Triggers: references to child abuse and torture

Contains a sex scene

From the day of the kiss, things progressed in a positive direction. Draco's trips to the pub for sustenance lessened as he stayed more often at Hermione's for dinner (Draco paid for the food, his mother didn't raise a philistine).

Forays into the Hogwarts textbooks were met with elated hugs and kisses when they were successful; and gales of laughter when they failed. TV programmes were watched with both stretched out on the settee, close together, with Hermione resting her head on his bicep and his free arm draped over her hips. Kisses were exchanged when the ads came on, and when the programme returned, they watched it with heated cheeks and tingling lips.

One evening in front of the TV, Draco's hand found itself slowly and exploring the skin beneath Hermione's t-shirt.

His fingertips touched an ugly, raised pucker of skin – and Hermione leapt off the settee.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean" – Draco blustered, hopping off the settee and taking a step towards her.

She stepped back, trembling.

"Her – Henri," he said quietly, recognising the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look the prisoners in the dungeon got the first time a torturer entered their cell. His arms stayed at his sides; palms open. "If I go too far or too fast, tell me. We'll go as slow as you want."

Her eyes locked with his. "I want to be with you," she said, but the words were wobbly.

Relief coursed through his body. "Tell me what you want," he murmured.

She hesitated, then turned to the living room door. "Come with me."

In thrall, he followed.

Hermione led him to her bedroom, darkened by the evening light but warmed by a single lamp next to her bed.

Draco stepped over the threshold, hesitant. On the surface of things, their relationship had scorched from minus ten to two hundred miles per hour in the space of twenty seconds. There was still fear in her eyes, no matter how she tried to disguise it with confidence.

Plus, he shouldn't really be in a relationship with her in the first place.

"Henri" –

"I want to do this," she said firmly. Then she gripped her t-shirt with both hands and pulled it off.

He'd seen it before, the letters. Back then they were raw and angry with her non-muddy blood oozing from the cuts. Now they were solid and scarred, a permanent blight on her beautiful skin. Then she took off her bra.

He hadn't seen the damage to her breasts.

After Voldemort pulled him off Hermione's torture for lack of results, Draco knew that Lucius was her sole torturer until the day she was supposed to die. He knew his father wouldn't have raped her; Muggleborns were worse than filth as far as he was concerned. But the scars he inflicted…

Each slash looked like it had been frenziedly applied, but Draco knew that Lucius didn't do 'frenzied.' Scars criss-crossed her torso, breasts and nipples, culminating in an awful cross-hatching of spite and ignorance and power-tripping. It nearly overwhelmed him.

Hermione fought to keep her arms from crossing over her bare chest. "I'm getting plastic surgery soon," she mumbled. "Then I won't look so ugly."

Before she even knew, Draco had crossed the room and she was in his arms, inhaling his yummy smell through his shirt.

"Never in a million years could anyone ever call you ugly," he said into her hair. "Dear gods, no."

She lifted her head, and they kissed. For a long time.

Eventually, Draco stepped away. He drew off his shirt and turned away from Hermione.

He swallowed when he heard her shocked gasp. He'd never shown the scars on his back to anyone – except maybe Lucy when he sped away from her rooms in his Speedos.

Like Hermione, every scar seared into his back and his mind was created by Lucius Malfoy. Every time Draco didn't meet his exacting standards, Lucius lashed out with his whip; or his cane if the whip was too far away. This happened throughout Draco's entire life, until he died.

Warm fingers gently traced the newest of the scars, and his skin rippled. "Your father?" she whispered.

"Yeah." What more was there to say, really.

Unbidden desire shot through him when she kissed the same scar she touched.

Turning, he held her close, until she stepped away. The fear was gone.

"Take me to bed, Draco," she said.

There was nothing he wouldn't do for her.

They took forever to remove their clothes; caught up in exploring with hands and lips what the other's body had to offer. Draco discovered more scars on Hermione's body and when he gently kissed each one, he silently vowed that if Lucius was still alive, he'd find a way to kill him. Being dead himself would be no obstacle.

Draco led Hermione to her modest double bed and helped her climb on as if she were a queen ascending her throne. There, he slowly moved from the top of her head down to her toes, leaving kisses in his wake – then he grasped her ankles and spread her legs apart.

