A/N: Huge thanks to LadyKenz347 for reading through this for me. I was (and still am) super unsure about it, but she assured me it wasn't garbage! This fic is perhaps a little strange, as it is kind of experimental and delves into a different aspect of my writing: some characters will be considered OOC, but try to read past that; there is an explanation in the bit of world building within. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to read this; I value your input. This is as yet unbeta'd; I will update this as soon as I've had someone go through it. I've broken the poem into three parts, and it (along with Gill's other works) can be read in its entirety by Googling her name.

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Part 1: Darkness

I will not have you
without the darkness
that hides within you.

There is something poetic about the way blood seeps into the crevices of pristine tile. It awakens a part of him that has long been dormant, a part of him not even Voldemort had managed to unveil.

Once, when he was a child, Draco Malfoy's mother had bandaged a scrape on his knee with the careful precision of a mother ill-prepared to deal with the ruckus of a rowdy pure-blood heir, but as the sole claim to the Malfoy name, she'd bent to his every whim. He cocks his head, comparing the deep crimson stains spider webbing outward to the remembered-red of the ruined handkerchief she'd used to wipe away the evidence of his torn trousers. She'd sealed the torn knee with a mending charm.

His father had entered the room, sparing him a cursory glance before pausing to take in the stained trousers. "Malfoy men are born into darkness. You would do well to honour your blood."

Honour. What a foreign concept that had been to his still-developing mind. He'd gone directly to the manor's library to look it up. "Adherence to a conventional standard of conduct," it had read. Lots of large words for a small boy, but he decided he'd watch. He waited and he watched his father for cues of what honour meant for a Malfoy man. And he learned.

He tears his eyes upward, focusing on the witch before him. She's lovely in a broken way, tears streaming down her face, but she loves it. She craves the degradation he offers, abjected in a way that calls to the deepest depravity in his soul, as he lashes cut after cut to her body with a flick of his wand. When he trails his fingertips over her splayed body, driving his fingers into their ruined flesh, he revels in the tremors he beckons forth, the gooseflesh that spreads over her skin. She's his… for now. Until he grows bored.

He always grows bored.

Their sighs run together, their incessant desire to do whatever he tells them to growing tiresome after a few days. He's the Malfoy heir—they'd be foolish to deny him anything. With Voldemort as his home's keeper and Voldermort's former his right-hand man since his… indiscretions, he has his pick of the lot.

He used to revel in the way that they clamoured to please him, how they tripped over one another to prove themselves worthy of his time. Something about their blind lust, however, doused the fire in him. When he stared into the depths of their eyes, that spark—the one that he needed to match his—just didn't burn bright enough. If it was there, it guttered in and out of existence at his insistence. None of them managed to maintain it long.

He also grows tired of the way they beg him for another chance.

He prowls the street night after night, looking for something to ease the darkness that lingers in his chest, that tries to claw its way out of his chest in a bid for escape.

A Malfoy man does not give in to depravity; he commands it with finesse, and he wields it as a weapon.

He can pinpoint the exact moment that the being woke in his chest. During the war, when the wonder Gryffindors were captured and dragged to his home in a bedraggled mess. Weasel and Scarhead were thrown into the dungeons after Bella saw they had the sword—the one he had placed in his family's vault and sealed with familial magic; not even the goblins could have opened it, despite the fact that they controlled the whole of Gringotts. When Bella had been carving into Granger's arm, her maniacal laughter bouncing off the walls and ringing in his ears, the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention as the stirrings of the beast inside him flickered one lazy eye open.

There was something about watching the girl write on the floor of his drawing room that both abhorred and intrigued him. She didn't give in, didn't show an ounce of shame when she soiled herself in front of him and his family. She'd refused to back down from Bella's glare, and she had spit into the other woman's face, calling whatever was within him to full attention. And then Bella had slashed through the girl's artery and he'd watched as her blood drained out onto the floor around her and stained the pristine tile crimson, altogether missing the searing in his palm until he'd retired for the evening. It lay hidden beneath a glamour even now.

Since that night, he'd searched for ways to replicate that feeling within him, but no matter what he tried, nothing stirred the same feelings in his chest. They lay dormant, occasionally flickering to the surface at a particularly bloody mess, but he didn't feel the same undeniable longing that he felt when he watched the light fade from Granger's eyes, the sudden absence of it telling him he'd made a grave mistake.

All the other women—they beg and plead for mercy, for help. They tell him that they are different, and he loaths the various pleas falling from their lips. None of them possess the same quiet dignity that the Muggle-born witch had; despite the perverse nature of his desire, he longs to know what possessed the witch to rage into that good night. He doesn't want someone to beg for him to stop.

He needs someone to look his demons in the eye and fight them claw for claw.

It wasn't long after the Battle of Hogwarts that he'd heard rumours. Voldemort reigned, the Order was essentially destroyed, and the magical world was once more regaining its respected position in the world; they no longer had to hide on the fringes of society. But word was making it through the ranks—someone, somewhere, had seen Granger slinking amongst the shadows.

