Run!

This was the only thought racing through Hermione's mind, repeating itself again and again, both a command and a plea. It's amazing how the finer points of the brain's mental synapses just shut down in times of panic. Gone are the memories, the emotions, the qualities of character that make a human being a human being. Once the chase is on, you are nothing more than beast. You register sounds, objects, heat, a wayward branch poised to trip you up, but that's about the extent of your mental sophistication. You are action or inaction, victim or survivor. Fight or flight it's called. In this case, Hermione chose the latter.

She had lost vision on where the boys were — No, not the boys; her boys. Always her boys. Hers to protect. Hers to fail.

Mere seconds ago, it was a perfectly normal evening; the new normal, the frightening, cold, hungry kind of normal. The three of them were strategizing and planning, plotting what to do next, when Harry let it slip, just once. Voldemort's name. Hermione knew how proud Harry was that he had always been able to say his name, even when no one else could. He didn't realize how deadly being brave was, not like she did.

Hermione always realized things before everyone else.

But she could still make mistakes. Once they were spotted by the gang of Snatchers, Ron, Harry and her had all fled in different directions. And it was looking as if hers was the wrong one.

A stitch in her chest burned like fire and her legs screamed in protest as she pushed them for longer than they could go. It was as if someone had hit a panic button in her brain, leaving everything red and fatal and breathless. Every soft, snapping, inconsequential noise in the forest could be the last thing she'd ever hear.

Stop and you die stop and you die stop and you die stop and you die stop and you —

Ahead of her, six hulking, heaving men blocked her path. She veered to the right and was met with more Snatchers; veered left, blocked just the same. There were just too many. She was too alone. Her wand was out and ready, but even the familiar sensation of the thin wood in her palm couldn't stop the slickness of sweat from making it slide worryingly in her grip. Hermione wanted to scream, make them think her deranged and wild. Volatile. But her throat had seized up, constricted and choked her.

Flight had failed; there was nowhere to run. Fight claimed her, and like a trapped animal, she lashed out.

"Cruci—"

"Expelliarmus!"

Hermione's wand jumped out of her hand. She could feel her hair sticking uncomfortably with the sweat on the back of her neck, and her heart was beating so painfully hard that if the Snatchers did not kill her, her own exploding heart surely would. At least if she died that way she would soil them with her dirty Muggle blood, the blood that they hated so much. For the first time, Hermione actually wished that there was some chemical component that made her blood different, and that if hers touched their skin it would scorch them like acid, burn holes in their flesh; or make their skin swell and bubble, like salt on a snail in the too hot summer sun.

But it wouldn't, because, unlike them, she knew that there was no difference in their blood.

An entire war because these people didn't understand basic biology.

The wizard named Scabior approached her first, all swagger and sweat and filth, dark hair dread-locked from lack of care and hygiene. Slowly, as if this were a romantic reunion, he cupped her cheek in his hand and lowered his head to hers like he intended to kiss her. Hermione wanted to claw his face off.

"'Ello, my lovely," he drawled. "And what do they call you?"

Hermione trembled and her mouth had gone completely dry, but was proud that her voice sounded clear. "Penelope Clearwater. Half-blood."

Scabior smirked. "Is that right? Well. What kind of company are we keeping out 'ere, eh? One girl, all alone with two strapping blokes. That's 'ow reputations get started, you know."

Hermione said nothing. She didn't even attempt to keep the murder from her glare as he gazed at her lecherously, his eyes sweeping down from her face to her body so intently she could feel it prickle her skin; a ghostly violation.

On instinct, Hermione jerked away from him and fell towards her wand on the leafy ground, straining, reaching for it. A ragged pain burst between her shoulder blades as Scabior's boot connected with her back in a cruel stomp; like pinning a butterfly's wings with a hammer. Ruthless laughter erupted from the men surrounding her as she cried out, apparently amused by her futility and distress.

"Tut tut, Ms. Clearwater," Scabior said, dragging her up and throwing her back against a tree, knocking what little wind she had gotten out of her again. "That was rather rude of you, don't you think? We're 'aving a conversation 'ere."

She was still recoiling from the pain, trying to get an honest lungful of oxygen. Hermione was peculiarly, uncomfortably aware of all her bones; could estimate how easily they could snap and how much pain it would cause her. All thought left her mind besides this one. She reasoned it was just a symptom of panic. Before Hermione could stop herself, the denotations surged to the forefront of her mind and she internally rattled them off, like the human encyclopedia she was: Panic — the sudden feeling of acute and extreme anxiety or fear; characterized by a racing heart, weakness or faintness, breathing difficulties, feeling a loss of control, and fear of impending death.

All well and good information, unless you actually were about to die.

Scabior suddenly shoved his hand between her thighs and palmed her over her jeans, his other hand used to point his wand at her chest. Hermione's breath caught in her throat and her body locked up, as if she were already exhibiting signs of rigor mortis.

Rigor mortis: stiffening of the joints and muscles of a body a few hours after death, usually lasting from one to four —

Shut up shut up shut up!

He didn't rub her or make any moves to touch her deeper; the message was clear. The declaration of ownership. The powerful over the powerless.

Out of pure desperation, Hermione searched behind him and into the large crowd of Snatchers, for someone surely, surely would not like the scene unfolding before them. She looked first and foremost for a woman, so that she could give her a beseeching look, banking on another female's empathy, on the compassion that the world forces women to cultivate, necessary to trick them into being selfless enough to become mothers and foolish enough to be forgivers. But there were only men, sneering, jeering men, eyes and bodies excited...

And then she spotted her, and as Scabior's eyes peered down her shirt, Hermione's locked with the lone female Snatcher; a stocky woman with twined, ginger hair piled on top of her skull, her face dirty and filled with contempt. She smiled at Hermione, and her teeth were all completely rotten through besides one gleaming, gold canine. From the look of open hostility on the woman's face, Hermione knew it would be a waste of time looking to her for mercy; evil crossed all genders.

And despite the horrid man touching her, and the horrid men grinning at her, it was this woman who Hermione hated most.

Scabior's hand left the front of her pants and began to slide up her body, gave her left breast a tight, painful squeeze before running his calloused thumb across her bottom lip. She reared to bite it off; but at that moment, another Snatcher ran up behind them, panting.

"It's Potter! She was with Potter! He — he got away, but it was him all right."

Scabior's eyebrows raised and his grin grew larger.

