Edited 10/13/15

3. Fight It Off

I'll hold your hand when you are feeling mad at me

Yeah when the monsters they won't go and your windows won't close

I'll pretend to see what you see

I know if you could snap both your fingers that you'd escape with me

But in the meantime, I'll just wait here and listen to you when you speak…or scream

[Waste, Foster the People]

The days ticked by in a haze of dread and despair, and Hermione didn't know how to cope, so in the end she just started falling apart.

She couldn't eat, she forgot what she'd been saying or doing or thinking right in the middle of it, she'd find herself sitting in the cell staring into space with Draco shaking her and calling her name and telling her she'd been like that for the past ten minutes or so. She was blanketed with livid scars, and she knew that the Healers could remove them if - when - they got out of here, but they were on her right now and she would sit there and trace them, counting them over and over.

It bothered her that she couldn't count the ones she couldn't see that were on her back, but when she'd asked Draco - her eyes big and wild and her hands wringing together - he'd just looked at her like he was worried she was going to snap and stab him in the throat or something.

It wasn't fair. She'd let him fall apart on her and scare her half to death, and she couldn't even ask him to count her scars without him looking at her like she was mad? She'd yelled at him it wasn't fair, all petulant and trembly and shrill, and his eyes had pierced straight through her, and his voice had been rough and low when he'd answered her.

"No, Hermione. I'm not doing that. No." He'd looked at her as if she was a child having a tantrum and being hateful to him, who he was nevertheless immeasurably fond of. Like she'd hurt him by asking, but he understood. And when she'd thrown a balled up blanket at his head he'd just caught it in his hand and given her a carefully measured look that had made her sink back down into nervous silence.

She didn't even know what was normal anymore, because at the time it had seemed perfectly natural to want to count her scars, but now, after his reaction, she was worried it was just too strange.

The Death Eaters still took them every day, although the time of day varied, and it was almost a sick relief when the booted steps came to a halt outside their cell door because at least then Hermione stopped waiting for it and expecting it with dread a tight ball in her stomach.

She couldn't hold out long under the torture now - they'd broken her down too much, and her resistance was pitiful - and sometimes she ended up begging them to stop, repeating the horrible things they told her to say, their hands skating roughly over her body, pinching and prodding and groping. Not violating her properly as she thought of it in her head, because Snape had said not to and they followed his orders reluctantly, but really, how much of a difference was there when their hands were on her rough and hard?

She felt dirty and filthy - a dirty filthy mudblood - and she really, really thought she was starting to go mad. She picked up the habit of yanking her hair out, one strand at a time, while Draco watched her with dulled, worried eyes. She started vomiting in the bucket when she did manage to eat, and in a matter of days the weight began to fall off her. Her ankle was healing funny, and she knew it would need to be broken and re-set when - if - they got out.

She was scared that they wouldn't, and Snape had just been lying and it was all just a mind game, and that he was going to take her away and turn her into his toy and Voldemort was going to kill Draco. And she thought about that and ended up hyperventilating while Draco rubbed her back absently.

He was going just as screwy in the head as she was - more so, even. By turns he was withdrawn to the point of absolute catatonia, nearly normal but still worryingly wrong, or filled with an anger that she allowed him to take out on her, because at least then she felt something other than fear and despair.

It became a routine over the too-many too-long days that passed by before the day she was waiting for - the day Snape had said he'd take down the wards. Draco would be dragged back from - from… being hurt - she still didn't even like thinking the word, because rape and Draco shouldn't be in the same sentence - and he would throw up, hanging over the bucket on his knees with his eyes streaming, coughing and choking and covered with their marks. And then he would roll to the ground and lie there, just staring at the ceiling and shaking all over with reaction for a while.

He would ignore her all evening. It was the time of day that he went almost catatonic. Once she'd gotten so frustrated with the way he'd completely ignored her shaking and repetitions of his name that she'd slapped him. Draco's cheek had blazed up red with her handprint, but all he'd done was blink and sway slightly at the force of the blow. She'd moved to do it again, and this time his hand had grabbed hers and twisted on her wrist until Hermione had felt like it was going to break, before he'd shoved her hand back at her and released it sharply. She left him alone after that happened.

But then, once the lights in the hallway went out at midnight, Hermione would feel Draco's hand rough on her in the pitch black, and his hungry, greedy mouth. His fingers and his teeth and his lips and tongue, and he hurt her and made her feel good, and swore at her, and told her he hated her and he loved her in the same gasping breath. Like an exorcism, like an outlet, and in the end she gave in and returned the anger, giving as good as she got, and she wondered how in the hell they were supposed to ever regain their normality after this.

After what they had learnt to do, what they had turned to in order to survive. Hurting each other and clinging and hating and yanking her hair out by the roots and counting her scars, and he scraping his Dark Mark over and over the knee of his chausses until it was rubbed so raw it bled, and picking at his bite marks so they never healed, and taking a fierce joyless pleasure in spitting his hate in her ear while his cock was buried in her… Merlin.

Hermione felt like this was the first time she had really realised what war was, now, taken prisoner - this was war; war against madness and breaking and ripping each other apart in their desperation to stay together and sane. And she thought that maybe they were failing.

