"We've just spoken to the Minister for Magic," Harry explained "He's our equivalent of a Prime Minister. He'd have come himself, but...well it'd have only drawn more attention."

"More attention?"

"Don't worry about that now," Hermione said quickly.

Well, now she absolutely was worried.

"What did Shacklebolt say?" Draco interrupted impatiently.

"It's a mixed bag, really. Serana and Tabitha, they'll go down for life, there's no two ways about that. Ordinarily, the protocol would now be memory charms for any Muggles involved."

"Memory charms?" Marilyn echoed.

Her confidence was hardly bolstered by the way Draco shook his head and sighed at Harry's words.

"It's how we handle Muggles seeing something that they shouldn't have. It's bound to happen every now and then. We can wipe your memory - make it so that you don't remember any of this, any of us - or we can even just do a more selective version, erasing the last few days and not Malfo- er, Draco. It would be like the last couple of days never happened. You'd think that you...Oh, I don't know, took a sick day off of work. Something completely normal."

Marilyn bristled at his phrasing, but it was lost in Draco's interjection.

"Ordinarily," Draco pointed out Harry's use of the word when she failed to respond.

"...Yeah," he sighed, raking a hand through his hair "I don't suppose you've seen this morning's papers?"

The gesture revealed a strange scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.

"Speculation. Gossip. Rumour. I can imagine," Draco said drily.

"Oh, I don't think you can," Hermione chimed in anxiously "Any plausible deniability you might've had concerning your hand in this is now a thing of the past."

Reaching into her handbag, she withdrew a newspaper - one that seemed much too big to have conceivably gone into such a small bag - and then angled it so that Marilyn could not see the cover, much to her disgruntlement, as she handed it to Draco. From where she sat, all she could see was the back, which was riddled with photographs that appeared to move. After everything she'd seen so far that day, though, she felt utterly numbed to this newest novelty.

Draco stared at the front page more than he read it, grey eyes fixed to the page rather than scanning across any lines. Anger and annoyance were soon replaced with dread. It was clear on his face, expression going almost slack as any colour drained from his features. When she reached across and tugged the paper from his grasp, he let it go freely. The headline was impossible to miss. 'Malfoy's Muggle Mistress', emblazoned across the page in thick black letters. And that wasn't the extent of it. Two photographs accompanied the headline - what passed as photographs in this strange world at least, side by side, each looping over and over.

"Where did they get them?"

Ah. His anger was back, blazing anew in his eyes as his lip curled in disgust. It riddled its way throughout his voice, too, clear for all of them to hear.

"The entire Ministry knew before we even had the attackers in our custody. Somebody must've tipped off the press, had them waiting outside the Nott manor. This one would've gone for a pretty price."

They were talking about the first of the two photographs, she could piece that together by what they said. The Nott manor - that must've been where she'd been...confined. She hadn't seen the outside of the place, she'd been too busy being unconscious, but it wasn't difficult to work out the context of the photograph. It was rather dark, taken from a distance with no flash (if they even had flash photography) so as not to alert its subjects, but not so dark as to make it indecipherable. Not with Draco's shock of platinum blond hair. It showed him walking down the steps of a great English manor, illuminated only by the light beaming out from the great double doors he'd just exited. He got to the bottom of the steps and then paused, lips moving with a sentence that was impossible to make out, and that was when she appeared - her unconscious self, floating horizontally out of the doorway like something out of The Craft.

The side the photograph had been taken from showed her injuries in all of their blurry black-and-white glory, the nasty scratches that had raked down the side of her face, unhidden by her hair which hung limply below her head. Hermione, Harry, and two others followed her floating body, she vaguely recognised one as Hermione's husband, the one from that night, but the other was a stranger to her. It disturbed her to see, and she had to make a conscious effort not to lift her hand to trace the skin where the scratches had been, but just as she was about to open her mouth to insist that it wasn't so damning, it reached the damning part as if on cue - Draco paused, waited for her unconscious form to drift past him slightly, before taking up one of her hands...refusing to look at the others as he did so, his jaw set grimly.

Could it have been a platonic show of care? Sure. But from Draco Malfoy it was the equivalent of a big wet kiss. Marilyn sighed.

