Hello again! My exams are over, I'm back from holiday and raring to go :) I hope you enjoy this chapter - it's shorter than usual but I'm quite happy with it. As one reader has perceptively pointed out, emotions seem to be my strong (or stronger) point than action (although whether either are very good is up to yourselves to decide.)

Draco entered the room quietly. It was lit dimly, with only a bedside lamp turned on. Matilda was sitting propped up on his pillows; her long hair was still its unnatural blonde colour – however, her cheeks were no longer sunken but rosy, and her eyes had lost their dark circles. He sat down in the armchair facing the bed.

'What did you want to talk about?' he asked gently.

Matilda looked down at the duvet on her knees, plucking at its hem. She smiled at him coyly through her eyelashes. 'I don't know. I just wanted some company, I guess.' She paused. 'You're too far away for a friendly chat. Sit on the bed, I can barely see you.'

Draco walked slowly over to the bed and sat down at the foot, his hands in his pockets. He was suddenly very aware that Matilda was wearing nothing more than a silk nightdress, which she was making no attempt to cover.

Matilda leaned forward, taking his right arm and pulling him towards her. 'Stop being so shy!' she giggled.

He looked at the floor. 'You haven't fully recovered yet, Miss Caster—'

'Call me Matilda,' she interrupted. 'Or I can be Danielle, if you like.'

'You are not Danielle anymore,' Draco said, with feeling. 'You don't have to go back to that life anymore, you're safe now.' His voice almost cracked with emotion, and Matilda heard it. But the words were not directed wholly at her.

'I know,' Matilda replied. 'You saved me. My hero.' Her voice was soft and husky, as she began to draw her finger down Draco's arm to wear his hand entered his pocket.

'Miss Caster, I must insist that you rest.'

'I told you, it's Matilda.' A look of hurt flicked across the girl's face. 'Why are you so stiff and polite around me? Well,' she added as an afterthought. 'You can be stiff if you like, I can help you with that.'

Draco turned away in disgust when he saw her grin. 'If you have nothing to tell me in the way of useful information, I must leave you now. Get some rest,' he sneered, as he walked towards the door.

Matilda got out of bed and walked towards him shakily. 'How can you say that to me?' she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears where a moment ago they had been hooded with potential desire. 'I'm alone and vulnerable. You're single and unfulfilled. We can help each other.'

'At the risk of sounding dismissive,' said Draco in a quiet voice laced with danger, 'I can honestly say that the only way you can help me is with information about your clients. You have no right to speak that way to me, and I shall not allow it to happen again.'

'So there it is,' laughed Matilda mirthlessly. 'You only want me for my information. If I were as unsuccessful as Hermione out there-' she spat the name out with distaste – 'you would have left me to rot in Haettenschweiller's fucking clinic. Well let me tell you that you wouldn't get any information out of me, even if I had some to give.' Draco could no longer look at her, and made for the door. But she grabbed his arm and pulled him to her. It was so unexpected he did not resist. 'So what does she have that I don't? Why is Hermione worth saving, even though the only clients she ever had were fat old tramps?'

Matilda was standing just a little too close, and holding on to him a little too tightly for comfort. She raised her head just enough to look into his eyes, and what Draco saw there scared him. Anger, jealousy and intent. And then she kissed him, hard, with such force that any reservations Draco still had about her health flew out of the window.

He felt her teeth on his lower lip, grazing it roughly, trying to force his mouth open, and he pushed her away. 'I'm sorry, I—' But she wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on a point beyond his shoulder, and they were triumphant. He turned slowly, the expectance of who he would see not in the least reducing the dread at seeing her.

She was frozen in the doorway, light framing her body like a halo and casting her face into shadow. But it could not disguise the look on her face – horror, mixed with pure anguish.

'Hermione!'

She made no sound, but span from the doorway and ran into the kitchen.

Draco cast Matilda a look of disgust, but she just collapsed onto the bed, smiling lazily.

'Was I good?'

'Don't speak to me,' he spat as he marched from the room, closing the door rather harder than necessary behind him.

