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A cloaked nun apparates onto the cold stone, landing not upright but on one knee, head shrouded by the cowl, gloved hands steadying the momentum of the apparition.
Swirls of black smoke surround her and instead of dispersing into nothingness, they sinuate in a pendulous manner before gradually sinking back into her body as if welcomed.
She rises, smoothing her habit, then tightens the belt cinched at her waist, where several of her precious artefacts hang; including her wand.
The cavernous church lies abandoned at this hour. Ancient dust and grime assault her senses as does everything lately. The cloying sweetness of the night incense no longer masks years of acquaintance with death and decay. At least there's no rot, she muses, firing her warding spells around as she looks into dark corners for anything she may have missed. Advancing down the nave at a leisurely pace, her boots clicking a merry staccato, she cracks her neck, her mouth twisting at the unpleasantness of what's to come.
She never truly liked this branch of magic; too unpredictable and volatile for her liking, though not invincible. Not anymore, not to someone like her. No; the darkness of her little adventure no longer troubles her; whatever corrosion once threatened her soul now forms part of who she is at her core.
The defected heroine, the so-called mad witch, and Bellatrix’s supposed heir has learned to live with these titles of endearment.
But whatever brought her here must be done. She's let things stagnate for far too long; the survivors are dwindling rapidly. Someone has to carry on the British magical bloodline, even if it comes down to a single man or woman, and it’s not the first time she wonders why she cares.
Procreation. Civilisation-building. All that tiresome theatre: spending your life chasing dreams and achievements, exhausting yourself until the day you perish, only for whatever heritage you've cobbled together to be swiftly forgotten; your wealth and possessions squandered by eager offspring, every sickle counted and absorbed into their own tangled webs of pointless ambition.
Fragile bubble dreams; to make it all worthwhile for some people, and she supposes, for the old times when her close ones meant something to her, perhaps this explains why she is here.
But at the rate he's going, she cannot even guarantee them or the world this meagre hope.
Her lips downturn gravely at the abhorrent word. What a waste of letters. Five years into this war, and it's laughable how some people still possess, she shudders, a fucking will to experience a semblance of longing joy.
Shedding the thoughts away, she reaches the crossing, where the transept floor already bears decorative tilework in a circular pattern. This will make her life easier; she is, after all, a devotee of perfection, even when it arrives in the simplest forms.
As a first step, one must honour his rebellion against the divine within this house of worship.
She flexes her gloved hand and traces the existing inlay, coaxing a luminous circle into being along the ancient stone. Within it she inscribes an inverted pentagram; the Sigil of Baphomet blazing at its centre, black lines stark and unwavering.
She steps back to admire her handiwork before anchoring each point with precise drawings:
At the lower left ray, she carves the Leviathan Cross; that serpentine mockery of salvation, chaos unbound.
At the lower right ray, the Sigil of Lucifer, extoling his blasphemy.
At the southern tip, she inscribes the Sigil of Amaymon, to rend open the gates of hellfire itself.
At the upper left ray, she etches the Brimstone Glyph; a symbol of destructive transformation.
At the upper right ray, the Seal of Belial to unshackle his infernal power from its bindings.
She strides the chancel, inscribing runes in her blood on the leading choir, not that she has much hope of them staving off his powers, but one must at least try. Right at the apse, she draws her hexagram, blue-white fire shaping the lines, before stepping inside. With her wand, she fires dozens of protective sigils, watching them carve themselves across walls and pillars, fortifying the space with as much protection as she can.
From an inner pocket, she withdraws the Ring of Solomon, required for the summoning and slides it onto her left finger. It’s a sight to behold, having plucked it from the severed hand of the Dark Lord himself, a memory she recalls fondly.
Conjuring a small stool and piping hot tea, she settles down and takes a sip. Sweet with a hint of bitterness at the end, just as she prefers it. But time doesn't wait, particularly not at this auspicious hour.
When the cup lowers, her voice remains level.
‘Scientia te invoco, non devotione. Potestas agnoscitur, sed hic non dominatur. Appare in claritate, verbo et signo coercitus, et discede solum cum permissum sit. Baphomet, adesto. ‘(I call by knowledge, not devotion. Power recognised, yet not sovereign here. Appear in clarity, restrained by word and sign, and depart only when permitted. Baphoment, come forth.)
Pressing her lips against the ring, she bestows a deep, salacious kiss to the metal before quickly returning her hand to support her saucer, tilting the cup to savour another draft.
