"Is he in?"

The older wizard sitting at the desk outside the Magical Forensics division of the Ministry of Magic didn't even glance up from his copy of the Prophet. He thumbed over his shoulder towards the set of worn doors that had little plaques next to their knobs: Charms and Potions, respectively. The latter had dark blue smoke furling out from edges of the frame.

He was in.

Hermione Granger stepped past the desk with the roll of her eyes and cast a quick Bubble Head Charm on herself before knocking on the door.

"Come back tomorrow!" shouted the annoyed voice from the other side of the door.

Per usual, she ignored the request and let herself into the potion laboratory where Draco Malfoy was mopping up a fizzing green liquid that was eating itself way through the corner of one of his wooden workstations. He was wearing his elbow-length dragonhide gloves as he was working but had not cast a Bubble Head Charm himself so Hermione hung inside the door frame until most of the smoke had dissipated into the hallway behind her before releasing her charm. Her curls popped with frizz as they made contact with the high humidity of the lab.

"I said to come back tomorrow." he sneered at her as he cleared up the last of the mess and peeled his gloves off into a cauldron that she knew was filled with a special cleansing concoction of his own development.

"Look, Malfoy, I know it's late-"

"It's past midnight, Granger. And when I said tomorrow, I meant tomorrow. I have seven hours to get home, get washed, get some semblance of sleep before I have to come back here and tackle the vials from the Avery case so that the Aurors quit their whinging! I don't have time for whatever Magical Law Enforcement thinks they found thi-"

Malfoy stopped mid-rant as the candlelight of his laboratory reflected off the potion bottle Hermione wordlessly held out to him. The pearlescent liquid inside swirled with the motion of her hand. He stared at it for a moment and then turned his back on her, gathering his things into a leather satchel.

"You are choosing to waste my time, Granger."

She sighed and walked over, setting it right next to his bag on the table top and leaned next to it. "It is not Amortentia."

His laugh was filled with frustrated disbelief. "I took the N.E.W.T. course with Slughorn same as you, and I believe I'm the one with the mastery in potions, so stop with the insufferable know-it-all act when you are in my lab, Granger."

"Why do you always think I am trying to one-up you, Malfoy? I'm not here to get into some sort of school-mark pissing contest!" she shouted at him, ignoring the dark expression that passed over his face. "I just want to do my work, same as you."

"Please, Granger. You terrorize me every single time your team has requisition for a potion identification! For the three months, in point of fact, you have been the liaison for every MLE case so what is your problem?"

Hermione found herself backing away from the angry wizard. She was cut off from a retreat by a shelf of research books and jostling a book. The tome toppled downward but before she could react, Malfoy had already reached out and caught the book. He was towering over her now and she could see the grey of his irises swirling with fury.

Malfoy spoke again, but now his voice had gone from shouting to dangerously low tone that dared her to speak. "Trying to find some way to throw me in Azkaban with my father? Trying to catch me tampering with evidence?"

The accusation burned her enough to straighten her posture and push him hard in the chest, giving them both space as he stepped away.

"No one else wants to deal with you because you are a certified asshole, Draco Malfoy! Apparently I'm the only person left who is willing to put up with your bollocks attitude!" declared Hermione with fury, outraged that he thought so little of her after years of working together in their respective departments.

"Attitude? Attitude?" he shouted at her. His golden hair was starting to pull free of the bun he had tied back at the nap of his neck while he worked. "Since the moment I came to work here, I have been constantly questioned about not only my loyalty but also my expertise! Either I am a Potions Master and you all need my help, or you can ask the desk guard to distill the next batch of Polyjuice Potions your team confiscates. Likely it'll just be another batch of muggle energy shake drinks some bloke put in glass bottles for a laugh, again."

She grimaced, because spit and sweat were flying off of Malfoy as he paced angrily around the small laboratory and also because Hermione knew that he was right. The officers within the MLE were absolute imbeciles when it came to dealing with the muggle world. Proud and anxious to be seen on par with the Aurors, they were puffed-up pricks with power kicks.

"Look, Malfoy," she said, trying to find work to de-escalate the tension, "Do you think I would come here if I knew what the potion was?"

