Edited 10/13/15

2. Are You Afraid

I swear that I can go on forever again

Please let me know that my one bad day will end

I will go down as your lover, your friend

Give me your lips and with one kiss we begin

Are you afraid of being alone?

'Cause I am, I'm lost without you

[Lost Without You, Blink 182]

Six days passed, as near as she could guess from the number of meals that had been shoved through the bottom of their cell door - one a day, it seemed, and they had both lost weight they could little afford to lose.

She got her period three days after they'd been captured - she didn't have her pills - and that made her more miserable than she'd thought was possible. The humiliation and embarrassment of having her period in these conditions with only a bucket for a toilet and no privacy was awful, and of course the Death Eaters wouldn't provide feminine sanitary products, so she'd had to sacrifice some of their filthy rags for the job, and it was just utterly horrible.

At least they got scourgified after they'd been tortured, which was, she thought bitterly, something positive.

And Draco had never said a single word about her having her period although he obviously couldn't help knowing, and he never acted disgusted either, thank Merlin. The first day they both tried to ignore it, until that night she'd woken before midnight all curled up around the cramps to find him sitting next to her, awake. He'd been tearing one of the cleanest rags into strips and folding them neatly up for her to use, his face pale and eyes catching the faint light, a faraway contemplative look to him as his long fingers tore the cloth with careful riiiips.

She thought it was the most romantic thing she'd ever seen.

And the next afternoon, when she was crying from the cramps and the torture and the everything, he'd sat himself behind her and leaned her back against his chest and silently rubbed her tummy in firm little kneading circles, and it helped.

They were tortured every day, for what she thought was a couple of hours on average, but seemed far, far longer, and then roughly healed afterwards. Hermione had hoped she might become inured to it - the torture - but she didn't. Merlin, every single time it hurt just as much, and it felt like it was stretching her thinner and thinner, until now she was see-through, transparent, hardly there at all.

Between hunger and exhaustion and the trauma of the torture, Hermione felt like it was all just a horrible, horrible nightmare - except when they stabbed her down with the pain and trapped her in her body, like a butterfly caught on a pin. Then it felt real.

So real.

On the seventh day of their capture, Rostan came and took Draco away again, and returned him covered in the evidence of what he alone had to suffer, thanks to Snape's curious intervention on Hermione's behalf. The Death Eaters never bothered healing the bite marks and the dark hickeys and brutally bruised fingermarks they left on Draco's body, and Hermione thought they left them on purpose. As a way to further the torture - to remind him he was theirs, and she had never thought she could hold this much hate inside her body and heart before, but now she was an ocean of it.

That night she waited until Draco had silently cried himself to sleep - hiding his face from her, his head buried against her chest like a child's - before she broke down and wept too. He didn't need the weight of her sorrow as well - his own hurt was enough for him to bear.

He retreated into himself after that - a defensive mechanism she thought - and then it was her who was left to be the strong one, her who had to hold them both together, and Hermione felt like she was all alone in this cell, and the strain was slowly tearing her limb from limb. She felt like she was going mad, and she talked to him at night, in the pitch black - told him the fuzzy memories of the dream she'd had, and the bright future it had held. Told him that it would be okay, and that at least they were together.

Sometimes, after a particularly bad day, Hermione would be the one huddled up in silence wishing that she was dead, and Draco would bring himself out of wherever he was in his head enough to murmur desperate apologies to her, as if he was responsible for this - which he wasn't, stupid boy - and tried to comfort her the best that he was able to.

They were still alive though, and in her better moments, Hermione remembered some old saying about 'where there's life, there's hope.' Hermione wasn't so sure about that, but she tried to be positive. It wasn't easy, especially not when they were hurting her, and she was staring into those far away grey eyes opposite her and repeating in her head what he no longer said. She would hear the imaginary words in his voice, and that helped.

Look at me.

Keep your eyes on me.

It's going to be okay.

It's not real.

Look at me, Hermione.

Don't give them the satisfaction.

But in reality he just hung there, staring at her slit-eyed and bloody until he couldn't take it anymore and began to scream - but until then, he was silent as the grave. It frightened her so much.

She shifted on their bed of rags, trying not to disturb him - she had her hand on his shoulder, feeling him twitch in his restless sleep, and stroking his arm to soothe him. It was between midnight and six am at the moment, which she only knew for certain because she'd heard one of the Death Eaters say something about how the torches in the hallway outside their cell were extinguished at midnight.

This was the quiet time, when they were guaranteed to be left to themselves, and it was these moments Hermione treasured now - clutched them to her heart like they were a precious prize, instead of a measly bit of peace that she shouldn't have to be grateful for.

And then Hermione heard a sound. She froze and looked up in the dark, and heard a shuffle outside the cell, like shoes sliding soft on stone, and the faintest rustle of robes brushing together. This wasn't usual; they never came at night, and the break in routine made her frightened.

She debated whether to wake Draco, but in the end, held her tongue. Rostan had taken him again today, and he had spent an hour retching helplessly into the bucket when Rostan had dumped his maimed body on the cell floor, and then another hour just lying there shaking. He needed what rest he could get.

The faint bluish light of a lumos shone through the cell door, and then a moment later, the bolt was drawn back very slowly and quietly, and for a brief moment Hermione flashed onto the hope that it was rescue. That it was Harry and Ron… The door creaked quietly and Snape stood there, greasy hair hanging about his face and dark eyes hard and cold, and Hermione's blood froze, and she pressed back hard into the wall as if she could fall backwards into it and be out of his slimy, chill reach.