They never managed to keep an eye on her long; she seemed to melt into the shadows nearly as soon as one of the men saw her, but she always left a calling card on the body that lay ruined in her wake: the words "and if it does not contain All, then All is Nothing" carved into their flesh in a steady hand.

He'd been one of the first on the scene; at one point, Draco was one of Voldemort's most trusted soldiers, but his inability to part with his frenetic search for that feeling drew him away from his duties, and thus Voldemort disgraced him. Whatever might happen, nothing was so important as the Lord, and forsaking him to chase an empty feeling was considered the most egregious of offenses.

Voldemort had stripped him of his mark without second thought. "A gift," he'd said because the alternative—death—was a far less appealing option. Draco had been told it was a kindness by some, a mark of his damnation by others. He'd long since learned that his status was far from satisfactory to the masses, so he embraced the lower-profile of his life without the mark, but he didn't particularly appreciate the vulnerability it awarded him. Still, he used it to his advantage.

It is one of those nights that he feels the restless energy in his soul, calling for him to find her. And so he goes, traipsing through mud and muck, avoiding the glass of broken out shop windows of storefronts long since abandoned. The few shops still in business seem to hesitantly fight back the dreary evening, diminutive candle flames flickering on countertops and amongst cobwebs. No one dares linger on the streets, and he is still formidable enough by reputation that he's able to drive those away who dare to spare him more than a cursory glance.

Whatever the outcome of the evening, he vows to find something, anything, to placate the darkness within him. He fears what would happen if he did not.

He passes through the depths of Diagon Alley, boot heels clicking on the cold stone of Knockturn. The alley seems to have grown even dourer in the months since Voldemort's reign began, and he keeps his eyes cast downward. Moaning issues from a newly established brothel—Wand in Hand its name, and he doesn't think he could roll his eyes any harder—though he can't tell if they sounds are satisfied or sorrowful. A cursory glance at the dilapidated building reminds him of the state of the world—Luna Lovegood's prone form is still the running flyer on the storefront, advertising a night with LooneyLove, the girl's ill-begotten stage name.

Despite his thirst for violence, the thought that they would use witches so close to children's age makes his stomach roil unpleasantly, and he has to force himself not to betray his conscious by throwing up in the middle of Knockturn.

He's just about to step into Borgin and Burkes' to question the man about his newest acquisition, flitting from shadow to shadow with ease, when he sees her. She leans against a wall, smoking a cigarette. The burning embers of the smoke cast her face in flickering silhouette, and he watches her. Smoke curls around her lips, and in that moment he would give anything to be that smoke, to wind around her and become inextricably intertwined in the mess of curls around her angular face. He releases a sharp exhale, and suddenly their gazes are locked, and he is lost.

There's something in her eyes—a flicker? A darkness?—that calls to him. The thing in his chest stirs, and his feet move of their own accord. She doesn't move, remaining against the brick as he approaches, but he swears he can feel her satisfaction in the slight downward tilt of her chin.

Words are beyond him, but she spares him when she exhales a breath of smoke; it's all he can do not to lean into it, to sink into the clove and jasmine scent that wafts around her. When she speaks, her voice is husky, whether from disuse or the cigarette, he's not sure.

"Fancy seeing you here, Malfoy." She draws another hit off the cigarette, and his gaze is drawn to the moist line of her lips when she pulls it away and dangles it carelessly at her side.

"I rather thought the same, Granger. This isn't your usual choice in locale." The words rumble from deep in his chest, a voice that is altogether familiar and foreign to him.

The cynical lilt to her lips sends a shiver through him, and he has to resist the pull that he feels deep inside. "Things change. You ought to be well aware of that."

Inclining his head in recognition, he smirks up at her between his lashes. "Touche."

Another exhale bathes him in clove, and this time he doesn't veil the shudder that wracks his body, the slight sway to his stance, the way he leans into her space. Inexplicably, she allows it, and, if he's not mistaken, her lips tilt infinitesimally higher. She drops the filter to the ground, having smoked it down to a nub, and grinds it under the heel of her dragonhide boot. She is no longer the polished, prim prefect he knew at Hogwarts. Something about the way her hair dances around her in the deepening shadows calls to him in a way he never knew before.

When she closes the space between them, he freezes, but her breath dances over his ear, a rush of gooseflesh following in its wake. Her voice is nearly carried away on the breeze, but even had he not heard her, he would have felt the command in his soul: "Come with me."

He is a slave to the coiled darkness in his chest, and he follows her without second thought, honour and expectations be damned. Her call is an ancient, sacred magic, and the being within him recognizes her; it longs for the touch of her hand, and he finds that he doesn't much care to rebuke himself for his intrigue, for the way he leans into her presence.

When she turns on her heel and fades into the shadows, he follows.

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Updates to be posted Wednesday and Friday.