After the sex, Draco always held her so tight it felt like her ribs were creaking under the pressure, and he cried in complete silence, the only evidence of his tears the hot wetness on her skin and the jerky shaking of his shoulders. Sometimes he told her he was sorry, once his tears had stopped, said the words in a dry hopeless voice, filled with guilt, and Hermione couldn't tell him anything but that it was all right, and that she loved him, and it was all going to be okay.

They told each other that a lot; that it would be all right. Draco never really believed it; she could hear it in the lifelessness of his voice, but Hermione would think of the coin in her pocket and sometimes - sometimes - she thought she did.

Draco knew that she was keeping something from him. He saw the way she rubbed her thumb over her pocket when she thought he wasn't looking, as if there was something important in there, and he didn't miss the faint spark of hope that came into her eyes when she did so. He didn't ask her about it though. Draco didn't trust easily - never had - but this was Hermione and he trusted her with his life, his sanity, and now, late at night he trusted her with his deepest darkest horrors as he drove himself into her willing body - so if she hadn't told him, he had to assume there was a reason for it.

So he didn't ask her, no matter how much he wanted to.

Whatever it was she had in her pocket - and he assumed it was some hope for escape from this fucking hell, he just hoped she didn't fuck it up.

And he hoped that whatever it was she had planned that she couldn't tell him about would happen soon. Because he wasn't sure how much longer he could spend being torn apart by torture and - and rape, and trying to put the pieces of himself back together, because he was starting to forget where those pieces went, and eventually he wouldn't remember at all.

He couldn't keep doing this. He was fraying apart and bits of him were drifting away, and he didn't know how to get them back. Sometimes it felt like all he knew anymore was pain; how to inflict it, and how to receive it, and there was just nothing else to him but a hollow shell holding all the pain inside of him as the pressure built and built until he wanted to burst.

The sky was dark with storm clouds that had split open half an hour ago, and the house, which blazed despite the soaking rain, gave off black, heavy smoke that choked the air. Ron hadn't bothered with a water-repelling spell, and his cloak clung to him like a second skin, his hair flattened dripping over his forehead, arm up over his mouth and nose as he looked for survivors on the muddy ground.

His lips were flattened into a hard line as he only found dead bodies - they'd been outnumbered, and forced to fight to kill, even though they needed the information. Johns had gotten one alive, but the woman hadn't known anything. Well, she could fucking rot in Azkaban now, evil fucking bitch. She'd laughed at their frustration, laughed and laughed, and Ron had been hard pressed not to kill her right then.

He saw a body and hurried towards it, only to see the Death Eater was dead, rain and ashes coating the body with a greasy black muck, the man's entrails burst out from his belly.

Damnit. Merlin fucking damnit.

They were running themselves fucking ragged going from place to place, wherever they'd heard there were smaller groups of Death Eaters or courier points, trying to get some information that would lead them to Hermione and Malfoy, but they never got what they needed, and Ron was getting bloody sick of it.

He kicked at the Death Eater's body furiously, getting a loop of shiny pink intestines over his boot and swore and kicked the corpse again. He was as red as his hair, he knew, because he felt like he was going to boil over like a damned fucking pot, and he was so angry he wanted to bring the Death Eater back to kill him all over again. The bastards.

Every place they went, every fucking place, there was no Hermione, no Malfoy, and none of the Death Eaters had any information - even under veritaserum they didn't seem to know anything. He hissed and kicked out again, boot driving into the Death Eater's gaping mouth and crunching through teeth, the glazed, dead eyes staring blankly up at the sky as dust and ash got in them.

"Weasley." A dry female voice, tilted with that perpetual casual amusement that made him want to both laugh and hex her at the same time these days. "Kicking dead bodies isn't going to help anyone you realise, least of all Hermione."

He turned on Truffle with a snarl, dropping his arm from his mouth and nose to jab his finger at her.

"Nothing's fucking helping. They don't know shit! They never bloody do. It's like - like she never even got captured but she must have, we know they got captured - you saw it." He snapped his glare to Johns, and the man held his ground - dark and spare and whip thin.

"Yeah, they had her, and Malfoy. The Death Eaters wouldn't have just left them there, and if they'd gotten away from the enemy - highly unlikely given Hermione was wandless and they were outnumbered - then they'd have returned by now. They have to be somewhere, Weasley. We'll find them."

"Yeah, but will we get there in time?" Ron clenched his fists convulsively, staring down at the corpse by his boots, disgust all over him.

"They aren't going to kill her - they aren't stupid. They'll see her usefulness," Johns said coolly, and Ron's hand jerked up, balled into a fist, and then dropped back to his side, fingers flexing as he buried the urge to hit Johns.

"Yeah, they won't kill her. What a bloody relief. They'll just be torturing her. What a fucking relief." He sounded horribly bitter and not at all like himself, and his mouth twisted up, eyes narrowed against the rain and ash as he jerked back from Johns, Truffle, and Sweetcress, boots making sucking sounds in the mud as he walked away, shoulders hunched to the rain.

