Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or places in the World of Harry Potter nor do I make money from this story.

'Morning.' She thought, with resignation. Another day had begun and the prospect of enduring another endless day like so many before turned her stomach. She fought not to open her eyes, a childish wish that she might find herself at home or with the man she loved, if only she could wish hard enough. Knowing this to be beyond even her startling magical talents she slowly peeled her eyes open and glanced around the richly appointed room, taking great care not to look at Him.

In the scant moments before He would begin to stir she cast her glance around the room trying, as she was wont to do, to find something good about her situation. Even in the strange low light of false dawn, which turns even the brightest of colors into various shades of gray and occasionally casts deep green shadows upon the carpet, the room was undeniably beautiful. This was purely aesthetic she reflected, after all is not a glided cage still a cage?

He began to stir and she froze instinctively, not wanting to catch the blame for having woken Him before dawn. That was a lesson she'd been made to learn all too well during the last two years and one she would try her utmost never to make again. Raising her hand she could still feel the scar on her scalp; running her fingers over it gingerly as though it might still hurt nearly a year later.

His wrath had been terrible, but more disturbing was the odd tenderness that overtook His handsome features when the violence of the attack had made itself clear. He was almost kind to her whilst she healed and made no move to use her for a space afterward. There was a troubling understanding in his eyes as he ministered her care for those weeks that had shocked her to the core.

She was not at all accustomed to being so incredibly wrong about another person, but the expression in his eyes said clearer than words that he knew what it meant to be hurt, and badly so. During those fateful days as she fell in and out of consciousness she also came to better understand the boy turned man with whom she had shared a deep mutual animosity and loathing. Even now months later when He was at his most sadistic she could no longer hate him, those eyes the color of a winter gray sky held a note of attrition, of...sympathy.

That is not to say that she was spared the worst of His temper, far from it. He had taken it upon himself to break her spirit, tame her and put her talents to use toward his own ends. He had taken a dislike to getting his hands, and robes, dirty and so left the worst of her physical "coercion" to others. He also displayed a politician's grasp of language.

One day about a month gone she'd heard Him discussing her progress with one of his house guests. He could not bring himself to say that he tortured her, no he was trying to change her mind, nothing more. She also found it odd that he refused to use her name when he spoke of her, wouldn't he want to tell the world of his triumph over an arch rival who was known to be a talented witch? Maybe she was wrong again?

He seemed to have drifted back to sleep, she sighed softly and pressed herself off of the satin sheets slowly, so as not to disturb him again. She padded across the ancient rug, handcrafted by master Indian wizards some hundred years ago, it was undeniable in its quality; the silken fibers caressing her bare feet as she took a gentle turn around the bed to grab her gossamer dressing gown, (It had been enchanted to provide more warmth than the fabric suggested.) designed to satisfy his own voyeuristic tendencies. Though once again the enchantment seemed a strangely magnanimous gesture on the part of one who technically owned her and who had spent many a year making her as uncomfortable as possible.

At the beginning of her...incarceration the thought of His hands on her revolted her, every cell it seemed screamed out for death, drove her to the very edge of reason, but in the years since He'd proven to be as compassionate as was possible, given her lack of choice in the...relationship. Draco Malfoy was many things, but a fate worse than death he was not. Most often she felt nothing toward him, not disgust or even anger. It was far easier to live with him when she allowed the numbness to sink into her mind, body and her very soul. She was possessed of an iron will during daylight hours, but her dreams were a different matter.

Some people claim that you can control your dreams, but that is a lie parents tell their children to banish imaginary boogeymen back into the closet to vanish in daylight. Hermione Granger was not a child anymore, not in any respect. She feared to close her eyes for the knowledge that her dreams would hold a very different life, the way her life should be: Ron at her side she'd glance down and see her belly swollen with the promise of new life. She could feel that little life kicking against her ribs merrily as if to say, "I'm here Mommy."

