the girl who lost it all [d.m]

five: tactus

tactus: touch, sense of touch, feeling

———

DRACO hissed as the wound on his forearm sealed itself, the blood finally seizing to flow out of it. 

Picking up the small vial of Dittany, he let a few drops fall onto the cut sliced over his collarbone and tipped his head back, inhaling through his teeth, as it burned.

The air in the bathroom was cool against his bare skin as he tried to catch his breath, wincing as he saw spirals of Dark Magic flash under his skin for a quick second—remnants of the torture the Dark Lord had inflicted on him for failing to capture members of the Order in Albania a few weeks ago.

As one of Voldemort's most powerful and trusted Death Eaters, failure was never an option for Draco. He could have easily captured Shacklebolt and the Weasley girl when he'd finally found their safehouse in the lonely prairie—but had let them go knowing the Weasley girl was too important. If she was captured or killed, Potter would fall apart and the war would tip dangerously in the Dark Lord's favour.

And Draco was no saint—Merlin forbid—but Voldemort was the reason for what had happened to Elara down in that cell. Draco wanted revenge— revenge for the glimpses of torture he'd seen in her mind the day he got her out, revenge for the way she had looked, wounded and dying, bones jutting out through pallid skin, stained in blood and dirt and grime. With initials carved into her hip.

Like she was property.

His mind flashed to earlier that day when he'd had his hand around her throat. It had wrapped perfectly around her—just like all those years ago. He hadn't even meant to touch her but she'd been fighting back, turning to strike him, and his hand had moved on its own accord to stop her.

And she had looked up at him with wide brown eyes and he'd been able to feel her pulse thrum under his fingers, had seen something flicker in her eyes before it faded. He wondered if she remembered how many times he'd slid his hand around her throat before—just the way she liked it.

She was his and no one else's.

Draco clenched his teeth and slammed his Occlumency walls up, picking up his wand and murmuring a healing spell to seal the wound on his collarbone, not even flinching this time as tissues joined and stretched, leaving a scar.

She had cast Granger's Patronus—something that could only be possible if the Dark Magic she'd absorbed that fateful night was at work.

He didn't know what else she could be capable of—and if the magic was anything like the one that pulsed underneath his skin right now, after his own personal torture session, he didn't know if it was a good thing it was living in her.