She hears his hoofed tread, arriving from somewhere distant and infinite before she glimpses his form. Settling her cup at her feet, she exhales slowly, head bowed within her shadowed cloth and casts a silent cooling charm to brace against the inferno of his arrival.
No sooner does the magic settle than his succulent voice ensnares her attention.
'You called, wife.'
He must be fully manifested upon his podium, if the chapel's escalating temperature is anything to judge by. Burrowing deeper into her cloak, she grimaces faintly against the offensive haze licking at her boundary wards, making her eyes sting.
His fire will not burn her, she reminds herself of this before straightening her head and meeting the blazing conflagration behind his dark silhouette.
'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate,' she intones, gesturing with the ring. She leans back upon her stool to savour the anguished screams of the damned as Malfoy's portal seals behind him.
'Not enjoying the suffering, dearest?' he taunts, his body coalescing into an identifiable form, one she's heard copiously about but never had the displeasure of encountering.
Well, there's a first time for everything.
She takes him in from the gleaming obsidian hooves, those caprine legs slender and black, furred and incendiary all the way to his waist where translucent cloth drapes loosely. His torso retains that bloodless pallor; structured and firm, flowing into corded arms cuffed at the wrists, leading to those long, elegant fingers she once enjoyed holding. Now they terminate in artfully sharpened talons.
He's kept the face she recognises: ashen hair cascading long past his shoulders, the way she had once insisted he wear it, framing that devastating beauty. Human ears instead of the goat's she'd anticipated. But if anyone harboured doubt about his true nature, the extending ribbed horns of black ebony rising from his temples in a deliberate affront to the heavens would disabuse them swiftly. His large wings stretch wide in theatrical glory, obstructing her view of the doors.
Not that she needs to escape. Not immediately, at any rate.
'Son of Satan. It's been a while.'
He laughs, voice rich and demonic, grey eyes feral beneath his exuberance. 'It's Draco, love. Or have you forgotten our vows already?'
She lets his question hang, instead reaching for her tea once more. 'I haven't the leisure to indulge your vanity tonight, demon. You know precisely why I've summoned you.'
'Do I?' He takes a languid step forward, hooves clacking against consecrated stone; almost defiling his enclosure. 'Enlighten me, then. What catastrophe has driven my darling bride to resurrect the old binding? Missing me, perhaps? Missing this?' He gestures to himself with obscene pride, wings preening.
'Hardly.' She sips her tea with intentional nonchalance. 'Though I see Hell has made you even more insufferable than mortality managed. Quite the accomplishment.'
He grins, small fangs catching the luminescence of his confinement. 'You wound me, Hermione. And here I thought you summoned me for a reunion. Perhaps you've finally tired of playing war general to the dying? Ready to join me below where the real power resides?'
'I summoned you,' she defers coolly, 'because you're decimating magical bloodlines at an alarming rate. The British wizarding world teeters on extinction, and you, in whatever infernal capacity you now serve, bear responsibility for accelerating our demise.'
'Ah.' He circles the pentagram's edge, fingers trailing against the invisible barrier, sparks hissing where he tests her wards. ‘Regretting sending me through the veil already?’
‘And I'll send you again, if we don’t make a deal tonight.’ She observes his smug face. ‘Unless you fancy spending eternity trapped in a provincial church, I suggest you listen.'
His expression darkens, playfulness curdling into something genuinely malevolent.
'You dare threaten me? I could incinerate this pathetic sanctuary and everyone within a hundred miles..'
'But you won't.' She sets down her teacup with a soft clink. 'Because I still wear your mark, Draco. Because our binding supersedes your current state. Because somewhere beneath that monstrosity, you remember what we were.'
Silence stretches between them, taut and simmering.
'What I am,' he corrects softly, dangerously, 'is beyond your mortal comprehension now. What we were is ash and memory. So speak plainly Granger, what do you want?'
‘You’re burning through yourself,’ she says. ‘Even demons have limits. At the rate you’re going, you’ll take half the magical world with you when you collapse.’
‘And that concerns you?’ he asks lightly.
‘It inconveniences me.’
‘Oh, I’ve missed you.’ A huff of putrid air leaves his smirk as his wings ruffle into a folded position. ‘You want me to cease culling your precious bloodlines.’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’
‘And who, beloved strategist, feeds my fires then?’
‘I delivered you Voldemort himself. Surely his soul burns hot enough to sate you for a century or two?'
‘His screaming is exquisitely diverting,’ he turns his unblemished back to her, and she startles at the absence of criss-crossing scars she'd healed hundreds of times. ‘But I confess, if that is your bargaining chip, I am profoundly disappointed. After all our history, must you still cheapen yourself with stupidity, mudblood?’