"So that's the sort of company you're keeping. Looks like we'll be taking you with us, beautiful."

The walk to the gates of Malfoy Manor felt like the descent into hell. Through the high, iron-wrought gates, Hermione could see the billowing figure of Bellatrix Lestrange, waiting for her, bony fingers poking through the bars like hungry demons. Scabior hauled Hermione close enough to her so that she could see the light of recognition in Bellatrix's dark, insane eyes. It was even worse seeing her up close; every scar, every hair, every blue-spider vein on her hateful face. The woman laughed with malice.

"The Mudblood is here! The Mudblood is here! Ooh, it's Christmas!" she sang. She twirled one large curl around her blizzard-white finger, as if she were a school girl awaiting her date. It made Hermione feel startlingly edible; a horrifying thought that no one should have, but it was true. All she was to them, after all, was meat and bones and fear and hate and bad blood.

If they tried to swallow her whole, she vowed to herself that she would scrape their throats raw on the way down.

The gates creaked open, and Hermione's stomach dropped into her feet. She was too petrified to move again.

Scabior forcibly shoved her through the threshold.

"I could smell the Muggle on you," he whispered roughly in her ear as they walked forward. "I've never 'ad Mudblood cunt before. Wonder if it tastes different."

A whine of consternation rushed through Hermione's skull, and she couldn't keep her eyes from filling with water, no matter how fervently she didn't want to break down and cry like they all expected her to. She almost wished it was Harry here instead of her and hated herself for it; but it was only because Harry was so much better than she was at not crying. And not dying. Hermione truly believed he would be able to make it out of this alive.

She wasn't sure she could say the same about herself.

"Try anything, and the only thing you'll be tasting is your own blood," Hermione spat as she swallowed her tears. Both Ron and Harry would be proud of her for saying that. Hysterically, she started to plan out telling them this as a funny, innocuous anecdote, how she would phrase it when, not if, she saw them again, as if there was no question that she would...

"And then I said, 'Try anything, and the only thing you'll be tasting is your own blood!'"

"All right, Hermione! Nice one!" Harry would laugh, clap her on the back.

"I'm still gonna go kill him myself," Ron would growl, and she would put her hand on his until he smiled a bit and then maybe he would...

Scabior's bark of a laugh jarred Hermione out of her thoughts as he pushed her along again with slightly more force. She could still hear Bellatrix singing and cackling maniacally behind her.

The castle was exactly how she imagined it: Elaborately gothic, so dark and gloomy it was suffocating. Hermione was pushed inside of a large, high-ceilinged room, shocking in both its extravagance and its grisliness. The feet of the room's chairs and chesterfields were actual centaur feet — Hermione recognized them, all dipped in gloss and then in black. The walls were a dark emerald color, and bolted on all of them were either the heads of magical creatures of varying assortments, or gleaming artifacts, silver, gold and onyx, all with the distinctive quality of being very old and very historical. Trophies that the Malfoys placed at equal or greater value to the once living creatures doomed beside them. It sickened her.

The first person she saw was Draco Malfoy, tall and slender, pale grey eyes looking at her in confusion and then resignation. He stared dumbly at her another few seconds before picking a spot of floor next to his feet and training his eyes there. Coward. If his family was going to kill her, Hermione wanted him to watch. She did not want him spared.

His parents observed her even less than their son did. Lucius Malfoy, who once seemed so massive and imposing to Hermione, looked strangely haggard and small, as if physically shrinking under the pressure of trying to redeem himself in the Dark Lord's graces. His hair was beginning to knot at the ends, no longer gleaming and smooth; his face was unshaven and there were deep circles under his bloodshot eyes. He also held a crystal snifter of brandy with a grip so tight it was clear that the only way he would ever relinquish it would be if you cut off his hand.

Narcissa Malfoy, beautiful and terrible, had sunken eyes only for Draco; obsessively, dotingly, motherly. For just one ardent moment, Hermione wondered if her maternal instinct would have made Narcissa speak up on her behalf when Scabior was touching her in the Forest of Dean, had she been there. She wondered if Narcissa might speak up now.

But she let this thought go; Slytherins only cared for their own, surpassing creed and gender, etc. etc.

Her hopes further iced over and died as the hulking werewolf Fenrir Greyback leered at her from a corner of the room; Hermione actually smelled him before she saw him, pungent and musky. His eyes somehow glowed in the darkness, and it sent yet another chill down Hermione's spine. She would give anything just to be warm again.

It couldn't have been just twenty minutes since she had been in the tent with Ron and Harry, could it?

Scabior pushed her down to the hard floor and she gasped as the coldness hit her cheek, as her palms burned with the slap of catching herself unexpectedly. Hermione rolled over and glared at him with all the venom she could muster, and so badly wished she could be on her feet again. Being below them all made her feel endlessly more helpless and vulnerable. Perception really was everything.

Scabior pointed his wand at her almost carelessly. "Talk, Mudblood. Where's Potter?"

Hermione set her jaw and remained silent. It was only then that she realized, with a horrible jolt, that he was wearing her scarf, the one that, in her heart-break, she had left behind for Ron to find, if he ever wanted to find them. It had originally been a present from her mum on her sixteenth birthday, tucked away safe inside a cornflower blue paper bag with the words "Sweet Sixteen!" in glitter; as if years could still be sweet when it was the same year that Albus Dumbledore's corpse hit the ground.

Seeing this scarf wound around Scabior's murderous throat made Hermione's stomach and heart ache painfully.

"Looks like she needs a bit of motivation!" He gestured towards Bellatrix, who glided over. Her face was absolutely aglow at the promise of inflicting pain, and she grinned wickedly at Hermione before screeching, "Crucio!"

Pain flooded Hermione's body. It thrummed in her bones, behind her eyes, inside her blood, as if it was a sentient being, hell-bent on destroying her. The pain was fire on her skin and breaking in her bones and acid in her lungs; found its way through every nerve and made them all split apart in agony. Hermione could hear screaming and barely registered that it was her own; she was nothing but pain, pain was all she ever was, all she ever would be.

And then it stopped.

Hermione's head and vision swam as she tried to collect herself, but was unable to sit up. She rolled over on her side groaning, dry-heaving, violent tremors rolling through her body.

The dark shape of Bellatrix Lestrange loomed over her again and for just a moment, she hoped that the next words out of her mouth was the killing curse. Anything but Crucio. Anything.

