Notes: I continue to hope you are all doing well and staying safe. Thank you for the myriad of responses and outpouring of support. I am so gratified that so many of you are interested in this story, all bringing such unique perspectives. For those worried about Hermione's choices, I urge you to read carefully. Thank you again for all you do for me and other authors.

~*~ Fifteen ~*~

The stacks at the back of the library were overrun with books, leather bound manuscripts pouring out onto tables and chairs. It gave her a profound sense of calm to be surrounded by such organized chaos. A sense of calm she desperately needed. After Tom's overt claiming of her during supper, she'd fled, unable to look anyone in the eye, lest she see a knowing smirk or derisive laugh. No, it was far better to hide from it all, to consider the magnitude of her stupidity alone with nonjudgmental books.

Her fingers trembled where they rested against the oak table; they hadn't stopped shaking since she'd left the Great Hall. She hadn't stopped shaking, overwhelmed by the sense that she was in far deeper than she'd known, that whatever path she'd charted was not the direction her ship had sailed. Groaning, she buried her head in her hands, forehead resting against the cool wood. She would not cry; she would not give in to the torrent of emotion that rattled in her bones. She would not be weak, not after so many years of facing far greater foes than a boy who would make her his.

A shoe scuffed against the floor behind, yet she didn't move, utterly unwilling to face the intruder. There was a long silence and then a soft voice whispered, "May I sit?"

Her cheeks heated, but she didn't refuse him. "Go ahead. Make the humiliation complete."

Malfoy sighed, the chair across from her scraping as he settled into it. She would not think of the last time they'd sat across a table from each other.

"I have no interest in humiliating you." His voice was soft, raw in a way she'd only heard a handful of times in the Room of Requirement.

"You could have fooled me."

He scoffed and she could feel the weight of his stare upon her downturned head. "We've covered this already. I apologize for the boy I once was. That does not mean his interests and mine intersect in any way."

Dragging a hand over her pounding temples, Hermione finally lifted her head to study him. His full lips were pulled into a severe frown, his tempestuous gaze full of an emotion just beyond her reach. She glanced sideways at the stacks around them before flicking her wand. "Muffliato. Then why exactly did you say yes to Tom?"

Barren December skies blinked once, twice. "You think I'm signing up to be a Death Eater all over again."

She hadn't thought of it in quite those terms, but he'd correctly identified the tendril of horror that had been twining tighter and tighter about her aching heart. "Your enthusiasm seemed genuine."

Malfoy's angular features contorted, a pain she couldn't understand rippling across his face. "I didn't have a choice, Hermione. That wasn't a request. Riddle doesn't ask permission, he simply takes. I would think that was obvious to you tonight."

The clear reference to her very public orgasm had her burying her face in her hands again. "I could have stopped him."

The sharp laugh was enough to jerk her gaze upward again. He stared unrelentingly back at her. "Could you?"

"Yes," she snapped, but doubt was creeping into her. Was Malfoy right? She'd not wanted him to stop, but neither had she wanted to participate in such a public sexual act. If given a choice, would she have opted not to allow such a trespass? Shaking her head, she glared back at Malfoy, all bravado and barely concealed tumult. "You still haven't explained why you didn't say no."

"I thought I had." But he sighed, shaking his head, lustrous midnight strands dropping in front of stormy eyes. "Perhaps I need to make certain truths more apparent to you. I accepted Riddle's offer for two reasons. One, it was not actually a question, but a demand." Her mouth opened in protest, but he held up a hand. "No. Of the two of us, I am far more familiar with Riddle's leadership methods than you are. I also accepted because it may be the only way to keep you safe."

A different sort of adrenaline pulsed through her veins. "What?"

Malfoy stared at her, a careful tenderness in his expression that shook her. "Believe it or not, I do not wish you any harm, Hermione Granger. In fact, I've been doing everything in my power to keep you safe from Riddle for the last few months. You haven't made it easy and after his declaration today, I worry there will only be so much I can do to keep you from him. I can best serve both of us by accepting a place on the inside of his… organization."

Although her mind told her to doubt his every word, the sincerity in his eyes was impossible to ignore. She focused instead on a part of his explanation that didn't quite make sense. "After his declaration?"

Malfoy blinked, pale cheeks flushing as he swallowed. "Um, I'm not sure you were very coherent when he announced to all of Slytherin that he planned to marry you by year's end. I assume he meant the school term in the spring and not New Year's Eve as that's only two weeks away."