Draco reached for her in the dark, and instead of sliding towards him with that little puff of air from her lips - like a sigh, like a surrender - she drew back and her body stiffened. He growled at that. His cock was hot and hard, and his veins thrummed with hurt and anger, and his muscles quivered taut, and if he didn't get it all out, Draco felt like he was going to explode.

Just snap and choke Hermione to death and then beat his head against the stone wall of the cell until he caved his skull in, or something else suitably insane and bloody. He found the ball of her shoulder and latched his teeth over it, nipped at her just hard enough to hurt a little, but feel good too. Testing her, seeing if she'd let him, and he felt filthy for it because he knew this wasn't right. Pushing her like this.

He hissed and rolled onto his back when she just pulled further away and murmured a small, "No, Draco."

Draco stared up at the ceiling; somewhere lost above him in the total black of the cell, and scrubbed his palm hard over his face. His cock strained against his chausses, and Rostan had taken him to play today, and… His jaw clenched and he glared at the ceiling, sick and horrible and fucking twisted up. He was an arsehole, and he had no fucking right, but he asked it anyway, all rough and angry like she was the one doing something wrong instead of him.

"Why not?" It came out sounding more like fuck you, and he heard her shift on the rags next to him, but she said nothing at all. "Why fucking not, Hermione?"

He was an arsehole. He was an utter bastard. He shifted and his cock rubbed uncomfortably on his chausses and he growled and gave in to the unbearable urge - ripped his laces undone with quick rough fingers and fisted his hand around his cock, squeezing firmly and slamming his lips together to stop the groan caught in his throat from shivering out. Waited for her to answer him, his fingers still wrapped around his dick like a fucking arsehole.

"I - I just…" she started unsteadily, and then pulled in a harsh breath. "Actually, no, fuck you! I don't owe you anything! I don't have to let you use me as your punching bag, Draco!"

There was a splinter and a ragged crack to Hermione's voice and he jerked up on his cock and felt the tendons in his neck stand out as he tried not to whimper.

"I haven't hit you once," he staggered out, head not working right, all filled up with blinding lust and anger and trying desperately not to sound like he was on the verge of full on wanking while they had what seemed to be about to bloom into an all out argument.

"That's not what I meant and you know it you enormous horrible prat. It was a metaphor and -"

"I hate you," he snarled, not sure if he meant it or not, his balled up hand sliding up and down his dick and shititfeltsogood but not as good as she would feel, not as satisfying as letting out the anger on her, and her returning it twofold. And then she sobbed and he felt her roll away from him, and he snarled and hated himself, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and breathing hard through his nose as he tried to relieve the ache and the want and throb to cum with quick, hard strokes.

He knew she must have heard him no matter how quiet he tried to be, because they were only half a foot apart and the room was silent so she had to hear his gasping breaths. But she said nothing, just lay there all curled up in the dark and he hated what the Death Eaters were doing to him. What they were turning him into.

His hand dropped away from his dick as the pleasure turned sour in his mouth, and rubbed his hand hard over his forehead, swearing under his breath. He couldn't even fucking wank to get rid of the urge, because it just seemed wrong with her lying there, obviously miserable and being forced to listen to him ignore her in order to selfishly chase his own brief, bitter pleasure.

He ground his teeth together and his fingers sought out her arm, to squeeze it in apology, but ended up dragging over the side of her breast and she flipped like a fish on a line and her hands batted at him viciously. He snatched his hand back in shock as she thwacked at him, catching him hard over the ear, and the cheek, and the arm he flung up to protect himself.

"I said no!" she choked out, sounding like she was going to implode with her fury and hurt.

"I didn't mean to touch you there! I wasn't trying to -"

"Sure you weren't, you pushy, selfish, arsehole. What's wrong with you, Draco?"

"I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean to," he tried, sounding more twisted up with frustration at her disbelieving him than actually sorry for touching her there, although he was, and she growled and out of nowhere thumped at him blindly again. She smacked his shoulder and the side of his head with her forearm, about this close to slamming him square in the face and Draco grunted in surprise and scrambled back from her like a crab, on his elbows and both feet.

"I'm sick of you telling me you hate me," she half-yelled from the dark, and her fingers hooked over his thigh and then she was crawling up him and shoving him down to the floor, the stone shockingly cold on his naked back, her straddling his thighs, her hands balled into fists that dug down into his chest.

"I'm sick of you using me like I'm just a thing. I've tried to be patient I've tried to understand but now it just feels like you're trying to do to me what they're doing to you and I just can't take that today. Not today…" She ended in a trail of sobs, beating her fists into his chest bloody hard and he grabbed one of her wrists, stilled that hand and the other stopped hitting him a moment later too, and then she started crying weakly, slumping froward so her hair dragged and tickled over his chest.

Draco bit his lip, suddenly worried, because they'd established a routine, that was admittedly nowhere near healthy or normal, but seemed to work to keep them half-sane, and now she'd deviated from it and he didn't know the reason why she had, but it had to be bad.

"What happened today?" he asked her tightly, heart racing a little now. He'd passed out before she had during the torture - the last thing he remembered seeing was her face opposite him, streaked with tears.

