The spell hit and Hermione twisted under the pain. She'd endured it before. She'd felt it from the hands of a master of the art. This was not as bad. It was still terrible. She gasped, and tears came, and she bit her tongue so hard she could taste the blood. But it was not as bad as it could have been. She was able to ease herself out of the chair so she could lie on the rug. She was able to breathe. She was able to exist as a person separate from the agony.

And that person who stayed clear headed and calm and weirdly, horribly aware of everything that was going on even as her body spasmed, looked at Yaxley's shoes. They were good shoes. Well made. Expensive. She had an eye for that now that she's lived with the Malfoys.

She looked forward to the day she saw them coated with his own blood.

"I think another bout," she heard him say. "One wants the lesson to be careful to stick."

Draco's hand must have shaken. She could feel it in the way the spell trembled at is coursed across her skin. She was being flayed alive. A clamp was tightening slowly around her head, squeezing her until she would surely burst. She knew if she moved it would become so much worse and so she held herself as still as she could and stared at those black leather shoes until they turned and walked away. She could hear Amycus Carrow's laugh and decided she'd kill him too. She'd kill him personally. She'd taken down his sister. It was only a matter of time before he found himself on the wrong end of her wand.

When the door clicked shut there was a long pause where no one in the room seemed to dare to move, and then everyone sprang into action. Draco dropped down by her side and held her head up. "I'm so sorry," he said. His face was wet and he was so pale he looked sickly. "Oh, god, Hermione, I'm so sorry."

Lucius handed him a vial. "Pain potion," she could hear her father-in-law say. He sounded tired. "Severus used to make it up for us. It's customized to deal with that curse."

The very act of swallowing made her want to gag. The potion stank, and feel rotten on her tongue, like milk that had gone bad. She tried to twist her head away rather than let Draco pour any more into her mouth but he managed to pry her jaw open and get it in. "I know," he said. "It's bad, but it does work."

It did. It wasn't miraculous. She'd experienced magical cures far more instant and wondrous. But it slid down into the aches of her bones and as it passed it took the worst of the pain with it. She wasn't better. But she'd be able to stand. She'd be able to walk to her room and climb into her bed and sleep until time did what the magic of Severus Snape could not.

Narcissa held a crystal glass of water to her lips. When had she knelt down? Who would ever imagine Narcissa Malfoy kneeling for anyone? "This will take the taste away," she said. "I think he made it that bad on purpose."

Hermione gulped it down gratefully. Clear, cold, clean water. She let Draco hook an arm around her and help her up. She couldn't even muster the energy to thank Lucius or Narcissa. She couldn't even speak. She just let Draco lead her up and away to her room, to their bed, to the blessed silence of sleep.

When she woke, he was sitting in a chair, hands folded, watching her. She felt groggy. Her eyes wanted to close back up again but she was afraid if she did she'd be back on the dining room floor. She could still see Yaxley's shoes walking away. She could still taste the potion. She forced herself to sit up. She was Hermione Granger. Hermione Malfoy. Hermione. She was Hermione and she had been tortured before at the hands of a woman who hated her. She had survived that. She would survive this pale echo.

"I'm sorry," Draco said. She could see his eyes were red.

"Had to be done," she said. "They outnumbered us."

"They won't always," he said.

"No," she agreed, and that was it. That was enough. They would make sure this ended.

"I have soup," Draco said. He waved a hand toward a tray and she could see that he did. "Restorative."

"Please tell me Severus Snape didn't write the recipe," she said.

That tricked a laugh out of Draco. "It is vile," he said.

"The soup?" she asked.

He laughed again. "The potion," he said. "This is a Malfoy recipe. Very French. Broth, vegetables, and herbs that have to be fresh or the ghost of my great-grandmother will appear and glare at you."

She smiled. She could feel the expression was weak but it was there. "I wouldn't want to antagonize your great-grandmother," she said.

"Terrifying woman, or so I understand," he agreed. He levitated the tray toward her and she picked up the spoon. Her first bite was tentative. Her second less so. Draco's great-grandmother might have been terrifying, but she had known how to make soup and she'd passed that art down.

"How did you…?" she asked. You had to mean it to do an unforgivable. Well, you had to mean it to do any magic. The words, the gestures, they were just a way of focusing intent. But the stronger the spell the more you needed that intention to be clear and unforgivable were very strong spells.

"Imagined it was him," Draco said. He looked at her through a fringe of hair. Those grey eyes were cold and there was a stubborn set to the way he thrust his jaw out. "It was a trick we had that last year. Focus on the Carrows, point the wand at your victim."

She nodded. It was clever. Her trick had always been to mean the longer-term result. She might not mean that she wanted to hurt the child in front of her – and her mind flashed back uncomfortably to Archibald Lestrange and what she'd done to him – but, oh, how she meant it when she thought about taking the Death Eaters down.

Compromise makes monsters of us all.

She took another bite of the soup. "It's good," she said.

"I know." Draco tucked his hands under his legs and watched her. Being stared at while she ate should have seemed weird. If Ron had done it she'd have reached a hand toward her mouth, sure she had a bit of parsley stuck to her lip. This just felt cared for. "My mother used to make it for me when," he hesitated. "When Voldemort was around."

"Your mother made this?" Hermione tried not to let the surprise show in her voice but by now Draco knew her too well for her to hide that. He quirked a brow up at her assumption that Narcissa couldn't cook, or wouldn't cook, and she could feel the heat creep up her neck as she blushed. "Well, it's very good," she said.

