The Bottom Of Black

Disclaimer: Nothing. Own nothing. Whabam
PS. /skgjbsg/ = thoughts
PPS. If you want to read more you must R&R!!! I can’t do this without support!

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A week passed, and she did not wake except to cry and eat when he forced her. Draco gave up his room for one of the many others at the manor. He settled in what had been his parents’ room. It was masked in a thin gray coat of dust when he had first entered, but upon telling Grill his wishes he had returned to it at the end of the day fully restored. A sheer black and green canopy fell in wisps over the four dark oak posts. Every inch of wood was carved, every detail painstakingly crafted. Grill had done well. It was just as Draco remembered it.

Up until Voldemort’s demise, Malfoy Manor had been a stronghold for the dark side. People could be found moving about at all hours of the day. Some drank and bedded wealthy pure-bloods and enslaved mud bloods alike, others simply patrolled the grounds. Either way, there was no privacy to be had with an evil web cocooning Draco from all sides, and he the fly with no wings.

He had been cut off from his confidants at the Order. Those who still believed in his goodness thought he was dead. Then Ron had turned, had revealed Draco as a spy. Draco remembered that sneer so like his own. But none of the Death Eaters had believed him. In fact, the only reason Weasel wasn’t killed on sight was the valuable information he brought: numbers, spells, and locations needed to be seen to, and Ron was all but forgotten, another Wormtail lost in the throng of followers. So he made an attempt against Draco, and Draco felt no remorse in sending Weasel to his unceremonious grave. He died even before he could make a difference, even before the Dark Lord could acknowledge him for his trouble. A whiff of smoke in the fire blazing between light and dark.

Ron brought Hermione with him the day he left Potter‘s side forever. She floated like a ghost at his side as he sauntered proudly up Malfoy Manor‘s granite entrance steps. She was the talk of the manor, the factor that sealed the deal for most. He had surely betrayed his friends. Hermione was the light’s greatest attribute next to Potter. What candle could they possibly hold now?

But the light had won, and for the life of him Draco could not understand it. Two years of deadlock then a break and a final victory. It had been too easy. And now he was alone with her, the only prisoner kept alive. Potter had not yet found them, not that Draco was making an effort to be found. He hadn’t lifted the unplottable spells or the anti-apperation spells. He’d left the complicated charms cluttering the grounds intact. He would wait. They would find him. In the mean time, there would be peace.

***

She stirred. Another day wafted past the drawn curtains to her eyes. Squinting, she turned over. He was there, staring at her.

“Good morning.”

Hermione didn’t smile. Her skin was the purest white marble in the morning light, a stoic angel’s face carved into it. She was not really seeing him there, he couldn’t be there.

/None of this is real./

But she held his gaze. She felt that time had passed since Draco removed her from her cell, but she could not tell how much. His eyes were softerr; he looked tired. “Draco…”

/Was I rescued? What happened?/

Then it rushed back to her, clouding his face and any other thought out of her mind. A room lit via spells with no distinguishable source of light. The chains, chains on the walls and ceiling, chains bolted to the floors. People in the chains, bloody people, dead people. A woman with no fingers scrapping the putrid stone floor with the butt of her palms, crying with sightless sockets. A man held up by magic from a Death Eater’s wand was writhing like a mutilated snake against the wall as the cloaked figure laughed maniacally and almost playfully tossed his wand back and forth between his hands.

There was cackling; there was screaming. Terror. Blood. So much blood. Blood ran like streams in the cracks of the stones between puddles. The man’s blood, the woman’s, indiscernible other’s, her blood, she realized. She looked down at herself. Sickly gashes covered her chest and legs. Burns and bruises made gory tracks up her arms.

There was a hooded man before her, then. He pulled her up, swept the mask over his face away, and she could taste his vile grin mingling with the blood in her mouth. He was carnal, devouring her with his eyes. It did not matter to him that she was near death, nor did her mangled body seem to distract him. She got the impression he was admiring her gruesome wounds, that it somehow aroused him.

***

Draco searched Hermione’s face. She seemed far away. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. She shook, the bedclothes slumping off to the corners of the mattress or onto the floor. Draco went to her. “Wake up, Hermione. No…Not yet. Don‘t do this yet.”

/Did they drive her insane? Two years… I would go bloody mad as well, wouldn’t I?/

He took her hand, and she snapped back from her waking nightmare just long enough to shout “Don’t touch me, you bastard!” before going blind and deaf to him yet again. His drew his hand back warily, not sure of what had just happened. It was not her shrieking that had alarmed him, it was what he had seen when he touched her.