"Oh," she said in a dismissive, sobbing, pitiful half-laugh as if it wasn't really important despite the fact that she'd just tackled him and thumped him because of it. "Nothing…nothing terrible, compared to -what it could have been," she finished awkwardly, and Draco wondered if she had been going to say compared to you and decided it wouldn't have mattered if she had.

"Not really," she continued. "They just - god. They just…" She trailed off and he knew her well enough to know that she was waving her hand in the air aimlessly. "Said things to me. Pawed their horrible, disgusting hands all over me."

Draco shut his eyes and unwillingly pictured the last time he'd seen them do that to her during the torture. Nothing…he felt sick…nothing invasive, exactly, but their hands had been rough on her, and definitely fucking sexual and before he'd gotten too lost in his own pain, he'd been seeing red with helpless rage. He blinked, his impotent anger leaving him feel suddenly heavy and numb, his fingers curling hard into the stones beside him, scraping over them hard, nails catching on the uneven surface.

"Did they…?"

"My honour is still intact, if that's what you mean."

The depth of her anger and bitterness astounded Draco, and he struggled up, her going with him on his lap, his chin brushing against her forehead as he twisted so that he leant against the wall.

"Shit, Hermione, I -" He didn't know what to say, and there was a long, horribly awkward silence before she scrambled off him, wincing to herself as she bumped a foot - her broken ankle probably - on his kneecap. "I just get so trapped in my head. In my…in what I want, and…fuck, this place is screwing with my head. I can't even think straight half the time, and then I get so angry and I just want you because you're all I have and I don't even think about what you want I just…I'm sorry."

He was an arsehole. That was the only explanation, and it was a true one - Draco knew it. He thought back over the past few days in his mind and realised just how fucking selfish he'd been. Because she was going through horrible shit too - it wasn't just him. It was her as well, and he'd gotten dug so deep into his stupid damned self-pity and half-madness that he'd forgotten all about Hermione and what she was going through. He was supposed to be protecting her, and instead he'd just ended up hurting her.

"I know. I know. It's messing with mine too." Her voice was quiet, coming from his right, and from the slightly muffled sound to her voice she was sitting with her back to him. He could picture her - too damn thin, all her bones sticking out, covered in livid scars and her hair a matted dark tangle falling down just past her shoulders.

She huffed softly, sounding like she was choking down tears, and went on. "And I don't mind when we…when you…you know. Usually. Except that's the only way - the only time - you've touched me in the past few days, and it feels like you…like you really do hate me. Or something."

Draco gulped down the lump in his throat the wavering smallness of her voice created, and dragged his hand through his hair. "I don't hate you. You know that, Hermione."

He didn't know how things had gotten so twisted up. How they'd…but then that was the nature of the torture and captivity they were going through - its purpose. It pulled people all to bits and made them into something they hadn't been before, something else entirely; something broken and cowed and fucked in the head. She was starting to mutter something, and he tried again.

"I don't hate you, Hermione. And I'm sorry I -"

But she was mumbling disconnected incoherent things in a broken voice about marriage and was so happy and how is it ever - ever going to be right again and she wasn't listening to him, was lost in her thoughts of the future and the past, which Draco tried not to think about at all, because it only made everything seem that much worse.

So he put his hand out in the dark and it landed on her back. Hermione jumped and her mumbling cut off, and he splayed his fingers flat, pressed gently into her skin like a signal to her to be still, and she was as he ran his hand over the raised, rough lines of scarring with a gentle touch.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, and the air felt heavy and his bones felt hot and full beneath his skin somehow.

"I want to go home…" she sobbed, and her shoulders were shaking. "I just want to go home and for everything to be okay again."

He scooted closer to her, sitting sideways to her, his hand sweeping up over her shoulder and his upper body twisted so he could press his lips lightly against her shoulder. She jerked like she expected the pain flare of a bite, and dully, filled with anger at himself, Draco supposed she that she did expect it. Because that was all he'd given her. Receiving pain and inflicting it - it seemed like it was all he did anymore.

He kissed the slope of her neck and shoulder, feeling soft skin and the ridged edge of a scar, and Hermione let out a shuddering sound, still crying quietly.

"I'm sorry. For…everything," Draco said, his lips barely brushing her skin as he spoke, meaning their situation, and his behaviour, and that she couldn't go home, and that everything couldn't be okay again. He felt like he was sinking, so heavy, and the anger that had consumed him just a short time ago had been banished by weariness and a horrible, crawling shame. She didn't say anything, shoulders still shaking jaggedly, and Draco brushed her hair out of the way, kissed the curve of her neck, swiping his tongue over her skin and tasting salt.

Hermione shivered and made a little mmm-ing sound, and Draco's hand curved over the jut of her shoulder, clasping it firmly as he kissed and nibbled a very, very gentle path along her neck.

"I'm sorry too," she said breathily while his face was buried against her, tongue swirling in circles just behind her ear, and he hummed an acknowledgment and slid his hand up and down her upper arm in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

"'S'all right," he mumbled, and then curled his arms around her, pulling her back against him, feeling all filled up and weighed down but light-headed at the same time, and she tasted like sweat and old blood, and he suddenly just wanted to crawl inside her skin, melt into her and lose himself in her.

