It took all afternoon for Hermione to copy the documents she'd stolen so they'd appear in Molly's book. Things OK, she wrote. She thought about adding more. Should she say that Narcissa had practically ordered her son to show her how to access all this information, or that the boy they'd hated for years had been more than happy to help? Maybe it was better to keep that to herself. Maybe no one would believe her anyway.

all fine here was the only return message she'd gotten. It wasn't very much. She wanted to know everything. She wanted to know if Ginny was still getting better, if Ron missed her, if they were planning on making raids. She didn't even know if they were still on the continent. They might have slipped back into the country. They might be up the road.

It was probably better for her not to know. They had to assume she was unreliable. Even if she didn't fall in to some kind of false, desperate love with Malfoy, she could be found out. She could be sobbing in some parlor right now, telling a Death Eater everything for all the Order knew. It was better to keep her ignorant.

It didn't mean she liked it.

Malfoy watched her copy all the things out. He sat in her suite, legs outstretched, as she wrote sentence after sentence in handwriting that grew steadily worse. She didn't even know if this would be helpful and as her hand cramped she became less and less optimistic it would. Who cared about lists of the various wizards who'd met with Yaxley, or the cryptic notations next to each name?

When she finally put down her quill and shook out her hand she looked over at Malfoy. He hadn't moved for hours and it reminded her of nothing so much as the way Victor Krum had watched her study in happier days. "All done?" Malfoy asked.

She nodded and he accioed the parchment to his hand and, with a quick incendio charm, obliterated any evidence of their theft. "My mother will be in her room tonight with a headache," Malfoy said. "I'll have dinner be sent to you, if you don't mind."

"Headache?" Hermione glanced at the window. It was still light, still hours from when she'd expected to have to put on a command performance and he'd been with her all day. How could he possibly know the state of his mother's head?

"Whenever Yaxley appears, she gets one," Malfoy said.

"Oh." Hermione wondered if the pains were real or if Narcissa simply refused to entertain the man and had hit upon a socially acceptable way to never be available. She watched the charm take the last batch of her work to Molly and touched the paper as if she could touch her friends that way. Draco watched her but said nothing. He only stood, nodded to her with distant courtesy, and let himself out.

She considered going for a walk out to the gardens again, or just exploring through the house. Despite Malfoy's assurances she was a guest, however, and despite the wand still in her possession, she decided she didn't want to risk it. She found a book on the shelves and curled up to read all about the history of gardening with partially sentient plants – it turned out several species of magical roses were just smart enough to jab thorns into passers-by who didn't praise them for their beauty - and spent the afternoon and early evening having an almost pleasant time. It would have been wholly pleasant if she hadn't felt like she had to be on her guard. At least the tray that appeared on her table at precisely 7:30 had a good meal laid out for her.

Books. A comfortable room. A delicious dinner. After years of privation it felt almost sinful. Expiation for those sins arrived shortly after nine, when she'd long finished the Hogwarts Mess that had ended the meal and was about to finish the book. A loud knock at the door had her grabbing her wand and calling out, "Who's there," even as she lifted the latch and cautiously turned the knob, ready to hex anyone on the other side.

It was Malfoy.

He stumbled forward then fell to his knees. She looked as far as she dared down the corridor but it was safely empty, then shut the door as quickly as she could and fastened the lock. Then she turned back to Malfoy. He was still down on his hands and knees and was coughing blood up onto the cream carpet. His hair was slick with sweat, he trembled with every breath, and what little color his skin had had drained away leaving his fair complexion wan and ghastly.

"What happened to you?" she asked, but she knew. She remembered.

"This makes seven," he said and then coughed again. She accioed a washcloth from the en suite, dampened it with a quick aguamenti charm and wiped at his face. She didn't think it would do much good but it was all she really had.

"Why?" she asked. She sat down next to him. His hair clung to his forehead, damp with sweat, but she stroked it anyway as he collapsed into her lap and shook. Crucio wasn't a curse she had a lot of experience with. Death Eaters didn't bother to torture people on the battlefield. They cursed to kill. They saved this kind of suffering for prisoners and their own. She wanted to grab pain potions she didn't have and pour them down his throat. She wanted to be a Healer who knew what to do, but all she had was a damp washcloth and sympathy.

Well, rage. She had rage, too. She just didn't think that would help.

He lay on her floor, breathing hard, and didn't answer for a long time. She moved his hair back from his face and thought how very pale it was. Each strand was almost translucent. How odd it must be to be so lacking in color. She wiped the blood away from his mouth with her cloth and tried not to look at what was sure to be a stain on the carpet. The carpet was probably priceless. One more beautiful thing ruined by these people.