"And this one? What's your excuse here? You have Aurors at the fucking door," Draco jabbed a finger in the direction of said 'Aurors' who, to their credit, offered no reaction to hearing themselves referenced.

Now he was talking about the second one. If the first was of shaky quality, this one was two steps away from being laughable. It had been taken in motion, that much was clear, with somebody trying to snap a quick photograph as they walked past the doorway of the room she sat in now. Were it a 'Muggle' photograph, it would have been an indistinguishable blur of pale pastel blue hospital bedding, but they weren't quite so lucky.

Instead it offered a glimpse, a mere glimpse, but a glimpse all the same. It must've been taken sometime during the night, for her injuries were gone but she was lying flat in the hospital bed, quite dead to the world while Draco sat in the chair at her bedside, his gaze on her face but his eyes miles away. This particular clip that the photograph offered was over before it began - the details she caught from it had to be snatched one at a time each time it replayed.

"Somebody must've bribed one of the hospital staff. They could've snuck a camera beneath a tray or bedclothes - something - and snapped it as they went by. We've people talking to them now...we would station new Aurors at the door, but you shouldn't be here much longer."

"And your colleagues didn't notice this? Merlin, I thought the Ministry a joke when Fudge ran it."

"You didn't notice, either," Harry pointed out.

"It wasn't my job to notice!"

"It was going to come out sooner or later. What were you going to do, run to your parents and insist the rumours were all lies? That you just so happened to know where she - where Marilyn," Harry halted mid-sentence in an effort to remember his manners "Was being held and decided to inform the authorities out of pure charity? That's not something you're known for, Malfoy. Not to mention that this all concerns the same place, and the same attackers that you'd just so happened to ask your mother about not an hour prior? Your parents might have pretended to believe it because it would be in their interest - in their comfort - to do so, but not the rest of the world. This was a matter of when, not if."

"Oh well in that case why not invite them in for a formal photoshoot? Would they like us to pose, perhaps? We can drag Marilyn out of her hospital bed to sing and dance-"

"I can't do that anymore," she muttered drily.

"And give them their inevitable story," he continued his tiraded regardless of her interjection "Would they like us to offer a statement? Announce a wedding date?"

We could have it in a barnyard, where all of your nearest and dearest adamantly believe that I belong. It was a snarky response that she longed to chime in with, but she found herself holding her tongue at the very last moment. Maybe it was because one more heated voice in the cacophony of ones already piping up would do nothing to help, or because of the slight amount of concern his words had shown her even now (or maybe her brain was just grasping at straws with that one). It could have been down to the way her mind was at war, with everything she'd known of him so far clashing harshly with all that had occurred over the last twenty-four hours. Mostly, she suspected it was down to those damned photographs. Not just the gesture in the first, but his face in the second. He looked...lost. Exhausted. So very sorrowful.

The old cliche of a picture speaking a thousand words rang painfully true here. However poorly worded his excuses and explanations were (and there was no forgetting that, that much was certain), in the look on his face captured clearly for little more than a second over and over, she could see the regret there. The worry. And it made everything so much more fucking difficult.

"The point is," it was Hermione who cut through the arguing, turning to Marilyn before her face softened "We can wipe your memory, but we can't do the same for everybody in the Wizarding community. You'd be the only one effected, and it likely wouldn't be the wisest course of action given the turns things have taken and…"

"And who my family are," Draco finished sourly.

"We'd do what we could to negate the threat, but in negating this one, I'm afraid we opened you up to a whole lot more," Harry added "Having you not know there are threats in the first place would only make things more dangerous for you, and having to keep our measures hidden from you would only interfere with us doing our job to the best of our ability. I can't emphasise enough that we'll have full Ministry resources behind protecting you now-"

"Now?" She cut in "As opposed to what?"

All three of the magical folk in the room shared a look.

"As opposed to the people we know who we've already had following you since New Year's Eve," Draco said flatly.

Exhaling sharply through her nose, Marilyn tilted her head back against the headrest of the hospital bed. Why was she even surprised?

"Why since then?"