He'd gotten permission from his Dark Lord, she supposed bitterly, and now it was her turn to go through what Draco had. She looked down at his sleeping face in the light of Snape's lumos, and a wave of overwhelming tenderness and fear seized and clutched around her heart.

"Come for your prize, have you, Headmaster?" she spat in hardly more than a whisper - not wanting to wake Draco, and Snape recoiled and gave her a disgusted look that left her blinking in confusion.

"Merlin - no, you stupid girl," he said derisively, whispering too, looking like he'd like to slap her, and Hermione's confusion only deepened. She kept her arm pressed over her breasts where the blanket didn't cover her properly, although her muscles tensed ready to fight in case he was just playing some sick, twisted game with her. But she didn't think so, somehow.

"What do you want, then?" she snapped, narrowing her eyes at him, and he looked at her in disbelief, like he wanted nothing more than to smack her repeatedly over the head with a book, in the hopes of actually beating intelligence into her.

"I'm here to help you, you foolish chit," he said scathingly, glaring at her from his looming position just within the doorway, wand held up in front him, the tip glowing blue and casting his face into harsh, unflattering light.

"Why should I believe you? You killed Dumbledore, you -"

"Expecto patronum," he half-snarled and silver flowed from his wand, and took on the form of a doe, prancing skittish and light around the room and leaving trails of silver in its wake. Despite Snape's opinion of her, Hermione knew very damn well she was anything but stupid, and her mind flashed back to what must be nearly a year ago now, and Harry telling her how the doe patronus had led him to the Sword of Gryffindor. Her eyes widened in the faint, shining light. This couldn't be coincidence.

"It was you who…"

"That much is obvious, Miss Granger," he snapped at her disdainfully. "Do you believe me then? Or -"

"I just - no one else knows, do they?" Hermione ventured, mind racing frantically as she processed the fact that Snape had been a triple agent - was a double agent, now.

"Only Dumbledore, and -"

"And you killed him," she said accusingly, jabbing her finger at him. "Why, if you're on our side -"

"I do not have time for your inane questioning, Miss Granger. Suffice it to say, no one must know, not even -" his tone softened marginally and his eyes looked regretful "- Draco. If anyone knows, and the Dark Lord plucks it from anyone's mind, then I am as good as dead."

"So why are you here? Right now, I mean," she clarified, and Snape crossed the room and held out a gleam of gold to her. She put out her hand both nervously and curiously, and he pressed a coin into her palm with those cold, skinny fingers.

"I cannot rescue you tonight - I cannot take you out the gate, and there are anti-apparition wards up that I must remove, which will be a…delicate task and can only be done without detection at the right moment, which is not now. It will in fact, be in eleven days' time, the day before the Dark Lord's arrival. But in case of emergency, activate this coin by squeezing it and thinking of summoning me, and it will inform me you need aid." He gave her a stern look. "An emergency, Miss Granger. Not what you consider to be an emergency, but an actual life and death situation."

"Beg your pardon, Professor, but this whole situation is an emergency."

"And you are doing an adequate job of surviving it," Snape said crisply, almost a compliment, before continuing. "Once I have lowered the wards, your coin will start to glow hot. From that moment, you will have exactly twelve hours to acquire a wand and disapparate before I will have to redo the wards, lest their absence be noticed. And then there will be no more chances for escape and I will have to obliviate you to allow the Dark Lord to view your mind without learning the truth about me, and then be able to take you, as the reward I was promised, to Hogwarts and marginal safety with me.

"I would, however, be unable to return you to Potter, or bring Draco with me. I would not harm you, but you would be trapped at Hogwarts, unless you were…intelligent enough to escape on your own, which I highly doubt."

Hermione nodded at that, accepting it all as a fair chance - better than what she had now, at any rate.

"Why do you have to wait so long, Professor?" That was the only thing she didn't understand; being subjected to eleven more days of torture - the thought was crushing. Snape smiled thinly at her.

"I have a small hope I will not have to risk revealing myself at all, and the Order will actually manage to rescue you. However…that is doubtful."

"You still haven't told me why."

"You've barely given me a chance," he retorted. "I want you to tell Potter - and only Potter, that I am on your side, and when the moment comes, he can trust that I will do whatever it takes to kill the snake. He needs to concentrate on the Dark Lord - and I will take care of the snake. So please," he drawled with bitter humour. "Tell him not to kill me before then."

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Get Potter to obliviate you of the knowledge of my assistance and loyalties after you have told him - if he's skilled enough. I would rather not be killed by the Dark Lord because you manage to get yourself captured again," he finished sourly, and then without another word, turned and left the room in a rustle of robes, leaving Hermione in a state of deep confusion and an unspoken thank you hovering on her lips.

But when the bolt snicked shut, hope throbbed in her chest, hot and heavy, and she turned the coin over and over in her fingers in the dark, threads of elation twisting together inside her. There was nothing quite so powerful as hope. She wished she could tell Draco, but she couldn't - couldn't risk it. Merlin it was going to be horrible to know, and not tell him, but…

She slipped her coin into a pocket on her chausses, and lay down beside Draco with a sigh, and he stirred and muttered a vague plea and a protest, fear saturating his voice. She brushed her fingers over his face in the dark - the heavy stubble that was not-quite a beard now along his jaw, the cracked, dry softness of lips, the bump of his straight nose and the hollows of eyes, his lashes tickling her fingertips, and then she found his forehead, all furrowed and crinkled with the nightmare.

