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Author's Notes: I apologize, profusely, to all of you who actually cared enough to keep checking up on my story to see if I would ever update it. I've been pretty busy, lately, but now that I have more free time, I'm going to do my best to get this story rolling.

Thanks to roxychocolate, here's more for you; Everbay, thank you for the compliments; Anonymous, don't worry, Ron will get everything that's coming to him; LUvINg EmIn3M & Mourant Flamme, thank you for the second reviews and morganna, thanks and here's the next chapter!

I'm sorry, again, for how long this took, but here it is!

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Hermione lay curled on her side, staring listlessly out of the metal-framed hospital window, watching the gardeners trim and clip at the hedges just outside. The night had been a long one and she'd only been able to pull small snatches of sleep between long hours of unwavering silence. Pain hadn't kept her awake; they'd been giving her Tylenol with codeine so her injuries hardly made themselves known so long as she didn't move often, and the quiet of the private room she'd been given should have been fairly conducive to sleep, but something was still amiss. Ron was missing. Even with the pain and anger of this most recent 'incident' fresh in her memory, she still missed him. In the face of everything that had happened during their last few years of school, their mutual decision to marry soon after graduation had been met with no resistance from anyone they were close to. In truth, this was one of the first times in her life that Hermione could recall when she couldn't expect Ron to be around for her since she'd first come to Hogwarts, and that was something that she loved about him; his steadfast presence though everything they'd been through over the years. Alright, it was time to stop thinking about this, or she'd cry, again. Normally, she'd already have a headache from the amount of crying she had already done, but the codeine effectively took care of that for her. Thank Merlin for small favors, she thought with a smile.

That was how Draco found her. Standing in the doorway directly opposite the window, clutching a thin clipboard and Hermione's file under one arm, Dr. Malfoy observed his newest patient with both the eyes of a psychiatrist and those of a former acquaintance. Other than slightly longer hair and the rounded belly, Hermione looked very much the same as she had the last day he'd seen her; the day he'd sat 18 chairs and 2 rows back from her at the graduation ceremony. The longer hair definitely suited her, he thought, since the weight of it now pulled some of the frizz out of it, but left a bit of the curl. Of course, he thought with a slight smirk, it would probably look better were it not in a tangled mess spread out en masse on the sanitary white pillows. The smirk faded as the professional side of him took over, noting the purpling bruises barely visible above the folded over section of the blue hospital blankets where the gown the institution had provided for her lay parted several inches at her back. The view of them, as well as a slight stirring from his patient, brought him back to reality. Regardless of his personal feelings for one of the people that had practically ruined what should have been the best years of his childhood, he had a job to do.

Stepping forward, he rapped one thin, pale hand against the open door of her room in an effort to announce his arrival.

"Mrs. Weasley?"

The deep voice from the doorway immediately caused Hermione to turn in that direction, which in turn caused the bruises on her lower back to twinge. With a wince, she readjusted herself, carefully turning to rest on the opposite side of her body, since reclining on her back wasn't an option. Once she'd finally gotten herself settled, she glanced up… and nearly had an apoplexy.

"What're you doing here?" she asked, no small amount of surprise (or was that contempt?) in her tone.

Draco tsked at her as he scraped the visitor's chair from next to the door to the side of her bed and sat, resting both the file and his clipboard on his lap.

"Is that any way to speak to your court-appointed psychiatrist?" A slight smirk accompanied his sarcastic remark. This was going to be fun.

"My what…?" Whether Hermione was surprised because she had a psychiatrist or if it was just him that was the surprise was anyone's guess.

"Apparently, someone thought you might need a little help with what happened." The smirk had left Draco's face leaving only the professional, now.

Hermione stifled the urge to roll her eyes; if Draco Malfoy was the only thing between her and getting out of here, she needed to tread, carefully.

"Help with what, exactly?" she asked, carefully. No sense in giving him more information than he needed, after all, right?

Draco was far too experienced as a psychiatrist to fall for that.

"You tell me," was his reply. Damn. No help, there. "Why don't you start by telling me how this all happened?" Hermione hadn't even noticed until now that he already had the clipboard out on his lap, pen ready to write whatever he felt needed to be recorded.

"How what all happened?" Draco sighed. She was obviously a master at this. He noted her diversionary tactics on his note sheet and sat forward, crossing his arms over his knee.

"The bruises are readily visible, Mrs. Weasley. How do you propose to explain how they got there? A bad fall down the stairs? Hit in the back with a door?" The gentle tone didn't diminish the hard words a single iota.

"What do you mean, 'they're visible'…? How did you see them…?" Again, the will to discuss anything but the true course of the matter. For the moment, he allowed the dissention; getting her talking, about anything, would facilitate the process.

"The stunningly stylish hospital gown they gave you is parted in the back, remember?" Draco tried to suppress a smile as Hermione flushed with both embarrassment and anger, pulling the blankets a bit higher around her, self-consciously. When she spoke, again, her tone was sulky.

"Ginny's bringing me something of my own to wear, later."

Draco did smile this time as he offered in a somewhat teasing manner, "Red and gold, I presume?" That pricked her anger and, for the first time since he'd been speaking to her, Draco finally saw a bit of the old Hermione return in her reply.

"Not all of us felt the need to carry the obsession with our houses into our adult life, you know." As she tossed out the sarcastic remark, she gestured to Draco's clothing and he cursed under his breath. Of all the ensembles in his wardrobe, why in Merlin's name had he chosen to wear the gray slacks and matching green button-up, today? He might just as well have worn his old school robe with the insignia right on it. Draco was just annoyed enough to decide to step into full business mode.

"Mrs. Weasley, something occurred, last evening, that had you brought here, in an ambulance with welts on your back, legs and buttocks that the emergency doctors determined were belt inflicted. You also have bruising on your left upper arm in the shape of fingers and welts that carry further onto your right side than on the left, indicating that someone held you in place with their left hand and hit you with a belt with their right. The belt was an inch, to an inch and a half in width and made of a heavy material, most likely leather," Draco rattled off the facts from the file that Hermione hadn't even realized he had in front of him. "Even though you refuse to admit what happened, your friends, a Mr. Harry Potter and his wife, Genevra Potter, claim that this is not the first time that injuries like this have occurred, and have also admitted that injuries more severe than this have taken place in the past, including, but not limited to, broken bones, a bruised jaw, internal bleeding-"

"Enough!" Draco had been so engrossed with the doctor's handwritten notes at the bottom of the chart that he hadn't noticed the tears beginning to trickle down his patient's cheeks, determined to continue until she spoke. "Enough…" This time, Hermione spoke the word in a soft whisper. Draco closed the file and, sliding it under his clipboard, his pen clicked as he sat back in the chair.

"Ready to talk about this?" he asked, handing her a handkerchief from his coat pocket.

Attempting to dry the tears that just wouldn't stop coming, Hermione could only nod.

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Author's Notes: That's it for this chapter! Want more? You know what to do!

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