. "Granger wouldn't want you to know. She'd tell you if she wanted you to know," he tries next, and that scores a hit. Potter and Weasley exchange uncomfortable glances. They retreat into the corridor and have a quick, quiet conversation, heads close together. But then Potter shakes his head, and they move back into the cell doorway, Potter's grip tightening on his wand.
"Just drink the damn stuff, Malfoy," he says impatiently. So Draco takes a deep breath and then does, pulling the cork out with a squeak, the fluid sliding down his throat in one small mouthful.
"Ask your fucking questions then," he says bitterly. Potter eyes him.
"It'll take five minutes to kick in."
"Then start simple, Potter. But like I already told you, I still have veritaserum in my system," Draco snaps and rubs his hands over his face, exhausted. He feels almost numbed to the approaching ordeal. Resigned to the awfulness. He knows roughly how this will go – he can't bring himself to imagine it in detail.
"Fine. Let's just start, Harry," Weasley says, and the interrogation begins. "What happened when she was brought in by the snatchers?"
The first question isn't so terrible to start with, although Draco can already feel the extra veritaserum dose slowly kicking in. His heartbeat picks up, and he knows it can't just be adrenaline, and his head is aching, his stomach churning as he answers Weasley.
"They dragged her in unconscious. I recognised her immediately, and I didn't know why they hadn't," he says, talking too fast and unable to stop himself. "She looked so small. So vulnerable. I knew – knew what the Dark Lord would do with her. I couldn't – not her." He's breathing too quickly, hand wrapped around the empty vial. "Not her. So I thought, maybe I could hide her. At the back, with the used-up Muggles, where no one who'd recognise her would see her. Where no one bothers going."
"...used-up?" Potter mutters disgusted, and Draco's compulsion-ridden brain takes that as a question.
"Yes. The servants who were abused too much and stopped being able to do the work. The ugly Muggles. The ones who stopped reacting to the torture and became catatonic, because they weren't fun anymore. The ones who came in damaged. The ones that Death Eaters –"
"Okay, stop!" Potter snaps, and Draco stops. Relieved and filled with dread at the same time. Potter and Weasley throw him several more questions about his treatment of Hermione in the dungeons. None of them are that terrible – it seems more like the two of them want to know what Hermione went through without putting her through the ordeal of asking her. But it still feels wrong to Draco. He can see that, to some extent, the two idiots are trying to understand Hermione's ordeal so they can help her, but it still seems like prying.
"Did you really think you had to rape her?" The question hits out of nowhere.
"I didn't fucking ask to, Potter," he snarls furiously. "But I knew he'd make me. I know how his mind works."
"Did you enjoy it?" Weasley asks, and Draco's stomach drops through the floor.
"Fuh-fuck you. You – you can't fucking ask me that." He stands numbly in the middle of the cell, swaying on his feet as he resists the compulsion, wanting to strangle Weasley for asking that. "You can't. You –"
"Did you enjoy it?" Potter demands now, his face twisted in disgust and his wand aimed steadily at Draco, a wordless threat not to try anything.
"Yes," Draco says in a hoarse croak, the word ripped from his throat as he stares at his feet, unable to keep everything from pouring out in a torrent. "At first, I couldn't even get it up, but then I did, and so I – I fuh-fucked her and I hated myself for it then, and I hate myself for it now, but yes, she felt so good, so good and so fucking awful and she was crying, and I'd hurt her so badly, and I just kept hurting her, and I wanted to die, I would rather have died than do that, but I couldn't because if I couldn't do it, if I couldn't, then he was going to throw her to the others, to everyone else, and so it had to be me, it had to be, and I couldn't help it." He takes a gasping, wretched breath, the next words very small, strangled in guilt: "I couldn't help that she felt good."
