Anchor and Rose | Dramione

Seventeen.

Dark Magic wormed its way inside Hermione's bloodstream for over a week with no mercy.

She woke every few hours for eight days with hot tears on her face and goosebumps running down her spine. She believed it felt like the equivalent of being burnt by flames while sitting inside a pool of ice at the same time.

She would scream and wake up to be sick for an hour straight. Her fingers would twitch unconsciously and her body would curl against the plush of the velvet sofa for hours on end just to feel something comforting. To feel something warm and plush and solid.

Draco sat with her.

He didn't speak much- but he sat there. Watching silently as she screamed due to the pain, feeling as though her bones were trying to escape from the confinements of her flesh.

He sat there when she cried.

He sat there when she shivered and sobbed and told him to get out. When she told him to leave. When she told him to never come back. When she told him she despised him and his family and all the horrid things they did.

He still sat there.

He still sat there, curled inside of the armchair wearing his black silk pyjamas and silently reading his book by Emily Brontë.

Only once did he speak.

"Dark Magic will ruin you for a week or so as it searches for a spot inside of you to live inside. I told you. I told you not to do it."

Hermione did not respond. Instead, a scream ripped from her throat when the bottom of her heart felt like it was torn in two and then stapled back together in just a few seconds. The Dark Magic must have decided to live there.

It must have decided to fester inside of her heart.

After a while-it somewhat stopped.

The pain and the festering stopped, but the Dark Magic was still there. It sat inside of her like an extra part of flesh, like an extra part of her soul.

Hermione somehow-did not care.

When she tried to feel guilty, she couldn't. When she thought how Harry, Ron, Ginny and the others would react, she did not feel guilty. She felt sad and benevolent, but she did not feel guilty.

Every time she tried to feel guilty she could only see Regulus Black standing before her whispering; A time will come where the choice between living and dying stands with that wand.

Her brain told her that it was necessary for her to grow. It was needed for her power as a Witch to develop. To win the war.

Because the War could not be won by love and warmth. It would be won with violence and power.

Hermione did not care when Draco tormented her for it once she recovered.

"Don't try anything like that again," Draco said, taking a sip of his drink on the dining room table.

"Why not?" Hermione quirked back, pulling a foot onto her chair to rest her chin against her knee. "Regulus told me to continue what I feel is necessary-at that moment I did what I had to do to protect myself."

Draco snorted and closed his book so harshly the sound of the pages hitting together echoed across the dusty kitchen.

"You do realise if I hadn't stunned you, you could have died?" Draco quirked a brow. "That wand did so much damage, Granger-I'm surprised it didn't smash your bones like dust."

Hermione swallowed dryly.

"W-who was it, anyway?" Hermione tried to keep her voice steady. "The two men, who were they? I can't remember their faces."