They land somewhere with a sickening crack, Malfoy's arms tight around her and her stomach lurching wildly, nausea seizing it in a rhythmically clenching fist. An alarm sounds, cutting through the air with a wailing that only makes the nausea worse, and Hermione turns in Malfoy's grip and throws up on the floor. It's wooden, she notices inanely as he lets her go, gagging himself.

"Granger," he says breathless, and he's angry and desperate at once. He'd prepared himself to die, Hermione thinks wildly, and the love he'd admitted to has become a hiltless blade now that he knows he'll live, cutting him even as he holds it. "Granger, are you okay?"

Bile is acrid in her throat, searing up her nostrils, but the heaving seems to have stopped. Hermione spits on the floor and wipes the back of her mouth, lifting her head to stare at him. "Oh my god," she mumbles as she meets his eyes. "Oh Merlin." They're out. They're actually out. Both of them. Free.

"We made it," she half-yells over the alarm, voice shaking and distorted with the sobs that spill out next, dry and weird, choking her. Hermione is simultaneously more happy and relieved than she's ever been in her life, and also filled with a boundless maelstrom of tears. She doesn't understand it. She reaches for Malfoy and he pulls her close without hesitation, wraps her up and buries his face against her neck, his chest moving raggedly with his breaths, his own cheeks wet.

"We made it," he agrees, sounding numbed and uncertain, the words nearly lost under the alarm. He'd planned to die; it was what he thought he deserved. It was little wonder he was in shock, now. Hermione doesn't particularly care right now, if she's honest. A wholly selfish, wild joy has spun over her. All that matters is that they are both out, and they're together. Somewhere. Clearly somewhere magically alarmed, presumably belonging to the Order. She lifts her face from Malfoy's chest, lips parting to ask, "Where are we?" when the alarms suddenly stop.

"Drop your wands! Get on your knees with your hands in the air, now!" A woman's voice rings out in the silence, commanding and hard, at odds with her lilting Scottish accent, but the words wash over Hermione almost without meaning. Understanding evades her, the words just a barrage. Her world has been nothing but Malfoy and torture for over a quarter of a year, and the arrival of other people is unexpectedly hard for her shocked, disapparating-addled brain to comprehend.

"Shit," Malfoy swears wearily, and his hands pull away from Hermione, the clatter of wood on wood sounding. He's dropped his wand. Hermione stares up at him, bewildered, as he takes a pace back from her, hands raising to shoulder height, and then things happen very fast.

"Malfoy?" she asks, feeling small and unsure, nausea sharp in her gut again. It's stupidly hard to think. Panic starts clawing at her insides, and the look she shoots Malfoy is pleading, but he doesn't go to her. He gives her a wild-eyed look, and tells her to get down, to do as they say, but Hermione is frozen. He swears as flashes of light indicate more people apparating in, and she stands there, unmoving.

"She's Hermione Granger," he's shouting loud and clear, as he gets to his knees. "Don't hurt her, please! She's Hermione Granger. I'm Judas. Draco Malfoy. My handler's Knight. Kingsley Shacklebolt."

There are too many bodies in the room, and Hermione wants to scream as Malfoy settles on his knees. She clutches at her throat, her breath coming short. It makes her think of a revel. A witch steps between her and Malfoy blocking Hermione's line of sight and looks her in the eye. "Merlin, it is you," the witch says in a familiar voice, and Hermione realises with a shock that snaps down her spine, that it's Cho Chang, staring at her as if Hermione is a ghost.

"Yes it's me," Hermione summons the sense to gasp out indignantly, past her breathless, surging panic. And then she sees past Cho's shoulder. "Wait – what are you doing?" Two wizards she doesn't know are shoving Malfoy roughly face down on the floor, even though he's cooperating. Horror and fury curdle in Hermione's belly at the sight, and without thinking she pushes Cho aside.

"Stop it! Leave him!" she demands, grabbing at the nearest wizard's collar and yanking him briefly off balance.

"Hermione," Cho protests, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her back.

"He saved me! Malfoy saved me – what the fuck do you think you're doing, you – you idiots, leave him alone!" Her voice becomes progressively more shrill and unintelligible as it progresses, gulping for air in great, unsteady breaths, the room starting to spin around her. She's hyperventilating. Now Cho's grip is helping keep her upright as she sways on her feet.

"Calm down, it's okay. You're safe."

"I – I know I'm – safe. He saved me. Leave – leave him – alone –" The words come out in gasps.

They've magically bound Malfoy's arms cruelly tight behind his back now, so that his shoulders are wrenched back, his face turned toward her and Hermione can see the pain on him; his eyes glazed and his mouth hard, sweat on his forehead as he pants for air.

