Do You Know Who You Are?
Draco Malfoy stood on the windy cliffside, his hair whipping around his head, blinking against the salty air that stung his eyes.
Below him dark waves churned and roiled malevolently, battering the rocks and sending seafoam and briny spray meters into the air.
He pulled the collar of his grey tweed jacket up around his ears in a futile attempt to stave off the biting cold, his eyes fixed on the dark mouth of the cave carved into the rock in the cliffside.
‘Please.’
He murmured his desperation quietly into the wind.
‘Please let this be it.’
Draco withdrew his wand as he began moving precariously along the ledge he had Apparated onto, doing his best to fight against the gusts that threatened to send him plunging into the icy waters below.
He lost his footing momentarily, sending small stones skittering down the cliffside.
Draco pressed himself to the wall, cursing himself for not choosing more appropriate footwear as the soles of his leather brogues slipped over the uneven ground.
As he approached the cave the wind subsided, replaced with a sudden stillness, a bone deep cold creeping over his skin, along with a prickling sense of foreboding.
This was Draco’s final stand.
If he was wrong he would die here today.
He was likely to die even if he wasn’t.
He stepped inside.
The interior of the cave was dank and dark, his feet crunching over unknown objects as he took another forward step and let the darkness envelop him.
Draco gasped as almost immediately he felt his magic stir.
It recognised something within the cave.
A beast that had long lay dormant within him raised its head and blinked, unsheathing razor-edged claws and trailing one sharp point along the centerline of his sternum, poised for what might come next.
He wandlessly silenced his movements and kept his wand unlit as he ventured further in, his heart pounding.
The more steps Draco took the darker it became until he could only faintly hear the roar of the wind and the crash of the waves.
Those sounds were replaced by the steady drip of water off the rock above his head and the roar of his own blood rushing in his ears.
Draco paused for a moment, willing himself to find a semblance of control.
He closed his eyes, focusing on lowering his thrumming pulse, taking slow, measured breaths until it began to slow.
He could smell his own fear and knew it was a death sentence.
If he was sensed before he was recognised then he’d be dead before he’d even had the chance to see.
A small sound echoed further down in the cave and Draco froze in place, his head tilted, listening intently.
It came again. A gentle sigh, soft and sweet.
He was almost forced to his knees by the sound of it, his magic now writhing within him, no longer something he could ignore. It jerked him forward, his fear replaced with something far deeper, far more innate.
He breathed deeply, grey eyes rolling back in his head.
There.
The faintest trace, dispersed by years of dank, stagnant air. He inhaled again, his tongue darting out too, tasting it. Tasting her.
She was here.
Draco moved deeper into the cave, his entire body trembling but every one of his senses alert, his reflexes sharp. He didn’t need to see any more, didn’t need to feel his way.
He was led by instinct, his magic becoming wild, almost feral. He held it tight, clutching it within two fists, barely able to restrain it.
The scent grew stronger, drawing him in, something floral and delicate, making his head spin.
His cock inexplicably grew hard within his trousers, even though he was still just in control of his faculties enough to know that he should be scared, terrified in fact.
Draco sensed when he got to the right place. He felt it even though he couldn’t see.
The ceiling of the cave felt higher, the walls not so oppressive.
He was in a chamber. Her chamber.
The droplets echoed now, plinking softly into standing water.
It was no longer cold, he realised, or maybe he was no longer cold.
Draco’s blood pulsed hot in his veins, his cock throbbing. He wanted to take off his coat.
He listened again. He could hear it, a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.
The cadence was slow, relaxed.
He could hear breaths, soft little exhales, gentle puffs of air.
He withdrew his wand, carefully, slowly from his sleeve.
His palms were sweating and the hawthorn was slippery in his grip.
Draco’s Lumos was wandless, the light dimmed, but it was enough.
It lit up the cave, illuminating the calcite deposits so that they glittered, reflecting in the puddles of water on the floor. Iridescent colors shimmered, moving over the walls as he advanced.
Draco didn’t see any of it.
He couldn’t see anything except the small huddled figure on the floor.
His magic stopped struggling. It purred instead.
He stared, his eyes wide. Unable to breathe, unable to move. Rooted to the spot.
Finally.
Finally, his long search had come to an end.
She was naked, her small body folded in on itself, her skin pale, ghost white in the dim light. Her hair was longer than he’d ever seen it, curls cascading down to her waist and over the rocky ground.
She was curled into a ball, her knees bent, the angle Draco was approaching leaving her bared to him.
His lips parted, his eyes magnetised to where he knew the scent was coming from, the warmth.
