Fables of Faubus by Bk11 [Rated NC-17] (7/?)
Exchange Story for ldymusyc
Title: Fables of Faubus
Author: bk11
Rating: R/NC-17
Warnings: Harry’s dead
Disclaimer: Don’t own
Author Notes: Thanks to my beta, streetscribbles--you didn’t do jackshit. Thanks to sandi_wandi for the encouragement. Seven parts total, still incomplete overall. My HUGE HUGE apologies to ldymusyc. :(
Summary: None
- - - - -
chapter eleven:
As with animals of all classes, so with man, the distinctive characters of the male sex are not fully developed until he is nearly mature; and if emasculated they never appear. The beard, for instance is a secondary sexual character, and male children are beardless, though at an early age, they have abundant hair on their head. It is probably due to the rather late appearance in life of the successive variation whereby man has acquired his masculine characters, that they are transmitted to the male sex alone.
- - - - -
The rumors spread very quickly.
The incident with Jason was originally considered to be a fluke. But then the villagers start whispering around about how Hermione almost broke Paul’s neck, and then after Paul came John, who actually stopped breathing for a full two minutes. They talk about how much trouble it was for David to go in and repair John’s brain damage from Hermione’s hands.
The villagers say that Hermione only allows David to lay with her. They say this because they see her willingly walk into his dome, and the both of them consistently walk out together unscathed.
And for the most part, she is an outcast. They rarely talk to her. And the men are scared of her. They have no works in which to describe her with, there is just fear-and they attribute it to the fact that she is wild-born and not made in civilization like they are. In another time and place, she might been called a ‘witch,’ but in their village, there exist no word for Hermione. They just avoid her as best as they can.
Their theory about the wild borns is reinforced with Draco. They villagers are scared of him too, though with less intensity than with Hermione because Draco seems to control himself better-he doesn’t often physically hurt the women he comes across except for when he forgets and gets especially angry. The women of the village dread when they called by David and are sent to Draco’s home because it always feels like they are like the cows, being led out of the fence, into a butcher’s block.
And for his part, David is patient. He knows that it’s very hard to tame wild borns. It’s like taming a wild colt. You need to whip the dumb thing until its spirit breaks and it understands what its purpose is. This requires an obscene amount of patience.
And fortunately for David, he’s been waiting thousands of years for traits like these two have to show up.
- - - - -
They talk a lot.
David uses it as an opportunity to gauge how far Hermione is progressing. And it’s a luxury for him that she wants to talk and learn so much about where she lives. Draco does not have the same concern-and it’s harder for David to track Draco’s progress. He just seems very angry and resentful. Hermione is more thoughtful and reasonable all of this.
Though it had been a close one earlier that day, when Hermione basically shoved her whole fist clean through Henry’s jaw.
She’s getting stronger though-David this very optimistically.
“You need to choose a mate, Hermione,” he often tells her.
She shakes her head calmly. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Well, what would you like to talk about?”
She thinks pensively. “I been wondering-"
“You want to talk about the cannibals,” David finishes for her.
“Yes, tell me about the cannibals.”
David takes a deep breath. And he smiles tiredly. “They are duds. It’s possibly from too much inbreeding. Of course-inbreeding when you are trying to draw out selected traits is an unavoidable necessity at appropriate times, but this business is rather complicated. I’ve gotten really good at predicting these kind of things, but it’s still very hard to find the right combination and a stale batch happens every now and then.”
Hermione looks disgusted.
David laughs, because she is so amusing to him. “Don’t be that way, little one.” As in, don’t be so stubborn.
She shakes her head, like a colt. “You mean the cannibals are squibs?”
“If you want to call them that.”
“No,” Hermione says, deciding to stick to this topic of discussion. “You mean that they are people born of two magical parents, but they possess no magical ability of their own? Are those the cannibals?”
David calmly probes around her head for the exact definition of a squib. He sifts rapidly through her memories and he puts it all together, like a puzzle. And then he sneaks out after doing a little housecleaning. And he slowly nods.
She looks confused. “And why do they come out vicious like that? Is that a bred characteristic?”
David blinks, and he is thrown enough to blurt, “What do you mean?” instead of jumping back into her head to search for the context of what she is saying.
Her jaw drops in disbelief. “They’re cannibals, David.”
And he inwardly smiles because he understands. “I know,” he says, staring evenly at her. “We cannot afford to spare our own food supply for duds. Or squibs. And you’ve see the island-there isn’t much out there. So I’ve built a temple of worship for them. It’s taken me years to teach them to offer sacrifices to the god, because that’s what god wants. Though there’s really no god here though.” David founds. “Religion is a very messy complication that I did away with for the most part. But it came in handy with the duds. It created . . . a food supply.”
Her mouth is still hanging in disbelief. “You mean you can’t share sustenance with them-you can only reserve your grain and your cattle for your elite breeds . . . so you force them to be . . . cannibals?”
David stares at her. “I don’t force them into anything, Hermione. They choose.”
She is quiet.
Basically she argues with him in her head. She tells him that they don’t get to really choose.
And he tells her that there is always a choice, no matter what level of being you are-you choose to survive, or you choose to die. After all, isn’t that what your friend Harry did?
“Don’t,” she warns out loud.
He smiles indulgently-he knows what it’s like when she gets like this, and he’s so used to it that he doesn’t even need to probe her head anymore. His colt is getting angry with him. So he backpedals and lets her think that she has won a little bit.
He changes the subject. “Why is it so wrong in your eyes to consume human flesh? If anything, consuming meat with a close genetic make up to your own has healthy benefits-"
“It’s just . . . it’s just wrong, David.”
“Why?” he presses. “Who are they hurting? Not us. And population gets controlled-"
“What?” Hermione shakes her head. “Parents can’t just . . . chuck their kids away-"
“It happens in your world too,” David says reasonably.
“That doesn’t mean it’s right!”
He shakes his head. “You are too bound by your preconceived ideas of right and wrong,” he says dismissively. “I’m done with this conversation. Now close your eyes, and I’ll teach you how to hone your concentration so that you only think about one thing at a time.”
- - - - -
It’s at least twenty more days until she talks to Draco again.
Though she isn’t sure of the concept of ‘days’ here. The word is obsolete to the inhabitants. When they refer to things that happened in the past, the usually assign it to another event. Like, ‘Oh remember when Justine broke her shed? It was around the time John let his cows loose.’ And since the sun takes so long to set, a day for her is a sleep cycle, but she remembers watching some sort of program that stated that a human’s biological cycle isn’t actually a twenty-four hour day. Maybe something like a twenty-three and a third hour day.
She remembers the day when she discovered too much about David. It was her first day there.
She had discovered when they all bow down to him and worship him, and it’s more than him just being a prophet or an oracle. They never look directly into his eyes, because they see themselves as unworthy of it. They fret and they worry over every word that they exchange with him, because he is so divine that they can’t bear if he thinks badly of them. They all truly believe that David is their god on earth.
The only reason Hermione doesn’t run is that she doesn’t think she’ll make it very far before dying.
And she knows better. She remembers a conversation that she had with him-because she always spends a few hours a week talking to him in his house. She had asked him why she was there-and she was there because she was powerful-he had said. And she doesn’t feel very powerful, but he had plucked that thought out of her head and had assured her it will come in time. The slow environment that they live in allows more time to cultivate and build up a contained energy burst.
It was a colony of wizards and witches. And they were being taught wandless magic-in slow-motion, which makes it easier for those with a natural born proficiency for it, and it makes it possible for those who don’t.
David had picked her and Draco because he could. And he just did. He brought them there to be breeders, to live among with the rest of his colony.
And she had asked him why.
She doesn’t learn this until later. She doesn’t learn the term “wild borns” until later. When she is woken up by Sarah, and is rushed outside to a crowd of people, circled around a big tree. And there had already been a sinking feeling in her gut-she hadn’t wanted to see, she didn’t-but Sarah pushed to the front anyways, because she believed that Hermione needed to experience David’s divinity for the first time upfront.
The charge was theft. Paul had stolen his neighbor’s grain and was being punished for it.
David had stood over him, with a look of sorrow written plainly on his face. Later, Hermione would know enough of David to know that the sorrow hadn’t come from the fact that David was about to mourn Paul as a person, but rather a look that signified his displeasure at good stock going to waste-like a weeks worth of wages flushed down the toilet. That’s how David sees his people.
