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Title: Black Mirror (Schwarzer Spiegel)
Author: Maxine
Translated from the German by Dripping_Cherry
You can find the original here: http://www.fanfiktion.de/s/40aa633b000009d3067007d0
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R/NC-17
Timeline: 6 years post-Hogwarts
Warning: Rape, Non/Con, slash, lemon, violence, dark, angst. If you can’t deal with it, you’d best not read it.
Wordcount: 2,419
Betas: Maxine and Dime- thanks!
Summary: “When will you be able to look into the mirror again, and not feel guilt?” – “Only when you can look into my eyes without fear.”


The Tempting Depth

You’ve torn down the wall that I’ve so painstakingly erected around myself.
You’ve seen sides of me that I never wanted to reveal to anyone.
I have the feeling of standing naked in the darkness, hearing my own scream piercing through my head.
I feel excruciatingly cold.
I wish that I could hate you. But I can’t.

*****

“Miss Weasley…” There was a slightly reproachful undertone in Madam Pomfrey’s quiet voice, and her eyes looked tired. “Why don’t you lie down for a little while? You’ve had a stressful night.”

Ginny shook her head energetically. “I can’t,” she answered miserably through the crack in the door. “There’s nothing worse than sitting around idly and waiting. Isn’t there anything I could help you with?”

She could clearly see that Madam Pomfrey was thinking hard. Ginny’s beseeching look didn’t fail to achieve its desired effect. “Well, you do know Mr. Potter well, after all,” she muttered with a resigned sigh, opening the door just enough so that Ginny could slip through.

Nothing had changed in the ward since her Hogwarts days. It still had the same heavy blankets, the same white beds with the curtains strung on the walls. The air smelled strongly of disinfectants.

Only one of the beds was occupied. Ginny’s heart clenched at the sight of Harry. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned to the side. His eyelids twitched lightly in his sleep. His face seemed even paler than it did the night before. She wanted to open her mouth and say something, but Madam Pomfrey interrupted her harshly.

“It’s better if you don’t ask, Miss Weasley,” she said with a pitying look at Harry. She pressed a reddish brown tincture and a swab into Ginny’s hand. “You can help me disinfect his wounds. They have to be clean before I can heal them.” With a determined motion, she pulled back the blanket down to Harry’s buttocks.

Shocked, Ginny sucked in her breath, feeling queasy. It wasn’t the first time that she saw Harry naked, but she had never seen him in such a dreadful state. His entire back was covered in cuts, scratches, abrasions, and bruises. There was hardly a spot where his skin wasn’t damaged. On his neck were dark marks that apparently came from being bitten.

She wanted to touch him, but her hand didn’t obey her. Ginny wasn’t able to bring her faux pas expression under control in time. Madam Pomfrey’s sharp eyes had long since noticed her horror.
“It was your idea to help me,” she reminded the young Auror coolly, and Ginny pulled herself together, trying to establish the necessary distance. After taking another deep breath, she began to dab the brown fluid onto the open wounds with great care. She knew from experience that it burned. Harry groaned quietly in his sleep, but didn’t awaken.

The minutes dragged on thereafter. They worked quietly until all the cuts and abrasions were taken care of. Madam Pomfrey had pressed her lips together tightly, and she critically eyed Ginny’s delicate figure. “Do you think that, together, we’ll manage to turn him onto his back?” she asked curtly, rolling her sleeves up high.

Ginny nodded hesitantly and moved to lay the vial holding tincture onto the table. In doing so, she accidentally brushed Harry’s backside lightly with her elbow. His reaction took her completely by surprise, and an icy shock ran through all of her limbs.

Harry had squeezed his buttocks together tightly. His head and upper body shot upwards. A hoarse whimper resembling that of a wounded animal escaped his throat. The vial with the tincture slipped out of Ginny’s hand and shattered with a clink on the floor. After the terrible sound had died away, there was dead silence.

Madam Pomfrey was the first to recover from the moment of shock. “Everything is okay. No one is going to hurt you,” she said calmingly to Harry and pressed him using gentle force back against the pillows. His gaze was fixed and he had begun to tremble uncontrollably again. She brushed his hair from his forehead and felt his temperature. “He has a fever,” she muttered worriedly, then drew out her wand and routinely healed the wounds on his back, her hand surprisingly steady. “Are you ready to turn him around?”

Ginny’s head was still pounding wildly, and she had difficulty overcoming her shock. What happened here with Harry? Had she hurt him? Madam Pomfrey’s demanding gaze left no time for questions. With their combined strength they succeeded in turning the young man onto his back.

