A/N: Thank you so much everyone, for all the reviews! They're an amazing motivator, and I really appreciate them! Also, I've recently edited and cleaned up The Risk-Reward Ratio on this site, and, if you'd like a pdf of any of my finished fics please let me know in a review or PM :)

Only one more chapter and an epilogue to come after this.

Part Ten

It's been over three months now since Hermione was first captured - the seasons have changed, and the lingering mild autumn sun has given way to winter proper now - snow fell for the first time, tonight. A thin covering that makes everything white and soft and beautiful. And because she asked as soon as he got in the door after a late night doing god knows what at a revel, Malfoy has taken Hermione down into the garden - in the middle of the night when everything is silent, and their boots crunch over the snow-blanketed ground, and she huddles close to him within her warm cloak and the jersey of his that she nicked from his drawers. He wraps his arm around her, keeping her close to his side, and the moon hangs bright in the sky, and she wants to kiss him, always.

But since her near admission to him almost a week ago, Hermione is simply lucky to have him hold her close like this. After giving her a sincere apology for his behaviour, he has been skittish and distant, avoiding contact with her as much as possible - sleeping back in his corner bed again, and no longer allowing her to tend to his wounds. She knows what is going on, now that that initial shock of his reaction has faded from her. He is trying to push her away in anticipation of their separation. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that he does. He's trying to cut the ties their shared horror has bound between them so that it hurts less when she is safe and he is not, and she hates it even as she knows there's nothing she can do to stop him.

So when they go down into the garden, Hermione pretends to be cold but waves off a warming charm - pressing close to him instead with pleading eyes. And as she knew he would, Malfoy relents with what seems like relief, and holds her much closer than she needs to be held for mere warmth. It makes her feel good, and safe, to be tucked up against him like this, soaking in the faint scent of his aftershave, and the wiry strength in his arm. She smiles to herself as they meander toward the maze, and leans her head against his shoulder. He smells good all over, fresh from a bath after his night's work. But those thoughts are bad, so she turns her mind firmly to the good.

"It's pretty tonight," she says softly, as they approach the snow-capped hedges of the maze, and he grunts a non-committal response, mind clearly elsewhere. "It's a full moon."

"Mm," is all he says in answer, as the hedging closes around them, everything dusted white like icing sugar atop a cake, and Hermione wonders despite herself what it is that weighs so heavy on him, tonight. She can't help wondering what he saw, at the revel. What he did. Has he ever…done to someone else what he did to her? She can't ask him those questions though. She can never ask him those questions. Instead she tries to blot them out, to think of anything but that. She lifts her eyes to watch him as they wander deeper into the maze - his face in profile. Malfoy has a woollen hat on that covers his ears and a thick scarf, the tip of his nose and his cheeks ruddy with cold, his features clear and calm with grave composure, and then his tongue darts out over his full lips, and warmth trickles through her at the sight and suddenly it is not so hard to think of good things.

"Do you know what Muggles say about the full moon?" Hermione asks, feeling wild and reckless as she jabs him in the side with her elbow, and he pauses and looks down at her for the first time, shaking his head. His eyes are as silver as the moonlight, tonight, catching it and reflecting it back, like mirrors. He is so beautiful, she thinks dazedly.

"They say it makes you crazy," Hermione says breathless as she turns to face him fully, lips twitching into a half-smile. And then she fists her mittened hands in his heavy cloak and drags herself by her grip up onto her tiptoes and presses her mouth to his firm and hard before he can pull away. His lips are cold and soft and he is motionless, and Hermione pulls back and stares into his face and sees conflict written in every line of him; want and guilt all tangled inextricably together, and she needs the want to win out.

"Please?" she whispers. "Plea-"

Malfoy's mouth meets hers hard and greedy as his arms wrap around her, one hand sliding up to cradle the side of her face, scratchy wool gloves covering her ear, thumb brushing back and forth over her cheek in caress. He kisses her hard as though something has snapped within him, backing her up until her shoulders bump against the hedge and pinning her there between his body and the snow-coated greenery. His lips part at the same time as hers do, and his tongue flicks hot and teasing against hers, asking, demanding, making her knees go weak and pleasure and lust pulse needy between her thighs. She is wet, Hermione realises vaguely as she tangles her arms around his neck and kisses him with desperation threading beneath her want. Sopping wet and throbbing from just a kiss, and Merlin she wants more.

