A/N: Hi! I hope you're liking the story so far. Formatting on is really finicky so if it seems like the narrative has jumped abruptly it's probably because the paragraph break didn't turn up correctly. Anyway, thank you for reading! I am open to any and all constructive criticism, feedback, and comments.


She liked to practice her spellwork in the quiet, pre-dawn light when she wasn't likely to be disturbed. Her jewellery box floated past her face, carried on a drift of magic; she called it hers, her jewellery, her clothes, her possessions, but she should really say Lord Voldemort's, for everything in the room belonged to him. The dress she arrived in had been burned, leaving her with nothing to call her own save for her magic and her skin. The latter could not even be considered her own any more.

There was a huge four-poster bed, with sage green sheets, and a stuffed chair in the corner. An indoor flower bed—amaryllis, violets, hibiscus, primrose—and a writing desk, black ink and expensive vellum. There was a thick woollen rug which her bare feet sunk into, and a large fireplace she could light with the barest thought. A balcony with glass doors looked out over the Forbidden Forest.

It was nice. Comfortable. Her bedroom at home had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a plush pillow at the foot of her bed for Crookshanks. No books here, in case she got any grandiose ideas.

Crookshanks. A hard bolt, right through her stomach. She had begged and begged and begged to bring him with her, but Father had refused.

You are to be a Lady, he said. Lord Voldemort wants a woman, not a little girl clinging to her pet. The cat stays here.

She missed Crookshanks more than her parents, sometimes. Soft fur, rhythmic purring rumbling up her arms, cuddled close, a thunderstorm rattling the window panes. She summoned Crookshanks now, not the real him, he was all the way across the forest, but a sheer reflection of his shape as it existed in her memory. Brilliant yellow eyes, glowing, twin lamps in the milky, dusty light.

She tried to pet him and her hand went right through. A hitch in her breathing. Swelling in her throat, billowing out, out. Croaking, face contorted, a deep ache in her stomach.

Don't. Don't. She told herself this wouldn't happen, that she would sink within herself as into a deep lake, water hugging her close, spiralling, a stone to the bottom. This feeling wrenched her to the surface and dangled her on the end of a hook. Squirming, thrashing, anticipating the bite.

Crookshanks evaporated, leaving her alone. Utterly alone.

She imploded. A star, collapsing in on itself, all that power locked away in her core flaming up, exploding, decimating everything. The windows shattered, her room—Lord Voldemort's room—reduced to shreds of sage green fabric, crumbled stone, torn vellum.

Her, in the heart of it, trembling. Make it stop. It was difficult to grip something as insubstantial as smoke. Magic pulsed from her, rupturing the tiles, ignoring her efforts to stuff it back inside.

She didn't realise she was on the floor until Malfoy tore into the room and he was sideways. Clatter, a dropped sword, he staggered against the thumping power whipping his cloak about his head. Arms around her, under her knees, a hand on her back. Movement, out of the wreckage. Breaths under the helmet. She curled into him as the tears came, her gaoler and protector, and found comfort in the cold metal against her cheek.


"This sedative," said a high, sibilant voice, slithering through the crack in the door. "Will it affect the magic of any future heirs?"

An unfamiliar room. Scratchy white sheets, one window, high up on the wall, enough to let in light but not to see out of. They gave her bitter tea to drink and something else that made her eyes droop.

She wanted to cry but had no tears left. No, they were there, but out of reach, under the water when she was an oil slick, sliding around on top. Probing in her chest cavity, feeling for her magic, was like trying to dress in the dark—she knew the textures and the shapes but nothing would align correctly. The most she could manage was a stirring of the dustmotes above her bed.

"Your heirs will inherit both magical lines even if Her Ladyship continues consuming the tea, My Lord, but I would advise against a collar at this time."

"Very well. Inform me should anything change."

Retreating footsteps. A creak, the healer standing at her bedside, feeling her forehead with clammy fingers. His breath on her face was stale and dry, old rag mats and week-old bread. She tried to hate him but couldn't find the strength to do anything other than lift her head and swallow the bitter tea.

"The fatigue will fade after a little while." He closed his bag. Tiny bottles lined the outside pouch, glass sentinels with funny cork hats. "Try to get up and move around. I'll be back to see you tomorrow."

He was. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that stretching on ad infinitum. At least, it felt infinite. The days slid by, growing warmer when suddenly, they stopped.

