Eighteen

The room is very quiet, so every small noise sounds so loud. Hermione shifts in her chair, and the wood squeaks, the fabric rubbing audibly. Siobhan's parchment crinkles and her robes swish as she crosses one knee over the other. The clock ticks on the wall. Christ, this is going to drive Hermione more insane than she already might be, but she refuses to talk first, aside from the hellos they've exchanged. Draco is just through the wall; that's a reassurance. They sit in the spare bedroom again, like they did the first time, and Siobhan looks tired, features strained and tight. She smiles at Hermione, though, as the silence stretches out, and then finally breaks it.

"So, how have you been, Hermione, since I last saw you?"

Hermione doesn't answer right away; she takes a breath and lets it out slowly, thinking the question over properly. A lot has happened since she last saw Siobhan. It feels as though another lifetime has passed, even though it's been just less than a couple of months. And Hermione can't sum those weeks up in any useful way and still be concise. It's been a chaotic maelstrom, and too much has happened emotionally to bother explaining to Siobhan. It's been two days since she got her new wand, though, and it's been fantastic since then compared to what it has been. She'll start there, she supposes.

"All over the place. Better once Malfoy came here," Hermione says briefly, her voice sounding too loud in the small room. She's honest. She agreed to give Siobhan a chance, and so she will. Lupin had asked again this morning if Draco wanted to see the Healer, and he'd given Lupin a scathing look and a definite no . She wonders if he feels uncomfortable about her seeing Siobhan. If he's worried the Healer will try to poison Hermione's mind against him. He hadn't said anything, but then, he wouldn't. All he'd done was kiss her temple before she'd entered the room and wish her luck, smiling wryly. God, she loves him.

Siobhan scribbles something with her quill as Hermione finishes, "And even better since I got a wand. I knew I missed having a wand. I hated not being able to deal with my hair magically, or use warming charms, or muffliato, or – well, lots of practical, everyday things, as well as being able to defend myself. You don't realise how useful something is until it's gone. But I didn't realise how different it would make me feel." Hermione looks down at her hands, twisted together in her lap. She draws her left cuff back discreetly and eyes the butt of her wand there, admiring it, before meeting Siobhan's eyes. "I feel like I got some of my power back. Is that stupid?"

Siobhan waits a beat before answering, her face blank. Non-judgemental. "No. Not at all. As a witch, your wand is, in a very real way, a physical manifestation of your power. You lost your wand right before you were taken and –" she picks the next word carefully "– hurt, repeatedly, over a protracted period of time. Being without a wand represents a helplessness to you, and a vulnerability to harm."

A shot of anger spears through Hermione as those words sink in, falling cool and neutral from Siobhan's lips. She glares at the witch, her pulse suddenly picking up speed. "Then why didn't you let me have a wand earlier? Why did you deny me one when you knew the effect it was having on me?"

Siobhan shifts uncomfortably. "There were other factors at play, Hermione. But we're not here to discuss that; we're here to check whether you're stable enough to keep this wand, and to see how you're feeling."

Panic fizzes up. Hermione probably should have realised that, of course, that's what this session is about. Of course. But for some reason, that's only just sinking in now. She wraps her right hand over her left forearm through her shirt, feeling the thin straps of her holster and the bulge of her wand. Part of her wants to hex the witch and run. Grab Malfoy and flee. Go find her parents in Australia. She's lost enough for this damned war. "But I want to discuss it," she says, voice brittle.

Siobhan sighs. "You were unstable. We were concerned you would use the wand to harm yourself or to try to apparate to Draco Malfoy." Hermione bites the inside of her cheek, thinking – and why would running to Draco have been so terrible?

"Malfoy let me use his wand," she says instead. "That was something that always made me feel so much safer." She meets the Healer's eyes again. "He let me use the Cruciatus curse on him." She doesn't know why she confesses to it. It's an Unforgivable. Siobhan's left eyelid twitches slightly, and her lips flatten.

"Why?"

"Why did he, or why did I?"

"Both."

