Author's Note: If you have triggers of any kind, this story may not be for you. It includes: characters navigating through thoughts of death (sometimes suicidal thoughts, sometimes praying for the suffering to end), character deaths of ANY age (not Dramione), dub con, physical abuse, mental torture, attempted non con, generalized dark and, at times, morbid imagery, coarse language and slight BDSM elements (pain kink, mostly); self-mutilation; a bittersweet ending that is not fully happy, but in which they are together. If you have any other trigger that I may have missed, perhaps err on the side of caution. *This is my only warning for the entirety of the story, so do not review saying something wasn't warned.* And yes, I know I'm using a quote from the Bible to set the tone for this story, but it fits this story entirely.

"And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!

for then would I fly away, and be at rest!"

~Psalm 55:6 (KJV)

4 December 2003

Hermione Granger knew this day would come eventually—his name had been on the roster for nearly five years. The words on the flyer shouldn't have been a shock to her. She'd testified on his behalf and argued against the skewed version of justice that had convicted him without trial or questioning. She'd watched as he'd been handed his sentence – internalized the way his shoulders slumped forward – and his mother's screeches still rang clear as a bell through her mind.

Narcissa had been hanged on the fourth of April, two years prior.

His sentencing was the last time she had laid eyes on the wizard and he had mumbled a quiet, "Thanks for nothing, Granger," as he had passed her on the way back to his cell, his shackles rattling with each shuffling step. She read and reread the words—willing them to change before her very eyes—but they remained harsh and glaring on the parchment.

Malfoy, Draco Lucius

Death Eater

Guilty in connection to the deaths of 6 Muggles,

3 Muggle-borns, and beloved wizard, Albus Dumbledore

Sentenced to Death by Hanging

6 December 2003

The public executions advocated by the Ministry turned her stomach. Once a month, four Death Eaters were dragged into Wulfric Square—a courtyard built into the Ministry's new compound in the center of London. Massive iron maiden-shaped cages had been erected to hold the prisoners upright and the public was invited to torture, maim, and inflict harm on them—so long as they did not cast the Killing Curse.

The animalistic behavior was contradictory to the world she had fought so valiantly to build during and immediately following the War. The Light had dimmed, and every public execution brought them a little closer to the Death Eaters' level of savagery. The rallies lasted from sun up to sun down the day before the hangings and were direct resemblances of the Death Eaters' revels. To further her mental anguish, her two best friends—the other two-thirds of the famed "Golden Trio—were the ones leading the brutalizing campaign.

Harry and Ron had come through the War and joined the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as Auror trainees nearly immediately. It quickly became evident to Hermione that they were out for blood. Countless Death Eaters were being rounded up and tossed into Azkaban: sentenced to death without a trial. The public wanted retribution for their lost loved ones and her best friends were keen to deliver. Fred Weasley's death weighed on the entire family and Ron wanted to avenge him, while every death in the War weighed on Harry and he wanted to avenge them all.

It turned Hermione's stomach. Of all times she'd imagined the world without Voldemort as she'd lain awake in the Forest of Dean, she'd never considered that the ruthless inhumanity would remain and reign the streets. It verged on anarchy as once-moral people brought the Death-Eaters to the cusp of their mortality for sport

Draco Malfoy's cadaveric eyes haunted her; the apparitional image of his broken countenance burned into the folds of her brain. Hermione knew he was innocent—she had been equipped with more than enough evidence to prove this to the Wizengamot at his trial—had he been allotted one. He was just one of the others in the end, swept up into a collective mind in the eyes of the public. A murderer. A torturer. A sadist.

Hermione had her doubts about the other Death Eaters: none had shown an ounce of true remorse. A few had begged for their lives in exchange for information on others (Lucius Malfoy being one—information that had been brought forth with veritaserum and torture anyway. But Draco? She knew with absolute certainty – not just her fierce intuition – that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted.

Her eyes skimmed over the flyer once more as she retrieved her traveling cloak from a hook on her office door. She crumpled it into a ball and then set it ablaze, dropping the fireball into her waste bin. An innocent man is going to die. Her stomach roiled dangerously as she sprinted out of the Ministry, worried that she would be sick in front of the few stragglers that remained this late into the evening.

She stepped into the cool air of the courtyard, pulling her hood up around her face to try and block the sight of the cages looming in four corners around the fountain. In a few hours, four bodies—four human beings—would be housed within the iron bindings. One of those bodies would be without blood on his hands and she could not live with herself at the thought that she had been unable to save him.

