Author's Note: This piece was written for the 2014 Reverse Challenge fest on H&V. A huge "Thank you!" is owed to my beta, Renee, for wrestling with my pronouns (and winning!), straightening out my wonky capitalizations, and pushing me to be better. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own. Warnings include graphic violence, strong profanity, and psychological trauma.

Chapter 1

September 19, 1998

Hermione Granger's brown eyes stared straight ahead, unfocused and unblinking. There was activity all around her, everyone moving, settling in, shifting and turning and talking, and though they were not moving quickly, to her, they were a blur, moving in double-time. The colors of their clothes and hair and skin melded into one another such that faces disappeared. No distinguishing characteristics, nothing to separate one person from the next. Just a blur. It was all just a blur.

A hand touched her wrist. Hermione nearly shot out of her skin with panic, but Ginny Weasley was used to that reaction by now, and her apology was in her eyes.

"Are you ready for this?" she asked.

Hermione nodded, though it was a lie. She never felt ready anymore. Ready for the trial? No. Ready to leave? No. Ready to go back to work, resume a normal life, begin pretending as if everything was okay even though wasn't? No.

The smack of the Chief Warlock's gavel made her flinch again, and the blurs of people settled down as he began to speak. A dark blue blur brought in the only focused object in the courtroom: Draco Malfoy.

He had been arrested shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts and had been held in one of the Ministry's basement cells during his trial. His grey robes were well worn, almost fraying around the edges, and his ashen skin accentuated the hard lines of his pointed face. Dark circles made his eyes look sunken and his hair, like his robes, was shaggy and unkempt.

He looked like shite.

The blur led him to the witness stand, where he sat for the final time to face judgment. Hermione looked away from him. She stopped listening, as well. She had been through enough trials over the past three months to know that the Chief Warlock was simply recapping the arguments made and the evidence presented.

Ginny touched her wrist again, once more causing Hermione to start.

"He's looking at you."

Ginny sounded surprised, as if Hermione hadn't noticed Draco's eyes upon her throughout the trial. Not the entire time, of course, but whenever his attention wasn't needed elsewhere, it was on Hermione. She didn't want to look at him. Didn't want anything to do with him, but the witness box was in a direct line with her seat, and there was nowhere else to look but forward, slightly over his left shoulder.

Hermione tugged on the hem of her right sleeve and steadied her voice before whispering, "Let him look."

The Chief Warlock's gavel sounded again and, judging by the sudden burst of outrage, Hermione knew that a stay in Azkaban, no matter how brief, was in Draco's future.

"He won't be seeing much of anything there."

Ginny breathed a cynical laugh and turned to Hermione. "No, he won't, will he? Well, happy birthday, anyway."

October 22, 1998

Hermione took a deep breath in an attempt to settle her rolling stomach. It was a bad idea. Though the Dementors had been removed from Azkaban, their presence still haunted the place, their evil sunk deep into the dark stone walls. The subtle, sweet stench of rot permeated the dank air, and Hermione was glad she had not worn clothes she cared about. They would have to be binned after this trip, and she would have to spend at least an hour beneath the stinging spray of a hot shower to cleave the scent from her skin.

"Are you ready for this?" Harry asked, looking between her and Ron.

Ron nodded, as did she, even though she did not mean it. Being in the prison was bad enough. Being in the prison to see him was worse. She did not like to think of how close he would be to her, how only a few metal bars would separate them from each other.

"I don't know what to expect," Harry continued. He sounded apologetic, as if he had promised them a full report and then forgotten about it. Knowing Harry, he was just nervous, and the idea of it warmed her slightly. His insecurity, completely unwarranted after what he had accomplished, was ingrained in him, and kept him humble, approachable, and beloved. Kept him human.

Ron clapped him on the shoulder bracingly.

"Probably going to be the same old git we know and detest."

Ron's humor made Harry smile, but did little to calm her. Her friend's bravado was not a new development, but it suited him less and less. Not like he would listen to her if she mentioned it. Not like she ever would.

Harry placed his palm against the wall. The stone fizzled away from his touch, dissolving as if his hand were acid. In less than a minute, the way was clear.