Asking it was masochistic. She knew she wouldn't like the answer - wouldn't like any of the answers they had to give her. But she still had to know. Now they turned to Draco, so it looked like he was the one with said inevitably shitty answers.

"The note that you found in your bag - we call it the Dark Mark. It was a threat. The symbol of the wizard that was defeated in the war."

The one that was emblazoned across his arm. Judging by the way his eyes were glued to that very arm, even though it was covered by a black shirt, he was thinking the same. A beat passed as the information sank in, and then she was shaking her head all over again.

"Jesus Christ, Draco," she breathed "I mean...fucking hell! So that's why you were so...after we-"

She cut herself off, feeling that damn lump accumulating in her throat all over again. How many oddities in their sham of a friendship had been down to all of the secrets he'd been keeping? The memory of that night still weighed on her in her weaker moments, the way he'd just entirely shut down on her after they'd first kissed. Shit, there had been a big whopping part of her that was scared he'd do the same after they first slept together, that it would be some kind of weird pattern of his. It had been no small relief when they'd gone on as normal in the morning.

Under different circumstances she might've blushed under the assumption she could see the others making based on her words and where she'd cut herself off - the way they got visibly flustered, looking anywhere but at Draco. But at that moment she didn't give a shit. What else had she taken personally, only for it to entirely be a 'him' issue? How many times had they sat in the aftermath of an uncomfortable remark or in an awkward silence, with her wracking her brains as to what she might have done wrong, when the problem was entirely to do with what she was (or rather, what she was not), and not what she had done?

"You two clearly have a lot you need to discuss, and all of that has nothing to do with us," Hermione said quickly, and couldn't be more visibly relieved by that fact "My point is, the matter is up to you. We can advise, and we can give you a bit of time to think it through, but ultimately it is your choice."

A few moments of silence followed. During those moments, she wasn't quite sure what they were expecting. Judging by the look on Draco's face, he was expecting her to make the choice that he did not want her to go with - but whatever exact choice that was, she honestly couldn't even hazard a guess. Before she'd seen those photographs, she would have assumed he'd want her to jump at the chance to get her memory wiped - of him, along with everything else. But she still couldn't help the way her eyes drifted back to the paper where it lay on the bed. The look on his face in those pictures was not the look of somebody who did not care - nor even of one who only cared so far as how the circumstances might affect them personally.

"You can go on like it never happened, or you can carve out some way of living while keeping the secret," Harry added.

There was that fucking phrasing again. Like it never happened. As if it was all so easily fixed and glossed over, and this time Marilyn couldn't help but voice what was on her mind - the words bursting forth quite of their own volition.

"What is wrong with you people?" She breathed, shaking her head.

Whatever they'd been expecting her to say, it seemed that wasn't it.

"Is this how you live?" She continued "Oh something made you sad? It's okay, take this potion and you'll be happy again. Somebody attacked you and carved up your face? It's cool, we'll dab this on and it'll all disappear. Some- some murderous, genocidal psychopath tortured you for a solid twelve hours? One spell and we'll just all pretend it didn't happen at all. Good as new! I mean what the fuck?! Is this how you make things better? This is how you deal with things? What is wrong with you?"

"We weren't trying to upset you," Hermione said levelly, brow furrowed in sympathy.

Somehow it only made her angrier.

"No, you're trying to fix it all with a wave of your magic wands. Give me a fucking break," she shook her head furiously as she spoke, picking at the blanket beneath her fingers like she had something against it.

"There's more," Hermione said reluctantly.

"Not now, Granger," Draco muttered.

Hermione continued "But it's complicated. And it can wait. Probably best discussed after you've had time to rest and adjust."

"Yeah, that's what I need. More and complicated. Exactly what I want - after ten shots of vodka and a new life," Marilyn griped.

She wasn't being helpful, but honestly she didn't give a shit. This whole thing was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. And now she was faced with the fact that she apparently didn't even know the full story yet which was just bloody glorious. Absolutely fantastic. Exactly what she needed in this situation.

Their reactions to her outburst differed greatly. Harry looked sympathetic, the beginnings of a smile that was more sad than anything else showing on his face. Draco still couldn't look at her, staring ahead as if not looking at her would make all of this stop happening. Hermione's reaction, though, was the most interesting - and perhaps the most annoying - as she kept looking between her and Draco like she was trying to work out how exactly they fit together. Marilyn found herself asking the same question.