David killed Paul that day, but sucking out his power and leaving the corpse on the ground and just walking away. Just like he can heal, rearrange organs back into their right places, he can also take it away and remove the heart without ever touching a body. And it should’ve been very obvious, but Hermione was stunned all the same. He did it in front of children too, and Hermione remembers looking around in amazement-seeing no one fazed by it in the least.
That wasn’t the only surprise.
The second surprise came nights later-the term ‘nights’ being used loosely-when Miriam came in the communal house crying. Again-no one else seemed particularly concerned, but Hermione had moved her mat over, and she pushed Miriam’s hair back and asked what had happened. Miriam told Hermione that she had laid with Isaac. And with sunshine pushing through the leaves of the dome, painting stripes on Miram’s face, Hermione asked questions-did he hurt you?-and Miriam did not answer any of them. Rather, she just settled for expressing her displeasure about the whole situation.
When Hermione sat down to talk to David about him-he had told her that he had told Isaac to go to Miriam.
But she’s one of your mates, Hermione had said.
Isaac is good stock, David had said. Very compatible with Miriam, he had said. It would be a waste for me to just have her, he had said.
After she had learned that, there had been a fleeting thought in her mind. She almost decided that she was utterly alone, and she couldn’t live in a place where men got killed for something as little as taking a bit of grain, and it was normal and expected for women to get raped.
Though that term doesn’t exist in the village.
Hermione considered running to the fences.
David caught that thought in her, and told her that it was very unwise because she won’t make it.
Hermione learns that she hates him more and more with each passing day.
And he knows. But he doesn’t care because she supposes that he doesn’t see any threat in her.
She also learns David’s goals. And she learns the sole reason why she exists in the colony.
She knows that the reason she can look upon him and not see a god like the rest of them is because he can die. The others don’t really realize this, because he has lived for thousands of years. They see David, and they see that he can heal people and bring them back to life, and he can take lives away just as easily if he wanted to. They see him as something completely unlike anyone else who has existed.
Hermione already knows this to be untrue.
And she knows that he can die because she spends a lot of her days actually doing what he wants of her. She opens up her ears, her eyes, and she tries to hear and see without them.
And one moment, when the warmth spread outwards from her core, with her fingers tingling as the warmth probed around her mind-she gets the smallest glimpse of David’s intentions. And she suddenly knew that he wanted her because she had survived Harry Potter’s blast. He sees that there is something in her, a special ability some might call it, that helped her cheat death.
And that’s why he stole her. He wants to breed an immortality trait into one of them. And he wants to suck out that power so that he can live forever.
The fact that he knows that she understands this doesn’t affect him whatsoever.
She sees Draco again in front of a fire pit. There are fire pits all around the area for them to cook their meat.
- - - - -
Draco spends a lot of his time leaning over the hearth, trying to build a fire just from concentration.
When David had first come to him to tell him what’s expected of him-he had been very angry. And the roof of David’s dome had caught on fire.
Ever since then, Draco never gives up hope of running away. David doesn’t need to read his mind to know this-because Draco makes it plainly clear verbally-“I’m going to get the fuck out of here the first chance I get.”
David does not care.
And ever since then, while biding his time, Draco tries to recreate fire.
There are painstaking feathers of sundried tree bark that he has nested around a piece of flint.
He needs to leave this place.
Jesus Christ, he cannot handle it anymore because he’s starting to get used to it, gutting the damn little buggers on a slab of stone like a fucking caveman-it barely fazes him anymore, when the gutsy stuff comes spewing out. And that’s just wrong, he can’t live like this. It’s driving him to the brink of his sanity.
With a prepping grunt, he starts concentrating. And like always, for some reason his hand gets really fucking hot, but it’s never enough to burst into fire and burn into two ugly little stumps. He’s burned himself a few times before-but it’ll be worth it, if he can get fire out of his fucking head.
Most of their days-and he uses that term loosely because the sun never sets-he watches Hermione. He doesn’t ever approach her because after kicking her out of his dome, he doesn’t want to be person wronged and be the first to talk to her. Hermione just sits in the shade and watches him too. Sometimes he can imagine that she’s criticizing him in her head, but he’s also starting to get used to that-which is also horrifying when he thinks hard about it.
And on his part, just thinking on how it was cannibals that made them have their bonding moment is just too damn bizarre. And appropriate. Like, fuck yeah, it really does take a small army of people-eaters for him and the Mudblood to get along better.
He can’t remember how many weeks-or months-he’s been stuck on the island anymore. He doesn’t quite trust his body, and he isn’t sure that his sleep cycles match up with time.
He concentrates.
“Hey, stranger.”
He practically springs up. “GRANGER! Wow. Wow. You just ruined it. I was going to do it. And you just ruined it. Thank you. From the bottom of my bitter heart. Bitch.” He points to his non-existent fire.
“Don’t be overdramatic.”
“Shut up!”
She stares down at him, with her eyes stern-and it’s a new expression on her to him. First and foremost in his mind, he remembers her fear of him. And he remembers apprehension. He remembers their first day on the island, when she clutched on tightly to his arm, cutting of his goddamn circulation.
And then he’s heard the rumors, and he supposes that she has carved out a nice little niche for herself, being the local badass and scary the shit out of everyone-and having a nice cushy spot beside that Potter-face wearing psychotic son of bitch.
And Draco glances at her suspiciously, wondering if she’s now on the dark side.
“You’re an idiot.”
And Draco’s eye nearly bulge right the hell out of his head. “Did you just-did you just mind fuck me?” he whispers dryly.
And she has the nerve to look bashful.
And he angrily throws a rock down at the hearth. “Well, I’m so glad your new buddy is teaching you all sorts of new tricks,” he says snidely.
“Yeah,” she says sarcastically. “Are you jealous?”
He gets to his feet quickly, scratching his arm on the way up. And he swallows the dull thick lump in his throat, pushing it back down to his gut. He isn’t quite sure why he’s so fucking pissed off at her all the time. And being alone has given him a lot of time to think, and he has already resigned himself to the fact that that one time in the woods, before the cannibals attacked, when she punched him in the face-that hadn’t been a fluke. The girl is actually a psychopath-not the kind of psycho that he is-he is a man of circumstance, not of mental deficiencies. He now knows the realer difference between him and Granger.
He knows better than to anger a genuine psychopath. So without a word-maybe she won’t notice-he turns his back to her and he walks away because he knows that if he opens his mouth, he’ll just make her angry with him. And knowing what he now knows, she’ll probably beat the shit out of him-which is survivable. That’s not the point. The point is that it’ll hurt. And he doesn’t like to hurt.
“Hey! Draco!”
And she follows, running up to him, and touching his back, right in between his shoulder blades.
He jumps. “WHOA!” he says loudly, holding up his arms. “Are you trying to push me?”
She blinks. “Uh-actually I was trying to get your atten-"
“Don’t push me! I don’t like being pushed!”
She stares at him with her big fat food trap hanging wide open. “YOU don’t like being PUSHED? What about me?”
He steps backwards and gives her a look of pure shock and outrage. And it makes her remember what he’s like.
And Jesus Christ-she finds that she had missed it. Just a little bit.
It makes her smile. And she lunges forward, throwing her hands against his shoulders, making him stumble back a few steps. “You always push me, you fucker!”
He shakes his head angrily, and he stalks forward. He lays his hands right back on her shoulders. “Don’t push me.” And he gives her a little shove.
“Hey!” She slams him back.
“Dude. Don’t go there, Granger.” And she trips back a little.
“No, buddy. You don’t go there.” And he almost hits a big fat rock with that one.
“Granger.”
She smiles. “Draco,” she taunts, holding up her elbows, bracing for the contact. A nice big loud smack.
He catches both of her hands mid-hit. And it does make a loud noise. And it stings the shit out of his palms.
“Ow.”
His chest starts involuntarily shaking, almost like he’s laughing without sound. And almost like he’s sobbing without tears. Maybe he’s exhausted. Maybe too much sun on his skin makes him crazy-she doesn’t really know. But she finds him funnier than she remembers. And she doesn’t really stop that much to analyze it. Maybe Draco got funnier in the last twenty days, being almost-raped some odd dozens of times. Maybe refraining from doing what he wants to do-beat the shit out of girls-had knocked some sort of humor into him.
Because she knows that all of those things have changed her. It’s not only the bizarre talks with David, but everything that she sees, and everything that she experiences, so unlike what she is used to-it has challenged her blind acceptance of certain truths. And sometimes it’s so fucking funny.
And maybe she really is losing her mind. Again.
“Sooo . . . you’ve been good?” She smiles a little bit, casually pulling her wrists out of his grip.
And he snorts, dropping his hands. “You’re not funny.”
