35.

Ron didn't fall through, and Hermione felt guilty at the slight pang of disappointment that gave her. A small, selfish part of her had been wishing for the chance to see Malfoy, and now she wouldn't until Monday, fleetingly at work. And instead of a lovely day out with Rose, Scorpius, and Malfoy, Hermione spent her Saturday at home catching up on paperwork and cleaning, before she gave in to an indolent malaise at around 1pm and lay on the couch in leggings and t-shirt eating crisps and binging murder mysteries on iPlayer.

At 4pm she got an SMS from Ron, obviously sent by Rose – it was a rather blurry photo of Ron, Rose, and Hugo, all grinning around the table in Hagrid's hut, a heap of cakes from Madame Puddifoot's in front of them. Hermione suspected Hagrid had taken it, from the way it looked down on them all. Rose looked much as she had last weekend – beautiful and elegant – but Hermione hadn't seen Hugo and Ron in a while. Hugo's freckled face was bright, his curly brown hair wild, a smear of jam on his cheek, and Ron looked well, if a little awkward. He'd grown in a short beard and wore a smart shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a t-shirt, and both suited him, his blue eyes bright, his grin a little unsure.

Hermione pressed her fingertips to her mouth. It hurt, it a strange way. She felt a pull to him. The pull of over two decades together, entwined in each other, as best friends before lovers. And there was some bitterness too – right there, taking pride in his appearance, he actually looked the way she'd always wanted him to but had never been able to nag him into bothering with. Obviously Chastity was more persuasive than she was, Hermione thought bitterly, and then her phone beeped again.

Another photo came through; slightly clearer and taken by Rose, because she was missing from the picture, replaced by Hagrid who barely fit in frame with everyone else, beaming at the camera with his hand blurred as if he'd been waving. He never could understood that Muggle photo were still. A moment later a message came through.

[Hi mum it's Rose. Dad took me to Hogsmeade, and then we met up with Hugo at Hagrid's. He says hi btw. Hagrid, not Hugo. Though Hugo says hi too. It was a nice day and I thought you'd like the photos. Love you!]

Hermione felt oddly empty after that. She texted back quickly.

That's lovely, Rose. It looks like fun. Say hi to everyone for me, and a big love you to Hugo.

She stared at the message before she sent it, knowing how painfully stilted it sounded. Normally she would have added 'I wish I was there!' but if she'd really wanted to be there, she should have done things differently. A flutter of regret at the way things had played out passed over her and was gone, like the beating of birds' wings. But she and Ron had both made their choices with open eyes. And as much as it might make her twinge with sadness at times like this, Hermione thought of Malfoy and a small smile curved her lips, and she wouldn't change her decision for the world. But it still hurt; a small pain, buried deep down.

Maybe she was just lonely and bored, Hermione thought pragmatically.

She sighed and just sent the text as it was, with a heart added to the end, and then lay there for a while staring at the ceiling and talking herself out of apparating to Malfoy's. She knew she'd be welcome there. He'd take her inside and – she pressed play on the remote, and tried not to think about Malfoy.

Sunday morning Hermione woke from dreams of Malfoy, all muddled and warm and filthy. And her cotton knickers found themselves kicked down to her knees as her hand slid downward, and she touched herself thinking of him.

If he was a Muggle, that would be the moment she'd text him –

In bed and thinking of you...

But that sort of thing wasn't the same when sent by owl, she thought with a snicker as her fingers slid over her own slick flesh, circling and circling and making pleasure buzz up bright and sparking. She imagined getting up right now in nothing but her t-shirt and summoning an owl, and then writing it out with quill and ink on parchment, sealing it up, and sending it off, to arrive an hour or so later. No. It would never work.

Hermione's fingers stuttered to a halt as she imagined a sex howler, the idea popping into her head unbidden, and that sent her off into hysterical giggles. But when the laughter tapered off to small snorts, thoughts of Malfoy's fingers, and tongue, and cock were still waiting for her, and Hermione found she was still very much in the mood to come. So she did. Twice. Eyes shut and picturing him doing terrible, wonderful things to her both times.