"I did it because I wanted to hurt him. Because he'd just – he'd just hurt me, and I needed to hurt him," Hermione says thickly, a tight, horrible feeling building in her chest. She hates involuntarily remembering enough – voluntarily remembering feels like holding a hot brand to her own flesh and breathing in the stink of the smoke. It makes her sick. It makes her feel dirty. "And I think... I think he let me because he knew I needed to." She shrugs. "He gave me total control in his room unless it was something that would put us in danger, and it wouldn't be total if it meant stopping me from hurting him, would it?" she says almost defiantly.

She knows what Siobhan thinks of Draco and of Hermione's relationship with him.

The Healer sees him as an aggressor. A perpetrator. She doesn't understand what Hermione herself struggles to really, truly accept, no matter how much she knows it intellectually to be fact – that Draco is a victim, too. A victim of Voldemort and of the Order, who made him the dirty tool they wielded to keep their own hands clean while he waded in blood and filth, and of Dumbledore, who knew of his situation in the sixth year and failed to act and, perhaps most of all, his parents who first put him on the path that led him to becoming a Death Eater.

Draco was trapped between Voldemort and the Order, and when Hermione turned up in the dungeons, he had saved her when he didn't have to. He had sacrificed himself for her. He had tried to make her feel safe in an almost unendurable situation. He had done his best.

She has every reason to love him.

Not to mention that he is thoughtful, unexpectedly funny, and sweeter than Hermione could have ever imagined. And when she looks at him, desire flutters in her core. She wants him, very badly, no matter how inappropriate it may be.

"And yet he still hurt you," Siobhan says, yanking Hermione out of her thoughts. She tenses, the unfurling happiness at the thought of every reason she has to love Draco dashed to pieces by those few words. "He raped you, and degraded you, and gave you to other dark wizards as entertainment."

It's like a physical blow. Hermione hunches in her chair, aware of the way her shoulders pull forward and down, her hands locked together in front of her, sitting on the edge of the chair like she's ready to run. But then the bitch might tell Lupin to take her wand. Her mind races, scrambling. Should she lie to the Healer? Tell Siobhan what Hermione thinks she wants to know? Or will the Healer sense that; would it be best to be honest? She's panicking. And she's silent while Siobhan looks at her, sitting back relaxed in her chair with a quill in hand, waiting. Hermione wonders if a Muggle psychotherapist would be any more understanding.

"Of course he did. Even if he hadn't, we both would have been punished or killed, horribly. And I agreed that it had to be done." The words come out clipped and slightly strained. Hermione's fingers twist on each other so hard it hurts. She can nearly feel her bones creak.

"So you're saying that you consented to your own rape?"

Oh god. Hermione feels sick, nausea roiling in her belly. Her pulse is thrumming loud in her ears, and her palms are clammy, sweat breaking out at her armpits and the nape of her neck. She sits frozen, wanting to sink into the floor. To cease to exist. This is cruel. She stares at her trembling, locked hands, feeling small and stupid. How is this supposed to help?

"No! No, I – it wasn't like that. It wasn't –" Hermione has nothing – she's speechless. She doesn't know how to argue against what Siobhan has just thrown in her face. Is the Healer trying some misguided attempt to make her confront the idea that – that all her beliefs are wrong, and Draco is evil, and she is just a brainwashed victim? Because that isn't right. But she doesn't know how to answer. She didn't fucking consent. But Draco didn't force her. It was – "It was you-know-who. You-know-who forced us both. Neither of us wanted to. And yes, it was worse for me, then, at the revel. But Malfoy was hurt too. Worse, in some ways."

"I see," Siobhan just says mildly, and Hermione looks up in surprise. The Healer's face is neutral, but Hermione has the oddest feeling the woman is irritated. She doesn't know what the Healer is trying to achieve. The woman takes a breath and looks down at her parchment, then back up at Hermione. "Do you feel your dynamic with Draco Malfoy is healthy?"

Hermione blinks at her. "Define healthy." Siobhan shoots her a look as if to say you know perfectly well what I mean. "Okay, um..." Hermione genuinely thinks about it for a long moment, and finally smiles to herself, faint and wry as the answer comes to her. "Yes, actually."