He snorted, stopping in the middle of the space and looking down at the petite witch, "Procedure dictates that all cases-"

"Procedure, yes, I love policy and procedure, but if this was a bottle of Amortentia and I knew that, I would have just added it through your regular processing." she pointed out, throwing her arms up into the air. "I would not have come up here past midnight and sought you out when I could be at home, naked in a bathtub and downing a glass of wine."

He stared at her.

"Or sleeping!" she corrected quickly. "Malfoy, I know you are the best at what you do. So - will you please just take a look at what I brought?"

Malfoy did not get away with the small prideful adjustment to his shoulders; Hermione definitely noticed his posture shift at her admission and grinned inwardly. There wasn't a warm bodied witch this side of the Channel who could ignore that the former Death Eater was striking in all the best ways, according to Witch Weekly. She would have admired him if not for her utter lack of patience with the wizard.

Several seconds passed before Malfoy sat down at a free workstation and held out his hand. Hermione picked up the bottle from where she stood next to the table and brought it over to him. Unknowingly to her, condensation had built up on the exterior of the glass and the potion bottle slipped through her fingers as she went to put it down.

The potion thunked loudly on the hardwood surface and fell over, rolling straight over the edge and careened toward the tiled flooring.

Hermione gasped as Malfoy just caught the bottle by the neck before it broke against the stone. They breathed out in relief as he set it onto a marble plate, then the wizard stared at the contents with a frown. The mother-of-pearl sheen was still there but she knew what was bothering him. The steam coming off the potion, still trapped in the bottle, was not moving in a spiral motion.

"This isn't Amortentia…" he whispered, picking the bottle back up and holding it closer to one of the candles.

It took Hermione all her self-control to clench her teeth together so as not to say anything that would set off Malfoy again.

Once she had recited the names of all the Ministers of Magic backwards in her head, Hermione said, "We found it during a case of muggle trading. Someone has been selling real love potions to muggles - all we found at first were diluted potions, like water mixed with the weaker ones like the type George Weasley sells in his shop. But whoever it is has started has gotten quite an underground market going and we've been trying to trace the supply of ingredients. We think it scared them into experimenting with uncommon ingredients. But there was an incident."

Her tone made Malfoy look up from where he was preparing a tray of vials to start his derivation process to figure out the ingredients.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Date rape. Brutal." There was a pause of silence. "The muggle police noted that the culprit had something odd in his system but they suspected some kind of drug. Our liaison on the muggle crew had a hunch, so MLE were the ones who did the cleanup at the apartment. They found a couple of the earlier potions I mentioned empty, but this was half full and unlabeled."

"Bastards." Malfoy said in contempt.

She nodded in agreement, seating herself against the table to watch him. As he uncorked the potion and used a dropper to pour a little into his of each vials, she continued, "It does look like Amortentia and that is what the officers thought, but I think whoever is behind this is either experimenting with Amortentia or-"

"Or they are trying to make Amortentia with alternative ingredients," he finished. His long fingers picked up one of the vials and watched as the color shifted from mother of pearl to a dark green. "You said the bottle was half empty? Granger, that bottle has like seven or eight doses of Amortentia in it, if it was Amortentia. One dose is strong enough on its own, let alone someone imbibing half that bottle."

"I know," Hermioned grimaced. "I'm worried more of this is out there. Whoever is selling it doesn't know the strength or doesn't care. It smells like Amortentia."

"Does it?"

"Parchment and grass. And… peppermint."

"Do I smell apples?" he noted with a sniff.

She shook her head with a chuckle, "No, that's just me. Someone keeps leaving me a green apple on my desk to eat when I work late. Crisp and tart, much better than the red ones."

"Nevermind, look at this."

Malfoy shifted in his chair and Hermione leaned forward to look as he held up the vial of green and another vial that had transformed the potion into some sort of chalky residue at the bottom of the glass. She waited for an explanation but Malfoy seemed to expect her to know what she was looking at.