She hoped he'd just bitten the inside of his mouth. She hoped he didn't have internal bleeding.

"Getting you to come to our side, even if I was thinking with my… my cock," he began, before he stopped, stumbling over the crudity. Hermione tried not to be amused that her childhood bully was embarrassed to be vulgar in front of her now. If he had any idea of the language she'd heard from Ron and Harry and Dean and the whole lot of them he'd know she wouldn't bat an eye at the word.

Of course, he didn't know anything about her other than her blood status and her marks at school.

"Yes," she said, "Your cock."

She must not have completely hidden her amusement because he lifted his head and glared at her before dropping it back down in defeated exhaustion. "I'm to be commended for that," he said. "Getting you here."

"Which made them torture you?" she asked.

"My youthful ardor alerted Potter," Malfoy said. He twisted youthful ardor into something hateful with his tongue and she knew he was quoting Yaxley.

"So, you were punished for his escape," she said. She should have anticipated that.

He closed his eyes. "Yes," he said. "And told that since you were such a marvelous witch, I should restrict my… I should come to you for help after. No one else."

"And here you are," she said. She had to keep from curling her hands into fists. She didn't know what to do and Yaxley had to have suspected she wouldn't. Healing was a specialized skill with specialized charms and she was a fighter. A researcher. He'd known and he'd wanted Draco to suffer for as long as possible and he'd wanted her to see it. "Who?" she asked. He stirred in her lap and she asked again, "Who tortured you?"

"Alecto," he said.

She tried to hide the choked sound of fury. Of course it had been Alecto. The bitch had probably wanted to get even for the rose garden incident. Draco let out a pained attempt at a laugh and said, "Yeah."

She eased back so she could lean against the wall. He wasn't going anywhere, not even to a more comfortable place to lie down, not for a while, so she might as well get settled. She smoothed his hair again and tipped her head back. The ceiling here was nice. Tidy half-circles has been traced in the plaster as it dried. She'd started to count them when he said, "Talk to me."

The words sounded too plaintive. She didn't like it. She preferred him as the arrogant, smirking opaque enemy. She preferred him as the laconic, sullen man pushing vegetables around his plate as he fenced with his parents. Hell, she preferred him as the schoolyard bully. Anything was better than the whispering plea to distract him from the pain. She'd heard that from Ginny. She'd heard that from Dean. She didn't want to hear it ever again.

"About what?" she asked.

He went to make a tiny shrug then stopped, to weak and hurting to expend the energy. "You?" he suggested.

She let out a weak laugh. "Not much to tell," she said. "I left Hogwarts with Harry to find Horcruxes. Found them. Killed Voldemort. Thought everything was better."

Everything hadn't been better. Within months they'd gone back into hiding. Seamus had died in an explosion gone wrong. Dean hadn't talked for a week after that. Luna had gotten weirder and weirder, and every conversation with her now was about some conspiracy or other. She needed the delusion that the world had a pattern and made sense but even as she clung to those ideas she'd become more and more deadly. She killed without remorse now.

"You still with Weasley?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. She owed Malfoy for Ron's life. For her life. For all their lives. "We were starting to talk about getting married."

"That's nice," Malfoy said. "He'll wait until you – "

"Get out of here?" Hermione asked. She kept losing count of how many of the plaster patterns there were the long way across the ceiling. She sighed and gave up trying to number them. "Yeah, he'll wait."

"I would too," Malfoy said. "For someone I loved, I'd wait as long as it took."

"Yeah," Hermione said. She believed him. He'd stayed here with his parents when he could have fled easily enough. Whatever building blocks made the foundation of the man in her lap, loyalty was one of them. "He's a good one."

Malfoy snorted and she laughed. He had to be feeling at least a little better if he could manage that. "You think you can make it to the bed?" she asked.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her in what had to be disbelief. "You aren't going to make it back to your room," she said. "The bed is softer than the floor." She hesitated before adding, "I'll sleep in the chair."

That got him to struggle back to his knees, then his feet, and she helped him hobble across the room, into the bedroom, and tucked him into her bed. He fell asleep almost at once, worn out by pain and exhaustion. She watched him until she was tired enough to sleep in the arm chair. It wasn't comfortable.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – A 'Hogwarts Mess' is a verbal play on the British dessert, Eton Mess.

Thank you to Salazars for beta reading! I own all the remaining mistakes.