"I'm not sure she's ever failed at anything she's really wanted to do," Draco said.

"The Malfoy women are terrifying," Hermione said.

He regarded her steadily. "They are," he agreed.

That made her almost drop her spoon. "God, I hated you," she said instead. It was the absolute worst thing you could possibly say to your husband as he watched you eat soup his mother had made but as she looked at him - grey eyes, sharp features, and keen mind – it was as if he were an overlay of the boy he'd been. She was reminded of a souvenir book for tourists she'd seen in Rome. A current ruin was printed on the page and a plastic sheet folded over it so you could see the way historians thought it must have looked when Rome had ruled the world. It had had the Coliseum, the Forum, the Senate. She'd been fascinated and had lifted the plastic sheets up over and over again. Past. Present. Past. Present.

She could almost do the same now with Draco. Past. The spoilt boy who'd never known a moment's pain. The world had been his. He'd loved Quidditch and cakes and himself. He'd been a horror. She'd probably been much the same way. Smarter than all the other children. Surer of herself. Of course she'd had magic. She hadn't even been really surprised to discover that. She was special. She was different. No wonder they'd hated each other. No one likes to see a hint of their own flaws in another person.

Past. The spoiled children who'd thought the world was theirs.

Present. The man who knew every ache the torture had left in her bones because he'd felt them too.

Future.

"I wasn't that fond of you either," he said. He smiled and the shadows under his cheekbones shifted and lightened. "You were such a brat."

"You just didn't like I had better marks than you."

"Yes," he said, the smile making his eyes crease and sparkle. "I'm sure that was it."

She met his gaze. How had it become so easy? She pushed the tray away and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. The movement hurt. It was the pain you felt after a bout of influenza, though. She was weak and sore and not at all happy with either of those things. She wasn't lying on the floor wanting to die. "I need a bath," she said. He held an arm out to steady her and she let him help her up.

"A bath," he said, "then a walk to the roses?"

"Roses?" she asked. It was winter.

"Wizard," he said, not the slightest bit confused what her question meant. "If I want my wife to sit in the sunshine in a rose garden, she will."

She tucked some of his hair back behind one ear. "You're a good man," she said.

"No," he said. "I'm not. I'm far too willing to do things that are," he paused and she could see him considering his words. "Not good. As you felt last night."

But she shook her head. They'd both done terrible things. She wasn't going to allow that to redefine them as terrible people. They were people who did what they had to and she'd lie and scheme and, yes, torture and betray if that was what it took to get to victory. Let them all hate her. Let the Weasleys assume she'd run to the enemy's bed. Let those self-righteous pricks at the art show assume she was a traitor to the cause. If she won – if they won – all those people could hate her from the comfort of a free Britain. "If we stayed pure," she said, "we'd lose."

"Must be nice to be Harry Potter," he said. "All good forever."

She smiled wanly. "Not really," she said.

"He gets to be the savior."

"But we get the rose garden," she said. "You promised me a rose garden and, just as soon as I'm clean, I intend to make you deliver."

"I can promise you a lot of things," he said. He didn't waste time on empty words, though. He turned the taps and held a hand under the water until he was satisfied with the temperature. He poured scented oil in. He helped her take off the clothes she still had on from the night before.

"Burn those," she said, wrinkling her nose at the smell of stale sweat. Fear and pain could somehow seep out your pores. You could clean away the smell of exercise or a hot day. The reek of torture never went away.

The bath was the perfect temperature, and she eased herself down into the water and let her head rest against the rim of the tub. Light streamed in from a window and a chandelier hung overhead. Someone had set a vase of fresh orange blossoms on a shelf that seemed to have not purpose other than holding pretty things. She didn't even need to look to know that there would be a pile of towels. They would be fluffy. They would be folded. Not a single one would have even the hint of a frayed edge. She hadn't grown up poor but the way the Malfoys lived was something else. "Being rich isn't the worst thing in the world," she said.

"If you can look past the lousy company," Draco said. He pulled up a stool and sat behind her and she let out a sigh that sounded awfully lot like bliss when he slipped his hands to the base of her skull and began to massage away the remaining pressure.

"Keep doing that," she said as she closed her eyes. "Keep doing that and you'll never get rid of me."

His thumbs pressed into the sides of her neck and he slid them up along the tight muscles. "That's the idea," he said. He leaned down and pressed his lips to her temple. "I never want you to go."

"I won't," she said. She pried open one eye, tipped her head back, and looked at him. "The soup," she said. "The towels. I'd be a fool to give that up."

"The rose garden," he said.

"You."

His fingers trembled against her neck and the massage paused for a moment before he said, "Well, we both know you have bouts of poor judgement but I'm not above taking advantage of one of them if it benefits me."

"Slytherin," she said knowingly.

"Exactly." He returned to his massage and she closed her eyes again and let the water leech the rest of the pain from her body. She needed to find out why someone had thought it was a good idea to spread rumors about the sexual histories of the Lestranges and Carrows. She needed to check in with Percy. She needed to take this whole, corrupt edifice down. But for just a few minutes it was okay to relax. She'd take this bath. She'd walk in the rose garden. She'd plot Yaxley's downfall.

Just as soon as Draco Malfoy stopped doing that magic thing with his thumbs on her neck.

He didn't stop.

Maybe being temporarily delayed by marital duties wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

It wasn't.