"Malfoy, you need-"

"Granger, from these two vials alone, this person isn't trying to make Amortentia. They are experimenting with it, but the ingredient swaps are deliberate. The base here is - plumeria, dried holly berry, lemon balm. But they've shifted from using maidenhair fern to yohimbe bark." He waggled the vial of white dust before replacing it and picking up another. "They've added celery water."

Hermione looked at him from under her crown of frizzy tangles and shook her head, saying, "Malfoy, remember, I'm not the exper-"

He placed the vials down in their holders, looked at a few more in a hurry then suddenly pushed his chair back, as though trying to get away from the table as far as possible. Hermione joined Malfoy quickly, sliding to the other side of the room and waiting there with him.

"What?" she finally asked, voice tense, after the blonde spent a whole minute staring at the workstation with an expression of disdain and distrust.

"Granger, if you still have samples of those previous love potions, I need them. I don't care if they were in labeled bottles, I need them immediately."

"We can do that. Evidence stacks opens in the morning, and I'll start the paperwork as soon as-"

"Granger-" Malfoy spun and grabbed her by the shoulders. Her brown eyes washed over his face, taking in the pale complexion and the worry lines along his brow. His hands didn't release her but his firm grip was gentle. "Whoever brewed this monstrosity isn't trying to sell potions to muggles. They are using muggles to experiment on a rape elixir. "

Hermione bit her bottom lip so hard in shock that she could taste the blood as she cut through the skin.

"And it's worse than that." Malfoy let go of her, seemingly reluctantly, and started stalking again, but kept to their side of the room.

"What do you mean, it's worse than that?" she whispered in horror.

He turned to her, hair shifting like a curtain across his shoulders as it finally fell completely out of its bindings. "This is veering into the Dark Arts. Your would-be potioneer is trying to recreate an elixir that existed during the war. It's… oh, fucking Merlin, I thought it died with Nott's father…"

"Nott's father-?"

Malfoy punched the wooden bookshelf and several books crashed open to the ground at their feet. Hermione flinched but moved closer to Malfoy, grabbing his arm to keep him from punching anything else. She placed a hand over his and felt where his knuckles had scraped against the wood.

"Malfoy, just tell me. I can't help unless you tell me what this is." She was shocked by the grief in his silver eyes as he looked at her.

"They used this elixir on wizards who married muggles or muggle-born witches. As a lesson. The elixir is a lust potion laced with a love potion. Amortentia specifically because amortentia is so strong due to the fact that it acts to accentuate existing love or interest. They would -" His voice broke. "They give it to the husband and it would trigger a love so powerful and possessive that the drinker attacks or… kills the person they love."

Bile rose into the back of Hermione's throat. She had no words to give the man who looked as though a ghost had stolen his soul.

Malfoy wiped his mouth with the back of a trembling hand. "Theodore Nott's father conceived it. Used it on himself and killed his wife and the whole thing spiraled from there once the Dark Lord learned of its potential uses."

"But why?!" gasped Hermione with horror, "Why recreate it, why not just let it die?! That side lost, what on earth could they gain from this now?"

"The Magical Marriage Act."

The brunette stared at the wizard in front of her, still shaken but confused by his answer. She shook her head, disagreeing, "No, there is no way the Magical Marriage Act is going to pass. Incentives for marriage between purebloods and muggle-borns? The Wizengamot will never vote for it."

"Granger, I know you hate the Prophet, but their polls say the proposal is gaining traction. The younger generation, our generation, is trying to make love matches to try to get some of those incentives in the bag. Nott just got engaged - happily engaged - to Sally-Anne Perks. His father is rolling in his grave, wonderful, but what if someone slipped Nott this potion? What would happen to Sally-Anne?"

The words hung heavily in the air between them. Malfoy was close enough to her that Hermione could hear how fast his heart was beating beneath his rib cage. Terrified though she was by the prospect of what they were discussing, his proximity was somehow reassuring. In all her years on the run during the war, and working with the MLE field teams, no one had ever made her feel a sense of security during a crisis. She shoved that feeling back to examine later - this situation came first.

"The case has to be transferred to the Aurors," she said, her voice dry and crackly. "I'll owl Harry and we can bring in his team on this first thing tomorrow. Is there… some kind of antidote?"