"Can I have a word alone with Marilyn, please?" Hermione asked.

Harry accepted the request readily and without question, but Draco looked like he wasn't sure how to take it. In the end, though, his lips thinned and he nodded before making for the door like it was his one chance of escape.

"Don't go too far, Draco," Hermione called after him.

Apparently she was thinking along the same lines as Marilyn - that they'd likely never see him again once he left the room.

"Where else would I go?" He snapped the question out with no shortage of exasperation.

Marilyn frowned, but he was marching out of the room and down the corridor before she could ask what exactly he'd meant by that. But she hated how relieved she was once he was gone from the room - like she could breathe again. The only thing that was worse, perhaps, was the extra helping of relief that she felt upon discovering he would return. She just chalked that up to the fact that they still had things to discuss, though...and then she focused on the infuriating look of sympathy Hermione had on her face as she sat down on the chair by her bed.

"This must all be a lot to take in."

"You can say that again."

"I'm a Muggleborn, so I'm not lying when I say I understand."

And yet she'd allowed her to go on none the wiser, knowing who Draco was and what he'd done. Okay, admittedly she'd done what she could to warn her, but that had hardly amounted to more than "he's not the best guy" rather than "ten years ago he was wizard Hitler's biggest fan".

When it became clear that Marilyn had no intention of making small talk - or maybe it was painfully obvious she was biting back some grade A beratements at Hermione's words - the woman sighed and leaned forward.

"Listen, I can't believe I'm really going to say this, but...I wouldn't be so hard on Draco. Or, well, okay I suppose that's not the best way to put it. You have every right to be angry, I won't try to insist otherwise, but all I can do is give you my perspective on the matter."

She spent a moment or two visibly agonising over how she wanted to phrase what she said next, but also took the pause to stop and allow Marilyn a chance to deny her the opportunity to share this unique and insightful perspective that she boasted of. Marilyn did not, but her lips twisted together in unconcealed annoyance. When it became clear she wasn't going to be cursed out of the room, Hermione began to speak again, choosing her words deliberately and with great care.

"When we were teenagers, he was the biggest bastard going - I won't argue otherwise. Ever," she said frankly "But he's come a long way since then. The boy who bullied me in school is hardly recognisable as the man who spent last night arguing with the healers when they said they couldn't heal your knee due to it being an old injury."

Her hands forgot their picking at the blankets in her surprise.

"He did what?"

"I didn't think he'd tell you," she said knowingly "But yes. He argued that it was the least we could do - use magic to help you, after how it had been used to harm you. I think he hoped it might make up for it in some way."

Experimentally, she flexed her knee beneath the covers. It felt no different.

"We couldn't do it," Hermione reiterated, catching the slight movement "There are rules - seas of paperwork and terms and conditions that go into that sort of thing. But my point is that the Draco Malfoy I knew wouldn't have even thought of the idea to argue for such a thing. It wouldn't have crossed his mind, not when it came to somebody other than himself or his family...certainly never for a Muggle."

"So, what? I changed his view of the world through the magic of my vagina?" Marilyn asked bluntly.

If she was expecting Hermione to be scandalised by her words, she'd have been disappointed - no, she looked shocked for a split second, but then she had to fight back a laugh.

"Well, I'm afraid I can't speak for whatever mind-altering properties your, erm, nether regions may possess, but I can speak for the change in him."

"That's a lot of responsibility to put on my shoulders," Marilyn shook her head, her hands going back to their fidgeting "What if we fell out? Would he go back to hating us all? Take it as a sign that he was right all along and that we're all no good?"

"It's never all been on you," Hermione replied "He had doubts during the war. Perhaps not about the great worth of Muggles, but certainly over what sort of fate they deserved."

"Which is a very convenient thing for somebody from the losing side to say after the fact," she replied.

Hermione just barely managed to stifle a smile at that - one that said "fair enough".

