A/N: This AU is about balance and righting the world. But do take note that it is an AU. Also note that this fic does not contain rape, or any forms of it. I rated this 'M' because it is for adults only. There are adult situations in this fic. There are many possible genres, so many that I couldn't properly categorize it. If you are lighthearted, please turn away.

Summary: It's been over five years since Hermione fled England with hopes to never return. She awakens after being beaten and dumped on the grounds of Hogwarts, with no memory of how she got home. Now she's forced to unravel the mystery with the help of the kind-hearted Harry Potter, and her old nemesis Draco Malfoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. Le plot, yeah. But HP? No.

Chapter One - Lay, Lady, Lay

The first thing Hermione registered as she came to was her inability to move. The second thing she registered was insurmountable pain.

The feeling of the rushing blood through her body was so ensnaring that the sensations hitting her nerves caused her muscles to bunch of their own accord, and she curled in pain as best as her body would allow. Loud and guttural groans of discomfort left her mouth at the all-over throbbing in her bones, only for them to them mix and die in the wind.

She lay in the fetal position on tall, wet grass. The pain in her face made it nearly impossible to open her eyes. Her jaw was more-or-less dislocated on her left side, and the same when for her left shoulder. She would have believed she'd been hit by a car on that side, had it not been for the pain of her broken leg and the pinch and stab of cracked and broken ribs of her right. She tried to tuck her knees closer to her chest, which did nothing to ease the pain; nor did it help warm her as the cold wind ran unforgiving through her soaked shorts and t-shirt. She didn't wear shoes, and the gusts of wind were causing cold drops of water to hit her bare skin; sockless feet and toes turning into ice-cubes.

The injured woman tried again to move, unhappily, away from the wet and the cold, but the motion only caused more pain as her broken leg and arm slipped and slumped ungracefully in her attempt to stay shielded and warm. The way her body wracked from the cold gave way to something close to convulsions. The cold that surrounded her and the slightly warmed patch of grass she lay upon gave her the first fully conscious realization since she'd awoken.

'I am not in Thailand anymore.'

She should have felt beads of sweat from the tropical atmosphere, not icy pricks and stings of high-velocity rain hitting her swollen flesh. She should have felt the thin mat below her body, the only thing separating her from the bamboo floor of her room at Tanet and Malai's, where her wand lie three years forgotten under a loose floorboard near her pillow.

Malai should be singing and humming as she made Tanet breakfast, or Tanet getting ready for the day. Tanet… She should smell his pipe tobacco mixed with the threat of tropical morning rain, not this dreary, icy, cold shite!

Then she had another cognitive thought.

'Am I in England?!'

Her lips felt fused together from dehydration, but they opened to let out a sad sob at the thought of her premature return to her home country. The noise was more pained than the last time she'd cried out, and she had to swallow the tears.

She was not ready to be back and face those she'd left behind. In fact, she'd never thought she'd be at all. She'd left them behind for a reason.

She was not ready to face her grandparents, whom she'd left to deal with her disappearance, and the death of her parents, alone. She could not face Harry or Ginny, or even Ron, whom she knew without a doubt she had left heartbroken. She did not want to think about them, or where she'd ended up.

She didn't want to think about France…

She never wanted to think of France.

She made another attempt to open her eyes, only to be greeted with more darkness, accompanied by the great many specks that dotted her blurry vision she knew must be stars. She closed her eyes quickly, knowing she would fail in trying to figure out where she was in her current state. She'd struggle in the daylight, let alone in darkness.

She decided to not even try and save herself or will away her pain that was increasing more and more by the second. In her defeat, she let her head roll into the grass as her face started to freeze with the cold blasts of air that seemed to be coming closer and closer together. She tried to imagine, in her diluted brain, that she was at home with Malai in the garden, planting the vegetables and fruits. Or with Tanet in the small training room in the house, being taught forms in both Thai Chi and Muay Thai.

He could have gotten into a lot of trouble teaching her, a non-native woman, the art of their beloved form of combat. But he'd taught her anyway, after witnessing the way she had taken to learning the Thai language and its different forms and tonal inflection, and how she had excelled quickly in the kitchen with Malai making traditional Thai food. The man had been curious to see if she would have a knack for his ancient artform.

