Forty

Draco enjoys it when they suffer – something he can barely admit to himself, let alone anyone else. It's an ugly truth. This is his vengeance, writ bloody. This is payback for every innocent he was forced to kill, for all the torture he could do nothing to halt, for all the evil he was made complicit in. For what they did to Hermione.

He takes no prisoners.

Coming up on the mansion, the weather front has clearly swept in over the region. Maybe the same storm that had laid over the Order safe house hours before. It's raining steadily but not heavily, and the skies look ready to open up any minute, far-off thunder growling ominously. In the haze of rain and mist that lays over the estate, they lay waste to dozens of Inferi that Voldemort has set loose. Destroying them with fire that fizzles in the rain, and beheadings, and Draco hears Creevey retching behind him at one point. Even Weasley, who fights at Draco's side, looks slightly sickened at having to take the head off a little boy who stumbles at him.

It might be sickening work for some, but Draco takes a strange pleasure in it. He's laying these poor people to rest. Whoever they are, they don't deserve the indignity of their animated corpses stumbling around trying to tear people to pieces. They deserve an end. And he gives them that end.

The American Aurors are damned good fighters at least, he notes – disciplined and skilled, working well with the Order as they fight their way into the mansion. There's no spare concentration for an Impervius Charm, so the rain falls on them all, and Draco's waterproof jacket proves to be not so waterproofed. It gets saturated with rain, but there's no convenient lull in the fighting where he can whip it off. It fucking sucks. It's cold outside, and while his blood is hot and adrenaline floods his veins, being wet through doesn't help – his jacket is chilled, and chafing him.

Using shields and curses, the mass of combined Order members and MACUSA Aurors – about eighty people altogether – fight through the pathetic minions sent out as grist to the mill. Voldemort sends out his poorest fighters first, pouring out of the mansion like lambs to the slaughter, and Draco does slaughter them, his heart pounding like a drum, the blood whooshing in his ears. His pulse is racing frantically.

By the time they get to the mansion's imposing doors, he's killed over half a dozen wizards at least, not counting the Inferi, and wounded more. They break through the doors and the wards with a series of bombardas, the wood finally exploding into splinters that hurtle inward, puncturing the enemies waiting inside who hadn't the sense to put up shields. Some of them scream, bloodied and wounded with shards of wood sticking through their groins, or eyes; those ones are easy to kill. Draco's focus sharpens; his heartbeat is still fast, but he feels right.

The mansion's doors open onto a T-junction, and Order members and American Aurors split off into groups, the bulk heading straight ahead, to the ballroom. Weasley sticks close to his side, and he falls into a rhythm as they make their way down the hallway, leading the way ahead of everyone else, Potter somewhere in the centre of the cluster, flanked by Lupin and Shacklebolt. There's no cover, so everything is shields, and dodging, and the enemy are coming at them. He shields, and then ducks the Killing Curse, and then cuts a charging man's abdomen wide open. The wizard tries to grab at his organs as they slide out of his body, intestines slithering onto the floor in slick ropes, and then the man joins them. Dropping like a stone.

Draco steps over the dying wizard. "Shield," Weasley snaps, and Draco throws up a shield to cover both him and Weasley – who flings a barrage of silent confringos down the hallway, his face a mask of concentration as he flies through the wandwork over and over as fast as possible. Draco's impressed. One moment there are three dark wizards running toward him and Weasley, and then there are just clouds of atomised flesh that he and Weasley jog through, holding their breath.

"Messy," Draco shouts offhandedly over the noise of fighting as he and Weasley come out the other side.

"Effective!" Weasley shouts back, defending himself. Draco laughs.

"I didn't say it was bad, Weasley!"

The other man grins, and then they both have to skid to a halt and focus as enemies spill out of side doors, flanking the large group of Order members.

"Shit."

The mansion is the kind of hell that Draco can revel in.

