Darkest Desires

It was like a dream, a rancid and horrific nightmare. She stood there in silence, Harry on her left, Ron on her right, Sirius, Dumbledore, there were so many others there but she felt none of it. The ghastly image of a skull, snake thrashing from the mouth floated above her wrecked home. She glanced up at it, her eyes ablaze with a fury so cold it burned. Tears streaked her face, but she could do nothing to stop them.

Hermione ran over the threshold and up the crumbling stairs that led to her parents' room, stumbling more than once. They were there, both of them lying crumpled in the corner of the room. There was blood seeping from the slashing wound in her father's chest, her mother lay on his shoulder, she had clearly been crying before she died. Lying a few feet away was a bendy dagger coated with blood. Hermione ran to it and gingerly stood over it. Hermione felt the anger rising within her to the point of breaking and she fell to her knees, sobbing with a silent, whirling mixture of misery and rage. She heard someone come up the stairs behind her and turning slightly she saw the silhouette cast onto the wall in front of her. She knew his shadow so well; she knew everything about him so well, for she had loved him. But that was no more. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing except revenge.

"Hermione?" Harry tried. She picked up the bloodied dagger and turned to face him, wiping her eyes dry and standing in front of him. She had regained her composure, but not her senses or her control.

"This is your fault!" she spat. Ron and Dumbledore appeared at Harry's side. Harry said nothing, just stood there slightly open mouthed, and took everything she threw at him. She knew very deep down that it wasn't Harry's fault really, but she didn't care. He should have stopped it; he'd saved himself so many times, why couldn't he save them too? She knew what she was saying was hurting him, but she wanted to hurt him for letting it happen. He couldn't possibly understand her pain now.

"Now, come Hermione, we cannot blame anyone but Voldemort for this tragedy..." Dumbledore began.

"No! Don't try to justify this! It's not fair! It's not fucking fair!" she yelled, her tangled emotions taking over, and tears beginning to streak her face again. "It's your fault! They were innocent; I wish I never knew you Harry Potter! Famous and brave, but not brave enough to save your friends. I hate you Harry Potter! I fucking HATE you all!" with that she pushed past them all and stormed from the house, her own blood now mingled with that of her fathers as she had tightened her grip around the blade. She didn't know where she was going, she had nowhere to go, but all she wanted was to escape the nightmare that had taken over her life. Voldemort would pay. Whoever did this would pay. She walked through parks and down alleys around the town, trying to make sense of it all in her mind, until everyone had left the house, the Ministry had taken away the bodies and removed the Dark Mark, screening the house from the view of Muggles. But she crept past the wards, she was the best witch of her year, she knew a thing or two about breaking pathetic screening wards. She walked silently and slowly up the stairs and pushed the door to their room open again.

**

An hour later she still lay there. There were broken items strewn across the room, some from the attack, some from Hermione herself. She had gotten angry and almost completely trashed the room. The curtains were slashed and the walls were cracking; there was only one item left in the room that wasn't destroyed. On the wall hung a photograph of Hermione and her mother and father on the day they found out she was a witch. She lay flat on her back, the picture taunting her, calling to her. The dagger she had picked up was still in her hand, and during her fit of rage she had accidentally, - or was it on purpose? - Cut a long jagged gash across her arm. It bled freely but it was nothing to the inner torment she felt. The blood may be dripping softly from her skin, but the essence of her soul was almost bled dry. It wasn't Harry's fault. It was hers. Tears welled in her eyes as the bitterness turned to sorrow, and she cried for some time, always eyes on the photo that was to fuel her new passions. If she hadn't gone to Hogwarts, they wouldn't have been in the line of fire, if she hadn't been friends with Harry Potter, they would have been safe. Nothing she could do now would change her view on that. Their deaths hung over her head, and she knew it. She sat up suddenly.

