Chapter rewritten


About five hours after Draco had left he sent his Patronus back to her to inform her that he was still investigating and had not been captured. Hermione recoiled from the sight of it, the nearly six meter long Anaconda slithered around her ankles, it's cloudy silver appearance not distracting her from the thought that her Patronus was but a small Otter, ready to be devoured by this monster of a protective spirit. The irony was not lost on her.

She had already paced the suite at least fourteen times. She was bored out of her mind! Malfoy wasn't here to argue with her. She couldn't concentrate on her research. She was damn bloody restless and it was only aggravated by the fact that she couldn't move as fast as she wanted to and the pain in her back. It were at a level now where she could effectively ignore them if she wanted to, but every time she felt them, it just increased her frustration.

Twelve hours after the first update, he sent another. Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin when she stepped out of the foggy shower and there was a dirty great snake staring at her. She couldn't help staring back, she felt like her reflexes should have kicked in but she just stood frozen and stared at the snake and it stared back. She couldn't help but see the arrogant look in it's eyes that Malfoy himself usually graced her with. After two full minutes of a staring contest, it slowly blinked at her and evaporated.

She made the decision thereafter that forcing herself to do something was better than getting frustrated at doing nothing, So she made herself sit down and look over the research again. Hermione thought to herself it shouldn't be so difficult for her to motivate herself into researching. Studying had been what she was most well known for in Hogwarts after all.

There wasn't anything in her research notes that she didn't know already. But she trawled through them in the hopes that she would catch some nuance or something she had previously missed. Over the last number of months a steady amount of muggles had been going missing. They didn't know how many exactly, it had taken the Ministry a while to admit that there was some magical reason behind it, rather than muggles killing muggles, as usual. Almost all the muggles who had gone missing were women, but there was a small proportion of young men who had disappeared as well. A couple of years ago working on this case would have sickened her to her stomach, but since then she'd seen an awful lot and been through some hard times. It was no secret to her that these people were being taken into a slave and sexual trafficking ring. Muggles were especially vulnerable when kept in captivity by wizards. They had no way to escape, they didn't know anything about the magical community, they couldn't know about wards or potions, they wouldn't know what kind of alarms or traps would have been set in place and they didn't know the names to fear. She had thought for a while on why this wizard elitist society was kidnapping muggles of all people, when she had originally gotten the assignments, but if human psychology had taught her anything it was that thinks they often claimed to despise in public held a morbid fascination within. There was no particular type that was being taken. Women from fourteen years old to thirty two, all of varying descriptions. Men between the ages of seventeen and twenty eight. As she trawled, nothing in particular was jumping at her, as it hadn't the many times she and Malfoy had done this in previous times.

Hermione worked late into the night, reading and rereading the various bits of information, hoping and praying for some clue as to where to go next. They had a photo of one of the younger girls taken on her mobile phone only a few hours before she was reported missing, but it was completely unusable. Cameras had only just begun to be attached to mobiles and their photos were of awful quality. Hermione groaned inwardly and rubbed her tired eyes with the heel of her hands. She glanced up at the clock. She'd been here for hours already. And had nothing to show for it. She stood and turned to look down at the people walking and chatting below her. All seemed calm and peaceful. Couples were walking in each others arms under the street lamps, smiling and laughing at each other, bundled up against the cold weather that didn't pay attention to what season it was. As it always did in England. A group of teenagers loitered in a dark corner, out of the way of the rest of the public, trying to impress each other with stories and awkwardly attempting to initiate physical contact with someone in the group she liked. Hermione thought back to her own experiences as a teenager. Well... she didn't really have any. The most teenager thing she could think that had happened to her in her youth was attending the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum. That was it. And that wasn't even that exciting. She'd been kissed on the cheek by him. Nothing more. But at the time, that was enough to send her heart pumping a mile a minute and to feel tingly all over. After that night, there were no other teenage experiences for her, really. She had fought with Ron, had to help Harry with his Triwizard tasks. Organize the D.A. Break into the Ministry. Study for her OWL's. Try and convince Harry that battered old potions book was leading to trouble. Defend Hogwarts against Death Eaters the night Dumbledore died. Go on the run. She'd known her teenage years were over well before all of that happened. She was always mature beyond her years and as logical as she could muster. But sometimes she wondered if she had have allowed herself to indulge in her youth more, would she still be the same person? Would she have the same friend. She knew what people in the Ministry said about her behind her backs and she knew what Malfoy thought of her.