"Enough to start talking? Or do you need another?" A gruesome wail that Hermione had never heard herself make before crawled out of her throat at the sight of Bellatrix gleefully raising her wand again, but Scabior stopped her with his arm.

"She won't be useful 'alf-mad," he said with the breeziness of someone telling a stranger the time. Hermione's vision was blurry from the curse and she struggled to keep Scabior in focus as he dropped to one knee and smiled down at her. She felt close to puking. "Tell me where the boy is, and I promise I won't let anyone 'urt you." He stroked her cheek; it felt like sandpaper. "Tell me, and I'll keep you safe."

Hermione spat in his face. She hoped there was a bit of her sick in it.

She knew it was a bad idea, she did. But it was worth it to see the shock and disgust cross his smiling, smarmy features.

Scabior grimaced, wiped the spit off his forehead dramatically, and smacked her hard across the cheek. More tears sprang to Hermione's eyes as the force of his blow knocked her head to one side.

"YOU SHOULDN'T 'AVE DONE THAT, BEAUTIFUL!" he screamed in her face, taking hold of her shoulders and shaking her, so close that flecks of his saliva landed on her face, and Hermione began to cry, heavy, dolorous sobs. She could not help it; she cried because there was a man screaming in her face and she cried because everyone in this room was a killer and she cried because she would never see Ron again or tell him how sure she was that he was the only boy she'd ever love, and she'd never tell Harry how proud she was of him, and she'd never tell her parents that they even had a daughter at all; she cried because she'd never know if Voldemort had been defeated, because she wouldn't be there to protect the Weasleys, or any of her friends; cried because that woman in the Forest did not help her. She cried for it all.

"Is your ickle pet not behaving, Scabior?" Bellatrix giggled girlishly. "Serves you right for fancying muck."

"Won't be making that mistake again," he snarled at Bellatrix. "Kill 'er."

Bellatrix's eyes lit up in delight again as she approached Hermione.

Throughout her life, Hermione had come across more than a few near death experiences. None compared to this. As Bellatrix walked towards her, each footstep a sharpening of the executioner's blade, Hermione felt what real fear was. This was the end of everything. She would die alone amongst enemies.

The thought made something break inside of her.

"Don't be messy," Narcissa chided softly, one fluttering, pale hand smoothing down her robes. "This carpet is expensive."

That got Hermione sobbing again; it was the worst thing she could have heard at that moment. That her death wouldn't even dirty the space she died in. It would be like she never existed at all.

She wouldn't exist to her parents. They would never have to mourn her.

She tried to convince herself she was comforted by this thought, but she knew that she was not.

Hermione stared at the end of Bellatrix's wand before screwing her eyes shut, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. She desperately tried to think of something happy for her last memory, of her mum and dad, of Harry and Ron, of a library, somewhere safe, with everyone she loved; had to think of something, anything but this oh God please not like this it can't end like this —

"Stop."

Everyone looked up at Draco, whose small protestation seemed loud in the echoing chamber. Hermione's own sobbing sputtered and stopped as she opened her eyes to see Draco's cloudy face, while his family stared at him in open surprise and apprehension.

Furious, Bellatrix descended upon her nephew.

"What did you say?" Her question was very near a shriek.

"She — she's closer to Potter than anyone." His voice shook and it was quite clear he was quickly regretting every word he spoke. "If anyone could lure him here, it's her. We could throw her in the dungeon, and he'll come, and — and we'll get him."

"Why," Bellatrix was now very close to his face, seething and spitting, "are you so intent on defending the Mudblood? Have you forgotten who you serve, nephew?"

It was completely silent. Hermione could only hear her own harsh, labored breathing in and out in and out, astonished that she was still able to breathe air. That her heart was still beating. And Draco was the reason for it. She felt some hope blossom in her chest, impossible to extinguish; she was alive, she was alive, she was alive!

Draco had not yet answered Bellatrix, and it seemed as if he had forgotten how to use his tongue. Lucius chuckled nervously; it came out like a wheeze.

"You know teenage boys," Lucius stammered, "The hormones, and all that. She's a pretty girl, and…it's just how boys are."

Bellatrix cocked her head to the side quizzically.

"Is she pretty?" she said. She looked back at Hermione and studied her. "I hadn't noticed."

Considering who this comment was coming from, Hermione wasn't that offended.

Bellatrix seemed to think hard for a moment, her index finger poised thoughtfully on her chin, and then shrugged her shoulders almost comically. "Well, all right," she said, tone now flippant. She pinched Draco's cheek and stuck her tongue out, laughing. "We'll keep the ugly little Mudblood alive for him."

"We can do better than that." Greyback stalked over from his corner, where he had previously been silent. Hermione had almost forgotten he was there. Almost. He hoisted Hermione to her feet and shoved her at Draco, who caught her and then quickly dropped his hands from her shoulders. Hermione stumbled a bit but managed to keep herself upright. She didn't look at anyone besides Greyback, her stance defensive.

"Let's let him have her for the night." His lips twisted into more of a snarl than a smile. "You want her, claim her."

That impervious flower of hope that Hermione felt in her chest a second ago? His words burnt it to a crisp.

"He's a child," Narcissa said, horrified at the suggestion. Her eyes were wide and her face had turned as pale as the white in her hair.

So am I! Hermione wanted to scream, although Narcissa likely wouldn't pay that any mind. Mudbloods were probably born un-innocent to her.

"A child? Ha!" Greyback growled. "There are no children anymore. Only soldiers."

He turned away from Narcissa, who was now gripping Draco's arm and whispering something in his ear. "What do you think, girly?" Greyback took a few menacing steps towards Hermione. "Want to go up a few levels of the social order tonight?"

Hermione couldn't suppress the sob that tore through her chest as he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her towards the staircase.

"Come along, boy." Greyback called over his shoulder. Through the sharp pain in her scalp Hermione heard Draco take slow, tentative steps behind her. When they reached the doorway to a dimly lit guest bedroom, Greyback actually walked her all the way inside. For one terrible moment, Hermione thought he would throw her onto the bed himself. Instead he set her upright and pulled Draco inside the room.

"There we are." He sucked on his sharp teeth. "Nice and cozy." Greyback put his mouth uncomfortably close to Hermione's neck before he spoke to Draco again. "Be sure to mark your territory well, boy. I'll be able to smell if you haven't." He took a long, drawn out sniff of Hermione's neck and she felt bile rise up in her throat. "Oh, yes she's a sweet one. If you don't, anyone might try to jam themselves inside her." His lips curled into a smile as his words made their intended effect on Hermione. She was visibly shaking and holding back tears. "Probably Scabior…maybe me. Fair warning, I'm a biter."