At first, for almost three months, she had failed all too miserably in her attempts at physical training, and she, Hermione granger, almost quit. But she hadn't, and neither had Tanet, seeing that she had been determined to try and try again.

She tried to never think of France, and especially not England, but it had been after France that she had come to live with the kind couple. Malai had found Hermione sitting behind a tall pile of hay near an old farmer's barn on the road heading back from town. Hermione, dressed in a dirty tattered gown, must have looked like she was in need of serious help. She had her wand for food and safety, but she allowed the Thai woman, with her kind brown eyes and beautiful tan skin, to walk straight up to her hunched form, only to demanded with dramatic hand signals that she go with her.

Hermione had only been in Thailand a week, so Malai's words had meant little to her. She'd been bumming around with too many cares in the world, but not the care to learn how to communicate, nor the urge to transfigure or clean her clothes. She'd simply allowed herself to lie about, stewing in depression and self-loathing, survivor's guilt, in her ragged gown… in a bed of mud… on a Thai farm… with the heifers.

Tanet had not been happy with the idea of another woman in his house, especially a white British woman. Hermione sat quietly, feeling awkward, while Malai and Tanet loudly hashed out their business about what to do with the woman staying in the guest room. Luckily, at that point she couldn't understand their words. But she hadn't needed to, because the yelling had been enough.

Hermione never thought that the angry man, who obviously loved his wife very much to let her talk him into Hermione's presence, would ever talk to her, let alone train her in his family's long-standing tradition of hand-to-hand combat. Tanet was distant and cold, or at least it at started that way.

His demeanor changed the day she had served him his favorite breakfast, jok, while Malai had been at her sister's overnight.

Hermione had presented the meal exactly as his wife would, even using the same phrase Malai would say to him upon setting the dish on the table before him. She had been there a month at that point, and Tanet had been unable to hide his shocked look of appreciation. She didn't tell him that she'd practiced the sentence she'd used a thousand times, like a spell, before she'd served him.

Now, three years from that day when Malai had found her in a state of self-defeat, Hermione was sure that the physical pain she felt lying in the cold, wet grass was far worse than any she had ever felt in training with the Thai fighting master. Even torture at the hands of Bellatrix, that pain now an old memory, could not compare to the way she felt broken and dismantled in this moment. She was lost, severely incapacitated, wandless, and just fucking broken.

Cruciatus be damned!

But, the feeling she had felt that day years past, lying in the mud like swine, was still somehow greater pain than any physical beating she had ever received, and she willed herself no to think back to…

Never think of France.

She forced herself to contemplate other things: How long had she been lying there? How long had she been losing blood? That was blood, right..? When had she been taken, and where from? Had it been during her trek to train in the jungle, away from the prying, judgemental eyes of the village natives? Had it been while she was in the garden? Had she been in bed, asleep, when these unknown assailants had come for her? How long had it been?

She could not begin to fathom.

Brown eyes, the shade of rich earth, tried like hell to open once more. A strange hope filled her as she skimmed the horizon, glimpsing the welcome threat of sunrise. It was faint, but it was there. Perhaps, if the light of day came, someone would find her and get help.

"No one is coming," she mumbled into the soaked blades of grass a few seconds later. Her voice sounded so odd, as if detached from her, and she held on to more memories of her home in the tiny village in the Thai jungle. She had been at peace there, with her days of obedience, meditation, and training. She had been able to begin swimming through the ocean of feelings that had crippled her so long ago.

She had begun to recognize a feeling of belonging in Thailand, like the way she had felt about Hogwarts before… before…

Hermione moved to shake her head to clear it of those memories as well, only for the movement to cause a surge of pain so vile her head began to feel as if it would explode, and the darkness of exhaustion and mind-numbing suffering began to take her consciousness.

She wondered, in those last moments before succumbing, who had done this to her and why they had left her in a discernible place to waste away and die? Why hadn't they just delivered the last few blows and sent her to Saint Peter? Gods knew she deserved it, and the hell that awaited her.

()()()()()

Draco had awoken early, sometime around five, in the bed next to his mother's in their private quarters of St. Mungo's.

