marked me (like a bloodstain)

true penance

i feel her filth in my bones, wash off my hands til it's gone

There was venom on her tongue.

Draco was far too skilled in mental defenses to believe Hermione Granger had infiltrated him through the use of legilimency, but there she was, spreading through each brain cell he had wrapped in steel. There she was, deep diving in every vein, latching on to every fragile tissue, and growing like weeds around his bones. She was everywhere, consuming his insides until everything he was tasted and smelled like tea and honey and sorrow.

He couldn't even hate her for it.

Some old version of himself would have plotted Granger's demise for simply sliding her fingers through his hair, but he had seen firsthand what Death looked like as it inched closer and closer to her, greedy hands trying to pull her up from Draco's bloodstained floor and drag her to the same desolate place He took the other poor souls that walked through Malfoy Manor's gates.

Draco had wanted—needed—her to live then.

Selfishly so.

If his demented Aunt Bella had managed to achieve what other countless comrades had not, Draco was certain there would never be redemption for himself. Already the last bit of his innocence had been carved out and spilled along with Granger's blood; if she took her last breath in front of him, too, he would deserve a lifetime in Azkaban. He would always be guilty—after all, hadn't he always wanted her gone? Hadn't he wanted to yank her out of the ground, root and stem, until nothing about her existed in the gilded fantasy he had been fed since infancy, one where people like her were eradicated?

He would have been content—relieved—with her surviving hatred, but Granger had none left to give.

When she walked through that battered classroom door, Draco should have known the exhausted, vacant glimmer in her brown eyes was a warning sign. She was never meant to look at him like that, like the ghosts overpowering his shadow were nothing to be afraid of. Not when they matched her own. He should have gotten up, left her in the silence and sorrow she carried, but her warm touch against his cold, stinging skin felt more cleansing than any salves or bathwater ever would.

He should have known there would be venom on her tongue, but Draco had slipped his own inside of her mouth first. With a bruising kiss that parted her lips, he chased redemption with every soft, greedy sigh she released, distracting him from what she was truly doing. Like Devil's snare, she planted herself in all of his darkness where she would grow thick, unyielding, and deadly.

The wizengamot exiled him, but having Granger possess him from the inside, one atom at a time, was Draco's true penance.

And it drove him mad three months in.

Ministère des Affaires hardly gave a fuck about Britain's war criminals, least of all if their name was Malfoy, so sneaking past Auror Trainees posted outside their humble villa was hardly difficult. Like an addict searching for his particular brand of poison, Draco burst through shadows, dead-ends, and sketchy pubs until he found a way to send a message back to the homeland that cut him out like an infection threatening anything good from ever sprouting from its ground again.

He knew what sort of insanity could be found in darkness—after all, he had lived imprisoned there as a madman and his devoted servants painted the prestigious walls of his childhood home red with death and misery. And yet, nothing compared to the four years of only living off a memory that had begun to fray around the edges after being overused.

Then, from one of those illegal crooks he had slithered past, Draco got a single scrap of parchment: Herrera's Cafe, London. Every weekday, noon.