And she laughs, standing very close to him. Close enough to smell her.
He looks down, because she’s shorter than him-good. He stares at her forehead, and it’s a little sweaty, like him. And he sees her crazed smile, and it’s so bizarre to see it reflected at him for no reason. Like-he didn’t just fall on his ass, and there is no bleeding dent in his skull. All of this makes him very suspicious. Like he wonders why she suddenly found forgiveness in the cockles of her Mudblood heart. Not that he did anything that bad.
He continues to regard her with his extreme suspicion.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about something.” Her arm nudges his elbow.
He looks up, thinking on whether this is a good idea, squinting at the sun. “About what?”
“About how we’re going to get out of here.”
And that’s why. He can see it. It’s like one of those looks that she always gets. That crafty look of satisfaction of a plan well hatched. He knows it well from school. And it had always exasperated him because her plans more often than not-turned out rather stupid.
Draco shakes his head grimly. And he kills whatever hope she has. He puts both of his hands on her shoulders, this time not to shove her. And he regards her seriously. “Death is the only viable option here, sweetheart. And those fuckers have been watching me like a hawk. Fucking suicide watch. I don’t know why-"
“Because you’d do it, wouldn’t you? If you could.”
He stonily stares at his non-existent fire, and he shrugs. “If someone could promise me that that fucker doesn’t jump inside me and fix up the fatal mess I make-yes, I would.” He grunts. “That’s the biggest of pits, Granger. When you are forced to live life out in misery. Leave me be in my misery. No more false hopes. It’s over. The only plotting I do from here on out is not about running the fuck out of here and getting back to home. It’s how just to fucking off myself for good.”
She flinches. And she touches him on his bare elbow. And there’s a real tan there now. “Don’t talk like that.”
And he feels compelled to break into a smile. “Because you’d miss me that much, huh?”
“Actually, yes.” She doesn’t break the eye contact. “Don’t give up on us. We’ll get out of here. One day.”
He looks at her skeptically, crossing his arms. And he lets out a big snort.
And that’s how they make up.
- - - - -
chapter twelve:
I have shewn that with long-eared rabbits even so trifling a cause as the lopping forward of one ear drags forward almost every bone of the skull on that side; so that the bones on the opposite side no longer strictly correspond.
- - - - -
More weeks pass. Or is it months? They stalk around in twilight now. The sun no longer feels like midday. It now feels like cool dust, the color of a grapefruit. Their fire pits come in handy now, and the change had happened gradually, like the changing seasons of winter into spring. Hermione passes through it, barely registering when it became too cool for her to just walk about with her rolled up strip of fabric, and she takes a pair of Draco’s pants for herself-without his permission.
And though the rest of the women in the communal house stare at her and condemn her for it with their eyes, she doesn’t really talk to them. Sarah just silently watches her with disapproval. Insolent, and incurable of it. And Hermione has nothing to really fear now, because she has gotten stronger than Sarah even. She doesn’t ever need to prove it either-the rest of them can just feel it.
And Hermione gleans a bitter satisfaction when she knows that they wonder if her powers come from the fact that she was wild born. And if asked, she wouldn’t know what to say-because she doesn’t know herself, having no time to decide whether that kind of trait is learned or bred. She knows that David believes that it’s bred-but she’s not David either.
And they all have their arguments-the villagers. And David likes to set aside a place and a time for the ones that want to come forth with a grievance and explain it to him publicly. It was like a town meeting.
Hermione is so beyond thinking any of it is bizarre. She also finds that a lot of the complaints are thinly veiled criticisms at her or Draco. Sometimes both.
“I don’t understand why there is a lack of authority in some parts of the colony,” someone says, “where a woman can walk around mateless, and David, you are doing nothing about it. It’s not right.”
Hermione sees Draco walk up to her with one hand scratching the back of his head. And he grins widely. “She’s talking about you, freak,” he says in a stage whisper, nudging her arm.
Hermione smiles back at him. “She could be talking about you, Draco.”
He shakes his head. “She said, ‘woman,’ Granger. And . . . last I checked. . . .” He trails off, looking down at himself, shrugging.
It makes Hermione laugh.
“Hey, let’s get the fuck out of here. These things are fucking boring.”
No one really noticed when Hermione left with Draco. Actually, she seriously doubts that any one of them cares. And David has his ways, and he would reach out for a grope if he gets too concerned.
Hermione crosses her arms as they get farther and farther away from the fire pits, as the air becomes more prickly and sharp. She mutely follows the white fabric of Draco’s shirt and stares at the back of his head, wondering if she can convince him to let her give him a haircut.
There are fireflies out in the cow field-and cows. And there can also be the stray cannibal or two-but Hermione finds that after she had learned that they’re just squibs-vicious people-eating squibs-she’s not as fearful of them anymore. And just as well, because she hasn’t had one sighting in a long time.
“Are you thinking about the cannibals again?”
Hermione smiles. “You’re getting good at that.”
Draco shakes his head. “No, I didn’t even have to peek. I could just tell by looking at you.”
Granger is a lot better at the head-rape than he is. Amazingly, this is a fact that she refrains from shoving into his face. He supposes that it’s because they both feel the same way about mind-fucking or head-raping, or whatever they call it. Speaking for himself, he doesn’t like it at all-he can see how some people get off on the power of it-David for one, that sick fuck-but Draco just ends up finding out icky things about the people he probes into, details that he’s better off not knowing.
David is completely unflustered by the things he encounters because he’s had so much practice, and is immune to all sorts of nastiness that comes from unfiltered human thought. Draco already knows that he never wants to get to that point, so he tries to stop himself from going there. And perhaps that’s why he’s not especially good at it like others are. Only good enough to shut people out.
Granger, he doesn’t mind so much. Because she’s a lot like him. And her nasty thoughts are just plain funny. He finds her very innocent-and like David has said once before-very straightforward. Draco can feel if she’s upset with someone, and he can feel her animalistic need to crush their skull. She isn’t like the others in the colony-where she dwells on creative torture in minute details for her revenge-just a clean break and she moves on.
“That’s nice,” she says quietly, staring up at the fireflies.
“What is?” he says suspiciously.
“What you just said about me.” And she makes a twirly motion with her finger, pointing at her own head.
He doesn’t like it when she does that without permission. He gives her a sour face. “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”
“So go pee,” she deadpans.
His mouth curves into a grin because she had gotten it right. And he spins around and takes a quick jog into the bushes.
- - - - -
She already knows that Thomas is there before he emerges.
And instinctively, she reaches out to find Draco-and feels her face grow a little warm, because she catches him in a private moment-a moment between him and the plant he’s peeing on. She pulls away before he can detect her because she knows how much he doesn’t like it when people push into his head, even with the best of intentions, he hates it with a strange passion.
As for herself, it’s a useful device.
“Can I help you?”
Thomas walks out. And he grins. “Hello, Hermione.”
And immediately, he pushes everything into her head at once. An onslaught of all the nastiness of people-and every time he does it, it leaves her with a headache.
She feels his need to control everything. She feels his justification for what he has done-he’s different from Draco-she’s said it before-and she reels back a little when she feels him stare down at Mary and feel joy when he clamps his big hand over her protesting mouth. She feels his elation, and she feels his arousal.
And it always makes her sick to her stomach. It always takes her a moment-because he always catches her off guard when he does it-it takes a while for her to grab a hold of all the edges, ignoring the corners and cuts. She folds it all on top of itself. And she squashes it, and she pushes him out of her head.
She opens her eyes, and she sees Draco standing behind a smiling Thomas, watching them an indecipherable expression his face.
“I think you should leave,” he says tensely.
Thomas is one of David’s sons, and one of his favorites, no less. The reason for that being how strong he is.
He slowly turns around and glances at Draco, looking at him like he was nothing-nothing but an annoying speck.
“Hey,” Draco says softly.
And Thomas ignores him. “Why do you bother, Hermione?” he says, jerking his head towards Draco. “You are better than that thing.”
And Hermione shakes a little bit, with all the effort it’s taking to keep him out of her head.
“Hey, guy,” Draco repeats, this time laying a hand on Thomas’ shoulder.
And Thomas snaps.
He spins around and he grabs a hold of the hand on his shoulder, and he whips it backwards. And Hermione quietly goes crazy when she hears the crack of bone. And she immediately shoves her way into Draco’s head-and Jesus, she really wants Thomas to die at that very moment.
For his part, Draco has learned not to scream in pain whenever shit like that goes down. He knows self-preservation, and so he backhands Thomas’ face real hard with the broken arm, no less.
