Vacivitas

Chapter Six

Trigger warnings: Seeing the dynamics of a world where blood slaves exist for vampires, talk of selling people for blood, things along those lines

Chapter Six

Hermione spends the next day in her room.

After the interaction she'd had with Malfoy the night before, there's no way in Hell she wants to be near him unless forced. She asks Pinky to bring her all of her meals–who seems to be the only one allowed to get past the wards in her room–and whiles away her time looking out the window. Her mind is too full and active to read today.

What the Hell is she supposed to do?

At first, making the choice between giving and taking was a tough decision. But now that it's entwined in challenge, she wants to make the choice that makes him the angriest. She doesn't want him to feel like he's won anything, no matter the outcome. This choice really is her last bastion of freedom.

Fifteen minutes or so after five-o-clock in the afternoon, a knock comes at her door. She knows it's not Pinky, given that Pinky would simply Apparate in, so she prepares herself to speak with Malfoy. Wearing a simple blue dress that drags along the floor, she opens the door.

He's wearing his Death Eater robes, his hair slicked back like he used to when they were young, and his expression is sour.

"Bad day?" she says, tone snarky.

"Dinner is in forty-five minutes," he replies, gaze cold. "Dress well."

And then he leaves.

The moment the door closes, she pulls a sour expression to her face. She knows he's filled her wardrobe with fine clothing, but it feels like if she wears any of it, she's betraying not only her friends, but herself. Knowing that her friends are suffering while she wears silks to dine on silver isn't in her character. Before the war, she would have refused to do anything like that without Harry and Ron.

But that was before the war. This is now. After. And in the after, she ran, and then she lived in a pit, and now she lives here. She wears silks. She dines on silver dishes. She'll just have to drape the guilt around her shoulders until she can save the friends she has now.

She walks over to the wardrobe and selects a dress in dark blue. It flows over her skin, silk soft against her, and cinches in at the waist. The sleeves are long and they billow, tightening at the wrist, and the neckline plunges to her sternum. She lets her curls spiral over her shoulders, staring at herself in the mirror. It's difficult to recognize herself, to recognize the ways she's changed since the war began. It's as if she's been in a slow decline since Dumbledore's body hit the ground.

Malfoy's already in the dining hall when she arrives, as is his guest. A ripple of both familiarity and surprise runs through her when she sees Blaise Zabini seated beside him at the end of the table. At Hogwarts, she'd rarely interacted w2ith him, but his appearance is as striking as she recalls. Regal facial structure with high cheekbones and a strong jaw, skin as dark as midnight, and broad shoulders that cause his towering form to fill any room he enters...How could she ever forget someone like that? The sight of him there registers as quickly as her memory of Malfoy's words from the previous day. This man–Blaise Zabini–is the one who sold her. The one who kept her in a pit, starved and trapped, to wait for it.

The one who has knowledge of her friends' well-being.

Hermione's gaze slides past his characteristic wolfish grin, onto Malfoy. He's wearing an expression she's not yet seen from him, with warmth to his eyes and a relaxed curve upward of his lips. He looks happy to see his friend. The friend he, as Hermione remembers, does business with.