She smoothed her thumb up between his brows and over his forehead and murmured comfort to him, and he twitched in his sleep and his hand came up searchingly, patting over her breast, and then grabbing her upper arm, before sliding loosely down to encircle her wrist and still her hand on his forehead. He was still asleep; she could tell from the steadiness of his breathing, but he was holding onto her tightly.

Hermione curled up closer to Draco, knees brushing against his, leaving her hand there at his forehead even though it twisted her arm awkwardly, and tried to get some sleep before the horrors of the next day dawned fresh and new.

"- after the recent rash of attacks we're so undermanned we can't afford to pull people away from their current missions." Remus was apologetic, and Harry shoved his hands through his hair, making it stick out in all directions, hands gesticulating as he tried and tried to persuade Remus, who would not be moved.

"It's Hermione. We can't leave her. Fuck, Remus, it's Hermione. We have to try to find her - it's already been twelve days that they've been captured! She could be dead by now! We need more people out there!" He was furious and flapping his hands, pacing back and forth and tugging at fistfuls of his hair, and Remus just watched him from his armchair, surrounded by an air of calm, grim stillness.

"We are trying Harry, but we can't spare any more than the three Aurors already searching. She could be anywhere, and we can't put everything in jeopardy because of her - you know she wouldn't want that."

"I don't care what she wants!" Harry burst out, flinging his hands up in the air, feeling like he was going mad with this helplessness. There was nothing he could do to help - all he could do was sit at Godric's Hollow - or go out on the occasional minor mission. But as for getting Hermione back - well, he couldn't do anything at all and it was driving him up the bloody wall. Remus wouldn't let him go to the locations they were visiting to look for Hermione - it was too dangerous, too risky, and with the horcruxes nearly all destroyed, and as their chances of achieving a final showdown with Voldemort grew, keeping Harry alive was more important than ever.

"I want to get her back! If she hates me for risking the war, I'll bloody well deal with it then. But right now -"

"Harry. I know how you feel, but we can't risk the war. You know that." Remus was gentle with the truth, but Harry's breath escaped him in a plosive sound, and he jerked his pacing to a halt, flopping down onto the couch and burying his head in his hands. Ron got to be out there with the three Aurors who were searching for Hermione, lucky bastard, while Harry was trapped here. It wasn't bloody fair. This was one of the very few times in Harry's life that he had been resentful of Ron, and he didn't like the feeling.

"Christ." He buried his face into his hands and growled into them. "Yes, I know that. I know it, Remus. I just…"

"I know. I understand, Harry."

"And here I am yelling my head off at you when…"

"It's fine, Harry, really." Remus reached out and patted Harry on the knee and gave him a small, reassuring smile.

"At least she's with Malfoy,' Harry said for the twelfth time that week, followed by his twelfth, "Jesus Christ I can't believe I'm saying that." He laughed weakly and shook his head, glancing up at Remus and pushing his glasses back up his nose. "But he'll - he really has changed, hasn't he? He won't…sell her out? Switch sides again…to save his own bloody skin?"

Harry had been having nightmares since her capture, where Hermione was across a Muggle football field from Harry, screaming for him to help her, while Malfoy pointed a wand at her head. And Harry didn't have his wand, so he had to run towards her, but every time he took that first step towards her and Malfoy, the blonde spat, "Avada kedavra," and Hermione's eyes went dead, blank, and she fell.

The last few nights Harry had been aware enough that it was a dream to refuse to take that first step, but then it seemed like he'd been standing there forever, and he couldn't wake up, and he was trapped, and in the end he took that step out of desperation, and she fell. It was bloody screwing with his head.

Harry knew that the other side weren't likely to kill Hermione at least - she was too valuable a bargaining chip. He sighed and scratched at the dark stubble that itched his face, feeling impossibly weary.

"He's changed, Harry. You know that," Remus said, also for the twelfth time that week, and Harry nodded to himself, smiled a distracted apology at Remus.

"I'm…I'm going to go find Ginny. Sorry that I…"

"It's fine," Remus said, with a wry, slightly impatient but sympathetic smile, and then turned his eyes back to the decoded messages he had been reading through when Harry had burst in.

Draco hung limply in the chains, head lolling heavy, naked limbs spasming with the aftershocks of the Cruciatus firing through his nerves, a searing agonising echo of the curse itself. They had gotten sick of just…using him…lately. He'd stopped reacting, stopped caring; just lay there like a hunk of meat, a dead body, and went somewhere else, and that wasn't fun for them so they had to find another way to make him scream. And they did.

They always found a way to make him scream, in the end, and the screams rattled and echoed off the walls like an animal's howls, shapeless and wordless and without thought.

Just pain.

And then they would use him, once they'd had their fun making him scream, because it got the sick bastards going to torture someone, and then of course they wanted to relieve themselves. And he would shut his eyes and think of Hermione and that at least it wasn't her. He was so fucking grateful that it was just him, not her. In a way, he was protecting her, by being taken instead. Or so he told himself as he tried to pretend he was somewhere else, hanging in his chains as they cut him.

He was whizzing through low cloud on his broomstick, the wind chilling his cheeks and nose and turning them red with cold, and the mist of the clouds damping him. He was listening to his mother tell him a story about the one of the constellations, while he stared out his bedroom window at the points of light, the covers all tucked up to his chin and a warm, lazy drowsiness suffusing him as he tried to stay awake and listen to the end of the tale. Or he was sitting playing a game of Scrabble with Hermione, irritating her by using what she sharply referred to as, illegal words and rude, to boot, and laughing at her annoyance.

He never thought about anything sexual, no matter how strong those memories of twining himself with Hermione's naked body were. That would have been worse than wrong - it would have been utterly abhorrent.