"It wasn't just after the war, though. There were a few times during it when the enemy had us exactly where they needed us to be, and all it would've taken was one word from Draco or his family to have us dead...and they didn't give it. They helped us. Had anybody on their side cottoned on to what they were doing, they'd have killed them. Slowly. But they took the risks. They didn't want their side to win, even in the midst of the war."

She'd sparked Marilyn's interest - she couldn't hide how intently she listened now, even when Hermione paused to make sure she was still paying attention. Apparently liking the interest that she saw there, she then continued more confidently now.

"Voldemort, he had his die-hard fanatical supporters. Maybe Draco's parents even were among them in the beginning, but by the second war all I saw was a very scared family boxed in by their own terrible stupidity. The stupidity of how he was raised, in his case. Nobody has more reason to hold it all against him than Harry and I do, but it was...it was a very complicated time."

"So because you forgave him I have to?" Marilyn asked, distinctly unimpressed.

"You don't have to do anything. I won't even pretend I don't have the benefit of the years that stand between now and what he did to myself and those I care about. I just wanted to," she paused and then sighed "Honestly, I'm not even sure what I'm trying to do. I just thought you were owed some perspective from somebody who knew him at his worst, and has seen how he's changed now. You deserve that much, after everything."

"And if you thought this was all some elaborate scheme of his? If you didn't see the change, didn't believe it?"

"I'd be sitting here, right now, telling you to run a mile. Or fifty."

"So...he cares?"

She hated herself for asking it. Fucking despised herself for it. The world was falling down around her ears, and she was lying in bed meekly wondering if the handsome man's affections were genuine. It was bullshit - it was pathetic! It went against everything she'd ever stood for. And yet, she found herself equal parts relieved and utterly annoyed when Hermione huffed a laugh and replied.

"Oh, he cares. We've been on the wrong end of it every time he decided we weren't doing enough to keep you safe these last few weeks."

Ordinarily she might have apologised, but in that moment she didn't exactly feel like she had much to apologise for.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What did he mean when he asked where else he might go?"

"Old pureblood families are positively Victorian - and that's only the most modern of them," Hermione replied drily "When we didn't know where you might be, he had to go to his mother for information. Given what's in the papers today, they'll have put two and two together by now. Had everything not gone quite so public they might've been able to sweep everything under the rug. Had the press not gotten hold of photographs, he might've even been able to go to them and denounce it all as scurrilous gossip intent on ruining the Malfoy name. As it is, the way things have shaken out have gotten him in a bit of a bind. All of his money is the family money, any homes he has are the family homes. Any friends he has have the same mindset as that of his parents. Depending on how long he wants to avoid their wrath, he'll need to get rather creative about where he goes next."

"Well," she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to find something clever or even vaguely insightful to say "Fuck."

The last place she wanted to be was in a position of feeling like she owed him anything. It was absurd, too. Any danger he'd saved her from was danger he'd bloody well put her in. Just like she'd put him in harm's way by going up to him for help on that first night they'd met.

But it wasn't the same. Not even nearly the same. She'd been going to a good samaritan for a little bit of help. He'd led sadistic maniacs to her doorstep while concealing a secret double-life from her. And what was sad was this revelation made so many things make sense, but in all of the ways she hadn't hoped for.

How many times had she caught him looking at her like she was some strange wonder of the universe? Shit, how many times had she felt secretly flattered by that look? Like she was the lead in some weird rom-com where people were simply meant to be and they'd find somebody out of the blue in some convoluted manner who completely changed their outlook on the world, or at least on the opposite sex? And now she knew the truth. That look wasn't a compliment, it was because she was the equivalent of a fucking gorilla that had learned to use sign language.

She just wanted to go home. She wanted to forget all of this and pretend none of it had ever happened. Harry's offer was beginning to look sorely tempting. Hermione offered her a sad smile, like she was aware of the war that waged within her. It didn't lighten her mood in the slightest. No, in fact she was thoroughly fed up of feeling like the poor, weak, defenseless ickle Muggle worthy of little other than sympathy (or scorn, as the case may be) due to the lack of "magic" in her blood. It was almost as insufferable as feeling like she was in Draco's debt, despite the fact that he was the one who'd brought all of this raining down upon her. Nothing, however, could be as insufferable as the fact that she still could not bring herself to hate him. Not truly.