The dream from which she'd awoken moments earlier had been particularly painful and was proving particularly to shake: She lay on a table in the house of a midwife who had placed a
curious device to her belly and she had heard it, heard the beating of that little heart. Ron's expression was one of elation, he grasped her hand and asked, "Do you hear that?" His voice a slight whisper muffled further by the tears in his eyes. She smiled at him, secure in the knowledge that Ron was going to be a great father....

She physically shook her head, Ron was dead and nothing could bring him back to her. She decided that a bit of work might bring her back to reality faster so she knelt down to lay a fire in
the cold hearth. She was not allowed the liberty of unsupervised use of her wand, so she made no attempt to light it once the logs were arranged. Instead she crossed the room and silently opened the door to the adjoining sitting room and perched herself in one of the window boxes and pressed back the drapes.

Her hand lingered a moment on the lush green velvet, it was a small comfort to feel it soft beneath her clenched alabaster fingers, but at the very least it was real. Reality was all she had to cling to and she reflected: as long as there is life, there is hope. Though it was a small hope indeed and she did not allow it to linger. She cast her glance from the draperies and out into the grounds of the manor.

The rain fell in curtains, a metaphor for the tears she could not cry for her lost life. It was later than she'd thought when first she'd awoken, this was all to the good as it meant her day would be a bit shorter and as such slightly more bearable. Her best days were when Draco was ill, she needed only to tend to him when requested, the rest of her time could be spent reading, her favorite escape though she'd never let it be known. Hermione's skin began to crawl with the need for a bath, her fastidious nature always seemed to remind her of the mundane things she'd taken for granted. She wished Draco would allow her to walk to the end of the hall unsupervised for a bath. He acted like she was free to roam the Wizarding world and not be marked for death as a mudblood! The Dark Lord did not permit such unclean specimens to be without a proper master and only then if they'd shown exceptional power. So in a way Draco had saved her, though by doing so had condemned her to a life of servitude and torture.

There was a knock at the door which startled her out of all proportion to its significance, she gathered the robe about her and turned the knob with her eyes properly downcast, lest she lock
eyes with one of her 'betters.' It was merely one of the free servants payed to tend to the needs of what remained of the House of Malfoy. It took a small army of humans to do the work of one house elf, and they had been unsuccessful in attempts at enticing another to their service. This spoke volumes to the horrors that plagued the family and the truly frightening skeletons which the Malfoy's were hiding in the proverbial closet.

The elderly wizard had an air about him which spoke of dignity and also of condescension to those he deemed below his meager station, and Hermione was certainly one such unfortunate. He levitated a highly polished silver tray bearing a matched teapot and the finest china that gold could buy. On the plate was one of Draco's favorite breakfasts, griffin eggs on toast points. It was an extravagance that seemed wasteful to Hermione's sensibilities, but she had not been raised in a home with such lavish and frivolous attitudes.

The wizard was staring at her and for a long moment she could not begin to imagine why, then she realized, the robe. The warmth often caused her to forget that it was not as visually substantial as she might have hoped for in general company, but she supposed that it was just another part of the design, another humiliation. She blushed a deep scarlet in spite of her best effort and grasped the tray doing her best to ignore the awkward situation in which she'd found herself. She crossed the room in silence and placed the laden sliver tray upon the table, blackened with usage and age and polished to a high shine to please the Mistress of the Manor. She turned back to the door hoping that the servant would have seized the opportunity to have left when some measure of modesty might be maintained.

It seemed that luck had abandoned her, instead of a closed door she found the man leering at her in a disquieting fashion. Her eyes widened in fear of what he might do next. He minutely shifted his feet and she braced herself for the full force of his weight. One of the enchantments that lay on her skin prevented her from running from physical attacks on her person by fully blooded witches or wizards. She clenched her eyes tight and waited in silence that seemed an eternity for the blow to fall, it did not come.