"Snape may have had one." Malfoy said bitterly, "But I do not."

"How long until it wears off?" she asked in a quieter voice.

He ran his hands fretfully through his hair. "I can only guess. This person has been experimenting. The one I saw before worked for hours or it ended when the… partner died."

Malfoy gently pushed off her hand that was still holding his and moved back towards the laboratory set up. He sat in the chair and pulled the vials close. Once again, he pulled the little flasks out and observed them, making notations on a scroll of paper. The tinkle of glass and the skritch of his quill was the only sound this late at night in the Ministry.

She watched him work. It struck Hermione that she had seen this version of Malfoy before - the stiff movements, the pallor of his expression. In front of her eyes, she watched him morph back into a scared sixteen year old who was desperate to save his family no matter the cost. Hermione had heard the harrowing testimonies after the war. He nearly worked himself to death trying to fix the situation, carrying the weight of it all on his own without help.

The wizard paused as she placed a hand on his shoulder, making sure not to do so until the vials were safely in place.

"Malfoy, don't try to solve this on your own. You didn't invent this potion." she told him softly.

There was a snap and half of his quill fell against the table, the bottom half of the feather sticking jaggedly out from inside his fist. Malfoy spoke but his voice was gravely and pained. "You will never understand, Granger. You don't know horror of watching the pain and the games and torture that people endured until his reign and the feeling of being powerless to stop it. This potion can affect any man who takes it - any man, Potter, Weasley, Longbottom. It doesn't matter who their loved one is either - the Dark Lord made a habit of slipping small doses into his servants' glasses to keep them in line, so they could see the horror of their own actions on their wives if they so much as thought of betraying him."

Her hand slid off and Malfoy conjured another quill to keep writing.

"I'm going to send an owl to Harry, and then I'm coming back. I can help with notes or research, or something." said the witch, standing up straight and trying to regain control of a rush of emotions.

The guardsman was still there, asleep on his desk now, as she slipped past him to the open room of cubicles and desks that made up the Magical Law Enforcement division. She scribbled a quick note to Harry explaining the situation as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, stressing the need for his involvement immediately, and then whizzed off the note via the Ministry's owl post.

Only then did Hermione take a moment to drop her head to her desk and take a deep breath. The crush of information in the last 30 minutes was threatening to crush her into oblivious exhaustion, but she knew Malfoy was going to keep working until he keeled over and she wasn't going to allow that. He was an insufferable twit, yes. But he worked hard. He worked brilliantly. He cared - he cared more than Hermione had given him proper credit for. She cursed at herself as she realized that, after months of working with the Slytherin on a frequent basis, she was actually interested in him. Falling for him.

A little voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Ginny whispered, 'About time.'

She gave herself a few more minutes to rest her eyes before gathering her own set of quills and parchments to take with her to the laboratory.

The guardsman was snoring heavily and the lab door was closed again, even though Hermione had left it open when she'd left to owl her friend. She tried the doorknob and it was locked.

"Malfoy?" called the witch, rattling the door knob and knocking. "Malfoy, I know you didn't go home, let me in!"

"Go away Granger." said Malfoy's voice, but it was weirdly muffled this time.

Hermione gave the door a dirty look and rattled the knob harder. "Absolutely not! I am perfectly capable of following whatever process you need to go through so let me in and let me help!"

"GO. AWAY."

Furious with him, she blasted an unlocking charm so quickly that the door flew back on its hinges. A blast of peppermint hit her in the face that Hermione coughed a few times as she stepped forward.

Malfoy wasn't at the work table. She moved around the lab which was actually quite large and finally found him guzzling a potion in the small store room she hadn't seen inside before. He snarled when he saw her and the sound made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight with fear.

"Malfoy…?" she asked, not moving forward but not retreating either. Something was definitely wrong. The wizard was barely able to stand up, there were a couple of empty glass bottles strewn on the floor of the storage area and he was gripping a sideboard like he was about to pass out.

"I said to go away." he raged at her.

"What in Godrick's Hollow is wrong with you? What have you been taking? Don't tell me those are all different antidotes?" she gasped.

