Are You
Scared?
Disclaimer:
You know the drill. Not mine.
A/N: This
fits with Satisfaction, another of my one-shots. Read it first.
Water
trickled down the wall of stone in a slow, unending, kamikaze mission to reach
the bottom of it, where it would collapse and melt in, disintegrate into a
puddle of many of the same others, which would in turn spread across the floor
in the same paths market by slime, decay, and a faint musty smell of both
fungus and dust, which would in turn soon reach Hermione.
At first she
had cringed at the feel of it, the dirty wetness, the craving inside of her
body for the very liquid she was now flinching from because of the disgusting dirtiness of it, the way the chill
seemed to seep from it into her bones, from which it emanated into every inch
of her body, the way it seemed to permanently state how dirty she was for her.
Now she
barely noticed it, except to focus on it, to latch onto it and nothing else as
a sort of haven, a last refuge for the shreds of her sanity still intact after
Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort were done with her. She still could not call
him Tom—that was Harry’s prerogative, almost it seemed, but calling him by his
assumed title was a feat she had mastered years ago, and she no longer had the
least trouble calling him that.
Few of them
in the same prison as Harry did now, really. Living with him in close contact
tended to do that to people. Even now, Hermione could muster up a faint smile
at the naivety of Harry when it came to his own magnetism and charisma. Yes, he
had never won over Professor Sn—Severus, but the man had been bitter, blinded
by prejudices that should have been left behind in Godric’s Hollow eighteen
years ago, when Lily and James Potter fell to Voldemort’s wand, spy or not. And
Harry had no idea of the devotion and loyalty he could inspire in people with
the touch of his hand, the sound of his word.
It had been
his innate leadership, something he did not recognize himself, more than his
status as the Boy-Who-Lived, that had made Hermione reach out to him in first
year, and after that their friendship had sealed all ideas of her turning her
back on him, even if her identity as a Muggleborn had not selected her for it
by default.
And look where that has gotten you, whispered the insidious voice that
had cropped up from time to time. She refused to listen to it, aware that she
was living in obvious denial but not caring. Why should she? She had gotten
very good at denial after three months of being in captivity to Voldemort, not
knowing from day to day what would happen to her.
Sometimes
she found herself wondering why Voldemort dragged it out so, why he would not
simply do it and get it over with. Surely with his track record at keeping
Harry prisoner, he would want to kill him as soon as possible? But then again,
he had always been a sadistic bastard, and three months of keeping Harry
prisoner, with no trouble from it, would have heightened his self-confidence,
always a problem with him to begin with.
And then
sometimes she found herself wishing that he would do it, found herself craving
the peace that death would undoubtedly bring. For what was it that Dumbledore
had said?—To the well organized mind,
death is but the next great adventure, or something like that. It sounded
something like what she had read in one of her Muggle classics, the Lord of the
Rings, always one of her favorites, and she had treasured it, tucking it away
in her private place where even Voldemort with all his Legilimency could not
take it from her.
But now—it
was only now, when she heard from the prison grapevine that their executions
were scheduled from her—that Hermione Granger discovered that she was afraid to
die.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
(Here, if
you haven’t already, read Satisfaction by me first. Just click on my author’s
name, and it’ll lead you to my profile, if you don’t know. It fits. Trust me.)
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
It was
unwise, she knew. It was foolhardy, and stupid, and ridiculous, and every other
synonym in the book. But she had to know,
the same crave, the same driving, overpowering need for knowledge that had
once driven her at Hogwarts, now drove her to the cell against hers, her face
pressed against the bars, staring at the man she knew was Draco Malfoy, for all
that he looked like Harry now.
“Malfoy?”
her voice was quiet, but his head snapped up and whirled around to her, glaring
at her, his green eyes possessed with a frenzy she had never seen in Harry’s
eyes.
“Potter,” he
snapped, but she understood. “Harry?” his mouth twisted as though he had bitten
into something unpleasant, but he nodded.
“Why did you
do it?” There. She had said it, and she paused, watching to see what he would
do now. Not that he could hex her, he had given his wand to Harry, and she had
to wonder what that had done to him, giving up his wand, but there were ways of
hurting people, even in chains and contained in iron. She had seen the force of
his will, and knew that if he really wanted to, he could probably hurt her
without his wand.
His eyes
snapped up to hers, and held them for an immeasurably long moment, calculating,
weighing, judging, measuring. They were the eyes of a man who has seen too much
and suffered too much, not an eighteen-year-old boy, and suddenly she felt an
aching pang that they should be so.
Then he
nodded, a curt, short nod, and said, “For lots of reasons.” Suddenly, all his
poise, his dignity, his Malfoy-ness went out the window, and he collapsed, a
slumping, haunted figure with ghosts in his eyes she did not want to see as he
continued. “Because Voldemort is a half-blood. Because he’s stupid. Because I
don’t want to live out the rest of my life as an automaton, never thinking
anything unless he wants me to. Because I don’t want to have children if they
have to grow up in a world like the one outside. Because my parents are dead,
tortured to death by the fucking Dark—by Tom, because I failed my mission and
didn’t kill Dumbledore. Because Smith is so damn good at wiping out all your
beliefs from under you with a single question.” He sighed, a long drawn out
sigh. “Because I woke up one morning and looked in a mirror and realized
something very important about myself.”
