Hermione/Draco- Deadly Legends- Chapter 2: A Disturbing Dream
Title: Deadly Legends- Chapter 2: A Disturbing Dream
Author: butterflys_fics/blacksouledbutterfly
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,952
Summary: Someone is watching her. Someone is stalking. The grounds are bathed in blood. And someone wants her dead. Hermione has to figure out how to keep herself alive....if that's even possible.
Warnings: Descriptions of violent death.
Notes: The chapter index can be found here.
Lovely chapter image by lyzzic @ TDA
It was weird, to know someone who was dead. Not so much someone who had died, actually, but someone who had been murdered in such a brutal fashion and while she couldn’t say she was exceedingly close to Melody she could say she was definitely a good person, that she didn’t deserve to have something like that happen to her. But then again she doesn’t suppose that most people deserve to be hacked apart by an axe. Even the most cruel and horrible of people deserve a much less painful death than that. It’s the most humane thing, after all. But whoever had killed Melody obviously didn’t care much about humane. They were obviously more interested in pain and fear and they had achieved both of those with Melody's death.
The faculty wasn’t talking about it, not yet. Even as the day went on and they would talk quietly amongst themselves there was no sign that they were going to tell the students anytime soon that one of their schoolmates had been killed in their home. So by the time everyone had turned in for the night she was one of the few people who knew. Her and Malfoy and whoever else he had decided to tell that little bit of information to.
Sleep didn’t come easy but when it finally came it was restless. It didn’t take long at all for her heart to start to race, for her dream world to turn into one that was a complete and total nightmare.
She had no idea where she ended up in her dream but wherever it was she was positive she was underground. The walls were cold and damp and smelled musty; somewhere she could hear water dripping and she was alone, in a room with no doors and lighting that flickered on and off so frequently it was nearly enough to cause a headache. She stumbled backwards and pressed her hands against the stonewall to brace herself, finding the surface cold and wet and when she brought her hands back in front of her and lifted them up to look at her palms they were slicked with thick, wet blood, extremely bright when the lights flickered on.
Somewhere in the distance she heard someone scream and she could feel her pulse beating in her tongue, making it feel heavy in her mouth. Wiping her hands on her jeans she took a deep breath, swallowing against the thick feeling in her throat and took off running down the hall, her footsteps sounding as loud as her heart is in her ears. The screaming came again, louder this time and more desperate and she ran faster, her arms scraping against the walls as she took sharp turns, her skin scrapping off and splitting, blood starting to run down her arms, warm and thick.
Behind her she could hear footsteps that didn’t belong to her. they starts out slow and relaxed and then became hurried, following after her so she tried to run faster, tried to get herself to move, to find an exit even though she couldn’t move any faster than she was. She was already at maximum speed, her lungs were already burning with the effort and her legs were tired but no matter how many corners she turned she couldn’t seem to find an exit, couldn’t even see a spot that was any different than the one she had encountered before. It was like she was in a maze that she just couldn’t possibly get out of.
The footsteps started to get closer and her heartbeat sped up, nearly deafening her to all else. And that’s when she knew without a doubt that she wasn’t going to get out of there, that she was going to end up being the one screaming but it didn’t make her stop running. It didn’t even slow her down. She just kept moving until she felt a sharp instant pain in her back. It made her stumble and gasp and nearly fall forward, made thick and warm blood flow down her back. The pain came again, sharper as the blade cut heragain, making her body burn and tingle, making the air almost impossible to fill her lungs.
She started to fall forward and then an arm wrapped around her waist and then she was pulled back against a body, her vision blurring and darkening and her head spinning, her legs feeling like jelly though her back wasn’t hurting anymore like her body had decided it no longer wanted to process pain and it was a blessing, the last blessing she knew she would ever have.
In the flickering light a blade entered her vision, part of it silvery and glinting in the light, the rest of it coated in fresh, blood- her blood. It should make her stomach churn, it should make her feel like her world is spinning and like she's going to vomit but she's so empty right now that she can't feel anything about it. It doesn’t get to her at all.
She feels breath warm and moist against her ear as her eyes start to flutter shut, her breath becoming shallow and week. "Don’t you know?" the voice asks, a dark and gravely voice that she feels like she should recognize even though she can't make the connection right now. "You should always believe what you hear." It was the last thing she would hear.