Nothing was different about this particular day. She walked down to the Black Lake, Malfoy a few steps behind, his shadow on her back, carrying her things. She swam in the lake and returned to shore, walked up to the castle, waited in her room for the healer and the tea, wet hair stretching down her back. The healer watched her drink every drop then turned to the window—she was in a different room, now, large but empty, a picturesque view of the gardens her only decoration. The glint of dusk light on the little bottles irritated her eyes.

His back was to her. She plucked one of the bottles like a sunflower seed and hid it away in her wide sleeve. He picked up his bag and didn't notice the infinitesimal difference in weight. Why would he? The door clicked shut behind him and she was left with this stoppered hope, the feel of her free will cool and solid beneath her fingers.

She could drink it and be asleep before her body hit the ground. Feel nothing as a shard of glass, or broken mirror, sliced through the ropey veins inside her wrist. Dreamless, unceasing sleep. Or she could hold it close to her chest, this knowledge that she controlled her own destiny and nothing, not the tea nor the healer nor Lord Voldemort, could stop her if she decided to escape.

She felt very unreal, sitting there on the bed. Untethered. She went to sleep with the bottle under her pillow like a talisman and dreamed of flying, over the mountains and away, away, away.

Two weeks later, the healer left the door open. She checked the bottle was securely in her sleeve before getting up. Magic, even the flyspeck needed to close a door, was too much for her. She'd woken after trying to summon flowers for her room with a sharp ache in her head and Malfoy leaning over her, cleaning the blood with a cloth, her pale oval of a face reflected in his helmet.

He hadn't called the healer; she hadn't said a word.

They had an unspoken arrangement. She didn't try to speak to him, ask about his family or his armour or what he did when he wasn't guarding her, and he let her have as much privacy as his duty would allow.

Her handmaids complained he kept them waiting for far too long on bath days, that they wouldn't have enough time for her hair if he kept scrutinising them so closely. Shouldn't he recognise them by now? Hermione relished those stolen minutes, alone in the bath, scented steam engulfing her.

She closed the door but it stopped, a black gauntlet flat against the wood. Her heart rose in her throat. This was highly irregular. What did he want? The bottle; he knew, he must, tasked as he was with protecting her, even—especially—from herself.

She stood behind the door, breathing too fast, fingers trembling. Caught her reflection in the mirror—saw herself wispy, agitated, carefully combed and dressed, but pursed, weary around the eyes, with a hunched back she corrected by a spasmodic lengthening of the neck: a debilitated woman, feeble, defeated, burned out.

Waiting, waiting, until her breaths were even again. The hinges whined and there he was, sucking up the light. She kept one hand behind her back, fist clenched so tight she would leave angry red crescents on her palms.

No cloak. Only the armour; biting edges, severe chines, like always. In his hand, a book. The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She plunged headfirst into her childhood, sitting on her father's knee, a sprawling garden, Mother crocheting, untarnished springtime glory. Then she grew up.

He pressed the book into her hand. She imagined bringing it to her face and kissing the spine, soft as skin beneath her lips, but he was watching. So unfamiliar, the feel of leather and the mellow, old-paper scent. How long had it been since she held a book in her hands, caressed the pages and burned the candle down low?

She hugged the book, smiling. This, too, was unfamiliar. Her cheeks bunched and a curious bubbling filled her stomach. If she hadn't drunk the tea mere minutes ago, she might have thought it was her magic returning.

The smile faded. For a moment they simply gazed at one another. Thank you needn't be said. He wouldn't respond, and she wouldn't expect him to. She often thought she had imagined his voice, all those weeks ago. A bout of delirium borne from loneliness.

A step forward and she would be close enough to lay a hand on his breastplate, the shape of a breath on her cheek, smooth metal slipping a chilly bite beneath her sleeve. Glinting silver, just out of reach. A step. Just one. Simple, so simple, yet her feet were rooted.

Torchlight wavered around them, vague shadows on the walls.

The rest of him did not move, but his hands, slowly, pulled off his gauntlets. Black gloves. Black and silver, and dark green, occasionally. Vernal. A warm spring breeze after the bitter cold.

He closed the space—must have, to be so near; she tilted her chin—but she could not remember him moving. Gliding, impossibly fluid. A spectre. She wondered if he was horribly disfigured under the glossy black helm. Would she care if he was?