Draco realises he's crying as Potter and Weasley's expressions shift to a kind of bewildered, devastated horror, like they realise belatedly that they've waded into deeper, darker waters than they thought. He's crying silently except for his gasping breaths, shoulders shaking, tears hot on his cheeks as he desperately wipes them away. There's a hot pain in his left hand, and when he looks dumbly down at it, he realises that he's crushed the veritaserum vial in his hand. Blood runs over his fingers in a sluggish, thin trickle. Weasley notices at the same time as Draco.
"Harry."
"Shit. Malfoy. Let me –" Potter waves at Draco's hand.
"No," Draco says, flat and numb, his voice thick with tears. "No. Ask your fucking questions. Get your fucking kicks. Invade her privacy. Ask about how she tortured me. I wouldn't have thought she had the steel in her spine, but she did it. She made me scream in a way the Dark Lord never managed to." He's furious. Angry beyond reason. "Your Hermione broke me so well."
"Good," Potter snarls back. "Tell me how she hurt you, then, you poor, innocent Death Eater."
"I – I didn't say I was innocent. I didn't say I didn't deserve it. I did. I deserved every bit of the kicking, and the electrical thing –" he still doesn't know what it was "– and her burning me, and ripping my nails out –"
"Bullshit," Weasley interrupts, and Potter mutters an aside to him – Hermione did say that, weren't you listening?
"– and the whipping, but you're not interested in that, are you? You don't care that we were both forced. Both had to. I didn't want to do any of it any more than she did," Draco gets out fast, panting and choking on his words and hoping his tirade makes them stop asking questions. But he's not in control of what he says, a stream of consciousness now, and he can't shut himself up. "You just want to know how I hurt her, like at the first revel. Like the dinner. Ask about that. About how I made her dress like a whore on a leash, and then I had to sit there and watch while they – they –" Draco breaks off, voice rising to a shout over watch, and then quieting over the last few. He hates himself. He needs to shut the fuck up. He doesn't want them to ask –
"While they what?" Weasley asks as if it were an automatic reflex, and Draco could sob at the cruelty of it, and even Potter hisses in a breath and glares at Weasley, though he doesn't say stop.
"Don't make me say it," Draco begs, his heartbeat a drum behind his eyes, his skull a vice crushing his brain as he pleads desperately, blood still seeping over his fingers. "Please. Please, I'm begging you, please pleaseplease they – they put things in her. In her – her mouth and her –" He gags. He's trying desperately to be vague, and bile is acrid at the back of his throat, the veritaserum killing him. "– made her lick their – their – and – and they cut her and used imperio, and they made her their dog, their dog, stupid little Mudblood bitch and I just had to watch, there was nothing I could do –" Draco's eyes beg them to understand but he sees only reflected horror "– please stop me, please..."
They do stop him then, or rather, Potter does. Draco stumbles to the toilet but doesn't throw up, just retches a few times before spitting and wiping his mouth with the back of his unbloodied hand. He raises his head and looks at the pair of them, feeling hatred like a pulse. "Are you getting off on this?" he asks dizzily, and they both recoil.
"Come on, Harry, let's just go," Weasley mutters, and no – Draco isn't having that. He strides across the room in two long steps and grabs Potter by the wrist before he can exit the cell. It's Draco's left hand, and the pain of the glass slivers digging in deeper is exquisite, and Potter is wide-eyed.
"Let me go, Malfoy."
"No."
"Let me the fuck go."
"No," he snarls, and Salazar's sake, he's still crying. A slow trickle like the leak of a tap, and he blames the veritaserum and Lupin's interview for making him susceptible to this because he doesn't cry in front of people. He tries not to cry at all, but definitely not in front of these two, of all people.
"Merlin's sake, I'll hex you," Potter snaps, looking unworried, because what threat can Draco pose, but annoyed.
"Please do. I don't care," he gets out numbly. "In fact, it might be a nice change." He narrows his eyes on Potter. "You're asking the wrong questions, Potter."
"What?"