"I'll leave you to think it through. The hospital won't let you leave until tonight, and even then we can give you up to forty-eight hours to make a decision...so long as you swear you won't tell anybody about all of this in that time."

"I wouldn't even if I thought they might believe me," Marilyn griped.

There was that damned sympathetic smile again. She averted her gaze, once again, to her lap. If only to avoid another outburst.

"Well, I'll leave you be for now. Until then, just consider all of it."

She paused for a moment before giving her the most awkward arm pat imaginable, but the part of Marilyn that still had any patience (and it was an incredibly small part, at that) appreciated the kindness behind the gesture. She watched through the window in the wall between her room and the corridor with the most amusement she could muster as Hermione left the room and gave Draco a wide berth before making her way down the hallway and out of sight. Draco hovered where he'd stood out in the corridor for a few moments before he sighed and seemed to steel himself before ultimately heading back in. Marilyn found herself similarly steeling herself for his return, managing to fix her gaze upon him through sheer force of will as he entered the room, closed the door behind him, and took up his place in the chair by her bed again.

After a few moments of silence he managed to drag his gaze back to her, and seemed surprised to find her already watching him. He hid the surprise quickly, though, straightening his shoulders and adopting a look of boredom (of all things) before speaking.

"Do you know what you'll do, then?"

He asked it like the response didn't mean anything to him at all. She didn't know whether to believe it or not - whether it was a facade or not.

"What do you want?" She asked.

Her question was mostly born of curiosity. Did he want her to take up the offer of amnesia that had been presented before her? The concern on his face in the photographs might suggest otherwise, but perhaps he hoped that with her out of the picture, he could go to his family and make up some excuse for what those very photographs contained. It must have offered him a certain amount of freedom - the potential for her to forget all about him entirely. If his family was as important and influential as she'd gathered, there would surely be those outside of it who pretended to believe whatever lies they came up with just in hopes of gaining something from that belief, false or no. A foothold in the social ladder.

"Does it matter?" He sighed, unimpressed with the question.

"More than you might think," she answered honestly.

It was more than wanting to give him an easy out, and more even than shirking the decision off onto him. She'd come too far in life to make decisions such as this based on what the men in her life might want. But what Hermione had said to her during their little chat weighed on her more than she wanted to admit. She couldn't tell whether he looked surprised or just downright perturbed by her response, but at least he took it to heart, pausing and taking a moment to think on it.

"Tell me what you want first," he said it like he was making a deal, haggling at some street market, except now he met her gaze and for once he dropped the mask, looking both incredibly tired and wary at the same time - like those two emotions were the most that he dared show in that moment.

Well. That was an anticlimactic response.

"It's too big a decision for me to make it so quickly."

"What are you leaning towards?" He countered.

It was a tricky one. The decision was much more difficult than any of them might guess, especially based on her earlier outburst. She had problems with the fundamental reasoning behind the 'solution' they proposed in the form of memory charms. Life demanded that you go through the bad to appreciate the good. To grow. In calamity there was opportunity. A chance for growth. Her knee injury and what it had done to her life was perhaps the most difficult thing she'd ever combatted, but she liked the person she'd become in combating it. Pain was a good teacher, dancers had that drummed into them from the moment they got their first leotards.

But would there be any good in this? How could there be? What could be the meaning behind it that fate was intent on teaching her? What sort of character building would be worth the memories of the torture, the knowledge that there were countless others who could do it just as easily, with Draco's lies and betrayal acting as a neat little bow to wrap it all up in? Hell, even now if when she closed her eyes there was a fear deep within her chest that when she next opened them she'd be back in that dungeon again. She already knew that if she did keep these memories, she'd be sleeping with the lights on for a long time to come. Perhaps forever. Okay, there was the danger in accepting it, in losing the memories of all of this, but if she was attacked again, surely they could then just do this all over again upon saving her? Fuck, how was she to know they hadn't?

The whole thing was warping her mind. The more she thought about it, the more a headache steadily began to build right behind her eyes.

Sighing, she slumped into the bed and decided that if one of them was to bite the bullet and start airing suggestions, it might as well be her. And then she opened her mouth and made her decision.