Here we are at the conclusion! Thanks again to my team as always. Lightofevolution and In Dreams, I'd be lost without you.

And just an extra thank you to all of you who are reading, fave-ing, and reviewing. This was a difficult story to bring to life, hitting the right tone and leaving my wheelhouse. I'm grateful for your comments and support.

The air is scented with the copper of blood, sulphur and fire. It's a battle, like many others he's seen, but this one leaves his mind clearing like the smoke around him.

Draco has a bloody rock in his hand he had just used to slam into someone's head. The other wizard, an Order member, had been straddling him, punching him in the face. Screaming something. Whatever his words, like many things, they didn't really register as anything more than noise. He had wanted vengeance, it seemed, but was cut short when a stone to his temple toppled him.

Is he dead? It's of no concern to Draco… except then it is. Only just, but more than before. He feels confused now, looking around the field of bodies and survivors around him. It's never been like this before. Usually, once a battle is done, those left standing apparate away to lick their wounds and assess their dead. Draco would return to the Manor. Most times, to his Master Suite, Pipsy waiting with fresh clothes and a bath drawn.

Sometimes, though, he would visit Granger. Not always. He often hadn't want her to see him like this, covered in the blood of her friends. Except sometimes, he wanted exactly that. Just to be sure she never forgets; that she knows who he is and what he could do to her. How he could make her scream or bleed. His mind never was able to decide what he wanted, the past few years. Recently, though, what it seemed he wanted was Granger.

Draco looks up once again, noticing Death Eaters trying to scramble away. Should he join them? It doesn't feel like he wants to. Then he sees Potter, the boy who inevitably, always lives. The man is surrounded by members of the Light, all hugging and clapping him on the back, joyous smiles on their faces. At Potter's feet, lies the cloaked and lifeless body of the Dark Lord.

Panic starts to settle in. They'll come for him, he thinks. They will murder him. And then who will look after Hermione?

His thoughts keep snapping, point to point, from where he was to where he should be.

Then the green eyes of Harry Potter bore into him, and he can barely react before he is hauled to his feet by his rival and punched hard in the face.

When he wakes, he is bound by more than a spell, physical manacles around his wrists. Draco feels groggy, swaying as he tries to stand.

"I wouldn't, if I were you."

He blinks, looking for the voice, and finds Potter looking down at him from the other side of steel bars.

Draco clears his throat, finding it rough, his mouth cotton-dry. "Potter." It carries none of his usual arrogance or his drawl. He finds his body is to exhausted for that; his mind unclear.

"Malfoy. Do you know where you are?"

"A nightmare," he offers, then follows with, "but, then, I've been living in one for years." Draco pauses, wetting his lips, then asks, "How long have I been here?"

"Two days." Potter shrugs at him, as if losing days from your life and your mind is nothing at all of consequence. Nothing to be mourned.

"I have something of yours," Draco responds with a grin, but then it falters. Why is he so happy to have her hidden away? She's probably scared by now, without Draco coming to visit, to soothe and pet her. Is Pipsy keeping her fed? What if he didn't leave instructions that she was to be fed? His brain is fuzzy, and he's not really certain either way.

Meanwhile, Potter has his brow furrowed and is demanding, "What do you mean, Malfoy? What could you possibly… is it Ginny! If you've hurt her, you complete fuck, I will end you! And it won't be an Avada, either. I'll go full Muggle and you will beg me to kill you-"

"Not a Weasley, Potter. If you've lost your little pet rodent, I can't help you. The pet I found is a kitten."

There is a pause, Potter seeming to try to calm himself. "I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, Malfoy. Where the fuck is Ginny?"

"Dead, most likely. Death collects all our lost things," he says, but the words don't feel like his own to use. Like he's borrowing things and forgot to put them back.

Outside the bars, Harry slides down the wall, one hand sliding back into his hair and gripping the roots. "I'd hoped, maybe…" He looks up, but his eyes are unseeing. "What the hell do I tell Molly?"

Draco doesn't have a response for that, so he ignores the entire sentiment. He's not even sure it was meant for him. "You still haven't guessed properly, Potter. Properly… Potter… Have you noticed how irritating your name is? Too much obnoxious alliteration." He isn't sure why he made that observation, but it seemed very important at the time.

The other wizard is eyeing him now in a way he very much does not like. "What is the matter with you?"

"Ah, ah," he teases. "Not really the question you should be asking. Have you forgotten the original game? You have to guess which kitten I have."