"So when do I meet him?"

"Hmm?" Hermione jerked her head up from her bowl of vanilla ice cream and tinned pears; a classic family pudding. Plain and simple, but nostalgically delicious, it made Hermione think of her mother. God, she missed her, so much. Ten years, and it could have been a day. She would have had advice for Hermione, these past few months. Some of it might have been unwelcome, but it would have been good advice. And she would have understood, in a way Hermione's dad couldn't. She blinked across the small table at her father, startled, her rather bedraggled ponytail swishing. "What?"

"This Malfoy that you're seeing –"

"I'm not seeing him, dad, not yet," Hermione protested, and he snorted.

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on," he dismissed her, eyes warm and amused on her face as he leaned forward, spoon in hand dripping pear juice on the clean tablecloth to Hermione's chagrin; she'd helped him give his kitchen and dining nook a thorough deep clean today mostly without magical aid. Partly it had been so that she didn't spend her Sunday alone and restless, itching to turn up at Malfoy's unexpected, but part had been because her dad was terrible with housework, beyond the basics. "It's obvious, love. You might not be officially dating, but from what you've said, you're seeing him."

"Fine. Fine, I'm seeing him," she capitulated, throwing her hands up in surrender.

"And I want to meet him," her father repeated and Hermione stifled a groan, her hand going to her necklace without thinking; it had become a habit to fidget with it, rolling the vial in her fingertips. She saw her father notice and yanked her hand down, cheeks heating a little at being caught and palms going clammy. She rubbed them along her thighs, on the old jeans she'd worn to clean – paired with a baggy t-shirt that she and Hugo had tie-dyed last summer.

"Dad...I'm forty. I don't need you to approve my boyfriends."

"You might be forty, but I'm still your father," he rejoined, and Hermione huffed. "Besides I don't remember approving of Ron." Well, he had her there. By the time she'd retrieved her parents from Australia and restored their memories as thoroughly as was possible – there would always be holes; her mother had died not remembering Hermione's sixteenth birthday – she and Ron had already been cemented as an item. "Anyway, I don't want to 'approve' of him, and it doesn't have to be right away. I was just wondering." He shot Hermione a small, tolerant smile and she felt guilty for being difficult, but she was sensitive when it came to Malfoy.

"Once we're officially dating, I'll bring him over for dinner then." She wondered if Malfoy would be difficult to convince to come. Her initial thought had been that he would avoid it like the plague, as reserved and unsociable as he was, but perhaps that wasn't a fair assessment. In the general wizarding world, Malfoy was disliked, still. Distrusted. Outright hated, by some, enough that Scorpius suffered for the crime of being his son. That would make anyone unfriendly and unsociable, especially if they were reserved by nature. And besides, he forced himself to go to his parents' social networking dinners. Entertaining Hermione's father should be a doddle in comparison. She smiled to herself, imagining it. Malfoy sleek and elegant in one of his old-fashioned suits sitting at this small table, in the dated, ordinary Muggle surrounds, trying to make conversation with her retired dentist father.

"Maybe just after New Year's?" she offered hesitantly. "We'll have to see how things go."

"That sounds good." Her father waved his spoon in her direction. "I want to meet the man who makes my daughter smile like that. And gives her such expensive looking jewellery. I hope he's not some kind of sugar daddy, or whatever the magical equivalent is."

"Dad!" Hermione's cheeks flamed hot again, and she pulled her traitorous hand away from the necklace she was once more fiddling with, and flattened her traitorous lips together. It was embarrassing, how much of an open book she was when it came to Malfoy, and – sugar daddy? Oh good God. She never wanted to hear her father say those words again. And the implications of them were awful. They hadn't done anything until well after her birthday present anyway. Her mind flashed back to what they had done; her, sprawled on Malfoy's sheets while he'd thoroughly fucked her into the bed. She gulped at the memory, skin heating further.