"Yes?" Siobhan raises a brow.

"I know it might sound crazy, but sometimes I feel like my relationship with Malfoy is the only healthy thing I have." Hermione has nightmares every night, she's awkward with everyone else she knows – even her best friends, too many people make her panic, she can't control her own thoughts. She's a mess. "There are things about our relationship that aren't...ideal, of course. But we have respect and trust. And love." She lifts her chin, staring Siobhan down. She expects the Healer to say something about Draco and sits ready to be on the defence, but Siobhan merely scribbles something with her quill and gives Hermione an expectant smile.

"Could you tell me more about the rest of your life then?" Siobhan says instead, tapping her quill on the paper. "How are you doing emotionally, now? If you were to compare where you are now to where you were the first time I met you?"

The rest of the session focuses on Hermione's overall well-being, and Siobhan isn't so bad when she's not fixated on Draco as an enemy. It's more of an assessment than a proper session, and Siobhan asks about her nightmares and her anxiety around touch. Whether she self-harms, and Hermione doesn't mention the way she sometimes scrubs her skin a little raw in the shower. It doesn't matter much now she has a wand and can heal the small abrasions. She asks about Hermione's eating habits and her energy levels. It's taxing, and Hermione feels raw and churned when she's done, but it wasn't as bad as she thought.

And at the end of it, Siobhan says she sees no reason why Hermione can't keep her wand.

She's standing to leave when the Healer adds, "I hope you'll think about having a proper session, Hermione."

Hermione thinks about it. She really considers it. Maybe the Healer could help. Yes, wizarding therapy was rudimentary compared to Muggle therapy, but she can't access Muggle therapy without being written off as insane, and maybe –

"I think the codependency in your relationship with Draco Malfoy is something it would be valuable for you to expl–"

"No." Hermione glares at the woman, the word a snarl. "I disagree." She stalks from the room and slams the door behind her, hard. It rattles in the frame, and she takes a vicious, childish satisfaction in the bang.

Her heart is stampeding, and she can't seem to catch her breath, but their bedroom is right there, and a moment later, she's shut in a haven of blue and gold paisley wallpaper. "Shit," Draco says mildly, worry underpinning the one word as he stands up from the edge of the bed where he'd apparently been waiting, a book sliding from his hand forgotten as his whole focus zeroes in on her. "Are you alright, Granger?" She nods wordlessly, and he goes to her.

It's not that Siobhan's wrong, Hermione thinks dryly as she curls her arms tightly around his back and nestles her cheek against his chest, staring blankly at nothing as he wraps his arms around her and tucks her close. It's just that she doesn't think it needs fixing. Codependency is the least of Hermione's problems.

"What do you need?" he asks carefully, one hand smoothing over her hair, the other splayed large, thin, and deceptively strong over her back. "What can I do?"

"This," she says in answer to both, as she so often does, and he places a kiss on the top of her head, his breath warm, and he doesn't ask any more questions. No, Hermione doesn't want to fix this.

Several days pass. Three, five. It doesn't really matter. Things go up and down, but Draco finds himself skewing toward a downward path. He doesn't hate himself any less as time ticks by. Hermione isn't really any less broken. He isn't any less of a monster. He's still trapped in his own head, thoughts circling – vultures around a carcass, water running down a drain, mind stuck in a holding pattern because nothing has really changed. Not for Draco, at least.

Everything is more or less the same, although they haven't attempted anything that could bring either of them to orgasm again yet. Just because she did it once, it doesn't mean Hermione's not still gun-shy and skittish. She still has flashbacks, she still has bad memories swirling up, tainting the moment, and he's still worried about triggering something that will cause her to regress. There are things he knows they both want to do that she had forced upon her at the dinner, and while Draco isn't sure how much she remembers of it, he knows she remembers enough.