He watched Narcissa sleep for an hour or so, then he'd kissed the still sleeping witch goodbye. He spelled his effects to fit easily in his pocket before moving from the room to make toward the lobby and the hospital's Apparition/Disapparition point.

The blonde man walked through the halls of the massive hospital, his grey eyes staring out the window that looked out over the dimly lit courtyard, peering into the darkness as if he could see through it as easily as the window. The shadows beyond the candlelight no longer held any danger or mystery for the pale, brooding wizard, what with the shadows that haunted his mind being far more disturbing than any giant spider or hooded assailant or Dark Lord could ever be.

Perhaps it was safe to say that he could see through the night.

Draco Malfoy sighed, fighting the urge to grind his teeth in anger for the twentieth time that morning. He had taken the weekend to visit St. Mungo's where his mother lie bedridden, plagued with maddening dreams and fits of hysterical anguish. The house elves had been unable to cope with the new Narcissa Malfoy. The woman, so formerly perfect, put together and confident, had spent years spiraling downward after Lucius had been sentenced to life in Azkaban. She had held it together for just over two years, but then Draco started to see little things slipping.

Soon, bigger issues came up; actions that he could no longer hide or ignore. He tried to take care of her himself, along with the help from their houselves. Finally, he had swallowed his pride and asked for outside help. The last three years of her stay at the hospital had proven that Draco had been right in putting her there.

The officials there had been happy enough to convince him they would take the utmost care of Narcissa, but he still had this niggling fear due to the fact that he knew that they knew who his mother was, and he hoped like hell that she was being treated well while he was away, while they tried to figure out some way to restore her sanity.

Another sigh…

Draco stepped into the lobby, avoiding the Floo system (which would take him to the twenty four hour Floo in the The Three Broomsticks), and he apparated to Hogsmeade, landing beside a covered bench near the Express. He decided he would sit on the bench instead of immediately taking a carriage to Hogwarts, for he had some time before classes started.

He closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sky, happy for the moment of solitude and the feeling of complete bliss at the sensation of his lids resting together. Sleep had been a problem for him for as long as he could remember, but it had been coming in alarmingly small amounts as of late. Every time he was in a sleep deep enough to dream, nightmares of the war and its casualties, both the living and the dead, haunted his subconscious.

The worst images had been those in which everyone but Draco had died, and a mountain of bodies that reached the clouds stretched up before the lone wizard. Everyone he'd ever known would be in that pile, and every face had eyes that were stuck open, and stared at him as he walked around them. Even when he wanted to look away, the dream wouldn't let him. As far as that dream goes, Draco had never felt so cold.

Slytherin commons be damned!

He rarely looked closely at the faces of the dead in his dreams, but that dream had forced him to look and remember what he had had a hand in making. What he had made possible for the Dark Lord.

A growl of frustration…

Every moment draco spent alone, he thought of the faces… All of the blank, grey faces…

His mum and dad, his aunts and uncles and cousins. Snape. His friends Vince, Greg, Blaise, Theo, and Pansy. Potter, all of the Weasleys, Granger, Longbottom, McGonagall, Sprout, Trelawney, Dumbledore…

Dumbledore…

The list was fucking endless, and that name somehow took the bloody cake.

A frustrated hand went to go through his hair, and he remembered all too late that he had pulled it back and tied it at the base of his neck with a bit of black ribbon. It wasn't nearly as long as his father's, but it was still an infuriating length nonetheless. Especially at this moment when he had to grab his wand to fix it and put it back to its original state. He must have forgotten his hair glue charm that morning. He cast one, just to be done with the chore.

If it had not been Monday morning, the day to get back to the grind, he would have considered going home for a solid attempt at sleep for the night before returning to his post. But, alas, duty called.

His position as Potions Master was now nearing the end of its second year, and he had yet to win any "love" from his fellow teachers, despite it being over seven years since the war had ended. He doubted taking extra time off would win him points. McGonagall, though happy to hire him, still treated him with icy detachment. She only spoke to him when she needed him to do something, or order him to do something, which was quite often seeing as he was head of Slytherin House. And this simply because all of the other professors refused to take the job.

"Cunts," Draco sneered aloud at his absent co-workers.

