Chapter Text
They give her to him in the black of night, her Gryffindor red blood dripping like tears down her cheeks.
A mudblood for a murder. His reward for the tarnishing of his soul.
She’s bound and gagged and devastated as he takes her home.
He unpeels her slowly. Her skin is clammy and she’s trembling as he unwinds the bandages.
Empty sockets tilt towards him. She’d been hit with a nasty curse, somewhere in that final battle, one that had popped her eyes like bubbles in her skull. His fingers stroke through the drying blood as his thumbs hook into the gag and tug it gently down.
“What happened to-“
“Shh.” Draco leans his forehead against hers and Hermione shudders. “Don’t say his name.”
Hermione draws her shoulders in and then sags against him, clutching at his collar with her still-bound hands. Sobbing softly, in that quiet way he’s too familiar with. The sound of someone whose heart has broken but they don’t want anyone to hear.
Draco lets her cry while he brushes his fingers through her hair, the knots tangled with blood and dirt and leaves. She needs a bath – a healer – but the Manor is quiet and still. Empty. His parents will be having their own celebration with their Lord.
His Lord.
It’s an indulgence that he’s allowed to linger here, alone with his hard-won prize. With the girl he loved in the hidden parts of himself that he buried under shadows and scars and the darkest of marks.
And now she’s his.
She doesn’t fuss as he strips her clean. And she doesn’t fuss as he washes her with his hands and magic and the warmth of his tongue. She just shivers and whimpers and turns her head away from his gentle kisses.
“I can’t see,” she whispers as Draco binds her in the softest silk nightgown his wand can summon.
“I know.” He strokes his thumbs under the empty sockets. There’d been enough skin left to close her eyes – to stop the ghoulish voids gaping at him like the mark on his arm. “You don’t need to.”
She cries again as he takes her to bed and tucks her in amidst the soft covers. Tearless sobs as she curls away from him, in on herself, as though she wants to make herself small enough to disappear.
He wards the room as a precaution before he leaves. It wouldn’t do for her to slash her wrists or leap from the windows when he’s not there to watch her and keep her safe.
His little bird, tucked in his own bed, embedding her fragrance into the sheets.
The revelry doesn’t interest him, but his father grips him by the elbow and tells him to enjoy himself. An order, and Draco obeys, though his heart is back in the manor, nestled in the tangled curls of Hermione's hair.
She’s asleep when he returns, her chest rising and falling in even intervals. Asleep, her hair cascading across the pillows like a princess. He strips slowly - his clothes are splattered with blood - as he watches her breathe. In and out, her eyes forever closed.
There will be no disgust in them when she looks at him, now.
He made sure of that.