"If you are so eager to keep the mudblood to yourself, then it occurs to me that you must surely be willing to pay a price for the privilege of exclusivity. For the privilege of being the only one to hurt her, and use her, and make her grovel and beg," the Dark Lord croons, lipless smile creasing his ashen skin. Hermione ducks her head to avoid those vicious, cruel eyes, feeling flayed raw under Voldemort's gaze, and the stares of the handful of Death Eaters who sit and lounge around the hall, watching with a lazy kind of interest. It is only the beginning of the revel, and Hermione thinks that Malfoy dragging her in here, half-naked and leashed, is the most exciting thing that has happened this evening. Yet. "For the right to be the only one she names Master. Are you, Draco, my boy? Are you willing to pay a price?"
"Yes," Malfoy says without a moment of hesitation, nearly too eager, and Hermione can feel his eyes burning down into her with a raw need that she hopes Voldemort will read into what he expects – hate instead of the desire to protect. She stiffens though, afraid. Voldemort's prices are always too high, and she doesn't want him to be hurt again. Malfoy's feet shift beside her – black shoes shining in her peripheral vision – and the chain leash jangles faintly as he adjusts his grip. "Yes, my Lord. I want to be the only one she weeps for. The only one she begs to stop. I want to own her," he grates, his hand tugging at the leash and Hermione gasps fruitlessly for air, choking and gagging as the collar digs in. She rears up off her elbows, like a dog dragged onto its hind legs, retching and flailing, fingers curling over the collar and mindlessly trying to wrench it away, to stop it from choking her.
Please, she tries to gasp. Please. But she can't breathe. Can't...can't speak. She tries to get up, but something strikes the backs of her knees and she goes down again, bare knees slamming into the hardwood floor. She would cry out at the pain, only she can't get the breath to. Her head feels hot and swollen, ears too full, and pulse sluggish but consuming – thump...thump...thump...thump. Tears streak her cheeks and inside her head she begs as she sputters wordless. Then the leash goes slack, and she slumps to a pile at Malfoy's feet, choking and gasping and sobbing, fingertips clutching and scrabbling at the ground as her nose runs and her tears drip and she drools and sputters. "And I want to control the bitch, body and soul," Malfoy finishes, satisfaction dark in his voice, and Hermione reminds herself that he's just trying to be convincing, because it is their lives at stake, always their lives are in his hands and he has to be convincing. She knows that he is only acting – she trusts him, damnit, but always, always in her dazed panic it gets so hard to separate fact from fiction.
Her eyes flick upwards in the ensuing silence, and she sees Voldemort's inhuman grin widen further as he stares down from his throne of bodies into Malfoy's face. "I can...understand that desire, my boy. That desire to be the only one. But attachment – even the attachment of hatred – can lead to weakness. If she is yours and yours alone, perhaps you will become...fond of her, like one might become fond of a House Elf. One might be persuaded to pity such a creature, especially when the creature tries to curry one's favour, to be obedient and good in order to avoid your wrath. One could become...confused." Malfoy is still and silent beside Hermione. Silence is safest, sometimes. The Dark Lord smiles.
"So, Draco, I will help you remember your respective places – slave and master – by first reversing the roles and letting the Mudblood play at owning you." Hermione freezes, blood running cold because does that mean what she thinks it does? "And you will see that a slave can only ever hate, and a master can only ever hurt, because the Mudblood will illustrate its hate by hurting you in vengeance for what you have done to it up until now, and you will feel the hurt and hate it for that, and remember." No. She can't do that. She can't hurt him. She can't... Hermione trembles on the ground, the lace French knickers she wears itching at her, and the bones of the corset digging into her flesh, the collar around her neck heavy and painful on the developing bruises Malfoy caused before, the feel of it making her want to panic when combined with the suffocating constriction of the corset. She can't.
"My Lord..." Malfoy says in careful tones of polite surprise. "My Lord, I am not...confused."
"Will you pay the price, or not?" the Dark Lord snaps, features twisted with a rage that terrifies Hermione, and then wrests control of his anger, smiling thinly again. He lazes back upon the bodies, his sharp nails tracing a bloodless cut on the dead flesh beneath his hand. "I have little patience, my boy. I am bored and I am beset by the idiocy of those around me, and I would have you either amuse me, or be gone from my presence and leave the Mudblood here, to be placed with the other slaves for communal entertainment." Hermione can hear Malfoy's throat click as he swallows dryly, and she sneaks a glance upward. He is ashen, chin up and shoulders back, jaw set firmly; she wonders for a moment if the Sorting Hat would still place him in Slytherin, because the courage on his face is pure Gryffindor.
"I will pay the price, My Lord."
"Very well. Unleash the Mudblood, Draco, and make it to stand." His fingers tremble as he unhooks the chain leash from Hermione's collar. She can feel them, shaking against her skin.
"Up," he tells her, eyes flat and cold and burning with hatred, wrenching at the collar so that she cries out in pain and scrambles up obediently. "Up, you bitch." Hermione sways on her feet, eyes on the ground and fingers at her throat, gagging a little, pain flaring in the flesh she touches beneath the collar.
