Dead Inside

Usual Disclaimer as Chapter 1. Took a while, this just did not want to be written. Just Draco and Hermione but lots of answers produced and hopefully some more questions raised.

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. I get ridiculously happy when I get them :-)

Slight warning of minor nastiness in this one.

*****


Dead Inside.

Chapter 3 - Confessions and \'The Book\'

How do I answer that? Only two others know the truth, Dumbledore and Minerva. Until now the story that it was casting the enchantment on the dagger that wiped me out (which is partially true) has not been questioned.

I finish my drink excessively quickly, feeling the burning trail of alcohol hitting my stomach. Tomorrow |\'m going to suffer the hang-over from hell, today I need this. Holding out my glass and grimacing at the thought of what I\'m about to disclose I murmur:

\"That is something I need to be a whole lot drunker to answer.\"

*****

\"Two major events stopped me fighting. One is kind of public knowledge, a half truth. Casting that enchantment finished off what a bloody stupid risk on my part started but there are a couple of things you have to understand first...\"

I slur, still not really as pissed as I\'d like to be but this will have to do.

\"...my parents had just been killed so I wasn\'t at my most stable and we were loosing the war. Everything was falling down around us and no matter what we did Voldemort was always one step ahead of us, it meant one thing. There was a spy in the Order.
No-one knew who it was but Ron was convinced it was you and\\or Snape. Harry thought it was Snape.\"

\"Not me?\"

He looks curiously at me.

\"Harry had hated the Professor since Sirius\' death, any excuse to despise him more and he jumped at it.\"

\"He didn\'t act like that earlier.\"

Mocking Draco gently I reply.

\"He\'s mellowed. Seriously, we force-fed him some fairly hefty home truths at the end of the sixth year. He\'d been transferring his own guilt at his actions onto Snape. Managing to convince himself that he had no element of responsibility for what happened, so we made him see things as they really were. Remus had the most impact on him in the beginning then I went to the other extreme over my parents murder which hit him quite hard. It\'s taken him a long time to get himself straight over it all, those were frightening times for all involved. \"


I can still remember the arguments and accusations we had to work through but it had been getting impossible to have Harry and Snape in the same room without one of them going up like a powder-keg. If we were to even have a chance of winning we didn\'t need vendettas, pointless as they were interfering.

\"Anyway Dumbledore had us all split into units so only limited information could be leaked until we found the culprit and this is where it starts getting pertinent.\"

Shifting in my seat I settle down for the duration.

\"I\'m more than aware of my lack of prowess at combat so was assigned to do the vast majority of the research. Dumbledore\'s private library makes the restricted section look like the child\'s story area in my local muggle library and had I been in the frame of mind to actually enjoy it, being given access to it would have had me in the throes of rapturous delight. As it was very little was reaching me then. A pity really.

As with most things where I\'m concerned it involves a book, several actually. I had a small line of research looking for something to stop Voldemort escaping his body when Harry destroyed his physical form.
In parchments I found reference to a set of scrolls dealing with death, spirits and the soul, after that it kept appearing in other texts dealing with theory of that nature. Nothing really noticeable but subtle allusions to it in scroll, papyrus and book forms. It changes to keep up with the media used by the reader.

I asked Dumbledore about it but he stated that it wasn\'t an avenue open to exploration, even if the thing did exist which he considered doubtful it is supposed to be so heavily warded against anyone actually reading it that it kills anyone trying to use it.
That was like waving a red rag at a bull, I spent any spare time I had trying to find out more, trying to find the book. Turns out I didn\'t need to look very hard.


The book is alive in very much the same way the Sorting Hat is. If you are trying to find it it will come to you, Attracting it\'s attention is easy, reading it, that\'s the hard part.
It pained me to admit it but there was no way I could use the book so I had to ignore it, not easy if you are me.\"

Draco is staring at me through half closed eyes, absorbing everything and not interrupting. Now I\'ve started talking the words pour out, as though a damn has broken and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

\"To gaze upon the pages of the book with the naked eye is instant death, to use it for a knowingly evil act is also instant death. There is a riddle etched into the cover, once solved it does some fairly obvious scouring of your mind to find out what you want to use it for. If it decides you aren\'t going to use it for nefarious world domination reasons (though it\'s definition of nefarious is definitely screwed up) then we skip the death bit and the summoning charm is implanted in your head.
No-one owns the book and any number of people can have access to it, but once you do you have at your disposal a tome with lore, charms, curses and potions that would have made Voldemort cream himself.\"

\"You worked out how to read it then.\"

\"The second thing, that I tried so hard to hide, that was the key...\"

This is the bit I\'m dreading, where someone else gets to look at me with barely concealed pity. I don\'t want sympathy. Yes it was horrible and unfair but it was ultimately the answer to the riddle and I have moved on.

