A/N: Hello my lovelies! Things are going well in Dramione Land, and that's a shame. It's my duty as a good author to keep you interested and enthralled. So, I pushed them off a cliff. :)

Your reviews have been so supportive and wonderful. I know I'll never get near the reviews of the folks who wrote while the original series was still being published, but I assure you, I love each and every one of them. And! I write back! :) So, if you can, drop me a line, I really appreciate it. Thanks!

-Elvee

Snatch

Chapter Ten

"Dignity: the doomed man's final refuge."

-Max Frisch

Over the next three days Hermione barricaded herself with her laptop. Tapping away industriously, she'd sent Dobby on errand after errand, giving him instructions in front of a glaring Malfoy from behind a muffliato charm. The elf brought back scraps of paper, messages and even the spare key or two. Hermione sorted everything he handed her into two manilla envelopes, frequently while talking on her laptop phone, or in between bouts of frantic typing.

Malfoy was left to entertain himself; something Hermione found he didn't excel at in the least. She'd piled books, a muggle DVD player and movies, even yarn and a crochet hook by his bed each morning in the one-off hope that today would be the day he wouldn't sulk under one of her silencing spells.

Today, the third day she'd been buried in work, he'd made it until after lunch. She'd made him a loop in the yarn and explained how to do a single crochet stitch. In his defense, he only had one arm free, so sewing at all was going to be a challenge, but sewing or not, he was driving her batty with his incessant interruptions.

He wiggled the yarn again with the hook and gave a melodramatic sigh. She glanced at him. He let the yarn fall into his lap. She went back to her laptop. Time was not on her side and she had to get this done as quickly as possible. He pulled more yarn from the skein and proceeded to make an intricate knot with a hundred yards of wool. He sighed again. She gritted her teeth and tapped on her keyboard.

"Granger..." He asked with a voice on the edge of a whine.

She didn't answer or even look at him, merely raised her wand at his chest. He sighed. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him struggling with the knot with his one free hand. Dobby cracked in bearing an envelope. She thumbed through the contents and finding three muggle passports, seemed satisfied. She slid them in the fatter of the two envelopes.

"Granger!" Malfoy had worked himself up to full on whiny mode now.

She dropped her charm petulantly, rolling her eyes. She snapped, exasperated, "What Malfoy? For Merlin's sake, what?!"

"Are you done yet?" He asked sheepishly.

"No! I am not done yet." She turned back to her pile of paperwork. It wasn't a stack of parchment, it was a pile of meticulously white paper with uniform black writing on it. She was filling them out with a ball point pen instead of a quill.

He wheedled, "You're working like a house elf! Everyone needs a break, Granger! Com'on!"

"You're exceedingly well treated for a prisoner, Malfoy. Now, shut it. I'm busy." She threw her muffliato charm back up and sent Dobby off on another errand. The stack of galleons Dobby had withdrawn from the bank three days ago was finally beginning to dwindle. She'd checked and double-checked her lists. She was almost done, four or five more hours at the most. If she could keep Malfoy from driving her to drink, that was. That was a mighty big 'if'.

She still hadn't heard from Lucius or Narcissa about Nott. Their time was running out and the lack of results was setting her teeth on edge. Snape hadn't written in the journal all week. Tension was running high, timetables were closing in and she was going to strangle Malfoy. All in all, it was a normal day.

Around dinner time, Hermione finally powered down her laptop and cleared the table, placing everything in her beaded bag. After a moment of deliberation, she pulled out the fire whiskey and poured herself a shot. She sipped at it, sputtering as it burned down her throat. Malfoy raised his eyebrows hopefully at her. She let her forehead fall gently to the table and rubbed the back of her neck.

Of course, as soon as she was done, he would expect her to be his bored wizard's chew toy. She sighed and pulled up a chair next to his bed. "Yes?"

"Are you done now?" He asked hopefully.

She tipped her head back and forth, signaling more or less. "For the most part."

"What were you doing?"

She narrowed her eyes in warning, saying, "It's none of your concern."

"Com'on Granger! I nearly died of boredom. Hell, I even tried to crochet myself to death." He held up his knot of yarn.

She took the yarn from his lap, wrapping it into a ball as she untangled it. "If you must know, I was spending your money."

He shook his head. "You look way too unhappy for a witch that just spent a hundred thousand galleons of someone else's money."

She shrugged, "Believe what you want." She huffed a breath through her bangs, making them even puffier than they had been all day. "Not that you deserve it after your behavior the last three days, but would you like to join me for dinner at the table with the big people?"

He gave her a genuine smile, "You mean it?"

