Malfoy was holding her by the throat and slamming her into the ground.
There was the punch of a knife blade sliding between her ribs.
She was in the middle of a battlefield. Everyone was falling to the ground, suffocating. Harry. Ron. Death Eaters. Everyone was dying around her and she was screaming.
“How many times do you think I can stab you before the light goes out in your eyes?”
Ginny crying, “I didn't mean to.”
“Something to warm my cold heart.”
A hard kiss as she was pinned against the wall.
“I didn't want you.”
The sensation of her wrist, shattering under an iron grip.
“You seem pleased to have successfully whored yourself. Happy to know you've got your chess piece locked in place?”
Harry was standing in front of her, pale and enraged, his face crusted with dried blood, “If that's how little you believe in us then you aren't someone whose help I need.”
She was sitting next to Tonks, who was staring at Hermione guardedly, her eyes suspicious. “How many people did you kill today, Hermione? Ten? Fifteen? Do you even know?”
Minerva McGonagall, gripping a teacup, her voice shaking, “You're no sinner; this is not a fate you deserve. And yet, it seems as though you're determined to try damning yourself if it means winning.”
Her own voice, “If my soul is the price of protecting them — of protecting you. That's — that's not a price. That's a bargain.”
“You're mine. You swore yourself to me,” growled into her ear.
Severus looking coldly at her, “If you manage to succeed you're just as likely to destroy the Order as save it.”
Hermione crying, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did this to you.”
Finally, Malfoy was standing over her, his face white, his eyes glittering with rage, “I have warned you. If something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order. That isn't a threat. It is a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the survival of the Resistance as Potter's. If you die, I will kill every last one of them.”
It was like falling as the past broke free, surging up through her mind and swallowing her.
Chapter End Notes
Additional Illustrations:
Benevolent Surveillance by Ceresartsy.
Hermione with her book by iamacult.
The headaches by heidiM.
A vessel by animusdiscidium.
Malfoy and Hermione by grapesodaandpuddin.
High Reeve and Surrogate by grapesodaandpuddin.
Malfoy and Hermione at the manor by charlespowers.
Sketches by dralamy.
Hermione by anottart.
The High Reeve by NadiaPolyakova.
Malfoy and Hermione by honeyintheskies.
'Malfoy always comes for me,' by todays.wizard.
Flashback 1
Three years earlier.
March 2002. Nearly six years after the death of Albus Dumbledore.
Hermione's teeth ground with frustration as she bottled antidote potions. She'd just gotten out of another pointless Order meeting.
Sometimes she wondered if she were the only one aware that they were losing the war.
As she shelved the new bottles, she tucked a few into her pocket and hurried into the next room where Madam Pomfrey was bustling around. The hospital ward occupying the second floor of Grimmauld Place was eerily silent.
No one currently in the room had an easily healed injury.
Lee Jordan was lying in one bed. There was brain matter still oozing from his ears, drop by drop. Hermione had figured out a way to cancel the curse but the counter-charm was slow-acting. She could only hope the dripping would stop within the next hour. It was doubtful his mental function would recover. The brain damage was severe and irreparable. She wasn't sure of the precise extent of it. She had to wait until he woke up.
If he woke up.
Most likely, assuming he wasn't completely brain dead by the time the dripping ceased, the Order would have to make a run to drop him at St Mungo's when they could spare someone.
George Weasley was seated in a bed beside his friend. He was pale with pain and despair. He had been hit in the right thigh with a fast acting necrosis curse. By the time he had been able to overcome the pain and apparate back, the rot had spread all the way up to his hip. There was no countercurse for necrosis. Hermione had barely managed to avoid his vital organs as she'd had to cut it off of him. She hadn't even had a spare second to stop and knock him out. His hands were still shaking, no matter how many calming draughts and pain potions Hermione administered to him.
Katie Bell lay in a bed in the far corner. Sleeping. She would hopefully be released soon. Some nastily creative Death Eater had conjured a porcupine inside her chest. The quills had shredded and mangled the girl's lungs and stomach and only miraculously not stopped her heart. She had nearly drowned in blood before Hermione and Madam Pomfrey had managed to banish the creature and stabilise her. Katie had been there for three weeks. While mostly recovered, her entire torso was still covered in a multitude of tiny round scars. Her breathing made a faint rattling sound when she moved.
Hermione went over and poured an antivenin potion down Seamus Finnegan's throat. He'd fallen into a pit of vipers and gotten bitten thirty-six times before he managed to apparate out. It was only because of wizarding folk's immunity to non-magical injuries that he had managed to make it back to them before he had died.
There were a dozen other bodies in the hospital ward, but Hermione didn't know the names of those Resistance fighters, and they were too injured to tell her.
Standing in the room looking over the silent, injured bodies, Hermione felt lost.
She had just come from another meeting in which she'd urged the Order to start using more effective curses when fighting. She'd been shot down. Yet again.
There was a bizarre sort of optimism among many of the Order members that they could somehow win the War without utilising the dark arts. Most of the Resistance fighters still defaulted to stunning or petrifying when cornered, as though the Death Eaters couldn't cancel those hexes in a few seconds and then appear at the next skirmish to horribly kill or maim someone.
There were a few who had begun using more vicious spells. Mostly the ones who had been on the receiving end of a curse that nearly killed them. It was like a poorly kept secret within the Resistance ranks; everyone turned a blind eye to it, pretending that it weren't the case.