"Mudblood," the Dark Lord says, all dark, sadistic amusement, and Hermione wants nothing more than to turn and run. She keeps her head down, bowing it in deference, afraid to meet his eyes because unlike Malfoy her Occlumency skills are pitiful. "You will hurt him until I order you to halt. And do not be afraid, Mudblood; your Master understands that this is the price to pay for his ownership of you, and he will not punish you for what you do to him here today, understood?" She nods quickly, watching from behind her ragged hair as Voldemort's gaze turns to Malfoy. "It wouldn't be any fun if she was too afraid to harm you, now would it, my boy?"
"No, my Lord," Malfoy whispers, standing straight and stoic beside her, trembling ever-so-slightly. "It would not."
"Wormtail – bring the tools forward," Voldemort orders with a lazy wave of his hand, and the servant hurries to do so, rushing to the table of torture instruments that sit at the right of Voldemort's throne and carefully hovering it forward, to settle in front of Hermione. She stares at it, unable to breathe as surely as if the collar is choking her again. Whips. Chains. Shining instruments that looked like pliers, and short-bladed shears, and thin, wickedly sharp probes. Knives. A heavy silver rod the size and shape of a truncheon. Pincers. Things that look remarkably sexual in nature. What she thinks is a Muggle cattle prod. A blowtorch-type lighter.
They haven't given her anything magical to use. She isn't surprised. She's a mudblood to them, not a witch, or a person. She is sickly glad, because magic can be so much crueller than Muggle means of inflicting pain, and she couldn't handle that. But despite that gladness... No. No, she can't fucking do this. Hermione backs away a step, and then Malfoy's gaze pins her to the spot. She can read the plea in his eyes as surely as if he were speaking the words to her: do it. Do it.
"Well, this should be just fascinating," Voldemort says with a ghoulish cheerfulness, and sits forward with the air of someone on the edge of his seat with anticipation. "Be a good slave, Draco, my boy."
His eyes still on hers – do it, Granger – as he slowly sinks to his knees in front of her, at her feet, at her mercy. Helpless and vulnerable and exposed, waiting for her to hurt him as he slowly strips off his shirt, and then bows his head until his forehead touches her bare foot. Grovelling in front of her. Hermione stares at Malfoy's lean, mutilated back and thinks about what she is going to have to do if she wants them to live through this, and she has to fight back a surge of nausea, bile caustic in the back of her throat. Her hands tremble and her stomach churns as she stares down at Malfoy, aware of all the eyes upon them, watching.
What is she supposed to do now? Her mind races and spins. Everyone thinks she hates Malfoy – everyone has to think she hates him, or his cover will be blown and they'll both be tortured to death. Christ. Is this how Malfoy felt every time he was expected to play his part? Terrified and sick to his stomach and wracked with guilt and self-loathing? And yet horribly determined to do whatever it takes to enable them to survive and live to regret the actions later, when they are...if not safe, then at least out of immediate danger.
Hermione takes a deep breath and tries to lift her foot. Malfoy's head is in the way and she bites her lip and then – steeling herself – yanks her foot out from beneath his head and shoves it back hard. A push to the crown of his head, not a kick, but it's firm and unexpected, and sends him tilting to one side with a wobbling gasp of surprise. Her stomach turns at the uncertainty and unwilling fear in the sound.
Hopefully those watching will take her hesitation as being ingrained fear of reprisals, and not true reluctance. Just in case she shoves him with her bare foot again as he tries to sit up, setting it against his shoulder and pushing, and he tips back, hands flying out to his sides to brace himself. She forces herself to smile, thinking that right about now she should be discovering how good it feels to know her master is powerless. Malfoy stares up at Hermione blankly – make it believable, Granger – and she bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed, and stomps down on his diaphragm.
Malfoy jack-knifes double with a soundless groan as she drives the air out of him violently, clutching his middle and tipping onto his side. Wheezing moans wrench out of his throat after a moment, pained and pathetic as he struggles for air that he can't properly draw, and she watches with a forced faint smile. Someone laughs, and she flinches at the sound in the silence. Malfoy stays curled in a defensive ball even after he's gotten his breath back, and Hermione feels ill as she stares at him like this.
"Don't be shy, Mudblood," Voldemort says in warning and encouragement both, and Hermione shudders. She shuts her eyes.
"Yes, My Lord," she whispers. The problem is, she thinks, is that she's never tortured anyone before. Stupidly – hilariously – she has no fucking idea what to do as she pads over to the table the torture tools are laid out on, and surveys them. There are four criterion by which she will have to assess the instruments; does she know what it does, can she bring herself to use it, does she think Malfoy will be able to stand it, and will it be believable? She has a dreadful feeling she may have to compromise on some of those, particularly the second one. Perhaps she will have to compromise on all. She wants to vomit.
In the end Hermione takes up the cattle prod simply because it seems the least threatening – no blood, no lasting damage, just pain – and holds it tight in one hand as she turns back to Malfoy. "On your knees." He scrambles up immediately, and she slaps him in the face as hard as she can with an open palm. Her palm stings hot with the pain of the blow, and his head snaps to the side, cheek flaring red with the shape of her hand. His breath hisses in and his eyes flutter shut. She does it again. "Look at me!" she snarls, trying to play the part and feeling like she's failing. "Look at me you bastard." He opens his eyes and stares up at Hermione and she slaps him again, harder, her palm sore, and then grits her teeth and jams the cattle prod against the slight dip between pectoral muscle and shoulder.