"Accio!" the photo flew into her hand, and she smashed the glass with her fist, grazing the knuckles on the glass, and ripped the picture out of its frame, putting it into her pocket and throwing the frame, clattering to the floor. She then went to stand in the corner where they had died. Outside it had started to snow. It was winter and the Christmas period was quickly descending upon them. A perfect white Christmas, the street was picture perfect; like a card, except for the one blip that was her house, decaying and crumbling to the ground slowly. I'll give them a present they'll never forget; she thought when a sound behind her startled her.

"Well, well, I told you Granger, didn't I? Mudbloods and Muggles would be the first." Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway of her decimated house, a grin on his face. Her family, her life was destroyed, and he stood there grinning!

"You knew they were going to do this, you bastard!" she began.

"Of course I knew. I'm one of them; I know everything about what we do. Some of us are born to suffer for what we are, some of us are born to make you suffer." She wanted to kill him. Right now, she raised her wand and he made no move to stop her.

"You think I won't do it, don't you Malfoy? You think I'm too much of a Mudblood, and good person to kill you. Well here's news for you..."

"Wait. I don't think anything of the sort, Granger. I think quite the opposite actually. I'm prepared to believe even you could kill after what just happened. However, I don't think you want to kill me right now. Because I have a proposition for you."

"What? I don't want anything to do with you, Malfoy. I just want to kill you and everyone else who had anything to do with this."

"Well then, in that case your looking for my Father, he killed your father with that very knife," he nodded towards the knife in her hand before continuing, his face was glowing with malevolent glee at her pain. "Was gruesome indeed, didn't seem to want to die. And then Peter Pettigrew, little pathetic Pettigrew, tortured your mother for twenty minutes before she finally relented. It was glorious. She screamed for mercy, but in the grand finale we had my father make her finish him off; bleeding and dying, your father, killed by..."

"STUPEFY!" Malfoy flew backwards and hit the wall with such a force that Hermione was sure she must have knocked him senseless. She walked over to him, wand fixed on the point between his eyes as he stood back up, looking angry now.

"Shut the fuck up! Tell me what you want and then I'm going to kill you." She was aware that she had never before even thought about the Killing curse, but she knew, fuelled by the coals of revenge that seethed inside her, she knew she could kill. And she knew she would do soon.

"I can offer you a way to bring them back." His face was contorted with an expression she had seen only a few times before on his face. It was a sort of triumphant grimace, as though he was blackmailing someone to do something absolutely horrific.

"Why should I believe you, you have always wanted to hurt me, and I'm sure you want my dirty blood out of the wizarding world, don't you?"

"Well," he came closer to her, the spicy scent of him washing over her. "I used to, Granger, but that's not what I want anymore." He fixed his cold, icicle eyes with her fiery hazel ones and they stared at each other. The moment was almost frozen in time, hatred and a deeper passion mixing in a swirling cacophony of confusing and conflicting desire. Neither moved nor seemed to know what to do, until Draco leaned closer still, so close his lips brushed her cheek as he spoke in a whisper.

"I only want to help you, I can give you what you want, Hermione..." She felt a sudden shiver of fear at her name coming from the lips of her enemy and the lingering voice of sanity in the back of her mind, rationality trying to reason with her contorted mind. Part of her wanted to push him away and run back to Harry and Ron, so she could be comforted and consoled, but a deeper inner desire was taking over, intensified by her fury. Their names caused more of an angry reaction than Draco's did now. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, and stepped backwards.

"You don't want to help me, Malfoy," she spat, suddenly feeling more bitterly towards him that anyone else. Malfoy simply stared, his gaze hard and determined.

"Oh no? Well why don't you look at the situation, Granger. Where's Potter and Weasel? Eh? Not come running to your side have they?"

"Shut up!"

"It's true though, poor Hermione Granger, an orphan just like the Boy who fucking lived, but where is he? Off having fun with that demented Weasel probably..."

"I said shut up!"

"You can't take it can you? That I'm here, and they're not? Doesn't that beg the question of whether or not they really care about you? The..."

"SHUT UP!" her voice echoed through the house as she span round to face him, her nose inches from his. "I couldn't fucking care less if they were here or not! I hate them, and I hate you! Just fuck off Malfoy! FUCK OFF!" she yelled the last words, and an eerie silence descended on them, before Draco suddenly smiled again. Not a sweet, innocent smile like Harry's, but a malicious and wickedly enticing smile. She swung her arm back to smack him across the face, but he caught her arm and pulled her closer.