At length she opened her eyes to see the man writhing on the ground he appeared to be shrieking though no sound was escaping his throat; perhaps the very air had been stolen from his lungs, for now he clawed at his throat in abject panic. She was still frozen, half expecting to be blamed for the servant's bad behavior, a laughable notion had she been able to laugh, as she'd not even complete control of her own actions with such magics chaining her! Then just when she was certain that the man had been removed from all pain and punishment by the sweet kiss of Death he gasped, taking great gulps of air and pressing himself slowly up to his feet.

"No," whispered a cold voice edged in steel, "You will remain on your knees until I say otherwise." Draco clucked his tongue like some disappointed schoolmarm and with a voice like unto silk he continued, "Abner, of all those in my employ I expected better of you. Long years have you worked in this household and now I have seen a glimpse of what it is you desire most and I find it to be most curious." Draco edged around the man who stayed on his knees with head bent out of respect born of fear. Draco then raised his wand like a whip and considered it before striking downward with considerable force.

A word of admonishment punctuated each stroke, Draco's tone was polite and very mildly condescending as if this was just any other day and he was not doling out punishment. "You." Crack! "Will." Crack! "Not." Crack! "Lay." Crack! "Hands." Crack! "On." Crack! "What." Crack! "Is." Crack! "Mine" Crack! The man stayed on his knees by some miracle, though he'd been whimpering piteously by the time the third blow had fallen.

Hermione jumped slightly with each lash, feeling fortunate that it was not she who was feeling the sting of the whipping as she had so often before, but also daring not to move, lest Draco feel that the blame was to be spread equally amongst the two of them. She remained, where she'd fallen to her knees and took great care not to breath too loudly.

Draco's voice echoed into the quiet of the room, "Get out of my sight you covetous wretch." Abner, it seemed needed no further warning and was gone before Hermione could summon the strength of will to raise her head. She clasped her hands together to keep him from noticing the shaking, but the rest of her body betrayed it to the tall wizard who stood above her.

He raised her to standing by laying a soft hand under her chin and pulling her upward gently. She tensed, gentleness form Draco usually presaged something horribly painful. She put all of the effort she could muster into not flinching, there was no need to give him any ideas. He pushed the robe from her ivory shoulders and the luxuriant material pooled on the ancient wooden floor round her equally pale legs. He carefully and throughly inspected her and having found no injuries he turned to the table where his breakfast lay nearly forgotten.

He took a carelessly graceful seat, his blond hair a shimmering curtain of loveliness in the early morning light and with a flick of his wand he opened the door and said dismissively, " I expect you'll be wanting a bath." She gathered the robe up in her arms and fled to the bath chamber without a backward glance.

Hermione raced down the hall on tip toe, so as not to disturb the remainder of the household. She closed the door softly behind her, her heart still thumping painfully against her rib-cage she could scarcely believe her luck. It might not have been advisable to dwell on the fact that she'd not only escaped punishment, but also somehow managed the privilege of bathing in private.

The chamber was positively cavernous and her bare feet created an echo which was uncomfortably loud to her ears. It was rather difficult to move surreptitiously, so she decided to abandon the notion altogether. The window faced full East and the dim light of the morning sun, muted by the grayness of the clouds, made the fixtures which were white as bone, glow radiantly. When, at length, her eyes adjusted Hermione beheld the splendor of the decor. Once again it could not be said that Draco's mother had failed in any aspect of style or taste; the clean white lines of the basin and sink were complimented to perfection by towels and linens that on first glance appeared to be spun out of jet, their delicate sheen toning down the stark nature of her first impression and leaving her with the impression of modern elegance.

She peeled her feet from the floor, how long she'd stood pondering the decor she could not have said, and crossed to the basin which began filling as she approached. She knew without testing it that it was the exact temperature that she wanted, ah the marvels of a fully magical Estate! Hermione luxuriated in the feeling of the supple jet rug between her toes and before she could have imagined it, the tub was filled with hot water and bubbles that were scented with a light soothing perfume. In fact the speed with which the basin had filled had been so startling that she'd not afforded herself time to brush her hair.