He convulses – body stiffening, back arching, teeth slamming together with a loud clack and a horrible sound of pain grinding out of his throat. He curls forward as his muscles spasm and tense, nearly falling, but she keeps holding the prod to him as she counts to five in her head and he continues to shudder and make that awful, quiet, animal sound. And then she pulls it back and he slumps and gasps, shivering for a moment, his chest heaving as he wrenches in sobbing breaths. He won't meet her eyes, his gaze fixed on the floor as he hugs himself and pants at the air, trembling like a leaf, biting his lip, nostrils flaring and eyes squeezing tight shut.
"I hate you," she says quietly, and real anger surges up in her for a moment – at him, at herself, at the Order, at Voldemort. At everything. "I hate you so fucking much." And then she electrocutes Malfoy again, in the same spot, where the prod has left tiny burn marks on his pale, smooth flesh. This time there are tears slipping down his cheeks when she finishes, and his gasps for air sound wobbly and wet, his lip bleeding where he's bitten through it. And then Hermione does it again. And again, and Malfoy screams and groans and by inches, slowly collapses to the ground, and Hermione would rather the world ended than that she had to do this a moment longer except she keeps doing it. Like an automaton, following the motions, shaking inside hard enough that she feels like she is going to fly apart. He still won't meet her eyes and she is simultaneously glad and furious about that – she doesn't want to see him look at her while she does this, but she deserves to have to see it.
"Enough!" Voldemort snaps eventually, and the prod rips from Hermione's sweat-slick grasp. "You are boring me, mudblood. Do something else to your master." There is a pause, and Hermione stares at Malfoy twitching and gasping on the floor, involuntary sounds of pain torn jaggedly from him like a wounded animal, and she would give anything to be able to comfort him right now. "I know," Voldemort says then, wickedly pleased. "Use the Muggle flame device. Let us see how he stands the pain of burning flesh. Surely you will enjoy that, mudblood. Or are you simply that soft-hearted, creature? You cannot stand to hurt even him, who hurts you?"
"Y-you won't let him punish me for this, Lord?" Hermione stammers out like the pitiful creature Voldemort thinks she is, to cover for her hesitation. That she is. She wants to be sick, she wants to turn and run away, but she can't. Can't stop to think, can't let her horror get in the way – just do it. She has to play the role. So she does. "I – I want to. Want to. But..."
"Creature, I have already told him not to harm you for this. Do not be afraid," Voldemort tells her, in a voice that is gentle and kind and all the more hideous for it, and she bows repeatedly and mumbles thank you, striding to the torture table and reaching blindly for the tiny blowtorch device.
Malfoy's flesh smells like roast pork when she burns him, only sickly sweeter and horrifying. He screams. At first Hermione tries sitting on his chest to hold him still and keep him from trying to pull away involuntarily, her knees just barely keeping his arms pinned as she holds the torch against his stomach. But even though he is trying to be still, as per Voldemort's orders, he writhes enough to nearly unseat her. They are both coated in sweat, flesh on flesh barely dressed as she is, and he is sobbing pitifully, like a child, his eyes closed and tears seeping from under the lids. She wants to cry too.
Hermione has laid five deep, galleon-sized burns of scorched, crackled flesh into the soft skin of Malfoy's abdomen, and is beginning the sixth. Malfoy cries out in agony as he has with all of them – his throat raw now from the wordless cries and screams – and thrashes in the throes of the pain that he cannot contain anymore. He twists and bucks as the wounded, hoarse sounds keeps tearing from his throat, and Hermione slides and tumbles off him onto the hard stone, the torch burning a line across his thigh through his trousers and grazing her knee. His trousers catch fire, leaping up with flame, and Hermione's stomach slams down sickly, turned to lead as she keeps herself from crying out with fear with for him and slapping the fire out in panic. Instead she waits, staring wide-eyed and clutching her searingly painful knee until Malfoy slaps his trouser leg out, sobbing and whimpering. His face is wet with sweat and tears and snot, and the blood from his lip, run down his chin and along his jaw, down his neck, mixed with sweat to a pale pink.
His thigh is burnt. So badly, to her eyes at least. Edging toward third degree burns, but from his reaction, not badly burnt enough to kill the nerve endings, or he wouldn't be making those breathy, choking screams, or sobbing so hard. Hermione supposes that's probably a good thing, compared to the alternative of even more serious burns. It doesn't feel like a good thing. Although at this point she thinks she mostly feels numb inside, overloaded and burnt out by the horror. Her knee is searing, and if one little burn feels this bad, then how does Malfoy feel? This is worse than anything that he has ever done to her, and she hates her helplessness, she hates that she is doing this.
He still won't look at her, his eyes swollen around from crying.