With her legs trembling and Malfoy licking into her mouth and drawing out moans and whimpers from her, Hermione shakes a mitten off so it dangles by the cord from her wrist, and worms her hand beneath his layers of clothing. She sighs in bliss and closes her teeth gentle over his plump bottom lip when her fingers find the smooth, hot skin of his abdomen, and her palm flattens to it. She kisses him eager and greedy, and her hand searches over his concave stomach and up to his chest, brushing across a pebbled nipple and feeling him mmff into her mouth in response. It's intoxicating. The feel of him like this, all fear and memory gone, as if lost beneath the pristine blanket of snow. All she knows is how good he feels, and how her clit is aching and her body needy.

Then Malfoy's suddenly de-gloved hand delicately finds its way beneath the jersey of his she'd borrowed. His long fingers trace gentle and tentative over the soft swell of her breast through the cotton tee shirt she wears…but it's enough to make unwelcome memory and revulsion flash up, hard and shocking. The sickness hits Hermione's stomach like a fist, driving what little breath she has out of her altogether.

"No -" Hermione rips her mouth from his in a panic and presses herself back into the hedge as if she can fall back through it and escape, her breath coming in gasping, frantic pants. Guilt floods Malfoy's face as he steps back, and Hermione wishes she could erase it, because he shouldn't be feeling guilty for doing what she asked. It wasn't fair. This was only going to make him more determined to distance himself from her, and she didn't want that. It wasn't fair. Sobs built in her chest, but she kept them tamped down, voice wobbling only a little as she spoke.

"I - I'm sorry. I just..."

"I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have let you..." Malfoy's face goes from flushed and bright-eyed to stony in a second, expression shutting down and leaving only one thing clear - his regret. "We shouldn't have done that."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said again, helplessly, and he shook his head, eyes going soft now.

"It's not your fault. It's my responsibility to - to make sure these things don't happen, Granger, not yours. But this is why…this is why us doing anything isn't a good idea."

"Why?" A hitching sob slips out and makes the word shake and wobble. "Why are we supposed to let something Voldemort forced on us define us?"

"You shouldn't," he tells her, as he steps forward and takes her bare hand in his, slipping the mitten back on with tender care. She curls her fingers hard around his, and he meets her eyes and sighs. "But the way you reacted just now - this isn't what you want, Granger." She begins to protest, but he overrides her. "You can't know what you want." His voice goes on, implacable and reasonable. "You've been captured for over three fucking months, and I am the only person you can trust, the only person who can comfort you, the only one who can protect you, and I clearly - clearly am attracted to you. How can you know that you would feel this way if we weren't in this situation?"

"I don't," she said as calmly as she could, fingers closed over his still, very tight because she needs him not to pull away. "In fact, no - I do. If not for all this, then there's no way that I would...want you. But I don't think it's because of some Stockholm Syndrome effect - I think it's because if I hadn't been captured I wouldn't have gotten to know you, and discovered that you've changed. That you're someone that...that I could care about." She takes a deep breath and adds: "A lot." Malfoy is silent for a long, long moment when she finishes, unable to meet her eyes. But he doesn't pull his hand away from hers - not yet. There is shame in his eyes, and so much guilt and self-loathing it hurts to look at him.

"How can you care, Granger? I am not a good person. I've done things that would make you sick, if I told you about them. I have done things that…that make me hate myself. That I can't ever forget. That I should never be forgiven for."

"That's not true, Malfoy. You haven't done anything because you wanted to. You did it because that's what you have to do, as an informant. It's not your fault. You're not to blame for what you've had to do." Hermione wants - needs - him to believe that, but she can see in the way he looks away from her, eyes dropping to the snow quilted ground, that he doesn't. He thinks himself a monster and he will not be persuaded otherwise, not by reason or logic, because he feels it. She can understand that. What he's had to do…it must feel like a taint on his soul. But it's not his fault. It's not. Malfoy smiles, very faintly, and it's so sad she can't stand the sight of it.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Granger, but whether or not I wanted to do it, I still did. The my victims aren't exactly going to feel better because I felt bad about torturing and slaughtering them. They're dead. Or…or wish they were." His jaw tightens. "You think you care, because that is how this situation has made you feel. But if you weren't dependent on me for life, I'm pretty sure you'd still be disgusted by me Granger." And the most frustrating thing was that he was right, but not in the way that he thought he was. Nearly everything he said was true, and yet it wasn't like that. If Hermione wasn't dependent on him but had still gotten to know him like this, she would still care about him. She knew it. But there was no way for her to have gotten to know him like this without her life being in his hands. It was infuriating.