He bit the air in front of Hermione's nose and she shrieked in spite of herself. Greyback made a sound that was half a chuckle and half a growl as he left the room and shut the door behind him.

Hermione then became keenly aware of Draco's presence, and her instinct kicked in.

She scanned the room quickly and noticed a small, exquisitely crafted oak-wooden table with a dark green, antique bottle placed on top of it. Almost as soon as the door had been locked, she snatched it up, smashed the neck of it on the bed's headboard, and held out the jagged end towards Draco like a knife. He hadn't moved the entire time, and looked at her makeshift weapon wearily.

"Do not touch me, Malfoy," she hissed, holding the broken bottle in the air. She thought her vision was still confused, but really, her hand was just shaking so terribly the bottle blurred in front of her.

Draco barely glanced at her or the bottle before he wordlessly got on top of the bed. He simply laid down and closed his eyes, seemingly unaware of her presence. Sucking in quick, shallow breaths and shaking, Hermione didn't lower the one weapon she had as she slowly backed up against the wall. For a long time she just stood there, ready to attack, eyes half-crazed. But after about fifteen minutes she had calmed down enough to lower her arm. Thirty minutes after that, she sat down against the wall and hugged her knees against herself. Enough time had passed that she was no longer a beast, a bundle of flesh and bone and fear, surviving for the sake of surviving. She was a witch, and a bright one at that. One that knew what must be done if she was going to make it out of this, back to her family and friends…back to Ron.

She tried not to think about Ron as she walked over to the bed, legs heavy and tongue dry.

"Are you awake?" she said in her clipped, Prefect voice, wanting to die more every second but knowing what must be done. He didn't stir, but Hermione knew he wasn't asleep. "Malfoy, we…we need to…to do what we were put up here for."

Draco opened his eyes slowly and glowered at her. "Don't be disgusting, Granger."

Hermione seethed and her fists clenched, but she couldn't hit him, regardless of how much she wanted to. "You heard Greyback. If you don't—" she inhaled hard through her nose, "mark your territory, then I'll be—"

She couldn't finish the sentence. Draco sat up and looked her hard in the eye. "No. I won't."

They were both completely still for a few moments, eyes locked. Then Hermione started undoing her jeans.

"Stop," Draco pleaded as he put his hand on Hermione's forearm to stop her movements. "Please, stop." He looked up at her with such a pained expression it made the turmoil Hermione was feeling give way to utter surprise. Then a thought struck her, and she grew even more furious.

"Why? Are you that revolted by the thought of being with a Muggle-born? Enough that you'd rather I die?"

But she realized how hopeless this situation was. That all these years, of course Draco wouldn't care if she died, in the same way that she could not particularly care — except for a quiet, short-lived stab of pity because of that damned, womanly sympathy — if he died. There was a war on. Kill or be killed. No time for nostalgia or hesitance just because they happened to spend their childhoods in the same place.

Draco rose from the bed and stalked angrily to the window. "Believe it or not, Granger," he spat through clenched teeth, "I don't particularly enjoy the idea of r-raping women." He stumbled a bit over the word and wouldn't look at her.

Hermione covered her face with her hands. She wanted to tear the room apart, to scream and cry and laugh, as insane as Bellatrix Lestrange, at the cruel irony that she would have to persuade Draco Malfoy to take her against her will.

"Could you live with yourself?" she choked out. "If those men were to do that to me, and probably kill me in the end, could you ever stop hating yourself?"

She turned to look at him, dead in the eyes. "They will rape me." Hermione put extra emphasis on the word because she could tell it bothered him, in the way it bothered all boys. That they had to live with that guilty sin of their brethren.

It bothered her too, but surely he did not see the fierce tremor that ran through her when she said it.

He stared at her, mouth open slightly. Then he blinked and his scowl returned. "I'm sure, regardless of what happens in the future, I'll become quite familiar with hating myself. But it won't be because I went around forcing Mudbloods to shag me. As if I'd ever want them to."

Hermione took a deep breath, sniffed away obstinate tears, and walked towards him. She put her hands on his chest and bit her lip in what she hoped looked like seduction.

"Draco…please, I-I want you," she lied. She was sure she'd be familiar with hating herself too.

Draco pushed her hands away from him harshly and his lip curled. "Don't patronize me."

It felt like every source of happiness inside her body was drained from her as her arms fell limply at her sides. For a wild moment, she thought maybe a dementor was nearby. But she didn't have that kind of luck.

Getting desperate, knowing she was getting desperate, Hermione tried a new tactic. She violently wiped away her tears again and stopped trying to appeal to his better nature, because she realized he did not have one. "What? You're not man enough to do it? Harry and Ron always said you were either a virgin or a pouf. Guess they were right."

Draco tore his gaze from the blackness of the window to her face, and then laughed at her, that annoying laugh that could always get under her skin, albeit slightly different; it was harsh and forced, rough on the edges.

"If this is your seduction technique, I must inform you, it's rather lacking," he said, as insufferable as he always was. "If you and the Weasel enjoy partaking in outdated, frankly homophobic verbal discourse before relations, it's very telling that a life around Muggles rendered the pair of you socially inept."

Hermione felt the tears fall again, fast and despairing. Draco hadn't been able to make her cry since after she turned thirteen, when she learned how to take the harsh, biting words from him and his Slytherin cronies. Then it was only Ron who could make her cry, funnily enough.

But now Hermione felt twelve again; back in a Quidditch pitch, eyes smarting terribly after being called a Mudblood, unable to steel herself properly.

"This isn't funny," she said quietly. "Please don't laugh at me."

Hermione hated it; how raw and exposed she felt. Was ashamed of it.

Draco's face grew dark again. "Again, this may surprise you, Granger, but I am perfectly aware of how not funny everything is. Perhaps even more aware than you, no matter how oh-so-clever you think you are."

"Then you should have just let her kill me!" she cried. "It would have been easier!"

"I suppose I shouldn't expect any gratitude from the likes of you, for saving your life," he said, his lip curling. "Because I certainly haven't received any yet. Not one, oh, thank you, Draco, for kindly and heroically saving me from being brutally murdered by your Auntie Bellatrix, I really appreciate it!"