Sometimes Draco lay there and he hated her so much if she had been standing there above him, he would have tried to kill her. He was glad that she had been saved from suffering through this, and yet he hated her because of that very fact. He was pathetically grateful it was him and not her, and he yet despised her for it too. Draco knew intellectually that he would rather it was this way - just him rather than both of them, or only her - but he couldn't help the creeping resentment and jealousy and hate that she was spared, and he was not.

And then she was there, afterwards, trying to be everything that he needed, all twisted up and hurting for him, and he loved her again.

Sometimes he woke up at night, shivering and crying silently, nightmares cold in his mind, and a sick horror thick in his throat and rolling in his gut. Draco thought he could have brushed them off easier, except he also woke painfully aroused, with his cock as hard as iron, throbbing and hurting he was so fucking hard, and so angry and sick over everything. And he would listen to Hermione breath, and want nothing more than to grab her and pin her down, and bite her and pinch her and lick her and fuck her 'til she was screaming with it.

The part that really frightened him, and made him lie there awake desperately not touching his cock, was that he wanted her to scream because he was hurting her, and in that, punishing himself. And he didn't know what the hell he was supposed to feel about that shit.

He blinked with swollen eyes as they undid the chains he hung from now, and let him crumple to a heap on the cold stone, shuddering and bleeding. And then Rostan dragged Draco up onto his knees in front of him by a handful of hair, leering down at him expectantly, and Draco opened his mouth obediently and tried very, very hard to go someplace else.

"Eat. Please. You need to keep your strength up," she tried to coax him, holding up a spoonful of the watery stew they got every day to share between them, and Draco sighed and let his head fall back against the wall. Rostan had been gone somewhere for four days now, and he was coming out of himself a little again, his emotions creeping through - although mostly it was just anger, it was still healthier than that dead look he'd had.

The other Death Eaters had still taken just him away by himself the day before yesterday - and Hermione knew what that meant - but it couldn't be as bad as with Rostan, because he seemed marginally better. Hermione hadn't asked - they hadn't spoken of any of it at all, actually, but she thought that Rostan had hurt him like this before, before he had defected. There was something there between Draco and Rostan - a history - that made it personal, and so much worse.

"If I eat, I'm just going to throw it up again, Hermione. There's no point. You might as well have it. At least you can keep it down," he pointed out wearily, and Hermione bit her lip, at her wit's end. He was right about throwing it up - he'd been nauseous ever since the first time Rostan had…taken him away, and most days he could barely get down and keep down more than a couple of spoonfuls of the stew. It worried her.

The Death Eaters fed them both potions after every torture session to replenish their blood and give them nutrition and that sort of thing, but it wasn't the same as eating - he still needed to eat. He was so thin she could count every one of his ribs starkly.

"You have to try. Come on, please, Draco?"

"Stop fucking asking me, Hermione," he snapped, and she jerked the spoon back in fright and spilt the spoonful of stew on her lap, and swore at herself, tears welling in her eyes at her clumsiness and his angriness and - and everything.

"Sorry. Sorry," she spilled out in a tight voice and jerked in a shaky breath, staring at the bowl and watching it waver and blur through the tears swimming in her vision. Draco shoved his hand through his hair, movements vicious and sharp with his anger even as he apologised.

"No. I'm sorry. I just…"

"Yeah…" She looked away awkwardly.

Half the sentences they exchanged during the day ended unfinished, trailed away into nothingness and meaninglessness. What was there to talk about? What was there that was safe to talk about, and didn't make everything worse? And apart from when Draco curled into her to cry afterwards, or when they slept - face to face on their sides, their knees drawn up a little so their kneecaps knocked together - he didn't touch her anymore, and she hadn't tried to touch him except for soothing strokes during nightmares, or when he was crying afterwards.

Those comforting, cautious, and well-telegraphed touches seemed to be all right, but anything else…a tight hug, a kiss on the cheek, and unexpected stroke of arm or back - Hermione didn't know if that sort of touch would trigger…memories. The one time she had kissed his cheek, when they'd woken one morning, he'd flinched back from her like she'd struck him.

She hadn't tried it again.

Sometimes Hermione woke in the night after a nightmare to find herself crying, and Draco awake, leaning over her and murmuring useless sweet comfort in her ear, his fingers whispering over her face, and his lips pressing light, dry touches to her cheek, and temple, and ear.

She would lie very still during those times, like he was a wild animal she didn't want to startle away, but he could tell the change in her breathing or something because he always stopped a bare moment after Hermione woke. And she began wanting to just grab him and kiss him on the mouth, but she had the feeling he'd hit her on instinct if she did that, and she wouldn't blame him for it either.

There was just so little to find sanity in right now, here, in this cell, and trying to find some comfort in Draco was one of the things that kept her going - those few limited gentle touches she was allowed kept Hermione from going utterly to pieces, but being unable to just grab him and bury her face in his neck and cling to him like a limpet made her feel so alone.

But at least there was always the comforting outline of the coin Snape had gave her in her pocket, and that constant small hope that it would all be over soon, if they could just hold on. She wished she could tell Draco, but she kept her mouth shut. Snape had told her not to, and if she was going to trust him, then she thought she should trust him completely and follow his instructions to the letter.

She stirred the stew idly, mind elsewhere, roaming around and flitting from one thing to another - her concentration had been shot in the past week, and she felt light-headed and confused half the time now. She wondered if she should ask him about the r-r - Merlin, she couldn't even say the word, let alone think it, and so she just ignored it and held him when he cried silently and tried to pretend it wasn't happening.