Harry led. Ron followed. Hermione needed a moment to square her shoulders before she committed to stepping into the visitor's room.

Her stomach turned over.

There were no bars to protect her from him. Just the width of a rectangular table, easily spanned by an arm or a lunging body. Her chest grew tight. She clenched her fists and stepped forward, joining her friends at the table. They had left the middle seat open for her intentionally. They wanted to surround her with whatever comfort they could give, what minimal protection their bodies could provide. The façade was unnecessary, and Hermione might have been insulted had she not been touched by the gesture.

Harry opened the conversation, and Hermione closed down, only half listening. She stared ahead, slightly over Draco's shoulder, letting her eyes flick to him every once in a while if only to prove that he could not catch her off guard.

Draco had cleaned up as well as he could, considering his circumstances. His hair was wet and lay mostly flat, curling around the nape of his neck. The dark blond stubble on his neck, chin, and cheeks was relatively clean. Dark circles still ringed his eyes, and his skin was startlingly pale against his surroundings, but he looked no worse than when the Ministry held him. She supposed it was proof enough that the prison reforms were working.

"Hermione?"

Her eyes snapped to Draco's face. He looked at her expectantly, his eyebrows raised, his grey eyes curious. Then, the walls compressed and the room went black. His face disappeared and in its place, shapes formed. A severe jaw, dark eyes, a mess of hair, and gleaming, laughing lips.

Hermione shot to her feet, steadying herself upon Ron's shoulder as her vision – what should have been her vision – popped back into place. Draco's curious look intensified, his brows no longer raised, but furrowed over his eyes.

Dark eyes. Dark eyes that were not his own.

She turned and left without a word, retracing her path until she could no longer see the dissolved wall. The prison guards eyed her beadily as she paced the drafty reception area. She suspected they would have told her to stop had she not been who she was. Several minutes later, Harry put a hand on her shoulder, dragging her out of her head. His eyes were unyielding, his tone stern.

"I know there's bad blood between you and Malfoy, but you shouldn't have left like that."

Rarely did she behave in a way that warranted a scolding; this was not one of those times. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming it.

"He doesn't deserve to be locked up in here," Harry continued. "He was coerced into joining the Death Eaters. He saved our lives at the Manor."

"Indirectly," Ron added, more for his own peace of mind than because he noticed the blood rushing from her cheeks at the mention of Draco's ancestral home.

"He's a scapegoat, Hermione. A way for the Ministry to atone for its mistakes."

Harry caught her hard, disbelieving look before she could disguise it as acceptance.

"Malfoy made mistakes, too," he admitted, "and he will atone for them. But not like this. This…" He gestured at the dark walls around them. "This doesn't mean anything."

Hermione tongue felt heavy as she lied: "I'm sorry."

"I don't want to do it, either," Ron said, "but if I can make it through thirty minutes…"

Ron's smile made his expectations clear, and Harry mirrored his expression, confident that she had understood.

And she had. Hermione knew she had to try harder, either to heal faster or hide her failing more effectively. She did not understand why the PsychoSocial Healing sessions hadn't worked for her as they had for Harry and Ron. She did not understand why she was still lost, still low, still struggling to breathe, and talk, and see, and live.

Her right forearm burned – a phantom pain that felt too real. She clenched her jaw as she followed her friends out of the prison.

December 24, 1998

Christmas at the Weasleys'. The cozy kitchen with its walls lined with animated portraits, brass cookware, and dented utensils; warm smells of food whose main ingredient was butter; the comfortable swell of familiar voices gathered around the old trestle table. It was her sanctuary, the safe place where she could forget what she'd lived through, even if just for an evening.

At least, it should have been.

It was Draco's first Weasley Christmas, and if his constipated expression was anything to judge by, he wanted it to be his last. Harry had petitioned the Wizengamot for Draco's early release, and the Wizengamot had complied with one stipulation: he would be placed under Harry's guardianship, meaning the responsibility for Draco's rehabilitation fell squarely upon her friend's shoulders. Any misbehavior on Draco's part would get him thrown back into prison and would reflect poorly upon Harry.

