His blood spills, gushing from his forearm and painting the prison red. Hermione watches in horror as the pool creeps towards her cell, eventually merging with her own pool of blood around her face, making them one.
For a moment she sees a Death Eater, a murderer, the man that watched her being tortured, who plotted to kill Dumbledore and yet in the same breath, she sees herself. Both of them are bleeding out, both of them dying, thrust into a war they want no part in. Is this justice? Is this revenge? How can she look at this boy and see her enemy?
"Carly!" Hermione rasps, her nose clogged and lungs in agony; a broken rib. "Carly!" Maybe this could be her last deed, her last act of kindness in this cruel world, but for all her shouting, Carly does not come.
She remains conscious for mere moments longer, her thoughts draining like brain matter out her ear, a lobotomy that has taken everything but him. His porcelain skin smeared red, his straight nose and angular cheek bones. He looks older. Weathered. Just before she loses consciousness, she wishes he could see her.
Liquid pours down her throat, like soul to the dying. Hermione faintly becomes aware of the ground beneath her, the world cold and empty. She wonders if this is hell.
Glass clinks against concrete, a bottle rolling across the floor. A sound that does not belong here. Hermione cracks her eyes open, vision blurring. Draco is still there, still dying and between them, stands hairy bare feet. Carly uncorks a potion, her bony fingers fumbling, more frantic than someone under the cruciatus curse. She grabs Draco's face through the bars, prying his mouth and tipping the potion. Empty, she discards the vial, reaching for another before it hits the ground.
The oak door barges open, fresh light bathing the prison. Purple fluffy slippers hurry past her cell.
"How long has he been like this?" A woman asks, dropping a brown leather satchel on the floor. She realises it's Pansy.
"He just- He just-"
Pansy throws the bars open, "How long?"
"I don't know-"
"Fuck!" She breaths, taking in the state of his arm, "What happened?"
"They brought him in here," Carly explains.
"He needs..." Pansy assesses him, her eyes darting from him to the bag, "He needs more blood! I need to use magic!" She grabs Draco's feet and drags him from the cell, struggling with the weight of him, kicking her bag out of the way as she pulls him into the corridor.
Hermione fights to sit up, pushing off the floor and using the bars for support. The potion, skele-grow she presumes, beginning to take effect.
"Damn this fucking place!" Pansy yells as she heaves, dropping his feet and staggering back into the prison. She grabs her satchel, gaze skimming over Hermione's cell as she turns back to the corridor. Pansy nearly snaps her neck with whiplash, doing a double take, "Who-"
The bag slips from her fingers, potions spilling across the floor. Pansy scrambles to pick them up, blood coating the vials, "Granger?"
Hermione holds her gaze, desperate to be seen, "Carly?" Pansy shrieks, staggering to her feet, tripping over her slippers, one of them falling off.
With one bare foot, Pansy hurries to the elf, her legs uncoordinated, "Granger?" She gestures helplessly, completely at a loss.
Carly frantically shakes her head, unable to answer; now is not the time. Carly kneels beside Draco, yanking his sleeve up further. Pansy gawks at the mess, dropping her bag and falling to her knees.
Hermione drags herself to the left wall, trying to see.
Pansy retrieves a cloth from her satchel, pressing it into his wound. She cast a diagnostic spell, the golden enchantment illuminating the cramped space around them, like a halo circling a saint. Hermione stares, mesmerized. Pansy ends the spell, removes the cloth and starts an intricate healing charm of the likes Hermione has never seen before. Reaching for another blood replenishing potion and fighting with the cork before giving it to Carly.
The elf opens it and tips it into Draco's mouth, "Another!" Pansy tells her, throwing her the bag. Carly catches it, fishing out more potions. Pansy cups his arm with her free hand, trying to hold the skin together and layering spell after spell over the gash. Her hands soaking with his blood, her movements practiced, second nature.
Carly tips another potion into Draco's mouth, discarding the empty bottle, "Keep going! He needs all he can get!"
"There's-" Carly panics.
"What?"
"There's- There's none- There's none left-"
"Shit!" Pansy lets go of his arm, grabbing the bag and turning it upside down. Vials spill out, Pansy swipes her arm through the equipment, spreading it out, "Fuck!" She returns her hand to his arm, "My supply!" She remembers, "Under my bed!"
Carly disapparates immediately.