"You know it's true Hermione," he whispered, his voice hissing in her ear like that of a serpent. She looked at him. He was tall, his blonde hair and pale complexion even more ghostly in these surroundings, there was something haunting about him, hauntingly beautiful.

"They abandoned you when you needed it most." His words were like poison in her mind, sweet, searching for a weak spot, deadly. Draco looked her in the eye for an answer and something took over her suddenly, and she closed the gap between them, kissing him gently. For a moment he seemed slightly startled that it was she who had initiated this, but that passed and he pulled her closer still, into his kiss, so he was in control.

Draco broke away, a wicked grin crossing his lips.

"So, does that mean you want my help?" he asked. She did not smile back, and her voice was completely flat when she spoke.

"Yes. I want your help Draco." She never thought she'd ever say those words. She never thought she would ever have to be so close to Draco Malfoy, but some horrible part of her was enjoying it, realising she didn't have to be that close to him, she wanted to. Her drive came from the thought that her parents could be brought back, saved, and she flattened her rational mind, allowing Draco to lead her from the room. Not from the thought of something more from Draco than help. She knew she was entirely under his power now; she had had her chance to kill him, and hadn't done it. Now if he had the chance, he could do the same.

**

Hermione did not return to school again. It was her final year, and Owls descended on her like large, fluffy parcels dropping letters asking where she was, if she was okay, if she wanted notes taken and when she was coming back. They came from Harry, Ron, Sirius, Dumbledore, and even one from the Minister of Magic, Mr. Fudge. But she ignored them all. On Draco's instruction, she burned them, relishing on the thought that Harry and Ron must be worried sick. She hoped they were. She hoped they couldn't sleep, and their dreams were filled with the morbid images of death that haunted her night times; filled with screaming of innocents, the splattering of fresh blood and the smell of putrefying flesh, and the blood on their hands. It was certainly on hers.

Draco had taken her to a hotel in a Wizarding village the night after her parents' murders. There he had told her to wait. For some reason, she didn't quite know why, she did. It was now two days later, and he had not returned to her. She thought perhaps it was his sick idea of a joke. If it was then he would die too, probably first. But something in the back of her mind kept her there. The kiss. He had kissed her back, and part of her wanted to see him again. She told herself over and over that she hated him, but he analytical mind was in overdrive. He, of all people had come to her house, come to offer her a solution. Not Harry, or Ron trying again to get her to understand. No. The boy she hated most in the world, she discovered, she actually loved. Perhaps all those years of insults and bitching had been their way of hiding affection that they didn't know what to do with. Perhaps it was just that it had taken something so huge to release her true inner feelings before she could realise it. Or perhaps she had been denying it, because she knew what it meant at that time. If she had chosen to follow her desires then, it meant forbidden love. A Slytherin and Gryffindor pairing? She would have been hated. But no, it was Harry and Ron whose opinions meant everything to her. That was why she could admit it now. She had cut herself free of the bonds that tied her to them, like the cutting of the rope to a ship newly released from port, completely severed from land, and what was familiar and safe. This was all new to her, but she was loving it. She found hurting others gave her a strangely sadistic sense of pleasure. Her world had completely flipped upside down. She hated the Boy Who Lived, and loved his enemy. How surreal it all seemed, when put into words.

The door swung open and Draco entered carrying a vial of something, which he pocketed before reaching the desk near the door.

"Hello Hermione," he said, his voice deadly soft. "There are some people I'd like you to meet."

"Oh really? Don't you think the Death Eaters will kill me, you idiot?"

"Oh no, not at all. This is what they wanted. I am a Death Eater, and unless I'm very much mistaken, you are still living." She looked into his crystal clear eyes and said what she least expected herself to say.

"That's because you love me." She stood and sauntered over to him. He stared at her, that obviously wasn't something he had expected her to say either, and she could see his mind working furiously to deny the statement as false. Then he shrugged, faced her and said plainly.

