T R A I N E D T O S I N | dramione

Thirty

Hermione sprinted through the meandering trees, flaying clothes skimming the trunks and chipping off the bark at the mere speed of her movement.

"Harry!!" she shouted into the darkness that consumed every slither of light that would have once warmed her skin and forced her eyes into a squint and mouth into a smile.

The darkness didn't answer back.

Every step further into the unknown just took her deeper, nothing was becoming clearer. She was chasing pure darkness. Searching for something inside it that she wasn't even sure existed.

"Harry! Ron!" she cried, fumbling over a stray log and almost failing to stay balanced.

"Ginny!" Her legs carried her further into the empty wood, moving at their own accord now. Neat red lines littered the revealed skin of her pale legs, artwork of the nettles that were currently treating her as a canvas.

Then, the darkness expanded, increasing the area of visibility just enough so that Hermione could see the scene infront of her.

Inside the circle of dim light was three bodies. Each with a slit throat, bathing in a puddle of their own blood.

Hermione's breath hitched, catching in her throat, part sob, part attempt at a word.

Two of them sported manes of gold, ginger hair dishevelled and knotted, slick with the blood stripped from their veins.

The last wore a pair of glasses, untouched apart from a new crack down the centre of the left lens.

"Harry," she choked out, then turned her gaze back to the other pair. "Ginny, Ron."

There was a sudden snap of a twig to the right of Hermione. She turned towards the noise, heart already beating faster as a figure approached the scene.

They emerged from the darkness, the last haze of lingering shadows leaving them as they entered the dim circle.

The boy turned to look at her.
"Draco?" Hermione whispered.
He began to step closer, and then something at his waist caught her attention.

In his hand, gripped tight and slick with blood was a knife. A quick breath was taken through her nose as she flicked her eyes back to the scene behind him.

He had killed them.

"Stop." She stepped back.
He continued towards her.
"Stop!"
He paused then, eyeing her for a brief moment before quickly bringing the knife to his own neck.

"Draco! No—"

Hermione's bedroom door swung open hard enough to rattle the furniture against the walls.

"Fucking media," Draco growled as he entered, ignoring her startled and woken state. He chucked down a folded sheet of paper onto her bed and went straight to the window, staring out of it and not giving her so much as a second look.

Hermione blinked wearily, the events of her sleep already fading into the file labelled "nightmares" in her brain.

Blinking, Hermione frowned, scooting across her bed and picking up the folded parchment splayed on her bed. The first sheet was thin beneath her fingertips as she unfolded the newest version of the daily prophet.