"Because it's your fault I'm in this position!" Hermione spat. "Why did you even do it in the first place? I know it's not because you actually care if I die or not."

He made a strange gurgling sound, and the side of his mouth turned down. "It's not like I'm evi—" he cut off from what he was about to say, and then shook his head as if he were flicking water off the front of his hair.

It was silent again, except for the soft sounds of despair coming from Hermione, that she could not stop.

"Hell. Bloody hell," Draco paced the room, once, twice. Stopped short a safe distance from her. "If I do this, will you stop blubbering? It's giving me a migraine."

Hermione's temper flared, and so did just the smallest bit of hope. She nodded.

"Get on the bed," he said, making a hand gesture that implied this was all rather burdensome to him.

Not daring to breathe, Hermione made her way to the large bed in the middle of the room. It was as well-crafted as all of the Malfoy possessions were; dark, elf-made wooden columns and headboards, sheets softer than silk. But one of the edges of its thick comforter was fraying a bit, and Hermione tore a piece off.

"What are you doing?" asked Draco, his silver brow furrowed.

"Something for me to bite down on," she said matter-of-factly, although her voice was still thick. She was in hyper rational mode, a state she was most comfortable in. "I'm not certain what Greyback meant by 'smell it' on me, but we shouldn't take chances. I'll probably have to bleed a bit. Don't worry, it sounds much worse than it will feel." She quickly disrobed except for her bra and knickers. Despite what they were about to do, that still felt too intimate, too soon. She sat down on the bed and finally looked at Draco again.

He hadn't moved an inch. It was clear his eyes had been on her body, but they darted away as soon as she looked at him. Her face felt very hot all of a sudden, and Hermione realized she was embarrassed. It was starting to sink in that a known blood supremacist was staring at her naked body, and it made her feel a bit queasy.

"It'll be quick," she said softly, more to herself than to him. "We'll just get it over with as fast as we can."

Still not looking at her, Draco began taking off his clothes. Hermione mostly stared at the wall but couldn't help but see his body out of the corner of her eye; a glimpse of pale, strong limbs and legs. It made her feel queasy again but also something else, something she didn't want to think about feeling.

When he climbed onto the bed Hermione suddenly lost all courage. She looked at anything besides him and swallowed several lumps at her throat. She wanted to be as far away from him as possible, wearing a parka and two pairs of pants and wielding her wand, and maybe a steak knife as well, for good measure. Not beside him, not close enough to touch, not shivering in bare skin despite the fact that the room was not particularly cold.

Neither of them wanted to move first, but finally, Hermione gritted her teeth and exhaled sharply out of her nose.

"Are you ready?" her voice sounded like a little girl's. Stupidly, she wondered where her "Gryffindor courage" was, and realized the whole thing was a silly notion; it was just a house, after all. It could not make her brave. She had to do it all by herself.

Draco made a small noise that resembled a gulp, but nodded. Annoyingly, he still did not move, so Hermione went to slide down his silk boxers, a plan already forming in her head. Step One, remove boxers. Step Two, stroke him to hardness. If Step Two malfunctions, stand in the corner until he strokes himself to hardness. Step Three, penetration. Step Four, ejaculation. Step Five...subject to variables.

But he stopped her hand, interfering with Step One. Hermione stared in confusion as Draco carefully positioned his body over hers and brought his lips down to her neck. It was a soft pressure, just his lips, gentle and unhurried; and it freaked her out.

Her entire body froze, locked up. "What are you doing?" she asked, sounding more than a bit outraged. He wasn't abiding by the plan, her fool-proof, step-by-step plan, which was entirely unacceptable.

She felt Draco sigh against her shoulder, warm breath where he had just been kissing her. "It will hurt you less if we do this bit first," he muttered. Hermione was so shocked that Draco cared whether or not he hurt her that she let him continue his ministrations.

He switched from putting wet kisses on her neck to applying them to her collarbone. He hadn't kissed her face or her lips, which Hermione was kind of glad for. Every now and then his hand would dip underneath her knickers to feel if she was ready, and every muscle in her body tightened. His slim fingers touching her in her most private place, softly probing, and she knew she was not even remotely wet. She could feel nothing but tension and discomfort.

After a while, Draco groaned in frustration.

"If I am so disgusting to you," he spat, "I suppose you can pretend I'm someone else. Perhaps that poverty stricken redhead you're so fond of."

For some reason, his comment angered her, the way it sounded as if the fault was on her. It was unfair; he can't expect girls to just get wet on cue. "Well, it's not exactly like you're excited about it either!" In a fit of pride, Hermione cupped her hand around the front of his pants. A soft "oh," escaped her mouth when she discovered that he was, in fact, painfully hard. He hissed at her touch.

"Don't flatter yourself, Granger," he sneered. "It's just biology. Nothing to do with you. Or didn't your Muggle parents teach you about that?"

Hermione's nostrils flared and she squeezed him through his boxers as revenge. She probably knew much more about biology than he did, actually.

Draco grunted aloud at the pain, wrenched her hand away from him and pinned it on the bed. He fumed over her, fingers pressing down on her wrist, twisting, twisting; a bit more and it would sprain. More than that and it would break.

She stared up at him, terrified and in pain, and silently cursed her temper. This was not the time or place to lose one's head.

"How dare you — " He suddenly cut off, presumably from seeing the terror etched on her face. The look of malice on Draco's suddenly turned into one of utter revulsion. He let go of her wrist and lifted himself off her body. Hermione watched with great wariness as his breathing became erratic and his gaze bounced wildly around the room. She was stunned to see there were tears in his eyes.

"Merlin," he half-sobbed, "Gods, what am I doing?" His chest heaved violently, and he reacted physically to horrors invisible to Hermione, flinching away from them.

Of all the things that Hermione could feel in that moment...she was just irritated. They had a job to do. The Plan beckoned for continuation.

"Hey, hey..." She reached for his hands which were running repeatedly through his own hair and tugging at it. He wouldn't let her get hold of him, and he kept knocking her hands to the side as he swore and muttered a stream of nonsense. At a complete loss of what to do, wrist still throbbing and stomach uneasy, Hermione threw her body against his and kissed him.

At first, he completely stopped moving. She kissed him hard and continued to roll her hips against his body as she straddled his lap, let her breasts rub against his chest and her knee brush against his still hard groin. Hermione all but humped him in her effort to snap him out of whatever it was that possessed him, and her cheeks started to burn in humiliation after a while of him not responding to her.