She awoke with a start, sitting up in her bed, panting like she couldn’t catch her breath and had reached up to press a palm against her throat to check to see if it really was all a dream and found her check unmarred and blood free. But her heart was beating so rapidly that she felt like it was going to explode while everyone slept peacefully around her. And she knew, just knew that she wasn’t going to be able to get anymore sleep that night so she didn’t even bother to try.
Slipping out of her bed she put her shoes on and pulled on her coat over her bedclothes and slowly made her way down the stairs of the girl's dormitory and out into the empty common room, taking a seat in one of the chairs, curling her legs up towards her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sits there, trying to get her mind to calm down again even though it keeps on racing. The voice that had been in her head kept dancing around and she tried to think about where she remembered it from but found herself unable to. The only thing that she knew was that she recognized the voice from somewhere, that something about it had seemed familiar to her though she couldn’t quite place where she had heard it.
But soon the common room started to feel suffocating and she had to get out of there so she climbed out of the chair and made her way out of the entrance, letting the portrait slide back into place and then made her way down the hall even as she could hear the Fat Lady waking up and mumbling about how kids weren’t respecting curfews and how it would serve them right if they got into trouble but she doesn’t let it bother her. She just knows that she has to get out of there, to go and get some air though she had no idea where she was really going.
In no time, however, she ended up outside of the school, just outside of the door and found the breeze to be a lot cooler than she expected so she wrapped her arms around herself and waited for something or for nothing- waited until the dream faded from her mind and it all made sense though she wasn’t sure if it ever would.
She was pretty quiet during breakfast though no one seemed to notice. She replied when asked a question, smiled at the appropriate times but mostly didn’t think of anything specific beyond the dream and didn’t start any of the conversations because she didn’t want to bring up the dream, didn’t want to talk about it. she was pretty much sleepwalking throughout the day, going through the motions during class and then separating from her friends and making her way across the school grounds and finding a place to sit, pressing her back against a tree and sitting so she could look out at the Great Lake.
It didn’t take all that long for someone else to find her, for her to feel the presence of another person by her and she didn’t even have to hear their voice to know who it was because only one person could enjoy seeing her acting like a proverbial zombie; only one person would want to rub it in her face.
"Brain stop, Granger?" came Malfoy's voice. "Don’t know what to do with yourself? Too busy crying over that dead girl?"
"I'm not crying," she replied tonelessly, her gaze never leaving the lake. "Just because I'm not excited that she's dead doesn’t mean that I'm crying. I know you must be quite pleased to see a muggle born dead but I can assure you, Malfoy, that not everyone shares that feeling."
"The smart ones do."
"That’s your opinion then, isn’t it? I doubt that intelligence has anything to do with it."
"Well, if you're not crying over that mudblood then why are you sitting out here without your pathetic little friends just looking out at the bloody lake? You going mental or something?"
"Wouldn’t you just love that?" she questioned, turning her head slightly to look at him out of the corner of her eyes from under her hair. "You'd bloody love if I went mental and had to be sent away, wouldn’t you? Would be one less muggle born in the school for you to have to share oxygen with, wouldn’t it? I do believe you would throw a bloody party if I were to go mental and be sent away."
The edge of his mouth curled up slightly, starting to turn into that insufferable smirk of his. "Can't say I wouldn’t enjoy being rid of you," he conceded, shrugging his shoulders a bit, his gray eyes almost sparkling at the sheer idea of it.
"You're horrid."
"And your insults are rather pathetic."
"I don’t care about your opinion, Malfoy."
"Oh, come off it, Granger. You care what everyone thinks about you. If the whole world doesn’t like you, doesn’t respect you then you get quite bothered by it. You can't fool yourself into thinking otherwise so you definitely can't fool me."
She watched him quietly for several moments, just looking at him from under her hair and then pressed her hands against the ground beneath her and pushed herself up and off of the ground, rubbing her hands over the back of her skirt once she's standing so she can smooth down the fabric and get rid of any stray blades of grass.
"Bugger off, Malfoy," she told him evenly, her tone not nearly as annoyed as she was feeling despite it swirling around inside of her in an almost suffocating way. She just wasn’t about to let him get that type of satisfaction, wasn’t about to let him know how much he was getting to her. If she did that then he won and she wasn’t about to let him win. So she kept her voice even, kept her expression empty and turned away from him, making her way slowly back towards the school and towards the people she actually could stand.