Though Potter, The Man Who Lived, and Hogwarts' DADA professor for four years running, had every right to treat Draco like dragon shite, he never did. There had been no heartfelt apologies, no bloody sob stories or brotherly embraces. There had simply been an unspoken "agreement" to be civil and stay the fuck out of each other's ways. That suited Draco well enough, as it made it far easier to float through time if he was undisturbed and employed.

Granted, he didn't need the money, but it kept him busy and his mind from wandering to places it shouldn't be. Like those bloody dreams, where eyes of every color and shade played on a loop. Dead, cold, expressionless eyes of every person he had harmed, whether purposeful or inadvertent.

Before loo long, the sun rose from its place beside the horizon, beside the looming castle, and Draco realized he had spent the past half hour brooding instead of looking over his lesson plans for the week as he had planned to do with his pregame free time. But, of course, he'd been concentrating on a load of awful shite he could do nothing about at present. Or ever.

After ensuring the state of his hair with a glance at his reflection in the perfectly shined train, he made his way toward the small carriage that awaited him. He climbed into the open door and settled in, just in time for the carriage to begin its tilt and bob journey up the windy dirt road. It was quite cold for a May morning, and it was obvious from the wetness that the storm that had hit the hospital that night previous had also rained all over Hogwarts.

'Starting fresh,' he mused inwardly, moving to the curtain to draw it back and look at the gorgeous morning light that played across the drenched grounds, and the newly budded flowers, and the-

"What in the fuck is that?!" Draco yelled, before adding, "Stop the bloody carriage!"

As the wobbly box on wheels tried to stop its lurching, Draco sprang from the door and toward the lump of fabric, gold skin and hair that lay some ways away, completely still.

'Please, gods! Don't let it be a student!' His mind pleaded, the small form he quickly approached looking as near to death as anything he had ever seen.

Had this student really wandered halfway to Hogsmeade in their bedclothes in the rain?

He fell hard to his knees behind the body and he quickly assessed the very obvious and sickening damage. If the girl was not dead, and if she eventually came to, he was sure she would wish to be. The one leg of the form that Draco could tell was female was twisted in such a way that it could not be natural, nor could it feel like anything less than hell.

He put his fingers under the matted dirt, blood, and grass covered brown hair that shrouded the face before him, and he placed the tip of his fingers on her pulse… and found it. He breathed a loud sigh of relief as he made to position her properly before levitating her back to the carriage.

As he flipped her slowly, the woman fell lightly onto her back, and he nap of curls and mud fell from her face, allowing Draco to have the first look of Hermione Granger he, and anyone else he knew, had had in years. The damage to her face was great, but Draco would never forget that face. She was on the pile of bodies in his nightmares.

He could hardly explain the feeling that shot through him then, as if he'd been dead and someone had shocked his heart until he awoke. As if someone had put the granddaddy of Baruffio's Brain Elixir into a syringe and shot it straight into his heart, only to cause his head to explode.

"Great Merlin's nuts!" Draco could not stop the very un-Draco like high-pitched exclamation of panic that he let out at the sight of the bloodied, broken body that was his former schoolmate.

Draco knew that there still had been people holding out hope that she was alive, somewhere. But, Draco was not one of them. Not that he wanted her to be dead, but life had taught Draco to expect the worst. A woman disappears one night, taking nothing with her or even leaving a letter- that's abduction. And then years of Potter, Weasley, and a team of the world's best aurors turning up nothing? What the hell did people expect?

It was obvious to him that, if she had been abducted five years ago, a body would not be found now after so long. Had she been enslaved? If she had, why would her captor bring her back after all of this time, in this state? To Hogwarts?

After allowing his shock to put him into a momentary state of inaction, Draco Levitated the woman before him and moved back to the carriage quickly and carefully, intent on making it to Poppy's infirmary before the faint beating of Hermione's heart decided to stop.

A/N: February 2019 - I've decided that this fic needed a revamp. So I am re-editing. Enjoy and review. Thank you.

(Lay, Lady, Lay - Bob Dylan; in my preferred style by Ministry)

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed

Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead

I long to see you in the morning light

I long to reach for you in the night