Chapter Text
Hermione must have drifted in and out, but when she wakes again and finds Malfoy still asleep behind her, she decides enough is enough. His oh-so-precious Black blood has surely raced through every vein by now. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if she became a pureblood. If transfusions worked that way.
Their forced proximity has served its purpose. Nothing more. The mere memory of ever begging the smallest scrap of affection from him makes her want to smash her face into the stone floor. Or his. A carousel of images rolls in her mind—the dagger puncturing her arm, fire licking through her skin, his expressionless face.
She wants him gone. Now.
Not dwelling on it further, she unwraps the bandage from their forearms, and she tries to pull her arm back fast, painless. Except—absolutely not. The dried blood has stitched their skin together like some grotesque patchwork.
Her scream rips out, shrill enough to wake him in a frenzy, and that’s enough to calm her a bit. She assumes his usual wake-up call in high-thread-count satin sheets doesn’t normally account for such a high level of stress, so she’s proud to be the reason why.
He bolts upright, dragging her with him, one arm clamped around both of their bloodied forearms, keeping her from yanking apart again. Wise choice, probably.
“Why was this your approach?” he snaps.
She has no clever answer, so she grabs the bucket at her feet and dumps its content on the bed.
“Please. If you think you’re better, do the honors.” Her snarl replicates what Voldemort told him earlier before the Cruciatus, and the way he blanches tells her he recognizes it too. Good. Pettiness is an art form.
He mutters an Aguamenti, refilling the bucket. Their eyes catch—his, wary. Then, inch by inch, he peels his arm from hers. Excruciating, yes, but at least his method doesn’t reopen the wounds in a gushing hemorrhage.
Finally separated, they plunge their arms into the cold water, sighing in unison.
“Leave it longer. Yours is deeper.” Not-a-healer Malfoy dares to instruct. She scowls but obeys, because the water is a welcomed bliss. She watches him dry his arm, cast a neat Episkey that smooths his skin back to perfection—except for the hideous Death Mark tattooed on his forearm.
She dries her arm, but without a wand, thrusts it at him. A silent order to cast the same healing spell.
Instead, he picks invisible fluff from his trousers, as if this were more important. The bastard. The word carved into her arm burns red, and she wants it gone. Stat.
“Malfoy, I swear, if you don’t—”
“I can’t.” His gaze drops to the floor, refusing hers. “Wounds made by those cursed daggers are… irreversible.”
Irreversible.
She knows the word, but it sounds too permanent for it to mean what it means. Final. Too final. As though he’s telling her she’ll wear this scar for life. Surely he’s mistaken. Surely—
She’s ready to demand answers when he takes her forearm, cradling it on his lap with absurd gentleness, prying the lid off a small pot of ointment that reeks of mint and disappointment. None of it makes sense. Why does the man responsible for this ghastly slur—supposedly permanent—now treat her with something that looks suspiciously like soft kindness? Like he isn’t the one who struck the match and set her veins ablaze only hours ago.
A fresh heat surges through her, this one pure hatred, as his long fingers trace over each letter—each mark a reminder of exactly what he’s done to her.
“Leave.”
He freezes, startled, finally meeting her gaze. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen his eyes that round.
Merlin, she hates him. It’s his fault. Even if he hadn’t wanted it, he still did it—and she’s the one branded with the evidence. She refuses to see there are shades of grey because she’s already picked her color. Black. Just hate, filling her until there’s nothing else.
“Granger, listen, I—”
“Leave.”
He exhales, still clutching her arm. She rips it free with the last of her strength.
“I had no choice.” His conviction is infuriating, as if that settles everything. She could laugh if she weren’t so tempted to hit him. She’s sick of hearing it—first from his mother, comforting him like he’s her perfect little boy, then from Theo, excusing the Malfoys’ lack of options. They’re all wrong.
“I said,” she sneers, “LEAVE!”
And somehow she finds enough strength—despite the pain, despite everything—to shove him off the bed. He stumbles, recovers, looming tall over her, but she doesn’t flinch.
She’s not his mother. Not his friend. She’s the girl he tortured—twice—and no hesitation before or regret after can erase that. He had a choice. There’s always a choice. And he doesn’t get to pretend it wasn’t his simply because he doesn’t like it.
His eyes plead with her, begging her to listen. She won’t.