"But -"

"There's no point, Granger. Just…drop it. There's no point in thinking any…feelings, are going to come to anything, because no matter who's right and who's wrong, you're going, and I'm...not." Malfoy is quiet and matter-of-fact, and Hermione sees the expectation of death on his face. He doesn't believe he'll live through the war, and it makes her angry and it makes her sick, and it makes her hate the Order for making him feel he has to do this.

"Then I'll wait, Malfoy," she says, with a wobbling smile at the cliché of it. "And then after the war - if it ever fucking ends - well, then maybe." It's a pipe dream, and they both know it, and Hermione thinks it's the very improbability that makes Malfoy agree.

"I won't hold you to it," is all he says, but his hand comes up to smooth over her cheek, needy and distant at once, fingers warm against her night-chilled skin. She can see the struggle in him so clearly now - the pull toward her that he tries to resist.

"You won't have to," Hermione tells him, and then pushes up on tiptoes again and brushes her lips against his cold cheek in a kiss, to seal the promise. "I'll hold you to it though." He smiles at that - a genuine lopsided grin - and agrees in a murmur as he tucks her arm through his, and they start off again. They move further into the winding green and white maze, heading toward the very centre and that peaceful little spot where he has woven her daisy chains, and pointed out constellations, and made her feel free.

Malfoy doesn't start sleeping in the bed with her again, like Hermione had hoped, and she doesn't feel she has the right to ask. She gets used to sleeping alone over the days that follow, ticking by toward a fortnight's worth. They still both have nightmares, but after the one suffering the nightmare has been soothed, the other leaves them, going back to their own lonely bed. Hermione hates it, this disentanglement he's forcing on them both, even as she understands his need to do so. She is going home, to everybody she has missed so desperately since she was first taken, and he is remaining here alone. It will be harder for him.

It feels hard enough for Hermione. She is excited about the thought of escape - of course she is. She cannot wait to be safe away from here, with the Order. But...

But things are very different now. She is different, and her feelings are different, and the Order chose to leave her here, and it's been so long, and she's been so damaged, and she doesn't know what she will do without Malfoy - the thought of losing his presence makes grief and denial rage in her chest - and it's frightening. What if she can't fit in where she used to, with Harry and Ron? What if Ron still feels that way for her? What if they want to know what exactly happened and she has to tell them about what Malfoy did to her, and about what the Death Eaters did, and about how she tortured Malfoy? How could they understand that?

How could they ever look at her and not see how damaged she is?

Malfoy touches her knee, and she looks up from the page she's been staring blankly at for the past ten minutes. His eyes are soft, and warm, like steam and summer rain clouds and moonlight, and her breath catches. This is the way he looks at her, and it makes her feel like bubbles in champagne, like chills down a spine, like she is a person who is hurting and not the wounded animal that she feels like at times.

"Are you all right?" He's concerned but not forceful - just a gentle query that she knows he won't push her to answer.

"Yeah," she whispers. "Just...thinking about going back. If - if it happens." His hand is still on her knee, and he gives it a little squeeze before pulling back, and she can see in Malfoy's face that he doesn't have any clue what she's thinking, and why would he? He thinks she's just scared she won't make it out.

"Don't worry, Granger. I'll get you home. I swear it." And Hermione believes him because he wouldn't promise that lightly, and even though happiness and anticipation swell in her chest she is hollow too, and that night she curls into a tiny ball for want of clinging to him, and cries herself silently to sleep.

