Manacled

64

June 2005

Regaining consciousness was like striking the ground after an interminable fall.

Hermione's head was throbbing; an agonising, bleeding pain, as though her mind had been ripped out and torn into pieces. She tried to get up from where she was lying, but her body couldn't move properly. The motions jerked, and her hands trembled.

She could barely see. She tried to push herself up, but her arm shook and wouldn't support her weight. She tried to breathe. Her heart was racing, a painful rapid thrum in her chest.

She reached out tremulously in the darkness trying to find her bearings.

Something touched her shoulder. She screamed and turned.

Draco was standing next to her, his pale hair visible in the dark. She jerked away but then froze and stared at him. Her heart was in her throat. She studied him with wide eyes.

He was older.

His face was the same, but his eyes were older, as though it had been decades since she'd seen him. His expression was closed, but his gaze was familiar and intent as he stood beside her bed.

"You're still alive," she said. Her throat was dry, and her voice broke with relief. "I thought you'd died."

She started to reach instinctively towards him. He was alive. He was still alive. She'd kept him alive.

His eyes widened.

"Ginny. She was the first body they brought back."

Her hand froze.

Everything hit her. Manacled. Imprisoned in Malfoy Manor to be bred.

He was the High Reeve.

Terror welled up inside her. Her blood ran ice cold. She felt as though she'd been struck so brutally she would die from it.

She gave a ragged gasp and snatched her hand back. Her jaw trembled, and she pushed herself away from him with shaking hands until she reached the far side of the bed. She slid off the mattress and knelt on the floor, staring across the bed at him as she struggled to breathe. Trying to reconcile everything.

It was Draco. He was still alive.

But he'd hurt her. He'd raped her. He'd told her he didn't want her; that he couldn't wait to kill her.

She felt like an injured animal struck on the motorway, bewildered and dying and trying helplessly to find a way to escape and hide. She wanted a dark corner to curl up in where things would stop hurting.

What happened?

As she tried to think, an agonising pain laced through her brain so abruptly her vision disappeared. An anguished moan escaped through her teeth. She buried her face in her hands as she struggled to keep conscious and tried to remember through the blinding pain in her head.

"Let's be clear, Mudblood. I don't want you. I never wanted you. I'm not your friend. There is nothing that will bring me more joy than being done with you."

He'd killed Ginny.

He'd killed everyone.

She looked up and started breathing faster and faster as she stared at him, trying to understand.

"Are you still a virgin, Mudblood? Is that something you even remember?"

The sensation of her skirts being pulled up, exposing her as she stood bent over a table, gripping it, trying not to shake or make any sound.

He'd dragged her before Voldemort and held her in place while her mind was torn to pieces and then left her lying on the floor in a pool of rotting unicorn blood.