He steps back. Then again. Turns, shoulders hunched to his ears. At the doorway his hand tightens on the bars, knuckles white, before his shoulders drop in surrender.
He opens his mouth, as if to speak, but thinks better of it.
At last, he leaves. And for once, she welcomes the solitude.
Still, despite her unambiguous hostility—hardly something that could be mistaken for an invitation—Malfoy keeps showing up. More than he ever did before.
Sometimes there isn’t even a proper reason. He’ll appear at random, transfigure himself a chair, and sit in the corner of her cell with a book. She doubts he actually reads, judging by how few pages he manages to turn. She sticks to ignoring him, sticking to her routine of stretches, exercise and Occlumency. Yet when she does glance over to check if he’s still there, he always is—already watching her. A single scowl from her and he drops his eyes back to the book, but not before a telltale flush creeps up his ears.
Other times, his presence comes with a purpose—like escorting her to the Manor for her weekly torture session and Voldemort’s favourite pastime: How Many Screams from the Mudblood it takes Before Potter Arrives? The answer is always the same. Endless. Harry will never show up. She knows it. She suspects Malfoy knows it too. But not the Dark Lord.
Hermione has a theory: the absence of a nose must limit oxygen flow to his brain.
After a while, Malfoy’s existence in her cell becomes more predictable, and she can almost establish a direct correlation. That’s another one of her theories. The length and frequency of his visits seem directly proportional to his participation in her weekly torture.
Which is unfortunate really, because Hermione’s hatred—and therefore tolerance to his near proximity—works in reverse. The more he partakes in her suffering, the less she wants to find him brooding in her cell afterward. Naturally, that’s when he lingers the longest, dripping guilt and repentance like some sort of apology.
At least, Narcissa does an amazing job managing her boss—though at this point, she looks oddly like the one in charge.
Stop delegating and involving my son in this degrading mess you call a luring strategy.
If you must play, leave Draco out of it.
He is not your lackey. Do it yourself.
But unfortunately, Narcissa isn’t always there to whip some sense into him, and in her absence, Voldemort seems positively inspired to rely on Malfoy, forcing him to carry out whatever message he wants sent to the Order. Messages usually written in Hermione’s screams.
She sees how much it guts him, how every order leaves him more wretched than the last. For all the swagger and cruelty he paraded at school, being a Death Eater looks like far more than he bargained for. He had no problems in second year, wishing the Chamber’s monster would kill her. No hesitation in hurling insults at her because of her blood. But maybe that’s all he ever was—noise. A boy who dealt in threats and slurs because he never thought he’d be asked to follow through. And there’s a reason the law punishes threats, even without the intent to carry them out: because the damage is done the moment the words are spoken.
All that to say, she’s not pitying him. Not when she’s dragged back to her cell more damaged because of him. No amount of tight lips, pleading eyes or exasperated breaths will change that, won’t make her feel less mad. He may have sworn loyalty to his master, but broad vows like that leave room for interpretation—an art his mother has perfected. So why can’t he?
“Do you know the exact terms of the Unbreakable Vow they made?” She asks Theo one day, as he heals a third-degree burn on her thigh—Voldermort’s handiwork this time. Ever since the dagger episode, Theo has been there in her cell every time they’d return from the Manor. A welcome third party. A buffer, if you will, when all Hermione wants to do is plant her fist in Malfoy’s face.
She nearly lost it a few minutes ago, when Malfoy insisted on hovering while Theo began tending to her injury. As Theo tried to peel the scorched fabric still fused to her skin, her patience for the blonde git dropped by the second.
Sensing the brewing storm, Theo had diplomatically told his friend to give her space, or in his own words: “Either fetch me a drink or get lost, you’re crowding my workspace.” Malfoy chose the latter, sulking his way into the Wing X corridors.
“Not sure,” Theo says now, dabbing Dittany on her newly unblemished skin. “Probably, something along the lines, obey me and you shall not be harmed. That sort of rubbish.”
“Not quite.” Malfoy’s voice cuts in as he reappears in the doorway. He drops down beside Theo, annoyance written all over his face. “You told her?”
But Theo is not impressed. “Don’t pretend like it was some great state secret, mate.”
Malfoy huffs, conceding the point.
