Notes: The sequel to Crumple, which was originally finished on the 28th April 2015. I never planned for a sequel, but nearly a decade later I'm finally writing the next and final part of Hermione and Draco's story, and I'm so excited. I hope you all enjoy the ride.

A thousand thanks to my amazing beta reader, Pidanka!

Content Warning: This fic contains descriptions of/reference to past torture, mutual rape, and sexual assault. It also contains mature sexual content, and covers potentially triggering topics such as rape recovery, disordered eating, self-hatred, co-dependency, semi-suicidality, depression, and general trauma.

Part One

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 breathlessly, 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 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 right now. Hermione doesn't particularly care at the moment, 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 backwards, 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 hang 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, 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 for 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 an 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. 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 her 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.

Hermione's homecoming has been nothing like she expected. Nothing like what she fantasised about obsessively in Voldemort's mansion.

She has spent most of it crying, and begging for Malfoy, and now she sits curled up on the floor in the corner of the room while Harry and Ron stare at her helplessly. Her sobs are a wild, uncontrollable force seething in her chest and hiccupping out of her until her heart and stomach hurt, and she's gagging. Both men try to touch her, to comfort her, and her body reacts of its own accord, their hands making her think of that dinner party. Of the wizards with their blunt probing fingers and cruel hands, laughing at her pain, making her lick their feet and their – their –

Hermione shrinks further back into the corner and begs them not to touch her, in a haze between reality and memory and unable to distinguish the two.

"M-Malfoy. I n-n-need Malfoy," she judders out almost incomprehensibly through her sobs, telling herself to just fucking stop crying, calm down, but her body is on a roll and she is along for the ride. A passenger, it seems. Because she can't stop.

"Hermione, it's okay," they say helplessly, trying to soothe her while they ignore her pleading for Malfoy as if they can't process it. Maybe they just don't know what to say in response to their best friend begging with a mad, sobbing desperation for a Death Eater, even if he is a spy. "You're safe. You're okay."

But it's not okay. Malfoy has been bound and hauled off roughly by people who despise him, which is bad enough. And she is alone with her friends, but instead of being overjoyed and flinging herself into their arms, she is a terrified wreck who can't stand them touching her. Who can't disentangle the past from the present. Who is sobbing like a mad person. She feels broken. She should be happy and she isn't. What's wrong with her?

Her sobs eventually ease off to shaking gasps for breath, as Harry and Ron hover over her, helpless and distraught, and utterly bewildered. And then, to her own private shame, she begins to beg to go home. They think Hermione means her Muggle home, with her parents – the house is sold now, her parents in Australia. They remind her of that with infinite kindness, voices soft as they're careful not to touch her. They must think her imprisonment has driven her insane. Round the twist.

But Hermione doesn't mean that place. She means the room with the green-striped wallpaper and her cosy armchair by the bookshelf, and the view over the maze, and their bed. That is home, now, in her mind. Sickly, she longs for her cage.

"I want Malfoy," she mutters miserably into her arms, blocking out the world. Not wanting to hear Harry and Ron's platitudes anymore.

What has she become?

In the end they place a vial on the floor in front of her with a clink.

"It's a Calming Draught," Harry says gently. "You need to drink it, Hermione, or we can't do anything. We need to get you back to HQ so you can rest."

Hermione eyes him suspiciously, and then the vial. It looks like a Calming Draught. And it's Harry and Ron; they're not going to hurt her. "What about Malfoy?" she demands hoarsely, and Harry winces, Ron scowls. Neither of them is comfortable with her obsessive focus on him.

"We can try to sort things out in the morning, Hermione. After you've been debriefed." Harry is quiet but decided, and Hermione knows there's no point in arguing.

She wants to cry again, but this time a weary, resigned weeping. They're not going to go and let Malfoy out of whatever cell he's locked in. It's just not going to happen. Not tonight, at least. An idea occurs to her, desperate and unlikely. "Can – can I stay with Malfoy?" Twin looks of horror are turned on Hermione before Harry's is obscured by his hands scrubbing exhaustedly over his face. When he emerges, his bright green eyes are wet.

"No!" Ron says, and it's final. " No."

"But–"

"No," Harry confirms. "It's against protocol anyway. Remus would never allow it." She looks at him, pleadingly. " No. Just drink the Calming Draught, 'Mione. Please."

A wave of defeat crushes her beneath it, and a few tears trickle down her sticky, snot-smeared cheeks. She unfurls herself enough to grab the vial, uncorking it with a flick of her thumb and downing it in one. As soon as it hits her stomach, she can feel the effects spreading through her, and the world goes fuzzy at the edges. Her emotions all go dull, and she sees no reason to protest when Ron reaches out to her.

"Come on, Hermione. Let's get you home to bed." She takes his hand and lets him pull her to her feet, swaying a little. And then everything is a blur.

She's obedient and pliable as they apparate her somewhere else. A magical home, all narrow corridors and small rooms, and she's led up three flights of stairs past plush furnishings and wallpapers that exude a faded grandeur. She thinks she catches sight of Neville in the living room, and Mrs Weasley and Ginny on the first floor landing, and a few other people she doesn't recognise right away or can't place by a glimpse of the backs of their heads.

"Your room," Ron says with a flourish as he opens a door in the loft conversion to a small bedroom tucked in the eaves, with one window that the moon shines through, the velvet curtains open. The walls are sloping down two sides, and an old-fashioned small double bed takes up most of the floor space, up against the far wall under the eaves so it faces the door. There's just enough room for a small bedside table on each side and a dresser beside the door. Magical gaslights in elegant sconces are affixed to the two interior walls, which are all papered in blue and gold paisley.