It was an empty threat. Draco would do anything to stay out of Azkaban, and nothing could tarnish Harry's reputation, not that he would care if it were. Regardless, Harry took the obligation seriously. He assumed control of Draco's remaining assets and found him a cheap flat to let in a decent neighborhood. Several new pairs of low-end robes and a haircut did for his image; Draco stubbornly insisted on keeping the stubble, though he did consent to have it trimmed and shaped. Though Harry would not confirm it, rumor had it that a Ministry job was forthcoming. Once Draco was employed and self-sufficient for three months, the geographical restrictions cast upon him would be lifted, and he could visit his mother at the Manor more than the allotted once per month.

Harry justified this dinner as community involvement, and though Hermione knew she ought to be impressed and pleased with Harry's compassion, she was angry. She resented Harry for ruining her holiday, resented the Ministry for caving so easily to his request, and resented Draco for being the cause of it, no matter how much he might deserve a second chance.

Hermione tried not to let it show, but Draco sat just across from her, separated this time by a slowly disappearing ham and a tureen of homemade applesauce. She tried not to look at him, but that forced her gaze to Ginny. Ginny noticed her stare and persistent silence. It did not take her long to guess the reason for it, and her pointed looks grew in frequency and intensity as the meal progressed.

Molly served pudding. Everyone tucked in, slouching back in their chairs as cutlery hit the table. Eyelids drooped, conversation lulled, and, when Bill suggested they relocate, no one had the energy to argue. Hermione followed behind, one of the last from the table, and veered to the right, forgoing the sitting room, the tree, the fire, the company, and any joy the season held for her.

She locked herself in the ground-floor powder room, turned on the faucet, and finally – finally – let go. Draco's face, so close to hers, and his eyes…

Bellatrix's eyes.

Her stomach churned, and she lurched to the toilet to heave up her dinner. Once her stomach finished its revolt, she wiped her mouth and sat back, scrunched between the wall and the toilet. Her throat burned as she tried to remember how to breathe and, desperate, she shoved up the sleeve of her jumper.

She felt the heat and the pain of the curse as clearly as the day it had been cast, carved into her skin, angry and red and vivid, and larger, she thought. Bloody. She couldn't remember the advice given to her by her Healer, a young man who didn't understand – couldn't understand – what it was like to be forced down and maimed for pleasure.

She clutched her arm and opened her mouth in a silent scream.

It felt like hours before the shaking stopped, before her tears dried and her breathing normalized. She wiped the vomit from the rim of the toilet and depressed the lever. She pulled her sleeve back down and tried to smooth out the wrinkles. She stood and checked her reflection – pale skin, bloodshot eyes, pinprick hemorrhages accenting her cheeks. She opened the door.

Draco waited for her. He leaned against the wall opposite the door, his arms crossed before his chest. The light hit the angle of his jaw in a way that made her stomach cramp. She looked away from him and took an unconscious step back into the loo.

The silence between them lasted too long. She had to break it because she knew he wouldn't.

"Why aren't you with the others?"

He ignored her question completely, as was his tradition. "Are you okay?"

She braced herself against the doorframe. "I'm fine."

Her eyes flicked up to his face again. Before, he had looked mildly concerned. Now, he looked angry, maybe even hurt, as if her answer had been not only incorrect, but also deeply insulting. She measured the distance between his body and the wall and decided to risk it.

As she passed him, he reached out and grabbed her arm. Her right arm. He was not violent, and put no more pressure on her skin than Harry or Ron would to stop her retreat, but she cried out softly in pain and fear.

Draco released her at once, dropping her arm as if it burned him, and she stepped away from him, clutching her arm to her chest. He stepped away from her, too. The distance between them made breathing easier.

"I'm sorry."

His voice was deep and sincere, and she knew he had apologized for more than just the unwanted contact. She also knew it didn't mean anything. Didn't change anything.

She dropped her arm, dropped her eyes, and walked away from him without a word.

January 3, 1999

Harry got Draco a job in the Auror Office.