Revel. The word rips through his mind like closing his hand on broken glass as they put down the wizards moving in on them, and begin to draw near the great ballroom where Voldemort had held his revels. Where Draco has seen so much torture and death. Where he has committed so many atrocities. He thinks of Hermione sobbing and begging, and fury rages in his chest until he wants to explode with it. Ribs blown out, heart burst – he's so fucking angry. At Voldemort, but also at himself, and at Shacklebolt and the rest of the Order.

Rage is a beast that he sets free at the enemy, for a while forgetting Weasley, and tactics, and the rest of the Order. He kills indiscriminately and bloodily, no mercy or kindness slashing from his wand. Just flames and destruction; the burst of organs from men's bodies, the parting of limbs from torsos, gouts of blood spurting from severed arteries. And all he can hear are explosions, screams, and shouted curses. Footsteps, crashes, and the crack of spells splitting the air. It's a cacophony of noise, but it's invigorating as he finally sinks into that state of total focus where everything melts away except the moment.

He lives in the battle. His entire existence is the battle.

Rage, and a terrible lust for death, and an absence of any kind of real fear. It's glorious. He laughs as he flicks off a silent curse that drops someone, literally boneless, and Weasley shoots him a concerned look that he sees from the corner of his eye. The redhead is lit up multicoloured by flying spells, his eyes dark in the light. Draco turns his gaze forward again, dismissing Weasley; he shields and slashes, a torrent of curses spilling with deadly accuracy from his wand.

They tumble into the ballroom, again having to explode their way through warded doors, and find themselves faced by Voldemort and a large group of minions, and what Draco can only assume are his most trusted allies. He thinks he sees Aunt Bella there, at Voldemort's right hand, but before Draco can get a good look at them all, the bunched-up group of Order members immediately has to scatter as the enemy rains curses down on them. Several people fall, dead or grievously wounded. Draco ends up with his back flattened against one of the columns that line each end of the room, next to Weasley. Voldemort and his people have slipped behind the columns at the opposite end.

They exchange fire from cover for a while, thinning the herd of disposable minions and losing a few people themselves, and then Voldemort calls out to Potter. Draco risks a look out from behind the column. He sees Voldemort step forward in his black robes, feet bare and bloodied, a snarl on his face. Bellatrix stands to his right, and to Draco's disgust, she's visibly pregnant, her belly sticking out under her gown, distended and sickening. Salazar's sake. Draco doesn't want to imagine what spawn she carries – he's fairly certain it's not her husband's child inside her. Behind her is Crabbe Sr., large and looming, his dull face shaped by a malicious glee. To Voldemort's left is Rodolphus, Nott Sr. standing just behind him. The former looks as insane as ever, and the latter grimly determined.

"Will you dare to fight me, Harry Potter?" The Dark Lord cries in his eerie, high voice. That clarion call. "Or will you cower like a rat in a hole? Face me! Face me and die, just as your parents did!"

"Oh fuck," Weasley mutters full of tired exasperation, barely audible over the spellwork whizzing through the room, as if he knows exactly what Potter will do. Well, to be fair, it's obvious. Potter was champing at the bit to face his nemesis, and when Draco glances in the Boy-Who-Lived's direction, he's hardly surprised to see him breaking from behind the column to charge at Voldemort, flanked by Lupin and Shacklebolt. Draco shrugs off his wet jacket quickly, leaving him in a white t-shirt he's sure won't stay white for long.

"Merlin fucking dammit," Weasley curses at Potter. "Come on, Malfoy." And then they're both running out from behind the column too, charging like idiots.

It's exhilarating.

Nothing exists but now as Draco pounds across the hall in his heavy boots, shielding and ducking, and nearly dying as curses streak past him. He never relies on his shields; they don't stop everything. Particularly not the Killing Curse. They lose two more people – no one that Draco has the chance to recognise in his hyper-focused dash toward Rodolphus. Potter and his bodyguard squad have reached Voldemort already and are engaging in pitched battle, the Dark Lord doing well against the two seasoned fighters and Potter, who's no slouch himself. Draco swears, heart thundering as he spins and flings up a shield to avoid a red bolt of light, and then skids to a stop facing Rodolphus. They're about four metres away from each other, and Rodolphus grins.