The whip comes next – her choice, not Voldemort's – and Hermione tries to make Malfoy kneel again, but although she manages to wrestle him to his knees he collapses to the ground face first, unable to keep upright. Hermione doubts he can even really comprehend what she is ordering him to do. He is lost in the agony. And then she takes the whip to him, hard and furious, shaking with horror and nausea because when will this end? Please Merlin, please god, let it end soon. The blows split open the fresh scar tissue that criss-crosses Malfoy's back, and the blood trickles down thick and dark. His head twists back and forth as he shakes and tenses beneath the lashes, and the end of the whip snarls across his cheek halfway through and he screams.
Then the pliers, and he vomits by the time she gets to the second nail. He begs her to stop; gasping, pleading, moaning wretched and pitiful and Hermione feels trapped in a nightmare, in hell. "Don't don't don't please don't please please please," he begs her in a slurring moan, and then the words turn into anguished screams as she rips out a fourth nail. He stares up at her and he's gone behind the eyes; lost to the pain and the fear, and she hates herself as she closes the pliers over his fifth nail.
When his left hand is bereft of its nails, a bloody mess that he cradles to his chest, sobbing, Hermione finds she hasn't the stomach to go on to the next hand. She just...can't. She can't do anything more. Not another thing. Everything in her rebels at the thought.
So she drops the pliers to the ground, walks stiffly to the table and seizes up the silver truncheon, and then before she can think better of it – before she can think of the risks of permanent, perhaps fatal, harm – she swings it hard at the side of Malfoy's head. He goes down in a heap, and then a cruciatus rips through Hermione, driving her to the ground as the truncheon falls from her nerveless fingers. Voldemort's voice cuts through the agony like a knife as she twitches on the floor, screams caught behind her teeth: "That will be enough, Mudblood. I want the boy to be hurt, not dead. Wormtail. Take it to young Draco's room and restrain it, so that it will pose no risk while he is unconscious. And lay a binding spell upon it as well, to prevent it from causing harm once it is free, just in case the boy is incapable of doing so properly when he awakes."
"Sh-should I have a healer attend Malfoy, My Lord?" Wormtail's cringing voice asks, as the cruciatus stops, leaving behind the blissful absence of pain.
"No, don't bother. Let him have his slave see to him once he wakes. It seems...fitting, doesn't it?"
"Yes, yes, of course, My Lord, of course," Wormtail simpers, and then there is a sharp pain in Hermione's head and everything goes black.
When Hermione wakes, the first thing she is aware of is pain. A dull ache at her temples, and a stiff soreness in her muscles. Her wrists aching, her knee flaming with burning heat. The feel of the hard floorboards underneath her and her awkward position explain the sore muscles, and Hermione scrunches her forehead in groggy confusion. What? Where...? Why is she...?
Then the memories slam back violently, leaving her panting and horrified; Malfoy screaming as she hurt him. Malfoy begging her to stop. The smell of Malfoy's flesh burning. Malfoy's blood streaking her skin. She makes a weird, gargling sound of denial and tries to get up, only to find her awkward position and the ache in her wrists is because her hands are bound tightly behind her back, her fingers half numb. It takes her six attempts to shoulder up to her knees, and from there to her feet, swaying unsteadily and shaking her sweat-lank hair back from her face, looking around.
She's in Malfoy's room, of course – thank Merlin. And Malfoy is right there just metres away from her, sitting slumped forward at the table, his back to her. He is still shirtless, and his back is a coagulated painting of blood that Hermione put there. She feels suddenly cold, staring at him with wide eyes. She did that to him. She stumbles forward, nearly tripping and falling over her own feet, feeling awkward and clumsy in her own body. Her bare feet scuff on the floor when she almost loses her balance thanks to the way her hands are wrenched back, and Malfoy jerks his head up at the noise.
"Malfoy. It – it's just me." She rounds the table, coming into his line of sight, and he looks into her eyes, his own bloodshot, red rimmed, and swollen around.
"Granger," he rasps in a voice that sounds like tearing paper, reaching out for her with one hand and it's bruised and swollen nearly beyond recognition, weeping wounds left where his nails were and oh god oh Merlin she did that. Hermione turns and stumbles for the bathroom without a word, operating on autopilot. She drops to her knees in front of the toilet, the impact jarring her through and sending pain shooting through her burn, and nearly dunks her head in the toilet as she overbalances. But she doesn't really notice any of that, too consumed by her nauseated horror. She retches and retches, her empty stomach bringing up nothing but bile.
It takes Hermione a few moments to clamp down on the spasms that wrack her stomach, but in the time it takes, she also manages to calm the panicked workings of her mind a little. She still feels shocky and suffocated by guilt and horror, but Malfoy needs her. He is severely injured and needs help, so she needs to fucking pull herself together. Just then, she hears Malfoy weakly call her name, his voice raw and hoarse, and she flinches at the sound.
"Y-you aw righ?" he calls out thickly, easily audible because she didn't bother closing the bathroom door in her rush for the toilet, and she chokes down a sob. He shouldn't be worried about her. "Gr-Granger?" Hermione clamps her lips together hard, shoulders shaking as she struggles to hold in the wracking sobs that are trying to escape her.