Seconds before she was about to pull away and accept her failure, she felt his arms circle around her bare waist, tight and secure. Relieved, Hermione opened her lips against his and tasted the inside of his mouth when his lips gradually parted for her. While their bodies were hard against each other, the kiss was surprisingly soft, the way his tongue hesitantly sought hers, warm and wet. He made a quiet moaning sound when she broke away from his mouth to kiss his neck, pale and strangely pretty. It was easy to mark, the way his blood rushed to the surface of the nearly translucent skin.

Her movements were sensual, but mechanical, never getting too carried away. A touch here, a kiss there, a stroke, a grope, a caress. She rationalized that as long as she did what she had to do and no more, there was no reason to feel guilt over this. She was surviving. What a person does, although undeniably wrong, when faced with the unmentionable is blameless. People would understand that. Ron would understand that.

Draco began to pull down the straps of her bra and laid her body down again. His kisses were beginning to feel feverish, frantic even, hard and almost violent like she had expected him to kiss, and his hands roamed freely on her body. Squeezing, groping, kneading and needing.

It killed her that when he touched the insides of her thighs she wanted him to do it again.

He unclasped her bra and threw it to the side of the bed, roughly; the straps pulled on her skin in his hurry to tear it off. They were both breathing hard, mouths swollen and red from kissing, but he stopped all he was doing to gaze at her chest. For some reason, she wasn't embarrassed anymore at his open stare. Draco bent his head down and, starting a few inches above her bellybutton, lathed his tongue across her skin and up towards the valley between her breasts. Hermione had to close her eyes for a moment at the sensation.

Everything about Draco was cold, from his eyes to his skin to his black, hardly-there heart. It was so unbearably odd that his mouth and tongue would be warm, could make her feel warm on the inside.

He took one of her nipples in his mouth and she had to swallow a moan. He sucked and nibbled on the light pink bud, let his teeth graze it more sharply when it hardened. It made Hermione's skin jump and desire pool low in her stomach. Without realizing it, she started arching up to his mouth, encouraging him to take more, lick more, do more.

By the time he had given both of her breasts equal attention, she was shamelessly writhing on the bed, and her knickers were damp with arousal. She couldn't help it; it felt better than it should have.

The time Draco spent running his tongue along her skin stretched on...and on...and on. And as he had not even attempted to explore her body further than her breasts, Hermione began to feel impatient; and as a girl who prioritized efficiency, she was actually quite irked. Really, they could have started shagging at least five minutes ago, and now could have already been done with the whole thing, or at the very least, mitigated the urgency she was feeling between her legs, but it was like Draco had forgotten that sex included more than just fondling a woman's chest. Perhaps he really was a virgin. Or a homosexual. Not that Hermione would judge, but she was rather certain homosexuals weren't particularly fond of breasts.

"Draco?" Hermione said, a little breathlessly. "Um, not to rush you or anything, but do you...do you think you could get on with it?"

A severe, slightly upset look crossed his features as Draco raised himself with his hands on either side of her. Hermione could see marks on her breasts where he had sucked more urgently, and it worried her enough to bite her lip, the way that her nipples felt raw and sensitive.

Draco glanced at her face, then stared at her lip where she was biting it, and stared, and stared, and then hooked his fingers over her knickers.

She lifted her hips as he slid them down, agonizingly slow, a whisper of cotton down her legs. It was humiliating how wet she was, the way it made even the insides of her thighs slick. Hermione wished that she could have been just appropriately lubricated, not excessively, not enough to swell his ego. But there was no denying the evidence.

Her knickers joined her bra on the floor and again, Draco just stared down at the her as if he was astonished that she had genitalia. And then he did something that surprised them both.

He dipped his head to kiss the soft flesh of her cunt.

A gasp ripped from her lips.

Definitely not a homosexual, then. Probably not a virgin.

Hermione's eyes rolled to the back of her head and she sank deeper into the pillow as his tongue delved into her folds, glanced the small gathering of nerves as he licked up her slit. She couldn't suppress the moans anymore; they were loud and they were frequent. She sighed his name over and over like a prayer, and she heard Draco make soft, eager noises as he continued to slowly eat her.

He alternated between sucking on and circling her clit to fucking her with his tongue. He kept her legs apart by holding them on both sides of his face in too tight of a grip, overstretching them — it was the perfect amount of discomfort. Hermione couldn't resist sliding her fingers through his hair and bucking against his mouth, no longer fighting the sensations that coursed through her body like fire. She thought she might go crazy from the pleasure, her usually articulate tongue reduced to saying things like "oh, oh, oh" or "Draco, yes, god, yes."

She bit her lip so hard the skin might tear, her hips rolling off the bed and against his face, susurrations of pleasure crackling through her whole body. Hermione didn't want it to end, loved the way she didn't have to think; not about right and wrong, not about war, not about death, just the fierce, consuming stimulation his mouth was giving her that made the world go away.

But through the fog of lust she remembered their intentions. Remembered who she was.

Who he was.

"Stop," she gasped, "you need to…we can't just…"

It was torture to make him stop what he was doing, but he lifted his face from her aching cunt at her words. Perhaps he was able to read between the lines and realize that if he made her come for any reason other than what was strictly necessary, the shame would swallow her whole.

Perhaps she was giving him too much credit and he just wanted to fuck her already.

Regardless, Hermione watched under heavily lidded eyes as he pulled off his boxers and his erection swelled in front of her; long, slightly thin, pubic hair as fine and blonde as the hair on his head. He ran his fingers up and down the length of his arousal, just once. There was a small gathering of precum at the head of his cock and Hermione forced down the strange urge to run her tongue along him and taste it.

But when he bent down, spread her legs wider and positioned himself at her entrance, her breath hitched in fear. Hermione shrank back, trembling. Everything was suddenly too real.