She wondered if that was the wrong thing to do. That first time, he hadn't wanted to talk, but maybe it was because of her reaction - she let her hair fall over her face to hide her flush of shame as she remembered vomiting into the bucket. Maybe he had thought that she was disgusted by him.

"Draco…?"

"Hmm?"

"I - would it help if - I mean, I know the, ah, the first time you said you didn't want to talk, and I understand if you still don't…but…I'm willing to listen, if - well - doyouwanttotalkaboutit?" She was flaming red but she forced herself to meet his eyes, and she had to stop a gasp of relief escaping her when he looked away a second later.

"There's nothing to talk about," he said flatly, and she frowned at his tone, peeking up at him from her resumed study of the stew bowl.

"You - you remember what you said to me, before, when we thought I…" Hermione flashed back over that conversation they'd had and then suddenly realised then that she hadn't said I love you in days. With the torture, and the silence, and the terrible, draining despair of everything, she hadn't said it at all, and what must that make him think with what they were doing to him? That she didn't want him anymore? That he was…dirty? But she didn't think now wasn't the right moment to say it - it would just seem forced and obligatory and he wouldn't believe her.

"You said that it didn't say anything about me, or my worth, but theirs," she forged onwards determinedly, and Draco hissed a breath and rolled his head on the wall, tipping it away from hers.

"I don't need your idea of a fucking pep talk, to cheer me up, Hermione. I really fucking don't."

"It doesn't change anything; you know that, don't you?"

"Yes it does!" He snapped his head back around and his eyes were narrow and furious on hers, the grey all darkened to the colour of dark smoke and storm clouds. "It changes everything."

"Drac-"

"You can't fucking tell me you don't look at me and see it! You can't tell me that you don't think about -"

"I don't - I don't - I mean…" She flailed for the words, trying to explain. "It doesn't change how I feel about y -"

"Bull. Fucking. Shit, it doesn't," Draco snarled, spitting the syllables out crisply and furiously, and shoved himself backwards from her like she repelled him, eyes still glaring into hers.

"It doesn't!" Hermione cried in frustration, dropping the spoon in the stew with a clatter and throwing her hands in the air with frustration. And then her eyes went to slits on him as she realised his damned double standards, and she jabbed a finger towards him and was too angry to notice when he flinched back from the gesture. "What, so would you have been lying, if it had been me? Because you said that to m-"

"If I'd said that," he bit out. "And I didn't, by the way, then yes I would have been lying. It wouldn't change the fact that I love you, which is what I said to you, if you'll recall. And it wouldn't have - have change your damn worth. But fuck yes it would have changed how I looked at you, how I felt about you. Of course it would, and you're lying to yourself as well as me if you're trying to say that those bastards fucking turning me into their personal fucking sex slave doesn't change the way you feel abou-"

"I meant that it hasn't made me think anything bad, not anything that matters - I love you, and them…hurting -" she stumbled over saying it and shied away at the last moment, the words sex slave and the bitterness with which he'd said them burning into her brain and turning it into horrified mush. Draco twisted around and reared up onto his knees, so one of them slotted between her outstretched legs, snapped forward like a snake striking, his weight falling on his hand, his nose almost pressing against hers.

"Say it," he hissed, cutting her off. "Fucking say it."

"Draco, no - I can't - I do -"

"Say it," he snarled insistently, "If you want to fucking talk about it, then talk about it, Hermione."

"I…"

"Say the fucking word, Hermione, or shut the fuck up you hypocritical bitch." He was looming threateningly a scant inch from her, his mouth twisted into a snarl, and Hermione instinctively splayed her hand out and pushed him back from her, palm slamming against his chest hard, knee jerking up into his thigh. He froze for a second and she saw his eyes change, and then he lashed his hand out so fast and clamped it hard around her throat, her back shoved against the wall and she couldn't breathe properly because he was squeezing and from the look of his eyes, he was somewhere else entirely. Trapped in nightmare memories.

Hermione sucked in a painful breath. "Draco - god - sorry…didn't - 's me - 's me -" she gasped.

Draco blinked, focused on her, grey eyes sharpening but still not quite right, but he stopped squeezing any harder at least, and then his mouth latched onto the slight jut of her cheekbone, and he bit her, hard. Hermione yelped at the sharp pain and the fright of it, certain he'd broken the skin and scared again, and her mind jabbered at her frantically because what the hell was that? He'd just bitten her, what the hell was that?

And then his tongue soothed hot and slick over the skin and his hand slipped away, and he slumped down against her, face buried into her neck, breathing hard. Hermione sat there frozen utterly, rigid against the wall, afraid to move in case she set him off again - and then spots were dancing in front of her eyes and she had to breathe, and Draco jolted when she did. His hand went up to her hair, twining his fingers securely through it, making a fist around the tangled handful he had.

"Don't move," he said roughly, desperately, still breathing hard and panicked into her neck. "Don't fucking move, you fucking bitch."

His maimed arm snapped up around her waist, pinning her between him and the wall, him on his knees between her legs, slumped down against her like he was boneless, only he radiated tension. She half-lifted her hands and then dropped them back to the floor by her sides, scared to touch him.

"Say it," he rasped again and it took Hermione a moment too long to realise what he meant and he bit her throat below her ear and she was certain he drew blood this time, and tried to jerk away but he had her pinned and she was trapped.

"Say it." It was a demand, an order, and it was filled with so much rage that Hermione cringed from it, and from him, her shoulder blades grinding into the wall as she tried to press herself back and sink into the stone, but his arm around her waist jerked her body up to his, naked skin on naked skin, and he felt shockingly hot.