He couldn’t stop himself moving closer even if he wanted to. He was no longer in control of his actions.
Draco was ready to die.
He craved death if this was how he would meet his end.
He would die finally knowing peace, knowing happiness.
He slowly lowered himself at her side, dropping to his knees.
He let his eyes run over her delicate features, her lashes splayed over her cheeks, her little upturned nose, full lips parted as she breathed. Her scent was overwhelming from up this close.
Draco watched her chest rise and fall and a tear dripped from the end of his nose.
He blinked. He hadn’t even realised he was crying.
Another tear fell. This one splashed onto her face and she flinched.
She stopped breathing.
Draco withdrew, panic spreading quickly through his gut.
Her eyes flew open, a kaleidoscope of amber and brown eaten up by black pupils that immediately shrank into pinpricks.
He pushed himself back, scrambling along the stone floor, sharp bits of rock biting into his palms.
Draco didn’t register the pain, every cell in his body focused solely on the figure in front of him.
She rose, turning her head to look at him.
Her hair fell over her breasts, down to her ribs, her legs were thin, her chest rising and falling as she took him in, her nostrils flaring.
Draco felt his fear grow, felt it flow through him as his magic twisted and bucked, trying to pull him towards her even as his brain screamed at him to get back.
Love,’ he whispered.
‘It’s me. I found you. I’ve been looking for so long. I’m so sorry, I-‘
Draco didn’t finish his sentence.
She screamed and the sound was terrifying, liquefying Draco’s insides and almost rupturing his ear drums.
He put his hands to his ears, dropping his wand to the floor. It rolled away, the light extinguishing.
The last thing he saw before the cave was plunged into darkness was her face, millimetres from his, her eyes wide, her teeth bared.
‘Hermione,’ he gasped.
But then she was upon him.
Two years earlier
‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine- you make me happy, when skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t - take my… sunshine- away.’
Hermione finished the last line, proud of herself that she’d finally remembered the words. She’d been trying to think of it for weeks.
She rolled over onto her side.
‘Did you like that one Colin? That’s a happy one isn’t it?.. Colin? Col?’
Hermione stared through the bars at the empty spot on the stone floor of the next cell.
She stared and she waited but the spot remained empty.
Realisation trickled into her brain, slowly at first then like a tidal wave, ice cold and painful.
Colin wasn’t going to answer her, no matter how many times she called his name.
Because Colin was dead.
He had been dead for months, his battered body finally giving up after one of his wounds became infected and he wasn't strong enough to fight it off.
She was alone.
Hermione cried out, her low moan punctuating the darkness as she slammed her palm against the stone, assaulted anew with the bitter truth that her desolate mind repeatedly kept trying to protect her from.
She sobbed as she absorbed the horror that came with falling back into reality, always so much worse after a break.
Hermione knew she was insane.
It was a strange thing to be sane enough to know you were in fact not sane.
She had felt her mind crack some time ago.
Sensed the first fissures spider-webbing along her consciousness and she’d welcomed them, prying her cold fingers into the gaps to make them bigger.
Hermione didn’t mind the madness, revelling in the small breaks from her bleak reality.
She looked forward to the day the fissures became deeper cracks, anticipating the moment her mind finally let her go and split open completely, setting her free in mind if not in body.
She didn’t know exactly how long she’d been in her cell.
There was no natural light, no certain way to track the passing of time.
She thought it might have been just over a year and a half though based on the amount of periods she’d had, bleeding freely onto the stone floor, though they’d become further apart as malnutrition took hold.
She marked each one off with a scratch in the stone wall, saving her tiny magical reserves to cast a faint wandless Lumos long enough to do it and then sobbing quietly as the pain in her head began and she felt the blood trickle from her nose.
Magic alway came with a price for her now.
The guards didn’t know she still had a little left, the weakest tendrils of a once remarkable power, one that had astounded her teachers when she was eleven, kept her friends alive at seventeen and helped to fight a war at twenty two.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Hermione couldn’t remember what it was.
The injury she’d sustained had been serious enough to enable them to capture her, seal her down here in purgatory.
She had awoken with little memory of the weeks and months beforehand, locked deep below the earth with a traumatised Colin Creevey, someone she’d known was a friend but who was unable to tell her anything useful.
Colin had never spoken a word in all the time they’d been caged together.
She didn’t know if he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk, but she’d known he liked it when she sang.
The men that guarded her starved her, hurt her, degraded her in every way possible.
They didn't rape her though, not with her dirty blood.
They told her it was because she was disgusting to them but Hermione knew the real reason.
Deep down they were all scared of her.