“Why do you ask?” He turns to her, and Hermione congratulates herself on resisting the urge to kick him in the face as she stands, tugging on a fresh pair of jogging bottoms—an un-incendioed pair. Theo, at least, has the decency to avert his eyes. Malfoy, for some reason, is slower. She doubts he saw anything—her t-shirt falls low over her thighs—but the red creeping up his ears tells her he might have seen something.
Lucky him, she picked a particularly provoking pair of knickers today, all silk and lace. She doesn’t see why he’s suddenly shy about it, considering he’s the one who bought them. She still remembers how much fun she had in explaining her so-called usual style (which, for the record, isn’t remotely what she actually wears) when he’d offered to bring her some clothes. He’d been shy then, too.
She hazards a guess that it isn’t pureblood custom for witches to dress that casually in front of wizards. It isn’t hers either, but Merlin, if she doesn’t take a shred of satisfaction in ruffling his pureblood sensibilities.
“Just wondering why it’s so easy for your mother to ignore orders, if she supposedly swore loyalty too. As for you…”
“You think I choose this?” he snaps. “I don’t have a choice. I can feel the tendrils of the vow sinking into my skin every time he commands me.”
She glares, then drops back onto the bed.
“If you say so.”
“Do you vow to serve me and obey every command I shall give you.” He recites the words, flat and bitter. “Not much of a loophole there, is there?”
She hates that he’s right. And if she had the energy to be fair, Hermione might even admit Narcissa gets around the vow only because the orders target her son, not her. If Malfoy is telling the truth—if—then he can’t refuse direct commands.
Too bad. Fairness isn’t on today’s agenda.
“I still think you’re a coward either way” she says coldly,
His eyes narrow.
“You don’t get to claim you hate hurting people and then turn around and do it. Pretending you don’t have a choice doesn’t make you innocent.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s about to argue but thinks better of it. Instead, she catches the faintest glimmer in his left eye—and as the weeks will prove, she might even call it the first crack in the passive, fatalistic mask he’s worn so convincingly.
What began as guilt for the things he’d done shifts into something else, even when Voldemort leaves him out of it. His eyes—eyes she once swore only knew hatred, annoyance, or shame—start darkening with something she never thought she’d see in Malfoy. Uncomfortable emotions. For her, that is. Something that looks suspiciously like worry. Like care. Kindness, even.
She cringed the first time she caught the expression, convinced her radar was broken. But it wasn’t. More hints piled up, and she couldn’t keep pretending not to notice the blatant concern bleeding through him. He might not even realize it himself, but she does.
It’s in the way he fumes when Theo isn’t quick enough to reach Azkaban to heal her. Or the unease when she can’t keep her food down after a particularly vicious session, even though every meal now is prepared by Rulio—healthy, filling.
It’s in the touches he allows now—never hers, always his. The way he cradles her broken body back to her cell with a softness that grows each time, like she’s fragile glass instead of the bothersome sack of potatoes he once treated her as. She hates admitting it, but he almost seems to like their forced proximity. The same boy who bragged he could go a year without affection. It shows in the way his fingers linger after bandaging her arm, in the brush of his hand against her forehead to check her fever, in the blanket from his home he tucks around her, in the tilt of his finger against her chin as he tips a Dreamless Sleep potion past her lips.
Little by little, her shabby cell looks less like a prison. A proper bed. An armchair. Piles of books. Almost…warm. She tries to tell herself it’s for his comfort, since he seems to have moved out here, and not hers. Maybe he just has bizarre nesting habits. Yes, surely that’s what this is about.
But then, actions become words, and Hermione can no longer pretend.
It happens on a rare sunny day in winter, when she’s dragged into the Manor’s gardens. The moment her bare feet sink into the thin crust of snow, she smiles, pleased to be outside for the first time in more than a year. Sun on her face. Fresh air in her lungs. Almost human again.
But Voldemort has other plans—the eternal killjoy. Instead, he shoves her into the nearest pond, ice sealing around her like a coffin, trapping her beneath the surface except for her mouth. Just enough to breathe. Small mercies.
Time loses meaning, hypothermia short-circuiting her brain.
When awareness returns, the blindingly white snow is gone. Just the familiar darkness of her cell. And instead of the penetrating cold piercing her bones, something warm wraps tight around her. A body. Malfoy’s body. His arms are locked almost protectively around her, her still frozen limbs pressed hard against his chest as though he could will his own heat into her.