She moved him to the table and they had dinner almost like civilized people. Dobby served the steak and kidney pie and stood by refilling their goblets with pumpkin juice. Conversation turned to the muggle moving pictures she'd played for him on her portable DVD player.

He stopped his spoonful of peas halfway to his mouth. "So wait, you're telling me muggles -filthy cretinous muggles- sent a man to the moon?"

She nodded enthusiastically, her mouth too full to speak. He burst out laughing. He dropped his spoon, peas bouncing, and clutched his belly, struggling to regain his composure. "But that's...Oh, Granger, that's a good one!"

She smiled at him, "No, really. They did."

He was wiping tears of laughter from the corner of his eyes, and said, "And you believe this load of hippogryph dung?"

She kept her voice even and nonchalant as she replied, "Of course. I've seen the pictures and movies. Almost every major muggle nation has been to the moon."

He'd picked up his spoon again, but let the tip fall against the plate, choosing to argue first, scoop up more peas later. "Granger! Every firstie knows that you can't go to the moon. Gamp's fourteenth law says..."

Hermione raised one eyebrow. "Gamp's laws govern magic. Muggles don't use magic."

"But..." He blinked. "You're serious?"

"As serious as a basilisk bite." She allowed herself a smug smile.

"So the moving pictures really happened?" His spoon paused scraping up more food from his plate. The Right Stuff, the last movie she'd played for him, was about astronauts.

"The movie was plausible fiction." She wiped her mouth with a napkin and motioned for Dobby to clear her plate.

Over pudding, Malfoy kept looking out the window at the moon. When he was scraping the last of his treacle tart from his plate he asked, his voice full of wonder, "They really did?"

She nodded, giving him a soft smile. "They really did."

"You're lying." He smirked.

She drew herself up indignantly, huffing out, "I would never! I may not tell you everything, Malfoy, but I don't lie to you."

"Not telling someone is a lie of omission," he pointed out.

Hermione shrugged, "It depends on the circumstances. In this case you're my prisoner, so you're lucky I tell you anything at all."

When the last of the plates was cleared away, and they each had a cup of steaming cocoa to nurse, Malfoy smirked at her, "If it isn't a lie, then tell me why you gave me a love potion."

"Figured it out, have you? Disgusted you threw yourself at a mudblood, Malfoy?" It was only a matter of time. She'd been underestimating too many people lately and wasn't going to let something like Malfoy figuring out she'd drugged him throw her for a loop.

He gave a lecherous smirk. "You got my clothes off and just couldn't control yourself, could you?"

She almost choked on her hot chocolate. "You wish, Ferret."

He ran a hand over his bare chest suggestively. "Com'on Granger, nothing to be ashamed of. It's okay. I'll forgive you, just admit it."

Her eyes darted to his hand rubbing over his well sculpted chest. Her tongue darted out over her lips before she could catch herself. She blew out a breath and shook her head, not even knowing why she was going to attempt doing battle with his enormous ego. "Malfoy, look at it logically: You're bigger, stronger and faster than me. I had to do something to keep you calm."

He ran two fingers over his lips with a faraway look in his eyes. He suddenly looked up as if he held a trump card. "There's also the matter of you kissing me."

"So you would've preferred staying petrified? Is that what you're saying?" Hermione leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Twice. You kissed me twice." He was beaming a predatory smile at her now.

"Face it, Malfoy, I'm not your favorite person. You wouldn't hesitate to hurt me."

He blinked and recoiled, his train of thought obviously derailed. "That's not true!"He cried.

Hermione snorted. "Of course it's true! You'd do whatever you could to escape. I'd do the same thing in your shoes."

"You don't know me at all, Granger. I don't hit women," he growled.

She gave a bark of disbelief, "You brained me with an iron shackle!"

"A mudblood was chaining me to a bed! I had to defend my honor!"

"Oh that's right, I forgot. I'm a mudblood, not a woman. I don't count, do I?" She asked acidly, absently rubbing her temple.

"It was a love tap!" He spotted the scar on the temple of her angry face, then dropped his eyes and barreled on, "Anyway, you hit me first!"

"That was years ago! So now that you have seventy pounds and ten inches on me, it was time to even the score? Big man, Malfoy."

"You kidnapped me!" He retorted.

"We've already established that." Her anger had turned to impatience. "And I only gave you a few drops of love potion. Not enough to make a fool of yourself."

"What we've established is that you like bad boys. Scarhead and Weasel just don't do it for you. I get it. You like me," he smirked.

"Don't be stupid," she spat. "I kidnapped you."

His voice was so smooth, inviting confidence. "Granger, it's okay to admit it. You can tell me. It's just us. Lots of girls would..."

"You really want to go there?"She interrupted. "I seem to recall someone wanting to join my little 'club'." She used her fingers in the air to make quotation marks when she said the word club.