She often thought about what she’d done to the first guards who got too close, her wandless magic powerful enough to creep out weakly despite her injury. She'd managed to explode their bollocks as well as their brains, smiling as their blood splattered her face.
Oh, the guards would still touch themselves when they were desperate.
They’d stay safe on the other side of the magically fortified bars while they forced her to strip.
They liked to use her humiliation to get off.
At least at first.
Now she was too thin, too fucked in the head.
They didn’t like the way her sunken, dead eyes watched them, didn't like it when she laughed at their half hard cocks, their pumping fists slowing and then stopping.
She mocked them, even when they hexed her, grinning with blood on her teeth and madness in her eyes, hoping that one day one of them lost control and killed her.
For so long Hermione had walked the tightrope between life and death, wasting- but not all the way away.
She wanted nothing more than to find peace, to join Colin and the hoards of other dead witches and wizards - her friends, some lost in a war that was never the worst thing, many more dying in the horror that came afterwards.
She sighed and pulled up her knees, the chains that bound her ankles clanking.
She barely felt the pain from the shackles now, the skin had been rubbed raw so often that it was just part of who she was, scar tissue built up layer by layer.
She looked down, inspecting the festering rings of flesh with only mild interest, poking a dirty finger into a particularly raw part, gritting her teeth and pressing down harder, enjoying the sharp bite of pain.
After a few minutes it stopped working, the sensation dulled. Hermione got bored and turned onto her side, focusing again on the empty spot in the next cell.
'I've got another song, Col,' she said. 'I think you'll really like this one.'
'Mudblood. Wake up. Get up, NOW.’
Hermione’s eyes flew open to the sound of a wand being dragged loudly across the bars of her cage, the clattering sound setting her teeth on edge after living in silence for so long.
She pushed to sit up, blinking at the guard who sneered from his place on the other side of the bars, his lip curling in disgust.
'Get up,' he demanded.
'They’ve finally remembered you’re here. They’ve sent you a solicitor which means your execution date has been approved.'
Hermione hardly dared to believe it.
Executed.
She'd be free. Finally.
She didn’t want the guard to see the joy that burned through her and so she kept her expression intentionally blank, forcing herself to barely respond.
She rose on wobbly legs, the chains clanking.
'You stay the fuck back, he said. 'Don't come any closer.'
He shot a hand through the bars, sliding a tray towards her with a small vial balanced on it.
The liquid inside was dark, a deep purple shade.
They needed her pliant.
It was the same potion they’d given her at the beginning, back when they were still conducting the medical treatments. A time that seemed so very long ago.
Hermione didn’t hesitate, snatching at the vial and unstoppering the lid.
She barely flinched even as the potion burned down her throat, making her eyes water.
Her tongue immediately thickened, her limbs growing heavy.
Hermione blinked lazily as her head grew even fuzzier and her vision swung on a delay.
She sat meekly and waited for him to bind her.
He pointed his wand and the black tendrils of his Incarcerous curled through the bars, wrapping around her wrists and securing them in front of her. He aimed it at her face, blindfolding her and sealing her jaw shut.
Even through the fog of the potion Hermione had to force herself not to panic as her eyesight faded away, telling herself there was nothing they could do to her that she couldn’t withstand.
If the end goal was death she needed to stay calm, do nothing to stop the process from happening.
Hermione heard the guard unlock the cage, her muggy senses now as alert as she could get them.
She heard the sound of his leather boots creaking across the floor, smelled him as he approached and unlocked her ankle shackles.
Her nose wrinkled at the overwhelming scent of his foul BO, his bad breath, the smell of the greasy food he'd eaten earlier that day.
She so rarely smelled anything other than herself now and it was shocking, making her stomach lurch.
She gagged, the muzzle on her mouth preventing her from opening her jaw.
Hermione panicked, feeling like she was choking, her heavy tongue blocking her airway.
She retched again, her eyes watering, her heart pounding.
The guard did nothing that she could discern, just waited while she frantically swallowed down the saliva that pooled in her mouth, pulling air into her lungs as she slowly got herself under control, panting against the bind.
A moment later a hand closed around her arm, rough and calloused.
The grip was hesitant, fingers loose as though he didn’t really want to be touching her.
He was frightened she thought. Even though she was bound and drugged he was still scared of her. Her magic, and her dirty blood.
‘Move.’
Hermione had no choice but to obey, the potion they’d given her forcing her compliance.
She felt her legs buckle only once or twice as he led her out of her cell and through the prison.
She no longer had use of her eyes so Hermione used her other senses to gain an idea of where she was.