She put her hands on the smooth planes of his chest to stop him. Maybe if they stopped, she could think of a different plan, some other way to get out of this. He watched her carefully, his cock throbbing and oozing at her lips, but he didn't enter her. There was something in his eyes that said he wasn't certain about this either. Draco's hesitance actually made her braver. Hermione watched in wonder as her own hands started to slide up his hard shoulders and hold onto the back of his neck. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

Without saying anything, he pushed forward, encasing his entire length in her slickness. She gasped and trembled; Draco Malfoy was inside of her, and it was mad and it was good and she panted, held onto him tightly as he rocked into her, fingers bruising at her hips, keeping them still. His lips crashed down to hers again, and she got a sick thrill from tasting herself on his tongue that was searching for the back of her throat, salty and feminine. His body was a solid weight on hers, warm and heating more, heat and heat and thrusting, and she allowed her legs to wrap around his lower body and anchor her. Hermione needed it — needed it because she in a plane of existence where she was Almost-Dead and Might-Still-Die and it was all so ambiguous and scary, everything was so scary; everything except his body, and her body, and that insanely perfect friction that made her want to take and take and take whatever he wanted to give her.

With a booming sound, Draco's hand smacked against the wood of the headboard, his hips pistoning, cock moving hard inside of her.

"Want this," he grunted and grabbed a fistful of her hair, her bushy hair that he always made so much fun of in school. Hermione didn't know if that was a confession or a demand, but she was beyond caring. He was looking down at her so intensely, and Hermione tried to meet his eyes but they were so black, so hardened, it was frightening.

It made her moan.

His grip on her hair tightened, and he pulled by the roots. Hermione arched towards him; it reminded her of how little boys pull the hair of whichever little girl in class they fancied most, although this wasn't anywhere near as wholesome as that.

And the more he gave her, the harder he pulled and fucked and groaned, the more she wanted. The harder she clung to him.

He bit her shoulder and she gasped.

She was so close.

"Please, Draco," she begged softly, "Please, harder. Oh God…" Harder. Was that for Greyback's benefit, or her own?

Draco grunted, slid his hands under her thighs and pulled her legs over his shoulders to fuck her deeper. Hermione felt like he was splitting her in half, the way that he was so careless, and that shouldn't feel satisfying, shouldn't make the low, keening noises being ripped from her chest increase in pitch.

But bodies do not care about should or should not.

So close.

Hermione shook all over; it was unbearable, she needed it to end, she never wanted to stop. Her head fell back and she shut her eyes as he pounded into her, giving her body to him completely. She gave up, let everything go.

Then she felt his hand at her chin, pulling her head back down.

"Look at me," he said huskily, eyes flashing. And she did. She looked at him while she felt her walls clench around Draco's cock, felt the pressure building low in her stomach.

So bloody close.

Hermione whimpered louder and louder every time he thrust into her, feeling the wave coming, and coming and coming, beckoning to her, threatening to consume her. She stared into Draco's icy blue eyes the whole way through, barely an inch away. Watched as his jaw slackened when she whined especially loud, as if he were astonished, transfixed by the sounds he was making her gasp. Then his thumb grazed her clit and she lost it. Her eyes widened as her orgasm washed over her, and she felt a scream build in her throat at its intensity. Draco moaned, open-mouthed, and his hand covered her lips to muffle her screams. They were still staring into each other's eyes as Hermione thrashed wildly on the bed, overcome as wave after wave of pleasure hit her, screaming and screaming into his hand.

When her orgasm ebbed away, Draco was still fucking her. His palm was still muzzling her. She brought her hands up to tear him away from her mouth but they only got so far as to grab onto his arm when a sudden change in the motion of his hips almost made her scream again. She couldn't believe he could hold out this long, and if anything, he was fucking her harder. Seemingly against her will, her hips rose up to meet his as she wrapped her legs around him. Now that she had already come once, her cunt was hyper sensitive, and the feeling of Draco rubbing and fucking her was almost too much to bear, painful even. But the pain added to the pleasure, added to the feeling of sinfulness that for some reason made her wetter.

He was groping her breasts again, this time rougher, unhinged. Draco was hitting that horrible, wonderful place inside her with his cock and kneading her breasts with his hand and sliding his tongue along her own and she didn't want it to feel so good but it did. Every plunge into her sent another shock-wave of pleasure and it was altogether too much but still she wanted more, more.

She raised herself up to be closer to him and he lifted her upwards by her thighs. Hermione ended up with her back to the bed's headboard, in Draco's lap, his cock still driving in and out of her.

He kissed her mouth with his teeth and it hurt; she did it back, harder, and it hurt him more. She wondered if he was scared to break through her skin, scared of tasting the dirt in her blood.

"You fucking..." he moaned as Hermione pulled his head back and sucked on his neck. "You fucking..." he rubbed Hermione's clit like he was trying to wear it down. It just added to the heat that swept through her body and made her whine louder. "I hate you."

She moaned again and so did he.

It was then that a fast movement across the room made her body flush with cold alarm. A thin rectangle of light appeared on the door, behind it a pair of eyes, mysterious and unquestionably male. Hermione could not tell who these eyes belonged to; most likely Greyback's, although just as probable Scabior's. Or it could be someone else, some random Death Eater who just happened to drop by. It could even be Draco's father.

She shuddered, and she wanted to believe she shuddered because of this thought, but it was really because Draco's relentless pounding had her dangerously close to coming again.

"Draco," Hermione cried terribly, watching the eyes. "Draco, there's someone looking—"

"Don't," he said, his voice low and rough. The sound of it had her clenching down again. "Don't look at them."

She felt his hand at the back of her head and he forced it down to his neck, where she burrowed into the thin, pretty paleness. Hermione shut her eyes and clamped around him; arms around his back, legs around his hips, pussy around his cock, and rode him while the gaze of whoever was standing behind the door prickled her skin, dirtied her, made her shamefully, disgustingly wetter.

Her legs started to quiver. She felt another orgasm coming, that coil of heat slowly unwinding within her. But instead of it feeling good like she thought it would, she panicked. She couldn't explain this away to herself, coming on Draco's cock twice. It was true betrayal; she would become everything she hated in a person. A hypocrite, a cheat. Ron would hate her. She would hate her.

Panting, Hermione snapped her head away from his neck and weakly tried to disentangle herself. Draco growled when she did and held her tighter.

"Please," she rasped. "I'm going to…I can't…please…I can't..."

She still wasn't sure if she was begging him to stop or begging him to fuck her harder. He did the latter. She vibrated and her teeth rattled and the headboard banged raucously against the wall as he slammed her down onto his dick by the hips, at the same time thrusting upwards with all his strength and hatred and fear.

Hermione looked at the eyes at the door. The eyes looked back at her.

She was going to come.

With a war-cry of a moan her fingernails raked down Draco's back and she felt him shudder, gasp. This time as she came, she bit down on his neck to quiet her cries and Draco fisted the pillow beneath them as he pumped hot come inside her, some spurting onto her thighs. He came quietly, shuddering, gasping, clenching, and she came guiltily, horribly, overwhelmed.