"He's going in four days," Malfoy says without even a 'hello' as he toes off his boots, bedroom door clicking shut and locking at a tap of his wand, before he strides across the room in his sock-clad feet and drops it gently on the table-top. Hermione watches him warily from her corner - he's an hour early and acting...different, and she knows there must be a reason. And she knows that she probably won't like it, whatever it is. There is a smear of blood at his temple that she can't stop staring at, and his face is grim.

"Tell me," she says, getting to her feet and twisting her hands nervously together as she approaches him. He paces like a caged animal, up and down in front of the windows with his brow furrowed and his mouth a hard line. "What's happened, Malfoy?" He stops abruptly in his tracks, turning stiffly to face her.

"He says he wants you," Malfoy tells her without preamble, and the words drive the breath out of her. Hermione can almost feel the blood drain from her face as she stares at him wide-eyed and horrified. "When he gets back from America. I don't know what for - I - I didn't want to ask..." His voice trails away and he rubs a hand over his face, drawn and weary. "I had to say yes. Of course. I didn't have a choice. 'Who am I to refuse the Dark Lord', you know?" There is anger creeping into his voice, a controlled kind of rage, and he's pacing again, as Hermione just stands frozen and tries to process what he's said.

"He...he wants me," she says flatly, her voice sounding funny and loud in her own ears, and Malfoy stutters in his pacing as he grimaces, and nods in the affirmative.

"Unfortunately."

"So…what does that mean?" It's hard to breathe, and her hearing still seems wrong, her voice strangled but still too loud and echoing, like she's yelling down an empty corridor.

"It means that faking your death at my hands isn't going to work as an excuse, because he wants you alive," Malfoy says slowly and carefully. He stops pacing again, framed by the windows with the light rushing against him and casting his face in shadow, his hair shining golden with the light of near-sunset. "It means that we can't afford to fuck things up. It needs to happen as soon as the Dark Lord is gone. This is our only chance - we're not getting another, after this."

His face goes slack and ashen, gaze turning inward, and when he speaks his voice is tight and horrified, as if he's picturing it: "He wants to - to take you away from me, as soon as he gets back, and I..."

From me, Hermione thinks, and it makes her feel wobbly and hot and lost. But she can see the panic welling up in him and so she steps forward and takes his hands before it can grow and take him over, and he blinks down at her as though startled. "It's all right, Malfoy. We'll think of something. Okay? It's going to be all right."

"I'm getting you out. I swore it to you, and I meant it, Granger." Malfoy is so earnest that he frightens her, eyes dark in the shadow as he looks down into hers unblinkingly. "No matter what, I will not let him hurt you again." He says the words fiercely, his gaze never sliding from Hermione's, their hands tangled together too tightly, and her heart thud-thud's too hard at the raw feeling in his voice. The ferocity, the desperation. He has never promised that before. He has never...

"Can you make that promise?" Hermione asks without accusation or fear, her fingers sliding interlocked between Malfoy's, staring up at him haloed by the dying sunlight.

"Yes, Granger." He says the words again, emphasising each one, and infusing them with total certainty: "I will not let him hurt you again."

"I believe you," she whispers, but how he'll get her out without compromising himself now that Voldemort wants her alive, Hermione has no clue. Unless he came with her... And the idea makes so much sense now, that she can't help but believe he'll agree. She doesn't mention it just yet though. Not right now, when he is bending his head and placing a kiss on her forehead, before drawing away from her, avoiding her gaze.

"I need to go wash up. I - we'll talk about this later, after I've taken some time to think," he tells her tiredly, and she nods in silent agreement, letting his hands slip free of hers with a small pang of reluctance. She stands in front of the windows, watching him stride into the bathroom without a backward glance, and then turns to stare out over the gardens, all bathed in snow melt and the setting sun.

"Come with me," Hermione whispers, her hands balled into fists so that her nails bite her palms, and wishes to god and Merlin and anyone else listening that he would.

They don't really discuss it that night. Not properly, anyway, in Hermione's opinion.

Malfoy emerges from the bathroom in fresh trousers and undershirt, his hair damp and spiky and the stubble on his jaw still unshaven, and his expression is faraway and lost in thought. Hermione watches him from her seat at the small table, where she pretends to read a book but can't seem to focus on the words running over the page. He looks so tired - too tired - and she wants to tell him to just let it go. To just take her away now and go with her. To stop being a spy and start fighting - openly, with people at his back that he can trust, without worrying that his every move could get him killed, without being forced to commit heinous crimes in the name of the light.