There was a long, easy silence in which they shifted so Hermione was nestled between his legs, his back to the wall and her hands on his thighs, his arms around her. She leant her head back against his chest and shoulder, and Draco kissed her neck and throat and shoulder; stupidly trying to make up for all the ungentle touches and anger. She sighed, boneless and heavy as she leant back into him.

Draco kept touching her with gentle, soothing motions, dropping tiny kisses on every patch of skin he could reach, and Hermione seemed to like it from the way her fingers kneaded his thighs like a contented cat's paws. And then, after a long while, her little kneading motions stopped.

"Hermione?" he whispered in her ear, and only slow, even breathing answered him, and Draco sank his face down against her neck and sighed, thinking about the future despite how he usually tried so hard not to think about it. He sat there, and wondered for what felt like the hundredth time how the hell they were going to put themselves back together, if they managed to get out of this alive.

The cell door swung open, and from the time and the lumos, Hermione wasn't surprised when Snape stepped inside. Luckily, Draco was asleep, or Snape would have had to stupefy and obliviate him, and Hermione didn't want to be party to that extent of deception. Mucking with his mind when he trusted her - it made her think of what she'd done to her parents, and feel ill. She dragged a thin blanket up around her, tucking it under her arms and slipping away from Draco with a kiss to his temple.

Snape was looking at her oddly as she limped towards his position at the door.

"What?" she asked almost rudely, her self-censors broken down to nearly nothing. Snape looked like he wanted to give her a disdainful sneer, but couldn't quite manage it.

"Plans have changed," he said after a brief pause, and she frowned because she'd meant why was he giving her a funny look, and also because plans changing was rarely good, in her experience.

"What do you mean?"

"The Dark Lord has been delayed. He may not return for another three weeks, and I am unwilling to attempt to bring down the wards before I absolutely need to." Hermione's blood ran cold at that, as she tried to process the reality of three more weeks when the past fourteen days had seemed like a year. She blinked at him, horrified, blanket slipping a little and unnoticed.

"Why?" She sounded strangled and hoarse, and she spoke too loud because Draco muttered and stirred in his sleep and Snape eyed him suspiciously. Hermione followed the Snape's gaze and caught her lip between her teeth as she examined Draco's face. He was having a bad dream - he only got that wrinkle between his brows when he was uneasy in his sleep. She looked back up at Snape to find him watching her with that strange look again.

"You love him, don't you Miss Granger?" he asked, the contempt in his voice easing very slightly, softened by intense bewilderment. Well, there was no reason to deny it to Snape, and Hermione was too fuddled, tired, and wrung out to lie convincingly anyway.

"Yes," she said shortly, feeling very set off-balance by the ex-Potions teacher and his strange questions.

"A Slytherin and a Gryffindor," Snape mused under his breath, with a funny bitter twist to his mouth. "How ironic." And then louder, he said, "And that -" he jerked his wand at Draco's Dark Mark, "- Doesn't bother you, Miss Granger?"

"It does actually. A lot of things about Draco bother me. And he tells me all the time I bother the hell out of him. But I fail to see how that's relevant to why you're willing to leave us here to rot for three more weeks!" She ended on a fierce snarl and poked a finger at him and the blanket slipped further. Snape averted his eyes, a flush of red appearing across his cheekbones and Hermione realised she was half exposed. It irritated the fuck out of her that Snape was acting so prudishly offended by the sight of her when he had actually touched her breast without her permission before, but she just huffed out an angry sound and hitched the blanket up again.

"Well?" she snapped in a harsh, demanding whisper, and Snape cleared his throat awkwardly, still acting utterly discombobulated by her nearly flashing him, and she wondered if he'd ever - and cut the thought off decidedly with an inward shudder. Merlin, she needed sleep before her she really went mad.

"I have left notes that reveal the location of 'two packages' at a number of Death Eater safehouses I have had reason to visit over the past week. I hope that in their hunt for you, the Order will come across one of them and realise what the note means. I can do very little else unless I would like to risk blowing my cover, which I would not. I'm already risking enough, Miss Granger. Hopefully, they will reach you before Voldemort's return, and my assistance will not be needed at all."

"What if they don't - you - you bastard!" She was so furious she could claw his face off, thinking of her and Draco and three more weeks and her head spinning and spinning at the thought, like she had vertigo and her body didn't know what was up or down or sideways or… Snape took her elbow to steady her as she swayed and clutched at her head, clasping her arm between his finger and thumb like she repelled him, and sneering down at her.

"I didn't have to put my safety in jeopardy for you, Miss Granger. I could have just let the rabble have you."

Oooh, she hated him, the arrogant, greasy bastard. How noble of him, that he'd done the minimum he could do to prevent them from raping her as well as torturing her. Did he think that made him a good person?

"And why didn't you just let them, then?" she asked, all churning fury and terror, because three weeks. Merlin. They'd never survive it.

