Draco lay on his stomach, his legs hanging off the edge of the bed and his pants around his ankles. He turned his face away from the rotten panting breaths and stifled his sobs. Crying would only make the torment last longer. Draco knew that from experience.

The bed rocked under him, back and forth, timed with the thrusts that forced Draco's hips into the bed.

The pain could be ignored and Draco had grown practiced at shuffling the aches and the indignity to the back of his mind. Wetness exploded inside him and a heavy body collapsed on top of Draco. As the person above him gasped for breath, Draco waited, hoping that this was all he had to endure tonight. Some nights it was almost bearable, like how tonight had been so far. Most nights it was much worse.

Draco stifled a shudder as a wand callused hand gripped his shoulder and turned him over onto his back. It was going to be a horrible night Draco thought as he stared into grey eyes that were so similar to his own.

"Will you do it boy?" The hated voice hissed. "Or must I use the Imperious?" Draco kept his eyes blank and turned his head to the side.

'Let him do what he wants', Draco moaned in his head. He did not want to have any part in his own humiliation.

A wand was pointed between his eyes and the curse was cast. For the next few hours Draco was blissfully unaware of his grief and degradation. All he had to do was what the voice in his mind told him to.

So he sucked when he was ordered to suck and licked when he was ordered to lick. He even willing bent back over on the bed and when another man joined, Draco did not even flinch.

It was only after, when he was alone in his bedroom, that Lucius Malfoy released his son from the Imperious Curse and left the boy to cry his hurts away by himself.

The night before Draco's return to school was always the worst, Draco thought idly as his father slipped into his room. Draco lay in bed and did not speak as his father used his wand to vanish the bedcovers. Draco soon found himself strung onto a whipping post. His hands were secured above him and to the sides. His feet were bound to the sides and he was about half a meter above the ground.

The whip, a nine-tailed leather monstrosity, lay at Draco's feet as the boy was bent over and his buttocks spread apart. Draco concentrated on the whip, using it as a focus to keep him from crying out now. He knew that he would be screaming over much worse later.

Draco woke on the floor in a pool of his own blood around six in the morning. House elves were carefully packing his belongings and cleaning the bloodstains off the floor from the night. Draco could order one of the house elves to heal him but the last time he had done that Lucius had punished his son so horribly that the worst of Draco's scars where from that incident. Draco would never ask for a house elf's aid again.

He was showered and dressed by the time a house elf came to inform him that it was time to leave. Draco almost sobbed in relief. Once he was on the train he had four months away from his father. Four months when he could rebuild his sense of self and gather his shattered dignity back together.

Draco carefully walked down the stairs into the welcoming hall where their chauffeur, an aging house elf, was waiting to drive him and his father to Kings Cross Station. Lucius clapped a hand on Draco's shoulder and Draco winced. His father had purposely smacked him on one of the worse whip marks. Narcissa walked around the corner and gently hugged her son goodbye. She never spoke any more, Lucius had cured her of that, but she still showed her only son some affection.

The car ride was a long one and when they were half way to the station Lucius turned to his son with a leer. "Strip boy."

Draco ignored his father but still found himself naked and facedown on the seat of the car mere moments later. Lucius gripped Draco on two of the most painful and bloody whip marks as he took his pleasure. Draco just thought about getting on the train and escaping for four whole months.

Lucius and Draco stepped out of their car, both perfectly combed and dressed, and headed to platform nine and three quarters.

"Be good at school boy," Lucius hissed, "or you will be punished when you get home."

Draco nodded mutely and left to find his own compartment. His elation at finally getting away from his father was tempered by the fact that Lucius would be keeping a careful eye on Draco. If Draco was even a minute late to any class Lucius would know and Draco would be punished.

Draco quickly slid into an empty compartment, sat down on the seat in a way that did not hurt his bruised body too much, and settled in for a long and blissfully father free train ride.

"Tom, no! Don't!" Ginny whimpered as her skirt was pushed up and her knickers ripped off. She tried to keep her legs together but the stronger force won. The pain was sharp and hard. It bruised the tender skin inside of her legs and Ginny cried out in pain with every thrust. When Tom collapsed on top of her, he laughed when he felt the tears on her cheeks. All Ginny could feel was humiliation and weakness. She was not strong enough to fight off the powerful presence of Tom, Lord Voldemort. She was not strong enough in body and definitely not strong enough in mind.

Tom rolled off of Ginny and gently wiped a hand between her legs. He showed her his fingers with a look of evil glee on his twisted features. They were red with Ginny's blood and white with Tom's semen.

"I will leave this with you so you can remember our time together." He laughed and wiped his stained fingers down the tear tracks on Ginny's cheeks.