Around the outside of the courtyard – lining the building – fairy lights sparkled in the dark night. Their pleasant twinkling was a gutting juxtaposition against the dreary stone and iron confines. It was bitter cold—a damp chill that rattled the bones deep within her body, and she was unsure of whether it was because of the cool December air or because of the knowledge that his life would be taken and she was defenseless against it.

The Ministry's jovial soundtrack of Christmas Carols rang out in the stillness as the wind picked up and it pained her to hear such carefree and joyous singing filtering into the night. Come daybreak, the small space would be filled with cheering and jeering, spewed hatred and wails of grief. She crossed the courtyard in near record time, rushing down a short, concealed alleyway that led to the streets of Muggle London. Keeping her face cast downward to avoid the reminders of the festive season, she felt her heart hardened to lead.

o-o-o

5 December 2003

Draco Malfoy had spent five years of his life rotting away in his desolate cell in Azkaban. He was hardly recognizable as the once proud Malfoy heir; the poncy little twelve-year-old shit who purchased brooms to buy his way onto the Slytherin House Quidditch team. Everything had changed when he took the Mark. His life had been one long, continuous downward spiral in the seven years since that day, and he found himself wishing it would just end.

The sixth of December, two thousand and three. The date that had hovered on the distance for far too many days was finally upon him. At daybreak, two guards would come to retrieve him and lead him on his walk of shame to the cage, where he would be subjected to hours of relentless torture. And then? Blissful relief by way of a hangman's noose. He would finally be free of this life—or lack thereof.

He could hear the mutterings of a few prisoners in cells nearest to his—crazed ramblings of minds gone insane. He was seated on his cot—little more than a wooden slab and a thin wool blanket—leaning against the stone wall. His head dropped back and his eyes closed as he tried to focus on the serene calm he felt at the sweet reprieve from this life—his for the taking in little more than a day's time.

It was then that her face surfaced in his long-dormant mind. It had been years since he had thought of the swotty little priss. There had not been much reason for her to appear in his thoughts—waking or slumbering. Beyond her botched attempt to save his life, he had not laid eyes on her in five years.

He could clearly picture her in his mind: a petite witch with far too much hair and her nose in the air as she stepped down from her perch on the pedestal above the rest of the wizarding world to offer her noble assistance. It had backfired on her spectacularly. For the first time in her life, she had been repudiated and defeat was an ugly occurrence on her face. He had been little more than a pet project for her – one she had failed marvelously.

Draco grit his teeth as he wondered whether she would be in attendance at his farewell send off. Five years was enough to change an individual and for all he knew, she could be leading the public crusade against already-doomed Death Eaters. A phantom pain burned in his Mark and he covered it with his opposite hand.

Soon. All of this would be over soon enough. The aches and pains he lived with—side effects of the repetitive rounds of torture he had endured at the hands of the other Death Eaters and the abuse of the guards here for the last half-decade. Soon. His mind would finally be at rest. He would not have to replay every moment of his life under the Dark Lord's thumb any longer; would not have to relive the horrors he had witnessed in his childhood home or right here in these walls of the prison at the behest of the Light.

The sound of a door cracking open and the gruff voice of a male echoed into the shared space. "Malfoy. Yaxley. Nott. Lestrange. On your feet, now!"

Rising to his feet was a monumental task for his weakened body, but Draco managed. Though he shared a wall with Theo Nott, he had not physically seen him since they had entered the cells. Two guards opened his gate and Draco managed to catch a glimpse of his former best friend as he was led beyond the doors. His line of vision was blocked by two broad-shouldered wizards. "Come on you Death Eater piece of shit," one man hissed, snatching him by the shoulder.

With a wave of the second man's wand, his restraints were tightened and his wrists were fastened to the metal belt around his waist. The cuffs held anti-magic capabilities and even a well-executed wandless spell could not be attempted without dire consequences. No matter. Draco had not held a wand in so long, he often wondered how the twig would feel in his hands now. He had once felt mighty and bold with a hawthorn wand playing between his fingers, magic coursing through his veins. Now – somedays – he thought that perhaps it had all been a dream. He could scarcely remember his days at Hogwarts learning simple Wingardium Leviosasand gorging on pumpkin pasties. His fingers often twitched, the muscle memory begging to be indulged just once.