"Fuck off, Malfoy, you just confirmed my best mate's sister is likely dead. Besides, if you're referring to the dungeons, we've already rescued everyone there. The few still alive at least."

"My prize kitten is hardly in the dungeons, Potter. She has to be properly groomed or her mane is just entirely unruly."

Potter's eyes go wide, and Draco would swear he looks like he's going to cry, the ridiculous tosser. He said she's alive not dead… Shouldn't he look a little more relieved? Grateful even? What a dick.

"Hermione?"

"Obviously, you dim little troll."

"Where is she?!" he demands, yelling angrily at Draco who sits calmly, watching. "Tell me where she is, or I'll let an Auror team get it out of you. I'm the civilized choice, Malfoy. Anyone else will treat you like the monster you are."

"You really are wretched at this, Potter. Threats already? You haven't even given me time to refuse. Never could follow the rules like the rest of us."

"This is not a game! Hermione is going to starve, you bastard!"

Draco doesn't think that's true. He's certain Pipsy will take care of her. Isn't he? And why exactly is he keeping her location to himself? She can't come see him if no one gets her out. And he very much hopes she will come see him.

"Don't be ridiculous. She will do no such thing. I take exceptional care of what's mine."

"Where...Is...She?" He grits out through this teeth. Hermione wouldn't like him grinding them like that. Her parents, she had mentioned once, teeth healers...he's sure would not approve.

"Im my bedroom, of course."

"You bastard." Suddenly Draco knows pain like he only has from the end of The Dark Lord's wand. From seemingly nowhere, Potter has pulled his own wand and licks of pain are racing through Draco's blood and bone. He's familiar with the Cruciatus, from both sides of the wand, but there is true hatred here. Draco thinks, more than a little impressed, Bellatrix would be envious of the level of Potter's hate.

Eventually, the pain lifts. Draco is left panting on his hands and knees on dirty stone. Something in him breaks apart a little, and it seems to surprise Potter as much as it does himself when his response is to laugh. Heartily and more honest than he has in years, he laughs with abandon, his rival staring down at him.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Oh, my dear Potter, so very many things…"

"You're crazy… Whatever, I don't fucking care. Just, how do I find her?"

"Pipsy!" he calls for the elf, undecided if he will demand that the creature show Potter how to find his kitten or to order that the elf to hide her away somewhere safe until he can retrieve her. But then, nothing happens. There is no crack of magic that signifies his arrival. He turns a dangerous look back to his captor. "Where's my fucking house elf, Potter? Where's my elf?!"

The bastard shrugs at him. "Back at your manor, I would imagine. But they can't reach you here. Surely you didn't think it would be that easy? That your slave would just magic you away?"

Draco doesn't like being condescended to, especially by a thick knob like Potter. So, he decides that in hindsight, his efforts would have been magnanimous. "Pipsy could have led you to Granger. But without me to give that order, you're on your own." He grins, wide and, he hopes, a little terrifying. He feels terrifying. Or is it terrified? Draco feels like he is too full of something.

He feels a lot of different things, come to think of it. Has done for a long time, but it's different today. There is a shift in the air and in his mind. Where is Granger? She had a way of making the buzzing quiet. Making his pulse race or slow in equal parts. His head feels fuzzy, and he loses himself for a moment, thinking of crawling into bed with his witch.

Someone is talking. "What?"

"Jesus fuck, Malfoy, I asked what room she's in. Tell me how to find her. I can do things to help you. Trade for information. Help us find her and we can get you a better location. A room more than a gaol cell."

Draco blinks and takes in the dim light filtering from the corridor and around the silhouette of Harry Potter. He's in a cell. He didn't realize… or perhaps he'd forgotten. "Who are you looking for?"

"Bloody fuck… Hermione! Where is Hermione?!"

He snaps a bit more to attention. Granger. She will be looking for her tea. He does hope Pipsy hasn't neglected to care for her. Did he leave instructions? Draco can't remember.

"How long have I been here?"

Potter looks at a loss for a moment, mouth hanging open. Was it a difficult question?

"Two days, Malfoy. You've been here two days.."

Struggling to his feet, Draco staggers, slowed by the wait of the manacles, to the bars. In response, Potter backs away, looking at him with distrust. "You have to get me out, Potter. She'll be waiting for me."

"She's alive then… you swear?" the other man breathes out, looking for assurance. For some reason, Draco finds the comment exceptionally irritating.

