#As dusk turns to dawn,
Still you're battling your thoughts.
You fell lost, so alone
And you wonder can you carry on#

- - Fallen Angel, by Gabrielle

Hermione lies, with her head turned to the side, on the bloodstained and moth-eaten sheets. She watches a fly rest for a while on the dirty-white walls, then watches as it flies over to crawl over the sheets she lays on, and for the first time in months, she feels something other than pain as it gently walks over her limp hand.

She's drawn away from the gentle tickling of the fly's touch as the door slams shut and she feels his presence enter the gloomy, dimly lit room.

"You're awake," he comments, a smirk spreading across his lips.

Hermione ignores him. It's all she can do- ignore the pain he causes and the numbness he leaves her with; ignore the bitter remarks he whispers softly and the orders he shouts violently at her.

"No reply? Well, well, Mudblood, it looks as though you've finally learnt how to keep your filthy mouth shut."

There was a time when she would have flinched at the name 'Mudblood' like she flinches now when he hits her, but words don't hurt her anymore. At least, not that word. She's heard him call her it so many times now; it has no meaning or affect. She is dirty. Inside and out she has been violated and she is filthy. They both know it, but he just relishes in reminding her.

He walks across the room to the bed where Hermione lays still, with only a mere shredded rag to keep her dignity. Draco leans over her, his wet hair from his recent shower, dripping water droplets- the first water she's felt in weeks- over her face. He smells clean and refreshing: the smell reminds her of all the summer days she spent with Harry and Ron. He notices her inhaling his clean smell and can't help himself not to comment.

"You like the smell of me do you? That's because I'm clean- something which you'll never be, not matter how many showers you have," he whispers in her ear; his tone that of someone who almost cares.

Hermione's stomach tightens as Draco steps back from her; she knows what comes next. He unbuttons his shirt and undoes his zipper in his trousers. He climbs onto the bed and strokes her face slowly with his hand, gently tracing her once-beautiful skin with his pale, perfectly formed fingers. She doesn't flinch; she just waits, silently.

Draco pulls the rag she covers herself with off her, and casts it away onto the floor, to leave her abused body exposed to him as he harshly runs his hands across her breasts, already bruised from all the times before.

Her ribs are distinguishable a she has not eaten for weeks. She is too weak to struggle, and it always proves pointless anyway: he is stronger now than she ever could have been: mentally and physically. She doesn't care about the state of her body now; she just wants it to be over.

He removes his boxers and pulls her legs apart. She just turns her head away and watches as the small fly manages to find its way out of the small gap between the glass in the window and the frame around it, avoiding the rusting nails that jaggedly stand away from the wall. How she has dreamed of leaving. But it is too late now anyway she is too weak to walk, and the murky windows are jammed shut, aside from where the draft blows in through the small gap in the glass, and the fact that she is kept on the third floor only adds to the knowledge she will never escape this.

She screws her face up in pain and flinches as Draco forces himself on her. She tries not to let him see how much she is hurting, but how can he not notice when so much pain consumes her? As he continues to violently push himself into her, she reluctantly allows herself to moan through the pain.

Draco watches her, trying to him in her mind, pretending he isn't there, but he can see from her face that she can't deny what he does to her time and time again. He can't quite distinguish if she moans through pain or pleasure; though he knows that she can't enjoy this. It is satisfying for him either way though, and he continues to thrust into her.

As Draco begins to come, his nails- neatly manicured and clean from the dirt that has settled in Hermione's- dig into Hermione's tender skin. She tries to regain focus on a point on the wall, but it is all too excruciating now. Her vision is compromised through the blur of tears that fill up and run down her face and onto the dusty covers beneath her. She stays silent through this, trying not to bring Draco's attention to her pain as her skin tears in several places where Draco's grip strengthens.

Having had his daily pleasure, Draco pulls out of Hermione, but does not leave her. His body still presses intimately close on hers and his fingers roam over her bruised and scarred body. His face hovers parallel to hers, supporting himself by leaning his hands either side of her anorexic body. With one hand, he turns Hermione's head to face upwards at him.

She is too weak to fight against him, and he knows he'll win anyway. He traces her prematurely ages face with his perfect hands. She refuses to look in his eyes. She's scared of what she might find. Once, she would have seen a malicious and vile boy; nothing but a high-school bully. But now, he is more than that, much more. Twelve years on, he is powerful, and she is scared what she might find in the eyes of someone that contains such cruelty; such evil.

He loves it when she does this; tries not to look bothered. Classic Hermione. Back in Hogwarts she would ignore his sadistic comments, and continue with her work, but they aren't in Hogwarts anymore, and she doesn't have Harry to come save her any longer.

Draco leans in close; Hermione can feel his warm breath on her tear-streaked face. She blinks slowly as water droplets from his hair drip over her face once again.

"Look at me," he commands in a whisper, softly. He speaks so caringly; so different to how he acts.

To Draco's surprise, and her own, she obeys. She dares to look up into Draco's cold, steel eyes. They are emotionless and malevolent, yet she can see his is surprised by her actions. It has been months since they had made real eye contact.

Draco is startled as she gazes into his eyes, and is caught off-guard at first. But he immediately regains his usual equanimity. He cannot allow her to see him off-balance. He mustn't. He is the one in control.