"Nephew! How nice to see you again so soon," he calls, and Draco clenches his jaw and lashes off a silent bombarda. A quick shield as his uncle sends a sickly yellow-green bolt at him. A confringo followed by two diffindos. And then, just in case, an expelliarmus, which Rodolphus flicks away with a laugh. "Try harder, nephew! Make your poor mother proud!"

He grits his teeth, trying to shove down his anger and take his uncle's advice. Beside him, he sees a dead Auror on the ground at his left – for a moment he thinks it's Weasley and feels sick, but then he sees Weasley fighting to his right, red hair catching the lights as he duels Nott Sr. A spark of relief flares. But there's no time to think, just blocking and deflecting, shielding and lashing out, trying to break through his uncle's damned defences. So far, he's avoided the Killing Curse; he knows how the Order feels about it. To cast it in front of everyone wouldn't be ideal, so he refrains, frustration surging in him.

Draco's wrist flicks and rolls in constant movements, his arm sweeping and slashing, and he finds he longs to just barrel forward, slam his uncle into the ground, and smash his head into the hard floor until he stops moving.

The bastard is too good at duelling.

And then Draco catches sight of a wizard slipping around the corner of the room, hugging the wall as he makes for the exit, and if he thought he felt rage before, he was wrong. Sheer hatred lurches up in him like venom. Poison is overflowing him, his stomach spasming, bile acrid in his throat as his hand clenches on his wand. It's one of the wizards from the dinner. It's Harry Hill. Stocky and dirty blond, dressed in a grey suit. Edging his way around the room like a coward, escaping.

No.

He sidesteps Rodolphus's curse and then runs at him, boots slamming against the ground. Wizards don't usually do that, not skilled duellists. They don't stoop to physical attacks – physical attacks are for squibs and Muggle filth, or dumb lugs like Crabbe and Goyle Sr. And so Rodolphus is not expecting it from his nephew, his eyes widening. He lashes off the Killing Curse, but Draco ducks it and hits his uncle shoulder-first in the gut, hard.

Rodolphus makes an oof and then they're flying back, hitting the floor with a jolting smack, and Draco jams his wand into his uncle's throat and snarls, "Avada Kedavra." He means it. There's a small green glow where his wand is pressed into his uncle's flesh, and before it's even faded, Draco is shoving off his inert body and sprinting for the door Harry Hill has just disappeared through, hatred surging through his body, his heartbeat a stampede, his hands clammy with sweat.

Screw Potter, and Weasley, and all the fucking rest of them; they can take care of themselves. Draco is going to kill the bastard who hurt Hermione like that. And he's going to make it hurt so much fucking worse.

Then a rage-filled shriek rises to a crescendo behind him, piercing the distance between them, and Draco knows it's Bellatrix. The mad bitch has clearly seen her husband's body. She screams Draco's name, the noise cutting across the ballroom, and he glances over his shoulder as he approaches the doorway. She's poised, one arm outstretched as though she's – he swears and flails as a flash of silver goes streaking past his shoulder, just slicing shallowly over the top of it and opening a stinging wound, hot blood welling up. The dagger thuds into the door frame, quivering, and Draco turns and laughs, relief making him feel wobbly and crowding out his rage for a few seconds.

"Thanks, Aunt Bella," he calls in a taunt, knowing she can probably read his lips if she can't hear him, and then yanks the dagger free with a grunt, and takes off through the door. He saw Hill go right, so he heads that way, shoving the dagger in his belt as he runs, sharp hatred swelling again as he remembers that night unwillingly. Remembers what Hill did, nausea rising, boots slamming into the floor and breath coming fast from adrenaline and emotion both. He will make the man suffer, and he will enjoy it. And then Draco turns a corner and sees him up ahead, and he feels renewed energy flood him. He lashes off a stupefy, and Hill tumbles and rolls but then scrambles back to his feet, shaking off the spell as he turns to face Draco.