Might be the hypothermia, but she swears she hears a raw whisper against the back of her neck, ragged with barely veiled anger ‘I don’t know what to do.’ And then softer, broken promises that he’ll do better.
But he doesn’t. He just keeps getting more helpless as weeks go by, while she comes back each time more bruised, more damaged, more hateful.
Eventually, she stops handing him memories, just to see how he’ll fare in front of his master empty-handed. But Malfoy surprises her and invents memories instead, each fabrication more creative than the last. She’d rather hex herself than admit it, but he’s brilliant at it : so-called Order’s strategies Hermione supposedly overheard, invented conversations she had with leadership and even bogus theories she apparently exchanged with Harry and Ron.
But Hermione too deserves some recognition, tapping into acting skills she hadn’t realized were quite this impressive. She put on some award-worthy performances. The wailing, the begging, the on please, don’t tell him routine—all very convincing. Voldemort, naturally, eats it up, none the wiser, satisfied that Malfoy continues to break through her Occlumency.
And then her worse nightmare comes to life, as Malfoy gives up a safe house—somewhere she knows to be a real. She remembers Bill and Fleur gushing about the beautiful place they bought on the outskirts of Tinworth. Somewhere they called the Shell Cottage.
She has no idea how Malfoy got this information, but it hardly matters. Not when she can’t breathe and wonders if one can die out of sheer panic. It certainly feels like it.
Minutes crawl by as they wait for the news of the reconnaissance mission, her body sprawled across Carrara marble, enduring yet another round of pain, counting the ticks between screams. Voldemort has delegated again—but not to Malfoy this time. Narcissa must have insisted.
Instead, it’s a fresh newbie crouched beside her, a mousy-haired boy whose wide, terrified eyes betray absolute panic at being this close to the master he probably once worshipped, but only from afar.
Likely a promotion from whatever small task he did before—though judging by how green he is, Hermione doubts torture will be a career he pursues. Especially not after this. His hands tremble as he peels her fingernails off one by one, like Voldemort instructed him to do. She tries to offer some constructive criticism, though between her shrieks and name-calling, nothing about her delivery reassures him he’s doing a great job.
She vomits twice. He does once.
A low growl halts him mid-motion, just as he reaches for her ring finger.
“Enough!”
Hermione snaps her head toward the sound, and she’s surprised to see it’s not Narcissa, although the low tonality should have clued her in.
“What is it, my dear Draco?” Voldemort muses from his armchair on the dais. “Wish to switch places perhaps?”
The intensity in Malfoy’s stare makes her pause. His crazed gaze burns with a savage fire, wild and unhinged. Unfiltered rage.
I don’t know what to do.
Clearly, Malfoy was going ad lib right now, because he doesn’t look like he has the faintest clue what his next line will be.
Mercifully, the Floo flashes green, and a tall figure steps through. Voldermort’s trusted lieutenant, who she hasn’t seen since her capture, but she’s overheard enough remarks about him and how ruthless he is on the battlefield. Mostly from Narcissa to Voldemort, as a wife is entitled to do when praising her husband.
“The Potter boy wasn’t there.” Lucius Malfoy announces, and Hermione might collapse with relief if she weren’t already sprawled across the floor. “But the safehouse was full, more than twenty inside. It has been burned down, per your instructions.”
Numbness spreads through her like ink soaking into parchment. Twenty people. Surely Bill. Fleur. Little Victoire? And whoever else their generous hearts had taken in.
“Show me.” Voldemort commands, already invading Lucius’s mind.
Her eyes dart around the room, searching for the culprit of today’s tragedy, and rapidly land on Malfoy. It feels like time stutters, freezing her in a bubble where there’s only him. His fault. It’s all his fault.
But he won’t look at her.
Voldemort’s cackle shatters the silence, triumphant. “You outdid yourself, Lucius. A spectacular fire.”
Hermione feels disconnected with her only tether being Malfoy, the sound reduced to static. Everything’s a blur. Everything except the boy’s wand, far too close. He’s too slow to react before she snatches it away with clumsy and bloodied fingers, half her nails gone. But pain hardly matters. Not when she only has one thought playing on repeat as she staggers to her feet and levels the wand at Malfoy.