He remembers her afterwards; catatonic, her eyes dull and body trembling, dressed in that abhorrent lingerie, covered in blood seeping from shallow cuts, dark, blossoming bruises, and – and fluids. Spit, and semen, and – he wants to be sick whenever the memory lurches up in his mind, which happens all too often when arousal rises in him. He had to sit there and watch. It kills him. Her lips split and swollen, her whole face disfigured with bruising, between her legs bloodied and abraded raw by what they'd done.

Merlin, Draco feels like he deserves death for sitting by and allowing that. He should have tried to get her out sooner, whether or not he had permission from the Order, and whether or not it blew his cover. Instead, he did his job and stayed and exposed her to more hurt. Of course, if he'd tried to get her out while the Dark Lord was still in residence, it might just have led to them being caught in the process. Patrols were always tighter, and protocols followed more closely when Voldemort was present than when he was gone. It would've been too risky, really. He knows that.

Either way, all of that trauma, guilt, and pain has culminated in them both being almost scared of anything seriously sexual because neither of them knows what they might trigger at any moment. Both of them are afraid of setting off a cascade of awful, nightmarish memories. So, no matter what Potter and the others might think, the intimate moments Draco and Hermione engage in mostly involve nothing but snogging like fifth years. Although gradually, she's been getting bolder. Touching him; his dick, his naked torso, and pressing her lips down his throat to his chest. And she lets him touch her more too – particularly seeming to love his mouth on her pretty breasts, although always through her thin vest, for some reason. As if skin-to-skin contact would be too much.

Draco takes what he's given and tries to be thankful.

There are other improvements too – she's eating, she's sleeping a little better, she talks to her friends. Sometimes she laughs. Draco loves it when he makes her laugh; the way her face transforms. Eyes crinkling up, shining and liquid, grin like a benediction, her cheeks – a little fuller now – pinking with colour, the little baby curls of hair that always escape whatever hairdo she tries fluffing out around her face like a halo. She enjoys having a wand again, and she's helping Lupin in his office these days, which seems to be giving her purpose.

But while she's closeted in the lycanthrope's office, busy with paperwork, Draco is at a loose end. Mostly, he exercises. Trying to stretch out the scar tissue on his back and attain a level of fitness he hasn't been at since playing Quidditch, and then hopefully surpass it. If he can't have a wand, he needs to find other ways to be dangerous, and physicality can't hurt. And calisthenics are mindless and painful, like a meditation that punishes him.

Draco is beginning to feel like he's trapped in purgatory, the guilt scratching inside his skull like claws. Gripping his heart tightly so it pumps against a binding cage, everything feeling too full, too much, not enough. As Hermione stabilises, he begins to understand he's destabilising, as though they're on a see-saw. She goes up, he goes down. He's slipping. The ground is turning to quicksand under his feet.

It was easier when he was in the Dark Lord's service, strangely. Draco feels terribly guilty for feeling that way, but when Hermione had been a captive, he had felt more sane and more in control than he did now. He'd had to be in perfect control of himself every second of the day. To keep his mind shielded every moment he was in front of any potential Legilimens, with a facade of acceptable thoughts for them to trawl through. He'd had to be made of steel; inflexible, hard, strong. To keep his emotions locked down as much as was humanly possible. Hermione had been his only weakness, and he'd needed to be in control of that too, lest his feelings for her give him away.

Any slip, any mistake, any trace of human feeling could've meant death when Draco was the Order's agent. And it had been a terrible strain – it had probably ruined him – but he'd risen to the demands put upon him. He'd shut down as much as possible, repressed the guilt, and done what he'd had to do – grimly, hating himself deep down. Now, though, no one is asking anything of him except Hermione, who only asks for his presence. Under pressure, Draco had functioned well, as though that pressure had been what had held him together. Because now that it's gone and only the guilt and self-hatred remain, he's falling apart.

A slow loss of cohesion.

An itch starts beneath his skin. He's trying his best to support Hermione. To be her anchor. The steady, immovable object she can cling to when things overwhelm her. She doesn't ask anything of him except to be there, but he tries to always present her with the front she needs. Calm, gentle, soft. Understanding, undemanding. In a way, it's like the facade he wore as a Death Eater, except it doesn't have the same stabilising effect on him. Draco wants to give Hermione a chance to start healing – as much as it's even possible for her to heal – but it's getting harder to keep it together himself.