‘Careful Draco, it is a mudblood who now controls you,’ she doesn’t flinch. ‘What do you want then?’
‘What a Malfoy always wants.’ His expression turns predatory, features pulling backwards in sharp angles, eyebrows darkening to render him especially devilish in the most abhorrent fashion imaginable. ‘What we’ve always wanted.’
Hermione stills, a slow swallow betraying her composure. She had hoped he would not drag that particular subject into this negotiation, not now, not after what he has become.
‘You know I cannot give you that,’ she says quietly. ‘The curses saw to it. And even if they had not… I would refuse.’
A low chuckle escapes him.
‘Your mortal magic failed you, yes. Mine need not. It could be as it once was, better even. You remember how fervently you embraced the possibility.’
‘I will not populate the world with an infernal heathen.’
'And why ever not? Is it because I look like this?' He gestures to himself, then gradually shifts, becoming the man he was, leaving her utterly breathless. He stands before her in immaculately tailored black robes, the most refined material imaginable. Dragon-hide shoes polished to gleaming, black silk shirt beneath his chiselled jaw, a tie at his throat fastened with a diamond tack. His signet ring sits atop their wedding band to complete the portrait of respectability.
Spreading his hands in cruel invitation, he awaits her answer.
‘I killed you once,’ she says. ‘I have no intention of resurrecting your particular brand of madness through carrying your offspring.’
‘So uncouth,’ he murmurs. ‘And unnecessarily dramatic. We need not indulge in anything so pedestrian as physical coupling. My seed will find its way to your womb regardless, and the child will quicken faster than human spawn.’
‘Never!’
‘For every viable birth your struggling world produces over the next two years,’ he continues conversationally, ‘you will provide an equal number to sustain mine.’ His gaze drifts over her, assessing, proprietary. ‘To grow our legacy, if sentiment makes the proposal easier to swallow.’
‘I would sooner die.’
‘Death over an equitable exchange?’ He raises a fine eyebrow. ‘Do consider the stability I would grant your fragile world.’
‘And what happens after two years when you are done breeding me?’
‘I will follow every father’s noble ambition and dedicate my time to the education of our children.’ He waves his hand in a flourish as he leers, knowing that his lie will land exactly as he intends, a means to scare her off.
But she is not fooled; she is aware of his desperation. It could only be her, as their bonding ceremony was never ordinary - intentional and meticulous in every incantation.
Draco had combed through the Malfoy archives for months, obsessed with some ancestral rite he refused to fully explain. At the time she mistook it for ambition for a fruitful life, perhaps even devotion. She had not yet recognised the corruption threading the Black bloodline, the ancient covenant binding certain heirs toward a darker, demonic madness.
Even Narcissa had remained ignorant until the signs became impossible to ignore.
His descent was gradual at first; a tolerance for violence then a voracious appetite. Voldemort quickly learned how useful that appetite could be. Draco began anticipating his master’s desires, and the bodies accumulated; entire raids bore his signature savagery.
She tried to reach him. Merlin, she truly did.
Their alliance had been secret, insecure; only a select few in the Order knew, and even fewer approved. He honoured his role as informant, often brilliantly but eventually the atrocities outweighed his usefulness. Pressure intensified on her to control what she had helped cultivate.
In the midst of this chaos, her accidental pregnancy had made him radiant with obsessive joy, frightfully so. She had only felt unease at the feverish intensity of his attention: the rigid protocols he imposed, the dietary restrictions, the house-elves assigned to watch her, his increasing insistence she remain confined to the safe houses for "protection’.
Luck had it that on the one night she dared to run for freedom, the Death Eaters captured her and ensured the loss would be unforgettable.
The torture took the fetuses. What remained of Draco’s restraint died with them.
He had eviscerated every hideout his master possessed, razing entire neighbourhoods to scorched earth with arcane magic no one had witnessed before or since. The distinction between ally and enemy ceased to matter to him entirely. He was not a man by then; he was a force of annihilation wearing her husband's face, and the devastation he wrought in grief was indistinguishable from what he wrought in fury.
Voldemort’s apostates begged Hermione to stop him. By then, their relationship was a public scandal, the mad Malfoy and his mudblood wife; the beast and his unlikely keeper. Do something, they said. You're the only one he listens to. You're the only one he won't destroy.
But he was beyond reason or reach, barrelling toward a destruction that would consume everything she had ever fought to protect.