"Of course she's alive! Now let me the fuck out! I need to go!"

The buffoon is still eyeing him, and when he speaks, his voice is low and controlled. "When I find her, Malfoy, if she's not…." Draco watches him struggle, trying to find words that are somehow elusive. "I expect to find her safe, and if I don't, I'm coming back for you. You'll wish you died with your parents, I promise."

"Fuck you, Potter," he whispers, suddenly angry again. Then, the other man simply walks away. Draco is furious, jumping back to his feet and stretching against the chains that bind him. "FUCK YOU!"

His voice echoes against the stone walls, but only the sound of Potter's footsteps retreating comes as answer.

He is left alone again. He isn't sure how long, but he vaguely knows he is fed and a guard hints at the time of day. "This be yer breakfast," he'd comment, or "This here yer supper."

He wakes often drowning in sweat, screaming for Hermione Granger. The Mark on his arm, the brand that made him belong to Voldemort for so long, is pulsing. He feels the snake curling around the skull, wriggling like it's made of fire on his skin. It's a searing, disgusting pain, and he cries until it starts to dull, and then he finds sleep.

"Malfoy?"

He looks up, not believing the voice. Perhaps it's another dream then?

"Hermione?"

She is holding a tray in her hands and looking down at him where he is huddled under a blanket on the floor. She frowns as she takes him in. "They said I could bring you this."

He watches as she opens the small trap beside the door and pushes the tray through. Draco doesn't move toward it, instead he watches Hermione as she straightens back to standing. "They found you." He doesn't say it any particular way. It is observation. Acknowledgement.

Because he's not entirely sure how he should feel about it.

"They did," she says, watching him closely.

He feels very exposed, their positions of power reversed. Of all the things he is thinking, one in particular wins out. "Did Pipsy care for you?"

Draco watches her eyes widen in surprise. "Yes, he came to see me every day. He told me you were… not coming back. I thought maybe...you'd died."

She swallows, and he almost thinks maybe she didn't want that to happen. That she hadn't wanted any harm to befall him. It makes him grin, some of his swagger returning. "It would take much more than the Order to keep me from you, pretty kitty."

Her face hardens a little, and she snorts in return. "Apparently, steel bars and some shackles do the trick." She smacks the bar with the back of her hand to punctuate her point. Cheeky thing, his Hermione.

Something about the way she is looking at him he finds rather disturbing. She looks angry. No, that's not entirely right. She looks wary. Had he not been good to her?

Mostly…

"I've missed you," he tells her, and he means it. She sucks in a breath, but otherwise makes no reply. "I hoped Pipsy would take care of you. I asked him to, I think. I meant to, at least, when my thoughts were clear."

She ponders that, studying him. "Are your thoughts… clear now?"

Draco is lost a moment, thinking about Pipsy and warm soup and the bed with blue silk sheets that he had made just for her. He almost misses the question. "Hmm? Oh. Yes… mostly, yes. It's hard to say. I think this might just be as clear as they will get." It strikes him as funny, what he just said, so he chuckles. Hermione doesn't join him.

After a short silence, she backs away, two slow steps from his cell. "I'll… I'll come back, alright? Just… hang in there."

That jolts him out of his reverie, and Draco scrambles to his feet. "You're leaving? You can't leave me here. Hermione, please…" He knows his eyes are wide, and he must look a mess, but he doesn't care about any propriety. In that moment, he just doesn't want her to go.

"I just…" she says, slowly, and he can tell she's trying to think of a lie. "I just need to get a few things. I'll be back before you know it."

"No. Granger, I fucking forbid it!" His panic starts to slide into anger, as it often does. "Get back here. Get the fuck back here! Granger! GRANGER!" He hears her footfalls once she's turned the corner and swears she breaks into a run. He's angry and afraid and very sad. Because he knows she has no reason to ever come back.

Days pass, blurred and uncertain, marked haphazardly by meals and the changing of the guard. Bernie, the one with improper grammar, has dark hair and a good disposition. Draco barks orders at him sometimes, demands things that are never delivered. He isn't even sure he actually wants the man to bring his wool socks or emerald tie pin or his mother's music box that plays Moonlight Sonata… he just feels more like himself when he wants things. When he feels he is entitled to them.

On other days, the guard has sandy hair and never introduces himself. He suffers no disrespect and does cruel things. When Draco asks for more water, his gaoler spits in the cup. When he demands a warming charm, he finds himself splashed with hot soup. The man grins at him every time he speaks, daring him to complain. Draco forgets, sometimes, to stay quiet. He has bruises, a testament to those times.