"Because I saw an opportunity to communicate with Potter through you, and because I am…fond of Draco, and would rather not see him wounded any further if I could help it." There was a distant affection in Snape's voice, rather like that of an uncle for a favourite nephew, and she absurdly remembered how Draco always beat her in potions and she had always known it was because of favouritism and not skill.

"Three weeks is too long," she protested urgently as Snape turned on his heel.

"I apologise, but I will do it at the last possible moment and no sooner. Now excuse me, Miss Granger, I must be going."

"Snape, please. Don't you know what they're doing to him? What they're doing to us? You can't just leave us here. You can't just leave us!" It took an immense effort not to scream at him at the top of her lungs, the cords in her neck standing out and her face red as she hissed at him furiously. His thin lips flattened out further and his eyes shuttered over, a faint pity on his face but no mercy forthcoming.

"I do know, Miss Granger. But I have my reasons. It will be in three weeks exactly, unless circumstances change again." And then he nodded sharply and was gone in a billow of black robes, and Hermione was left choking on bitter, bitter tears, because three weeks was like a lifetime. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room in Snape's wake, and she gasped for air that wouldn't come. Three weeks. Three weeks.

"They set it alight! They fucking set it ablaze the bastards," Ron raged, staring over at the shack that had once been a safe house for the Death Eaters. "Again. They're always just one fucking step ahead of us!" He swore as the house in front of them burned just like the last three had, and kicked blindly at a tree in his anger. "They could have had information in there! Prisoner transport instructions, anything."

"I doubt it. They aren't going to discuss captives as important as Hermione and Malfoy on paper - they wouldn't want to risk we'd find the records of it," Truffle pointed out, and Ron kicked the tree again.

"Well, if they did write it down, we wouldn't have found it anyway, would we? Because the place has gone up like a ruddy bonfire!" he snarled and clenched his fists.

Stacks of burning papers darkened and curled on an old desk inside as the flames consumed them. One was a slip of parchment tucked between two others, which read: 'The two packages at Mintres must not be shifted before the Dark Lord's return'.' A missive in handwriting that was carefully completely unlike Snape's, and was never meant for any Death Eater's eyes. It burnt.

Hermione hung in the chains and cried and begged and pleaded with them, lost beyond all reason, promising them anything if they'd only stop. Shame burned through her beneath the agony and the mindless desperation, because Draco was watching her with steady, wounded grey eyes, blood dripping from his nose and tracking down his thin, scarred chest, and she didn't want him to see her beg but she couldn't stop herself.

All the barriers were gone between Hermione and Draco now, as she counted down the final days until Snape would take down the anti-apparition wards. Nothing was sacred, nothing was taboo, and nothing was private. It was what kept them from sinking into selfishness and self-pity, what kept them from using each other, or retreating.

She still wondered how on earth they would ever go back to normal, but now it was because they were twined so tight - had become so unhealthily interdependent - that she didn't know how they would function somewhere other than their eight foot by eight foot cell. The only time she was apart from him was when Rostan took him, and other than that they were always in contact, always touching, although they never really talked much.

Hermione was half-seriously worried that they'd get outside of the cell and she would just be overwhelmed by everything - all the freedom - and just want to spend the rest of her life locked in the cellar of Godric's Hollow with him. She curled up against his warm chest and tried to sleep, and his arm came down tight around her, snugging her even closer. She didn't think he'd object to the cellar idea, actually. She wondered idly how many years of therapy they would need before they stopped being half-mad.

Her mind wandered aimlessly, until, despite it being late afternoon or somewhere thereabouts, exhaustion dug its claws into her and drowned her under it. Hermione dreamed of ants and Voldemort and a giant bowl of icing that kept threatening to spill over, and she awoke crying in a frightened muddle from the nightmare which had been absurd and yet so scary, as footsteps thudded into their cell.

She hadn't even got her eyes open yet when hands dragged Draco roughly up away from her, taking him and him alone, before either of them were even properly awake, and she curled into a ball and cried harder.

"I don't think I even remember what a bed feels like. Or a shower. Or clean clothes," Hermione sighed, and Draco glanced up at her, her eyes looking dull and sunken, her tone dreamy as if she was half-lost in memory, or fantasy.

He dropped his eyes back to his concave abdomen, picking at scabbed over bite mark beside his bellybutton and making it bleed again. They'd just spent the past hour being crucioed, so the pain of opening old scabs didn't even really register, and it soothed him, somehow. He could feel Hermione looking at him funny, whenever he did it. Just like she looked at him funny when he spent hours shredding a bit of rag as small as he could get it, like he was trying to un-weave the cloth, or when he traced invisible runes onto the stones in front of him, or sat and stared and stared at the rectangle of flickering barred light that came in through the cell door's little window.

"When we get out of here, I'm taking a bubble bath and not getting out until I'm like a prune all over," she continued dreamily, and he made a neutral sort of grunt in response. He didn't like playing these sorts of games. She'd been unusually positive these last couple of days - a strange, strained, nervous sort of excited energy hanging about her - and she'd started talking about 'when we get out' and it made Draco uneasy, because she'd either gone mad from the strain and was living in a fantasy world, or she knew something he didn't, and he didn't like being kept in the dark.