Hermione steps into the space – there's a large, ancient Persian rug covering most of the floor – and all she can think, very tiredly, is that there's no Malfoy. "He shouldn't be locked up," she says apropos of nothing as she plumps wearily on the edge of the bed and begins to unlace the boots Malfoy got her. She strips off all her outer layers clumsily – scarf, jersey, and chambray shirt, leaving her in socks, wool leggings and her warm vest, as Harry and Ron stand by the door looking like great, useless lumps. "He's your spy."

The Calming Draught must have worked because as muzzy as she feels, Hermione seems to be somewhat more rational. She stares at the two men standing nervously by the door; dark hair and ginger, both looking at her like she's a stranger. Probably she looks it; she shakes her hair out a little and tries to finger-comb some order into it and knows she fails. "Why is he even detained?" she demands as neither of them answers.

"Routine," Harry says shortly. "We can't trust double agents, Hermione. By very definition, they're untrustworthy. And he wasn't supposed to come back." He pauses. Amends: "Not yet, anyway."

Harry's words rattle around Hermione's head like knucklebones. His casual disregard of Malfoy disgusts her. "He wasn't going to, until I made him! He was going to get me to safety and then go let Voldemort torture him to death!" She shoves herself to her feet in a burst of anger, and then stands there swaying, glaring at him.

"Okay – okay. I think we should talk about this in the morning," Ron says, tired and drained, and Hermione thinks that none of the three of them look happy. "I know you don't like it, but Malfoy's a big boy. He'll be fine in the cells overnight."

He's right. Hermione hates it, but he is. Nothing is going to happen to Malfoy overnight. And she'll be fine without him. Or so she tells herself very firmly, her heart racing. "Tomorrow," she says hard, brooking no disagreement. "Tomorrow you take me to him."

"Hermione, we can't just –" Harry begins to prevaricate, and Hermione's impotent anger flares. She hates this place suddenly. This place, and Harry and Ron, and the Order who happily had Malfoy commit atrocity after atrocity in the name of the greater Merlin-damned good, ruining him, tearing him apart until he got to the point where he truly believed his death was the only good option. It horrifies her, sudden and sharp. She thinks she might rather be in Malfoy's cell with him than up here alone with the hypocrites who condemn him.

"Tomorrow," she cuts across Harry's excuses, her voice loud and edging toward shrill again. "Tomorrow, you take me to him." Her fists clench, her vision swimming. "Swear it, Harry." She doesn't trust his platitudes, she realises with another lurch of horrible disillusionment, but she still believes he won't break his word to her. "Swear it."

He looks unhappy but he shares a glance with Ron and then nods, and Hermione feels stupidly left out. Once it would've been the three of them sharing a glance and exchanging a wordless exchange. Now, Hermione is the outsider. "Fine," Harry says. "Although I think we need to talk about why you're so fixated on him first."

It feels like a slap. It's cruel and unnecessary to bring it up now, and Hermione recoils, stomach flip-flopping sickly. They haven't asked yet. They haven't figured it out. Hermione thinks they half suspected some kind of spell from the charms they cast on her before apparating here, but she's clean of any magic. Is it so unbelievable that she could just care about him? They've spent over three months together, completely dependent on each other for everything; is it really implausible that she cares?

Even setting the notion of love aside, it seems natural that some kind of bond would develop. She and Malfoy have been through hell together – that leaves a mark. They've drawn each other's blood, healed each other's wounds. Wept for each other. But Harry and Ron clearly don't see it that way. Hermione doesn't explain it; her tongue feels thick and clumsy, her head stuffed full of cotton wool. And she certainly doesn't mention love. It doesn't seem like it will be helpful right now, she thinks, knowing that's an understatement. She doesn't know what she'll say tomorrow.

"But then you'll take me to see him?"

"Yes," Harry grates out, clearly frustrated and annoyed. Hermione doesn't care.

"Okay," she accepts, nodding once. A thought occurs to her, as the two men shuffle out the door awkwardly. "Um. Is there a loo around? In case I need it in the night?"

"The next floor down, just down the corridor," Ron says. "Last door on the left." He offers her an uncertain, sweet smile. His blue eyes are bright in their dark-smudged hollows, the untidy stubble on his jaw making him look older. Hermione returns his smile, her mouth feeling wobbly and tears threatening again. She did miss them, she thinks dizzily. So much.

"I missed you," she says aloud. "I really did." Harry's expression goes soft as the frustration is stripped out of him with those few words, and Ron gulps, nodding, his eyes wet.

"I know this has been difficult," Harry says awkwardly, hands twisting on his wand. "But you have no idea how glad we are that you're back, Hermione. Safe." Ron nods a silent agreement, muscles in his jaw bunching, the back of his hand swiping over his eyes.

"Yeah," Hermione nearly whispers. "I know." She's glad too. And she knows she should be happy. But the happiness won't come, and she's scared of their touch, she doesn't know if she'll ever feel safe again, and she needs Malfoy like a plant needs light, and everything feels wrong.

Notes: A little housekeeping update.

Currently, I have 15 chapters and 63,000 words of Aftermath pre-written.

I've been focusing nearly exclusively on getting Fascination finished until now, and have 42 chapters and 156,000 words of it pre-written, and am about three-quarters done story-wise. I anticipate it should wrap up at around 200,000 words max.

But from this point on with so much of Facination pre-written, I'll be switching focus to Aftermath as my main priority, with Fascination secondary, and fingers crossed I'll be able to keep ahead of my posting schedule for Aftermath.

I'll start off with twice weekly chapters, (Fridays and Tuesdays NZT,) until I get to the end of the pre-written chapters – and then depending on my writing flow, I'll probably need to drop back to once weekly. So wish me good creative luck! Haha.

Thank you so much to everyone reading, favouriting, following, commenting, and sharing!