Ginny swallowed painfully. She should have been prepared for it, but she wasn’t. The abrasions on his chest, stomach and thighs were a lot worse than those on his back. “What did they do to him?” she finally ventured to ask with a quivering voice. She could not manage to look the nurse in the face.

Madam Pomfrey slowly let her hands fall. She seemed to be struggling with herself. Ginny could hear how deeply she was breathing. “They raped him,” she answered finally, her voice flat.

Ginny couldn’t say how she felt. The news hit her like a harsh slap in the face. Her knees began to tremble so hard that she had to sit down. She was paralyzed with horror. The queasy feeling in her stomach swelled, going upwards until she thought she would choke on it. The words simply burst out of her, there was nothing she could do. “It—it’s my fault. I—we left him alone,” she stammered, almost hysterical. Suddenly the gruesome images of the past night came back before her eyes in vivid detail. Images that didn’t let her sleep at night.

“There were so many Death Eaters—we wouldn’t have had a chance in close combat. Harry said we should all flee in different directions to confuse them. Apparently they only wanted him—they let us escape.” She felt tears burning her eyes, although she tried with all her will to hold them back. “We should have helped him,” she whispered in a choked voice, burying her face in her hands.

Madam Pomrfey walked around the bed and put her arm around Ginny’s shoulders in an unexpectedly gentle and motherly gesture. “You did help him,” she insisted. “You alerted the Order, and by doing so, rescued Harry. If it wasn’t for you, he’d surely be dead. You must not forget that!” She sighed shortly. “As far as his psychological wounds are concerned—they’ll heal in time. He is strong. He will overcome this.”

With an abrupt wave of her wand, she cleared the traces of the broken iodine bottle. “You’d better get going. This all has been too much for you. I’ll take care of Harry.”

Ginny nodded absently and slowly stood up. It was hard to put her thoughts in order. “Perhaps Professor Dumbledore has something for me to do,” she muttered tiredly. Her limbs were as heavy as lead.

Madam Pompfrey considered her with a worried look. “If you really can’t give yourself a rest, you can try looking for Mr. Malfoy. Professor Dumbledore had ordered that he allow himself to be examined, but he has not been here yet. Perhaps you’ll manage to persuade the boy.”

“Draco is here, at Hogwarts?” The fact amazed her beyond measure. The former Slytherin’s utterly haggard look resurfaced in her mind’s eye. But things have changed. Now, she finally understood his reaction in the chapel. He had been forced to witness everything, without the possibility of intervening. Her stomach cramped. She was glad not to have been in Draco’s shoes.

“Albus personally went into the Forbidden Forest this morning to look for him,” Madam Pomfrey explained calmly as she began to clean Harry’s remaining wounds.

“I’ll see if I can find him.” She brushed Harry’s unhurt hand quickly and tentatively in farewell, struggling to swallow down her emotions along with her tears. Then she turned to leave.

*****

She had known that the young spy wouldn’t be difficult to find. At least not as a former trouble-maker. Given that it was the middle of summer break, Ginny had been able to search Filch’s office, undisturbed, for the Marauder’s Map, which had landed in the drawer along with other confiscated magical items after her graduation. Almost gently, she stroked the rustling old parchment that immediately awakened a wave of unsettling memories from her seventh hear at Hogwarts. But this wasn’t the right time to ponder old times. She rolled out the map decidedly, tapped it with her wand and said, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

Not many people showed up on the map. Dumbledore, Lupin, Tonks, Terry, Minerva McGonagall and a few other members of the Order scurried around the castle as tiny points. Madam Pomfrey and Harry were still in the hospital wing. There was also another black point labeled as “Draco Malfoy” that was to be found in the North Tower. There, where no one ever went. Astonished, Ginny wrinkled her forehead. What had Malfoy lost in the North Tower?

She was slightly out of breath as she climbed the last few steps. She opened the tower door quietly so as not to alarm him.

The window was wide open and a warm summer breeze was blowing inside. Draco was sitting with his back to her on the outer window ledge, letting his legs dangle without holding onto anything. The back of his shirt was moist and dirty, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He didn’t react to her entrance, only took a deep drink from a bottle he was holding in his hand.

She remained standing a safe distance away from him. “Draco, is everything okay?” She noticed that her voice trembled slightly. The way in which he was sitting on the window ledge unnerved her. Beneath him was fall of at least three hundred feet.