"Hill." The man's name spits from his lips as though it's a curse in itself. Draco parries a bolt of light and flings up a shield, his heart thundering, his hands clammy with sweat. He adjusts his grip on his wand, approaching the stocky, bookish-looking Hill, who snarls and flings off several more sloppy curses and a sputtering Killing Curse that Draco dodges with a neat slide to the left, holding his breath as the green bolt streaks past his abdomen, centre mass. His shield wavers.

"Do you remember me?" he asks Hill, a snarl that's strangled by the force of his fury, not fighting back yet. The man pauses and furrows his brow as he processes the question, his bespectacled eyes sliding over Draco as he stands there, breathing ragged with emotion rather than exhaustion, the left shoulder of his t-shirt sliced and stained with blood, his shield a shimmer in the air as he holds his wand up. It has been months, and probably many revels and dinners since then, but Hill will remember. If he doesn't, Draco will make him remember.

Hill's thoughtful frown clears. "Draco Malfoy, isn't it?" he asks, as though dredging the name out of the passages of memory. "Voldemort's failed protege, weren't you?" And then he grins; a shark-like expression, his eyes black and shining with malice. "That's right. You were the one who ran off with the little mudblood bitch who was at that first dinner."

"Don't," he grates through gritted teeth, wanting to kill the man just for calling Hermione that. His hand shakes on his wand. From his inept spellwork, it's clear that Hill isn't a skilled duellist – it would be so easy to just kill him fast, now. But that's not what Draco wants. He wants justice. He wants revenge. Mere death is not enough for what Hill did to Hermione.

"I remember her. She was a gem. A treasure –"

"Shut up," Draco snarls, his chest heaving as he takes another step closer to the man. Only a few metres separate them now. He wants Hill to remember so that he knows why he's dying, not so that he can gloat over the things he's done. A sickened horror rushes up in him. He doesn't want to hear any of this. Venom dripping from a vile mouth. His grip shifts on his wand, and part of him wants to just lash off the Killing Curse.

"– mouth was so soft and sweet on me. She did such a good job. I've never –"

"You fucking cunt," he gasps past his rage as he remembers, his pulse whooshing so loud in his ears that he can hardly hear the man. Nausea curls in his gut. He wants to vomit. He remembers sitting there and smiling faintly, making pleasant conversation with a wizard named Dougherty while Hill had taken his turn with Hermione. He hates himself with a sudden intensity that rocks him. He hates himself more than he hates Hill. And he can kill every one of the wizards who hurt Hermione, but he'll still be here. "Shut your damned mouth."

But Hill has no reason to be quiet. He's obviously correctly guessed that Draco isn't going to let him live out of the goodness of his heart, so he's driving the knife in and twisting. Maybe hoping he wins – he won't, Draco thinks – but not playing for mercy. He can tell that Draco has none spare. "Mmph. And the way the little slut wept –"

"Stop!"

"– was exquisite –"

Draco huffs a breath, fists clenched, trying to gather himself. Hill's words are wrecking him, and he can't afford that. He tries to drag himself back on track. To compose himself. "I'm glad you remember –" he begins.

"– painting her pretty face with my –"

"– that's why you're going to die," Draco says, raising his voice and talking over the other man. "Slowly."

Hill sneers. His dark eyes are like pits, and filled with horrors. "No wonder she kept looking at you, begging you to save her."

Draco remembers. He'd mocked her. Made fun of the pathetic mudblood clinging to her master, like she was deluded enough to think he'd give a shit about her. So long as they didn't put their dicks below the waist. He swallows down saliva, mouth watering as though he's about to vomit as he stares at Hill. It had seemed like a reasonable line to draw – that as her master, he solely owned that part of her. He'd been trying to save her from as much as he could, and that was all he could obtain. That pathetically small mercy. He'd tried. Tears prick his eyes, and his vision blurs.

"It will not be quick. And it will not be pleasant," he tells Hill. A strange numbness blankets him. As though he's gone well beyond rage into something else entirely. Some calm, dead place. It's hard to breathe, his chest in a vice, and he knows exactly what he's going to do to Hill. Poetic justice.

