Covered in Crimson

There had been so much blood. Draco could barely comprehend that a person had that much blood inside them; how someone could survive with so much of it spilled was beyond his ken. He had had to refill his pot of water six times simply to keep from reapplying blood to her cool, pale body. He felt certain that these moments would never leave his memory…

“Granger, I need to lift you if I’m to get you cleaned up. I’m just going to put you on the bed so I can do this better.” His voice had been low and quiet, some instinct telling him that it would calm him, no, her. It seemed they both needed soothing in this horrible, intimate moment. His head had been pounding for what felt like hours now, but had truly only been about forty-five minutes since he’d awakened to this nightmare. He’d never had a headache so intense. Was this part of a hangover that had also affected his memory of what had happened in this tiny room? He hadn’t seen any evidence of drinking anywhere in the ramshackle cottage – no empty bottles, no half-filled glasses. The pain, though, was nearly unbearable. He surmised that Granger was probably in pain too. She’d whimpered and moaned as he’d slowly, gently, laved the drying blood from her skin. Draco wondered if she was aware, if she was afraid. “I’m not going to hurt you, Granger. Not anymore,” Draco breathed. He briefly questioned what prompted him to be gentle with her now when he’d obviously been anything but that mere hours earlier.

When he’d wedged him arms under her knees and shoulders to lift her onto the small, cotton-covered bed, he had imagined that her eyes flickered open briefly, but there had been no repeat and he concluded that it had been his imagination. Her raised position had allowed him to more easily clean her body, and to comprehend the damage that had been done to her. With a resolute hand, he’d lifted her left knee and washed her bruised inner thighs of thick, clotted blood. The heavy lump and tightness in his throat had made it difficult to breathe. He absently reflected that this was what guilt felt like. He had momentarily squeezed his eyes shut as he’d run the wet, stained cloth over her swollen vulva. The tearing at her vaginal opening was obvious, though it appeared that the wound was now clotted. He’d felt disturbed at seeing her injuries, and even more distressed at the thought that while he was tending to her so intimately, he had been the cause of her near-death state. “If I did this, and I can’t see how I wasn’t the one responsible, why do I feel so horrible about it now? What would have made me behave as such an animal, to treat her as an animal? I don’t understand. What did I do? Why did I do this? How did we even come to be together here?” Draco’s thoughts had swirled round and round but no answers to his question were found.

It had taken him more than a half hour to completely clean Hermione’s battered body. The marks on her breasts had appeared to be bites – human bites. Her nipples and aureoles were red, swollen and abraded. The bruises he’d seen on her neck were undoubtedly made by fingers, his own fingers. “I raped her. And I tried to choke her to death,” Draco concluded. He’d sat, naked and still covered in Hermione’s blood, in the small wooden chair for nearly an hour, just watching her lying motionless on the bed. Comprehension refused to come. Knowledge of what he’d done was apparent, but why was not so easy. And then he’d wondered for the hundredth time, “Why did I do this?” For the hundredth time, he had no answer. He’d watched her chest rise and fall in slow, shallow breaths. She was still alive, but she hadn’t regained awareness. “Is she in a coma?” he wondered, and then realized that he didn’t really know what that meant. He knew the term, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

Draco’s headache hadn’t abated in the least, and he’d started to shiver. He had only his dusty cloak to keep warm, and he’d placed that over Hermione’s body in another small act of compassion. He hadn’t wanted to move her to release the thin sheet and blanket that were trapped under her. Soon, he’d have no choice, or he’d freeze. “After what I’ve done to her, maybe I deserve it. We’ll die together here, and no one will ever know,” Draco mused.

Slumping against the chair’s high back, Draco stretched his long, pale legs, his vision drifting down to see the blood that he still hadn’t washed from his own body. With a deep grunt, he forced himself to rise, and walked over to the tiny bathroom. He’d already discovered that there was no hot water to be had, but the tap and the shower functioned. The shower stall wasn’t exactly clean, but it wasn’t desperately grimy either, so that seemed to be his best choice. Draco turned on the water and rested his head on the arm he’d leaned against the gray tile. He was almost reluctant to wash her blood from his body; the guilt wouldn’t be washed away so easily, and this tangible reminder of his deed somehow seemed necessary.

Shaking his head in an effort to stem the endless flow of thought, Draco reached for one of the less-stained pieces of cloth that he’d left on the sink and, pushing the plastic curtain aside, stepped under the frigid stream of water. He’d taken more than one cold shower in his day, but this was just totally, entirely different. There was no arousal to staunch, and “cold” didn’t come close to describing the feel of icy needles against his skin. He thought his brain might explode right through the top of his head; the throbbing had become so vicious. For the first time in many years, he thought he might actually cry. Over what, he wasn’t exactly sure.

Without soap to aid him in his ablutions, Draco rinsed the dingy cloth as best he could under the stream of water, and began to scrub aggressively against his skin. Though he’d washed his hands earlier, they’d become stained again in the process of moving, then cleaning, Granger. His forearms, marked by things darker than blood, were rubbed raw before he turned his attention to his torso, and finally to the area he’d been subconsciously avoiding. The wiry blond hair of his pubis was dark and matted. His penis, completely flaccid and shriveled against the cold, was coated in dried fluids, and he tentatively pulled back his foreskin to clean the head. It felt sore, tender to the touch. He mused that he’d been brutal enough to hurt himself while he was hurting her. That made him feel marginally better, that he’d deserved this ache. In a disconnected way, he imagined that he wouldn’t want sex for quite a while. He scrubbed ruthlessly against his thighs, down his calves to the bottoms of his feet, which were coated in both blood and dirt. He’d never felt so utterly, completely filthy.

He turned off the water, and leaned his head against the side of the stall, allowing the water to drip off his body. Finally, he gave into the urge and wept.