They all thought she was in essence completely heartless and arrogant to boot. And she caught herself sometimes being a complete asshole, and she couldn't stop doing it. She saw herself pushing people's buttons unnecessarily, she saw her pride getting the better of her on many occasions. She had always told herself when she was younger that if she ever found herself becoming that person she would curse herself into oblivion before it happened. But it had happened without her realising it, and it was too late to change it without wounded dignity now. She had always thought that people who were like that put themselves on a very high pedestal, and sooner or later, they would come crashing down. Hard. The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall. She turned away from the window staring down into the streets full of people without a care in the world. As she sat back down at the desk and rubbed her eyes again, she didn't see the small wisp of a weak patronus disintegrate to nothing before it got within a meter of her window.


Hermione awoke with a start, papers sticking to the side of her face, hair comically sticking straight up in the same position it had been in while she was sleeping on the desk. She squinted her bleary eyes out of the window while one hand unstuck papers from her face and the other one attempted to flatten her hair. The bright morning light stung her eyes and she had to close them again while they adjusted. Based on the position of the sun and the time of year, she judged it to be about eight in the morning. She looked up and the clock above her. Eight twenty eight. Damn. Five points from Gryffindor. As she tried to wake her brain up, slumped in the chair, she felt like she was supposed to be looking for something. It took a few minutes of her rubbing and slapping her face to wake herself up when it suddenly came to her.

"Oh fuck!" She exclaimed out loud. Malfoy's patronus had never come last night. She looked up at the clock again, hear heart rate picking up. What time had he sent the last one? She wasn't sure... It had to have been at least twenty four hours. And that was outside the time she should have been looking for him. Oh dear god, what had that prat gotten himself into. A voice at the back of her head berated her for her thoughts, reminding her of what she had thought about last night about attempting to change her attitude. She brushed it aside as she moved as fast as she could to the wardrobe to change. Fresh jolts of pain shot up her back as she moved quicker than she thought wise, but she had been through worse pain. This was nothing she couldn't handle. She was just about to throw her hair up away from her face when a loud bang echoed down the hallway.

Immediately Hermione dropped to her knees and crouched into the shadows of the wardrobe. She held her wand at the ready and went through her attack plans and escape routes. There was no noise after the bang. No shouts, no walking through the rooms, no further bangs or explosions. Was someone looking for her? Who would have known where they were? Who were they and what were their intentions? How many were-

Her thoughts were cut off when there was a thud and a heavy groan. What was happening now? Well hiding like a child wasn't going to solve anything. Quiet as a mouse, she crept out of her shadows and keeping low to the ground, peeked around the doorway. They weren't in the bedroom. The door was at the exact same angle she had left it. She could hear someone shuffling in the hallway. There was a crash and a shout of pain. They had knocked over the side drawers in the hallway. Well that was rude of them. She paused moving again, trying to listen as closely as she could. She could hear her heart and her blood in her ears, but enough years of practice had taught her how to drown those out. Whoever it was wasn't doing a great job of quickly searching the rooms- "Hermione!" a familiar, desperate and pained voice called out to her.