He shook his head back and forth, golden locks shining in the dim candlelight that came out of the main room of the lab. As she drew closer in her worry, she could see his pupils had turned to pinpricks.

"DON'T COME CLOSER."

Hermione stopped again, eyes wide.

"They aerosolized it. One of the last test vials, the components mixed and…" Malfoy squeezed his eyes shut, body shuddering with exertion.

"Oh Merlin," she breathed, "Malfoy, we have to get you out of here! We have to get to St. Mungo's - there's no telling how big a dose that is if you've been breathing it in - "

"Hermione… run."

Malfoy's voice was ragged and hollow.

"Malfoy, I'm not leaving you. You said it yourself, this only makes men attack the people they love. The potion can't affect me and I can keep you from attacking anyone else until we can get you help." Hermione reasoned.

"I LOVE YOU." he thundered, the frame of the cupboard splintering under his grip. "Now, run."

The wooden shelving rattled at the pressure.

Glass jars tipped off their ledges and fell.

A small basket of bright green apples toppled over and one of the apples rolled over and over along the floor until stopped at the brim of her shoe.

Hermione Granger met Draco Malgoy's frenzied gaze only once more before she turned heel and fled.

She was not the brightest witch of the age for nothing. Whisking her wand as she ran, the main door to the laboratory slammed on her heels and locked behind her. Seconds later, the door bowed outward as the man on the other side threw himself against it, raging incomprehensibly. The power of the potion was driving Malfoy into some sort of monster frenzy and the whole area shook with each go at the door. Hermione watched the door frame groan and only just turned the corner as she heard it all come crashing downwards.

The guardsman, who must have awoken in all the commotion, was shouting but Hermione didn't look back as she moved as fast as she could through the cubicles and out into the main entry way of the second level of the Ministry. She tried and failed to summon a Patronus as she ran, her wand sputtering out silver mist but nothing else. No one else was here this late, in the wee hours, to hear any cry for help.

A red stunning spell sped by just over her shoulder and ricocheted off the wall.

"Protego." she gasped breathlessly, throwing up a shield mid-corridor without remembering if it held back people as well as spells. Hermione turned and threw her arm out. "Petrificus Tota-"

"Langlock!"

Hermione gulped and choked as her tongue snapped itself to the top of her mouth. She hadn't realized how much of the distance he had been able to close. Mere meters away, Malfoy's robes were torn and covered with pieces of wood and glass. A portion of one sleeve was missing and she could see blood pooling against the white of his undershirt.

"Where are you going?" he asked in a deep voice that wasn't reminiscent of the Malfoy she knew. It was laced with anger, and he bared his teeth at her as he snarled, "To Potter? Weasel? You don't belong to them."

She raised her wand and Malfoy was instantly pulled up by an invisible hand into the air. Hermione had never been good at wordless casting but in this blessed instance, it had worked when it needed to.

Unfortunately for her, he still had his wand

"Colloshoo."

Her heels locked themselves to the floor as she backed away. As she fell, one of Hermione's ankles twisted to the side before her foot came free. She gasped in pain, dragging herself backward along the cold tile, leaving her shoes behind as she aimed to get to the lifts before her own curse wore off.

"You can't hide from me!" he demanded of her from his position in the air. Then he was grabbing his face, tearing at his hair and raging again.

A tear slid unbidden down her cheek as Hermione Granger managed to pull herself into one of the spindly elevators and smash a button to the Atrium. The grates closed between her and Malfoy, who was now tearing at his robes and thrashing as though possessed in the open air.

She laid her head against the elevator wall as a brief respite, but the elevator shuddered as the grating was suddenly hit by a barrage of spells as it disappeared from Malfoy's line of sight. The metal clanged and shrieked as it careened free fall towards the lower levels of the Ministry. Hermione screamed silently as she scrabbled at the walls for anything to hold onto. The lift bounced her body around like a rag doll before coming to a horrible and sudden halt.

"The Atrium." announced the magical voice on the intercom.

Hermione wept openly as she grabbed the side of the grate and pulled herself to her feet. It took all of her strength, which wasn't much, to settle her weight on her one good foot. Across the glittering black lobby were the fireplaces where she would be able to Floo to safety.