Malfoy's laughter followed her as she left.
Author: butterflys_fics/blacksouledbutterfly
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,952
Summary: Someone is watching her. Someone is stalking. The grounds are bathed in blood. And someone wants her dead. Hermione has to figure out how to keep herself alive....if that's even possible.
Warnings: Descriptions of violent death.
Notes: The chapter index can be found here.
Lovely chapter image by lyzzic @ TDA
It was weird, to know someone who was dead. Not so much someone who had died, actually, but someone who had been murdered in such a brutal fashion and while she couldn’t say she was exceedingly close to Melody she could say she was definitely a good person, that she didn’t deserve to have something like that happen to her. But then again she doesn’t suppose that most people deserve to be hacked apart by an axe. Even the most cruel and horrible of people deserve a much less painful death than that. It’s the most humane thing, after all. But whoever had killed Melody obviously didn’t care much about humane. They were obviously more interested in pain and fear and they had achieved both of those with Melody's death.
The faculty wasn’t talking about it, not yet. Even as the day went on and they would talk quietly amongst themselves there was no sign that they were going to tell the students anytime soon that one of their schoolmates had been killed in their home. So by the time everyone had turned in for the night she was one of the few people who knew. Her and Malfoy and whoever else he had decided to tell that little bit of information to.
Sleep didn’t come easy but when it finally came it was restless. It didn’t take long at all for her heart to start to race, for her dream world to turn into one that was a complete and total nightmare.
She had no idea where she ended up in her dream but wherever it was she was positive she was underground. The walls were cold and damp and smelled musty; somewhere she could hear water dripping and she was alone, in a room with no doors and lighting that flickered on and off so frequently it was nearly enough to cause a headache. She stumbled backwards and pressed her hands against the stonewall to brace herself, finding the surface cold and wet and when she brought her hands back in front of her and lifted them up to look at her palms they were slicked with thick, wet blood, extremely bright when the lights flickered on.
Somewhere in the distance she heard someone scream and she could feel her pulse beating in her tongue, making it feel heavy in her mouth. Wiping her hands on her jeans she took a deep breath, swallowing against the thick feeling in her throat and took off running down the hall, her footsteps sounding as loud as her heart is in her ears. The screaming came again, louder this time and more desperate and she ran faster, her arms scraping against the walls as she took sharp turns, her skin scrapping off and splitting, blood starting to run down her arms, warm and thick.
Behind her she could hear footsteps that didn’t belong to her. they starts out slow and relaxed and then became hurried, following after her so she tried to run faster, tried to get herself to move, to find an exit even though she couldn’t move any faster than she was. She was already at maximum speed, her lungs were already burning with the effort and her legs were tired but no matter how many corners she turned she couldn’t seem to find an exit, couldn’t even see a spot that was any different than the one she had encountered before. It was like she was in a maze that she just couldn’t possibly get out of.
The footsteps started to get closer and her heartbeat sped up, nearly deafening her to all else. And that’s when she knew without a doubt that she wasn’t going to get out of there, that she was going to end up being the one screaming but it didn’t make her stop running. It didn’t even slow her down. She just kept moving until she felt a sharp instant pain in her back. It made her stumble and gasp and nearly fall forward, made thick and warm blood flow down her back. The pain came again, sharper as the blade cut heragain, making her body burn and tingle, making the air almost impossible to fill her lungs.
She started to fall forward and then an arm wrapped around her waist and then she was pulled back against a body, her vision blurring and darkening and her head spinning, her legs feeling like jelly though her back wasn’t hurting anymore like her body had decided it no longer wanted to process pain and it was a blessing, the last blessing she knew she would ever have.
In the flickering light a blade entered her vision, part of it silvery and glinting in the light, the rest of it coated in fresh, blood- her blood. It should make her stomach churn, it should make her feel like her world is spinning and like she's going to vomit but she's so empty right now that she can't feel anything about it. It doesn’t get to her at all.
She feels breath warm and moist against her ear as her eyes start to flutter shut, her breath becoming shallow and week. "Don’t you know?" the voice asks, a dark and gravely voice that she feels like she should recognize even though she can't make the connection right now. "You should always believe what you hear." It was the last thing she would hear.