She snatched the sliver brush from the shelf on which it lay forlorn and turned to face her reflection in the mirror that served as the northern wall for the room, it was startlingly clear to her at that point that vanity was a curse of the Malfoy line. Her tresses had never been so neglected and it was with no small amount of cursing and hissing, both under her breath, that she began to carefully untangle the mats that had accumulated over the week since last she'd been allowed to wash or tend to her waist-length hair. Hermione supposed that it was another act of subjugation to prevent her from caring for her appearance as she'd have liked to, it was a petty thing. Petty things were not of any great consequence, she would remind herself, and so she chose simply to ignore his attempt at undermining her fragile ego. Her life was more important than her pride.

The mirror was fogged with the steam of her bath and she swept her hand at it in order that she might see what a mess time and neglect had made of her once delicate features. The moisture in the air was so great that she could not get an accurate picture of what she might look like, she smirked at the obscured reflection; it no longer mattered what she looked like and following that line of thought it might never matter again.

She was suddenly cold, a bone deep cold that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room and more to do with the notion, the painful realization that she might be permanently
disenfranchised. Hermione abandoned that thought altogether and slipped into the bath, whose fragrant bubbles were already beginning to dissipate. The water glided over her skin like a
silken kiss, a caress that would never, could never be unwelcome. It was like a hug from a lifelong friend and was more comfort than she'd have allowed herself had she been supervised as was the norm.

Suddenly Hermione was crying, a luxury that she could ill afford given her present state, she raised a wet hand to wipe away the traces of tears and caught the scent of Draco still on her skin. She picked up the soap, heavily scented with jasmine, and began to violently scour every last trace of him from her skin which turned bright red under her hands. When she discovered that the smell was also intertwined in every curl on her head. Disgusted, she plunged herself into the basin as deeply as she could go and prayed for the strength to take one deep breath of the scalding water. She straightened her legs and was momentarily trapped beneath the weight of her hair.

She ran her fingers over her face beneath her damp tresses and parted them with a sigh, there had not been a time in the past year and a half that she'd so consistently failed to master her emotions. 'This,' she thought, 'does not bode well for my well-being.' She reached for the new bottle of shampoo that sat next to the basin. Upon picking it up it was not one she'd seen in this bathroom before, though it did look strangely familiar to her. The bottle slipped through her wet fingers and water splashed back at her with unnatural force, hitting her straight in the face. "Bollocks!" Throwing her hands down she splashed more water from the basin to pool upon the cold marble.

'One more thing for me to clean up!' she seethed in silence. Lady Luck has at times a most peculiar sense of humor, or perhaps it was just the imp of the perverse plaguing Hermione that day. Her fingers dredged the bottom of the basin and found the bottle where it had come to rest at the far end near the drain where the porcelain dipped to better drain the water. By some miracle the cap remained tightly snapped and the contents were undamaged by the impromptu swim they'd taken. With fingers that were now grasping far more tightly than was strictly necessary she gave the bottle a squeeze, set it down and began to lather before the full fragrance hit her nose, and hit her it did...

Hermione stood in the small bathing room at the Burrow combing through her damp hair and singing under her breath, so lost was she in her reverie that she failed to notice when the door opened and a visitor stepped into the room and chuckled softly to himself at what he beheld.

Her eyes were closed and she was enjoying the smell of the shampoo that Ginny had lent her and the relative privacy of the room, it was frequently the only place that one might be alone in the Weasley household. Finally she brushed her hair back from her face and was astonished to see Ron standing not three feet from her with an unidentifiable expression painted on his handsome face. She flushed at his chuckle and in trying to be cautious and casual she dropped her brush to the floor; her eyes followed and she was determined not to look him in the face again, lest she draw another laugh from him.