He's done enough.

But she is silent, watching as he walks with weary steps to the liquor cabinet and unlocks it, stooping to pull out a full bottle of firewhiskey and plucking two crystal tumblers from the top of the small cabinet. He comes and sits at the table with a sigh and cracks the bottle open, pouring several decent slugs into the glass nearest him.

"You?" he asks, bottle hovering over the empty tumbler, and she meets his eyes - shadowed beneath like bruises - and nods after a second's hesitation. Malfoy fills the squat tumbler halfway without a word and slides it across the table to her, and every movement he makes seems exhausted, as though he's passed his breaking point and this is him just going through the motions. Hermione sips at the firewhiskey, making a face as she does, watching him over the rim as he downs the entire thing in three economic gulps and thuds the tumbler clumsily to the table, refilling it with a hand that trembles just fractionally.

"So what are we going to -" she begins, cradling her glass in both hands, watching the slanting sunset light dance orange on the tabletop, and stain Malfoy's skin. He cuts her off as he thunks the bottle back to the table, and lifts his tumbler.

"I don't know, yet. But I'll think of something, Granger."

"Come with me." It falls from her firewhiskey-numbed lips by mistake, and he stares at her with wide, startled eyes - one grey and the other licked eerie orange by the sunset - holding the tumbler frozen halfway to his mouth.

"I - " he starts to speak, to deny her, and Hermione can't stand to hear him refuse it.

"Don't be stupid. Don't." She leans forward, speaking fast and pleading. "No one would blame you, now. You don't have a choice - really, what are you going to do? How are you going to cover up me escaping in a way that doesn't end up with you…suffering Voldemort's displeasure?" Killed, she thinks - how is he going to avoid being killed as a traitor the moment he returns without her? It's ridiculous. It's far too risky, even if he can think of an excuse. Even if he comes up with an airtight reason for her to have escaped, he will still be punished, harshly, and he has to know that.

"You have to realise the best thing to do is leave with me, Malfoy. You have to." Hermione tries to fix her eyes to his as she speaks, but he looks down, the coward, taking a sip of his firewhiskey and then staring at his tumbler as he sets it on the table. "What else can you do?"

He is silent for a long moment, rake-thin in the white cotton tee shirt that is washed in the dying light, just like his face, and the fire set in his eye, and Hermione forces herself to gulp down some of her firewhiskey rather than keep pleading ever more frantically. It burns down her throat and kindles a fire in the pit of her stomach, and sets her eyes to watering. She blinks hard, staring at him through a haze of waviness, waiting. There is no point in pleading any further - Malfoy is stubborn, like her, and either he will come with her, or he won't, but begging won't help. Or so she tries to tell herself. She doesn't want him to die for her, or even to be hurt for her. Not again.

"I'll think of something," he says grimly, jaw set, lifting his eyes to hers, and draining his glass, before echoing himself determinedly: "I'll think of something."

"But -"

"Just don't." He glances at her, his expression begging her to let it drop, before pouring another tumbler full of firewhiskey. His movements are clumsy, his hand palsied as he pours, and some of the firewhiskey sloshes onto the table; a shiny little puddle on the dark wood. His tone is bone weary. "Please, just don't, Hermione. Just don't."

So she doesn't.

Instead Hermione picks her book up off her lap and sits back in her chair, pointedly shifting her focus to the black script on the parchment even though she can't take in a word of it, holding her firewhiskey glass in one hand. She entirely ignores Malfoy, and that seems to be what he wants; in her peripheral vision she can see him slouch, and some of the stiffness melt out of the way he holds himself, his features slacken, and his gaze goes unfocused - staring out the window at the gardens in the dying sunlight. Hermione sits and drinks her firewhiskey in small, measured sips, pretending to read while she watches him like a hawk. He takes gulps, not sips, and keeps pouring refills with a clumsiness that only gets worse as the alcohol takes effect - drinking down the bottle level fast. His features are drawn and exhausted, and his whole body is filled with a trapped kind of despair that she can sense in the air around him like an aura.