Some days, his head pounds and his mark crawls on his skin like insects. He misses Hermione, and he tries to remember what happened a week ago. A month. He remembers he cursed Hermione once, and it settles in his stomach, making him feel he could wretch. How could he have done that?

And there are other things. He remembers her delicate touch and the smell of her skin. Her wide eyes, stiff posture. Had he scared her? Surely that can't be right.

One morning he thinks of Dean Thomas and goes pale, remembering how Goyle had hit him so hard with a cutting curse he'd nearly severed him in two. Dean Thomas who, before that moment, was relegated to vague memories of him paired with Finnegan or watching Quidditch or laughing at the Gryffindor table.

From there, he spirals. He feels feverish, sweating but shivering, crouched on the stone floor and eyes darting around, anticipating some sort of retribution to come. More memories come. Muggles with wide, dead eyes, his brethren standing over them. The Dark Lord, punishing him and praising him in equal measure. Members of the Order and Death Eaters alike, bleeding out on the ground, crying for their mothers or Merlin to save them.

He thinks surely he will die. His fever spikes higher and he believes he is in other places. His skin feels like paper, and he tries to scratch it off to find himself beneath it. Like he might molt something away and come back better. He has just enough presence of mind to know he has been slipping. He feels drunk, knowing he isn't himself but unable to pull himself out of the mire of his madness.

He wakes more lucid and remembers his mother is dead. Draco sobs so hard he vomits whatever food he managed to choke down. He wishes Granger was with him. He imagines wrapping his arms around her, feeling her heartbeat under his hand, but in his dreams she slices him open with a blade or begs him, sobbing, to let her go.

After untold days of being alone, Draco wakes, folds his blanket neatly, stacking it in the corner with his shoes, and waits for his first meal to come. It's the cruel one today, and Draco simply nods at him in recognition when he slides the tray through the slot.

He eats carefully. Of course they do not provide him a knife, but he slowly spears each precut bite of sausage, chewing patiently and letting the food nourish him. He doesn't let his mind wander, knowing that there is nothing good to come from his thoughts. He is nearly hoping for execution at this point, knowing it is likely he will get that wish.

Sometime in the afternoon, his lunch tray already having been taken away, he hears soft footsteps approach. It's not the shuffling sound of Bernie, nor the quick, sure stride of the other one. He knows before he sees her, before he smells her scent; it's Hermione.

"Granger," he rasps out, realizing he hasn't used his voice in days. There is relief at seeing her as much as trepidation. His mind flashes to her in the bedroom, letting him hold her close, but then she is trembling and begging him to stop. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the dream away. Or was that one a memory?

His eyes go wide when she doesn't simply stop at his door, but instead moves to open it. The metal squeals as it swings open, and then nothing is between them except empty space. Do his chains extend to the door? He isn't sure, but he wants so much to be near her.

Draco stands, slightly shaky. He feels nervous and unsure. These are not things to which he is accustomed to feeling. He takes a step forward, testing, and she doesn't flinch. Another step, and another, and she never moves, keeping her eyes on him and her hands by her side.

When he reaches her, his feet no more than inches away from the toes of her boots, he stops, his own hands flinching and twitching near his thighs. Why isn't she moving?

Reaching up to her face, he lays his fingertips lightly against her cheek. He doesn't understand what's happening, but suddenly it's difficult to breathe, and he brings his other hand up as well, cupping her face and pressing his forehead against hers. "Hermione…"

When she lays her hands on each side of his neck, so heartbreakingly gentle, he feels a sob choke him, caught in his throat and his body hitching with the force of it. "What's wrong with me?"

He looks down at her to find her rather stoically gazing back. She still hasn't spoken, but he can't stop the questions that have been slowly starting to eat at him the last few days. "What did I do to you, Granger? What the fuck have I been doing?"

Hermione moves one hand from his neck and sets it lightly against his forearm. It's painful and it makes him hiss, removing his hands and stepping back from her.

"Can't you feel the darkness in it?" she asks softly. "Can you still hear Him?"

Standing in the middle of a stone room, one hand protectively hiding the brand on his skin, he squints at her, not quite understanding.

"It's poison."

What she's saying, he thinks this is something he already knows. Couldn't he feel the Dark Magic swirl into his blood the day he was marked? He'd known even then, felt the degradation of his natural magic.