In the end, she arrived at the only conclusion left to her.
When she gave him the poisoned drink, she watched him bereft, hollow, and miserable as he hungrily drank from the chalice; slurring his love for her, then promptly dropping at her feet; wide grey eyes open from shock, froth bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
With a wipe to his mouth and a swift, solitary cremation to prevent an Inferni resurrection, she carried on, shunned from the world, hated by her friends, feared by her enemies, for anyone to have been with that terror would surely be the same.
Widowed, barren and alone, she endured the fights unaided, helping from the shadows, devolving further into Dark Magic, hunting for answers, clawing through every text she could find on arcane lineages and ancient covenants, to discover the secret that was her husband.
Too late she learned of the fiendish inheritance. Too late she understood that fire rarely destroys demons, it liberates them.
Too late she grasped the magnitude of her mistake; but she’s more informed now.
There will be no third choice today; they will either disappear together or she’ll manage to escape in some miraculous fashion. Redemption, if such a thing remains possible after what she’s done, is a ludicrous notion.
Aware that she’s out of options to negotiate, she decides to play along and drops her act with a timid smile, vanishing her cloak to reveal her slender frame. She welcomes the cool air around her with a serene, deep breath, awaiting his reaction. She’s decked herself with all the ancestral jewellery he’s given her in moments of ardour, hoping to lure him in; to convince him that some things still remain sacred to her.
His eyes drop to the diamonds immediately.
‘You would deprive me of my children?’
‘You are welcome to join us,’ he says, somewhat dazed, gaze roaming over her with limerence. ‘Only I know what it is to live as you do, insignificant, wandering like a cast away. Neither loved nor appreciated.’
‘I was once very much loved by you; until you decided to burn that world to cinders.’
‘I waited for your brilliance to catch up with mine. You never quite trusted the scale of what we could have achieved. Mortal heirs would have ruled a country. Now…’ His eyes brighten dangerously. ‘They would command realms.’
‘I would consider it,’ she says carefully, ‘if you curbed the slaughter. Repentance need not demand oceans of blood.’
'You misunderstand.' His voice drops to barely above a whisper. 'They die for yours.'
He takes a supplicant step toward her, still confined to his circle. 'Every body. Every decimated neighbourhood. Every act of carnage you witnessed and could not reconcile.' His eyes hold hers. 'It was the only language your conscience would hear, love. The only way to drag you back to me. That incorruptible nature of yours-' his mouth curves, aching and proud and ruined all at once, '-could never be extinguished. I never wanted it extinguished. I simply needed it desperate.'
A gasp escapes her, masked by self-deprecating laughter. He orchestrated a genocide to summon her back to him; a brilliance she wants to applaud, were it not so macabre.
She's been utterly, catastrophically outplayed. Led step by step into her own perdition.
Her womb for his legacy, her survival for compliance. A fate preferable to death, she tells herself though she's no longer certain that's true. Everything hinges on her plans succeeding.
‘Shall we seal our agreement then? Magic sizzles at her fingertips, volatile and ready to snap. ‘Your vow against mine sealed with a kiss?’
‘Just like old times,’ he slips his hands into his pockets, posture deceptively relaxed in waiting, calculating.
Hermione understands she has scarcely any time once she releases him to her. He will move quickly, mercilessly, more subtly and serpentine than any counterspell she could improvise.
She performs the Qabalistic cross with forced steadiness, touching her forehead, chest, right shoulder, left shoulder, and finally her heart, where her fingers linger a half-second longer than ritual requires. The ring rises once more to her lips.
‘Veni, fili Satanae. Non solutus, sed mihi datus. Voluntas tua voluntati meae pareat.’ (Come, son of Satan. Not freed, but delivered into my power. Let your will bow to mine.)
In the wisp of the second when his bonds dissolve, she feels heat unfurling low in her body, slow at first, then ravenous, igniting into a flare in her centre - burning and consuming her from within. Her skin erupts as invisible flames strip her from the inside out. The stone rushes to meet her molten agony, teeth gritting against this fracturing power, jaw locked, refusing to scream though every nerve in her body is a lit fuse.
She wants to tear herself limb from limb, to split her body open and extinguish the breath within her before it dares another rise. If this is what it means to live, she would rather die; if this is damnation, she begs only for obliteration without deliverance or absolution.
She rolls across the stone, clutching her abdomen as though she might still the savage rending within, as though her hands could quiet the unseen blades carving through her. Anything, any other sensation, any sharper agony to drown this unbearable excruciation and make her feel human again.