"That doesn't count. I was under the effects of a love potion, you even admitted it," he said defensively.

"Sorry, Malfoy. It was too long to blame that one on the potion, Malfoy. As a matter of fact, by my calculations, you should have only been affected for twenty-four to thirty hours. The love potion wore off last week," She finished with a smug smirk on her face.

"Granger, what did you mean when you said 'if my father plays his cards right I could have a mudblood of my own'?" She went silent. She had been angry, sure, but that still wasn't the brightest thing to say. It gave entirely too much of her plan away. "You're not thinking of... Merlin's hairy balls! You're joining the Death Eaters?" She closed her eyes and gave herself a mental face palm. Unless, of course, Malfoy was an idiot.

She patted his cheek patronizingly saying, "So pretty and yet so stupid. Pity." She petrified him and moved him to his bed. "You're obviously overwrought. Time for bed."

When she released the petrification, he squirmed, "You can't! You don't know how they treat mudbloods, Granger."

"I didn't know you cared, Ferret. I'm touched," She joked. Then, seeing he was very serious, she laid a hand on his cheek to calm him, saying gently, "Malfoy, I can't tell you what I'm doing, but I can tell you this much: I am not joining the Death Eaters."

Her eyes flew to the door. The wards had gone off. Multiple people had breached her wards. One was Professor Snape, but he wasn't alone.

Malfoy's eyes flicked to the door, then back to Hermione's face. "Granger! What is it?" There was an edge of panic in his voice.

She tried to maintain her calm facade. "It's time for your potion, Malfoy." She summoned her bag and took out a sleeping potion.

"He's back, isn't he? He's back and you're going to..." She put the potion to his lips, but he batted it away. "You can't do this, Hermione. He'll promise you anything, but he'll hurt you. You've got to believe me!"

"Don't make me stun you, Malfoy. Take your potion like a good little prisoner." She tried to give him the potion, but he struggled again, thrashing his head violently.

From outside she heard Snape yelling, "Miss Granger!" Merlin! What if Malfoy recognized his voice?

She stunned Malfoy and made him swallow the potion. She cast the enervate then dashed out the door.

Outside in the chilly night, a tall, shadowy shape carried something large and unmoving. The fingernail moon was stingy with its moonlight, giving nothing away except the fact that the figure closed on her. She drew her wand and cast a lumos charm.

"Well, girl! Don't stand there gawping! Help me get him inside." As Professor Snape entered the circle of light from her wand she could see he was carrying another man with great effort. She started to cast the levitation charm, but Snape stopped her with a curt, "No. I'm holding one of his wounds shut so he doesn't bleed to death. Just open the door."

She ran back to the cabin and opened the door, pushing the table and chairs out of the way, clearing a path to her bed. Malfoy's eyes were open but drooping. In the light of the cabin, Professor Snape was sallow with pain and effort. Sweat and blood ran down his face and between his fingers. The limp form he carried wore a matching long velvet robe and a Death Eater Mask.

He strode to the bed and barked over his shoulder, "Quickly! Blood replenisher and the strongest pain potion you have." He laid the form gently on her bed and began stripping him of his clothes with flicks of his wand.

Hermione summoned her bag and retrieved the potions. She slapped them in his outstretched hand as he barked, "A basin of clear water and a flannel. Com'on, Miss Granger! Hurry!"

With a squeak she summoned a bowl, conjured a flannel and filled the bowl with water with a simple aguamenti charm. She transfigured a piece of fire wood into a rolling cart and pushed it next to the bed, setting the bowl on top.

Professor Snape was healing long festering gashes in the man's torso, running his wand along them and muttering under his breath. Her sheets were covered in his blood, some dripping onto the floor. The injured Death Eater's breathing was shallow, irregular and gurgling. She didn't have to be healer to know gurgling while breathing was never good.

"Remove his mask and check for wounds, make sure his airway is clear," Professor Snape snapped.

She crossed behind Snape as he continued to work and gingerly lifted the Death Eater Mask. She gasped. It was Viktor Krum. Viktor Krum, who Malfoy told her took the Dark Mark voluntarily. Viktor Krum who never told her he was turning down the dark path. Viktor Krum who betrayed her friendship.

"Have you never seen a dying man, Granger?" Professor Snape sneered between healing spells.

She backed away, stunned. Numbly she said, "Why did you bring him here? He can't stay."

"You will help me heal this man, Miss Granger. Now, get to work!" Snape turned and scowled at her.

Her spine stiffened and her hackles went up. She said through gritted teeth, "I am no longer your student, Master Snape. Neither am I an Order member or a Death Eater. This is my house. I have every right to refuse this man succor and I do. Please leave."