And then they both go down in a bloody mess, screaming at each other.
“YOU FUCKIN’ SHITFACED-"
“WORTHLESS-TINY-NOT FIT TO EVEN-"
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.”
“YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD.”
Hermione quickly calls out to David, telling him to come fast before Draco gets seriously hurt-she can’t give less of shit about Thomas.
She runs over quickly to Draco. Upon seeing the bleeding mess of his arm, she reaches out and quickly probes him-asking him why on earth he had smacked with his broken arm.
It’s the one I always use to hit people with, he replies calmly, in the middle of his red-lighted bursts of pulsating pain.
And she breaks into a teary laugh, and touches his face with both of her hands. “Oh, yeah,” she whispers, remembering.
And he shakes his head, knocking her hands off. “Don’t be stupid,” he tells her.
And later, when she’s sitting in the field, in the middle of a commotion, she watches as David takes his time healing Thomas’ face before he walks over to Draco. And she hates David for the millionth time in her short life.
He does not care.
- - - - -
It happens unexpectedly.
Draco still tries at fire. No one else can actually make combustion out of thin air-and Hermione suspects that that’s why Draco tries so hard at it. So that he can be special. Not the retarded kind of ‘special.’ But special-er.
“You should give up, Draco. This is senseless.”
“People need goals, Hermione.”
“This is a stupid goal. You can do the same thing with a match.”
“Dude-when man discovered fire, you bet your ass he didn’t just go-oh hey-that was . . . cool . . . ummmm. . . .” Draco trails off, scratching his head, wondering where the hell he had been going with that.
She bursts out laughing. “Draco, you are so stupid.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t be so fucking negative,” he grunts, pushing his mind harder. The sparks are coming out, but none of them are catching onto the feathered tree bark yet. “Blow, Granger.”
She gives him a wary look. But nevertheless, she leans down and softly blows over the embers.
“Too much!” he screeches, his face turning red and sweating from the mental effort. “You’re blowing too hard!”
And just when she’s about to sit up and snap at him for ordering her around, the dumb thing actually bursts into flames.
“Oh my God!” he screams. “OH MY GOD!” He stares at Hermione in wide-eyed awe. And she laughs.
“Hurry!”
He reaches over and grabs some of the stock pile of wood that he’s been saving for this very moment, and he carefully nestles his little fire in the sticks. First sticks, then logs.
It’s minutes later, as he sits next to his fire that he turns to her and says, “WOW.”
She grins. “You did good!”
And without warning, he leans over and he kisses her.
She is too surprised to smack him.
He reaches up and holds onto her face tightly, and then his lips start moving over hers. He leans in closer and he inhales the scent of the ocean. And he opens up his mouth to her. And it’s been so long-that he sort of feels the inside of himself start aching because he didn’t even know that he had been missing this, just normal human to human contact.
And maybe she feels the same way because her hands come up to tangle in his hair. His pulse hiccups a little when she clenches her fingers in his hair. He smoothly slides his calloused hands over her wrist, and he smoothly run his tongue against hers, blanking out everything thought he has ever had and instead, he concentrates on the headiness of it all, and the textures. Such as the way it feels when his hand gently skims over the warm skin of her arm, up to her shoulder. He pauses there, squeezing her shoulder.
She pulls back, gasping for air, and his eyes immediately fly open. He sees that her mouth is wet and shiny. And he avoids staring into her eyes. Instead he shakes his head, he groans, and he leans forward to recapture her lips in his. Their mouths collide, and she shrinks away a little bit, right before a whimper slips out between them and she pushes forward, meeting him stroke for stroke.
He’s not even thinking when the hand on her shoulder skims down to cup her breast. He doesn’t even know he’s been thinking about it until the second she gasps against his mouth and lightly bites down on his bottom lip. And maybe it’s okay-he decides that maybe this is okay-if it’s just the two of them here. Her hands travel down his bare back, trying to find purchase.
And he’s not thinking at all when he pushes her into the sand. It’s sort of like how he used to push her into the sand, but this time, he doesn’t shove, and he doesn’t really want to hurt her so badly.
He insinuates his leg in between hers, and he doesn’t think about that one time in the library, when he was trying to scare her and make her cry. He has just never realized how much he had missed this sort of thing. He pulls away from her lips a little to take in a breath, and he softly burrows his face into the crook of her neck, nipping at her pulse point.
He can actually hear her whisper, “Draco,” and he doesn’t know why-but it sounds very nice so close to his ears. It makes him brave enough to reach under her shirt. He can feel her heart beat. And she’s very soft.
He doesn’t think about how his hands are far too rough for her stomach. He doesn’t even consider that it’s all spinning out of control far too fast. He feels pain, and the need to alleviate it, and he grinds down roughly on her leg and maybe he’s a little bit harsh when he bites down on her skin because it just wasn’t enough to alleviate the slow drag of pressure.
His hand moves on its own accord, and he has already undone the tie on her-or rather--his pants that she stole. And the material is already down and stretched around her thighs. When he had done this-he doesn’t remember. And he doesn’t waste much time before he slips his hand into her underwear.
And she cries out at the first sweep.
And the next thing that he knows definitely is that her small hand firmly closes over his, and she’s trying to push him away.
“Stop,” she tells him softly. “Draco,” she whispers. “Please.”
And he looks down at her. And it looks like she’s crying.
He freezes. And he relives all of it. And he’s thinking-his mind is whirring at a mile a minute-and the first thing that comes to the forefront of his mind are the words, “but it was consensual.”
And he’s so confused. He immediate gets off of her, breathing heavily, gasping in air.
“Hey,” she says softly. “I’m-"
He doesn’t feel it anymore. He manages to run about six feet before he falls to his knees and starts retching out cow meat. Even a ways away, he can clearly hear her pull her pants back up, and he can hear her tying the string up. And he convulses, curving over the sand on his hands and knees. And he lets it all out. And it’s gray and shiny.
He can’t do anything to stop her from crawling over and sitting next to him. He feels her hand on his back as he throws up some more.
“Aw, Draco,” she says sympathetically. Like he’s some moron or something.
He’s too embarrassed to ask, so his arm flies out and he tries to swat her arm away. He mostly succeeds, but he hits a little bit of her chin in the process. “Get the hell away from me!” he screams. “FUCK!”
“Draco,” she says weakly.
“Get away. You’re making me sick, Mudblood.” He coughs.
He doesn’t even think before he throws it out. And he already knows it’s a huge mistake, even before she breaks out into tears. He knows from the sinking feeling in his gut.
“You’re . . . such a . . . I hate you,” she tells him, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Don’t you ever listen, you dumb bitch!” he shouts at her. “Leave me the fuck alone! Jesus!”
He doesn’t apologize for it.
- - - - -
Over the next few days, Draco finds that it’s pretty damn difficult to avoid a person if him and that person are the only two fucking normal people around. And he also finds that the perpetual sunshine doesn’t help either-because she can always see him, and he can always see her. There is not the neat trick of night time to hide his face from her sour expression or her condemning stares.
Maybe they are regular stares, he tells himself dully. Maybe she just looks brain dead like that all the time.
He can tell that she’s very angry that he keeps blocking all her efforts to talk to him, verbally or non-verbally.
He can feel her staring at his back when he’s hunched over his precious fire. He can see her narrow her eyes whenever she blocks a pathway and he has to go take a leak and the only way to get out is to go past her-and since they are not talking, he can’t very well tell her to move her fat ass, so he slides by-and her eyes narrow when he accidentally brushes his arm against her. Her eyes narrow with accusation and derision.
Sometimes it makes him want to slap her dead. Other times, he wants to shove her down and tell her that he’s trying to get the hell away from her, he’s not trying to rape her. Jesus Christ-he ought to say all of that before he makes a fucking run for it, try his luck in the forest of palm trees and cannibals. Maybe he would rather risk getting clobbered by a coconut and hang around with the birds than sit and watch her blame him for everything that goes wrong.
It had been her own damn fault that they are stuck on this godforsaken place anyways. It’d do her good not to forget what a fucking burden she is to him.
“Hey, bitch, stop avoiding me.”
He jumps around in surprise. Before he shiftily avoids her again by covering his ears and walking away. He doesn’t expect her to confront him on this head on. And she always does shit that he doesn’t expect. It’s annoying.
“DRACO!”
He keeps walking.
“DRACO! You’re being a baby!”
“Like that’s news to me!” he throws back. Very cleverly. And then he runs and hides.