Fulfilling the role of a high-ranking Death Eater’s son had the occasional benefit, the major one in this case being nightly Legimens lessons from Snape. Though whether or not he considered what he just saw as a benefit was still up for consideration: Flashes of gore. Pangs of nausea and disgust. Goyle’s big bloody hands on her stomach. Green light from the Crucio curse.

Draco watched her shiver though the room was not cold, knowing she was seeing these things and more than he could imagine. He decided not to leave her. Sitting in silent vigil, Draco could sense her pain. He focused harder on her thoughts, not her emotions, but the events playing out in her mind her memories.

***

Goyle dropped her on her face and left the room for a moment, sniggering all the way. “There’s still more fun to be had in one of them, at least!” He returned with two more men and a table. They hoisted her onto the splintering wood stomach-down. She knew then what was to come. It could have been anything, but she knew.

They took turns ravaging her, the first being particularly excited to find she was a virgin. After the second she tuned them out, just went limp and numb like a ruined china-doll as they broke her over and over. She couldn’t breath. The woman was screamed unintelligibly somewhere behind her, and Hermione gasped a wordless warning for her to stop. But it was no use. An instant later the eyeless, screaming face slammed into the wood inches away from Hermione, tossed beside her to share in her fate.

/I was not enough for them. They had to destroy her, too./

The woman did not last. She stopped screeching, but they did not stop devastating her until minutes later when the corpse started to turn cold. Then they were back to Hermione. What happened in the next hours was mercifully blacked from her memory. Whether she passed out or her mind simply wouldn’t comprehend the pain she would never know. She didn’t care.

When she woke, it was to two deep holes where eyes should have been gawking at her; a mouth gaping in one last silent tormented wail. There were teeth missing, and there were scabs of hair and splintered wood and dried blood instead of lips. Hermione was still slung over the table like a piece of raw meat. No doubt they thought she was dead. Feeling as though she was beginning to slide backward off of the table, she moved her arms, probing for something to grab onto. There was nothing. Her toes scrapped the slick floor as they wormed around searching for a foothold, but she couldn‘t reach. She skated helplessly over the side and landed with a thump on the unforgiving floor.

Two Death Eaters appeared around the corner of the door. “What happened?” It was a woman’s voice, though low and raspy.

“I don’t know. It probably just fell off.” Goyle began walking over, but-

“Leave it. What does it matter?” They left, but the woman returned shortly after, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Is that Hermione Granger?”

A gruff voice from around the corner. “The one with that brown hair? Yeah. Weasley brought it.” The woman took off her mask and hood, approaching Hermione as though she were a rapid animal.

“Narcissca,” A man. His calm, hissing voice halted her on the spot. “Go, join the others.” They passed each other as she exited and he advanced. His tone, if possible, lessened below even a whisper, and he knelt to her. “Miss Granger?” It was Snape. Her fingers twitched; her mouth open and shut. “Miss Granger…” He cautiously brushed his hand over her forehead. “Alive? …I did not know…”

***

Draco unfocused. The spell was broken. Snape? It was Snape that kept her alive? He must have fed her enough vertasirum to keep her useful, enough so that the Dark Lord would deem her necessary. After a time, when she had no more to tell, she was locked in the bottom of black, in a cell barely fit for life. A house elf was put in charge of her until she died.

Most were probably sure it would only be a matter of days. But days turned to weeks. And weeks fled into months. Lost in the flurry of the war, people forgot her. Nearly two years came and went between the day she began rotting away in that cell and the time that he was finally able to extract her from it. How much irreparable damage had been caused?

“Grill! Sleeping draught!” Grill appeared immediately holding a silver vile. He bowed as Draco took it, and, when dismissed, evaporated as usual. Draco did not want Hermione thinking anymore on her captivity until her full strength returned. He focused his mind on her, willed her to wake. Her eyes opened abruptly. He offered her the vile. She took it, sniffed it warily, then downed it all in one fluid motion. He got the distinct feeling that she did not really care what it was. Hermione turned from him, leaving the vile, and, after a fashion, took to sleeping again.

Draco took the vile and left her alone, wondering if she knew he was in her thoughts. She hadn’t wanted him to touch her. The one thing he wanted to do more than anything, the only thing that he truly needed, caused her pain. He found his room and sprawled on the bed. He stared at the canopy shifting colors in the afternoon light. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, one thought and one thought only gripping his mind:

/Find Snape./