"It won't be anything, you stupid upstart. You foolish, mudblood-loving vermin," Hill crows, and then hot, deep pain erupts through the back of Draco's right knee. He feels something come loose in his thigh, his knee and thigh a sudden mass of pain. His leg goes out from under him as the pain sears from ankle to hip, and he staggers and falls against the wall. Panic claws at the back of his mind as he scrambles to think clearly.

"Incarcerous," he snarls, flinging the spell off at Hill. It hits and the man falls with a cry, wand spilling from his hands as Draco raises another shield, feeling pain radiate hot through his leg, blood soaking his trousers and running down over his calf, wet and sticky. Fuck. He looks down the hall at – Crabbe Sr. The large man is glaring at him, an older version of the long-dead Vince, his eyes filled with hatred and a wild kind of gleeful malice. The man points his wand at Draco, but as far as he can see, he hasn't raised a shield.

"Malfoy, you nasty little shit! I can finally get my vengeance on you, instead of taking it out on your mother," Crabbe shouts, and Draco's rage blooms again. His mother. Crabbe isn't the sort to lie over things like that – he's too thick, and not tactical enough. And what lies he does tell are clumsy and easy to see through. If he says he's been hurting Draco's mother, then that means she's alive. Mistreated – he doesn't let himself think about what she must be suffering, or whether Rodolphus had been telling the truth – but alive. He twists around to face Crabbe. His leg won't work right. He'll figure that out in a minute, he thinks dizzily. He needs to stop the bleeding, too.

He concentrates. It takes effort, and it helps to say the incantations aloud. "Confringo," he snarls, and Crabbe blocks. "Diffindo –" he thinks that might be what Crabbe used on him "– sectumsempra, expelliarmus, stupefy." He lashes spells one after the other, harsh and desperate, running out of time as the blood runs down his leg. Of all things, it's the stupefy that gets through. Crabbe drops his wand and sways on his feet, and Draco flourishes his own wand, hissing: "Bombarda!" Crabbe, and a good portion of the wall behind him, explode violently. There's no time to celebrate.

Draco shoves his wand between his teeth and pulls a vial of essence of dittany off his belt, twisting to try to see the wound. There's a clean, deep slice across the left side of his right knee that gapes and trickles a steady stream of blood, the surrounding area already swelling and beginning to bruise darkly. He thinks it may have slashed through a tendon; his hamstring, maybe. It's in too awkward a place to use an episkey on himself, but he manages to drip some dittany on, which stems the bleeding at least, although it won't repair the tendon. He tucks the dittany away after smearing some on his shoulder, and then turns to focus on Hill.

The man is making a furious shrieking, struggling against bonds that only tighten as he fights them. Hill's face is red, his spectacles half off, his expression contorted as he shouts slurs and pleas by turns, and Draco remembers the expression on his face as he'd violated Hermione right in front of him. He limps over, his knee not wanting to straighten or bend properly, forcing him into a stiff-legged gait as pain rips through him. He ignores it. He's remembering. What Hill did. What they all did, while Draco sat by and let it happen.

"You violated her," he says as he whips the man's trousers and underpants down with a spell, not caring if Hill hears what he's saying or not. But he stops raging briefly as Draco yanks his clothes off, a bewildered horror entering his eyes. As if he's afraid he's about to become the victim.

He is.

Draco leans over him. His voice shakes as he goes on.

"You took her, and you hurt her more than she ever imagined she could be hurt. You ruined her. You broke her." He doesn't know if he's talking to Hill or himself. His heart is thudding against his ribs. He can feel the blood thrumming in his fingertips. The whole world narrows down to Hill, and him. He will make the man pay. Appropriately. "But she's going to get better," he says, hard, steel in his tone. "And you won't."

"Please," Hill begs. His eyes widen, terror shining on the surface, and Draco feels a smile twitch at his lips. He schools his face to coldness. "Don't – don't –"

"Yeah. She said that too," Draco says, and his wand slashes down in retribution, parting flesh from the man's body. Hill begins to scream, and scream; a high, shrill, awful sound, and his mouth is stretched wide, features contorted in agony. Draco imagines he is unaware of anything except the pain, and the horror. Mindless with suffering. Good.