- - - - -
Thank-you for participating in the Hot Summer Nights with Draco and Hermione fic exchange.
Title: Fables of Faubus
Author: bk11
Rating: R/NC-17
Warnings: Harry’s dead
Disclaimer: Don’t own
Author Notes: Thanks to my beta, streetscribbles--you didn’t do jackshit. Thanks to sandi_wandi for the encouragement. Seven parts total, still incomplete overall. My HUGE HUGE apologies to ldymusyc. :(
Summary: None
- - - - -
chapter eleven:
As with animals of all classes, so with man, the distinctive characters of the male sex are not fully developed until he is nearly mature; and if emasculated they never appear. The beard, for instance is a secondary sexual character, and male children are beardless, though at an early age, they have abundant hair on their head. It is probably due to the rather late appearance in life of the successive variation whereby man has acquired his masculine characters, that they are transmitted to the male sex alone.
- - - - -
The rumors spread very quickly.
The incident with Jason was originally considered to be a fluke. But then the villagers start whispering around about how Hermione almost broke Paul’s neck, and then after Paul came John, who actually stopped breathing for a full two minutes. They talk about how much trouble it was for David to go in and repair John’s brain damage from Hermione’s hands.
The villagers say that Hermione only allows David to lay with her. They say this because they see her willingly walk into his dome, and the both of them consistently walk out together unscathed.
And for the most part, she is an outcast. They rarely talk to her. And the men are scared of her. They have no works in which to describe her with, there is just fear-and they attribute it to the fact that she is wild-born and not made in civilization like they are. In another time and place, she might been called a ‘witch,’ but in their village, there exist no word for Hermione. They just avoid her as best as they can.
Their theory about the wild borns is reinforced with Draco. They villagers are scared of him too, though with less intensity than with Hermione because Draco seems to control himself better-he doesn’t often physically hurt the women he comes across except for when he forgets and gets especially angry. The women of the village dread when they called by David and are sent to Draco’s home because it always feels like they are like the cows, being led out of the fence, into a butcher’s block.
And for his part, David is patient. He knows that it’s very hard to tame wild borns. It’s like taming a wild colt. You need to whip the dumb thing until its spirit breaks and it understands what its purpose is. This requires an obscene amount of patience.
And fortunately for David, he’s been waiting thousands of years for traits like these two have to show up.
- - - - -
They talk a lot.
David uses it as an opportunity to gauge how far Hermione is progressing. And it’s a luxury for him that she wants to talk and learn so much about where she lives. Draco does not have the same concern-and it’s harder for David to track Draco’s progress. He just seems very angry and resentful. Hermione is more thoughtful and reasonable all of this.
Though it had been a close one earlier that day, when Hermione basically shoved her whole fist clean through Henry’s jaw.
She’s getting stronger though-David this very optimistically.
“You need to choose a mate, Hermione,” he often tells her.
She shakes her head calmly. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Well, what would you like to talk about?”
She thinks pensively. “I been wondering-"
“You want to talk about the cannibals,” David finishes for her.
“Yes, tell me about the cannibals.”
David takes a deep breath. And he smiles tiredly. “They are duds. It’s possibly from too much inbreeding. Of course-inbreeding when you are trying to draw out selected traits is an unavoidable necessity at appropriate times, but this business is rather complicated. I’ve gotten really good at predicting these kind of things, but it’s still very hard to find the right combination and a stale batch happens every now and then.”
Hermione looks disgusted.
David laughs, because she is so amusing to him. “Don’t be that way, little one.” As in, don’t be so stubborn.
She shakes her head, like a colt. “You mean the cannibals are squibs?”
“If you want to call them that.”
“No,” Hermione says, deciding to stick to this topic of discussion. “You mean that they are people born of two magical parents, but they possess no magical ability of their own? Are those the cannibals?”
David calmly probes around her head for the exact definition of a squib. He sifts rapidly through her memories and he puts it all together, like a puzzle. And then he sneaks out after doing a little housecleaning. And he slowly nods.
She looks confused. “And why do they come out vicious like that? Is that a bred characteristic?”
David blinks, and he is thrown enough to blurt, “What do you mean?” instead of jumping back into her head to search for the context of what she is saying.
Her jaw drops in disbelief. “They’re cannibals, David.”
And he inwardly smiles because he understands. “I know,” he says, staring evenly at her. “We cannot afford to spare our own food supply for duds. Or squibs. And you’ve see the island-there isn’t much out there. So I’ve built a temple of worship for them. It’s taken me years to teach them to offer sacrifices to the god, because that’s what god wants. Though there’s really no god here though.” David founds. “Religion is a very messy complication that I did away with for the most part. But it came in handy with the duds. It created . . . a food supply.”
Her mouth is still hanging in disbelief. “You mean you can’t share sustenance with them-you can only reserve your grain and your cattle for your elite breeds . . . so you force them to be . . . cannibals?”
David stares at her. “I don’t force them into anything, Hermione. They choose.”
She is quiet.
Basically she argues with him in her head. She tells him that they don’t get to really choose.
And he tells her that there is always a choice, no matter what level of being you are-you choose to survive, or you choose to die. After all, isn’t that what your friend Harry did?
“Don’t,” she warns out loud.
He smiles indulgently-he knows what it’s like when she gets like this, and he’s so used to it that he doesn’t even need to probe her head anymore. His colt is getting angry with him. So he backpedals and lets her think that she has won a little bit.
He changes the subject. “Why is it so wrong in your eyes to consume human flesh? If anything, consuming meat with a close genetic make up to your own has healthy benefits-"
“It’s just . . . it’s just wrong, David.”
“Why?” he presses. “Who are they hurting? Not us. And population gets controlled-"
“What?” Hermione shakes her head. “Parents can’t just . . . chuck their kids away-"
“It happens in your world too,” David says reasonably.
“That doesn’t mean it’s right!”
He shakes his head. “You are too bound by your preconceived ideas of right and wrong,” he says dismissively. “I’m done with this conversation. Now close your eyes, and I’ll teach you how to hone your concentration so that you only think about one thing at a time.”
- - - - -
It’s at least twenty more days until she talks to Draco again.
Though she isn’t sure of the concept of ‘days’ here. The word is obsolete to the inhabitants. When they refer to things that happened in the past, the usually assign it to another event. Like, ‘Oh remember when Justine broke her shed? It was around the time John let his cows loose.’ And since the sun takes so long to set, a day for her is a sleep cycle, but she remembers watching some sort of program that stated that a human’s biological cycle isn’t actually a twenty-four hour day. Maybe something like a twenty-three and a third hour day.
She remembers the day when she discovered too much about David. It was her first day there.
She had discovered when they all bow down to him and worship him, and it’s more than him just being a prophet or an oracle. They never look directly into his eyes, because they see themselves as unworthy of it. They fret and they worry over every word that they exchange with him, because he is so divine that they can’t bear if he thinks badly of them. They all truly believe that David is their god on earth.
The only reason Hermione doesn’t run is that she doesn’t think she’ll make it very far before dying.
And she knows better. She remembers a conversation that she had with him-because she always spends a few hours a week talking to him in his house. She had asked him why she was there-and she was there because she was powerful-he had said. And she doesn’t feel very powerful, but he had plucked that thought out of her head and had assured her it will come in time. The slow environment that they live in allows more time to cultivate and build up a contained energy burst.
It was a colony of wizards and witches. And they were being taught wandless magic-in slow-motion, which makes it easier for those with a natural born proficiency for it, and it makes it possible for those who don’t.
David had picked her and Draco because he could. And he just did. He brought them there to be breeders, to live among with the rest of his colony.
And she had asked him why.
She doesn’t learn this until later. She doesn’t learn the term “wild borns” until later. When she is woken up by Sarah, and is rushed outside to a crowd of people, circled around a big tree. And there had already been a sinking feeling in her gut-she hadn’t wanted to see, she didn’t-but Sarah pushed to the front anyways, because she believed that Hermione needed to experience David’s divinity for the first time upfront.
The charge was theft. Paul had stolen his neighbor’s grain and was being punished for it.
David had stood over him, with a look of sorrow written plainly on his face. Later, Hermione would know enough of David to know that the sorrow hadn’t come from the fact that David was about to mourn Paul as a person, but rather a look that signified his displeasure at good stock going to waste-like a weeks worth of wages flushed down the toilet. That’s how David sees his people.
David killed Paul that day, but sucking out his power and leaving the corpse on the ground and just walking away. Just like he can heal, rearrange organs back into their right places, he can also take it away and remove the heart without ever touching a body. And it should’ve been very obvious, but Hermione was stunned all the same. He did it in front of children too, and Hermione remembers looking around in amazement-seeing no one fazed by it in the least.