Hobbling, she crossed the open space of the Atrium, looking over her shoulder and around the statues to look for Malfoy or for the presence of anyone who could help her. The fireplaces were silent and empty of fire at this hour, and the sparkling fountain of lies was oblivious to her need. Her wand was biting into the palm of her hand from the death grip Hermione was keeping on it.

The Floo was only ten meters away now. She would cast a wordless fire, then travel to the hospital. The Healers could help her and then they could help Malfoy.

She made it to the closest fireplace and scrambled for the floo powder dispenser that was in the middle of every mantle. The glittering sand poured from between her fingers as she held her wand hand forth to conjure a fire.

Flames erupted in the hearth, orange tongues of heat licking at the brick and stone as it flared wildly, but Hermione hadn't cast a spell yet.

"I told you to run." His voice brushed her ear, low and bitter.

She didn't move, couldn't move as she felt the panic rise from her chest to throat and her breathing became hopelessly erratic. Hermione couldn't be sure what spell he had cast on her or if her body was shutting down in terror but the witch did nothing as he reached out and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the Floo powder. Malfoy stretched her arm over the fire and squeezed, enough to force her hand open to spill the magic dust over the hearth.

Then he pushed both of them into the open green flames.

Hermione landed in a heap of bruised limbs onto a high pile carpet that would have been luxurious if not for the ash that had followed her and Malfoy through the Floo network. She choked and gagged as she tried to breathe around the tongue locking curse through the dust in her mouth. Blessedly, someone was pouring clean water over her lips and Hermione gulped at it gratefully. The water washed down her throat and someone supported her so she didn't drown as she drank until she could breathe again.. She struggled to sit up right on her own before she remembered again who was with her.

Malfoy knelt in front of her, a glass of water in one hand at her mouth and the other holding her up around her waist. She threw a fist towards his face but he easily blocked the block with his forearm and pinned both of her arms to the floor, arching his body over hers as he growled at her. In a silent rage, she screamed into his face and tried to put up a fight, but his strength and his position made it impossible.

Her strength gave out to the pain.

Whimpering, Hermione lay prone on the carpet, the full weight of Malfoy above her. Fear was still driving her heart to rise and fall like she had run a race. A race she had lost.

"Hermione…"

She opened her eyes, afraid, and found that the wizard was only inches above her now, breathing quickly as though he was struggling to do so. His hair tickled her neck as it swung down around both of their faces, but Hermione could see herself clearly reflected in his eyes. The pupil had widened and her face was caught in the middle. Malfoy was so close that she could see that her tears had made tracks through the grime on her face, dribbling down the sides into the mane of dark brown hair that flowed outward in all directions. He looked anguished, barely breathing.

All she could do was wait and worry and wonder.

The grip on her arms tightened painfully, his fingers digging into her muscle as though he was incapable of letting her go. Malfoy buried his head onto her shoulder, growling in frustration.

"Apples…" he muttered, almost incomprehensibly quiet.

Without fully realizing that her tongue had unlocked from the top of her mouth, Hermione whispered, "Malfoy…?"

His head snapped up, the anguish gone and the rage fully in control of the wizard. She cried out as he bodily removed her from the floor and flung her onto an ornate chaise where she curled up defensively.

"Don't use that name!" Malfoy shouted, his voice booming through whatever sitting room he had brought her to.

"I'm sorry!" she shouted, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Her wand! Hermione glanced around but her wand was in front of the fireplace. Malfoy caught her staring and bent down and picked it up.

"Is this what you want?!" he asked her, voice low and dangerous again, waving her wand through the air, "Are you trying to leave me? Again?"

"No… no!" promised the brunette, shaking her head and hating that she was crying again. "Never, never, Malfoy…"

"DON'T. USE. THAT. NAME."

The anger made Malfoy somehow taller, stronger. The potion, maybe. But did it matter? This was a wizard who was in one of the worst bouts of dark enchantment Hermione had ever witnessed and she was, according to him, in danger of losing her life.

Because he loved her.

Her.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Draco… so sorry…" she sobbed, fists clenching the fabric of the couch beneath her, something, anything to hold onto.