"I – I'm fine, Malfoy," she says as soon as she can, but her voice still wobbles with emotion. "Can you just...hang on? Just a second. I'm coming." She manages to get a drawer open with her tightly bound hands and find a pair of good, sharp scissors, fumbling them up in her numbed fingers with great difficulty. "Get it together, Hermione," she tells herself harshly as she catches sight of herself the mirror, pale and stricken. Malfoy needs her to help him, to tend to his wounds, not to pointlessly beat herself up. So she leaves the safety of the bathroom to face the man she tortured.
She feels like a monster.
Malfoy sits slumped at the table still, head lolling forward a little, injured hand sitting on the table top – it looks gruesome, like a broken spider. Blood mats his hair at the left side of his head, where she'd hit him, and trickles sluggishly from his left ear. There is a deep wound on his right cheek, cutting up from his jaw where it is the deepest, and ending shallowly just beneath his eye. The lash from the whip, Hermione thinks, and wants to cry. The table hides the burns, but she knows they're there. Tears leak from her eyes as he looks up at her and tries to smile at her through the agony she knows he must be suffering.
"Malfoy. Malfoy, I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." She feels heartsick and disgusted with herself. She wants him to be angry at her, to hate her, but instead he just smiles and sighs with what sounds like relief, slurring:
"It's okay, Granger. It's gonna be okay."
"I hurt you," she says in a cracked voice, wanting to reach out to him and touch him and soothe him and try to make it better. "It's not okay." She turns her back to him, and shows him the scissors hooked up in her fingers. "Can – can you cut me free?" He takes the scissors in his uninjured right hand without a word, and begins clumsily working at the cord around her wrists. "Malfoy, I tortured you. I did things... I – I scarred you, I... It's not going to be okay because I made you scream like that and I hurt you and I can't take it back."
The bonds around Hermione's wrists go slack, and she manages to wriggle her hands free, before he turns her to face him. His unhurt fingers curl in her numb ones. Malfoy's eyes are bright grey irises in a sea of bloodshot red, puffy around his eyes, and so ashen he is nearly grey, the deep slash along his cheek and the blood from it, and his bitten lip and head wound, all conspiring to make him look like a stranger. He is painted in blood in his hair and down his neck, across his cheek and down his chin and jaw, into smears across the top of his chest.
"You did what you had to do," he answers calmly, in that scream-hoarse voice, and gestures toward the liquor cabinet with his uninjured hand. "Pour me a drink, Granger."
He drains three full tumblers of whiskey in under a minute, and then coughs weakly and gasps. "Shit that's good. Here." He places his wand on the table in front of her. "Can you cast? I – I don't think I can." Her hands are still clumsy but beginning to regain their feeling, stinging and buzzing with pain as sensation returns. Hermione thinks she can manage simple spells that don't require complex wandwork – she scoops up his wand and flicks it experimentally, hand screaming with sensation overload, and the candle at Malfoy's desk springs to flame.
"Yeah. I'll try." Some of the tension begins to gradually ease out of Malfoy as Hermione carefully applies multiple numbing charms to his wounds. His eyes are pain and whiskey-glazed, and he shivers a little – sweat at his brow, which feels burning hot to her touch. Hermione doesn't know if its the pain, or shock setting in, or both, or something else entirely. By the time she has applied numbing charms to all his wounds though – cringing with guilt at the sight of them – his shivering has eased a little though. "Can – would you mind if I change before I...?"
"Go for it, Granger," he says tiredly, rubbing the side of his unhurt hand over his forehead. He looks like a wreck, and despite the numbing charms, pain is still etched into his features. But Hermione can't stand being in this humiliating, restrictive, blood splattered costume a moment longer, and it'll only take her a moment to change.
"Thanks." Swiftly she unbuckles the collar around her throat, and cuts the laces to her corset with a sigh of mingled pain and relief. The lines of boning are bruised into her flesh, the fabric seams leaving indented red marks. She strips without a care, aware that Malfoy had averted his eyes when she'd shoved down her knickers – not that she would care if he hadn't. Heedless of the blood spatter on her skin, Hermione throws on the clothes she'd left in a heap on the bed before they'd gone down to see Voldemort, what feels like a lifetime ago; a soft tee-shirt and a pair of Malfoy's thin grey pyjama trousers magically altered to fit her better. Her hands tremble nearly as badly as his are.
Hermione closes the wound at Malfoy's cheek first – getting the smallest wound out of the way while she steels herself to deal with the more severe ones. She manages well enough at sealing the flesh together – moving along the deep slash as it curves from just beneath his left ear, up across his cheek bone to directly beneath his left eye. It will definitely scar though, as rudimentary as Hermione's healing skill is, and she apologises mournfully, only for Malfoy to shrug it off without a word.
"Wh-what should I do next?" Hermione doesn't know what injury to deal with next now and Merlin-damnit she doesn't want to cause him more pain, which the healing of anything will do. She wishes she didn't have to do this. The thought makes her skin crawl.
"Leg first," Malfoy answers her through gritted teeth, breathless as he shifts sideways in his chair to reveal the raw, blistered skin on his thigh, and pours himself more whiskey with a shaky hand. Hermione flinches back and shuts her eyes, clamping a hand over her mouth as she sucks in a shocked breath. It looks dreadful. She forces her eyes open and stares at the burn miserably for a moment; she is responsible for this. She is the one to blame for the burn that covers a third of the front of his thigh, cooked until black and raw.