"Ask me if I'd die for her. Yes, I would. I would die for her gladly," Draco says low and quick, his voice intent. Urgent. The truth slipping from his lips. "Ask me if I'd ever lay my hands on her without her consent unless it were to save her life. I wouldn't. Ask me if I wish it had all happened to me instead. I do. I'd rather it had been me being raped by – by fucking Rodolphus or Crabbe or Goyle Sr., or hell, all of them – than me doing it to her." He lets Potter's wrist go. It's blood-smeared now. Potter doesn't move away, those bright green eyes locked to Draco's, searching and intent, a frown slashing between his brows, his mouth pursed with distrust and disbelief. "I just want what's best for her. I want her to have what she wants. I want that to be me –" that last slips out unintended, and Weasley scoffs "– but whatever it is, I want her to have it. I want her to be happy."
And then Draco retreats to his bed and sits, staring at his bloodied left hand. He can see a few slivers sparkling in the spider web of cuts; nothing too bad. He'll try to pick it out later. Or Lupin can. There's silence. Draco knows intellectually that he made a fairly decent point with that rambling, gasping rant, but he still feels numb. It hasn't changed his mind – he still thinks that he's a monster, and probably the farthest thing from what Hermione needs, so why would it have changed their minds about him. Just because he loves her? Pathetic.
He overhears them talking in low voices.
"He's telling the truth, we know that."
"I don't know if I care, after what he did."
"To be fair, he didn't have a choice."
"That doesn't make me feel any less disgusted. "
"Well, no, me neither. But Hermione clearly...well. She cares about him."
"I know."
The whispers go on for a minute, and then Potter's voice cuts the air, cautious and neutral. "Malfoy? Can I heal your hand before we talk?"
"No," Draco snaps back without looking up. "You can get the fuck out."
"Reparo," Potter snaps and Draco grabs his wrist and winces as the slivers of glass pull themselves from his flesh and reform the veritaserum vial, hanging in the air stained with his blood for a brief moment before Potter summons it. He lifts his head. "Get out," he says and watches as they shuffle out, the door shutting behind them with a hollow sound.
When Lupin returns, Draco has washed the blood from his hand, and hides the cuts by turning his palm against his abdomen as he lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling once more. Thinking.
"I'd rather not go," Draco says when Lupin says he's found him a safe house. The older man is openly confused.
"You can get out of your cell. You can –"
"Do I have to?" Draco interrupts.
"Well, no," Lupin says, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "You don't. But –"
"Then I'd rather stay." And that's it. He's decided. He sighs, an odd sense of relief and resignation settling over him. Lupin wants to know if it is some kind of attempt at penance and tells Draco he doesn't have to punish himself. That, regardless of what he did, he did, in fact, do it under the Order's directive. He's absolved, legally, of his crimes. Morally though, Draco doesn't feel absolved. Besides, a safe house doesn't sound much better than a stone cell at this point; he may as well stay.
Lupin seems concerned, even as he tells Draco he can have another two weeks in the cell, if he agrees to meet with a Healer. Draco agrees. "You can see Hermione in a week," Lupin offers, and Draco thinks the older wizard must be concerned to bring that up of his own accord. He huffs a humourless laugh.
After today, remembering everything he did to her in excruciating detail, Draco thinks that – seeing as he didn't stay and die – it might be best for Hermione if he just vanishes from her life. Remains in this cell, unvisited and forgotten. Letting her heal without his presence as a toxic reminder of everything that was done to her. If what they say is correct, she's recovering well without Draco there. His absence might be for the best.
Housekeeping!
I currently have 133K of Aftermath written, and am entering what feels like the home stretch – the ramp up to a hopefully climactic finish. Based on the chapters I have plotted out, I estimate it'll wrap up at anywhere between 160K – 180K, at 34 chapters, 27 of which I have completed.
Fascination has been on the back burner slightly, so I'm only at 188K words and 49 chapters out of what I estimate will be approximately 60 chapters or less, once complete. It too, is beginning to move into the home stretch, although I imagine it's ending will be less climactic and more fluffy than Aftermath, haha.
Thank you as always to everyone who engages with my fics in some way. It's fantastic, and I appreciate you all 3