"I think you're right," and he grabbed her by the arms, pulling her into a fierce and intense kiss, their teeth clattering together as he pulled her in with more force than was necessary. She reciprocated, sparing no time for being gentle, sliding her hands across his chest and dragging her fingers through his silky hair, whilst he slid his cool fingers up the sides of her shirt. Then, he broke it off, smirking as he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the corridor.

"I must take you now, to meet them."

"Can that wait?" she said, a devious grin twisting onto her lips as she tried to pull him back into the room. Draco raised an eyebrow, still grinning.

"Much as I wish it could, it can't. Or else my head will be on a plate, and the rest of my body will be in bloody tatters decorating the Dark Lord's living room."

"But surely the Dark Lord can understand the need for earthly pleasures?" she said. His smirk widened and he kissed her again.

"Very, hedonistic," he said between kisses. She ran her hands through his hair again, slowly kissing him, cheek and neck. She pulled him backwards and turned, shoving him back into the room, closing the door.

"Well, I'm willing to live with that if you are," she said, as she continued kissing him, running her hands up underneath his shirt.

**

They left the hotel and walked down several streets before coming to a boarded up house. It was dark and there was no glass in the windows, the torn curtains rippling in the wind. It reminded her of her own house two nights ago. They walked through the gate, past the tall, menacing looking stone gargoyles standing on the pillars. Draco opened the door and held it for her to walk through. She did, and immediately she felt her wand whipped out of her hand.

"Expelliarmus!" A voice said from the shadows. Draco shut the door and pushed her forwards. She no longer had her wand, but she did still have the knife she had picked up from the floor of her home. They obviously did not realise that. Or perhaps they felt she was no great threat. Well, we will see.

With Draco she entered a large and for the most part, empty room. Around the edges of the room stood fourteen black, hooded figures. There were two spaces, one of which Draco took, and seconds later, his father, Lucius walked into the room and stood next to his son. He was carrying Hermione's wand. A tremor of fear tingled at her spine. I'm going to die. But no one was doing anything. They all simply stood there, blocking her escape, but doing nothing to keep her there.

"Welcome, Miss Granger," a cold, rasping voice said. She whirled round and saw Voldemort standing directly behind her, only a few feet away. The tingle of fear became a horrible sense of panic, yet she steeled her nerves. She couldn't die yet; she had to get revenge. It seemed Voldemort knew what she was thinking. He did not move, but held suspended in the air a mirror about the size of an A3 poster.

"It seems, Miss Granger, you have forgotten who you are."

"I know perfectly well who I am. Don't presume to judge me." Voldemort ignored this, and proceeded as if she had not spoken at all.

"This is the Mirror of Truth. It will show you what you really are. You inner self, the self you have been denying, and hiding. It shows you what you are. Not what you might be, or might once have been, but what you are. Do you know, Hermione? Do you want to look into this mirror?"

"I know what I am."

"No, you don't. You only think you do."

"I will not look into it. I do not care what twisted ideas you have to try and make me fall under your will, I am here for one reason. To find out how to bring my parents back. I don't care what you want, I can give you Harry Potter if I must. I just want them back." Her voice was desperate, like that of one on their deathbed, struggling to get out a secret hidden for so many years. Silence. She glanced at Draco. He looked away. Lucius stepped forward. She clamped her hand tightly around the photo in her pocket.

"How can we get into the castle?"

"Hogwarts? There is a passage in Honeydukes..." she paused, remembering this was the man who had killed her father. And suddenly realising for the first time, just by looking at the hatred in this eyes, and the smirk on his face that she was betraying everything she ever had been, Harry, Ron, herself and her parents memory, and giving them what they wanted. She gasped. She didn't know what she was; she had become something she never wanted to be. Lucius Malfoy smiled a cold and horrible smile, and she knew that they had been lying all along, it was all a scheme, and she had followed it so easily. She took out of her pocket, and glanced at the photo before stepping sideways to see in the mirror what she knew she would see. Herself, betraying everyone she had ever loved and everything she had ever believed. She had become a monster. Her soul was twisted and distorted beyond repair, her inner-self had died. Hermione Granger was dead, and all that was left was a soulless, heartless void.