Warmth on her cheek, his gloved hand, thumb skating under her eye to wipe a tear. Tears? She was crying, at last. Her chest tightened then released, ribcage unlocking, lungs swelling. She breathed. Wetness on her skin, brushed away, deliberate tenderness.

Not a moment had passed with her face turned into his hand when, abruptly, he was gone. Gauntlets fastened, a statue again. Had she imagined it? Her skin tingled, pink and glowing.

They stood there, staring, suspended over a yawning abyss, like pirates with rope necklaces; like hopeless rebels, fools. She backed away and closed the door.


Thumping on the window. No, in the walls. The castle's beating heart, enveloping her. She couldn't sleep. Something tugged on the thread in her chest. It was buried so deep, drowning in bitter tea, she almost didn't feel it.

Almost, but not quite. Its insistence interrupted her reading. She slipped from bed and out into the corridor.

No shadow following her tonight. She thought, idly, it was because of the new moon. There couldn't be a shadow if there wasn't first light.

Even blind, her feet knew where to go. She found herself outside the library, hand wrapped around a silver snake's head. Ice-cold to the touch but thrumming, somehow alive. She tugged but it wouldn't give.

"What are you doing, little dove?"

She froze: caught, she was caught.

Lord Voldemort's hand was cold on the back of her neck, pinching, like grabbing a pup. "Ah," a slow exhale, ruffling her hair. "My Horcrux, it calls to you. To my son, quickening in your womb."

No. Her hand flew to her stomach; flat, empty, she thought. Illness squeezed her entrails, forcing them up into her throat. She would know. She would know if she were…

She wasn't. How could he know?

"Oh, yes." He squeezed, forcing her face towards him. "I can feel him. A mere seed at the nonce, but growing. He will be strong, like his sire."

Stinging bile in her mouth. She wrenched herself away, gasping.

"Run along to bed, dear. You will need your rest." He snapped his fingers and Malfoy manifested from the pools of dark at the edges of the corridor.

There, all along. Listening, watching, a passive suit of armour.

The bottle burned a hole beneath her pillow that night.

A mother's mercy, that was what she would call it. Staring at the ceiling, into the Stygian darkness, she conceived her plan.


Summer had come, hot as sin, scorching through her flimsy linen dress. A bathing gown, her handmaids called it. No more swimming naked in the midsummer rivers of her girlhood.

Malfoy held a parasol above her delicate paper skin. Incongruous with the ice in her veins, this heat. Gelid lake water nibbling away at her flesh would be a welcome reprieve.

Cool water on her ankles, over her knees, fabric clinging to her thighs, her back, the lake embracing her, clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like. The bottle, hidden in her sleeve. She floated on her back and brought it to her lips, swallowed the contents, let the little glass sentinel bob away, duty done. Malfoy was a tiny, shining beetle on the distant shore. All that armour, he would sink. No use to anybody.

She relied on it.

Above, far above, spider webs of sunlight. There were mirrors down there in the lake, dangerous glittering, her own warped reflection. She breathed—that was perilous. She thought, which was more so.

I want to live.

Live? This wasn't a life. Her life had been stolen, sold to Lord Voldemort, fenced; illicit goods.

Water in her lungs, then fire. Searing, smoke in her throat, burning her sinuses. Oh, Godric, she hadn't expected it to hurt. She had imagined sweet sleep, the lake taking her gracefully, a beautiful corpse in white on the dark stones, artfully waterlogged.

For what good was a woman if she couldn't be winsome, always, even in death?

Laughter boiled inside her like magma. The lake entered through her open mouth, consuming and consumed. Cold, wet fingers twisted in her windpipe.

Any moment now.

She spasmed, clawing towards the distant sunlight.

I want to live.

Eyelids fluttering. She gasped but there was no air.

I want to live

Lake weed tangling in her dress, clinging to her ankles, dragging her to muddy death.

I want to

Surging, something else in the water. Out of the black, a flash of white and silver. Hands on her waist, falling upwards, falling, falling, fracturing the surface.

I want

Jaggedness against her back, her arms. A mouth on hers. Life breathed into her. Water, coughed up and spit out, curled on her side, wheezing, shaking with mirth.

Alive, I'm alive.

Her throat hurt but she couldn't stop laughing. Alive, alive, alive, said her thundering pulse.

The sleeping draught rose up to claim her at last, wreathing her head in a dense, valerian-tinged fog. Through the vapour, a face, hovering above her own, all hard angles and pale lines. Saying her name, but the dark halls of sleep had already swallowed her up.