"Oh my god, " she says into her hand and turns away until she can compose her features.
"It looks worse than it feels," Malfoy offers, his face shining with sweat and his lips grey as he tries to smirk. Hermione raises an eyebrow in disbelief.
"Really?"
"No." He coughs a weak laugh, and then hisses at the pain as he leans back and fumbles with his belt buckle. "Well, maybe a little. I think some of the nerves have died, or something." Hermione automatically moves to help, fumbling awkwardly with his belt without success, before giving up and using magic to cut down the side seams of his trousers. Thankfully, he is wearing shorts, rather than going without – Hermione can only take so much awkwardness and awfulness before she falls apart. The right trouser leg comes away easily, but the left doesn't want to separate from Malfoy's thigh. It is burnt into his flesh, adhering to it here and there around the edges of the wound, and Hermione doesn't want to just rip it away. She stares at the damage she wrought for a brief moment.
"I'm so sorry, Malfoy. And I don't – I don't say that because I want you to forgive me because you shouldn't." She sniffs and wipes at her nose, eyes full of tears, on the brink of crumbling to bits as her voice wobbles upwards and catches. "...I – I just can't believe I did that to you." Malfoy says nothing – his eyes are screwed tight shut and his face is twisted with pain, and Hermione stops flagellating herself over what can't be changed, and focuses on him. He needs her help, not her guilt. God she is a useless mess. "I'll just go get the medical supplies," she whispers hoarsely, sounding wet and nasal with her tears, and hurries for the bathroom.
They have a large jar of topical healing potion that Malfoy stole from a house he had taken part in raiding a short time ago, old clean cloths, and multiple rolls of soft, elastic bandaging. Hermione gathers it all up inside a large bowl and takes it back out to the main room, kneeling at Malfoy's side and laying down her supplies. The bowl she fills with water and chills until ice begins to creep over the surface, and dips a cloth into, laying it over his thigh so it gently soaks the trouser material adhering to Malfoy's wounds. His unhurt hand balls into a fist, and he tips his head back – tendons standing out stark on his neck, jaw clenched and eyes shut. "Belt," he gasps, and she swears inwardly and fumbles around for it, doubling it over and placing it in his mouth for him to bite down on. It seems to take forever to remove the last shreds of blackened cloth from the bubbled, weeping flesh, while Malfoy makes strangled noises of misery and tears seep from beneath his eyelids. Hermione doesn't know how he remains so still and stoic.
When Hermione splashes the wound with whiskey to disinfect it, he arches in the chair and screams, leg jerking uncontrollably and hand slamming down on the table, and she cringes back and hates herself.
Finally Hermione finishes the grim task, and after using a charm to clean her hands, carefully applies a thick coating of the cream to the burn, before winding soft bandages around Malfoy's thigh. After a while, his hand comes down and curls in her hair, and she pauses in her gentle binding, resting her forehead against his knee. She feels exhausted. A sigh shakes out of her chest, and his fingers stroke and curl through her hair, scratching gently over her scalp. "That feels better," he says soft and hoarse after plucking the belt clumsily from between his teeth, and it helps to hear that. She lifts her head and kisses his knee lightly, offering him a small, wobbly smile before taking a deep, steadying breath and beginning to wind the bandages around his wound again.
After Malfoy's leg, Hermione turns her attention to his back – his next worst wound. She hisses in a breath at the fresh slashes she'd torn through the still forming scar tissue. Livid scars have been ripped open again or bisected, and fresh, dark blood weeps sluggishly from the deepest wounds still. The only consolation is that the marks she has left aren't as deep as the others had been, for all that she had tried to be convincing. She hadn't been strong enough or experienced enough with the whip to cut that deeply, thank Merlin. They're nasty wounds still, yes, but compared to what had already been done to his back it doesn't seem as terrible as it would otherwise, somehow.
"It's not as bad..." she says to him in a small voice, not certain whether she's trying to reassure him, or make herself feel better. Both, probably. "Not as deep."
"I know," he tells her quietly, and catches her hand with his uninjured one, squeezing it reassuringly, tangling their fingers together, and his is clammy and cold against hers. "Stop blaming yourself, Granger. I wanted you to do it. You know that."
"That's not the point. I can't help it," Hermione says, and then shifts her grip on his hand and uses it to carefully help pull him to his feet. He leans heavily on her, unsteady and swaying, whimpering as they shuffle awkwardly side-by-side toward the bed. He is clammy with sweat, his right arm heavy and sweat-damp around her neck, and his breath rough on her cheek, scented with whiskey and the iron-tang of blood. "How do you stand it, Malfoy? How do you live with – with hurting...?"
"You get used to it," he says dully, ragged and choked with pain as they take one halting step after another. "After a while you just...get used to it. Not that it ever stops – ah! – stops making you feel like a – shit fuck nggh – a monster." Hermione doesn't know how Malfoy lives with the weight of it; with the guilt and the self-loathing. Suddenly the habit she suspects Malfoy had before she was captured, of drinking himself into a stupor every night, seems perfectly reasonable. "I'm sorry, Granger," he gets out, as he takes another limping, pain-filled step.
