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She felt like an injured animal struck on the motorway, bewildered and dying and trying helplessly to find a way to escape and hide. She wanted a dark corner to curl up in where things would stop hurting.

What happened?

As she tried to think, an agonising pain laced through her brain so abruptly her vision disappeared. An anguished moan escaped through her teeth. She buried her face in her hands as she struggled to keep conscious and tried to remember through the blinding pain in her head.

“Let's be clear, Mudblood. I don't want you. I never wanted you. I'm not your friend. There is nothing that will bring me more joy than being done with you.”

He'd killed Ginny.

He'd killed everyone.

She looked up and started breathing faster and faster as she stared at him, trying to understand.

“Are you still a virgin, Mudblood? Is that something you even remember?”

The sensation of her skirts being pulled up, exposing her as she stood bent over a table, gripping it, trying not to shake or make any sound.

He'd dragged her before Voldemort and held her in place while her mind was torn to pieces and then left her lying on the floor in a pool of rotting unicorn blood.

Hermione kept staring at him. There was a tearing pain in her chest — in her heart — as though there were a blade slicing through her as she struggled to breathe. Her chest contracted sharply and a broken, gasping sob was torn from her as all the gaps and inconsistencies merged into a single horrifying narrative.

Her heart kept beating faster and faster. Hermione pressed her hands over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Her low sobs cut through silence. She kept shaking as she tried to think.

“I'm going to take care of you. I'm always going to take care of you.”

The pain in her mind was growing blinding, as though the past and present where converging and tearing each other apart.

She gripped her head. Her brain felt as though it were on fire, her skull cut open, the pressure in her head intensifying and intensifying until she dropped her head down and screamed.

She screamed until she was gasping and then ground her teeth together and tried to keep from hyperventilating. She looked back across the bed again.

Draco was gone.

She sank onto the floor, pressing a hand against her chest. Maybe he hadn't even been there. She might have just hallucinated him.

Maybe she'd hallucinated it all.

Maybe he was dead, and she was still in her cell dreaming of him.

She was just hallucinating that she'd somehow found him in the darkness.

No. It was real. She was certain it was all real. Because it was worse than anything she would have dreamed.

Let's be clear, Mudblood. I don't want you. I never wanted you.

She couldn't understand. Parts made sense, but other parts—

A hand grasped her by the shoulder, and she started violently. Draco had come around the bed and was kneeling beside her.

He studied her, and his eyes flickered as his expression tensed.“You're remembering now, aren't you?”

She gave a small nod, and her hand reached up and gripped his wrist. He was really there. She could feel his bones under her fingertips.

“Grang—”

Hermione buried her face against the comforter of the bed and sobbed with relief. The pain in her head was so severe she felt as though her skull were fracturing. She ground her teeth together as she tried not to scream again.

“Oh god—” she forced the words out. Her whole body was trembling.

A thought struck her, and she stilled, her hold tightening.

“The horcrux — the one Umbridge was wearing — was that — was that you?”

There was a silence. “It was.”

Her lips trembled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Was it — was that the last one?”

“It was.”

She nodded, and her empty hand spasmed; she gripped the fabric of her robes and tried to make sense of everything.

If he was there, he wasn't dead.

But — if he wasn't dead, that meant he'd never come for her.

She'd waited. And waited. And waited.

And he never came.

“I don't want you. I never wanted you.”

Ginny.

Her hold on his wrist slipped away, and her hand fell to the floor as the devastation drowned her relief.

“Why did you kill Ginny—?” Her voice broke.

“Ginny's alive.”

She turned and stared at him. “Hannah saw her body. Everyone in Hogwarts saw it. Vold — Voldemort said you killed her. You — you told me you killed her.”

“Ginny's alive.” He met her eyes. “She was pregnant, remember? Her son was born on October 20th, 2003. I'm told he was an exceptionally difficult newborn. She named him James Sirius Potter. You're his godmother.”

Hermione gave a low sob, and Draco continued.