The position was one only Muggles and Muggle-borns had ever heard of: mail clerk. Harry admitted, after several coercive questions from her and accusations from Ron, to using his celebrity to create the position. It was a measure of the Ministry's hatred of the Malfoy name that Harry could do no better than a joke.

All mail delivered by owl post was dropped into a large retaining bin and magically sorted into rolling carts which visited each floor three times a day. Only owls who missed their intended target due to confusion ever left their letters lying about. This was a rare thing, unless, of course, one's last name was Weasley. Draco was at Ron's desk more than seemed reasonable, even for Errol's great age. Hermione occasionally theorized that the bird clung to his life simply to make hers difficult.

It was bad enough that Draco had witnessed her failing, even peripherally. To see him every week, to have that constant reminder of what had been done to her, made her tense. She dreaded coming to work, not knowing if she would see him or not, not knowing if she needed to be on guard, not allowing herself a minute to relax for fear he would notice and take advantage of it.

He lingered today, making a show of analyzing Ron's ragged quill collection, and her hot-tempered friend was unable to resist countering his jibes. Hermione tuned out their back-and-forth most days, and Harry helped her, ignorant though he was of it. Today, he needed her opinion on the specifications of a wand his team had recovered from a raid in Southern England.

"Nine-inch beech with unicorn tail hair core," Harry muttered, passing the drawing across the aisle to her. "Do you recognize it?"

She took it and turned toward her desk, spreading the parchment flat and producing a copy with a pass of her wand. She swung around just long enough to hand him the original, then held her copy to the light.

"There's some strange detail in the handle," she said. "Almost like it's… misshapen."

"And look, the tip's nicked."

"It's Amycus'."

Hermione spun around to stare at Draco. Harry did likewise. Ron snapped his nicest quill.

"Come again?"

Draco answered Harry. "The wand you found. It belongs to Amycus. Amycus Carrow."

"How many other Amycuses do we know?" Ron sniped.

"Amycus' wand is a ten-inch larch with unicorn hair and no distinctive markings," Hermione recited. "We have record of it from when he was at Hogwarts."

"The larch is his secondary wand. His main one now, I suppose, since you've collected the beech."

"There's no record of him having a secondary wand."

"Well, there wouldn't be," Draco said slowly, as if explaining it to a child. He was not quite condescending, but he was close, and Hermione's cheeks flushed. "It's not one of Ollivander's. He acquired it illegally, probably soon after he became a Death Eater."

"Does Alecto have another wand?"

Draco turned back to Harry and nodded. "Most Death Eaters do."

"And you can identify them."

It was more statement than question. Draco grinned like a Niffler that had discovered a platinum vein. Then the bargaining began.

Hermione turned back to her desk and ignored it, staring with unfocused eyes at wand schematic. It made her furious that Draco would leverage his knowledge. A well-intentioned citizen would supply the information without a thought, not needing or wanting anything in return. A normal person would be content with the satisfaction of capturing murderers and potentially saving lives.

Not Draco. He was the epitome of selfishness, always twisting situations so that he benefitted from the exchange. His self-interest was so ingrained that Hermione wondered if it was a product of nature rather than nurture, but the idea that he couldn't help his behavior did not sit well with her. It precluded the notion of free will, and she could not accept that.

She tugged at her right sleeve and wondered if she could leave without attracting attention when Ron said her name. She whipped her head around and looked between the three men. Of them, Ron looked most expectant, so she addressed him.

"Sorry, I missed that."

Draco answered. "Would you have a problem if I joined the team?"

All eyes turned to him, which meant no one saw the shadow of anger that darkened her eyes.

He would call her out and make her into a spectacle. To tell the truth – to tell him yes – would lend itself to a discussion she did not want to have with her two best friends. He had trapped her just as he had trapped Harry and Ron.

Her only option was to force a grimace to look like a smile and say, "No. Not at all."

January 7, 1999

It was a problem. A large one she could not avoid.

Draco moved from the mailroom into their quadrant of desks the very afternoon she had agreed to the bargain. Harry and Ron sat next to each other, as was their habit, and she had learned to live with the fact that they shared a bond she could never match. She was barely an arm's length away from them, anyway. Just across the aisle, there when they needed her, as was her habit, and she reconciled the isolation with the ability to use the empty desk beside her as a short-term storage area.