The memory came back in a rush, hazy at the edges with the stain of pleasure. Tom had tumbled her over the precipice mere moments after announcing something very like an engagement. She hadn't had the wits to realize what he'd just done when she'd been quaking with need, but now it was disturbingly clear. They'd never discussed anything of the sort and she'd been under the impression that he was content hiding their relationship, not that he was planning to make it official in every way that mattered. She shook, knuckles white where they gripped the edge of the table. Using Tom for relief from the dark terrors of her mind, fine. Marrying Tom, absolutely not. But what if it was the only way to save him? To prevent the cascade of events that would ultimately destroy everything and everyone dear to her?

"You won't marry him," Malfoy said, soft and utterly sure. "I promise."

"But—"

"No. There is always another way." He rubbed a hand over a dark brow and she frowned, reminded again how different he was from the boy she'd despised. "I know you think you need him, that he's your only escape from the hellscape we endured, but I need you to start considering different… remedies."

"I don't want to feel so connected to him, Malfoy," she admitted. "But it's like he's taken up residence in my head, like he's the drug I can't resist."

His sharp chin jerked upward, eyes frantically scanning her face. "Like he's in your head?"

Hermione nodded, avoiding his discerning stare. "Yeah. There's this sense of completion I get when I'm with him. I've tried everything… things I'm even less proud of than him. But I suppose you likely saw that when you were…" She couldn't quite vocalize just how far into her psyche Malfoy had ventured. "The emptiness, it hurts so damn much, I do everything I can to escape it. I can't help it."

"But only sex has ever worked for you." The words were barely audible, but barren of judgment.

She swallowed around the lump lodged deep in her throat. "After Ron and Ginny died, there was nothing left for me. Not even the thought of defeating Voldemort could sustain me. One night, Harry and I drank a little too much, the next thing I knew the ache was gone, if only for a few minutes. I'm not sure it had the same effect on him, but he never turned me away after that. So I just kept killing and fucking and praying it would all end."

"When we came here, you simply continued what you'd been doing with Riddle. After all, he is more than willing to use you in kind." Malfoy didn't sound bitter exactly, but his tone wasn't as free of emotion as it had been.

"Aurelia thinks I'm falling in love with him."

"If only it were that simple." A rueful smile graced his full lips for a mere second, there and gone. "I could protect you from a broken heart I think, but we both know that's not what's going on here."

Hermione groaned, staring despondently across at him. "No. I can't help it. The need to connect, to feel something beyond this never ending misery, to satisfy this ache that burns me from within, is too overwhelming to fight. And I'm tired of fighting, Malfoy."

"And you've chosen the worst partner in crime available."

"He's bloody brilliant at sex."

"You know that's not what I meant," Malfoy chastised. "He's a controlling psychopath."

Hermione growled, looking away from those stormy eyes that promised futures she could not begin to believe. "I'm not about to stop, you know. Tom makes me feel whole, honest to Merlin human. It's not so bloody wrong to want that, is it?"

"Of course not."

"So what if I have to marry him? All the better to make sure he doesn't turn into a murderous lunatic." That wasn't remotely what she felt about the possibility of marrying Tom Riddle, but Draco bloody Malfoy didn't have any right to know her like this.

"Hence my membership in his club." He picked at the cover of a discarded book. "Despite what you seem to think, we are in this together."

She glared at him, suddenly tired of him knowing every dirty facet of her soul and her knowing rubbish about him. "Don't you ever want to escape? Don't you ever hate everything? Don't you wish you could forget?"

The book he'd been touching was flying across the alcove before Hermione realized he'd thrown it. "Of course, I bloody wish I couldn't remember! It hurts so damn much that I think about walking off the top of the Astronomy Tower nearly every day. But I don't have the luxury of burying my head in the sand like you. If I give up that means she died for nothing!"

He was shouting by the end, spittle spraying her face as he trembled above her. The usual frosty veneer of his eyes was gone, replaced by a hurricane of emotion that swept the breath from her lungs.

"I didn't know." She still didn't know. She had no idea what had happened between that night he'd let the Death Eaters into the school and the day they'd been swept into the past. Taking a shaky breath, she realized she didn't know him at all. "I didn't know," she repeated, syllables wavering and clumsy.

"No. You bloody don't," he agreed, a chill in his tone that hadn't been there before. "And I'd thank you to stop making selfish assumptions. The world doesn't bloody revolve around you, Hermione Granger."

Without another word he was gone, the air shimmering as he burst outside of the protective sphere of the muffliato. Hermione collapsed back in her chair, suddenly weary. What had started with a humiliation one sort had morphed into one of an entirely different nature. What Tom had done to her with her threadbare permission seemed nothing compared to the dark rage behind Malfoy's eyes. Whatever had happened to him, she was beginning to suspect it had indeed been worse, or at least more personal, than the scars of war left behind on her soul. And perhaps, perhaps he was truly more broken than Hermione. She rested her cheek against the wooden table, staring blankly at the tomes surrounding her, not moving for a very long time.