"Say it again."

Hermione hiccuped through her sobs and looked at Malfoy. He had stopped a few feet away, the tinge of madness that had been like a halo around his person ebbing ever so slightly. The ice grey of his eyes were intense as he looked at her and demanded, "Say it again."

"I'm sorry…"

"NO," he screamed at her, holding his chest like he was dying, "Say my name!"

"Draco…"

He collapsed to his knees.

"Draco. Draco…"

"Again.. please…"

His voice barely reached her but she repeated his name dutifully over and over as the man in front of her crumbled in a scream of fury, slamming his fists into the ground and dragging his fingers until the carpet started to pull up from its nails. Draco shuddered and begged her to run again, deep gasps of horror ripping through his lungs.

"Draco, please, let me get you help," Hermione cried, sliding off the chaise and onto the floor, reaching for him.

"NO." he shouted, eyes wild before withdrawing into himself. "I'm going to hurt you… go… go, please leave."

"I'm not leaving you like this! I just promised I wasn't leaving you!" she shouted back. Something burned hot in her chest - distress, rage, passion, the witch couldn't be sure; all three were likely. "I don't give up just because it's dangerous! I never left Harry once, despite all the pain, despite all the fear!"

Draco moved quickly at her words, pinioning her to the chaise by her shoulders and snarling in her face. "Potter never wanted to maim you! To see you hurt, to take pleasure in your pain, witch."

"I've never wanted Harry, Draco." she whispered.

There was a flicker of uncertainty in his cloudy eyes.

"Do you not understand how vulnerable you are right now," he asked her, leaning in and nipping harshly at her ear. A thrill shot down Hermione's body. Draco felt her tremble and growled with pleasure. "I want to devour you. All of you."

"You can," she breathed, "Every inch of me, Draco."

He stilled and she felt his body strain to keep his composure. The blonde pulled his face upright to stare at his beloved's expression. The grey was clear and disconsolate.

"Not like this, Hermione." he implored her.

She reached and stroked a stray piece of hair behind his ear, then pulled his face forward so that he could rest his forehead on hers. "Not like this, Draco."

Until the sun rose, Draco raged and pleaded and threatened in turn but he never hurt her again. The vicious elixir roared through his system until the wizard was spent, the enchanted strength and possessiveness wiped from his being.

Hermione watched the wizard sleep on the carpet next to her, and gently brushed back the hair from his face. She answered a frantic Patronus from Harry and sent along a message to St. Mungo's, along with numerous warnings about the elixir and other potions in custody. And then she waited until the blonde eyelashes fluttered in grogginess and opened.

Draco sat straight up in shock, staring at Hermione in disbelief before losing himself in the act of checking her for injuries.

"You're hurt!" he said, voice strangled and eyes dark with fury.

"Just a twisted ankle," she said hurriedly, "Nothing else-"

"You're bruised!" cried Draco, holding up an arm so that she could see for herself the extent of the damage he had caused.

Hermione tried to interject that it was the lifts and that she was, in fact, in better shape than he was, but the wizard exploded at her. "Why did you stay?! Why didn't you to St. Mungo's the moment you had a chance-"

"Because you needed me." she answered, arms crossed from her seat on the floor. "I promised."

Draco sat with a flumph onto the chaise and covered his face with his hands. "You did."

"I promised some other things, too." Hermione smiled as she watched him pull away from his hands to stare at her. "Besides, I made an appointment for both of us at the hospital later today already, I don't care if it's already out of your system, it was experimental and you should still be checked for after effects and- mmlphff."

His mouth was sweet as he captured Hermione's lips. The taste of peppermint sparked a fresh wave of pleasure that rushed through her as Draco buried his hands into her hair to pull her closer. Their tongues swapped warmth in an eager duet that left them both breathless, Draco biting her lip in a yearning to keep her close even as she surfaced for air.

"I think…" she panted, a smile lurking in the corner of her mouth, "That I may be falling for you, Draco."

"You already know how I feel," he groaned, then looked up into her face. "Is this… is this… with everything that happened, are you okay with it… with us, like this?"

"Just like this, Draco."

And he pulled her in once more.