"No! Merlin, no! I – that's just – " she began to protest indignantly, despite not knowing exactly what she was going to say, flustered and blushing.

"Settle down, Hermione. I'm only teasing." Her father was grinning, a twinkle in his eye and she subsided, though still bristling a little, and still wholly mortified.

"You're horrible. Horrible," she accused, no weight behind the words, smiling ruefully. "And I'm pretty sure the magical equivalent of a...sugar daddy, is still just a sugar daddy. Which Malfoy is not." She narrowed her eyes on him as she stood and scooped up their empty pudding bowls to take to the sink. "And if you're going to behave like this with him, I may think twice about the two of you meeting."

"I swear I'll be on my best behaviour, love." Her dad leaned back in his chair, still grinning at her.

"Hm. And when will I get to meet Karen?" Hermione asked, as she flicked her wand and set the dishes to washing themselves, a sight her dad never ceased to enjoy.

"The weekend after I meet this Draco Malfoy."

Hermione rolled her eyes but nodded as she flicked the kettle on. She'd been expecting that, and it was fair enough. They turned the conversation to other things after that, like what ridiculous hobby her cousin Gwen was into at the moment, and how her Aunt Lucy – her mother's younger sister – was going with her recent knee replacement, and other such safe topics, that weren't Malfoy. Settled down in the sitting room with cups of tea in hand, they watched TV for a while. Her dad had recorded the last episode of Eight Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown and saved it to watch with Hermione, and they competed fiercely with each other throughout the show. At the end she was victorious when she got the conundrum – not a regular occurrence.

But then it was nearly 9.30pm, and her dad was looking tired, a jaw cracking yawn escaping him, and she was catching his sleepiness, feeling a little dozy herself. So buoyed with triumph, Hermione pulled on her oversized knit jersey and said goodnight. It was dark outside so she didn't bother sneaking to the garden shed, wand in hand; instead she drew it from her arm holster on the porch, and disapparated on the spot.

Yawning, wand in hand, Hermione dropped her handbag on the table by the stairs and started sloping up them, rubbing her eyes. The tiredness from the afternoon cleaning and cooking, and the evening chatting, was starting to hit her, and she was looking forward to snuggling down into fresh, cosy sheets and falling asleep daydreaming of Malfoy. Wondering if he was thinking about her. If he was thinking about her. She smirked.

And then just as she crested the stairs, a figure stepped out of Hugo's bedroom door and snapped, "repulso!"

The spell hit her square in the chest before she even had a chance to react, and the world became an indecipherable chaos and a disaster in slow motion at the same time. Hermione was aware of the immense force hitting just above her sternum, and pain and pressure rippled out through her body from that spot. Her head jerked forward whiplash hard as she was propelled backward by the chest, the shove of a giant hand that she thought might have cracked ribs, and her hands flew wide open in some kind of fruitless search for something to grab onto.

Her wand went spiralling away, end over end.

The chain on her necklace broke.

And then the world spun into fast-forward.

Her back hit the wall at the bottom end of the stairs a good seven feet above the floor hard enough to cave in the plaster, and then Hermione plummeted like a stone. Her limbs flailing, she landed with one leg bent beneath her and screamed as she felt her knee bend in ways it shouldn't. No wand, agony radiating through her, all alone, the wards disabled, her phone out of reach... Hermione sobbed for air, tears streaking her cheeks and cutting trails in the settling plaster dust. But her mind still worked through the pain, and in the seconds she had before the wizard got down the stairs, Hermione knew there was one thing she could do.

The necklace had slid down, finding its way mostly into the left cup of her bra but the chain was hooked on her jersey neck and – obscured by the plaster dust floating thick down around her – Hermione shoved her hand down the wide neck of her jersey and pushed the small vial beneath her breast. The chain slid free in her grip as she pulled her hand out, coughing wrackingly, a little thread of delicate gold that she let fall to the carpet beside her.