Tom slowly faded from sight and Ginny lay sobbing until her dreaming ebbed and she woke up in her comforting bed at home.

Ginny sat up and slowly pushed the covers off her aching body. She was still dressed in her ragged pajamas that had once belonged to Bill and it did not seem as if she had moved at all in the night.

"It was only a dream," Ginny whispered to herself. It was still dark outside and her room was bathed in shadows.

It was not until the red sun started to peak over the horizon that Ginny could see that what she had previously thought had been sweat and tears was actually blood.

Ginny smiled brightly as she bid her mother and father goodbye. She even managed to assure them that she would stay safe and look after Ron, Harry, and Hermione without breaking down and telling her parents that she had not gotten her period last night, as her parents thought, but had been raped by the feared Lord Voldemort himself.

It was not until she had boarded the train and had abandoned her family and friends to their own compartments that she allowed her cheerful veneer to drop. A few passing students gave her odd looks as she walked by them on her way to find an empty compartment but Ginny ignored them in favor of being alone. After all, who else could understand what she had experienced? Surely there was not another person on this train who knew what it was like to be humiliated in such a way.

For a fleeting moment Ginny entertained the idea of finding another person who could empathize. The idea faded as quickly as it came and Ginny was left standing in front of the last compartment on the train without any hopes for her survival.

With a tear filled sigh and a stifled sob Ginny pushed her way into the compartment and sat across from a sleeping boy. She looked at his gaunt features and carefully combed blond hair without comprehension. All she saw was the twisted grimace that screamed of bad dreams and painful experiences.

Ginny almost reached out to wake the boy from his fitful dreams but stopped herself before she touched him. Maybe for him, dreams were a safer place than the waking world.

When Draco woke, hours had passed and the sky was just beginning to shine with bright pinks, reds and oranges that spoke of the coming dusk. He watched as darkness slowly stole over the sky and a very small, sardonic smile lit his face. Usually Draco was dreading the time when the sun abandoned him because it meant that night and a visit from his father would soon follow the disappearance of light. Now he was on the Hogwarts Express, probably not more that twenty minutes away from Hogwarts, night was quickly arriving, and his father could not touch him. It was exhilarating to feel the freedom and he wondered, as he did every year at this time, how he could bear returning to his hated home with his loathsome father.

There was a minute whimper to his right and Draco quickly wiped all expression from his face before turning to glare at the intruder. He need not have bothered to make himself look presentable because the girl sitting across from him had clearly been there most of the train ride and she was lost in a nightmare that kept her captive inside of her mind.

Draco watched as the girl struggled to fight off her dreams and failed, but when the tears started to flow down her cheeks in helpless tracks, he stepped forward and gently took her hand. She reminded him of the muggle he had been forced to rape; so innocent and young and jaded. He could sympathize with her plight.

So when she feebly mouthed the words 'no, please don't' in a soundless whisper that screamed pain, Draco gripped her shoulder and carefully shook the girl awake.

She blinked at him for a few moments as if she were expecting to see someone else, someone frightening, standing over her. Then comprehension dawned and the girl quickly wiped away her tears with the ragged cuff of her muggle shirt and covered her face with a blank expression. Draco thought she only managed to look like she could be broken that much easier.

He thought for a second about offering her sympathy or even pity but he banished the thought. If the last emotions he wanted directed at him from someone who knew what he was going through were those in particular, Draco did not wanted to subject the girl with them. She deserved better than that.

Instead he gave her a bland look and turned to dig in his trunk for his school robes. Draco could feel her watching him, as if she was waiting for a malicious comment, but he ignored her and peeled off his shirt.

The girl gasped but quickly focused on her own trunk. Draco flinched when he realized what she had noticed on his body. Scars. There was barely a clean inch of skin left on his back from all the years his father had been beating him and forcing Draco to heal his body the muggle way, which left massive scarring. He waited, breathless, for the girl to ask about his scars but after a long moment of her continued silence he finally understood that because he had honored his silence when he had the chance to ask the girl about her dreams, she was giving him the same polite treatment.

Or so he thought. Instead he watched as the girl pulled off her own shirt, leaving her in her bra, and turned to show him her front. Draco could not stop his eyes from widening reflexively when he saw the huge, dark purple and blue bruises that covered all of her lower abdomen and dropped below the line of her pants.

And suddenly, Draco understood. Maybe she was not being raped physically, like he was, but mental rape still left scars, especially when the attacker was skilled in Legilimency.

He had inadvertently found a kindred spirit, someone who understood what he was going through and even more importantly, someone who knew when not to ask questions.