That wasn’t the only surprise.
The second surprise came nights later-the term ‘nights’ being used loosely-when Miriam came in the communal house crying. Again-no one else seemed particularly concerned, but Hermione had moved her mat over, and she pushed Miriam’s hair back and asked what had happened. Miriam told Hermione that she had laid with Isaac. And with sunshine pushing through the leaves of the dome, painting stripes on Miram’s face, Hermione asked questions-did he hurt you?-and Miriam did not answer any of them. Rather, she just settled for expressing her displeasure about the whole situation.
When Hermione sat down to talk to David about him-he had told her that he had told Isaac to go to Miriam.
But she’s one of your mates, Hermione had said.
Isaac is good stock, David had said. Very compatible with Miriam, he had said. It would be a waste for me to just have her, he had said.
After she had learned that, there had been a fleeting thought in her mind. She almost decided that she was utterly alone, and she couldn’t live in a place where men got killed for something as little as taking a bit of grain, and it was normal and expected for women to get raped.
Though that term doesn’t exist in the village.
Hermione considered running to the fences.
David caught that thought in her, and told her that it was very unwise because she won’t make it.
Hermione learns that she hates him more and more with each passing day.
And he knows. But he doesn’t care because she supposes that he doesn’t see any threat in her.
She also learns David’s goals. And she learns the sole reason why she exists in the colony.
She knows that the reason she can look upon him and not see a god like the rest of them is because he can die. The others don’t really realize this, because he has lived for thousands of years. They see David, and they see that he can heal people and bring them back to life, and he can take lives away just as easily if he wanted to. They see him as something completely unlike anyone else who has existed.
Hermione already knows this to be untrue.
And she knows that he can die because she spends a lot of her days actually doing what he wants of her. She opens up her ears, her eyes, and she tries to hear and see without them.
And one moment, when the warmth spread outwards from her core, with her fingers tingling as the warmth probed around her mind-she gets the smallest glimpse of David’s intentions. And she suddenly knew that he wanted her because she had survived Harry Potter’s blast. He sees that there is something in her, a special ability some might call it, that helped her cheat death.
And that’s why he stole her. He wants to breed an immortality trait into one of them. And he wants to suck out that power so that he can live forever.
The fact that he knows that she understands this doesn’t affect him whatsoever.
She sees Draco again in front of a fire pit. There are fire pits all around the area for them to cook their meat.
- - - - -
Draco spends a lot of his time leaning over the hearth, trying to build a fire just from concentration.
When David had first come to him to tell him what’s expected of him-he had been very angry. And the roof of David’s dome had caught on fire.
Ever since then, Draco never gives up hope of running away. David doesn’t need to read his mind to know this-because Draco makes it plainly clear verbally-“I’m going to get the fuck out of here the first chance I get.”
David does not care.
And ever since then, while biding his time, Draco tries to recreate fire.
There are painstaking feathers of sundried tree bark that he has nested around a piece of flint.
He needs to leave this place.
Jesus Christ, he cannot handle it anymore because he’s starting to get used to it, gutting the damn little buggers on a slab of stone like a fucking caveman-it barely fazes him anymore, when the gutsy stuff comes spewing out. And that’s just wrong, he can’t live like this. It’s driving him to the brink of his sanity.
With a prepping grunt, he starts concentrating. And like always, for some reason his hand gets really fucking hot, but it’s never enough to burst into fire and burn into two ugly little stumps. He’s burned himself a few times before-but it’ll be worth it, if he can get fire out of his fucking head.
Most of their days-and he uses that term loosely because the sun never sets-he watches Hermione. He doesn’t ever approach her because after kicking her out of his dome, he doesn’t want to be person wronged and be the first to talk to her. Hermione just sits in the shade and watches him too. Sometimes he can imagine that she’s criticizing him in her head, but he’s also starting to get used to that-which is also horrifying when he thinks hard about it.
And on his part, just thinking on how it was cannibals that made them have their bonding moment is just too damn bizarre. And appropriate. Like, fuck yeah, it really does take a small army of people-eaters for him and the Mudblood to get along better.
He can’t remember how many weeks-or months-he’s been stuck on the island anymore. He doesn’t quite trust his body, and he isn’t sure that his sleep cycles match up with time.
He concentrates.
“Hey, stranger.”
He practically springs up. “GRANGER! Wow. Wow. You just ruined it. I was going to do it. And you just ruined it. Thank you. From the bottom of my bitter heart. Bitch.” He points to his non-existent fire.
“Don’t be overdramatic.”
“Shut up!”
She stares down at him, with her eyes stern-and it’s a new expression on her to him. First and foremost in his mind, he remembers her fear of him. And he remembers apprehension. He remembers their first day on the island, when she clutched on tightly to his arm, cutting of his goddamn circulation.
And then he’s heard the rumors, and he supposes that she has carved out a nice little niche for herself, being the local badass and scary the shit out of everyone-and having a nice cushy spot beside that Potter-face wearing psychotic son of bitch.
And Draco glances at her suspiciously, wondering if she’s now on the dark side.
“You’re an idiot.”
And Draco’s eye nearly bulge right the hell out of his head. “Did you just-did you just mind fuck me?” he whispers dryly.
And she has the nerve to look bashful.
And he angrily throws a rock down at the hearth. “Well, I’m so glad your new buddy is teaching you all sorts of new tricks,” he says snidely.
“Yeah,” she says sarcastically. “Are you jealous?”
He gets to his feet quickly, scratching his arm on the way up. And he swallows the dull thick lump in his throat, pushing it back down to his gut. He isn’t quite sure why he’s so fucking pissed off at her all the time. And being alone has given him a lot of time to think, and he has already resigned himself to the fact that that one time in the woods, before the cannibals attacked, when she punched him in the face-that hadn’t been a fluke. The girl is actually a psychopath-not the kind of psycho that he is-he is a man of circumstance, not of mental deficiencies. He now knows the realer difference between him and Granger.
He knows better than to anger a genuine psychopath. So without a word-maybe she won’t notice-he turns his back to her and he walks away because he knows that if he opens his mouth, he’ll just make her angry with him. And knowing what he now knows, she’ll probably beat the shit out of him-which is survivable. That’s not the point. The point is that it’ll hurt. And he doesn’t like to hurt.
“Hey! Draco!”
And she follows, running up to him, and touching his back, right in between his shoulder blades.
He jumps. “WHOA!” he says loudly, holding up his arms. “Are you trying to push me?”
She blinks. “Uh-actually I was trying to get your atten-"
“Don’t push me! I don’t like being pushed!”
She stares at him with her big fat food trap hanging wide open. “YOU don’t like being PUSHED? What about me?”
He steps backwards and gives her a look of pure shock and outrage. And it makes her remember what he’s like.
And Jesus Christ-she finds that she had missed it. Just a little bit.
It makes her smile. And she lunges forward, throwing her hands against his shoulders, making him stumble back a few steps. “You always push me, you fucker!”
He shakes his head angrily, and he stalks forward. He lays his hands right back on her shoulders. “Don’t push me.” And he gives her a little shove.
“Hey!” She slams him back.
“Dude. Don’t go there, Granger.” And she trips back a little.
“No, buddy. You don’t go there.” And he almost hits a big fat rock with that one.
“Granger.”
She smiles. “Draco,” she taunts, holding up her elbows, bracing for the contact. A nice big loud smack.
He catches both of her hands mid-hit. And it does make a loud noise. And it stings the shit out of his palms.
“Ow.”
His chest starts involuntarily shaking, almost like he’s laughing without sound. And almost like he’s sobbing without tears. Maybe he’s exhausted. Maybe too much sun on his skin makes him crazy-she doesn’t really know. But she finds him funnier than she remembers. And she doesn’t really stop that much to analyze it. Maybe Draco got funnier in the last twenty days, being almost-raped some odd dozens of times. Maybe refraining from doing what he wants to do-beat the shit out of girls-had knocked some sort of humor into him.
Because she knows that all of those things have changed her. It’s not only the bizarre talks with David, but everything that she sees, and everything that she experiences, so unlike what she is used to-it has challenged her blind acceptance of certain truths. And sometimes it’s so fucking funny.
And maybe she really is losing her mind. Again.
“Sooo . . . you’ve been good?” She smiles a little bit, casually pulling her wrists out of his grip.
And he snorts, dropping his hands. “You’re not funny.”
And she laughs, standing very close to him. Close enough to smell her.