"Thank you, that is all we wanted to know." She stared at Draco, he was standing by his father's side, a proud look in Lucius' eyes, and she knew that she had been taken for a fool. And she was a fool for believing it.

"You lied to me...I..." she couldn't phrase what she wanted to say. Draco shook his head slightly, and then stopped as Lucius looked at him.

"Indeed," Lucius said. "How did you ever believe he liked you, you're a dirty little Mudblood," he said, approaching her slowly. At that moment, her despair reached the point of no return; Lucius had drawn his wand and stepped right up close to her. Tears had begun to streak down her face, and she plunged a hand into her robes and grabbed the knife, thrusting it into his chest before he could speak.

"Hermione, NO!" Draco yelled stepping forward. Lucius crumpled as she twisted the knife up and down.

"Bleed you bastard! BLEED!" she yelled before yanking it out and staring down at him, a manic look of satisfaction on her face. Her hair was wild, and her eyes were blood shot from the stresses of the past two days, her breathing uneven as realisation dawned upon her. She was crushed. She had murdered someone in the same cold blood they had murdered her family; she had declared her feelings for someone who used her, and with his suffocating, poisoned words taught her to hate with such a fierce passion. A boy who followed unquestioningly a father who was lying, gasping on the floor at her feet, as her dagger dripped blood onto her hands. She looked at Draco, who was standing in shock, and her vision blurred as the tears flowed freely down her face. Around her she knew the Death Eaters were coming out of their stupefied shock, and were going to kill her. Well, you won't get that satisfaction from me! She thought bitterly, driving the knife into her own chest, screaming as she did so. The pain was substantial, but the shock took over and the pain, along with the cruel world ebbed away...her last image before she blacked out was of Draco, standing over her, picking up the knife, a sense of disbelief in his eyes. Then she completely blacked out, her dying breath taken with the contentment that she had at least taken one of them with her.

Draco ran to her side. The Death Eaters were apparating away, her screams had attracted attention and people were trying to force their way into the house. Hermione's eyes closed very slowly and her chest ceased moving. Draco picked up the ceremonial knife, looking at her with a pained expression. She would never know the truth now. He stood up, but something caught his eye. The photo of her parents was still clutched in her hand. He bent down to retrieve it and closed his eyes, apparating away, the image of her too painful to look at. Once he was away from the scene he walked a long way to a place he knew well. It was a place Hermione would have loved; he sat down on the grass under a willow tree he had planted as a child. You stupid girl! He thought to himself, taking the two small vials from his pocket. Suspended inside each was a drop of blood from both of Hermione's parents, and wrapped around them was the parchment with the spell he had planned on giving her afterwards to bring them back. Draco sighed dejectedly, perhaps he had been naïve to think he could make it all work out, and began to dig a hole with his hands. After a few minutes, his fingers blackened by the dirt, he dropped the parchment and two vials into the hole, adding a third vial with a drop of Hermione's blood he had taken from the knife, and began stopped to look at the photograph. The three of them all looked so happy, so content. Hesitatingly Draco moved to put the picture into the hole too, but he couldn't. He wanted to keep it, a lasting memory of Hermione. He pocketed it, and took the knife to carve onto the tree, "For Hermione." He covered the hole and stepped back out from under the dangling willow branches. The wind blew he silver hair into his bleak grey eyes as he spoke.

"I never lied to you Hermione, I never could have. I never told you enough." He turned to walk away, and whispered back two words. "I'm sorry."

A/N ~ This was written in response to a challenge. I'm not sure how IC they are. If at all, how can Evil!Hermione be IC? I tried! *cries* Oh yeah, and I don't do romance. So...it might seem a bit awkward when they kiss. It had to include the following -

A mirror that shows a person's inner self.

A ceremonial blade

Hermione in a Death Eater summit

Dark or evil D/Hr, They must kiss at least twice

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