In the violence of her struggle, he strips her bare, garments melting away as she slithers across the floor, jewels slick against sweat-drenched skin, each faceted edge biting deep, scoring her flesh and releasing a flow of blood freely given. She wants to slam her head to stave the hollowing within, but he’s hauling her upwards, carrying her high above the ground.
Opening her eyes to Draco’s towering form steals her voice, magnificent in its terrible splendour; the devil incarnate. Dark, lethal eyes swallowed entirely by black, coarse hair bearding his goat-like face; a true animal. He holds her as if she weighs nothing, laughing hysterically, his pestilential touch eroding what remains of her strength as talons press inward, searching, claiming, drinking from the life he helped awaken inside her.
‘I hunger,’ he growls, voice thick and gravelled against her temple. ‘And you, Hermione, have always been exquisitely sustaining.’
He drags his tongue across her cheek, her temple, her neck; tasting, claiming her with reverence. He yanks her through the air, spinning her between his horns as he speaks something intelligible. His hooves strike the stone below in percussion, each impact reverberating through her bones in defilement.
‘Can you feel it Wife,’ his tail coils around her middle with terrible tenderness ‘our children were never entirely lost, Hell does not squander what it claims and neither do I.’
‘I feel it, I feel it!’ she cries, the confession tearing from her throat as tears stream unchecked down her face, her body straining against the scathing tightening of his grasp. ‘The vow… you swore to keep it. You must kiss me..’
‘Begging so soon after you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing?'
She nods, pulling him towards her and, with haste, his thick lips descend upon hers, intrusive, unyielding, forcing her mouth open beneath his, a clawed hand tilting her chin so she cannot evade him. Sulfuric heat radiates from him in suffocating waves, the taste of smoke and iron flooding her senses. For one terrible heartbeat, she falters from the pain coursing through her body, seeping from every pore. Her arms lift instinctively around his neck as despair threatens to obliterate her resolve.
Why fight for a world that abandoned her? She truly wants to plunge into whatever abyss will claim her; she almost lets go but something flickers, some last stubborn glimmer of the girl who once believed saving others mattered, drags her back from the edge.
Summoning the last fragments of her will, she tightens her embrace, fingers threading through his unfamiliar hair, tugging sharply at the roots as if answering his passion. When he groans against her, her hand closes around the crucifix at her throat; an ankh disguised underneath her jewellery, already sanctified in this church's holy water. The rosary of black tourmaline coiled at her ankles, burns hot against his hip, its concealed wards flaring violently to life.
Every remaining shred of magic she possesses surges outward in quick, successive silent prayers, pressing the totems against his person.
‘In abyssum te abigo. Ad nihilum solveris, Extra vitam, extra mortem maneas. Nec ad Infernum nec ad Caelum redeas in aeternum.’ (I banish you into the abyss. Be reduced to nothing. Remain outside life and death. Return neither to Hell nor Heaven forever.)
For a few suspended seconds, nothing responds and panic claws at her spine. She deepens the kiss, accepting his tongue like a silencing gag, anchoring herself by the ridged sweep of his horns, forcing the words again in the privacy of her mind, pushing every ounce of will into their meaning until a violent crack splits the ceiling and catches his attention.
As her magic courses through his body, he holds her at arm’s length before furiously flinging her away. She sails helplessly through the nave before crashing into the pews with a horrendous crunch of splintering wood and breaking bone.
The structure begins to collapse around them, its walls quivering, the ceiling fragments into falling stones. Barely conscious, she manages to call her wand and casts a weak shielding charm against the debris; barely a shimmer of a barrier out of harm’s way.
‘What have you done?’ he shrieks, voice tearing raw. He attempts to lash out at her, but every step he takes towards her is restrained by a wrecking power that surges through his body, jerking him back with an invisible bind, unravelling him from within.
His scream follows, guttural, ancient, echoing with the anguish of every soul he has ever commanded. His eyes dart wildly, trapped in memories only he can see, reliving each death, each torment he’s inflicted. His body convulses violently, black fire erupting along his limbs in a devouring punishment.
On broken limbs, she scurries backwards, her magic sputtering from sheer fright as dust and rubble strike them both, leaving them bloodied and battered beneath the church's collapsing foundation.
‘Call my name,’ he bellows, his face tearing upwards towards the sky now gaping through the hole in the roof, his vast form already shedding in drifting ash beneath the relentless force of her spell.