Classes had finally ended for the week and Ginny quickly took herself away from the student population down a dark corridor that led into the bowels of the castle where no one bothered to travel any longer. Classes had been hard. Keeping her eyes blank and a happy smile on her face so the teachers did not notice that anything was wrong with her was harder than telling Ron that she was not interested in playing on the Gryffindor Quidditch team this year and telling Hermione that she did not have any time to spend on SPEW.

Still, even for all that, Ginny had one thought that at least gave her something else to focus on, a real human boy.

Tom had returned last night and had left her covered in blood again after using her body repeatedly. Yet even when Tom spread her legs so wide that her hipbones creaked in warning she was able to turn her head to the side and ignore the monster's invading presence. Instead she thought about the boy she had met on the train, a boy she now recognized as Draco Malfoy, and she realized that the mass amount of scars, old and new, on his body meant that he had been able to endure what they both were going through for years and he had not lost his sanity yet. He gave her some hope that she could survive until Harry killed Voldemort and freed her from Tom's reaching mind.

There was a soft footstep behind Ginny and she spun with her secondhand wand outstretched and ready to beat back anyone who dared to invade her privacy. Malfoy stood down the hallway with his arms held out to show that he was unarmed.

"Hey," he whispered in a quiet voice that creaked with disuse. He carefully looked her up and down and noted the way she curled in on herself as if she were expecting a blow and the way her eyes were a little too large and she was breathing heavily from fear. "Come on Weasley. I'll show you a room that is unplottable in this castle where you can go if the rabble become too trying."

He walked slowly giving Ginny every chance she wanted to run but Ginny wanted to know about this room. How often had she wished in the last week that she could just run somewhere where no one would find her; a place where she could hide from the prying eyes of the world? It seemed that Malfoy was giving her that place and, as long as he never tried to touch her, she would be grateful.

Draco led her down a dark, dusty and clearly abandoned hallway and stopped outside of an old ripped and empty painting. He pushed the picture aside and held it open for her to climb into the room ahead of him.

"I use this room to relax," he whispered behind her as she surveyed the room. There was a huge couch that looked like it would collapse in an explosion of feathers and fluff if someone sat on it, an equally big roaring fireplace, and a bed with so many pillows that it was impossible to see that there was a fluffy down comforter and a multitude of blankets hidden beneath. The room was tasteless. Instead looked like it had been designed as a perfect place to cry and sleep where nightmares would not dare reach. To Ginny, it looked like heaven.

"I decorated it myself," Draco continued and he moved around Ginny and slowly sat down on the fluffy and slightly shabby rug in front of the fire. "I come here when I can't handle the attentions of everyone else in the castle. You are welcome to stay here any time you wish as long as you never bring any one else down here."

"Thank you Draco," Ginny whispered back in a tired voice that spoke of sleepless nights plagued by visits from Tom. She sank appreciatively into the fluffy pillows on the couch and promptly fell asleep.

Draco watched Ginny as she slept and smiled thinly when he realized that whatever she suffered during her dreams would not harm her while she was in this room. He pulled a blanket off the bed and gently covered her before sinking into the bed by himself for his own dearly needed sleep.

It had been hours, probably near an entire day, before Draco woke. He was glad that it was a Saturday so neither of them would be missed.

Draco was not sure what exactly had drawn him into telling Ginny about his room when he had seen her after classes the previous day.

He remembered her from the previous year. She was always following behind Potter and his friends and she never seemed to feel like she was a third wheel. Ginny was fiery and had a constant smile on her face. Draco remembered looking at her and forcing away his jealousy. The red headed girl had been so happy and carefree; everything he could never be. Now…well now something in her had failed. The difference was mostly in her eyes. So while Ginny smiled brightly and spoke in her usual chipper voice Draco focused on the pained eyes that showed, to anyone who bothered to look, just how much grief she was suffering. Ginny's eyes were the windows to a soul that was dying; slowly and painfully dying.

She looked like she would have a breakdown in the middle of the second floor corridor so he followed her. He saw the way she furtively looked around before sneaking into the unused hallways that led beneath the school and had known at that moment that the little girl needed someplace where she could release her tensions. So he gave up his only safety to her because she clearly needed it as much as he did.

When she woke he would show her the bathroom he had magically installed into the small storage closet attached to the room and he would show her the magical spell that filched food from the kitchens so he never had too leave the room if he did not want to.

And he hoped that his help gave Ginny the strength to fight off whatever attacked her before it consumed her because he wanted to see that cheerful girl from before. Draco wanted to be jealous of little Ginny Weasley again.

Submersed in that fleeting hope was the one wish that Draco would never acknowledge. It was a wish that beat constantly at his soul but he shuffled it to the side where he could ignore it.

He wished that maybe, hopefully, Ginny Weasley would grow strong enough to help him destroy his demons and fight back against his father.

That somehow, Ginny Weasley would save him.