Vacivitas

Chapter Twenty-Nine

JUST A NOTE MY BRETHREN: this story DOES have happy ending planned!! Don't worry. I have it all plotted out :)

You can imagine ANYONE that you want for Hermione's singing voice. In my mind, it honestly just changes depending on the song and I just imagine that's the voice xD

So for this chapter, the song I imagined is Breathe by Ryan Destiny

I just pretend the accompaniment is piano only bahahaha

TRIGGER WARNINGS: minor gore

Violence

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hermione feels like she's floating toward the center of a galaxy. Like she's hurtling around and around in circles, no chance to breathe or think, on her way to the emptiest section of the universe. A vast coulee of darkness that stretches centuries wide, calling to no one and erasing everyone. And no matter how hard she tries to pull herself out, the hole won't give her an inch or a mile. The event horizon waits for her, impatient in its desire to consume.

That's how she feels, living in the Dark Lord's world. From over a year on the run with friends that died one-by-one, to being in the pit with two new friends to hold onto, and now to living at the Malfoy Manor and dealing with the struggle that is Draco Malfoy, that black hole is dragging her inward. The closer she gets to Malfoy, the closer she gets to being torn asunder. She fears that the moment she accepts it will be the moment every version of her is destroyed, before and after the war. There'll be nothing left.

As she stands in front of a crowd of monsters holding the ends of chains, singing her heart out, she feels like being ripped apart might not be a bad thing.

Is this what she has to look forward to? Days of wandering about the cold corridors of a manor that represents death for so many of her old friends, while her new friends find solace in each other, and she withers? While she foolishly pines after someone who paid for her so he could eat her? What's the point of surviving if there's no one to survive for? Tillian is her friend. Faye is her friend. But they could be happy without her. And Malfoy is...Malfoy doesn't care one way or the other. He couldn't possibly, after what he said.

Yet there he is, standing against a wall in a room full of lecherous, grotesque demons, watching her like he's never seen a star before. Like he's never walked outside at night and looked up. He's got his hands in the pockets of his trousers, one leg kicked back against the stone, looking for all the world like a lanky, nonchalant teenager with the weight of the world on his shoulders. She hits every note in each verse, every run in the bridge, every register she needs to reach in the chorus, and it's like she's not here in this nightmare. It's like she's in the manor, in the tearoom, sitting at the enchanted piano. It's like she's at home with her parents, singing in her bedroom while she does her summer coursework, thinking they can't hear her. All she has to do is lock eyes with him to feel morbidly safe, and it makes her feel sick.

Why did he have to ruin the little world they were building together, vicious though it may have been?

She's not singing to him, because that would be foolish. Childish. Immature. She's singing to the stars, the only constant in her life that she knows will be there–that won't let her down. Because right now, he's let her down. That's the problem. Malfoy has disappointed her, and she doesn't know why she put him on a pedestal in the first place.

But even as she tells herself that, she finds that the expression on Malfoy's face while he watches her sing is not one of cruelty. It's not one of triumph. It's not one of maliciousness. It would be unreadable for anyone other than her, and that's because she's seen the same look in his eyes when he's tasting her blood.