Hermione only shakes her head, tears blurring what remains of him as her back hits the far wall. With both mangled hands, she raises her wand again, sustaining the faltering shield through sheer, stubborn will as the demon burns away, leaving only Draco Malfoy kneeling before her, frail, charred, heartbreakingly human, his naked skin a darkened map of everything he has suffered.
He looks up from his battered position, his piercing eyes as grey and captivating as the day she first met him. ‘Say the true name you summoned me with, Hermione, save me,’ he beseeches in sweet cadence, stretching out his hand towards her. ‘Wife, please!’
‘Draco Lucius Malfoy,’ The name shatters stubbornly from her lips in desolation, each syllable hiccuped hysterically as she crouches against the wall, watching him inch toward her on trembling knees.
As her condemnation dawns on him, his face shutters in deep sorrow, grey eyes welling with broken comprehension. ‘Did I mean so little' he whispers, a lone tear falling from his singed lashes, 'that you’d kill me twice?'
‘No..’ she bows her head in shame, drowning in her tears.
His body finally slams to the floor in one final rattle that shakes the church to its very bones, bringing it crashing down with him as he expels his last breath.
Hermione raises her head cautiously, scarcely trusting what she sees. The world has fallen into a vast and absolute silence, as if existence itself had paused to mourn the fallen man before her. Stones hang suspended in the air, frozen mid-descent; dust hangs like pale incense; flame, wind, and even the broken floors seem arrested before caving in. It is an apocalyptic tableau, a painting of catastrophe held unnaturally still in which she’s the only one left breathing.
Crawling from her position, she reaches his prone form through moans of pain and woe. Fearful he might dissolve, her fingers hover before touching him. Then, with painstaking effort, she lifts his head onto her lap and immediately topples over him, wailing her apologies against his face, his eyes, his lips, his nose; every feature she'd once traced in tenderness now cold beneath her touch.
She doesn't know how much time passes as she rocks him back and forth, keening, when a man appears far away in the doorway. He surveys the bizarre scene with widening eyes - the frozen destruction, the naked woman cradling a corpse - taking several cautious steps inward before he catches sight of her properly.
'What's this? What happened here? Who are you?' The priest's voice rises with each question, rattled by a phenomenon he cannot fathom.
'I killed Baphomet,' she whispers, pressing a kiss to Draco's temple before dully turning to face the clergyman now standing closer.
'That's impossible!' He stumbles backward. 'No human is capable of killing the Devil.'
'But a witch can,' she says softly, watching the colour drain from his face. His hand snatches at the cross around his neck, raising it against her as though it might shield him. Prayers spill from his lips, frantic, barely coherent, his steps wobbling.
Completely ignoring him, she resumes her attention to the man in her arms.
'Let's go, my love.' She holds him tighter against her chest as she absentmindedly raises her wand with her free hand and fires a killing curse towards the terrified voice who promptly crumples without a sound.
Then, cradling Draco’s lifeless weight, she disapparates into the pale uncertainty of early morning.
*
Nine months later she returns.
Jewels gleam coldly against her skin, every ancestral piece in its rightful place, yet none outshines the proud curve of her stomach, heavy with the future she has carved from ruin. The church stands exactly as she left it, untouched by time or mortals, abandoned to history's bewildered scrutiny.
Alone, she prepares for the birth; charming ancient spells beneath her candles, drawing runes all around her chosen position of profane deliverance.
The labour ravages her for two days, stripping her of every restraint she's ever possessed. She does not fight its majesticness, welcoming the gifts she's been bestowed with, humbly grateful.
When they finally arrive, slick and wailing and impossibly small, she cradles them against her as they latch instinctively onto her bosom, suckling her blood with ravaging hunger; filling her with a warmth so profound it eclipses every emotion she has ever known.
Her perfect twins.
Pale as winter snow, hair feathery and fair, lashes dark against delicate cheeks. Fallen angels, unmistakably, heartbreakingly his.
‘We did it, Draco,’ she murmurs, voice rough from exhaustion yet luminous with pride. ‘Lilith and Belial Malfoy… you would have been so proud.’
She weeps, joy and sorrow inseparable now as their small fists curl against her, anchoring her firmly to the living world.
‘Hush now,’ she croons softly. ‘Rest. We are safe.’
Humming something wordless and ancient, she lulls them towards sleep, her own fatigue rising to claim her alongside them.
In that hazy twilight between waking and oblivion, she sleeps unaware of the delicate horns emerging shyly from her temples, black as sin, gleaming in damnation, feeding on every breath her children take.
Hell has been patient. Now it has its Queen.