There needs to be a way for him to atone. To pay penance. Not just for what he did to Hermione – in all honesty, what he did to her is only responsible for a small portion of the guilt he feels – but for everything he's done since he first went to Potter, seeking an escape. He remembers that so clearly. Running in fear, disillusioned by Snape's memories, broken and lost, and seeking safety, not yet fully mired in his role as a Death Eater. Not blooded. He had thought the Order would accept him. That he could fight on their side. But after Potter had disarmed him, the Order had held him prisoner for nearly a week in a windowless room undergoing interrogation after interrogation – much less pleasant than this recent round with Lupin – before they'd returned his wand and sent him back, against his own pleas.

They'd sent him back, giving him no choice, and it was only as their man that Draco had committed atrocities that make him think that perhaps he doesn't deserve to live. Perhaps he's crossed the line. He's unsalvageable. Too tainted, too ruined.

It's at its worst at night. That's when despair creeps in, as though Dementors are looming over him, hooded faces close and eager, drinking up his hope and leaving him a husk.

Draco dreams about staying behind the night he got Hermione out, and in those dreams his inevitable death feels like a relief, a release, and he cries when he wakes up because he's still alive.

Those nights, it's Hermione who is a comfort to him, their roles reversed. It's her who holds him close as he presses his lips together and struggles to stem the weakness and vulnerability of his weeping. It's her fingers combing through his hair, whispering reassurances and love that he doesn't deserve. Her body is soft and warm as he buries his face against her breasts, his silent tears wetting her shirt. And she doesn't understand why he's crying. That it's because he survived, and now he has to live with it.

What really infuriates him is that now that he's free to fight for the Order honestly, to try to atone for what they made him do, they keep him trapped here, wandless and useless. They used him up, and now they won't let him be useful anymore, and he hates it. They've ruined him.

They made him a murderer, a torturer, a rapist, and now they tell him that he can't be trusted with a wand.

"Hi, Harry," she says as he knocks on the doorjamb of Lupin's office to alert her to his presence. The last time he'd come in unexpectedly, she'd stifled a scream, tried to hex him – Merlin, she was out of practice – and then burst into tears. She's still very reactive and hyper-alert, but she gets lost in her work in the office in the mornings and startles easily. Having company helps, but she's trying to be more independent because she feels like everyone expects it of her, including Draco. If she's having a bad morning but still wants to try to work, he comes down from their room and sits with her and helps her with the cryptography – which he's very good at, unlike following her systems of organisation. And usually, even if he's shut away in their room exercising or reading, he'll pop in mid-morning to check on her, with a cup of tea.

"Hi, 'Mione." Harry smiles at her, adjusting his glasses and meandering over to the table, bright green eyes curious.

Hermione pins a scrap of parchment up to the map with a sticking charm. The Order is planning a raid on a Death Eater base in the wizarding village of Tinworth and has been collating data for over a week. The mission had been what Ron was doing reconnaissance for. From the few communications they've intercepted recently, the Order suspects Voldemort is growing more paranoid and may be hiding Nagini away. It makes sense; while Voldemort may want to keep Nagini under his constant protection, having them both in the same place also makes him uniquely vulnerable. Hermione has just finished decoding a note found on an unidentified Death Eater's body, which seemed to confirm the theory. She pulls out a yellow folder and uses a sticking charm to securely affix all the related documentation to it.

"Is this to do with the mission Remus's planning?" Harry seems both happy and slightly resentful that Hermione's taken over his job as Lupin's assistant. He'd clearly disliked the paperwork and obviously hadn't been able to handle the cryptography as well as Hermione, but she thinks he feels pushed out. She smiles faintly, trying to include him as she spins the folder to face him.

"Yes. Ron found a note on a Death Eater's body written in Ogham," she says, tapping the parchment, and Harry leans forward to peer at it, scrunching up his face at the Old Irish lettering. "It was a simple substitution cipher, but in modern Irish Gaelic, so that was fun." She'd needed some reference books for that and to owl Seamus in the hopes he could help with translating the unencrypted text, which he had – a bit rustily.