His eyes grow into wide circles. He grabs his own wand, but instead of aiming at her, he turns it at his father—who she now realizes had his wand pointed at her. With a flash of light, Lucius is effectively disarmed.
No time to figure that one out. She flicks the wand, snarls a powerful blasting curse. Except it fizzles, traitorously, into a pathetic spray of orange sparks. She stares at the wand and now notices the ash wood—known for throwing a tantrum if stolen instead of won. Temperamental bitch of a wand. Figures.
A jet of green light streaks toward her, but just before it reaches her, her body jerks sideways—not by choice—slamming hard into a marble column.
The room, already a blur, factures into something even hazier. And then, black.
“What were you thinking?”
Her eyes flutter open, then shut again, torn between waking and slipping back into sleep for the rest of the war. The silk sheets against her fevered skin make a convincing argument for the latter.
Wait. She doesn’t have silk sheets in her cell.
She bolts upright. The motion tips something over, and a cold, viscous liquid soaks through her pajamas. Also made of silk.
What in Merlin’s name—
“Don’t,” Malfoy snaps, closing the distance. Only then does she notice where she is: a bedroom, seemingly inside the Manor, the recognizable gardens visible through the window. She’s too busy trying to process it all to snarl at him for fussing as he wipes up the mess she’s made.
“Here.” He takes her hands, plunging her fingertips into two overturned jars.
“What is—”
“Acorn juice mixed with Skele-Gro.” He drops onto the edge of the bed. “For your fingers.”
His hands twist together, restless, as if remembering exactly how she lost them. He drags a hand through his hair so roughly it stands unruly, then smooths it back down as though embarrassed by the lapse.
“You finally get hold of a wand, and the first thing you do is hex me?” His voice sharpens, shaming. “This could have been your chance to escape, you spiteful witch.”
What? She expected him to scold her for aiming a Confringo at his chest, but apparently that’s the least of his worries. He wanted her to escape? But how could she, when his betrayal was the only fuel in her veins.
“That wasn’t my priority,” she hisses. “Not when you gave up Shell Cottage—a safehouse full of people I knew. Friends. You utter bastard, how could you—”
“It wasn’t true, Granger.”
His attempt at sympathy lands like an insult.
“Don’t lie. Voldemort literally congratulated your father on the impressive fire.”
“Because the fire was impressive.” He says, all smug, worshipping his father like he always does, always in blind admiration. “But nobody was inside. We knew it was empty. The occupants ran weeks ago.”
Hermione is usually pretty decent at spotting lies—at least with Ron and Harry, though those two are practically open books. Malfoy, though…he wears that infuriatingly unreadable mask.
“Why not burn it when it was still occupied?”
“Didn’t get the order till today.” He shrugs.
Sneaky little ferret. That wasn’t her question and he knows it. Why spare a house both he and Lucius knew was packed with the other side? Unless—they weren’t the other side? Which side are they, then? Nothing makes sense.
Maybe she can’t think straight with her skull pounding like she’s been trampled by a column. Which, technically, she was.
“Tell me,” she flops back, sinking back into the pillows, “was it my torn nails or the concussion that earned me this charming upgrade in accommodations?”
It’s easier to cling to sarcasm than to pick at the dangerous thought scratching at the edges of her mind. The one screaming that, maybe, the Malfoys aren’t quite as evil as she’s always believed. However, her anger still burns too brightly to let that possibility in. And Malfoy, as much as she’d wanted to hex him a few hours ago—and nearly did, convinced he’d betrayed her—has once again proved that he can invent memories on her account, without hurting anyone in the process.
His gaze lingers on her nails soaking in the potion, then drops to the quilt he’s clutching so tightly she half-expects it to tear. He releases it a second later, smoothing down the crease like nothing happened.
Abruptly, he rises, paces a few steps, then forces himself back onto the bed—this time further away from her.
“It’s only temporary,” he murmurs, as though she were thick enough to believe she wouldn’t be dragged back to her Azkaban cell. But it’s not the words, it’s the way he says them: ashamed, like he wishes he could offer more. “The Dark Lord’s gone for the evening, so I thought—” He falters. “Maybe you’d want—” He jerks his chin toward a door behind him. “There’s a bathroom. I could run you a bath, if you’d like—”
“Merlin, yes!” she blurts, bouncing on the bed with unfiltered euphoria at the thought of her first bath in over a year. Her impulsiveness tips the jars again, drenching the silk, again. She drops to her knees to salvage what she can, but Malfoy catches both her wrists, looking closely at her fingertips.