"Say the fucking word, you fucking cunt," he grated, all dangerous threat and fury and the hairs rose on the back of her neck, and she sobbed a choking breath, adrenaline flooding her along with the fear.

"I love you," she said, voice all knotted up and hoarse. "I love you, and them raping you hasn't made a bit of difference to that, Draco."

Draco shuddered at the word, and his hand clutched at her hair, dragging at it painfully when she said it, his breath sobbed on her throat, and she hurried on.

"The only thing that it's changed is that I'm worried about you. I'm scared for you, and I'm worried about you and I don't know what I'm supposed to do - what I can do - to help, and I'm scared, and I feel so alone, and I feel like I can't touch you, but then maybe I shouldn't want to because that's selfish, isn't it, to want you to touch me like that when they're r-r-raping you, and I just -"

"Shut up," he choked, still clinging to her, his lips brushing over her neck as he spoke, his arm like an iron bar around her, his fingers gentling a little on her hair and petting at it with quick, panicky movements. "Just fucking shut up for a minute, Hermione, I need to - I need to - I -"

There was a barely controlled rage that seethed off him like an inferno, and it scared her, because she thought it was directed at her, and he wasn't exactly stable at the moment, and Christ, what if he snapped because she didn't have her wand, and he was bigger than her, and stronger, and…

"You're scaring me. Draco. You're scaring me."

He ignored her and she brought a shaking hand up, tentatively touched his side, the naked flesh warm and tense, and he bit her throat again as though in reaction, and she yelped because it hurt. She thumped his side with the heel of her hand, shoved at him.

"Draco!"

He yanked her hair hard and dragged until her bum slid out from the wall and her head was pulled to the side and jammed against the stone, exposing her throat more, and his mouth was still latched over her throat although he wasn't biting down anymore. He was hunched over her and she was sucking in frantic, terrified breaths until she felt light-headed from too much oxygen, shoving at him but he was utterly immovable like he was carved from stone. She thrashed beneath him, get her uninjured leg bent up and pushing at his side with her knee but he just hooked his thigh over her leg just above her knee, pressing it down, laying his shin over hers and trapping it.

"Draco!"

"Shut - the fuck uppp…" He whined it unevenly into her skin between drags for air, sounding like he was about to snap even more than he already had, and she clamped her lips shut, shivering against him.

"Fuck," he gasped, almost like he was talking to himself, but she knew it was aimed at her, and the words spilled out in a ragged flood of rage.

"Fuck I hate you. I hate you. You fucking bitch." Draco jerked back, pulling her away from the wall with him, and then slamming her backward and Hermione's shoulders ground painfully into stone again and her head knocked back into it, and she grunted as the breath drove out of her and pain rang through her skull like a bell. She slid under Draco slightly as his arm jerked convulsively around her waist, and he sank down on her thigh to keep her still. She choked as she felt his erection press into her leg, and she instinctively flattened her leg harder against the ground, trying to keep away from it because she didn't even know - what - anything. And he just kept spitting the words out like each one was a lash to strike her with.

"I want to hurt you so badly. To fucking make you hurt, because it's not fair, it's not fair that it's just me, and you don't have to hurt like that. I just want to -" She tried to shrink away from him and he growled at her.

"I said don't fucking move, Hermione," he rasped and shoved himself harder into her, his words trailing off into a dazed groan for a second as his cock rubbed hard against her thigh, and then he shook himself, gasped.

"I just want to hurt you and shit shit shit I should be glad that it's just me because I love you I do, I swear to fucking Merlin I love you but - but -" Draco paused to heave in a breath, the roughness of his almost-beard scratching over her skin as he nuzzled his face harder into her throat and nipped a different spot - not to titillate but to hurt again and Hermione jerked and her hands fluttered like frightened birds by his sides, afraid to touch him and make it even worse.

"They don't touch you like that, they don't fucking touch you, and you see it you see me when they bring me back and I'm covered with - with - everything - and they've - and I can't walk I can't fucking sit and you know what they're making me do and I can't - can't - you look at me and you fucking know what they do to me what they do and I can't stop them fuck there's nothing I can do when I fight they just hurt me until I can't fight anymore and then they do it anyway so now I just let them, I just let them fucking do it I just get down on my fucking knees and open my fucking mouth for them and you know what I let them do-!"

He was screaming it into her skin now, and his hand had gone from her hair to her shoulder, ragged nails digging into her bare flesh and she could feel the blood starting to trickle down her back, and tried to bite back the pain of it, as his words crashed into her, crushing her beneath their weight.

"Draco."

His whole body was so tense it felt like he was going to fly apart like a coiled spring released, and he was shaking against her, and Hermione bit her lip and lifted her hands, put them on his back.

"Draco."

And he flinched and his tirade of words just stopped, he just gulped them down and made a hiccuping sobbing sound and his breath rattled out hard as the tension just went out of him and he sank against her limply, gasping as hard into her neck as roughly if he'd just shagged her senseless. Hermione pressed her fingertips into his back hard, staring numbly at the sweat-dampened spikes of his white-blonde hair and the sharp-bumped ridge of his spine, the jut of his shoulder blades beneath the skin of his back as he slumped limply against her, and she just breathed.