As they passed through door after door she became aware of the scent of others, more body odour, dirty hair, rotting teeth.
She ignored the lewd comments they threw at her, choosing instead to focus on the fact that there were voices. Real ones.
Were they real? Or was this her mind taking her on an adventure?
It was hard to tell with the effects of the potion and the way her head was light with so much movement after so long.
Hermione’s jaw was clamped too tightly for her to bite her tongue, instead she twisted her hands within the binds at her wrists, manipulating them until she was able to pinch her skin between a finger and thumb.
She felt it.
She kept pinching, digging in her nails until a warm drip of blood ran slickly down her palm.
Hermione could only deduce that this was real.
She lost track of the direction they took, her mind too jumbled to keep up.
She tripped and fell as he dragged her up several sets of steps, banging her shin painfully on the stone and yelping in shock.
Eventually he yanked her to a stop.
‘In here?’ The guard asked someone she couldn’t see.
‘Yeah that room. Fuck. That’s her? The Mudblood?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She doesn’t look like much does she? You’d never know.’
A grunt.
‘Is he already here?’
‘He’s in there, ready for her.’
‘Has he been briefed? He knows the risks?’
‘The warden was in with him for ages. He knows.’
Hermione heard the jangle of keys, a muttered incantation, then a door was screeching open.
The metallic sound setting Hermione’s teeth on edge.
She waited, unsure where the threshold of the door was.
The guard pushed her roughly, a palm flat between her shoulder blades.
Hermione stumbled, falling forward onto her knees. He cursed under his breath and she felt him hauling her roughly upwards.
There was another person in the room. She heard them shift in their chair, a further soft curse coming from that direction.
‘Where’d you want her?’ The guard asked.
The response was wordless but the guard began pushing her further into the room.
Hermione suddenly became aware of another scent layered on top of the grime and filth of the prison.
Something clean, masculine.
It made her stomach clench in a way she couldn’t explain.
She breathed deeply, tears inexplicably springing into her eyes behind the blindfold.
She was suddenly pushed roughly down by a hand on her shoulder and couldn’t help crying out as her tailbone collided with the hard seat of a chair.
There was a table in front of her. She felt along it with her fingertips, sliding her palms up until she could rest her bound hands in front of her.
The person opposite shifted again, clearing their throat.
‘Unbind her.’
Her breath caught. The voice. It was familiar. She frantically cycled through fragments of memories, trying to figure out where she knew it but coming up empty.
‘I don’t think you want to be that close to her without a wand mate. She might look pathetic but this bitch is fucking crazy.’
‘Do as I say. Unbind my client. I cannot do my job if I can’t converse with her.’
Crisp vowels, a cut glass accent. Hermione’s sluggish brain tried again to make the connection, to make sense of why the voice had her pulse racing, tears continuing to burn at her eyes.
She suddenly felt violently sick.
‘Okay mate. Your funeral.’
She heard the guard's heavy footfalls as he stepped back towards the door, a few seconds more before the Incarcerous was lifted.
Hermione felt the binds fall from her wrists first, the blood rushing into her ice cold fingers.
Her jaw was freed next, her teeth aching as she worked it side to side.
Finally the black shroud left her eyes and she gasped, squeezing them shut against the sudden light.
A moment later, when she felt able to, she cracked her eyelids open. Just a millimetre.
Her vision was blurry, she could only make out a shape in front of her.
She blinked, trying to clear the film from her vision.
Slowly, the person sitting opposite her came into view.
Blonde hair. That was the first thing she saw.
Hair so blonde it was almost white, swept back, fixed in place, smooth and shining.
He was immaculate, cufflinks shining at the cuffs of a crisp white shirt beneath a grey tweed peacoat.
His shoulders were broad, every muscle tensed as he held himself stiffly, appraising her down a pointed nose, lips pressed tightly together in disgust.
‘She’s drugged.’
‘Believe me, that’s how you want her.’
Hermione forced herself to meet his eyes, dark and fathomless, a flinty charcoal grey.
They held hers for a moment before flicking away as he appraised the rest of her with a cold detachment.
‘And you’re sure this is her?’ he asked blandly, sounding almost bored.
‘The Mudblood? Hermione Granger?’
The guard chuckled.
‘Yes we’re sure. She came helpfully branded for us. You can see it on her arm.
Don’t touch her though, don’t want to get that filth on your posh white shirt.’
Grey eyes cut away from her, his head tilting towards the two guards who were standing with their backs pressed against the wall within reach of the door, their wands raised.
Both blanched under his unflinching gaze.
She watched a muscle tick in his jaw.
‘You may leave.’