Her now brand-new fingertips. Nails fully grown back, clean for the first time in forever. She’d almost gotten used to the grime packed beneath them, permanent dirt she had no way of scrubbing off. A glorious bath might be coming, but this alone feels miraculous.
“It worked.” He smiles, quick and boyish, pride softening his face in a way she doesn’t remember ever seeing. The weight of her hands rests in his palms, almost too comfortably there. His thumb brushes over her pulse in unconscious, soothing strokes, his gaze transfixed on her fingertips.
She swallows, and the moment breaks. He jerks away, retreating to the bathroom like a spooked animal.
The bath water begins to run, like a distant sound. Not enough to drown out the buzzing in her ears. Because as she examines her ring finger, the scene comes back in a rush.
Enough!
She realizes that, for the first time, Malfoy had snapped back at his master.
And just like that, the man who claimed he had no choice made one. The right one.
But of course, nothing can ever go smoothly for Hermione. Merlin forbids that the moment she starts thinking she might have a semblance of an ally, he’s yanked away.
“I’ve been reassigned,” Malfoy announces, like he’s reporting the weather. “I’m leaving for a mission out of the country in a few hours.” He leans against the bars, arms crossed, perfectly casual. Too casual. As if he hasn’t just dropped something that makes her stomach twist.
Which might be why she decides to go petty.
“Good riddance.”
The detachment in her voice even startles her. She doesn’t believe it for a second. She’s already dreading whatever Death Eater replaces him. Terrified, really. Imagine that—preferring Malfoy. The devil you know, they say.
Plus, Hermione thrives on routine, and the thought of starting over with someone new is enough to sour her mood.
“Ok.” He clicks his tongue, his mood rapidly shifting, for only Merlin knows what reason. He’s not the one who’ll be subjected to a new Death Eater, so he could really lose the attitude. “Do you need anything before I leave?” He glances around her cell, now a bit comfier and more furnished than it was two months ago when he found her.
Thanks to him, she admits, reluctantly.
“Because I don’t think the next person will accommodate you like I did, so now’s your chance.”
And he apparently knows it too.
Air deserts her for a moment; the audacity of that comment punches her right in the gut. All he’s done these past weeks—the upgraded meals, the reason why she’s finally approaching a healthy weight, not all bones and angles. The books he brought. The reason why she’s not utterly bored. And as much as she whined about his presence and how she wanted him gone, it was still a far more welcome presence than the loneliness she survived during the first year of her imprisonment. He knows, and now he throws it back in her face.
“Accommodate me?” she snaps, anger simmering. “Did you maybe forget the reason why you’ve been so accommodating?”
He stays silent.
“Guilt,” she answers for him. “So don’t you dare present yourself as some bighearted wizard. I didn’t ask for any of this.” She gestures at the things he changed in her cell. “You did it for you and only you. To overcompensate for all the horrors you put me through.”
That gets his attention as his face loses all color.
“This quilt.” She fists the heather quilt she’s sitting on. “A few days after you carved that slur into my skin.” She raises her forearm for evidence. He flinches slightly. Good.
She stands and stomps to the armchair. “This,” she says, gripping its back, “after your master must have set an all-time record—ten crucios while you stood there and did nothing.”
She bends to grab a book from the pile that grows taller every day.
“This book,” She fists the first one she read, a welcome moment of normalcy. “After you used an incarcerous on me.” She throws it in his direction, and it hits him squarely on his chest. It pains her to risk damaging a book, but she can’t stop. “This one,” Another book, “After I was punched in the throat and I couldn’t breathe normally for days.” She throws it harder. “This, when he made me licked the blood I spilled on the floor after he wanted to try his new blade.” Another book, another hit.
“When you burned me.”
“…cut me,”
“…choked me,”
She’s out of breath and those must be angry tears pooling in her eyes, because the room is suddenly all watery and she doesn’t see Malfoy moving before he appears right in front of her, seizing her wrist mid-air.
“Stop.”