Now, she didn't even have that. Draco's need for a workspace forced her to relocate her piles of books and scrolls, and so she did, relinquishing his desk and chair. Ron found him a dented inkpot. Harry added a yellow Muggle highlighter to his collection of moderately priced quills. Draco supplied his own potted plant, which, Hermione discovered after browsing through a few Herbology texts, was carnivorous.

Draco kept to his side. He was quiet, mostly, and when he did speak, it was to Harry and Ron more often than it was to her. But the nearness of him, the biting, almost bitter smell of his aftershave, was enough to remind her, to trigger her panic and have her clutching her chair for what must have been hours, her fingers cramped so severely that she could barely hold a quill.

Hermione wanted to ignore him and lose herself in mindless, repetitive tasks, but it was impossible. She had been hired to research. She had to complete the puzzle, make the connections, see what no one else could, and prepare her team for all eventualities. She had to focus. She had to be sharp.

And she couldn't.

Not when her arm burned and screams lodged in her throat. Not when fear clawed her belly and threatened to rip her apart.

He didn't know what memories he brought forward. He couldn't know. Not the details, at least. He had seen a glimmer of it at Christmas, and she had felt him watching her ever since. Before that, even, but with renewed intensity now. He was careful around her. Measured words, measured movements, nothing quick or loud, and that made it worse.

She did not want to be fragile. She wanted to be the way she was: confident and whole, unmarked and untainted.

It was a foolish wish, and she was a fool for entertaining it.

She rose from her desk, suddenly desperate to be anywhere else. She made sure her wand was in its holster (it always was) and headed toward the lift.

Draco followed her in.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember her PsychoSocial Healer, those breathing exercises she'd dismissed as soon they were explained, but each breath she took was full of him and, by irrational, unstoppable association, her.

"You'll get through it, you know."

She wrenched her eyes open and wished she hadn't. The lift's buttons swirled black, white, and gold. Black, a gaping maw. White, shining teeth. Gold, a capped tooth. The lift's screeching as it lowered itself into the building grew louder as it traveled, magnifying into an insane, gleeful shriek.

Hermione pressed her back against the lift's wall, and she was there again, in that wide, open, opulent space with a madwoman tearing her flesh. She writhed, she screamed, she cried, and, as if from a mile away, she heard Draco swear.

The lift slammed to a halt, the noise as loud and deafening as an explosion. Then Draco's hands were upon her. Her shoulders, her neck, her face, her shoulders, her chest. He seemed to vibrate as he touched her, but no – it was she, shaking so violently that her teeth clacked together. His breath warmed her forehead, his hands gripped her firmly beneath her arms, and his foot swept her legs out from under her.

Her scream came out as a high-pitched, plaintive mewl. It was happening again. He would pin her to the floor, mark her in a way he thought she deserved, and she would cry and scream, but keep silent, keep their secrets, because that's what they needed, and that's what she was. She was strong. She didn't want to be, but she was, so she would grit her teeth and endure.

She would fight.

Draco was strong, too. He manhandled her, forcing her knees up and her head down, and then he was gone, pressed against the other side of the lift. She felt his absence like a gust of cool wind. Her deep, gasping breath made her chest ache.

"Breathe, Granger. Breathe."

She didn't need the encouragement. With time, her heartbeat slowed. She let her legs drop and her arms fall to her sides. She lifted her head, but did not look at him. She stared instead at the black, white, and gold lift buttons. Just buttons. Nothing else.

"Is that what it's like?" Draco sounded shaky and breathless, as if he had just witnessed a death. "Seeing me every day? Is that what you feel?"

She clenched her jaw, but it did not keep her chin from quivering. Draco made a noise as broken as she felt. Several minutes passed before she had the courage to look at him.

He sat on the floor. His legs were crossed, his elbows rested on his knees, and his face was hidden by his hands. His entire body trembled, and his back heaved with each breath he forced himself to take.

Draco was miserable, and it was like looking into a mirror.