"He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy." - Thomas Hobbes

Chapter Two: Traveling with Malfoy

Her first toilet break was a spectacle, just as she'd predicted it to be. She had definitely put it off for as long as she could, but she was going to pee on him if he didn't let her go now.

"You're making this such a big deal. Just go!"

Hermione blinked in vain. "I can't see, and I won't go if you're watching me!"

Draco tossed up his hands and stormed away, knowing that they would argue more if he protested again. He didn't want their argument to get too explosive, lest it invite some Death Eaters to scope out the area. Not to mention that her voice was grating his nerves and he was barely resisting the urge to reach out and slap her.

She listened until she could barely make out the sound of him crunching through the fallen leaves. She put her back against a nearby tree. All she could do at this point was hope that he was decent enough to give her some privacy. She had issues with peeing outside, let alone while someone was holding her captive.

After she had silently pulled up her jeans, she listened. She couldn't hear him at all. How far away could she get if she ran now? She reached deep inside herself for some magic.

"Don't even think about it," a voice said, directly in front of her.

Tears came to her eyes involuntarily. Who knew if he'd been there the whole time or not? Shame squirmed in her skin. "I hate you," she mumbled, putting her face in her arms.

Instead of responding with any of the million things he could have said to that, he snorted, which said all of those things for him. He pulled her up by her arm.

As they traveled that day, Hermione fumed silently, cringing away from him as much as possible with every step he took through the foliage. Vulnerability was a difficult thing to digest. It squirmed in her stomach like a derisive little eel, mocking her sense of self-worth. She wanted nothing more than to squish it flat, hammer it down so she could concentrate on how to escape.

Magic boiled inside of her. She needed to incapacitate Malfoy long enough for her to run a safe distance away. How could she do that? There were so many things one could do with wandless magic - it was just a matter of using as little energy as possible to do as much damage as possible.

Without warning, she pushed a combination of energy and magic out of her pores, and they were on fire.

"Oh stop it," he muttered tiredly, more irritated than angry. His arms turned ice cold, and she choked on a mouthful of steam. Her resolve faltered; now she was weaker, and all she had done was make him angry.

At least she knew that he could do wandless magic as well, which was good... sort of. No, it really wasn't. It just made it harder for her to understand that she probably wasn't going to get out of this. Hermione breathed in and out, noticing that his grip on her had tightened.

"Stop struggling so much. I'm trying to help you."

"You don't care about me," she spat, her voice shaking as she recovered from the embarrassment of having her attempt foiled so easily.

"You're right, I don't - let's be clear on that. Just don't get on my nerves and I won't hurt you." He lifted her up in his arms a little higher so their faces were level.

"Like I believe that. You hurt people just for the fuck of it."

She gasped as gravity took her to the forest floor and her temple bounced against a stone. As she groaned, he stormed away from her determinedly. She was definitely bleeding.

And now she was completely alone.

"Hey!" she yelled after him, her perception of up and down once again reversed.

He responded in the distance with something that sounded like, "Fuck off."

Her eyes welled up with tears again. She was alone and blind in a forest, and thus fresh meat to any enemy she might encounter. The fact that she was free, that Malfoy had left her there and she could now be in control of her own fate now seemed unimportant.

She pulled herself to her feet, and unexpectedly hit her head on something hard. She sobbed openly now, slowly moving around the branch and reaching out with her hands. She now had no idea from which direction they had come, so she couldn't go back, and she couldn't tell which direction Malfoy had gone off in. If she'd felt vulnerable before, it was nothing to how she felt now.

Hermione slowly picked her way through the trees and plants, the shaking of her shoulders having nothing to do with the breeze filtering through the trees. She couldn't use any wandless magic to fix her eyesight; it had been a dark spell that had taken it and it would take a lot more than some healing to get it back, if she ever would. She couldn't apparate without her wand, and the chances of her finding a portkey or even another person out here were very slim.

Her words seemed so frivolous now, and she cringed at her snotty comment. Why would he be put out by something like that anyway? He knew it to be true, and if he didn't, it was probably still not the first time he had heard it. But that didn't matter, as it was the fact that he'd left her there, in the mud, as soon as she'd said it that made it something to regret.

As much as she hated him, she had developed some kind of unreal dependency on his senses. He'd actually carried her, which was something she would have expected from someone like Harry or Ron, or a friendly acquaintance, not an enemy. That had not been entirely necessary. She knew that he was trying to move as quickly as possible, but why was her life worth it to him?

Was he trying to save himself? He should have just dropped her like a stone from the beginning - what was he doing with her anyway? She honestly would have dropped him if their roles had been switched.

Oh, but he had dropped her, literally, just now.

She concluded that he was on some kind of power trip. He knew that she needed him. She sucked in her breath and tried to shake away her tears. She wasn't weak, but she was acting like it. She needed to calm down, toughen up, and figure out how to fix this.

Draco paced, fuming. This whole ordeal was becoming more trouble than it was worth. He was doing a good thing by keeping her from them, and all she could do was complain and struggle. Would she rather he had left her to Krokesh and Rubinoff, letting them take her to Master?

She doesn't need to be alive anyway, a dark part of him rationalized. In fact, everything would work just fine if she were dead. Dead, she is no use to the Death Eaters either. Neither the Death Eaters nor the Ministry of Magic had any way of knowing whether she was alive or dead while she was with him, so if he killed her or if he left her to die, no one would know...