Draco could barely stand on his own and as a result, he half-shuffled and was half-carried down a long corridor to the apparition point. The side-along apparition – never one of his favorite activities – made his stomach turn, but he swallowed down the bile as they stepped into a faintly lit courtyard. The morning sun was peeking through the clouds, casting a rosy hue over everything, and he thought it was almost pretty as the guards led him past where Nott was weeping within his cage. Draco glanced at his best friend from the corner of his eye and then trained his eyes on the cobblestone streets as he was led to his entrapment. Theo had once cried over a dead mouse they had stumbled across in the gardens of Malfoy Manor. He did not belong in this courtyard but he was too pure for this fucked up world.

The heavier of the two guards sneered, locking Draco within the metal pinfold. "I'll start you off right," he said, gurgling up something from deep within his throat.

With a great heave, the man spit directly in Draco's face. With his hands fastened to his waist and the tight confines of his enclosure, he could not raise his hands to wipe it away and the guard's sneer grew ever more prevalent. As the sun rose over the east side of the Ministry, Draco leaned back in his enclosure. Witches and wizards would be turning up in droves, all seeking their little piece of recompense. The wind blew through his thin prison garb and his entire body rattled and shook. A grin spread over his face as his toes began to burn with the cold. Soon.

o-o-o

Hermione could not bring herself to watch the inhuman rituals that took place during the daylight hours the day before the executions. The acts of people she had once considered her friends and family had sent her straight to the bathroom to vomit. She had refused to participate for the last two hundred executions but this one was particularly heavy in her mind.

It was nightfall and the crowds had all thinned, forced by Ministry officials to leave their day of twisted barbarism. She peered down at the courtyard from the window in her office – the window she had frosted upon her arrival at work that morning. She had purposely arrived early – long before the prisoners had – and with greater purpose, she had stayed late. Sleep had refused to come to her the entire night before and as a result, Hermione had begun to formulate a plan on how to save him. She had to save him.

The cage could only be accessed by an Azkaban official, and careful flirtation with a young Azkaban guard had afforded her the opportunity to copy his key while he was preoccupied sucking on her neck. That key had burned a hole in her pocket all afternoon as she waited for nightfall. Only one guard was left at this late hour to mill about and watch over the prisoners. He paced lazily right under her window and Hermione lifted her wand and stupefied him from where she stood inside.

Acting with swift agility, she swept down a flight of stairs and entered the courtyard undetected by the unconscious guard. All four prisoners were slumped in their cages, but his head of bright white hair gave Malfoy away in the light of the moon and multi-colored fairy lights. Hermione rushed to his side and retrieved the key from her pocket. She repeated a careful sequence of clockwise and anti-clockwise turns that she had learned through a peek into the flirtatious young guard's mind and the metal clanged open.

"Malfoy," she whispered, placing her hand on his chest as his weight began to buckle without the cage to support him.

The afternoon of abuse had left him battered and broken – bleeding from more places than she could easily see. Blood pooled in a shiny puddle at his feet and caked in his hair, turning corn-silk white to rusty crimson in places. His face was swollen beyond recognition, and she knew that he had more broken bones in his face and body than she could possibly heal overnight. "Malfoy, wake up," she urged, shaking him even as she withdrew her wand and lowered him safely to the ground.

Half in the cage and half out, he was completely unconscious when she bent down. "Malfoy, I need you to get up! I don't know if I can safely apparate us both out of here without splinching you."

Her anxious ramblings did nothing to rouse him and Hermione heard laughter in the distance. He was wearing the anti-magic cuffs and she knew there was no way he could trust him without them. A small tattoo—the runic symbol for a dragon, a cheeky joke on the prison's part—was his link to Azkaban: a way of tracking him within moments should he ever attempt to run. The laughter – coming from at least two men – broke into her psyche once more and she began to panic. Without a moment more of hesitance, she lifted her wand to his neck and held the tip to the tattoo. Her eyes closed as she burned the flesh, effectively causing his skin to bubble and peel within seconds.

The sound of a man – belligerent and clearly wasted – grew closer and Hermione's panic began to rise in the back of her throat. She placed both of her hands on Malfoy's unconscious frame and closed her eyes, hoping beyond all rationale that he would not make her regret her moment of compassion.

o-o-o

A/N: Please review! A huge measure of gratitude is to be extended to PartyLines! I can never thank you enough for your colorful and incredibly detailed notes!