Sighing I place my hand over my left eye, dropping my head so I\'m more or less obscured by my hair and catch the warm, smooth orb that drops at the command word.

\"Shit!\"

Draco scoots back on the sofa looking shock Shr Shrugging to hide the twinge of pain at his action I try to lighten the mood.

\"All I need now is a hip-flask and a catchphrase.\"

\"I\'m sorry Hermione, it wasn\'t exactly what I was expecting.\"

\"No, probably not.\"

His face hardens for a moment, the old Draco staring back at me.

\"Who did it?\"

Replacing the prosthetic and hissing at the slight pain of my senses rewiring themselves, I prepare to tell the most painful part of the tale, what I\'d been protecting my friends from since it happened.

\"Pansy Parkinson.\"

He does the maths.

\"But that would mean ...\"

\"Two months before the final battle, when the children loyal to Voldemort left Pansy\'s last act was to follow the instruction to make me useless to the Order for as long as possible.

I was leaving Potions with a couple of free hours because of not doing Divination when she cornered me, put me in a body bind and dragged me off to a part of the dungeons I\'d never seen before.
It looked exactly like you\'d think dungeons would, with manacln thn the wall and a table with a roll of scalpels and a pensieve set to one side.
She told me exactly what she was going to do with me. The Death Eaters were aware that my usefulness didn\'t really go any further than research and maybe some healing but they knew I was damn good at those, so the idea was to destroy my capacity in those areas whilst keeping me alive as a demoralising warning to the Order.
Pansy thought it would be highly amusing to let the last thing I saw be the full, unedited, technicolour murder of my parents...\"

I don\'t dwell on the details, even in my head I skip them. I spent long enough dissecting what I saw in the infirmary where I woke up. It does me no good to rake up the past.

\"...I thought I was going to die Draco I really did. She made me watch it again and again for I don\'t know how long. Started cutting out my eye whilst I was still watching, telling me in a voice so far away exactly what she was doing.
For once in my life I didn\'t want to know and thankfully I passed out before she started on the really painful stuff.\"

Draco hands me a large silk handkerchief and I wipe away tears I hadn\'t been aware were being shed. Telling a friend is a balm on a wound I hadn\'t thought was still open and I feel strangely lighter.

\"Luckily someone must have disturbed her because I woke in the infirmary with one eye intact and the other...irrepairable.\"

\"That\'s why you locked yourself away with Dumbledore for so long.\"

\"Yes. I was still of some use but with only one eye it was difficult to adjust. Also Harry didn\'t need the worry, no one did, not then. If I had to meet anyone it was with a glamour in place and I was always sitting down.
The prosthetic had to be hand made and didn\'t arrive until the last fortnight before the battle, Dumbledore had it rushed through but it is completely different from using a normal eye and I still get migraines.\"

I feel ill. Not sure if it\'s the freshly exhumed memories or the alcohol that twist my stomach but I tae a moment to brace myself.

\"Three weeks before the end I worked out how to read the book, it appeared when I started thinking about it and I gambled.
It is a book only the sightless can read, my eyes were in the way but I was still only half blind and it hurt more than Pansy\'s tender ministrations, but I read it and it hated me for it. I wasn\'t evil so it couldn\'t kill me and I had covered my good eye so I couldn\'t see it but the malice in it..\"

I shudder at the memory.

\"...It forced power into me like it was trying to explode me. Rupturing my barely healed wounds with something bordering on glee, each burning word searing into my brain through my empty socket. It thought I had cheated, me, the girl who hasn\'t even looked at a neighbours test sheet to see if they got anything wrong!\"


I remember stumbling into the Infirmary at Hogwarts, blood streaming down my face, gore splattered notes clutched protectively to my chest, every nerve-ending screaming in pain. Moving only because of the residual power coursing through me like adrenaline.

Dumbledore and Minerva were standing over the bed of a sleeping Gryffindor whose own parents were Death Eater victims. It didn\'t take them long to notice me.
The looks of horror on their faces almost making me laugh, such a contrast to the exhausted elation on my own. I had done it, I\'d read the book and knew how to destroy Voldemort for good.
For the first time since after my parents funeral I felt something other than aching numbness or terror. I was no longer dead inside.

The reasoning I gave Dumbledore that night sounds crazy to me now, he asked me what I\'d done.
\'What do you do when something is blocking your view?\' I asked.
He looked so sad, like I\'ve gone one step too far. I suppose he\'d be right, I was desperate enough that any small rational part of me had been quickly stamped on. He replied. \'I\'d remove it Miss Granger.\'
I\'d smiled up at him then. \'Exactly.\'
Luckily, if you could call it that, Pansy had already done the deed. I don\'t think I could have.