"Why?"

He knelt by her bedside. Young; he was younger than she had anticipated, and not horribly disfigured after all, but symmetrical and comely. Still wet, his white-blond hair stuck to his forehead.

"Why would you do that?"

Golden light trickled through the dirty windows, drifting over the narrow bed, the chest of drawers, skimming over the hollow where a fireplace had once been, but now was empty. A scar on the wall.

Tendrils of foggy sleep lingered in her mind. On the bedside table, a bundle of herbs sat softly smoking. She wiped an arm across her face and found the skin damp; she mustn't have slept for very long.

"Dried dittany." He stubbed the bouquet against the wood, leaving a charred circle. "I needed to wake you."

"You should have let me drown."

Malfoy ran a hand through his hair, gripped it in a fist, lake water dribbling onto the floorboards. Floorboards, dark wood; not the castle, then, which was all stone and marble and long, lonely corridors. A cottage, she guessed.

"You must promise you won't do anything like that again. Make the Unbreakable Vow, or else I'll tell His Lordship."

She huffed a laugh; it rasped along her bruised throat and burned inside her nostrils. "Gladly," she croaked. A thick swallow, tears pricking her eyes. "To break an Unbreakable Vow means imminent death. My will triumphs, either way."

His eyes flashed. Such pale eyes—she'd never seen anyone with that shade of grey, so bright and fierce so as to be silver. He rolled up his sleeve.

No armour. The shock of it finally registered. No armour, but still he dwarfed her.

He brought a blade down on his forearm, decisively, a good, long gash on the first slice. Her stomach turned and she sat bolt upright. What in Godric's name…

"A blood pact, then." He flipped the knife and held it out to her, handle first. "If the Dark Lord discovers what happened today, you'll lose a lot more than your magic. You don't require arms nor legs to give birth."

A chill spider-walked down her spine. His eyes were sagacious, two silver reflecting pools, not a ripple on the surface. If she looked for long enough, she might fall in.

The handle was smooth and warm in her palm. "Why not tell him, then? Having an immobile charge will make your life much easier."

Blood rolled down his arm and dripped to the floor. Drip, drip, drip—the only sound punctuating the silence stretching thin between them. His eyes never left her face.

She took the knife and made a shallow cut on her arm. Pain bloomed, hot and bright. They clasped elbows, wounds pressed, latent bloodborne magic weaving together, sealing. Sealed. Her entire body tingled.

She pulled away and clamped her hand over the cut. "It's done. What is this place?"

For a moment she saw only the top of his head; he reached into the bottom drawer for a roll of bandages and a small metal tin. His fingers were long and pale, surprisingly feminine and delicate despite the flecked scars and callouses. Watching them move in all their nakedness made her pulse quicken. She looked away, cheeks heating.

They were only hands. She was bathed by hands that were not her own, touched, skin to skin, yet to see him without armour was somehow more intimate. He moved in the corner of her eye, drawing her arm into her lap and daubing a fragrant salve over the wound. Every touch sent ripples racing to her shoulder and up the back of her neck.

"This is the gamekeeper's cabin," he said at last. He wrapped her forearm and tucked the end of the bandage in to keep it secure. "He's… no longer with us."

Myriad meanings lingered behind his words, though she knew he would never elaborate. Perhaps the gamekeeper absconded to join with the Order of the Phoenix, or was relieved of his post.

Or perhaps he was simply dead.

She moved to bandage his arm next but he pulled out of reach. "That won't be necessary, My Lady."

"You're bleeding." She stood up and found she was only at his shoulder. "Please. It is the least I could do."

But the reticence had returned and she was met in answer with his back to her face. He began pulling on his armour.

It shouldn't have stabbed her so, this dismissal. She rubbed at her chest, finding the skin raw and sensitive, the beating heart encased there fragile behind the brittle bones. Wetness in the corners of her eyes, blinked hurriedly away. She shouldn't, she shouldn't, but who else was there left to hurt her, if not for him?

So many buckles and laces but, as she watched, they knotted together independently—magic, like his sword. He fastened it on his hip and stood facing her, helmet under his arm.

His lips parted, a short inhalation, words which were not yet words but on the cusp, shivering in the space between them. Then he pulled his cloak from a hook on the wall and drew his helmet over his face. A veil, blocking the light from his eyes.


PS: There were two references to Shakespeare's Hamlet in the drowning scene: clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like and dragged to muddy death.