He can't bend down to do it manually, so he does it by magic; he levitates the man's severed genitals to his wide open mouth and jams them inside, stifling his screams. Another flick of his wand conjures a gag that wraps around Hill's mouth, preventing him from shoving his own flesh out from between his lips with his tongue. He's making agonised, stifled screaming noises, and his eyes are so wide that Draco can see the whites all around. The blood vessels in Hill's left eye have haemorrhaged from the force of his screams, and the white is spidered with red.

"Not so fun sucking your dick, is it?" Draco asks him bitterly, his breathing ragged, swaying on his feet above the man, but he gets no response. Just more pain-filled moans and muted shrieks. He stands above the wizard, and a hollow sickness rises up from beneath his consuming rage, and triumphant, vicious vengeance. There's a raw, disgustingly open wound at the man's crotch, and he writhes and wails in a muffled voice, his mouth stuffed with his own flesh, and Draco feels sickened at himself and what he's done. What he's capable of. He's a monster.

Hermione deserves better. But she wants him.

And he's standing over a mutilated man, who is wailing behind his gag, and sobbing, tears streaming from his eyes and snot running from his nose. And Draco doesn't feel terribly bad about it. Just sickened by what they all are, himself included. All except her. He stands there a moment longer, watching, and then he slashes his wand and cuts Hill's throat, casting a wordless incendio as the blood gouts out, and the wizard's eyes start to glaze.

Draco limps away as the body burns – destroying the evidence of what he's done – finding an awkward, stiff-legged jog that makes him lurch to the left with every step, but doesn't make his knee feel like it's exploding. He can hear fighting off in the distance, and he's been gone too long already, pursuing some kind of twisted justice. He stumbles into Creevey and Weasley in the hallway that leads out toward the gardens, lurching around the corner right into the thick of a skirmish, and nearly catching a curse from Creevey. The only reason he doesn't is because of the way he tips to the left with every step – the curse zips straight past his head, and he bites out a "fuck," stuttering to a stop.

Creevey stares at him wide-eyed, ashen pale, and spilling apologies. "I'm sorry, Malfoy! I'm so sorry!"

"Shit." Draco whips out a curse, sending it flying across the hallway to hit a dark wizard who'd been aiming at the distracted younger man. "Creevey! Focus!" Creevey spins and watches the wizard fall, dead, and then turns to face the action, focusing, thank Merlin. Draco limps into place beside Weasley, who's fighting like a machine as he pushes forward down the hallway, blood streaking half his face, his arm in constant motion. Abbott, Finch-Fletchley, and a few American Aurors are with them too, covering the rear and their flanks. "What're we doing?"

"Where the fuck were you?" Weasley asks, without sparing him a glance.

Draco swallows, and then he's honest. "Getting Hermione justice she probably wouldn't approve of," he says, shielding, thinking of Hermione with an ache in his chest. Longing for her wrenches through him for one brief, consuming moment. Weasley shoots off a sectumsempra.

"Huh." Weasley sounds about as thoughtful as is possible in a combat zone. He throws up a shield and holds it as Draco flicks off a volley of silent diffindos. "Good then." Another pause as they fight, and several dark wizards die to their wands, and then he answers Draco's first question in short, breathless sentences, in between spells. "We're pushing out into the gardens. Protego! Voldemort, your aunt, and a few others retreated out there while duelling Harry, Remus, and Kingsley." He lashes off a silent confringo. "Then his damned minions blocked us from following. Incendio! We're trying to break through."

"Got it," Draco snaps and then notices movement out of the corner of his eye. Creevey. Shit. He's going to get himself killed. "Get in cover, Creevey!" he yells, and the younger man flinches, and does as he's told, ducking into a nearby doorway. "Confringo," Draco hisses and flourishes his wand, and the wizard explodes. He smiles, grim and tight-lipped, beginning to settle into his rhythm again, the only thing setting him off balance the pain throbbing through his leg, and the way it won't work properly. He pushes through it, focusing.

He wants to go home to Hermione.