AN: Hello beautiful people. While I deal with writer's block for Surprise, I decided to start another fic that's been knocking around in my head for a while.

If you all remember when Harry has the vision of Voldemort torturing Thorfinn and Rowle in DH for failing to capture Harry, he makes Draco Crucio them. And J. K. says that Harry feels something akin to pity for Draco.

The exact wording is: "Malfoy's gaunt, petrified face seemed burned on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort."

That is what inspired me to write this fic.

It's basically an AU-DH story. I will be using some exact wording from the book, wherever necessary.

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns all of it. The story, the characters, everything. I'm just borrowing them and having some fun.

The Dramione romance is a little slow in this one. I'm trying to be as realistic as possible. But it is very much there, so do not fear! There will be some delicious sexy times in upcoming chapters.

Don't forget to review and tell me what you think!

xoxo

Title taken from the song Stitch by Stitch by Javier Colon which also inspired me to write this fic.

CHAPTER 1: ANGRY

Hermione:

He's funny.

I didn't expect that. It makes it difficult to hate him when I can't help giggling when he says funny things.

Harry has caught my eye several times when I'm suppressing laughter at something Malfoy said.

He smiles triumphantly, see, he's not so bad, and I avert my gaze, fuck you, Harry, determined to be angry at him for going against all of our opinions and allowing Malfoy to live with us.

At Grimmauld Place. In the neighboring bedroom to mine, for Godric's sake!

Malfoy's been living with us for over a month now. He is currently sniping at Ron. Clumsy Ron who has managed to send a whole stack of Kreacher's painstakingly cleaned and polished plates crashing to the ground in an attempt to reach for the jug of pumpkin juice on the counter.

"It's what you get for being so ridiculously tall, Weaselby," he says loudly.

In response to Ron's glare he shrugs and continues, "Well just look at you! You're all limbs and stupidity. You gangle."

I barely suppress a guffaw at this. Gangle. The word perfectly described Ron's unfortunate style of movement.

Harry catches my eye again. I want to punch him.

Our quest for the Horcruxes was forcibly turned over to the Order after Harry'd gone berserk at Lupin that night. Lupin had gone to Molly and everybody else and told them that we were just children and that if that was all it took for Harry to lose control like that, we were going to get ourselves blown up before we set a single foot out the door.

They had obviously agreed.

We'd all argued violently, but in the end we gave in and Harry told them everything. About the Horcruxes and Mundungus and Kreacher and Regulus.

Everything.

And they had patted us on our heads, smiled, told us to stay put and stay safe and that they would take it from there.

We'd stewed in frustration for days.

We, Harry especially, weren't used to just sitting around and waiting for everybody else to do things. We hated it. Harry and I begged them to at least let us go back to Hogwarts. Especially after we heard that Snape was going to be Headmaster. Harry was worried for Ginny. I was, too. I also wanted to at least be able to study if I wasn't going to be allowed to do anything else.

But, nothing doing.

"It's not safe, dears," Molly had said kindly. I controlled my anger. She couldn't possibly know how patronizing she sounded. She was just being her kind, concerned self.

So we'd stewed some more.

Ron seemed the least affected by the Order's actions. I suspected that that was because he had never been fully convinced that we would succeed on our own, anyway. It made me angry at him. It felt like a betrayal of sorts.

He was content to just lay about Grimmauld Place, eat Kreacher's rapidly improving cooking and laze.

He hadn't even fought very hard to go back to school, or to be kept in the loop about how the Order was going about searching for the Horcruxes and collecting them. He just didn't seem to care.

Coward.

Harry became withdrawn and quiet. His hand jumped to his forehead more and more often. He always made up an excuse and hurried away when that happened.

I suspected that he was purposely keeping the connection open with Voldemort's mind so he'd feel like he knew what was happening on the front lines at least from one point of view. But we never spoke about it.

We didn't speak about anything, really.

The house became filled with a heavy kind of silence. It pressed on my chest constantly.

We'd taken to sleeping in separate bedrooms. Ron took the room that he'd shared with Harry the last time we'd lived here. Harry took the room neighboring Ron's. I took the one directly above Ron's- the one that the twins had used the last time.

I felt our friendship, mine Ron's and Harry's, begin to weaken.

I realized how much I'd been taking it for granted. How much I had relied, without even registering it, on the strength of our bond.

The prospect of losing it devastated me. My dreams became filled with screams of despair.

I missed my parents.

I missed my best friends.

Sometimes I found myself laughing out loud in my sleep at the irony of it all. Missing my best friends when I was living in the same house as them. How stupid. How depressingly, mind-numbingly stupid.

I became sure that my sanity was slowly fraying.

But I did nothing about it. I was paralyzed by inaction. I wanted, desperately needed, to do something, anything to fix things, but the wanting somehow kept me from actually doing anything. It made me so angry.

And then one night, about two weeks after the Order had descended upon us like a flock of annoying, patronizing birds and taken away our mission, Harry returned from his regular outing to scout things out in hopes of finding out what the Order or Voldemort or both were up to with something more than the day's Prophet.

One look at that hateful pale face with its trademark smirk and I was up with my wand out and screaming at Harry to get away from the scum. Ron was right next to me, his stance mirroring my own.

But Harry, Harry was still standing beside the Death-Eater that he had brought into our home with a strange, nervous smile on his face.

"HARRY! That's Draco Malfoy! You..you brought him here?! The Fidelius Charm! How could you? He'll lead the rest of them here! What is wrong with you?"