\"Anyway I found what I wanted and sent the book away. I couldn\'t fight because I was completely shattered when the books energy wore off, the daggers enchantment almost wiped me out completely. Even if I had been able to get out of bed my eye needed to heal before I could use the prosthetic. Good reasons but I still hate myself for not being there.

The rest is history as they say.\"

For a while he is silent.

\"If you\'d been wrong you\'d be dead now wouldn\'t you?\"

\"Yes, I told you I wasn\'t thinking clearly at the time.\"

He takes my arm and pulls me onto the sofa against him, hugging me.

\"I\'m sorry we couldn\'t be there for you then Hermione.\"

I slump against his shoulder, grateful for the support.

\"It was my choice to hide it, you have nothing to be sorry about.\"

In perfect accord we both go for the whiskey bottle at the same time.

*****

The bottle empty we slump with the bonelessness of the truly drunk into the sofa, his head resting on my leg, my fingers combing absently through spiky blonde hair. Draco stares blankly at the ceiling before speaking.

\"I suppose its my turn now. Nothing grand, no sudden feelings of repentance, definitely not a tale to rival your own.
I am a self serving creature, survival at any means is how I live and ultimately why I joined the Order.

I overheard a conversation between Voldemort and my father one day. I heard more than I bargained for, so much more that er wer wished to know. I turned to the Order that night, angry and in a pain I\'d never felt before. Everything I\'d known to be true I questioned and Dumbledore took me in without a word. I told him everything I knew and he kept me safe, I told him what few others than the Dark Lord\'s inner circle knew.
Voldemort was at that point primarily a creature of magic, any humanity burned away by his greed for it.
His body held therther by magic and it was deteriorating. Requiring regular infusions of magical blood, Unicorns worked best and he was getting paranoid about it. Perceiving his dependancy, quite rightly as it turned out, as an exploitable weakness he wanted to possess a new body and they were discussing plans for the future.

Would you believe...\"

He sounds tired but snorts as though about to make a big joke.

\"...Voldemort wanted me for my body.\"

Nope, don\'t find that funny.

\"Well just my body really. Not entirely sure what he was going to do with the ME part of me, seems life\'s just one big round of musical souls, every time the music stops another body ends up empty.
Unless you\'re that bastard and planning to move into one.

And my father, arse-kissing piece of SHITE that he was, all he had to say was \'Yes master, I am honoured you find him acceptable\'.
I\'m surprised he could get his tonout out of Riddle\'s anus long enough to even say that!

I mean..

Draco is up and staggering around the room with a face twisted with mixed fury and hurt.

\"..Is that honestly all he thought of me? Just some vessel to be sold to a vain, arrogant bullshitting wanker!
No, \'But my Lord he\'s my son and a credit to the Death Eaters\'. Nooooo, he\'d rather sell me off like a whore, a cheap whore at that.
I\'d spent all my life trying to please him, trying to be someone he could be proud of, to be more like him and what does he do?!!!!

Sinking down next to me almost sobbing I wrap him in an embrace I hope is as healing as his was earlier.
The horror of that overheard conversation moves me to quickly hidden tears, he would see them as pity and I won\'t do that to someone who has been equally as kind to display none at my tale.
Though if Lucius were here now I swear I\'d think up some suitably painful hexes.

\"I am no-ones meat Hermione and I would rather die than let any of them take my soul, Voldemort, the ministry, any of them.\"

Eyes huge and filled with fear turn up to me.

\"Promise me Hermione, promise me if it happens you\'ll kill me..\"

I squeeze my eyes tight shut and nod.

*****

Tbc...


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Susan - Thank you :-) No healthy Snape yet *sigh* getting there though.

ancientgirl - Definite Ron in the next couple of chapters :-) Glad you like.

WendyNat - Thank you :-) *dances jig*

Sci-Fi Nut/ JStockert - Hope this answered well enough :-)

Deb >^..^< . - The end of the conversation...I hope it\'s not too dark. I have a very twisted imagination ;-). The War room was based on something in the film \'Gone in 60 Seconds\', if Hermione ever saw it she would definitely have used it.

Lots of background and whiskey in thne, ne, I wouldn\'t want to Dra Draco and Hermione\'s hangovers in the morning :-)

WizardingAngel - Thank you :-)

Saphira - Sorry for not updating sooner, stubborn chapter wouldn\'t go right, am not intentionally cruel *evil grin*. I hope this is okay.
*hugs, Saphira*

mother - Thank you :-) This is a response to the Hollow Man challenge on WIKTT which is a very cool place. Severus gets the Wizengamot version of the Dementor\'s kiss as punishment for being a Death Eater. Very nasty and very unjust. I hope that helps :-)