Ron did not realize that he had embarrassed her and crossed the room in two great strides and bent to pick up the fallen brush. At the same moment Hermione knelt to retrieve the brush she'd dropped, further mortified by her own clumsiness. Suddenly she was struck with..something on her head. "Bloody Hell!" Ron said echoing her very thought as he straightened rubbing his head with one hand and her hairbrush in the other. In spite of herself, Hermione began to laugh, it was oddly appropriate for the situation and Ron joined her before asking, "What is so funny Hermione?"

She shook her head and smiled at him, "My mum told me once that in every great relationship there will be a moment where the two of you bend over to pick something up and end up hitting your heads together. When it happened for her and my dad was the first time she realized she loved him..." she finished in a whisper. She looked up into his face breathlessly, uncomfortable with the obvious thought that came unbidden into her mind.

Hermione watched as something passed through Ron's eyes and her reached up to touch her cheek, she both longed for and feared to close the distance between their lips. Ron suffered from no such lack of motivation and bent to her upturned face, his heart beating frantically, he could feel her breath on his lips. Hermione closed her eyes and the door flew open they jumped back from each other as if they'd been momentarily electrocuted. A female voice came into the room ahead of its owner, "Hermione I had a few questions about the..." Ginny stopped short and gaped at the sight before her eyes.

The memory faded and Hermione scrubbed at her scalp ruthlessly trying to remove any trace of Ron from her mind, as if it would be possible to do so with force of cleansing. She rinsed her hair doing her best not to linger over the smell of the shampoo, realizing this to be a fruitless plan she instead hurried herself just to escape the ghost of Ron who lingered in the faint traces of vapor and suds from the shampoo. She toweled herself so vigorously that her skin was red and irritated, not an easy task given the exceptionally soft nature of the towels at her disposal.

Hermione forced herself to the task of cleaning the enormous room with a dedication which might only be attributed to desperation; even given her desire to finish and be away from this room she did not allow her haste to affect the quality of her work. She tried to focus instead on the fact that Draco made her clean by hand. She thought that this too was meant to insult and degrade her as a witch, but she wondered if he could ever understand that it was not nearly so much a hardship to her as it might be to him, as she'd grown up doing chores which were not all that dissimilar. It is often the contention of the gently born that their fears or dislikes are the only things worth despising or fearing, that their experiences were the only ones of any value.

When the room positively gleamed in the dim stormy light which struggled through the window on the Eastern wall of the chamber, Hermione finally decided that her task was done. She
gathered the cleaning supplies and stowed them neatly under the sink and prepared to dress in the robes that had appeared on the plush seat in front of the vanity next to the sink. The fabric was far too fine for everyday wear, surely there was some mistake. She took a moment to weigh the options before her: did she wear the robes which were far too fine and incur the wrath of their rightful owner or did she refuse them and risk Draco's anger? It seemed that there was no way to win. After a moment she decided that it would be the lesser risk to dare his anger, lately he was as likely to react as not, but no other member of the household was likely to be as inattentive.

She gathered the robes delicately, in order that she'd not wrinkle them and walked carefully down the long hall to the suite she'd left earlier. It felt odd to be alone in the hallway, or really anywhere where she was not under lock and key (or more accurately in this case, lock and wand); she savored the walk to the end of the hall not knowing when she might again have the opportunity to be without scrutiny. She had always imagined this moment would be accompanied by some level of relief, but the only thing she could feel was a weariness that dragged at her feet as if she were trudging through ankle-deep mud.

She trudged down the hall with hunched shoulders, back to the inevitable sting of her reality. She stepped softly into the receiving room, though she needn't have bothered. Draco was absorbed deeply in some bit of business a frown of concentration on his face and his brow furrowed with wrinkles that his chiseled masculine features would not for some years to come. Setting about to her chores for the day she studied his face surreptitiously, it seemed that he was under some great stress as of late and it could best be seen in his eyes that had lost the sparkle of youth and vitality that they'd held during his tenure at Hogwarts. It was a testament to the level of his distraction that he'd not caught Hermione's subtle glances, though she was much on his mind and the very subject which had given him pause.