They stayed like that for a while, breathing hard, him still inside of her. She felt her own cool tears on Draco's shoulder, and realized she was crying.

He finally pulled out of her and rolled over, his gasping under control. Hermione took a deep and shuddering breath, wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand and finally faced the door again. The eyes were gone.

Shaking all over, Hermione started to get out of the bed, only to be stopped by Draco's hand.

"What are you doing?" he asked, quiet and confused. She didn't look at him.

"I'll sleep on the floor," said Hermione. "It's fine." Her body felt alien and used up; sleeping on the ground seemed the most attractive option in her current state.

But he didn't release her from his grip. "Greyback might come back any time," he said slowly, making an effort at sounding logical. "It might not look good to see us sleeping separately."

Hermione knew that the evidence of their night together was obvious, you wouldn't need to be a werewolf to know. Never mind the fact that it was probably him who had watched the whole thing himself, got off on it. But she lied back down anyway.

"Okay."

She got under the blanket and so did he. It felt so wonderful on Hermione's weakened body to be curled up in a bed. They lied together side by side, and stared up at the black ceiling.

"Would you help me escape if I asked?" she said to the sky.

"No, so don't ask."

She took another long, hard breath, tried to push through the exhaustion and trauma to utilize her usually sharp mind. But the only other question she could think to ask was:

"Who was watching us?"

Draco didn't reply for a long time. "I don't know. I never know."

Hermione bit her lip to keep from crying.

She wondered how on earth she could stand to share this bed with this person, this person who presumably killed, hated and tortured innocent people, people just like her. This person who had become accustomed to having someone watch him fuck and sleep. Wondered how she didn't feel like throwing herself down a flight of stairs.

But she was clever, so she worked it out.

There was a war on. That was really the answer to everything.

She might die any second, and he was familiar. Hogwarts was her second home, and although Draco Malfoy was a nasty part of that home, he still was a part of it. And here, in this unknown, awful place of pain and fear, he was a comfort.

She reckoned he got the same kind of twisted solace from her presence as well. That this building was more a jail than his home. At one point in the night, Draco placed his hand on hers. She didn't move to intertwine their fingers, but she didn't move her hand away either.

An hour passed, maybe more. Hermione's throat was so dry it was painful and she couldn't suppress a coughing fit; rasping and burning. When was the last time she drank? The last time she ate?

"What's the matter with you?" Draco asked after a rattling cough that could make any smoker think twice about that second cigarette finally died down. "You better not get me sick with some strange, Muggle disease." He still had not moved his hand away from hers.

"I'm thirsty," she answered irritably.

"Well, that's not my problem," he snapped.

Hermione was certain she would not sleep that night, and tried to think about Ron as a way to pass the time, some source of warmth, but now even those memories were somehow tainted. Nothing was right anymore. Nothing may ever be right again.

She was so tired, her body hurt, and she so wished she could sleep, but, no, not after everything that happened, there was no way...trying to sleep would be absolutely impossible...

When Hermione woke up the next morning, there was a large glass of water by the bed next to a plate of toast and dried fruit. She gulped it down, somewhere in her mind worried that it was poisoned, but she was too dehydrated to care. There were worse ways to die. It was soothing and cold down her throat, and once she had finished it, she dived for a stack of dried apricots, sweet and pulpy. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

She glanced over at Draco, who was pretending to be asleep, as if the food and water was brought up by his mother or a house-elf, but he was wearing a different change of clothes.

"Thank you," said Hermione, always one for manners, even towards Death Eaters who shagged her with questionable consent.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he grumbled out the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes closed.

Hermione sat up, chewed her food, and worried. Her body was sore from the roughness of the sex and the ruthlessness of the Unforgivable, which she did not like, because it would be harder to fight. And she was going to fight.

"Would you not try to stop me if I escaped?" she asked contemplatively, rephrasing the question from last night. "Would you just do nothing, and let me go?"

That roused him; he flew up in a violent fit of anger and glowered at her, got in her face. Hermione barely had time to be scared. "Look, I know that I'm a brilliant lover and everything, but for fuck's sake, Granger, do not get any romantic illusions about me; I thought you were smarter than that. The fact of the matter is that you are probably going to die. Your side will lose, I will be rewarded, and the Dark Lord will have you killed just for your proximity to Potter. It won't be down to me, so you need to stop looking at me with your hopeful fucking little looks, okay? You're still a Mudblood, and you're still going to die, no matter when that happens."

She stared coolly at him. "We're not going to lose. I think you know that deep down."

Draco rolled his eyes and fell back on the bed again. "If only you knew the kinds of things I have to see. Then you would realize how hopeless you people are."

"I'm fairly certain that I got a taste of it yesterday," she said sharply. He did not reply to that.

Less than thirty minutes later, Greyback came sniffing around and leered at them, grinning wolfishly. Hermione trembled as she stared back at him and was grateful to have Draco beside her, no matter how bizarre that feeling was. He did not take her hand again, although half of her wanted him to. Maybe slightly less than half, but enough.

The arrival of the sun also brought Ron and Harry who came to save her; it felt almost strange, since she was so used to doing the saving. But she definitely did not mind it.

The fighting was violent but brief, and it was amazing how so much terror could exist in such a short amount of time.

Draco did next to nothing to stop them, just cowered in fear. Hermione knew she would think about this fact for a while, try to force meaning into it, even if there was none.

After Dobby dropped a chandelier above Bellatrix's head Hermione fell into Ron's arms, but she didn't feel like she deserved to be there anymore. She didn't quite fit as nicely, like a circle trying to land inside a square. As they Disapparated from the castle, she should have been looking at the knife hurtling towards them, or Ron, or even Harry, who she knew ranked priority on a macro scale.

But she looked at Draco. And he looked back at her.

And then they were gone.

Author's note: Sorry if you thought it was a little plot heavy if you were only reading for the sex, but I thought the plot was important and I really loved getting inside Hermione's psychology a bit, even if it went on a little longer than I thought it would. Also sorry if you were expecting more actual romance between them, but since I'm not a huge Dramione fan I honestly don't know how to write Draco authentically with actual romantic feelings towards Hermione, except that he thinks she's decently good-looking, but nothing much deeper than that. Likewise for Hermione.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and let me know what you thought!