She didn't move for three heartbeats. Then dashed madly for the door, still keeping low to the ground. She quickly looked around for any enemies, but it seemed Malfoy was alone. Her blood ran cold when she finally looked upon him. It looked like he had been tortured. Burned, stabbed, beaten and worse. It looked like clinging onto conciousness was taking immense effort. She had no idea how he had even managed to get here. He must have apparated. Holy shit, how did he manage to do that in his state?! Fresh burns covered half his body, half of his hair gone, down the side of his face, left eye gone, down his neck, and ending on his chest and stomach. Bits of muscle and bone were visible where the skin had come away. There were hundreds of miniature but deep cuts over the other half of his body and face and it seemed anywhere that hadn't been touched by the blades had been mercilessly beaten as swollen and bluish purple skin bloomed all over. The smell was putrid. She could feel her stomach churn. As she flung herself down next to him and tried to heave him up, he cried out again. She paused and using her wand, removed the blood that she had just noticed was littering the hallway, making it look like a muggle Hanted House attraction, and got it to circulate itself back into his body. Using the rudimentary healing skills she had to knit the skin together on his cuts but the burns, she nearly retched looking upon them again, the burns would take more serious magic. She grabbed his good wrist, the one that didn't look like it was broken, slung it over her shoulders and put her other arm around his torso to steady him from the other side. He didn't cry out this time, it was more of a strangled sob. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever heard. She nearly exclaimed in revulsion and disgust when she pulled him close. Where he her fingers were brushing against his burns it was almost as if the skin was disintegrating below them. It slid around and moved under her touch like a piece of tissue on a gel surface. She also realised with an extreme shudder she could suppress that she was feeling his broken ribs rub up against her own and make the most sickening vibration feeling.

Looking around and thinking quickly she decided to drag him toward the bathroom. It was the closest room to them and she supposed it would be easier to clean. After a lot of grunting and effort on her part, she had managed to sit him into the gargantuan bath. Hermione then proceeded to hobble out of the room, her back burning her with protest. She snatched her medical potions bag from beside her bed, burst back into the bathroom and vaulted into the bath next to him. His breathing was becoming shallower and more laboured with every passing minute at his watched her with his one sluggish eye rip bottles and vials out of the bad and start to frantically mix them together in the correct proportions. Her heart was in her throat and she felt so scared she could hardly breath herself. Why did he have to be the better of the two of them at potion making? Her hands were shaking almost violently and she silently wondered to herself why she was losing her cool so terribly. Looking back upon his form, she grabbed a fistful of the tatters of robes he wore and ripped them from his chest, leaving it bare for her to work. Glancing back up at his face she found that he was still looking at her with a half closed eye, but he didn't seem to be seeing her. He didn't seem to be seeing anything. He was still breathing... barely. But he was definitely unconscious. She threw a leg over his hips and straddled him without putting any weight on him, she put a hand on his cheek and turned his face toward hers. "Malfoy...?" She called. He did not stir. She lightly slapped the unburned side of his face. "Draco! C'mon, wake up. God damn it..." She yanked the cork from the bottle she'd been mixing and upended it over all of his burns. Thick heavy plumes of dark green noxious smoke rose from them and she coughed violently, eyes watering she used her sleeve to cover her mouth and nose. Looking back down at the burns, they had healed a little. God damn it, she hadn't mixed it correctly. If she'd had, they'd look a few days old by now and the smoke wouldn't have been so dark. She had to try again. She could feel panic rise in her chest as she shook and shook the mixture to combine it. She almost watched in slow motion as it slipped from her hand and smashed to pieces on the porcelain of the bath. She balled her fists up into her hair and nearly tore it out from the roots. "This is not the time to lose your fucking composure!" She screamed at herself. Her body and mind were seizing and she could almost hear Malfoys life leaving him. She had smashed the bottle with the last of the primary ingredient she needed in it. She wasn't sure if or where Malfoy kept his potions. He was going to die and it was all her fault. He was going to die, just like she had let William die two years ago.

And somehow, in the midst of her panic, a memory came to her. "Have you gone mad?!" Ron bellowed, as Devils Snare slowly suffocated himself and Harry. "Are you a witch or not?!"