Author's Note: I was fixing a snack when the plot bunny attacked me. The most difficult part was researching the words for the spell she'd need to use.


Hermione Granger knelt on the endless floor of the Malfoy residence, scrubbing with mundane brush and suds. Even though she'd been under the strictest of Unforgivable control since her secret capture two weeks ago and could have easily cleaned the floor with the wand holstered at her side in an instant, it pleased Draco to watch the Mudblood labor doing house-elf work by Muggle means. Hermione scrubbed, face blank, incapable of doing anything other than exactly obeying the direct orders of Draco, her Master.

Surely, if anyone but Draco and a few House-Elves had known that she was there, there would have been a stop put to it, one way or another. The late Lucius Malfoy, artist of torture that he had been, wouldn't want something as pallid and haggard as she'd become disgracing his ancestral home, and would have killed her without a thought. If Ron and Harry knew she was missing, they would be scouring the world for her and rescue would be imminent, sooner or later. But she'd told them she was going deep-cover, and to not expect a peep until she was done doing what she was doing, which she couldn't tell them for security reasons. They'd put up an almighty fight over it, but had, in the end, agreed.

She wished they hadn't.

Her mind was the one thing left free to her. She reviewed yet again the sequence of events that had brought her here as she scrubbed the already-spotless floor. Undercover, she had gained access to the Malfoy residence. Undetected, she had wheedled and weaseled and bullied her way to being alone with Lucius Malfoy. And then she had assassinated him in cold blood. As she was making good her escape, she had not been prepared for Draco's Imperius curse, which caught her in the back of the head. She had swept floors through the elaborate funeral, unnoticed, unable to give a sign to Severus when he brushed past her, careful to not let the drudge's dirt sully his robes. No, either she would extract herself, or she would die here. There was no one to depend on for rescue.

Draco walked in just then. Hermione would have cringed if she'd been allowed. He had grown bored with the inventions of his own imagination, and had been researching Muggle humiliations. "Woman, make me a sandwich!" he demanded.

Hermione's face stayed blank. She produced her wand, and pointed it at the thin blonde man. "Mutatum Draco Dominus cibarius striatus!" she incanted. She checked the sandwich before wrapping it in the least-dirty of her handkerchiefs. White bread, stringy turkey, no mustard. It would do. It would be a long walk home to Hogwarts, and she would get hungry.