Draco thought it had something to do with whatever was in her pocket, but he hadn't yet had a chance to get into her pocket without her catching him.

"I'm going to curl up in bed and sleep for a week," she said and sighed again, as if she could feel the soft warm bed beneath her right now. He stopped picking at the scabbed wound and looked up at her again, his fingers tap-tap-tapping idly on the floor.

"Sleep?" he asked, raising his eyebrow and trying to sound arch and obscene - how he used to - and he thought maybe he succeeded from the way she blushed at him, fingers twisting up nervously into a lank strand of hair by her face.

"That - that'll be what we do the second week," she said hesitantly. She eyed him as though she was afraid her mentioning sex would set him off, even though he managed - wanted - to screw her every day without freaking out, even when it wasn't rough and angry and just about letting out his boiling emotions. Draco's left eye twitched convulsively as he set himself off with his thoughts and his insides curdled horribly, but he forced a smile to curve his lips because they were both trying very, very hard to act normally these past few days.

Because they were slipping, and it scared them, so they tried to pretend.

He tried to think of something clever and witty to say, but pulled up a blank, and his eyes flicked back to his scabbed, bleeding bite mark.

"Sounds good," he said vaguely, losing his grip on the normality of the moment and disappearing back into his head and he knew it was happening, but couldn't quite bring himself to care enough to stop it. His fingers idly pick-pick-picked at the bite, and he was dimly aware of Hermione sliding over to him, her hair tickling and rough on his arm and neck, and the warm weight of her head tipped against his shoulder.

"We're going to get out, Draco, I swear," she said very softly and with a desperate tone that let him know she wasn't actually totally sure, but for a moment, Draco really, really almost believed her.

She knew that today was the day Snape was supposed to take down the anti-apparition wards, and she'd been praying all day that she'd be able to get her hands on a wand. That they wouldn't come to torture them until the coin had glowed hot, so she could snatch one of their wands and disapparate with Draco before the unsuspecting Death Eaters even knew what had happened.

But they'd come and taken them away early that morning, and it had gone on forever and Hermione had passed out and only come to when she was dumped on the cell floor to the tune of Draco swearing viciously at their captors in a thick, slurred voice.

He'd stumbled to his knees by her side and she'd blinked through bleary, swollen eyes and tried to flail an arm out for him. The floor was cold on her back and arms and…legs? Hermione made a frightened sound and tried to look down at her body to see why her legs felt so cold, like they were bare, and Draco's arm came up around her.

"Easy, easy. They - they…"

"My clo'es, Dra-Draco my clo'es. Wha' happen'?" The words came out all garbled and she retched as blood trickled down her throat, and he tipped her to one side gently, so she could let it dribble out onto the floor. His voice was horribly tight as he answered her.

"Your -" He sounded like he was strangling on something, like he was going to vomit all over her, and he slurred from however they'd hurt his mouth. But all she could think about was her trousers, and fear was icier than the floor on her skin. "Your kn-knickers are still on, Hermione. They - they didn't…"

"Chausses. Whe'?" she asked urgently, not thinking or giving a damn about whatever they'd done to her while she was unconscious right now, only thinking about the coin, the fucking coin in her trouser pocket, and she needed it. He jerked his head to the side and she saw the motion, blurry and distorted, his pale hair nearly white in the light, except where it was streaked by dark red.

"They're here."

"Get them," she demanded-pleaded and he did as she bid, confusion and sickness on his face, and a sigh of relief sank out of her as she pushed herself painfully to one elbow and felt the pocket with shaking hands, and her thumb ran over the outline of the coin there.

"Jesus." She fell back, head knocking slightly on the stones in her clumsy exhaustion and pain. His face hovered over her, grey eyes wide and worried and dried blood crusted beneath his nose. His arms came around her, lifting her up to him with a struggle and a grunt, and then they were locked together on the ground, and her head was buried against his shoulder. Pain seared through her despite the rough healing they must have both received, like always, and she winced at the trembling ache through her muscles.

"I thought…they - they were going to -" Draco started; the words all thick and shapeless so she had to strain to make them out. Hermione slid her arms around his waist, despite the pain in them when she moved them, and clung on like a limpet. His heart thundered against her ear, and his breath rasped on the top of her head, uneven, jagged.

"Bu' they din't?" She felt slightly ill - very ill - thinking that they could have, and she wouldn't have even been aware of it, and somehow that seemed worse, although she would have thought it would have been better, not being conscious. But it no longer seemed that way, and she shuddered, her arms still locked around his waist and her hand bunching her chausses up against his back, clutching onto the coin inside them. Eventually, his breathing calmed, and she let the slowing, steady beat of his heart soothe her own nerves.

"Has whatever's in your pocket got anything to do with why you've been so shitting positive lately, Hermione?" Draco asked slyly, head bent so that he was whispering so close to her ear she could feel his lips curve into a weak smile as she jolted. Of course he knew something was up. Neither of them might be in their right minds, but he was still a damned Slytherin. He'd probably known something was going on for weeks - she wondered why he hadn't asked her about it.