She heard him come into the kitchen, but she did not look up. Draco had never seen a more desolate sight. Her elbow was resting on the table, supporting her head while one finger absent-mindedly traced patterns in the sugar left over from breakfast. Her gaze was concentrated on the table, as if she was focusing all her energy on the sugar instead of her thoughts. But Draco could see the pain in her eyes, taking over, as if it would consume her. But they were dry. Her face held no trace of tears.

'Hermione—'

'Don't.' Her gaze remained fixed on the table. 'Don't say my name. Say what you have to say, but don't say my name.'

'Right. Sorry.' Draco breathed in deeply, not about to question her. 'I'm… I'm sorry. Really.'

'For what? For all the lies you told me?' She looked at him then, and it was so intense that he had to look away.

'I never lied to you. It was one kiss, and I didn't even—'

'I don't know why I ever believed you. You weren't in the brothel for information, you were there for sex, just like all the rest.'

'You know that's not true!' He was finding it hard to stay calm against Hermione's growing hysteria.

'Why should you be any different? You, of all people, after everything that you did to me at school!'

Draco snapped. 'That's not fair!' he shouted. 'I've changed and you know it. I'll be the first to admit that I was shit in school, but we agreed we were both grown up enough to put it behind us. You accepted that, get over it! It's been five years, for fuck's sake!'

'No! You're just the same as you always were. Your usual slut wasn't available, so you took me to start your own little harem and then used me to get your little fuck buddy back! You disgust me,' she spat.

Draco couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'Where is this coming from? You're being completely unreasonable. It was a kiss! One kiss! And I didn't even participate, she just jumped me! What the hell is going on in that twisted little mind of yours Granger?' He threw that last word in solely to spite her, and it worked.

Her eyes flashed, but her voice was suddenly stony, tainted with the eerie calm of the eye of a storm. 'I told you not to say my name, and yet you turn around and use it to insult me? No, listen to me,' she said, as he opened his mouth to speak. 'I'm not angry because it's Matilda. She's a dirty whore who'll do anything to get what she wants, and for some reason she seems to be out to get me. Don't flatter yourself that it's anything to do with you. I am angry at you for going against everything you have said and done over the past week that made me think you might want me for more than just my profession. For making me think we could be friends, or more, if I were ever ready for that. Well now I never will be, not for you. You have made me lose any thought I might have had about getting my life back on track and beginning to connect with people again. You're worse than all the other lowlifes I've had to deal with over the past ten months put together, because you took away my hope. They insulted me and hit me and raped me and demeaned me, but you put them all to shame because you rescued me, presented me with a future, and then showed me it was all a joke. That's why I'm so upset over one kiss.' She took a deep breath. 'And that's why I'll be staying with Ginny from now on. I have no future with you, perhaps I may be able to salvage some scrap of hope from the only people left who might care for me. I'm so sick of just giving in and crying. Thank you for giving me a wake-up call. And thank you for the clothes,' she added as an afterthought.

'Green is your colour.' It was the only thing he could think of to say.

Hermione turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving a stunned Draco at the table trying to work out what had just happened.

Hermione sat in the shower, letting the hot water pound her back until her whole body went numb. Her mind was empty, she had nothing left to think about. She had bared her soul to Draco, and now there was nothing left. She sat for an hour watching droplets of water drip form the tips of her hair, before standing up and turning the water off.

She stood in front of the mirror, not bothering with a towel, dripping on the tiled floor. She looked at herself for a long time, without thinking or saying a thing. She traced her scars with her index finger, remnants of a time when she had been able to feel. Some were little more than silver-white threads snaking across her skin. Others were deeper, red-purple whorls warping her body, twisting the skin out of shape.

She realised suddenly how cold she was, so she dried herself off with her pyjamas and used a charm on her hair. She didn't want to touch anything of his. She dressed in the one outfit he had bought her, what she had worn every day since, her colour. She wanted to hate the clothes, wanted to feel them crawl on her skin, but they smelled and felt only of comfort. She picked up her wand and left the room without looking back.

Draco had fallen asleep at the table, his head resting on his arms. Matilda was nowhere to be seen. Hermione tried not to look at him as she crossed his apartment for what she believed to be the very last time, but his white-blond hair falling across his face drew her eyes like a magnet. His forehead was creased in a frown, his mouth slightly open. She opened the door softly and walked away from the only place in the world that she might have called home.