“What was
it?” her voice was gentler than she meant it to be, tempered perhaps by the
weariness in his posture, or the sacrifice in his actions, or the dullness in
his eyes. Or maybe by the fact that at the moment, he looked like nothing more
and nothing less than an eighteen-year-old boy, scared out of his mind,
confused, twisted, foundering, but with enough good in him to sacrifice his
life for someone he hated, so that the world could survive.
“That I
hated the person who looked back.” His voice was quiet, so quiet that she could
barely hear the words. They might have been the scrape of his chains against
the floor, or the drip of water on the wall, but. But that she thought that she
could not have imagined the self-loathing in his eyes when he raised his eyes
to meet her gaze once again.
She nodded,
once, and returned to her spot on the floor to wait for the first rays of red
light seeping in under the window that would signify that dawn had come.
Wait for the
execution, that, somehow, no longer seemed quite as frightening as before.
Morning came
sooner than she had expected, and she had not slept when the guards came to
pick her up, banging on the door and calling out in rough voices even as the
small, skinny one cast the unlocking spells. The other prisoners huddled in a
group, and there was hugging, and kissing, and ruffling of hair, and all the
various touches that they had so needed to do and have. Human beings need
touch, Hermione thought happily as she relaxed in the warm arms of Charlie
Weasley, pounded on the behind by Seamus, and Alicia Spinnet. And then her eyes
slid across to Malfoy.
He was
standing, alone and uncomfortable, on the outskirts, holding his arms to
himself as though unsure of how to act. His sacrifice had traveled like
wildfire through the cells, and everyone knew who he was, and what he had done.
Molly Weasley attempted to hug him, but he shied away, stiff, awkward, and
Hermione saw the flinch he had tried to conceal under guise of coldness, and
she whimpered softly in sympathy.
“All right,
that’s enough!” It was Goyle the elder. No sense of finesse at all. Hermione
watched dispassionately as he kicked the couples apart, and shoved with his
brawny arms at the group hugs and hurried them all up the corridor, distracting
herself by wondering which form of death Voldemort would deal out with them,
and hoping that she would die by the Killing Curse, then realizing what she had
just thought and wincing at the idea.
It didn’t
really matter though, she thought as she went to seek out a certain someone
with green eyes and black hair. In a short while, nothing would matter anymore.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
“Stop
following me.” His voice was blank, but it carried more overtones of
frightening hate than his malicious drawl at Hogwarts ever had, and Hermione
swallowed slightly in fear. He could still hurt her, now more than ever, as he
was unchained, guards or no guards.
“Please,”
she whispered softly, and something in her voice must have called out to him,
because he turned around and stared at her, his green eyes wide and
incredulous, softer in Harry’s form than she had ever seen the cold Malfoy be.
“Why?” he
asked, and they both heard the unspoken words hanging in the air. Why me?
“Because,”
she murmured. “Your back is straight.” Both of them knew what she really meant:
you’re not Harry, you’ll never be Harry,
and that is both why you and why not you, and you know it as well as I do.
“I don’t
understand,” he half-murmured. “What does that have to do with me?” And then he
whipped around again, and grabbed her chin in his hand, and forced it upward,
meeting her eyes in a flash of green that somehow seemed like grey. His hand
was cold. Very much so, and she winced and shivered, but he gave no sign of
noticing, and somehow she was glad for this yet another sign that he was not
Harry.
She felt his
eyes peering, probing, and knew that he was a Legilimens, but somehow what he
was doing did not feel like Legilimens, only a careful soul-searching that had
nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the soul.
And then he
found whatever it was that he was looking for, and dropped her chin so abruptly
that her teeth met, and made a sort of clicking sound.
“You’re
scared of dying.” It was breathed softly, incredulously, but it was no more a
question than were his eyes.
“Yes,” she
admitted, tears glistening and shimmering on the tips of her eyelashes, ready
to fall and trace a clear, shining path down her cheeks.
And I need to know why you are not,
and how you can give up your life, because what I heard yesterday isn’t enough,
and you know it, and I know it too.
“Come here,”
he said, even as the Death Eaters herded them faster and faster toward the ring
of onlookers waiting for the promised spectacle, like hounds surrounding a
kill. “Look at the sky. Really look, not just glance.”
She did,
raising her head for the first time in months, staring at the sky. It was dark,
surrounded by a cloud, fog, and smoke, evil and twisted and unnatural, choked
by the sheer evil that was Voldemort’s
twisted magic. Shuddering, she twisted her head to look at Malfoy, who nodded.
“Yes,” he
said. “Now look again.” And even as she twisted her head, she felt a faint
surge that she knew was his wandless magic, and she spared a brief part of her
thoughts to wonder at the strength of his will and power of his magic before
she turned all her attention to the sky.
Wordlessly
she gazed at the huge expanse, dark as it had been before. Except now it was
clear, the awesome power of the Dark as it was meant to be, not the perverted
version of it that Voldemort practiced, the beauty of the night in all her
glory and splendor, the stars adorning it, the moon shining above it, and the
majesty of it all whispering about it, and she knew. It was beautiful.
“This is the
Dark as it once was,” whispered Malfoy from beside her, his breath warm in her
ear. “This is how it should be. This is how it will be again one day soon, when
Potter returns to defeat the Dark Lord.
“Do you
understand?”
“A little,”
she admitted. “I’m still scared.”
He smiled, a
real true mysterious smile, and inclined his head. “That’s okay,” he said. “So
am I.”
Are you scared?
Are you scared?
Cause if you’re scared—
You’re not alone.
I once thought I was brave
But I can’t stop
Crying.
(Second Day
by Kendall Paine)