‘No can do mate. The warden would have my balls. For your safety we can’t leave you on your own with her.’
‘My safety is my own concern. Tell your superior you were ordered to leave.’
The second guard laughed.
‘Ordered? By you? Who the fuck are-‘
His words were cut off, his eyes suddenly going wide as a small strangled sound escaped his throat.
The second guard had paled dramatically, swaying slightly, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
Seeing them in the light Hermione realised neither could be older than eighteen or nineteen.
They were boys, not men.
‘Leave.’ The word was quiet, low.
Both guards turned woodenly and without another word they left the room, the door slamming heavily behind them.
Hermione turned back to the person sitting opposite her. His hand flexed on the table between them and her eyes caught on the rings he wore, chunky silver bands.
One on his thumb, two more on his middle and ring finger.
Her stomach dipped again, her mind sluggish, trying to alert her to something she couldn’t quite grasp.
He remained still, deathly silent.
Hermione waited, trying not to vomit, watching his chest rise and fall.
Fear began curling in her stomach.
She looked back up to his face.
His eyes were on hers and there was a flicker of something else in his gaze now, something other than apathy.
She watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple dipping and rising.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked eventually and Hermione flinched.
‘You- you’re here to sign off on my execution, f-from the Ministry.’
He nodded slowly, and Hermione noticed he was more than stiff, he was almost robotic.
The man in front of her was occluded to the eyeballs, she realised.
He was restraining himself, struggling to hold something back.
‘Do you know who you are?’ He asked, his voice tighter now.
‘Yes.’ She jutted her chin forward as she answered him, forcing her voice to remain level.
‘I’m Hermione Granger.’
A small crack in his expression, the slightest twitch.
‘Yes,’ he said, and there was something in his tone like she’d pleased him.
‘Yes you are.’
Another pause.
‘What do you know about yourself?’
Hermione thought, her brow furrowing. What did she know now?
‘I- I’m a Muggleborn witch who attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. My best friends were Ron Weasley and H-Harry Potter.’
Another twitch, a small muscle feathering in his cheek.
‘I helped to fight against Voldemort. There was a war. I was-‘ she struggled for the word ‘- a resistance fighter. I think. I was captured with my friend Colin. I’m not sure how long ago.’
‘Almost two years.’ His voice was bitter, the words forced out between clenched teeth.
Hermione felt the world tilt.
Two years she’d been down in the darkness, left to rot.
What had happened in the outside world since she’d been forgotten?
The man took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
The hand with the rings left the table to scrub over his face, she looked at the rings again, her eyes tracing over the intricate patterns in the silver. Something about them was so familiar, she didn’t know why.
‘How drugged are you?’ He asked. ‘Can you walk unaided?’
Hermione looked up sharply. What kind of a question was that?
He waited, his eyebrows drawn together, his body still.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can.’
He nodded. ‘Okay.’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘Okay.’ He said again.
Hermione watched as suddenly his dark eyes shifted.
The occlusion began to lift, the colour lifting in tandem.
The clouds in his irises parted, dark stormy grey lightening gradually until it was replaced by a bright, almost unnatural silver.
Hermione couldn’t breathe, her heart was pounding.
His chest was rising and falling rapidly, his previously stiff posture crumbling. He was shaking.
She watched his lips as he murmured something, an incantation of some type.
The words floated across the table towards her.
Hermione heard them.
The world fell away.
Hermione fell too.
She swayed and she dropped, forced to the ground by the sudden explosion of emotion that hit her.
He dived across the table, catching her before her head hit the ground.
He lowered to the floor with her in his arms, and somewhere in her mind Hermione had the wild thought that he was ruining his immaculate suit, sullying it with dirt from the floor and filth from her.
It seemed to be the last thing on his mind.
He was cradling her tightly, his face pressed against hers so that she could feel hot tears running down his cheeks and over her skin.
His hands ran over her arms, her ribs, down her legs, he was trembling all over, his breath ragged.
Up close his scent was overwhelming, flooding her lungs and her mind so that Hermione gasped.
Her truth finally unlocked, reaching out to grasp what that scent finally meant to her.
She looked up and their eyes met again.
‘Draco.’
He sobbed, a raw, desperate sound.
‘It’s me, love.’
’Draco. Draco. Draco.’
She couldn’t stop saying his name, as though it had been on the tip of her tongue for so long. The lyrics of a song she’d forgotten.
He clutched her tightly, his heart hammering against the side of her head as he rocked her gently, seemingly unable to let her go.
She heard his next words as a vibration, coming through his chest.
‘We need to go. Harry’s waiting for us.’