"Shit," he said with rigidly tight control to his tone, after a long, heavy silence, and even though he sounded like he was still on a knife's edge of sanity, he also sounded more normal than he had in over a week. Embarrassed. Stunned. Half-afraid. Guilty. "Shit, Hermione, I -"

Hermione curled her arms tighter around his back and buried her face down, so her mouth was at his ear and his hair tickled her skin. She wanted to say something, but she didn't know what the hell to say after whatever that - whatever that had been. She was trembling all over still, and their skin was sweaty and slipped slickly together when Draco shifted a little - erection still there, she noted nervously, not sure why he was hard or what he wanted to do with it, if anything. Merlin.

"Fuck. Fuck you're bleeding, Hermione."

"You bit me," Hermione said dazedly, and when Draco pulled his head back from her she saw a smear of her blood on his lower lip, and when she lifted her hand to her neck her fingers came away reddened with traces of blood. Their eyes locked and she dragged her thumb over his lip to clean it, and he blinked at her owlishly, as dazed as she was. Still hard though - his cock prodding against her knee accidentally and aimlessly as he reached up and touched her bleeding shoulder gingerly.

"Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't…I just lost it. I fucking lost it. Fuck." Draco sounded furious with himself, and half-frightened.

"Jesus," she breathed and slumped down as she saw the horrified apology on his face, his eyes clear and his hand hovering over her shoulder - the fear fell away from her then. He wasn't going to hurt her right now. He wasn't. Thank god. Her head fell forward and knocked onto his shoulder, and her hands came up and hooked into his upper arms as she went weak with relief.

"Merlin, you scared me, Draco. I thought you were…"

"Were what?" Guilt and fear in his sharp question, and she shrugged, hands petting down over his arms now, no fear about touching him because damnit he couldn't complain about her touching him after what he'd just done to her. She huffed out a half-laugh.

"Going to kill me or - or, um, trytofuckme," Hermione said, the words slurring together in her embarrassment and she blushed and was glad he couldn't see her face.

"What?"

"You're…" She shifted her knee deliberately and it rubbed over his hard cock, and he sucked in a sharp breath and pulled back from her slightly.

"Oh. I didn't know - I wasn't exactly - I didn't mean you to… Shit." He broke off, flushing hot over his cheeks and started to move away from her and she dug her fingers into his arms again and jerked him back down.

"Don't. Please?" She lifted her face to his, begging him with her eyes, because if anything she needed to touch him now more than ever. To reassure herself that…he wasn't utterly mad or something. She still wasn't really sure. "If it's…okay…I just want to…touch you. Maybe. I guess." Merlin, she sounded stupid.

But Draco's hand came up and shoved light but firm up over her cheek, fingers driving into her hair, and he nodded, twisted to the side and sat down against the wall, pulling her with him and settling her on his lap, his arms almost too-hard around her and his erection - yup, still there and hard as ever, she thought nervously - digging against her thigh. She slid her hands up onto his arms, and felt goosebumps rise on his skin.

"I'm sorry," she said lamely after a moment. "For everything that you're going thr-"

Draco hissed with clear annoyance. "Now is not the best time for that, Hermione."

"Why…?" she started to ask, because she just always had to stick her nose in, and he made a harsh sound in the back of his throat.

"Because all that shit I was saying - I still feel that," he grated unwillingly. "It hasn't just handily disappeared because I expressed it or whatever happy shit you think happens when people share their feelings. I lost control. I shouldn't have. Now I've got it back again, and I'm so fucking sorry I scared you and…hurt you, but…"

"But you still want to?" she asked very quietly, feeling small and confused, and something extremely inappropriate was roiling and coiling in the bottom of her belly at the steel and need in his tone. She looked up and saw his jaw clench and spasm, and his eyes flicked down to hers.

"Yes," he said from between gritted teeth, as if he was daring her to be revolted. No. That wasn't quite right, she thought - it was as if he was daring her to let him. She was mad. She was completely insane. The hunger and exhaustion and torture had driven her around the bend.

"Do it then," she said, challenging him to it, and Draco let out a pained groan and then his hand was in her hair and his mouth was on hers, and Hermione had discovered he'd meant it when he'd said he wanted to hurt her. His tongue shoved into her mouth without ceremony, hot and probing, and her stomach flipped deliciously disconcerting.

His narrowed eyes were locked to hers when he sucked her bottom lip between his two and swept his tongue over it, and her belly cramped and squirmed with an almost painful want. And then Draco bit her lip hard enough to bruise, and when she flinched and made a high-pitched sound of shock and pain he moaned into her mouth and kissed her harder as if it got him off.

Hermione wondered for a frightened second, what she and her big mouth had gotten her in for. His hand yanked at fistfuls of her hair and tears jumped to her eyes, and she could feel the bones of his arms and chest as she searched over him with greedy hands because it had been so long since she'd been able to touch him like this, the lean muscles rippling under the skin - no fat left to him now at all, just skin and spare, wiry muscle, and hard bone.

He pressed his mouth to hers so their teeth clashed, tongue flicking over the edges of her teeth and curling up to brush against the roof of her mouth, and she was making shocked, wanting sounds and pressing herself full against him, all racked with throbs and cramps of hot, needy lust.

She returned the favour of his probing tongue after a long, heated moment, hers slipping between his parted lips as if she was fucking his mouth, and his breath snorted out his nose, warm on her lips and cheek, and he bit her tongue and she yelped, a formless sharp cry and ripped back from him, going up on her knees, ignoring the pain in her ankle.

She gasped and stared down at him, panting for breath and feeling out of control and helpless in an entirely different way than she had since they were captured. His hand came up and stroked down the curve of her face, pushing her hair back off it, and they stared at each other for a second, her hand clamped over her mouth and she was sure her tongue was bleeding.