He looks down, because she’s shorter than him-good. He stares at her forehead, and it’s a little sweaty, like him. And he sees her crazed smile, and it’s so bizarre to see it reflected at him for no reason. Like-he didn’t just fall on his ass, and there is no bleeding dent in his skull. All of this makes him very suspicious. Like he wonders why she suddenly found forgiveness in the cockles of her Mudblood heart. Not that he did anything that bad.
He continues to regard her with his extreme suspicion.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about something.” Her arm nudges his elbow.
He looks up, thinking on whether this is a good idea, squinting at the sun. “About what?”
“About how we’re going to get out of here.”
And that’s why. He can see it. It’s like one of those looks that she always gets. That crafty look of satisfaction of a plan well hatched. He knows it well from school. And it had always exasperated him because her plans more often than not-turned out rather stupid.
Draco shakes his head grimly. And he kills whatever hope she has. He puts both of his hands on her shoulders, this time not to shove her. And he regards her seriously. “Death is the only viable option here, sweetheart. And those fuckers have been watching me like a hawk. Fucking suicide watch. I don’t know why-"
“Because you’d do it, wouldn’t you? If you could.”
He stonily stares at his non-existent fire, and he shrugs. “If someone could promise me that that fucker doesn’t jump inside me and fix up the fatal mess I make-yes, I would.” He grunts. “That’s the biggest of pits, Granger. When you are forced to live life out in misery. Leave me be in my misery. No more false hopes. It’s over. The only plotting I do from here on out is not about running the fuck out of here and getting back to home. It’s how just to fucking off myself for good.”
She flinches. And she touches him on his bare elbow. And there’s a real tan there now. “Don’t talk like that.”
And he feels compelled to break into a smile. “Because you’d miss me that much, huh?”
“Actually, yes.” She doesn’t break the eye contact. “Don’t give up on us. We’ll get out of here. One day.”
He looks at her skeptically, crossing his arms. And he lets out a big snort.
And that’s how they make up.
- - - - -
chapter twelve:
I have shewn that with long-eared rabbits even so trifling a cause as the lopping forward of one ear drags forward almost every bone of the skull on that side; so that the bones on the opposite side no longer strictly correspond.
- - - - -
More weeks pass. Or is it months? They stalk around in twilight now. The sun no longer feels like midday. It now feels like cool dust, the color of a grapefruit. Their fire pits come in handy now, and the change had happened gradually, like the changing seasons of winter into spring. Hermione passes through it, barely registering when it became too cool for her to just walk about with her rolled up strip of fabric, and she takes a pair of Draco’s pants for herself-without his permission.
And though the rest of the women in the communal house stare at her and condemn her for it with their eyes, she doesn’t really talk to them. Sarah just silently watches her with disapproval. Insolent, and incurable of it. And Hermione has nothing to really fear now, because she has gotten stronger than Sarah even. She doesn’t ever need to prove it either-the rest of them can just feel it.
And Hermione gleans a bitter satisfaction when she knows that they wonder if her powers come from the fact that she was wild born. And if asked, she wouldn’t know what to say-because she doesn’t know herself, having no time to decide whether that kind of trait is learned or bred. She knows that David believes that it’s bred-but she’s not David either.
And they all have their arguments-the villagers. And David likes to set aside a place and a time for the ones that want to come forth with a grievance and explain it to him publicly. It was like a town meeting.
Hermione is so beyond thinking any of it is bizarre. She also finds that a lot of the complaints are thinly veiled criticisms at her or Draco. Sometimes both.
“I don’t understand why there is a lack of authority in some parts of the colony,” someone says, “where a woman can walk around mateless, and David, you are doing nothing about it. It’s not right.”
Hermione sees Draco walk up to her with one hand scratching the back of his head. And he grins widely. “She’s talking about you, freak,” he says in a stage whisper, nudging her arm.
Hermione smiles back at him. “She could be talking about you, Draco.”
He shakes his head. “She said, ‘woman,’ Granger. And . . . last I checked. . . .” He trails off, looking down at himself, shrugging.
It makes Hermione laugh.
“Hey, let’s get the fuck out of here. These things are fucking boring.”
No one really noticed when Hermione left with Draco. Actually, she seriously doubts that any one of them cares. And David has his ways, and he would reach out for a grope if he gets too concerned.
Hermione crosses her arms as they get farther and farther away from the fire pits, as the air becomes more prickly and sharp. She mutely follows the white fabric of Draco’s shirt and stares at the back of his head, wondering if she can convince him to let her give him a haircut.
There are fireflies out in the cow field-and cows. And there can also be the stray cannibal or two-but Hermione finds that after she had learned that they’re just squibs-vicious people-eating squibs-she’s not as fearful of them anymore. And just as well, because she hasn’t had one sighting in a long time.
“Are you thinking about the cannibals again?”
Hermione smiles. “You’re getting good at that.”
Draco shakes his head. “No, I didn’t even have to peek. I could just tell by looking at you.”
Granger is a lot better at the head-rape than he is. Amazingly, this is a fact that she refrains from shoving into his face. He supposes that it’s because they both feel the same way about mind-fucking or head-raping, or whatever they call it. Speaking for himself, he doesn’t like it at all-he can see how some people get off on the power of it-David for one, that sick fuck-but Draco just ends up finding out icky things about the people he probes into, details that he’s better off not knowing.
David is completely unflustered by the things he encounters because he’s had so much practice, and is immune to all sorts of nastiness that comes from unfiltered human thought. Draco already knows that he never wants to get to that point, so he tries to stop himself from going there. And perhaps that’s why he’s not especially good at it like others are. Only good enough to shut people out.
Granger, he doesn’t mind so much. Because she’s a lot like him. And her nasty thoughts are just plain funny. He finds her very innocent-and like David has said once before-very straightforward. Draco can feel if she’s upset with someone, and he can feel her animalistic need to crush their skull. She isn’t like the others in the colony-where she dwells on creative torture in minute details for her revenge-just a clean break and she moves on.
“That’s nice,” she says quietly, staring up at the fireflies.
“What is?” he says suspiciously.
“What you just said about me.” And she makes a twirly motion with her finger, pointing at her own head.
He doesn’t like it when she does that without permission. He gives her a sour face. “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”
“So go pee,” she deadpans.
His mouth curves into a grin because she had gotten it right. And he spins around and takes a quick jog into the bushes.
- - - - -
She already knows that Thomas is there before he emerges.
And instinctively, she reaches out to find Draco-and feels her face grow a little warm, because she catches him in a private moment-a moment between him and the plant he’s peeing on. She pulls away before he can detect her because she knows how much he doesn’t like it when people push into his head, even with the best of intentions, he hates it with a strange passion.
As for herself, it’s a useful device.
“Can I help you?”
Thomas walks out. And he grins. “Hello, Hermione.”
And immediately, he pushes everything into her head at once. An onslaught of all the nastiness of people-and every time he does it, it leaves her with a headache.
She feels his need to control everything. She feels his justification for what he has done-he’s different from Draco-she’s said it before-and she reels back a little when she feels him stare down at Mary and feel joy when he clamps his big hand over her protesting mouth. She feels his elation, and she feels his arousal.
And it always makes her sick to her stomach. It always takes her a moment-because he always catches her off guard when he does it-it takes a while for her to grab a hold of all the edges, ignoring the corners and cuts. She folds it all on top of itself. And she squashes it, and she pushes him out of her head.
She opens her eyes, and she sees Draco standing behind a smiling Thomas, watching them an indecipherable expression his face.
“I think you should leave,” he says tensely.
Thomas is one of David’s sons, and one of his favorites, no less. The reason for that being how strong he is.
He slowly turns around and glances at Draco, looking at him like he was nothing-nothing but an annoying speck.
“Hey,” Draco says softly.
And Thomas ignores him. “Why do you bother, Hermione?” he says, jerking his head towards Draco. “You are better than that thing.”
And Hermione shakes a little bit, with all the effort it’s taking to keep him out of her head.
“Hey, guy,” Draco repeats, this time laying a hand on Thomas’ shoulder.
And Thomas snaps.
He spins around and he grabs a hold of the hand on his shoulder, and he whips it backwards. And Hermione quietly goes crazy when she hears the crack of bone. And she immediately shoves her way into Draco’s head-and Jesus, she really wants Thomas to die at that very moment.
For his part, Draco has learned not to scream in pain whenever shit like that goes down. He knows self-preservation, and so he backhands Thomas’ face real hard with the broken arm, no less.