Draco snorted at that thought, disgusted that he had considered it even for a moment. He wasn't going to kill her. Of course not.

Besides, if... no, when... he was inevitably captured by the Ministry, if he had killed her, there was no way to escape either death or a life sentence in Azkaban.

But if she inexplicably died, the Death Eaters could also claim responsibility for taking her and killing her if they wanted to. They already knew that she had not been captured, so they in turn had more information about the situation than anyone in Potter's outfit, who suspected nothing yet. It would probably take Potter a week to find out that she was gone, and then there would be scrambling on the Ministry's part. And while the Ministry bumbled around, trying to find the forces necessary to conduct a search, the Death Eaters would be planning, training, building their torture contraptions and Imperiousing key Ministry officials.

The other thing he could do was give her to Potter and his forces. He considered this. He did not want to be thrown in Azkaban for everything he'd done just to save her life however - she wasn't that special. And she'd see to it that he was given the worst possible sentence, no doubt; no one could deny her intelligence and connections for such things. He hated her for that. It was why they'd said that he wasn't valuable.

Though in reality, they'd felt doubt in his heart, and that was why he wasn't valuable. But the statement hurt all the same.

He then heard a small noise, like a wounded animal, somewhere off to his right. He turned his head and saw something vaguely human looking through the trees, at least fifty meters away.

Well, she apparently had a sense of direction.

He would have to figure out what he was going to do later. He didn't need her blundering around until she got captured and then divulging his part in it all so they could get him too. Screw that, he had enough things to worry about without the Death Eaters knowing he was not only skipping out on them, but traitorous scum as well. He picked his way over to her as quietly as he could, and waited until he was a few feet away before he stopped.

She stopped too, hearing the sudden crunch of foliage under his trainers, and looked blindly at a point over his shoulder. He got a proper look at her eyes, covered in glassy ink... she'd look like a demon if she didn't look so frightened.

Her head was bleeding, perhaps as a result of walking around blindly in the woods, or perhaps as a product of her fall. He felt nothing at this besides a slight queasy feeling - something about the smell of blood made him sick. She was dirty beyond belief, and her hair was full of twigs and leaves. She hadn't looked nearly as bad when he'd dropped her.

"I need a bath," she said, still looking over his shoulder.

Everything about her was suddenly bizarrely hilarious. Draco couldn't keep up his silent charade anymore - he burst into laughter.

Hermione's jaw dropped, beyond insulted, beyond humiliated. "Shut up, you maggot," she snapped, trying to run her hands through her hair.

Draco shook his head, still chuckling away. She may have been annoying and insufferable, but Hermione Granger definitely had some entertainment value.

As it was pointed out, she did need a bath. He had carried her when she was covered in a thin layer of filth, because he was as well, but now that she was a host for the viral plague, there was no way he was carrying her. They would be safe enough from those louts until nightfall, though it was nearing late afternoon. They both needed a wash.

"Alright, Granger,' he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, and he cruelly laughed again.

It took him the remainder of the hour to find a water spot big enough for any kind of washing - this meant something larger than a dirty puddle. He eventually settled on a rocky ravine, knowing that it was likely the only one he would find that day. He'd had to guide her along for most of the way, so he got a taste firsthand of how much trouble not carrying her was going to be. It was a good thing he was strong - or maybe a good thing that she was so light. Did that girl eat?

Some spell that the two Death Eaters had used had sapped her strength away, so she was also moving about as fast as his dead grandmother.

"We're at water, Granger. Wash up." He crossed his arms. Her slowness really pissed him off. He knew that she was trying to play it tough, pretend like nothing was wrong - that was her personality. But he also knew that she was moments away from collapsing with the effort.

Hermione turned her head this way and that, not being able to see the water, but being able to hear it. She bent down slowly, her hands outstretched.

Her carefulness was even more painful to watch, but he knew that he had to be patient with her. He wanted to put his foot against her behind and push her, headfirst, into the water, but the last thing he wanted was for her to bang her head against a rock and have to be carried, soaking wet and unconscious, through the night.

She sighed when the frigid water engulfed her hands. She rubbed it onto her face with her rough fingers and blunt nails, scratching at the dried blood and cleaning out the little scrape on her forehead. Draco looked around before walking a bit further down and washing his own face.

Hermione turned herself over and lied down on her back, letting her hair rest in the water. The current pulled at it, removing the loose dirt, and she ran a hand through it now to dislodge the leaves, twigs, and sap that had also gotten in it. She had a gigantic knot in the back that she'd been feeling for hours and hours; it definitely needed to come out. As she leaned further into the water, the coldness crept up to her scalp and loosened her hair some more from its grimy bond.

She now knew that Malfoy had odd mood swings; one second he was storming off in a random direction and the next he was laughing at her helplessness... who could ever know what he was thinking.

Damn her eyes, she wanted to see the expression on his face, his body language, and basically everything she couldn't without them. In her condition, she had to rely on things like little huffs of annoyance and sighs of frustration to tell what he was thinking. However, being a Death Eater, he was skilled in deception. He could be using little things like that to lead her along when the reality of something could be completely different.

"Come on, this isn't a luxury spa. Time to go."

"But - "

She was cut off as Draco pulled her up, letting the cold water from her hair trail down her back.

She used the other hand to attempt to wring it out before he picked her up.

At least I am a little cleaner, she reasoned, letting him put his other arm under her legs.