He was flushed - forehead, cheeks, neck, the blush spreading down his chest, which rose and fell hard on his breaths, thin stomach caving on each inhale. His eyes were hooded and glittered silver in the dim light, and his chapped lips were damp now, swollen and reddened from their kissing, and his hair fell over his forehead, all dirty and messy. Hermione gulped, a sudden bundle of nerves again - between the bite marks and bruises and other fresh scars on his thin body, the dishevelled, dirty state of him, and the blonde scruff that was almost a beard, he looked like a stranger.

Like a very dangerous, very sexy stranger.

And then Draco must have tired of her absorbed, wide-eyed staring, because he made a rough little noise in the back of his throat and surged up to clasp Hermione's wrist and rip her hand down from her mouth, claiming it, his fingers letting her wrist go and curling down against her crotch and rubbing a single stroke hard over her. Even through her chausses it was enough to make her go hot all over like her skin had caught fire and her hips thrust out into his hand shamelessly without her even deciding to it - just operating on breathless, wanting instinct.

Grinding herself into his hand and kissing along his jaw and chin messy and sloppy, prickles stabbing and scratching at her mouth and cheeks and it was the strangest feeling.

Draco was impatient though, and moments later he flipped them, and she landed with her back on the rags and him on top of her almost before she knew it - there was a brief searing, grinding pain in her ankle as he twisted her roughly and her foot caught on the rags, and then he was on his elbows above her, his mouth latched around one of her nipples, his hand awkwardly pinching and tugging at the other one.

Her back arched up and she moaned and mewled and then he seized her whole breast in his hand and squeezed and the cramping pain made her cry out and hit at him automatically, catching him on the shoulder.

He growled at that and bit her stomach, her side, her breasts; everywhere, like he was lost in his head, like he was an animal, like he wanted to cover every bit of her in marks of him. And Hermione didn't hate it, because he wasn't biting that hard, and the frantic little growling noise he was making made her womb clench deliciously - but she knew perfectly damn well that every time he came back from…with Rostan…he was covered with vicious bite marks, and she wasn't sure how she felt about him re-enacting that with her.

With her in the role of the prey, and he the predator; like he was taking it out on her. Using her as a proxy, almost, but not quite, and she wasn't sure if it was healthy or a very bad thing. She did know it made her stomach feel horrible and confused, all mixed up with the pleasure and unease tangled in a knot that she couldn't get undone. But maybe it could help him exorcise his rage and helplessness - maybe. Either way, Draco seemed to want this - to need this, and that was enough for her.

Her hands slid up over his shoulders and she cupped his face, the roughness of his thick stubble making him feel alien, unfamiliar. But those grey eyes were always the same, couldn't belong to anyone but Draco Malfoy, and when his hand drove down beneath Hermione's chausses and pinched her clit too-hard she moaned with pain and pleasure, and her teeth closed over his prickly jaw - biting him back.

He whimpered, an achingly vulnerable, frightened sound, and his hand froze down her knickers and he went stiff all over and she berated herself furiously for doing that. And then he sucked in a breath and ducked his head and nibbled at her throat, interspersing lighter bites with deeper ones that made her body jerk and her teeth clench in the effort to keep herself from instinctively fighting him again.

It was strangely chaotic and painful but good, and their breath mingled on the air, rough and gasping rasps as she dragged her nails down his back while he teased gently with his tongue at her nipple, while his hand roamed her side pinching, and it felt hard enough to bruise - certainly hard enough to make tears spring up and her flinch away.

Point and counterpoint, and she let herself take out all her anger and fear on him, in the end, and he didn't seem to mind, although at first she'd been afraid it would remind him. But he groaned with half-afraid pleasure when she bit his throat, and hissed sharply when she raked her nails down his back, and thrust uselessly against her through their chausses making a low growling, mewling noise when she plucked hard at his nipples.

"Now. Now," he demanded hoarsely, lifting his head from her neck, his eyes gleaming at her in the half light, and Hermione squirmed under him, shoving her chausses down and managing to kick them off until they hung around one ankle, while he unlaced his with urgent fingers, eyes still gleaming on hers, his lips parted as he panted, breath hot on her throat and jaw. And then he sank into her, and she saw his pupils dilate as he shuddered out a low, strangled sound, and then he dropped his head and shut his eyes, and fucked her.

Hermione's legs came up, the one with the broken ankle just drawn up to her chest a little, and the other hooking around his waist, and Draco drove into her brutally, rocking them back on the rags with each thrust until she had to reach up behind her and flatten her hand against the wall to stop her head from knocking into it.

"Oh fuuuck," Draco gasped, just moments later and buried himself even deeper with a snap of his hips. "H-H'mione."

And then it was over, and she was soaked in sweat - as was he - and she hurt inside a little bit because it had been a while and he hadn't been gentle, and she hadn't gotten to…finish…herself, and her ankle flaming with irritated pain. But there was no time to dwell on all that, because Draco was gripping her in the vice of his arms and muttering half-angry, half-grateful nonsense in her ear, interspersed with a slew of foul language and she could feel his tears dripping on her neck and stinging the bite marks, and she couldn't think about anything but him, and making sure he was all right again.

And he wasn't, of course he wasn't, but he seemed a little better, maybe.

And when they lay down together, he held her spooned against him - instead of facing her in the more distant nose-to-nose position - and that gave her a little hope that maybe he could get through this. And if he could, then she could. She only had to hold out a little longer - just a little longer, and then they would be free.

It wasn't until Draco had fallen asleep, and Hermione was drifting off herself, that she realised with a lurch of fear that she wasn't covered by her contraceptive pills anymore.