Despite herself, Hermione tensed, which Draco expected. He retraced his path back up her beautiful body. "Try to trust me," he said between slow, languorous kisses, "but say 'stop' very clearly if it gets too much. Okay?"

"Hmmm," she purred, relaxing again.

Once she'd parted her legs again, the way he looked at the juncture of them made her think of a hungry panther, about to pounce. She closed her eyes and went with feel over sight, so when Draco parted her with long, cool fingers and placed his mouth on her clitoris, she yelped and jerked before she could stop herself.

Draco stilled. "Stop?" he asked.

She let out a breath. "No," she replied. "Just surprised."

Draco smiled and went back to work.

He'd seen Hermione orgasm before, through those voyeuristic Afterlife mirrors. He had no reason to believe she'd fake an orgasm on herself, so he was privately elated when, after a few awkward first minutes when Hermione's self-consciousness threatened to get the better of her, she gave in to her inner hedonist and reacted to Draco's fingers and mouths moving over her pink, glistening skin. He applied his tongue to her clitoris, building up speed and pressure until she cried out in release and her body shook with the force of her orgasm.

He drank from her body like a starved man.

At last, Draco placed his erection at the opening between her still-shaking thighs. Her eyes were closed again, and already he could feel her tighten. He'd explored inside her with his fingers, drawing out another orgasm, and his cock throbbed with need. Or angry neglect.

He lowered himself over her body and kissed her. "Just tell me to stop whenever," he gently reminded her.

She wrapped her arms about his neck. "I don't want you to stop," she said fiercely. "I want it to be you."

Draco gathered his reeling senses and moved inside her for the first ever time.

Draco wanted to stay, to sleep in the bed with Hermione, to wake in the morning and watch the sun make its way up the bed and fall across her body. But he had an early start tomorrow, and even though he found Simon to be both annoying and smelly, he didn't want to let him down.

Just before he got out of her bed, they had an odd conversation. Odd to him, anyway.

"We should talk about contraception," Hermione announced before she languorously stretched her nude body alongside his, distracting him.

"Uh, yes, of course," he replied. Not that he knew what to do. Without a wand or access to a contraception potion, he was out of ideas.

"I could go on the pill," she said thoughtfully, "or we could use condoms."

Neither 'pill' nor 'condoms' meant a dicky bird to Draco. "Uh… what do you suggest is best?" he said lamely.

"Well, the best is to use both, at least initially," Hermione said. "How many sexual partners have you had?"

Draco blinked. "Just one," he muttered.

"Really?" Hermione grinned. "The way women flock around you, I assumed you must have had dozens."

"Quality before quantity, my dear," he drawled.

"I think we'll use both for the time being," Hermione decided. "I'll get a prescription for the pill. Can I leave it to you to get the condoms?"

"Ah, yes. Of course. Condoms. Got it."

"Simon," Draco asked the following morning with a sense of foreboding doom, "what are condoms and where do I get them?"

It took Simon five full minutes to stop laughing.

But before morning, the night had to be gotten through.

For the first time since he died, Draco dreamed. Or, more accurately, he remembered.

The very first time he was forced to torture someone, he was given a kid to destroy. "He's younger and weaker than you, so you shouldn't have any problems," Lucius said as indulgently as he could and slapped Draco on the shoulder, just where the vestiges of last night's whipping ended.

Just outside the kid's dungeon door, Draco turned and faced Lucius. "What information am I supposed to get out of him?" he asked. "If he's a kid, what's he supposed to know?"

Lucius shrugged. "He's a hostage, imprisoned to make his parents cough up information about the Order. He mightn't know anything. But he'll be good practice for you, so in you go and stop dawdling. You're a Death Eater. Live up to it."

To Draco's shame, the damage he inflicted on an innocent Hufflepuff Third Year was channelled from the immense and impotent rage he felt at his father.

The boy's heartbreaking screams and begs for mercy were horrible to hear, but the images that tormented Draco as he dreamed were of what was left of him towards the end, lying in a broken puddle on the cold dungeon floor, legs streaked with his piss and excrement, dribble leaking from his bloody mouth and his eyes staring dully at nothing.

He was worse than dead.

His life refused to leave him.

That same evening, Draco stopped scratching away at the Mark and tried to sear it from his flesh. Never again, he vowed to himself. He will never lay a wand or a hand on anyone again.

Fuck this place.