She doesn’t and kicks him instead, but he’s faster and bigger, and she only gets one solid kick to his shin before he hooks his leg behind hers and pins her movement. Her right fist is all she has left, so she drives it into his chest again and again, the hits punctuated by every insult, every accusation she can spit.
He lets her, until he closes his fingers around that wrist too, and the combat drains out of her as she becomes limp. At least, she got the chance to tell him. She had to tell him, because this is the last and only time she gets to unload all this fury.
Because he’s leaving.
And she cries harder.
Somehow, they end up on the floor. Her knees buckle, or maybe he lowers her. All she knows is she ends up folded into his lap, her running nose smashed into the softness of his sweater. Must be cashmere. The posh git.
She can’t make herself stop crying. It hits her then—how long it’s been since she cried for anything other than pain. The realization only makes it worse. A more embarrassing and blubbering mess. Because she’s not supposed to feel like this. She’s fucking Hermione Granger. Strong, fierce, able to overcome any obstacle. She’s not supposed to have a meltdown of this magnitude. She’s been discarded, forgotten, for one whole year, incredibly lonely and still, she didn’t cry, didn’t weep. She doesn’t fall apart for mundane reasons, like sadness, or abandonment. So why this sudden torrent of tears? Because…Because—
Fuck.
He’s leaving her. Right when she’d started to accept that Draco Malfoy might not be as bad as she thought. Surely better than whatever Death Eater comes next.
That thought makes her feel more alone—and more afraid—than she’s ever been. And if she’s rational, then maybe she’s being punished for all the denial she’s been so heroically maintaining. Maybe she’s finally reached her limit and has to process every horror and torture she’s politely postponed.
Because she doesn’t break. Breakdowns have to be scheduled, and even then, they’re never on today’s agenda. But apparently, her planning skills didn’t account for Malfoy’s departure.
And it royally sucks that after all the venom she just spat at him, he chooses decency over anger. Because why not ruin her fury by saying the one thing she’s been waiting for without ever admitting it…
“I’m so fucking sorry.” He whispers, his breath stirring the fine hair at the top of her hair. “For everything I’ve done. For everything I watched and didn’t stop.”
And that ought to shut her up. She pulls back from his sweater, damped with tears, but at least the sobbing has stopped.
His face is open, unguarded. Looking so honest that she decides to believe him, not thinking of a reason not to.
The air stills between them, their breathing intermingling for a moment.
He apologized. Who knew something so simple could bring her anger to a full stop?
His gaze briefly flashes down her mouth, and self-consciously, she hopes it’s not snot dripping down her nose. She wipes it quickly, but no, she’s fine. Then his hand rises, spreading over the side of her neck. His hand is so huge that he has no trouble in grazing his thumb beneath her eye, sweeping away the last tear.
And then he does it again. His eyes dip to her lips. So she lets hers flick there too—and, well, she can see the appeal.
Before she can overthink it—or actually, think—she pulls him in and kisses him. It shocks them both, because he goes still for a beat, just long enough to make her second-guess. Then, something in him snaps free.
All he needed was a bit of light coaxing. He takes over, deep, certain, his tongue parting her lips with rough haste.
And her brain gives up, her body and feelings becoming the only control center left.
His lips feel like the satiny sheet back in his guest bedroom, all smooth and pliant. He tastes clean, earth, with a hint of salt, and she needs more. She opens her mouth wider, and his tongue darts in, reaching, hungry. His hand moves lower on her neck, cradling her jaw, pressing her face more firmly against his lips. She’s completely at his mercy—and for once, she doesn’t mind.
She gasps into his mouth as his other hand slips beneath her shirt, fingers brushing her ribs and leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.
Don’t go.
She shifts her weight on his lap, and oh—the new angle makes her realize just how much he appreciates their kiss. She rolls her hips once, twice, and the sound that tears from his throat, low, raw and almost animal, sets her pulse on fire.
His hands clamp to her thighs, to stop her or guide her, she can’t tell. Doesn’t care. Instead, she arches into him, hips rocking harder, a relentless ache that grows deep down.
She’s a muddled haze of lust.
Don’t leave me.
He breaks the kiss, but only to trail his mouth along her jaw, up to her ear, catching it softly between his teeth.
