Vacivitas

Chapter Eighteen

This chapter, as well as the next two are HEAVY on the dark. There will be individual trigger warnings on each chapter, but do be aware that there is torture, horrific things being said, Death Eater behavior, a scene where Draco and Hermione have to "pretend" while everyone's watching. It's very dark, so I just want to prepare you!

Trigger warnings: allusions to high possibility of rape, allusions to future torture

Chapter Eighteen

Hermione feels strange.

When she looks at Malfoy, she sees a monster that her heart does not. Her heart sees the Malfoy she knows–the one she's grown attached to. She has to remind herself that he didn't do those things to her. That he never would. The weight of all these memories keeps her heart pinned to the floor. It's so horrible of a feeling that when she bathes before getting ready, she washes her body four times before she has to stop scrubbing. It had started to hurt.

She goes into her wardrobe and pulls out the glittering black dress robes that have been there since the night she came here. Upon doing so, she realizes it's not a set of dress robes–it's an evening gown. She glances it over. It looks very expensive. The black fabric glitters like the night, each sparkle looking like an individual star. It's A-line with chiffon cap sleeves and a neckline that plunges to just above her belly button. She's never seen anything like it in the wizarding world. It might not be the type of dress that Pureblood would want to see.

That's why she's going to wear it.

The dress glides on over her russet brown skin with ease, molding to her curves in a way she's never seen before. There's a slit in the skirt that goes to her upper thigh, and her leg looks kilometers long. She stares at herself for a good amount of time before she starts her make-up, wondering if this dress will be the one she dies in.

Once she finishes her make-up, she stands up, bends at the waist, and uses the help of gravity to drag all of her braids up to the top of her head. She clamps them together with one hand and uses it to twist them all into an elegant bun at the top of her head. She works some nonmagic-magic and uses a couple of the braids to secure the bun. The last touch is a pair of simple diamond earrings that she thinks probably cost a fortune. She stares at herself again, finding that she's catching her own eye.

This is the first time she's found herself beautiful. And not just the generic beauty your mother says you have. The kind-of beauty that everyone can see. It makes her sad, knowing that beneath that beauty lies the nightmarish memories that she's being forced to carry in her head all night.

Hermione selects a pair of black heeled shoes and heads out of the room. She's assuming they're taking the upstairs Floo, so she heads toward the stairs, which she'll have to pass on the way. As she does, she stares at the ground, lost in the terrible reverie. She hopes Voldemort doesn't kill her. She wants to experience at least a second more on this Earth after Malfoy takes the memories and locks them away so she can have her real ones back.

"Fuck."

Hermione stops. Malfoy's just stepped onto the carpet from ascending the stairs.

He looks...Handsome. He's wearing his Death Eater robes, open over a pair of black slack trousers, a black button-up with the top two buttons undone, and a black belt. His shoes are ones she's never seen, black and made of dragonskin leather. His hair is pushed back, with a few strands that seem to ignore his wishes and fall into his eyes. She catches sight of his hands and notices a large black ring on one of them–she thinks it might be a family heirloom due to its appearance. She's so busy ogling him that she doesn't notice that his eyes have been glued to her body the whole time.