"What will happen to me now? Now that… that He's dead. Will it… fix me? Can I even be fixed?" he finishes softly, feeling haunted by his own ghost.

The look she returns is regretful and sad, and she says, "Some things that are broken can never truly be fixed."

"What did I do to you?" he asks again, memories in pieces. He remembers feeding her and holding her, but there are flashes of other things, and he feels sick for what must be the thousandth time in so many days.

"Nothing I couldn't survive."

He studies her then. She seems so poised. So collected. But there is a shift to her eyes and stiffness to her spine. "You're afraid of me," he says sadly.

"You told me I should be," she reminds him, and it floods his mind with memories of the day he found her. He had said that… and he'd meant it. Merlin, he had wanted her to be terrified even as he had coveted her.

He drops, then, to his knees with his head hung low, his hand still holding his mark. He doesn't even hear her leave, but when he looks up, she's gone.

"Mister Malfoy."

How long has it been? He never really knows, his dreams flowing into his waking memories like water rushing onto the beach. He is living in the liminal space between his fears and his past.

He sits up now, his head swimming a little when he moves too fast. Two wizards stare down at him. They are dressed much as the staff in St. Mungos, though their faces show none of the kindness of a healer.

"Mister Malfoy, I am here on behalf of the Ministry. I must ask that you remain seated and do not move unless we instruct you to do so."

Draco looks over the man's shoulder and sees both of his familiar guards. They have their wands drawn, and it occurs to him they are here to protect the healers. Why had they not come with Hermione on her last visit? Why had she been allowed to enter his cell?

Had she even been here at all? He more than suspects that she had not.

Draco thinks he nods, agreeing not to move, but he's not sure he actually moves his head. They look wary as they cross the room.

The older of the two steps into Draco's personal space, his own wand at the ready. "Your arm, if you please."

The healer is holding out his hand, asking for access to the Mark on Draco's forearm. He lifts it, twisting so that the mark is staring straight up and bends his wrist to better angle the ink. Showing it off. Asking for praise or penance.

Look at what I am.

"It's fading," the younger one notes.

The healer holding Draco's arm in one hand agrees. "It is. They all are, but there's so much Dark Magic already inside, it hardly matters."

The younger one approaches and casts a nonverbal spell that leaves Draco paralyzed in his position.

"What is this?" he demands immediately, speaking for the first time and not liking this feeling of vulnerability.

"No more than what you did to that Granger girl," the nasty guard barks over at him. It's true, isn't it. He had kept his kitten tame.

"Just to keep you from thrashing about, Mister Malfoy." Draco looks back in the healer's face. He seems no more kind nor warm than before.

"What are you doing?! Get your fucking hands off me-" His protests are cut off into a scream when he feels a wand touch his Mark, pain travelling through his veins. The binding ensures he can't flinch away, but he yells and then whimpers when they don't stop.

He tries to breathe through the trauma, finding a chip in one stone block on the corridor wall. He focuses there, imagining he could crawl inside the cracks in the mortar, visualizing hiding himself in the very rock and dirt.

"You're a right mess," he thinks the man murmurs, the pain making it hard to hear. It feels like his blood is being stripped from his body, like worms are being torn from his veins, pulled by their long lengths through the channels that house his lifeblood. He can envision it as clearly as the sees the cracks in the stone, his blood turned to insects, crawling over one another to escape through his skin.

"Reckon it'll kill him? Like that Lestrange prick?"

Draco hadn't entertained the possibility that whatever they are doing might kill him. He tries to thrash, the pain dulled by fresh fear.

"And that is why you're bound," one of them says to him. "Move too much, it only hurts worse."

His eyes snap from the corridor over the faces of the wizards around him and finally down to his own arm. He feels his gorge rise at the sight of it. His limb looks raw, the skin tearing itself open and the snake writhing like it feels the same pain as Draco. A sludge, black like tar, physically exits his veins, blood seeping out around it and dripping down his arm.

"Almost there," the man assures him, and he wishes he knew his name so he could use it to beg, please please not to let him die.

The pain is a crescendo, the last of the blackness clinging to him, like tiny claws gripping him inside his veins and tearing them out, ripping through a network of nerves, until it's too much and his vision goes black.

When he opens his eyes, bleary and unfocused, one of the healers is leaned over him, studying his Mark. Draco looks down at the devastation of his arm, finding the brand still there, but now torn and scarred, his flesh jagged and ugly.