"Wh-why the fuck are you sorry, Malfoy? You didn't do anything. I'm the one who should be sorry."
"Because you're not a monster, not like I am. He shouldn't have – you shouldn't have to feel like one. Because you're not," he gets out through grunts of pain as she helps him sit down on the edge of the bed, hunched forward so that his elbows rest on his knees, and his head lolls down.
"Neither are you," Hermione tells him firmly, and then she takes a deep breath and begins the long, arduous process of cleaning Malfoy's wounds.
He bites down on the doubled up leather belt that she remembers to slip between his teeth without a reminder now, and breathes in short, harsh pants, his uninjured hand shifting down to claw at the bedcovers as she gently sponges the drying blood from the wounds with the whiskey-saturated cloth. It takes longer and seems to hurt more than cleaning his thigh, and she ends up chewing the inside of her cheek bloody by the time she is done. She thinks that Malfoy would be at the point of crying out, only his throat is too raw, and he can't get enough breath. Instead, when she finally lays the bloodied cloth down with hands that shake like leaves in a storm, he is sobbing soundlessly, head twisted to the side to keep the wound on his cheek from being abraded.
"Too much," he grates out at one point toward the end, barely intelligible past the belt. "Salazar...can't take...any more." Hermione can see the pain etched into him; his face flushed now, and the tendons in his neck drawn taut, lips white where they aren't smudged with old blood, his eyes screwed shut, tears trickling from them slowly as he gasps for air through the belt and his gritted teeth.
"It's done," she says at last, and watches as a shudder runs through him, and the anticipation of agony leaves his face. Malfoy pushes the belt out of his mouth with his tongue as she undoes the magical binds, his eyes opening with a flutter. Hermione shifts from her position behind him on the bed, dumping the supplies on the bedside table, and Malfoy looks into her eyes – his own hazy, pupils mere pinpricks in the grey irises. His hand catches her shirt, and tugs her to stand between his knees, and she goes with his clumsy pull, smiling down at him with trembling lips, gently pushing his sweat-soaked hair off his forehead, and wiping the tears from beneath his eyes with her thumb.
"I'm sorry. I – I can't do that again," she gets out in a tiny, breathless voice, as her own tears start again, blurring in her eyes. "Please tell me he won't make me do that again. Please tell me that we're – we're safe now."
"He probably won't. And – and we're probably safe. But...well..." he says in a cracked near-whisper, and she nods in understanding, because she knows that Voldemort is the last person she can expect to keep his word. They may have done what Voldemort had said was needed to ensure Hermione is...exclusively Malfoy's now, but that doesn't mean Voldemort won't change his mind in a fit of anger, or boredom. They'll never be safe as long as they're here.
"Yeah. I know," she says, pressing her lips together hard and trying to push down her tears. And Malfoy lets go of his fistful of her shirt, and slides his arm around her waist, tugging her even closer and resting his forehead between her breasts. Turning his head, and burying the unhurt side of his face against her, his breath hot on her skin through the thin material of the tee-shirt. She lets out a long, slow sigh, and strokes her fingers light through his damp hair for a moment, careful of the bloodied, matted patch where she'd struck him with the silver truncheon. Then she ducks her head awkwardly and kisses the top of his head. "Come on. I'd better bandage your back up now."
Bandaging his back is relatively easy; Hermione has had too much practice at wrapping the soft lengths of cloth around whip wounds, and while it's uncomfortable for Malfoy, it's not terribly painful. She takes care of the five coin-sized burn marks on his abdomen at the same time, cleaning and dressing them neatly. Malfoy stays seated at the edge of the bed while she sits behind him, dabbing the whip wounds carefully with the healing cream-potion they didn't have last time, and he says with a sigh that it soothes the pain in his wounds almost immediately. It's a slow process, winding the cloth around his lean torso, but Hermione is glad for that – it gives them both a moment to steel themselves for the final part. His hand.
"I can't believe I did this." She holds his poor wounded hand in her two as she kneels upright on the floor before him, feeling sick to her stomach as she stares at the raw, weeping wounds where his fingernails had been. He is staring down too, splaying his fingers out, a nauseated kind of fascination on his face. In a way it's even worse than what she did to his thigh, because the severity and extent of the burn to his thigh was an accident – ripping out his fingernails was purposeful.
"Neither can I," he begins and it's like a slap in the face, guilt slamming into her with nauseating force.
"I – I didn't know what to do," she gasps in tearful apology through the sickness that cramps her stomach. "I'm sorry, Malfoy. I – I just...he told me to, I –"
"Hey. Hey, hey, Granger, hush. Hush." Malfoy's other hand comes up to cradle the angles of her face, thumb stroking gently over her tear-damp cheek. "I know. I know that. I didn't mean...I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I just really didn't think you had it in you." His eyes search over hers as his thumb keeps up its steady, gentle stroke. "I'm glad you did. You were convincing and that was what you needed to be." Hermione is silent as she gets a clean, alcohol-soaked cloth ready by her side with one hand, the other still holding his wounded hand. "They'll grow back, Granger." He grins lopsidedly, and despite the awfulness of the situation, a pathetic, teary little giggle fizzes out of her.
