A Lamb to the Slaughter

Torture Given Teeth

Draco ran his fingers over the waxy green leaf.

His witch had grown this - not by nature but by magic. With a whisper she had given it life, something he was only capable of doing with a wand that had captured her essence. His magic was a raindrop - hers was a thunderstorm.

He didn't know what to make of it.

Draco dusted off his robes. He could finally leave to pick Hermione up from Nott manor in less than an hour. Should he change? Have himself another sweet cake? He tried reading in the library and playing piano, but he was too jittery to sit down-

POP!

Draco whirled to find a battered Pevensy streaking towards him, her eyes wild and panicked.

He began to feel very cold.

"Pevensy?"

"It's- it's My Lady!" She sobbed as she crumpled into his robes. "H-He broke Hermione!"

Every thought in Draco's mind disappeared like  shadows doused in full darkness. There was only one thing, one word that pounded through his head, his heart...

Hermione Hermione Hermione-

"Where is she?" He couldn't keep the tremors out of his words.

"When Lord Nott gives Pevensy permission, Pevensy apparates back here, to heal Hermione. Pevensy has her in bed."

Draco was running. He flung open the door and continued running, then sprinting up the stairs, then tearing open door after door until his chest was heaving from more than just exertion.

"Hermione?" His voice was a broken piece of glass, so close to becoming nothing more than ground powder. "Oh, Hermione-Jean..."

Pevensy reappeared with a pop and began her work as Draco stared at what they had done to his witch. His wife.

Her robes were in shreds on the floor, her nightgown fresh and clean thanks to Pevensy. Her hair was wildly tousled, as if someone had continually grabbed it. Bruises and bite marks turned her pretty skin purple, and her eyes...

Her eyes were vacant as she stared at nothing. But her mind wasn't vacant. Draco almost wished it was. Images of what had happened punched into his mind, over and over again as they both relived it-

Draco barely made it to the toilet before he hurled up everything in his stomach.

Her memories seemed to grip his gut and twist it, and it wasn't until he slammed his mental walls up that he could finally wash his mouth out and clean his face.

His hands shook as he gripped the sink and listened to Pevensy try to speak to Hermione.

This was everything he had feared. His worst nightmares were currently bleeding into his bleak reality. This was torture given teeth. Because even in his nightmares, he could comfort her, and she would respond and heal the way he wanted her to. But here, in the real world, he was useless. Helpless. An outlander to her trauma.

And now his word meant nothing to her. He had promised his protection-vowed it- and yet he had left her alone to be devoured. Draco found that he wanted to slam his fist into the mirror, but he'd have to wait until he'd returned to his own rooms for that.

He finally flushed his mess down the toilet and walked softly and slowly, watching Pevensy place Essence of Dittany on Hermione's more serious wounds. The house elf herself still looked battered and bruised, but she continued to hum and work on Hermione as if her own body didn't contain cuts and bloodstains.

"I told him to stop." Hermione's voice was raw, as if she had screamed so hard her words had formed claws and tore her apart from the inside. He flinched as she spoke. "I said no and he just...laughed."

This was not his Hermione. This was a girl with grief in her bones, nausea in her gut, and a desire to be anywhere but in her own mind.

She finally looked at him, but her eyes were so haunted he focused on her nose.

"I'll never be the same." Whatever she was thinking, those words undid the vault inside of her. Hermione curled in on herself, and sobbed so hard she almost sounded as if she were choking. "I'll never be the same.... I'll never be the same..."

___

As she slept, there was only one consistency besides the heavy darkness.

A brush of fingers so light Hermione wondered if it was a trick of her mind.

Across her brow. In her hair, on her cheek. Many times the touch would graze her own fingers, but they never took her hand. They never did anything but come and go, as if she were too fragile, too rare. As if the barest brush of their fingers was all the stranger could do, for anything more and she would crumble like sand underneath their touch.

Hermione wondered if the reason for their resistance was for their sakes, not hers.

____

The girl with white hair and crescent moon birthmark didn't try to communicate anything to Hermione as they stared at each other across the field.

She stood there, in solidarity. In sisterhood.

The mysterious woman did nothing but nod her head once before the dream melted into nothing.

____

Narcissa's lip quivered, but Draco wondered if it wasn't in sympathy but rather in wrath.

He and his mother had been in Hermione's room for two days, neither of them leaving.

One kept watch while the other slept on the uncomfortable chaise he had drug in there. They ate together, helped change her bandages with Pevensy together. If it wasn't his fingers combing through her curls and brushing against her lashes, it was his mothers.

Lucius had come to visit once each day, though when he told Draco to keep a rational head when responding to the Notts he had snarled at his father to get out.

Now, Draco wondered if those words weren't just for him.

His mother brushed back another curl as Hermione fidgeted in her sleep. "They need to pay, Draco."

He looked down at her. "I know. I just haven't had it in me to leave her side."

His mother stood, swift as a doe. "I will be here to watch over her. Pevensy said she shouldn't fully awaken until tomorrow morning." She took his hand, and he was surprised to feel her skin was hot. "They hurt a Malfoy, Draco. Look what they did to one of us."

He did look. He hadn't stopped looking. He had been letting those flames of rage lick up his spine until it was the only thing holding him together. Draco was afraid that if he tried to let go of it, he'd crumple into ash.

"Show House Nott why we are known as cold and most cunning."