Pansy turns back to his arm, casting more spells, furiously weaving her wand, "Don't die!" She whispers to herself, "Please, don't die!" She looks up at Hermione, remembering she is still there. Their eyes connect through the bars, Pansy opens her mouth to speak-
Carly apparates, weighed down by a large metal trunk. It crashes to the floor, Carly flips it open and Pansy nearly cries at all the blood replenishing potions. Carly administers them. Hermione watching carefully and counting a total of five potions used and discarded. Pansy casts another diagnostic charm, studying it quickly. Taking a deep breath, she leans away and covers her face with blood soaked hands.
Hermione has never seen her so broken. Pansy drops her hands, rocking forward, a sob strangling her throat. She covers her mouth with the back of her hand, trying to block it, "He'll be ok."
She looks down at him, eyes vacant and exhausted when an idea occurs to her. Reaching for his belt, she unbuckles it and pulls it through the loops. She wraps it around his upper arm, pulling tight, then tighter, and tying it in place, "He'll be ok." She says again, "He'll be ok." She sounds doubtful. She turns back to his wound with shaking hands and layers more healing spells for good measure.
What did he do?
Hermione brings her arm to her chest, looking at the letters carved into her flesh then holding her ribs for support. He must have betrayed the Dark Lord in some way. But why not just kill him? Why leave him somewhat alive? Hermione looks away. The enormity of the situation settling into her gut.
Draco Malfoy, Pureblooded Death Eater, prejudiced, bastard is unconscious, sprawled on the floor, blood gushing from a wound where is Dark Mark should be. Hermione blinks, her stomach churning. Where his Dark Mark should be...
Like the crack of a whip, Carly flinches "He's back!"
"What?" Pansy halts her wand work.
"Master has returned."
It takes a second for Pansy to register and gape at Draco's body, the supplies, the open oak door, his open cell, "Oh my God!" Pansy gets to her feet, slipping on the bloodied floor and landing flat on her backside, "He can't know I'm here!" She shoots to her feet again, covered head to toe in his blood.
Pansy grabs his ankles, dragging him through the oak door and back to his cell, "He'll kill me!"
Carly grabs the medical bag, shoving everything back inside, "I must go!"
"Go! Go!" Pansy shouts dragging Draco into the cell. Carly apparates away. Pansy positions Draco's body as she first found him, slamming the bars shut behind her in a flurry.
"What's happening?" Hermione asks.
"I'm sorry," She snatches up the empty vials, "I'm sorry!" Before slamming the oak door shut.
Deafening silence splits through the prison. Hermione stares at the door, unable to think. She listens to the beating of her heart, willing Pansy to come back. To say more, to see her and understand. Look at me! Look at what your Father is doing to me!
As if her mind conjures it, the oak door flings open. Hermione's mind rolls. Pansy crashes back into the prison, wild, throws herself at Draco's bars, ripping them open and colliding with the floor. Fingers trembling, she unties the belt from around his arm and tries to loop it back through his trousers in hysteria. Fumbling and fumbling with the belt loops, rolling Draco onto his side to slide the belt round the loops at the back.
Shooting to her feet, Pansy slams the bars behind her and races out the prison like her life depends on it. The oak door should have broke with the force she shut it with.
Cassius is coming back. To interrogate her? Draco? Both?
Quickly, Hermione lies back down on the floor in the same position Cassius had left her in. Pretending to still be unconscious and using the blood to disguise her healing bones.
She turns her head, peering at Draco under their bars.
Draco Malfoy is in the cell opposite her. Draco fucking Malfoy is in the cell opposite her! Malfoy.
Malfoy!
She looks at his closed eyes, unaware of her attention. His mutilated forearm, the skin gone, like an arm plunged in a blender.
How- How had this happened?
Her enemy. Her own personal rival, shoved in the cell opposite, forced to look at him, forced to suffer in front of him.
He would see everything, she realizes.
Everything.
He would have full access. He would watch as she slept, as she used the bucket, as she ate her scraps and had her nightmares and slowly bled to death-
Something purple stands out amongst all the red. Hermione turns her attention, focusing her gaze in the dimly lit prison and realizes with horror that it is Pansy's purple fluffy slipper. She stares at it, heart pounding, not knowing what to do, before edging as close to the bars as humanly possible, her shoulders digging into the iron, and reaching under the bars, fingers skimming the purple clump before making purchase and snatching it under her bars and into her cell.
With nowhere to hide it bar the tin bucket that already contained her waste, the only rational thing she can think of is to stuff it up her jumper.
If Harry and Ron could see her now... Drenched in blood, imprisoned with Draco Bloody Malfoy across from her, a Death Eater or rather, Ex-Death Eater with Pansy Parkinson's stupid slipper shoved under her jumper. Hermione laughed until she cried.