"Thanks, Malfoy. But that really doesn't help me feel any better. I feel...awful." There is no word that can adequately describe how guilty she feels.
"I know. So do I." Malfoy grins again, trying to make light of the situation, and Hermione wonders how in the hell he's smiling through his pain and actually trying to reassure her. Why is he trying to make her feel better when it should be the other way around? She leans forward without thinking then, and kisses the corner of his mouth – slow and lingering, her lips warm, and his lips and cheek clammy and cool and so, so soft. Malfoy makes a quiet, rough sound and then turns his head, and his hand is in her hair and he's kissing her, gentle and thorough, tasting of whiskey and blood, and her stomach flip-flops and twists deliciously. And then all too soon he's pulling away and shaking his head weakly.
"Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh. No, we shouldn't – shouldn't be doing that," he says breathless, even as he leans unconsciously in toward her again, fingers playing in her hair and down the skin of her neck.
"Just a kiss," she says. Pleads. Her free hand finger-walks up his bare, unhurt thigh, before she scritches her nails back down over the pale, hair-smattered skin, and then splays her hand over the curve of his leg, squeezing firm. "Malfoy, please it's not taking advantage. I want to."
"N-n-o-oh fuck it." And then he's kissing her again, hard and greedy, demanding, taking, and Hermione melts into him, savouring all of it. The way his hand has fisted in her hair to hold her to him, the rough scrape of his stubble, the soft fullness of his lips, the practiced, teasing touches of his tongue to hers... She's slick-wet and aching desperately between her legs with want, and she moans as Malfoy moves his damp, kiss-swollen mouth to her throat, licking and nipping at the sensitive flesh there. She shudders as his teeth close over her ear lobe, tongue playing, and her fingers twist and tighten involuntarily on his injured hand. Malfoy makes an awful, wounded sound and pulls back from her.
"Shit," he hisses in a pain-thick voice, jerking his hand away just as Hermione realises and drops it like a hot coal.
"Oh my god, oh Merlin, Malfoy, are you all right?" He's ashen and biting his lip hard, cradling his wounded hand in the other, but he manages a nod.
"Mmhm," he forces out, breathing hard and shallow, still ashen-grey. And then: "You just – just squeezed my – my thumb a bit. Hurt like fuck, but I'm – I'm all right, now." Her lust now well and truly quashed thanks to feeling sickened over hurting him again, Hermione snatches up the alcohol damp cloth, waving it in the air.
"I'm bloody well sorting out your hand now. It needs to be bandaged, for protection. I'm not risking bumping it again." Malfoy nods, holding it out to her, hissing and whining with the pain as she gingerly damps the wounds with the whiskey.
"We shouldn't have done that," he says, as she starts applying thick layers of cream-potion to the wounds, to keep the bandages from sticking and to help it heal. She looks up at him briefly – feeling stupidly rejected.
"Why? W-wasn't it good?" she asks pathetically, eyes casting over his face and coming to rest on his reddened mouth, just barely stifling the sound that threatens to escape her as she remembers viscerally the pleasure in that kiss.
"Salazar's sake, of course it was – too fucking good. Too...I'm hurting like hell and I still just wanted to push you down and –" Malfoy stops himself before he goes any further, but it's already enough to make Hermione tingle and throb, picturing it in her mind with nervous excitement. "But we can't do that, for the same damn reasons as I told you before, Granger. The situation hasn't changed. I just had a...moment of weakness."
"It's not taking advantage," she insists, like a child, and Malfoy makes an exhausted, pleading sound of disagreement and shakes his head.
"I – I can't – ...can we talk about this later?" he asks her with a hint of beseeching and impatience in his hoarse-rough voice. "I can't think straight right now, it hurts so much, and..."
"Yes. Yes, of course. Jesus. You're hurt and I'm – I'm a terrible person. I'm so sorry." Hermione turns her attention abruptly back to his hand and resumes carefully applying the cream, stifling the maelstrom of feelings that kept trying to escape. Now is not the time. Hermione knows Malfoy is quite correct that now is not the time to delve into the issues hanging between them, and she knows that he's certainly trying to do the right thing by insisting they not do anything, but Merlin, it is infuriating. She wants him. But Malfoy is on the brink, not thinking clearly and wracked with pain and in her mind, she would be the one taking advantage of him if she were to push the issue right now. So she reins her inappropriate feelings in sharply.
"Don't be sorry, Granger." Malfoy's unhurt fingers curl in the ends of her hair, where it hangs forward over her cheek, tugging gently. "You didn't do anything wrong. I just – I don't want to be doing things that we can't take back right now. I'm hurting and I'm pretty sure I'm a little drunk, so..."
"No kissing," she finishes for him, as she wraps the first bit of gauze around his thumb, swaddling it carefully, and he makes a humming sound of assent, and smiles at her, and she tries to smile back, feeling warmth well up alongside her guilt and her strain. And then there is silence for a while, punctuated now and then by hisses of pain, and quiet apologies.