She awoke with a start, sitting up in her bed, panting like she couldn’t catch her breath and had reached up to press a palm against her throat to check to see if it really was all a dream and found her check unmarred and blood free. But her heart was beating so rapidly that she felt like it was going to explode while everyone slept peacefully around her. And she knew, just knew that she wasn’t going to be able to get anymore sleep that night so she didn’t even bother to try.
Slipping out of her bed she put her shoes on and pulled on her coat over her bedclothes and slowly made her way down the stairs of the girl's dormitory and out into the empty common room, taking a seat in one of the chairs, curling her legs up towards her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sits there, trying to get her mind to calm down again even though it keeps on racing. The voice that had been in her head kept dancing around and she tried to think about where she remembered it from but found herself unable to. The only thing that she knew was that she recognized the voice from somewhere, that something about it had seemed familiar to her though she couldn’t quite place where she had heard it.
But soon the common room started to feel suffocating and she had to get out of there so she climbed out of the chair and made her way out of the entrance, letting the portrait slide back into place and then made her way down the hall even as she could hear the Fat Lady waking up and mumbling about how kids weren’t respecting curfews and how it would serve them right if they got into trouble but she doesn’t let it bother her. She just knows that she has to get out of there, to go and get some air though she had no idea where she was really going.
In no time, however, she ended up outside of the school, just outside of the door and found the breeze to be a lot cooler than she expected so she wrapped her arms around herself and waited for something or for nothing- waited until the dream faded from her mind and it all made sense though she wasn’t sure if it ever would.
She was pretty quiet during breakfast though no one seemed to notice. She replied when asked a question, smiled at the appropriate times but mostly didn’t think of anything specific beyond the dream and didn’t start any of the conversations because she didn’t want to bring up the dream, didn’t want to talk about it. she was pretty much sleepwalking throughout the day, going through the motions during class and then separating from her friends and making her way across the school grounds and finding a place to sit, pressing her back against a tree and sitting so she could look out at the Great Lake.
It didn’t take all that long for someone else to find her, for her to feel the presence of another person by her and she didn’t even have to hear their voice to know who it was because only one person could enjoy seeing her acting like a proverbial zombie; only one person would want to rub it in her face.
"Brain stop, Granger?" came Malfoy's voice. "Don’t know what to do with yourself? Too busy crying over that dead girl?"
"I'm not crying," she replied tonelessly, her gaze never leaving the lake. "Just because I'm not excited that she's dead doesn’t mean that I'm crying. I know you must be quite pleased to see a muggle born dead but I can assure you, Malfoy, that not everyone shares that feeling."
"The smart ones do."
"That’s your opinion then, isn’t it? I doubt that intelligence has anything to do with it."
"Well, if you're not crying over that mudblood then why are you sitting out here without your pathetic little friends just looking out at the bloody lake? You going mental or something?"
"Wouldn’t you just love that?" she questioned, turning her head slightly to look at him out of the corner of her eyes from under her hair. "You'd bloody love if I went mental and had to be sent away, wouldn’t you? Would be one less muggle born in the school for you to have to share oxygen with, wouldn’t it? I do believe you would throw a bloody party if I were to go mental and be sent away."
The edge of his mouth curled up slightly, starting to turn into that insufferable smirk of his. "Can't say I wouldn’t enjoy being rid of you," he conceded, shrugging his shoulders a bit, his gray eyes almost sparkling at the sheer idea of it.
"You're horrid."
"And your insults are rather pathetic."
"I don’t care about your opinion, Malfoy."
"Oh, come off it, Granger. You care what everyone thinks about you. If the whole world doesn’t like you, doesn’t respect you then you get quite bothered by it. You can't fool yourself into thinking otherwise so you definitely can't fool me."
She watched him quietly for several moments, just looking at him from under her hair and then pressed her hands against the ground beneath her and pushed herself up and off of the ground, rubbing her hands over the back of her skirt once she's standing so she can smooth down the fabric and get rid of any stray blades of grass.
"Bugger off, Malfoy," she told him evenly, her tone not nearly as annoyed as she was feeling despite it swirling around inside of her in an almost suffocating way. She just wasn’t about to let him get that type of satisfaction, wasn’t about to let him know how much he was getting to her. If she did that then he won and she wasn’t about to let him win. So she kept her voice even, kept her expression empty and turned away from him, making her way slowly back towards the school and towards the people she actually could stand.
Malfoy's laughter followed her as she left.