Come with me, Hermione thinks fiercely at him all lit in sunset flame, fear clouding her mind like the firewhiskey she's sipping automatically. Come with me. But she is silent as the sun slowly sinks, and with the fiery light gone he is left ashen and grey and cold. A drowned man in the blue-grey of twilight, his eyes glazed and dulled with drink and despair.

The clock ticks around toward 6.27pm as Hermione sits curled in her armchair and stares at the bedroom door. There are only two nights left until Voldemort leaves, and as Malfoy will be taking on extra responsibility with Voldemort gone he's been spending more time busy with his duties, receiving instructions from the Dark Lord. He hasn't told Hermione what those extra responsibilities will entail, and she doesn't want to know. She can imagine well enough and her skin crawls.

Strangely enough she has spent more time hoping Malfoy will be all right if he stays, than she has daydreaming about being back with the Order.

There is a sound then - a rattle of the door handle and Hermione sits up straighter with expectation - and then Malfoy shoulders the door open neatly, hands occupied by a large serving tray. He kicks it shut behind him and smiles across the room at her without having to search the dimly lit space. His gaze is pulled to her directly, like a compass to magnetic north. He looks tired, but the small smile on his lips is genuine, as far as Hermione can tell.

"Hi. I brought food," he says tentatively, holding up the tray as he pries off his boots and leaves them in a jumble by the door. He's in shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow, the fine knit woolen sweater he'd worn that morning gone, a trace of blood on the collar of his white shirt hinting at why he might have ditched the sweater. Hermione gulps, feeling a little sick. Blood could be notoriously difficult to get out of wool with scourgifies - it took a proper Muggle-style wash.

"To celebrate," he goes on, and Hermione blinks in confusion as she unfolds herself from the armchair and moves to take the tray from him. There is a smear of blood along the underside of his jaw, near his ear, but he smells faintly of cologne and sweat, not the reeking stench of death. His eyes are smoky-soft and gentle set in their exhaustion-shadowed hollows, not the sharp, bleak grey they look when he's been forced to kill. But then maybe he's finally getting used to it, she thinks despite herself. The tray is heavy, the bottom of it warm.

"Celebrate what?" she asks as she sets the tray down on the table, a wave of her hair fluffing down from its precarious knot at the nape of her neck as she leans down.

"You going home. Of course," Malfoy says, mild bemusement evident in the crinkling at the corners of his eyes and furrowing of his brow as she straightens and turns to face him. Of course. That is a thing worthy of celebration, isn't it? Hermione pushes her disobedient hair off her face and it falls straight back again, and he takes a step forward - inside her personal space now - and with firm, precise fingers, sweeps the fall of hair back from her face and tucks it into the knot, one-handed. She blinks up at him speechlessly, lips parted and suddenly dry.

"Granger?" His face shifts to show concern. She hates that he does these things. That he says they can't...and then touches her like that, with such gentle intimacy. It's not fair. Not at all. Doesn't he realise what it does to her? In two days' time she will be leaving, and that is good - leaving this awful place, where she has been tortured and terrified and forced to do things that make her sick. She can't wait to leave. To be safe. Only she will be going without him. Without this man who brings her Muggle food - she can smell it on the air because she loves the way it makes her think of her childhood, and good memories, and safety. This man who touches her like she is unspeakably precious, and tries so hard to do what he thinks is right - even when she tries to persuade him not to - and has protected her as best he can, regardless of the danger to his own life.

"Of course," she echoes him numbly. But... "You've come up with a cover story, then?" Malfoy nods, swaying back a step and scrubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. He looks permanently exhausted past all endurance since the news that Voldemort was leaving; an ashy undertone to his skin, and purple shadows sweeping deep beneath his eyes. The scar of the whip lash on his cheek stands out livid purple-red, and he's all skin and bones. It hurts to look at him.

"Yeah, Granger. I have. I -" He blinks slow and fuzzy and his smile is forced and strange on his face. "I'll go shower, and then tell you over dinner."