"Yes," she said after a short pause.

"But you can't tell me anything about it?"

"No."

"Didn't think so," he sighed and hoisted her up in his arms a little, nestling her firmer on his lap, his forearms twitching and trembling with the after-effects of the Cruciatus.

"Is it happening soon?" There was a thread of unravelling desperation in his words, and Hermione gnawed at her lip as she decided what to say and then stopped with a wince - her mouth was swollen and sore, and her lip didn't appreciate being bitten.

"We need to get our hands on a wand today. Not yet, but soon, probably - in the next few hours. I can tell you when," she murmured into his chest, and felt him nod slowly. "I was hoping they'd leave the - the torture until later when we need the wand, so we could grab one off them, but…now we need to get one some other way."

He grunted, chest rumbling with bitter humour. "Maybe Rostan'll come to visit."

Hermione shivered, but nodded against him, because really, that was what they wanted. Otherwise she'd have to…make lots of noise and get the Death Eaters down here, or something - because if they tried to apparate without a wand they'd splinch themselves into a dozen pieces, and if they didn't apparate away then Draco would be left here tomorrow, while Hermione went with Snape, and she wasn't letting that happen. She wasn't leaving Draco here, in Voldemort's hands.

She pulled back from him, every movement hurting, trying unsuccessfully not to notice the fingermarks bruised into her thighs and breasts, and the bites that dotted her as he held her up unsteadily while she pulled her trousers on, the coin still cool and inactivated against her hip.

"If no one comes, I'll just pretend I've gone mad and threaten to kill you very loudly," he said, and she could hear the dry smile in his voice. "They won't allow that."

"You're already mad, Draco," she answered with what she thought he wanted her to say, what she thought should be the appropriate response - unable to tell from instinct anymore, having to think about how one was supposed to react normally - and was vaguely gratified when he snorted a laugh into her hair.

She was curled into Draco, all tucked in his lap, and he'd draped the thickest blanket around her shoulders to cover her as she dozed in and out of edgy sleep. Tension thrummed in his veins. Something was going to happen today, something that involved getting a wand, and he was pretty fucking sure it wasn't to make a spot of tea. They were escaping today, if all went well. He thought about that, and thought about it, and his heart thumped like a drum in his chest, all tight and booming. The escape wasn't a moment too soon, either. If Draco hadn't been aware enough to scream at the Death Eaters torturing them, about Snape and not damaging his goods, then Hermione would have been naked and raped quicker than he could blink.

He gulped, stomach curdling at the thought.

And even if Voldemort did give Hermione to Snape… Draco frowned to himself. Snape had always favoured Draco, always liked him, ever since he was a kid. He hoped desperately that Snape had claimed Hermione because he'd been able to tell she meant something to Draco, and was doing Draco a favour as he'd often done in the past. Draco had never thought of Snape as a rapist - the man had never touched a woman, Muggle or otherwise, in any sexual fashion, ever, as far as Draco knew, or had heard. His belief that Snape wasn't like that was still a rather slim hope given what was at stake, however. What if the man really did want Hermione to be…?

Well, Draco thought, burying his face into her matted hair and whiffing in the scent of her - rather ripe, but still her - at least Snape was better than her being thrown to the Death Eaters to use up and throw away. Fuck, was this what it had come to? Being glad that maybe it was only Snape who would rape Hermione? They had to get out.

Hermione stirred in his arms, her face nuzzled half into his chest, half into his armpit - which had rather startled Draco when she'd rather vigorously buried her face there. He couldn't imagine it was very pleasant, as they hadn't been scourgified in several days now, but she had resisted his efforts to tug her away and resettle her somewhere more pleasant.

She said it was like a cave, with his arms up around her shoulders like that, holding the blanket around her. She'd said it made her feel safe. He'd smiled faintly at that, all packed with the silent, desperate hope that they might be free by the end of the day - if they could get a wand, apparently.

Draco's head jerked up when the bolt on the door thudded back, and his arms locked hard around Hermione. There was only one reason the Death Eaters came to the cell after they'd already tortured Draco and Hermione. He shuddered and shrank inside, and then remembered. Put his mouth to Hermione's ear as the cell door creaked slowly open.

"Do we need the wand yet?"

"No," she breathed miserably, and her fingers dug into his back, hugging him so tight he let out an oof of breath as she crushed the wind right out of him. Shit. Shit. They were coming to get him and…and they couldn't grab the wand yet, so he - and they - were going to - again oh Merlin fuck no not again - Draco choked down a sob. He refused to give them the satisfaction. Maybe when they brought him back, maybe then she could use the wand, and they could escape then.

Yes, he thought frantically, his hand petting rough over Hermione's head, preparing for Rostan's sneer, and hands ripping him away from Hermione, and everything that followed. Draco would think about escape. He'd think about that, and not what was happening to him, not at all.

And then a white-blonde head appeared in the gloom, and cold lips smiled down at him and Hermione, and Draco's heart froze in its beating for a second that seemed to go on forever. Oh shit. This couldn't be good.

"Hello, father," Draco said through numb lips.