“I-I’m sorry.” He croaks into her ear as his hands grip her hips, guiding her into a rougher rhythm, along his growing length. She moans at the jolt of pleasure. “It was a mistake to let him know about you—I—"
Don’t leave me alone, here.
His tongue traces down her neck, over her pulse, and continues to mumble his regrets.
“If I’d kept quiet—”
“I should’ve kept you to myself.”
She ignores the hint of possessiveness in those words, and grounds herself harder against his erection, desperate for more—more heat, more skin, more him. Impatient, she reaches behind him to tug at his sweater, but—
Something harder than the length she’s bouncing on (with gusto) interrupts her movement. A literal piece of wood. Eleven inches, or so.
Her survival instinct kicks back into gear, but she doesn’t get far. She barely reaches for his wand before he slams her back to the floor, wrists pinned above her head.
His stare alone robs what little breath she has left. A whole storm of emotions passes across his face.
Confusion.
Doubt.
Hurt.
She’s not usually inclined to care about his feelings, but this time the need to rectify comes urgently. It looks like she staged the whole thing just to get his wand, when the idea only popped into her head when she felt it. Honestly, it’s exactly the sort of trick she might’ve pulled in the first week—and damn her for not thinking of it—but not now.
“I—” Her voice catches, her lungs still fighting to steady after…whatever that was. She blushes, her brain finally resetting, replacing the traitorous arousal of someone who hasn’t been touched that way in a very long time. “I didn’t realize you had your wand on you. It wasn’t…some calculated plan.”
There. Situation clarified. She hates misunderstandings.
His lips—still swollen and red—curve into a small smirk, like her words have eased something in him
“I hope this time your goal was to escape.”
“After stupefying you, yes.” She replies bluntly. He chuckles, and the fact that he’s not angry with her weirdly tickles her stomach. She crushes the caterpillar down before it builds its cocoon deep within her.
“If Azkaban’s wards were that lenient,” he says. “I’d gladly let you hex me and make a run for it.”
He stands up, then offers her a hand. She ignores it, pushing herself up on her own—composed, or pretending to be—still reeling at the thought that he’d let her hex him.
“Keep that fighting spirit, Granger.” He takes a step back, then another, stopping in the doorway but never breaking eye contact. It feels uncomfortably like a goodbye, and her throat constricts. “I’ll try to get my babysitter job when I return.”
Oh.
That promise has no right to make her feel that happy. But it does and the cocoon cracks.
“So don’t go anywhere.”
And a butterfly stirs its wings.
She rolled her eyes when Malfoy told her to stay. Where else could she possibly go? The Manor? That would take someone to take her there, except no one’s crossed her cell in a week. No replacement in sight. Maybe Voldemort forgot about her? Maybe—
The sound of muffled boots on wet stone echoes from deep within Wing X. Adrenaline bursts through her, preparing her to fight any Death Eater coming her way. She’ll go down kicking and screaming all the way to the Manor.
And to think that was what she feared: someone bringing her to the Manor, for another round of torture.
Instead, a guard appears. Just a clueless man, his expression more puzzled than cruel.
She starts talking fast. Pleading, reasoning. She tells him there’s a reason why she’s here, and not with the others, that the Dark Lord himself ordered it, and that he’ll be furious if she’s moved.
But he won’t see reason and grabs her forcefully by the arm.
They walk for what feels like forever, though not long enough to change his mind. Every step pulls her closer to the noise—first a faint hum, then distinct voices, then the chaos of shouting and wailing ricocheting through the stone.
After a maze of twists, narrow corridors, and ceilings low enough that she hit her head once or twice, they emerge into an open space so vast it steals her breath. Some sort of a hollow tower stretching higher than she can comprehend. Only now does she understand where they are. The Tower. The one housing all the other prisoners.
She tilts her head back, eyes tracking the endless rise of the structure. Level upon level of cells spiral upward, each marked by a small square—narrow windows all facing inward toward the vast and empty space where she stands.
She can see some prisoners leaning out through the said windows to peer down at her, probably curious about the new inmate.
But when her gaze finally reaches the roof, a stab of terror roots her to the spot.
At first, it’s only a blur of shoes and limp feet dangling high above. Then her eyes adjust, and the ropes come into focus. Nooses, taut and silent, wrapped around necks. Bodies. Dozens of them, swaying like dead flags.
She now understands the weight behind the name The Hanging Ballot.