And then they both go down in a bloody mess, screaming at each other.
“YOU FUCKIN’ SHITFACED-"
“WORTHLESS-TINY-NOT FIT TO EVEN-"
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.”
“YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD.”
Hermione quickly calls out to David, telling him to come fast before Draco gets seriously hurt-she can’t give less of shit about Thomas.
She runs over quickly to Draco. Upon seeing the bleeding mess of his arm, she reaches out and quickly probes him-asking him why on earth he had smacked with his broken arm.
It’s the one I always use to hit people with, he replies calmly, in the middle of his red-lighted bursts of pulsating pain.
And she breaks into a teary laugh, and touches his face with both of her hands. “Oh, yeah,” she whispers, remembering.
And he shakes his head, knocking her hands off. “Don’t be stupid,” he tells her.
And later, when she’s sitting in the field, in the middle of a commotion, she watches as David takes his time healing Thomas’ face before he walks over to Draco. And she hates David for the millionth time in her short life.
He does not care.
- - - - -
It happens unexpectedly.
Draco still tries at fire. No one else can actually make combustion out of thin air-and Hermione suspects that that’s why Draco tries so hard at it. So that he can be special. Not the retarded kind of ‘special.’ But special-er.
“You should give up, Draco. This is senseless.”
“People need goals, Hermione.”
“This is a stupid goal. You can do the same thing with a match.”
“Dude-when man discovered fire, you bet your ass he didn’t just go-oh hey-that was . . . cool . . . ummmm. . . .” Draco trails off, scratching his head, wondering where the hell he had been going with that.
She bursts out laughing. “Draco, you are so stupid.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t be so fucking negative,” he grunts, pushing his mind harder. The sparks are coming out, but none of them are catching onto the feathered tree bark yet. “Blow, Granger.”
She gives him a wary look. But nevertheless, she leans down and softly blows over the embers.
“Too much!” he screeches, his face turning red and sweating from the mental effort. “You’re blowing too hard!”
And just when she’s about to sit up and snap at him for ordering her around, the dumb thing actually bursts into flames.
“Oh my God!” he screams. “OH MY GOD!” He stares at Hermione in wide-eyed awe. And she laughs.
“Hurry!”
He reaches over and grabs some of the stock pile of wood that he’s been saving for this very moment, and he carefully nestles his little fire in the sticks. First sticks, then logs.
It’s minutes later, as he sits next to his fire that he turns to her and says, “WOW.”
She grins. “You did good!”
And without warning, he leans over and he kisses her.
She is too surprised to smack him.
He reaches up and holds onto her face tightly, and then his lips start moving over hers. He leans in closer and he inhales the scent of the ocean. And he opens up his mouth to her. And it’s been so long-that he sort of feels the inside of himself start aching because he didn’t even know that he had been missing this, just normal human to human contact.
And maybe she feels the same way because her hands come up to tangle in his hair. His pulse hiccups a little when she clenches her fingers in his hair. He smoothly slides his calloused hands over her wrist, and he smoothly run his tongue against hers, blanking out everything thought he has ever had and instead, he concentrates on the headiness of it all, and the textures. Such as the way it feels when his hand gently skims over the warm skin of her arm, up to her shoulder. He pauses there, squeezing her shoulder.
She pulls back, gasping for air, and his eyes immediately fly open. He sees that her mouth is wet and shiny. And he avoids staring into her eyes. Instead he shakes his head, he groans, and he leans forward to recapture her lips in his. Their mouths collide, and she shrinks away a little bit, right before a whimper slips out between them and she pushes forward, meeting him stroke for stroke.
He’s not even thinking when the hand on her shoulder skims down to cup her breast. He doesn’t even know he’s been thinking about it until the second she gasps against his mouth and lightly bites down on his bottom lip. And maybe it’s okay-he decides that maybe this is okay-if it’s just the two of them here. Her hands travel down his bare back, trying to find purchase.
And he’s not thinking at all when he pushes her into the sand. It’s sort of like how he used to push her into the sand, but this time, he doesn’t shove, and he doesn’t really want to hurt her so badly.
He insinuates his leg in between hers, and he doesn’t think about that one time in the library, when he was trying to scare her and make her cry. He has just never realized how much he had missed this sort of thing. He pulls away from her lips a little to take in a breath, and he softly burrows his face into the crook of her neck, nipping at her pulse point.
He can actually hear her whisper, “Draco,” and he doesn’t know why-but it sounds very nice so close to his ears. It makes him brave enough to reach under her shirt. He can feel her heart beat. And she’s very soft.
He doesn’t think about how his hands are far too rough for her stomach. He doesn’t even consider that it’s all spinning out of control far too fast. He feels pain, and the need to alleviate it, and he grinds down roughly on her leg and maybe he’s a little bit harsh when he bites down on her skin because it just wasn’t enough to alleviate the slow drag of pressure.
His hand moves on its own accord, and he has already undone the tie on her-or rather--his pants that she stole. And the material is already down and stretched around her thighs. When he had done this-he doesn’t remember. And he doesn’t waste much time before he slips his hand into her underwear.
And she cries out at the first sweep.
And the next thing that he knows definitely is that her small hand firmly closes over his, and she’s trying to push him away.
“Stop,” she tells him softly. “Draco,” she whispers. “Please.”
And he looks down at her. And it looks like she’s crying.
He freezes. And he relives all of it. And he’s thinking-his mind is whirring at a mile a minute-and the first thing that comes to the forefront of his mind are the words, “but it was consensual.”
And he’s so confused. He immediate gets off of her, breathing heavily, gasping in air.
“Hey,” she says softly. “I’m-"
He doesn’t feel it anymore. He manages to run about six feet before he falls to his knees and starts retching out cow meat. Even a ways away, he can clearly hear her pull her pants back up, and he can hear her tying the string up. And he convulses, curving over the sand on his hands and knees. And he lets it all out. And it’s gray and shiny.
He can’t do anything to stop her from crawling over and sitting next to him. He feels her hand on his back as he throws up some more.
“Aw, Draco,” she says sympathetically. Like he’s some moron or something.
He’s too embarrassed to ask, so his arm flies out and he tries to swat her arm away. He mostly succeeds, but he hits a little bit of her chin in the process. “Get the hell away from me!” he screams. “FUCK!”
“Draco,” she says weakly.
“Get away. You’re making me sick, Mudblood.” He coughs.
He doesn’t even think before he throws it out. And he already knows it’s a huge mistake, even before she breaks out into tears. He knows from the sinking feeling in his gut.
“You’re . . . such a . . . I hate you,” she tells him, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Don’t you ever listen, you dumb bitch!” he shouts at her. “Leave me the fuck alone! Jesus!”
He doesn’t apologize for it.
- - - - -
Over the next few days, Draco finds that it’s pretty damn difficult to avoid a person if him and that person are the only two fucking normal people around. And he also finds that the perpetual sunshine doesn’t help either-because she can always see him, and he can always see her. There is not the neat trick of night time to hide his face from her sour expression or her condemning stares.
Maybe they are regular stares, he tells himself dully. Maybe she just looks brain dead like that all the time.
He can tell that she’s very angry that he keeps blocking all her efforts to talk to him, verbally or non-verbally.
He can feel her staring at his back when he’s hunched over his precious fire. He can see her narrow her eyes whenever she blocks a pathway and he has to go take a leak and the only way to get out is to go past her-and since they are not talking, he can’t very well tell her to move her fat ass, so he slides by-and her eyes narrow when he accidentally brushes his arm against her. Her eyes narrow with accusation and derision.
Sometimes it makes him want to slap her dead. Other times, he wants to shove her down and tell her that he’s trying to get the hell away from her, he’s not trying to rape her. Jesus Christ-he ought to say all of that before he makes a fucking run for it, try his luck in the forest of palm trees and cannibals. Maybe he would rather risk getting clobbered by a coconut and hang around with the birds than sit and watch her blame him for everything that goes wrong.
It had been her own damn fault that they are stuck on this godforsaken place anyways. It’d do her good not to forget what a fucking burden she is to him.
“Hey, bitch, stop avoiding me.”
He jumps around in surprise. Before he shiftily avoids her again by covering his ears and walking away. He doesn’t expect her to confront him on this head on. And she always does shit that he doesn’t expect. It’s annoying.
“DRACO!”
He keeps walking.
“DRACO! You’re being a baby!”
“Like that’s news to me!” he throws back. Very cleverly. And then he runs and hides.
- - - - -
Thank-you for participating in the Hot Summer Nights with Draco and Hermione fic exchange.