"I'm glad you're back," Harry says with a wry grin.

"Me too," she says more solemnly, and Harry's grin fades as though he's just remembering. He shuffles from foot to foot.

"Well, um, Lupin just sent me in here to grab a folder on Gorman Fell? He's a Snatcher we took prisoner a while ago." Hermione's able to lay her hands on it quickly, thanks to her new organisational system, and she passes it over to Harry with a smile, trying not to flinch when their hands touch. She does though, and he notices, eyes sad. "Thanks." He pauses as if gathering his strength, pressing his lips together. "How are you and Malfoy?" he says at last as if he's reluctant to even ask. She frowns, picking up a quill and fiddling with it.

"We're fine, Harry." Hermione doesn't tell him that she's been worrying about Draco more and more recently. He's been having more nightmares, and sometimes he cries when he wakes. She catches him staring into space blankly too often, although when he notices her looking, he schools his face to an eerie normalcy. He's careful of her to a fault and it should be amazing, but it's beginning to feel brittle and false. As though he's hiding everything behind a mask. But she's very aware he wouldn't want Harry knowing about his vulnerabilities.

"There's nothing you –" Harry begins to ask, shifting uncomfortably. He's bright red and looks incredibly awkward, and Hermione cocks a brow. "I wanted to check – I mean, you were saying the other day..." She looks at him expectantly, but he backs up a step, clearly having lost his nerve. "Actually, never mind. I should get this to Remus."

"Oh." She watches, bemused, as he backpedals toward the door. "Okay?"

"Bye, 'Mione!" He waves a hand and then vanishes. She wonders what he was going to ask as she returns to an owl communique they intercepted yesterday that mentions one of the American wizards by name. Jonas Wilson. Hermione doesn't know which one he was. She doesn't know what he did to her. She tries – desperately – not to think about it at the same time as the other half of her brain tries desperately to place him in the nightmarish memories that haunt her. Lupin had told her she didn't have to work on the message – that perhaps she shouldn't – but she wants to, for reasons she can't fully articulate. Not without wanting to cry. But she hasn't told Draco. Not with the way he is at the moment.

Reminding him of the dinner again might be too much for him to bear right now. Hermione can almost see the strain weighing down on him, crushing him beneath guilt and shame over what he'd done as the Order's agent, and a constant worry for her. She wishes he wouldn't worry about her so much. She's getting better, not worse. Slowly and inconsistently, yes, but she's not sliding downhill the way he seems to be, drowning in guilt that shouldn't even belong to him. Fuck, it's all such a mess. She leans over the table braced on her hands, her head starting to ache, a persistent thud beginning behind her eyes, her temples tightening. She feels useless. Utterly useless. Tears sting her eyes.

She sighs and sits with a thump, staring unfocused at the blank parchment in front of her, wishing she knew what to do. But even though she's doing better, she can still barely keep herself functional half the time – she has no idea how to help Draco deal with his own burdens. Especially when he won't talk to her about it. At all. Every time she's tried over the past several days, he changes the subject firmly enough that she doesn't want to try to push him. His eyes go cold and his mouth becomes a thin line, and he suddenly looks like a Death Eater again, and it frightens her. And even if it didn't, she knows he won't talk no matter how much she pushes. He's immovable. It's infuriating and stressful, and makes her lie awake at night worrying, after he's slipped back into sleep.

Hermione smears away her tears with an impatient gesture. The closest she gets to helping Draco is holding him in the dark night while he tries to stifle his silent weeping, his shoulders shaking and his breathing ragged, his face turned away from her, or pressed against her chest. And that isn't really helping. She grabs her copy of the message she's trying to decrypt and glares at it, trying to spot patterns as her mind spins on Draco. Her headache worsens, thudding in time to her pulse, her orbital bones filled with sharp pain, her chest aching as though her heart is trying to beat through her ribs.

She doesn't know what to do.