A figure loomed up out of the cloud of plaster dust, and Hermione tried to make it look like she was yanking up the neck of her jersey as she glared up at him, defiant. "Who are you?" she gasped, every breath hurting. It was a man; she could see that much. A male wizard in boots and trousers and long coat, his face hidden behind a red, featureless mask but his hair long and straggly, his wand pointed at her. "Incarcerous," he said, and Hermione swore at him as the bonds writhed around her, drawing tight.

And then the bonds bent Hermione's knee back a way it no longer wanted to go, and it tightened in on her chest and her poor, battered ribs, and she stopped swearing and started just trying to manage the pain. She was vaguely aware she was making a weird whining noise, tears flooding her cheeks as she wrenched for air but could only take in tiny sips, no headspace left for defiance. Everything hurt. It all hurt so badly. She hadn't felt pain like this since having Hugo; he'd been breech, and Hermione had ended up demanding to go to a Muggle hospital except by then it had been too late to go.

She felt dizzy – vaguely aware her mind was wandering stupidly, shattered into bits by the pain, and the fear.

Heavy footsteps sounded. "Eh, good job," said a new voice; higher than the man who'd attacked Hermione but still male, with an accent that sounded vaguely Essex. "I've checked the house like you asked; we didn't trip anything."

"Did you search it?"

"Yeah. Nothing valuable. Mostly Muggle shit." The owner of the new voice bent over Hermione, a hulking, dark shape – half giant? – and seized her by her ponytail, yanking and dragging her upwards, and she wailed despite herself, arms pinned to her sides and legs immobilised, unable to even try to relieve the wrench on her hair. "Pretty daughter, though. Pity we weren't able to get her instead. The things I could do to a bitty little sweet like that..."

"You bastard!" Hermione gritted out, writhing, a wail clenched behind her teeth as the incarcerous tightened and her scalp burned, and the hulking wizard laughed as he grabbed her around the waist, massive hand flattening over the front of her jeans and palming her crotch firmly in passing – she made an animal sound of fury and writhed – before he just tucked her under his arm, hanging limply over the bar of his forearm around her waist. Her ribs shrieked with pain, but Hermione kept it to a quiet whimper, tears dripping straight from her open eyes onto the floor.

"Settle down, Len," the first wizard said as they moved toward the garage, Hermione still dangling helplessly, "keep it in your pants. This isn't one of those missions. The client wants her alive and undamaged, not fucked into a coma."

"That was one time, man. One time, and you always bring it up! Merlin's balls, how was I to know the precious bitch'd react like that?" He shifted Hermione under his arm as she listened in horror. "I mean, we healed her back together, and she still just...blehhh," he said, aping an addled state, and Hermione swallowed down bile.

"You're an idiot, Lenny," the first wizard said with a note of affection, and Hermione's blood ran cold. They were monsters. How could human beings laugh about those kinds of things? She wanted to be sick. Oh God. Oh Merlin. She was going to die. They were going to take her to their client – who she just knew had to be the anonymous sender of the flowers – and then he or she was going to kill her. This I promise you, bitch. And it had to be Caritas Usbourne, it had to be. Only he was still in Azkaban, so who was organising it? Who was responsible? His daughter? His wife? Her mind raced and spun as she was jolted down the few steps to the garage. It was hard to think through the pain.

Harry would know it was Caritas, too. Or connected to him, somehow. But by the time he knew Hermione was gone, she might already be dead. And even if she wasn't, how would he find her? Oh God, she was going to die, horribly, and then what would Rose and Hugo do without her? Ron would try his best, but he couldn't be her. And Malfoy. Oh Merlin, Malfoy. She'd only just found him, it wasn't fair. He was going to get divorced for her. She made him happy. And Ron wouldn't be supportive of Rose and Scorpius being friends, and her dad – her dad would be devastated. Magic taking his daughter away from him again.

And then everything squeezed and twisted horribly as the wizard holding her disapparated, and took Hermione with him.