The blond didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to notice her presence, or didn’t want to notice.

“You…aren’t thinking of jumping, are you?” She laughed softly to show that she was only joking. But deep inside, it was immediately clear to her that it all wasn’t a joke. Her nervousness grew stronger. And as he turned his head to her, her laugh punctiliously stuck in her throat.

The man in front of her no longer bear the slightest resemblance to Draco Malfoy, whom she had previously thought she knew. By his glassy eyes she could tell that he’d been drinking. The hand holding the bottle was trembling, and his usually neatly gelled-back hair was in complete disarray. His faced appeared gaunt, his features turned to ice. Only his eyes still seemed alive. In them—what Ginny had never seen there before—was naked despair.

“Get lost.” The words came through his lips peacefully and without a trace of emotion. An unpleasant smell of alcohol wafted towards her.

“I can’t,” she said with outer calmness. “You’ll fall out of the window if you keep on drinking like that.”

Draco laughed mirthlessly. “Who’s to say that isn’t what I have in mind?” His voice sounded unnaturally coarse. He lifted an eyebrow cast a quick glance into the precipice and pressed the bottle to his lips again.

Her head seemed to spin. She didn’t dare come closer. The only thing she could do was keep talking.

“It must have been awful for you to have to be there and watch what they did to Harry.” She had wanted to sound calming, but achieved the exact opposite. Draco winced, his had clenching down on the bottle. The horror in his eyes wasn’t feigned.

“How do you know what happened to Harry in the chapel?” It sounded more like a croak. His gray eyes were open wide.

“Madam Pomfrey…” Ginny stammered. She felt that the situation was sliding out of her hands, which frightened her. The blood pounded violently in her veins.

The horror in his eyes was mixed with resignation. The muscles of his face twitched. In a nervous gesture, he ran his hand through his hair, making it stick out even more wildly in every direction.

“She sent me to tell you that you should let her have check you over.” She looked him up and down. He didn’t seem to have any wounds, but they might have been hidden by his clothes.

He lifted his head high and shook his head strongly. “I don’t want to. You can happily report that to Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore,” he answered coldly.

There were a few seconds of unpleasant silence between them. Draco’s blank gaze was directed into the distance. His nostrils flared lightly.

“Aren’t you interested in how Harry’s doing?” Her voice was flat. Something wasn’t right with Draco, she could feel it.

He closed his eyes in agony and exhaled audibly. “No, I’m not interested,” he choked with difficulty. “Please, go away! I want to be alone!”

She squinted her eyes to slits. “Only when you stop drinking this crap,” she retorted obstinately, gesturing at the bottle. “Although she disliked Draco, she didn’t want to be responsible for his stupidity. She already felt bad enough because of Harry.

“Dammit, Weasley, could you finally stop sticking your nose into my business?!” He’d gotten loud and raging anger flashed in his eyes, pushing back the despair. The half-empty bottle barely missed her head and shattered resoundingly on the wall behind her. The biting stench of alcohol spread across the entire space. “Are you happy now?” he screamed like a madman in a loathsome voice. His face was distorted with rage. “Was that what you wanted?”

His violent reaction shocked her, and she drew back from him in panic. All of a sudden, the air seemed sticky and she found it hard to breathe. Draco turned away and pressed a fist to his lips. His shoulders trembled.

Without another word she turned and ran, stumbling, towards the door. Everything inside her was in a state of turmoil, thoughts whirling around in her head. She wanted to put as much distance as possibly between herself and the tower room. And with every step dowstairs, it became clearer to her that something worse must have happened to Draco Malfoy in the chapel than to have been a witness of rape.

Tbc…

Date: 2007-02-28 10:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bloodlessdreamz.livejournal.com
Hmm... Convulsively might have actually worked there. I've seen it used a few times in a similar sentence, and it didn't look too awkward. The change reads just fine, however. :)

Thank for for this chapter! I for one greatly appreciate that you're taking the time to translate this story.

Date: 2007-02-28 11:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dripping-cherry.livejournal.com
LOL. That was actually a note to the original author who is also one of my betas. But I'm glad you brought it to my attention so I can delete it :D

Date: 2007-02-28 11:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] originalintent.livejournal.com
I am in love with this fic! Thank you *so* much for translating it for us non-German speakers.

Date: 2007-03-02 07:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mtranc3.livejournal.com
Another good chapter! I like angsty!Draco <3 Thank you for sharing it with us ^_^

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