Shaking, Draco lurched awake, very troubled.

He was being punished; he knew.

For Hermione, her nightmare was as bad.

This time, she recalled in agonising intimacy the torture the tall, patrician man inflicted on her. He never raised his voice, not once, not even when she used all the remaining breath she had to hurl obscenities at his hooded face; screaming out the searing, unending pain that he released in her.

He'd merely reply that was all he expected from such a filthy Mudblood.

When he'd had his fun, he strode to the door and demanded that it open. Hermione ached to curl into a ball and mentally disappear, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

Before he left, he glanced at her one more time, and there she saw tendrils of long, blonde hair and chameleon eyes almost hidden behind his hood.

In her bed, Hermione's eyes opened. Her body shook from head to toe.

That hair colour and those eyes: she knew them well.

The man who tortured her must be Draco's father.

The next morning, Hermione made herself a cup of tea and sat at her kitchen table.

Her first instinct was to tell Draco; then Gerry. Except they might point out it was a dream she had. Considering all the time she'd been spending with Draco; it was no surprise that his features surfaced in her dreams.

Did Draco know what his father got up to? That he was running around in a monk's habit in the dungeons of someone's ruined castle, probably, inflicting pain on random people for God knows what reason?

He said they were estranged; so, probably not.

She knew how far-fetched it would sound without proof.

So; she had to find proof.

When Hermione brushed her teeth, her eye fell on the small wastepaper basket next to the sink. It needed emptying. After she rinsed her mouth, she took it downstairs to the outside rubbish bin and manhandled the tissues and floss and whatever into it.

Just before she replaced the lid, something inside caught her eye.

The tissues containing Draco's dried blood from his nosebleed at the pub. She'd stuck them in her pocket and forgot about them until she came home.

She stared at them for a long time.

Then she retrieved a small plastic bag from the kitchen.

New Scotland Yard

London

"Ms Granger! How lovely to see you!" Detective Schiller wasn't joking; time had passed and it looked Ms Granger had physically improved in leaps and bounds. She was still tiny and skinny, but now there was a strength to her that was missing before. "Downstairs said you had something for me?"

Hermione shifted in her seat in the small meeting room. She'd been so sure this was the right thing do as she travelled into the city; but now, she wasn't so sure. She wasn't even sure where to start.

"I have a blood sample," she said, putting the plastic bag with the bloody tissues on the table, "from a person whose father, I think, was involved in my torture."

Schiller drew the bag towards her thoughtfully.

"It's a couple of weeks old," Hermione said lamely, "I don't know if it's even viable as a sample. But if there's even a chance that something can be obtained from it, I'd like to know."

"And so would we," Schiller replied, getting out an evidence receipt from her bag. "What's led you to think this evidence might be useful? I take it that if you're still calling yourself Henrienna Miller that you haven't recovered all your memories yet?"

"I have recollections," Hermione clarified, "but I haven't remembered everything yet. But in this case, what I recalled" (not dreamt, she told herself silently) "was very clear. I believe the man who tortured me is related to the person I got the bloody tissues from."

"Did you hit him?" the detective asked curiously.

"No! He had a bloody nose," Hermione said hastily.

"And what's the name and address of the owner of this blood?"

Hermione hesitated. She didn't want Draco to get into unnecessary trouble. "I'm certain he's not involved," she said. "He's estranged from the man who did this." She pointed to her chest. "Could you possibly treat the blood as from John Doe, maybe?"

Schiller hid her frown. "Henri, the psychological profile on the person or persons who did this to you indicate that they're very, very dangerous," she said gently. "If there's any chance the person you know is involved" –

"He's not," Hermione replied. "That man's caused a lot of damage to him, too."

Schiller looked at the bag again. "Has this person given his consent to having his blood taken?"

Blood suffused Hermione's face. "Never mind," she said, leaning across the table to grab the bag. "It was a long shot from the start."

"Now, now, hold your horses," Schiller smiled. "We haven't had a break on this case at all. If the contents of this bag can send us in the right direction, I'll overlook a couple of procedural anomalies. Let's send it to the lab, shall we?"

"Thank you!" Hermione smiled, relieved.

Before Schiller opened the door, she warned "Promise me you'll be careful, Henri."

"I will."

After Hermione left, Schiller called Rochester and requested a patrol for Hermione's street.