As Draco returns Hermione's stare, she wonders how any living person can contain such evil; such heartless hate. She yearns for the touch of her friends; the comforting sound of their voices and laughter, but she knows it is only a dream; a vacant hope lost in the gaze she holds with Draco. Harry is gone, probably destroyed by Voldemort, and Ron, well she didn't know where Ron went all those months before, but she had a feeling he wouldn't be returning, not for her anyway.

Hermione, coming out of her memories of her friends, blinks and ends the connection between the two.

For a second, just for a moment, Hermione saw in Draco someone who didn't want this; the violence and the pain. But that moment passed and she is one again pinned beneath the rapist and murderer that is Draco Malfoy.

He climbs off her and pulls his expensive clothes back on, leaving Hermione's tainted body exposed to the cold air. He picks up the cloth that he'd cast on the floor earlier, and throws it at her.

"Cover yourself up," he spits. "Anyone would think you enjoyed revealing yourself if you lay there totally naked, making no effort to keep yourself covered," he smirks.

Mustering her strength, she manages to sit up and pulls the dirty cover round her thin body.

"That's my angel," he smiles, the way he smiled at his young daughter when she learnt to write her name.

"I'm not you're angel," she manages to say, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"She speaks!" Draco comments. She hasn't spoken since she was first locked in the dusty room. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten how. But you're right: you're not an angel- you're a fallen angel now."

Hermione just looks at him, wondering, once again, how he can behave like this. She too, had wondered if she'd be able to talk after so long, and, though she had not planned to answer him back, she had found a hoarse voice, clearly out of practice, sound from her throat. Her voice was foreign to her after so long, and Draco looked at her curiously.

He is fully dressed now. He moves towards the door to leave again and go continue with his life as normal, but he is stopped when Hermione speaks again.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks. It is not a question Draco was expecting. She sees, once again, that Draco is startled by her for the second time today- the second time ever. He resumes his composure quickly and steps forward into the middle of the room, closer to where Hermione sits.

"Why? What do you mean 'why'?" he asks mockingly.

She just looks at him, her eyes baring into his. She wants an answer, an explanation as to why she must suffer so much every day.

"Why?" he muses. "Well, that is a question you shall never know the answer to, my sweet," he tells her softly.

"Do you not think I have the right? Do you not think I deserve an explanation for all this pain?" she asks him, her voice getting stronger with each word.

"You don't even deserve the air you breathe," he says in a casual manner.

Hermione listens to these words and wonders if he's right. Maybe she doesn't deserve an explanation. After all, she must have done something wrong for all the suffering she's done. She just can't figure out what it is that she did wrong. Slowly, tears gather and run silently down her pale and think face, creating a stream of salt water that flows from her amber- once joyous- eyes, down to her jaw line, where they fall onto the thin sheets below her.

Draco leaves her like this. He slams the door shut behind him and locks Hermione in the cold, damp room, with only one light bulb in the centre of the ceiling to lessen the eerie atmosphere as dusk settles in.

The next day, little before noon, Draco unlocks the wooden door leading to the room Hermione has been trapped in for months. He looks on in shock and horror at the sight that meets his eyes: Hermione, with the dirty rag he threw her the day before covering the majority of her body, lays on the wooden, rotting floorboards below the window, surrounded in a pool of blood. Her wrists, once pale and perfect, are cut jaggedly and from them blood continues to pour.

The rusty nail that sticks out among the once-clean white window frame is tainted scarlet at the sharp edge, and Draco steps closer to the body as realisation settles in.

A mass of brown curly locks lay across Hermione's face, and Draco crouches next to her body, and gently removes the hair from her face to see her pretty face, and brushes it back behind her ears. He caresses her prematurely-aged face with his fingers.

Any onlooker would have seen this as a sign that he cares, and would still do so as he carefully lifts her fragile body off the damp, bloodstained floor, and onto the bed that he had left her on the day before.

He then shuts the door and walks back over to the bed. And for the last time, he unzips his trousers and climbs on top of her; violating her body once more, getting off on the fact that he is the one that has driven her to take her own life; feeling the power he has to cause so much pain to someone, so innocent and kind, who once had, mentally, twice the power he did. Remembering what she was once like, back in Hogwarts, and how, day by day, he wore her down to an emotional wreck, he comes inside of her.

Ten minutes later, he exits their room, locking it securely behind him, now fully dressed and composed, and goes down one floor to his daughter's room.

"Hey Daddy. What have you been doing?" the three year old asks her father.

"Nothing, honey; I've just been in my study doing some work. Why?" he replies caringly.

"No reason, I just wanted a cuddle, that's all."

"Come here," he says, picking her up and hugging her. He runs his hand over her long blonde hair. She smiles from the loving comfort of her father. "My little angel," he says softly.

"I love you Daddy," she tells him, looking him in the eye.

"I love you too, Kyra," he tells her, genuinely. "Now come on, Mummy will be waiting- lunch should be ready by now."

Draco puts his daughter down and she runs down the corridor and down the stairs. He follows slowly, looking up at the ceiling where he knows Hermione's dead body lies in the locked room above him- the room Kyra and his wife- Ginny Weasley- both know, though not quite sure why, they aren't allowed in. That's Daddy's 'secret' room.

Fin