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Draco dismissed Hermione to bathe counting on surprise to curtail any possible ill-conceived, or more likely in her case well-conceived, escape plans. She left without so much as a backward glance and he let out a breath that he had not known he was holding. This was not at all what he'd anticipated when he'd hatched this plan, she should have made his life easier! He bit idly into his breakfast and poured himself a cuppa and flicked his hair over his shoulder so that he could better see out the window. The weather matched his mood so closely that it could have been spun from his very thoughts, black clouds roiled outside as well as inside his mind.

Though the hour was later than he generally liked to rise he was disinclined to raise any complaints, he was too despondent to hear his own gripes. A feat, indeed, for someone who was widely known to greatly enjoy the sound of his own voice. When it seemed that his mood could sink no lower, his melancholia was interrupted by a knock at the door.

He bid them entrance and took the post from yet another silver tray then dismissed the servant and cracked the wax seal on the first of three letters regarding his "Magical Investment" as Hermione had been deemed by one of Draco's more couth associates. It was not widely known that he had what amounted to a slave gifted with exceptional powers, but to those few who were privy to such information it seemed that Draco had scored the ultimate coup.

On a near daily basis he received offers, which had become increasingly lucrative, for her person. He would not entertain them, nor would he reveal to those who knew what he had who she was...Hermione Granger had died in the Battle of Hogwarts and no one ever need think differently! It was a small miracle in itself that they'd survived that battle, but he could not bring himself ruin by giving her to anyone else, not for any price.

He quickly scanned the remaining letters, only to confirm the nature of their author's inquiry, before throwing them into the cold grate and lighting it with flick of his wand and a thought. The force of his thought caused the fire to flare higher than he expected, it was not at all like him to let anything get the better of his abilities, the flare up ended as abruptly as it had begun and he did his best to shake off the slight panic that it arose in him.

He had finished the last of his correspondence for the day and began tending to the bills for the household by the time Hermione returned from her bath. The scent of the shampoo clung to her and played strangely with his mind. Hermione sprawled naked upon black satin sheets with a knowing smile flashed through his thoughts, he clenched his jaw and did his level best to ignore the smell and the vision that it seemed was painted on the back of his eyelids. He clenched the quill in his hand and it snapped under the fury of his grip, sending droplets of ink splattering across the clean sheets of parchment that lay neglected on the table. He trembled with the effort to ignore the scent of her hair and skin, with the desperate attempt to forget the color of her eyes.

Storm clouds crossed through his eyes and before he could stop himself, in fact before he had even the slightest notion he'd moved an inch he'd closed the distance to where she stood tidying (And he noted oddly detached, not wearing the robes he'd had made for her). She did not cower as the force of his anger broke over her; her will was as strong as it had ever been.

He grabbed her left arm with bruising force and pressed the frock into the other with an order for her to turn and change into them posthaste. She obeyed keeping the disgust from her face with discipline of iron; tossing her hair over her shoulder to catch him in the face was her only concession to the seething anger bubbling near the surface.

He grabbed a hank of her hair where it hit his face and pulled it harshly to his nose, eliciting a small sound of protest from her. He wound the lock of hair more tightly and she groaned in response. He smiled at her pain and the flowery scent of the shampoo and spun her fiercely to face him, her half buttoned robes fell down around her ankles. All traces of defiance were gone, leaving fear naked in her magnificent eyes.

He pulled her hair again and she made no noise and no movement, paralyzed by the threat in his posture. He kissed her roughly and was certain that she felt no pleasure from it only kissing him back when it became clear that he'd bloody her lips against her teeth if she did not yield and open to him. He loosened his grip on her hair and let her fall to the floor, a puddle of flesh, a perfect compliment to her new robes. He laughed derisively and with a flourish left her to her cell. Though he did enjoy them, there was far too much business to attend to for playing such games all day.