Snape made an exasperated sound and turned back to Viktor's still form, continuing to work on him. "I do not have time for your insolence. This man is dying. I demand..."

"You are not in a position to demand anything," she said tartly.

"If you recall, three thousand galleons of the Order's money was used to secure this..."

Maybe he finished his sentence, maybe he didn't. She wasn't listening, instead she pulled the sack of galleons out of her bag. She magically counted out three thousand galleons, conjured a purse to put them in and tossed it on the bed next to him. "Take it and get out."

He goggled at her before pulling his facial expression back under careful control. "He told the Dark Lord you were friends."

"I thought we were." She held up the mask she still held in her hands. "This says otherwise."

"This man is an Order member! He will die if I have to move him again." Snape pinned her with a murderous glare.

Viktor was an Order member? Realization crashed over her. Of course! It all made sense! Why he would volunteer to be a Death Eater, why he wouldn't tell her what he was doing, why Snape couldn't take him anywhere else. Malfoy wouldn't have known that! He was a spy. Oh, Merlin, how could she have doubted him?

She bent over Viktor's still form, whispering, "Oh, Viktor, you idiot! You could have told me!" She wiped his face clean of blood and carefully tilted his neck, checking his airway.

An hour later Master Snape sat at the table shirtless, letting her heal a large gash on his back. She worked methodically, cleaning and closing the wound. "What do you suggest I tell Malfoy?" She asked.

His back still facing her, he said, "We'll have to think of something. Mr. Krum won't be able to be moved for some time."

She rolled her eyes behind the older man's back. "He's going to be impossible! He already thinks..." she broke off, blushing.

He stiffened and waited for her to finish. A rivulet of blood ran from the unhealed portion of his gash. When she didn't, he asked, "He already thinks what, Miss Granger?"

She cleared her throat and paused in her healing, not trusting her hands to remain steady. "That we're lovers." When he turned to face her, his brow raised, demanding an explanation, she blushed even more furiously. She stammered on, "Not you per se... just that I have a romance going on with the Death Eater that showed up last week."

"Interesting." He took in her blush, studying her slowly before saying, "That could work to our advantage."

"What?!" She squeaked before she could follow the rapid fire thoughts that were shooting through her head. Any advantage they could reap would be the result of Voldemort knowing she was close to Viktor. For something this monumental Viktor's word wouldn't be enough. If Snape could back up his story, he certainly wouldn't be hiding him here while he healed. The only way that would happen is if Malfoy was returned to the Death Eaters.

"Actually," Snape gave a predatory smile. "If young Mr. Malfoy runs back to his parents, then the Dark Lord will have no choice but to believe that Krum has you under his thumb. It would explain his absence while he heals and elevate his status considerably, giving him access to more sensitive information for the Order."

That idea, sound as it might be from an information gathering standpoint, made her stomach churn. She'd sacrificed so many things already to win the war: her friends, her parents, even her future. She wasn't about to hand Malfoy over to those animals on a silver platter. He'd suffered enough. They all had. That's what her entire plan had been about.

After she finished treating his wound, Snape pulled his shirt back over his shoulder and worked to button it up. She cleared away the mess, taking the time to think furiously. As she sat down in a seat across from her old professor, she said, quite clearly, "No."

Snape conjured a tea tray. His shock at her lack of cooperation must have surprised him as it appeared a few inches above the table and landed with a crash. "Excuse me?"

"No. Malfoy won't be told." With a flick of her wand she conjured a large sheet and suspended it around her old bed, where Viktor Krum now fought for his life.

"You're a fool," he spat. "The Order needs every advantage we can get!"

"It may be an advantage for us, but at what cost? What would Malfoy get out of it? More torture at the hands of that monster? Watching his mother get gang raped again when he has too much humanity in him to dice up a living person?"

"Your Griffindor sensibilities are clouding your judgement," he sneered.

"The wise man does at once what the fool does eventually," she quoted. When Snape opened his mouth to argue and it was clear reasoning wasn't going to prevail, she stood and slapped a hand on the table. "You forget yourself! Malfoy is my prisoner, Master Snape," She sniffed. "I will decide what he does and doesn't do."

He narrowed his eyes at her, and she could feel him calculating the possible outcomes to the situation if he didn't comply.

She hissed through clenched teeth, "I knew there was a reason you were dragging your feet on rescuing Narcissa! You planned to sacrifice Malfoy all along. You Order bastards aren't much better than the Death Eaters!"

"How convenient you can forget you're using him as well." His eyes flashed, but his face was an impassive mask.

Hermione's hair crackled with wild magic. She leaned into the Potions Master and snarled, "He'll live through my plans. Can you say the same?"