When We Were Beasts

Before: Part Ten

TW: mentions of sexual assault

Hermione did not let that night distract her from her greater picture: escape.

The next ten days were a blur of moving room to room, running from monsters and shadows, ignoring Malfoy while she was awake and thinking of him when she dozed off.

It was becoming harder and harder to keep those thoughts dead and buried.

Hermione would wake up after a detailed dream and try to repent, remembering Ron and their good memories together as a form of atonement. She'd ignore Malfoy, even go as far as to snap at him, until he'd ask her if she'd like to use his robes as a blanket, or a pillow, or a mat. Sometimes she'd have the self-control to tell him no. Other times Hermione would begrudgingly lean forward and let her fingers brush his as she took them and let herself be surrounded in the way he smelled.

And while she could control her thoughts while she was awake, it was hopeless in that place between drowsiness and sleep.

Each night was something new.
Her and Malfoy in the Slytherin common room.
The two of them in her bed, tangled in sheets of glittering gold and ruby red.
Sometimes, she'd imagine the two of them in a muggle hotel room, a place hidden away from the wizarding world. Each time she felt a tingling buzz of nervousness as she imagined them doing something forbidden and secretive.

It wasn't what Hermione wanted for her future. They were just harmless, carnal thoughts. The result of spending two weeks alone with a flirtatious, good looking devil named Draco Malfoy.

She knew she needed to stop while she was ahead. Hermione needed to replace that porcelain face with one smattered with freckles, the pale hair with red curls. But she just... couldn't.

****

They entered a quidditch field.

Not the one at Hogwarts, but it was similar. Perhaps another school. The sight of it made her think of Harry, and her heart twisted.

"I miss it." Malfoy murmured. Hermione turned to him.

"Quidditch?" Hermione clarified. He nodded, his eyes turned upward.

"There's nothing like it. You feel so above the world, like anything below you isn't even real-"

Someone cackled behind them, the sound followed by slow clapping.

"Malfoy, is that you?" Yaxely's voice was still vibrating from laughter as he stepped forward. "It is! My, these rooms have made you rugged."

"Yaxley?" Malfoy didn't step forward to greet him.

The Death Eater bowed. "The one and only. I'd say it's good to see you again, but neither one of us would believe it." He turned his bloodshot eyes to Hermione. Yaxley licked his lips with a rotten tongue.

"You've found the Mudblood?" His eyes didn't leave hers, though his words were meant for Malfoy.

Hermione felt Malfoy take a step not only towards her, but in front of her.

"Found her, and claimed her." The way Malfoy said it made Hermione feel like a prize he had rightfully found first. "She's been mine from the beginning."

"Have you tasted her?" Hermione's face burned from the implication. Yaxley licked his lips again. "There's something about her kind that just feels so...hot and filthy when you're inside of them. I've never finished faster than when I fucked a Mudblood."

Hermione didn't think of her classmates, her fellow Muggle-borns as Yaxely's words infected her like poisoned lightning. If she did, she'd launch herself at him.
Was that the fate of those who hadn't entered the BackRooms? To be a slave to the DeathEaters? If that was the case, was her fate truly better being here protected by Malfoy?