"I'm okay, Granger," he says hoarsely. "Just let them... It'll be okay." He can't even finish a sentence. He's not okay. This isn't okay. For days he's been lying to her when he was going to just go and die, and how does she know he's not lying to her now?

There's a silence. Hermione realises that she's gasping those things at him aloud and incoherent as tears streak her cheeks, and the handful of witches and wizards in the room are staring at her. Pity and horror hangs thick in the air. She snaps her mouth shut and stares at him pleadingly. But what can he do? They haul him roughly to his feet, and his eyes never leave hers.

"Malfoy, please," she says dumbly, "make them understand. Make them let you go."

He looks gut-punched, face a misery. "Granger," he says roughly, begging her to understand, and she knows there's nothing he can do. There's no chance anyone here will listen to Malfoy. The only person she knows is Cho. She turns her stare on the Ravenclaw, a manic desperation winding her muscles tight.

Hermione knows what happens when the Order captures someone. She remembers it vaguely as if peering through fog, the memories somewhere past the fear and panic eating her alive. Detainees get taken away to away processing. And Hermione doesn't think she can maintain her sanity without Malfoy. There are too many people, and everything feels terrifying and wrong, and she wants him. She needs him.

"Please, Cho. Please. He's not the enemy. He saved me. He's on our side. Please," she begs through whooping gasps for air, and the other woman's eyes are full of confused pity.

"Okay, Hermione. Okay. We're not going to hurt him," Cho says, as if Hermione's a particularly dim child. Maybe she sounds like one. Her limbs feel trembly and she can't get a breath, and Malfoy is standing there staring at her, pain etched on his features and worry for her filling his eyes, his mouth a hard, thin line. Cho mutters an aside to a nearby wizard that sounds like, "Get Harry and Ron here, now."

Hermione can't find it in herself to care that Harry and Ron are okay. Are on the way.

"Don't take him. Please. Cho. Malfoy hasn't done anything wrong. He's on our side, for Merlin's sake! You don't have to!" Frustration and fury clog Hermione's throat and make her heart gallop, thundering wretched and hard. She feels an absurd longing for their room in the mansion; just her and Malfoy, alone, in a bubble of fragile safety. She's been institutionalised, Hermione thinks hysterically. She wants her cell back. Oh god. A sob hitches out of her.

Cho looks out of her depth. "It's protocol, Hermione," she says apologetically, and then the bitch flicks a hand at the wizard holding Malfoy by one elbow.

They vanish.

Hermione feels her stomach drop out. A horrified terror washes over her; irrational, uncontrollable, and entirely unhelpful. Everything whites out for a while. When she comes back to herself she is sitting on the floor in a corner hugging her knees, a hoarse whining moan coming from deep inside her chest and someone is shaking her, saying her name with worry grinding through their voice.

"Malfoy?" she asks small and hopeful, and the voice chokes and stumbles. Hermione lifts her head, her cheeks sticky with tears, and Ron looks back at her, a complicated expression on his face, his blue eyes watery. His hands are on Hermione's shoulders. A surge of instinctive, terrified revulsion tears through her and she recoils, skittering back across rough wooden floorboards.

"Don't touch me!" she chokes. "Don't – I can't –"

Ron stares at her from his crouch on the ground, expression wounded now. Bewildered. Harry stands behind him, Hermione sees; the same wild shock of black hair, his glasses crooked, his expression an echo of Ron's. "It's me," Ron says, as if she's a wild animal, holding one hand out for her to take. "Not Malfoy."

"I know that," Hermione says tartly, annoyance creeping up absurdly. She shuts her eyes for a second and breathes, struggling for control, her heart a wild drumbeat and her breathing ragged and gulping, panic still hot in her veins and making her dizzy. She's had a panic attack; she lost time, Hermione tells herself, trying to take stock. They took Malfoy. She needs him back. She stares at Ron and Harry, wondering why she isn't happier to see them. But mostly all she feels is a weird, numbed awkwardness, and the need to get to Malfoy.

"I know that," she repeats. Ron looks exhausted beyond belief. Dark hollows swallow his blue eyes, and he's halfway to a scraggly beard, his skin more pallid than usual. And Harry doesn't look much better. He's clean shaven but his eyes are haunted. It's grief that hits Hermione then. A strange, consuming sense of loss; she has lost who she was. The Hermione Granger that Ron and Harry knew is dead, burned out by torture and degradation, and months of constant, terrible fear and suffering.

"We missed you," Harry says then, and it all slams home.

Coming September 2023, the...

Aftermath