I screamed these things at him while my heart raced and my mind whirred a mile a minute.

Had he been Confunded? Imperio'd? And why, why was Malfoy just standing there smiling? Why hadn't he raised his wand to defend himself? Why was he carrying a bag of our groceries?

What in the name of Merlin's pants was happening?

All this while, Ron had been staring at Malfoy with a fearsome scowl on his face, his wand pointed unwaveringly right at the ferret's chest.

I turned to Ron in utter confusion in time to see his face suddenly clear of anger. He straightened up, walked casually over to Malfoy, relieved him of the bag of groceries, placed it carefully on the floor, and then just as casually pointed his wand at him and said, very quietly, "Incarcerous."

"Now that that's done," Ron said brightly and turned to Harry. He took a few steps closer until he was right in Harry's face.

"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR BLOODY MIND?!"

Malfoy, mummified from neck to feet in the bindings, fell to the floor with a dull thump that perfectly accentuated the sudden falling of that weird, nervous smile from Harry's face.

"Look," Harry began, taking a few steps away from Ron and turning to look at me, "I can explain."

When he didn't carry on with the explaining after a few seconds, I tapped my foot impatiently, "Well?"

"Perhaps you'd both better sit down?" Harry ventured, "It's sort of a long story."

Ron and I sat warily at the kitchen table. Harry sat down across from us.

Malfoy continued to lie on the floor looking ridiculously like he would burst forth in a few minutes having been transformed from a disgusting worm to a beautiful winged creature.

"I've been having visions," Harry said, looking at me nervously for a minute. The admission to what I had suspected for so long should have made me angry, but I was angry enough already.

"Yeah. So. I've been having visions, of what You-Know-Who is doing."

"Since when do you say You-Know-Who?" Ron asked incredulously.

"Malfoy, he told me that they're planning to put a taboo on his name. Because only the people who are really against him will use it. If you say it, all the enchantments that hide you from them, Fidelius Charms, anything, get broken and they can come find you. Pretty clever if you think about it."

I reeled. It was unbelievably clever. And Malfoy had told Harry? He had volunteered information that would help us stay hidden?

"Get on with the explanation," I said. I hate feeling confused.

"The visions. Yeah. You-Know-Who's been using Malfoy to torture people. The Cruciatus. I've seen it more than once. And it always seemed like he was forcing Malfoy to do it. Like he had to be threatened into doing it. He'd say things like 'Do it, Draco, or feel my wrath yourself!' "

"So you felt sorry for him?" I didn't even try to control the derision in my voice. "Harry, don't you remember the last time they used these visions to trick you? It ended up with-"

"Sirius dying," Harry finished my sentenced quietly. "I know, Hermione."

Something about the look in his eyes made the words thronging in my throat evaporate. I nodded.

"Dumbledore told me that he's too afraid of entering my head after how much it hurt him when he tried last time at the Ministry. That's how I know that everything I'm seeing now is real. He doesn't even know it's happening. I'm sure of it."

I looked at Ron, but he was focused on Harry.

I didn't know what to think. Harry did sound sure. But how could I trust this when every instinct I had screamed at me that Harry should be cutting off this evil connection instead of fostering it? I opened my mouth but Harry held up his hand.

"Let me finish, and then you can argue, Hermione."

I sat back. Fine, I would let him finish.

"Anyway, three nights ago, I had a dream-vision. It was particularly bad."

I remembered. He'd been screaming for a good half an hour before he went back to sleep. I'd lain awake all night worrying.

"What did you see?" I was whispering, caught up in the trauma that shone in my best friend's vivid green eyes.

"Malfoy. You-Know-Who was hurting him."

I looked down at the motionless body at my feet. His lips were pressed together, storm-grey eyes wide open. He was listening.

"What was he doing to him?" Ron's voice had lowered too.

Harry seemed to struggle for words now. He squeezed his eyes shut.

I realized suddenly that he had experienced all this from Voldemort's perspective. Revulsion rose like bile in my throat. Poor Harry.

"He…he made him Crucio his parents."

My gasp was sharp in the ensuing silence. A deep, billowing silence.

Ron was leaning forward, his fists clenched. "Why?"

I forced myself not to look down at Malfoy's face. Tears were pricking at my eyes. I didn't want him seeing that.

"He was bored."

So simple. So horrific.

"He told Malfoy that he would kill him and his parents if he didn't obey. That he owned them, mind body and soul. That they should never forget that."

Harry began to rock back and forth slowly while he spoke, hugging himself.

He stared unseeingly somewhere above my head. He was reliving it.

"They screamed. I can't get their screams out of my head. Blood-curdling. Malfoy Crucio'd them till You-Know-Who told him to stop. And he didn't tell him to stop for a long time. Long enough.."

"Long enough for what?"

The urge to look at Malfoy was overpowering. I wanted to throw up.

Harry didn't answer.

"For what, Harry?"

His gaze snapped to mine with a suddenly ferocious intensity.

"For them to stop screaming."

I couldn't control myself anymore. I looked down at Malfoy. His lips were trembling, tears seeping from between his closed eyelids and running down the sides of his face into his hair.

"And you know the worst part," Harry rambled with a hollow laugh, "I could feel him enjoying it. He loved it, making a son torture his parents until their brains literally fried inside their skulls. He relished it."

My scalp crawled violently. The tears that had been pooling in my eyes finally overflowed. I let them.

I didn't want to. I almost couldn't bear to. But I did. I felt pity for Draco Malfoy.

It made it difficult to be angry anymore.