"Okay," she whispers, feeling uncertain and muddled. She smiles, and it feels just as forced on her lips as his looks. Malfoy tells her to start without him, if she likes, but Hermione shakes her head. She'll wait. She listens to the taps running in the bathroom, sitting at the end of the bed in the grey flannel pyjama trousers of Malfoy's that she favours now the weather has gone cold, and a white tee shirt shrunk to fit her. Idly, she re-does the folds at the bottoms of the too-long trousers, fiddling with the hems. Malfoy's bought her a few items of clothing, over the months, but she's never asked for anything. Hermione's used to his clothing - it does the job and it's...nice.

She listens to him move about in the bathroom, and it's so strange to think that in a couple of nights, this will never happen again. She will never be here again. Never listen to him wash dried blood down the drain, the taps running hard to cover his hitching breaths as he tries not to unravel. Never feel the constant fear ease slightly at knowing he was with her after a long day alone. Hermione sits and stares at her hands - fingers picking at the hem of Malfoy's trousers - and thinks that she should be happier.

Instead she feels dulled and numbed, like she's been wrapped in cotton wool and her ears plugged up, and she doesn't understand it.

When he comes out they eat McDonald's at the table; he washing it down with firewhiskey, and she with coke. She can't seem to taste it properly, and it takes a great effort to chew, and swallow. They sit in quiet together, for the first few minutes - Hermione doesn't ask him what his plan is, instead waiting for him to explain it in his own time. She feels for a moment absurdly like they're in some stereotypical domestic scene; the husband and wife eating dinner in peaceful silence while he de-stresses from work.

"I'm going to frame Crabbe and Goyle Sr.," he says suddenly, voice crisp and decided. Hermione pauses mid-bite of her burger, staring at him as questioningly as possible with her mouth full. She must look ridiculous. The corner of his mouth turns up a little for a brief, sparkling moment. Then his expression smooths out again, as he goes on and she finishes her mouthful, listening.

"It makes sense. Crabbe and Goyle Sr., have had it out for me for a long time now. And they don't know that Voldemort want you alive. It's believable that they'd kill you to get at me." The blunt way he puts it sends chills down Hermione's spine. Even after everything she's suffered, to have her murder spoken of so plainly is...frightening. She pushes that twinge down; nothing is going to happen to her. Not anymore. Not ever again.

"Will he believe that, though?" Hermione isn't certain, staring at Malfoy across the table with his eyes shadowed and his expression blank, his hair still damp from washing up. It seems a slim hope to pin his life on.

"I'll make sure he does."

"But - you'll have to explain why you let them get to me. Why you didn't watch me better. Why you didn't protect me for him... Won't he still be angry at you?"

Malfoy leans back in his chair, and takes a sip of his firewhiskey. He's trying for nonchalance but she has lived in this room with him for over two months, and she knows him. It's a carefully cultivated sense of ease, but he can't hide the stiffness in the way he holds himself. Not from her. She expects lies but he gives her...honesty.

"Yes. Yes, he will. I expect to be punished quite severely -" she can't hold back her sickened catch of breath as he says the words with a shrug, as though his torture is of no consequence "- but he should accept my story as truth."

Hermione feels ill. Her appetite is gone, in a lurching fall. "Severely? Malfoy...Malfoy you can't... You can't do that for me. That's not all right. I can't -"

"Granger." He shoots her a weary look.

"No, Malfoy! You only just barely recovered from..." She can't say it, and stutters to a halt for a moment. "You haven't really recovered. You've not got enough weight on you yet, and - and...god, Malfoy, I don't want to be the reason you're hurt, anymore. I don't want that. I can't-"

"And I don't want you to be hurt anymore, Granger," Malfoy says, his tone trying to shut down any argument, determinedly cheerful and it seems so wrong, coming from him. It makes him seem like a stranger, as he goes on in that oddly upbeat voice. "And I will be fine. I will survive, and I will crawl my way back into the Dark Lord's good books, and you will be back home safe with the Order, with your Potter, and Weasley, and -"

"And you will come back, after the war - alive," she interrupts stupidly, too earnest and not even entirely knowing what she means by that - she wants Malfoy, and she can't deny that. But does she really, truly want him in that way? Not just seeking comfort and warmth in another human being, but waiting and hoping like they'd talked the other night? Hermione thinks she does, and it terrifies her. As for Malfoy - his expression is unreadable as he smiles faintly across the massacred feast of McDonald's at her.

"That's the plan, Granger."