"There's no healing the scars of Dark Magic, I'm afraid. That's the best it will be."

"I was hoping it would be gone," he whispers, mostly to himself. He wonders how long it's been.

Draco sits up with effort, cradling his arm with his other hand and whimpering at his own movement. He looks around at the healer, the cell, and feels his breathing pick up, panic sweeping through his veins. His mind is, for the first time in longer than he can remember, untainted and clear, and he is horrified at the memories he finds there, coming fast in flashes.

"What… what have I done?" Unfortunately, he knows the answer, unable to keep the images out of his head, and he breaks down, sobbing into his hands.

"Draco Malfoy, it is the decision of the noble council of wizards that you should be stripped of your wand and magic and confined to one of your family's smaller holdings. The Malfoy ancestral home and all Gringotts funds will be seized in restitution for crimes during the second wizarding war by both yourself and your father."

Draco swallows hard. He is shackled in the center of a large room, elder witches and wizards peering down at him while he cowers in literal chains. He's just lost everything.

Glancing around, he's hoping to find a head of bushy curls in attendance, but she hasn't come. He's not seen her since he was delirious in his cell and is losing hope that she has any intention of seeing him again.

"However," the wizard continues, "we also acknowledge the research as provided by one Hermione Granger that suggests you were not entirely in control of your actions these past years."

He perks up. She researched for him. Protected him. Why she would do anything for him after some of the things he did and said he cannot imagine.

"As such, your wand will be returned to you and your freedom granted after a five year period with the potential for early release based on your willingness to cooperate with studies on the nature of the Dark Mark. Do you agree to these terms?"

Unable to speak, Draco simply nods. A gavel hits the heavy oak bench, and with that, Draco is sent home.

She comes to him in the Autumn. It's been months, and Draco has settled into a routine that is little more than a half life, only Pipsy for company and conversation. Conflicted and bitter and grieving, Draco spends his days reading and regretting. Her appearance leaves him without words. Pipsy had greeted her, offering her a seat in his small receiving room, and then alerted him that he had a visitor. The moment he sees her, everything between them floods his memories. He sees her cowering and begging. He sees her beyond the bars of his cell, promising to return though she never did. He sees her in battle, fierce and dangerous.

But mostly, he sees those eyes that had given him refuge when he came to her bloody. He sees the witch he's coveted since they were children. He sees the only thing in this world he wants to be his, though he lost everything else.

"Draco, I-"

In two strides he reaches her, capturing her face between his palms and slanting his mouth over hers firmly. He should probably be shocked that she doesn't protest. Maybe somewhere he is. Mostly, though, he can't think beyond this moment.

This kiss.

In the beginning, it's nothing but pressure. Firm and possessive, telling her with his mouth pressed against hers that she is his, his, his. That he wants her and he has her and nothing was more frightening to him than to believe he would never see her again. But as the kiss lingers, he softens, both the pressure of his lips as well as his embrace. Draco wraps himself around her, pulling her close and burying one hand in the softness of her curls. He gentles the kiss until he is nipping at licking at her languidly, tasting her and relishing her in a way he had never done before. She is pliant and warm, and then she is returning his affection, her small hands cupping his face and her soft and welcoming body leaning into the hard planes of his own. He feels her try to pull away and whimpers against her mouth, suddenly terrified to let her go.

"Hermione, please," he murmurs against her, begging her not to pull away. Maybe simply not to leave.

"I wasn't sure," she starts softly, "what I was going to say when I got here. I'm still not sure. Part of me thought you wouldn't even want to talk to me."

He looks down at her, incredulous. "Not want to talk to you?"

She pulls away from her, backing up a pace and folding her hands behind her back. "Right. Now that you're back to… well, you again. You never held me in very high regard before…"

Before. Before he nearly raped her? Draco flinches at the implication. "I held you in higher regard than I could admit. Hermione..." He doesn't know what to say, what words to use. "It wasn't..." He covers the remaining scars and darkened skin of his mark with the palm of his right hand. "This didn't make me want you. I'm sure it seems that way now, but it wasn't. You made me want you... this just made me cruel."

He watches her take a breath. "I think I came here to yell at you," she tells him. "Part of me still wants to. But I also want to know what I should feel about what happened. How do I know what parts of you were real and what parts made us both a victim?"

He doesn't know how to answer that, and he tells her as much. "I'm having trouble separating some things myself. But...I am sorry. So fucking sorry I hurt you. I just wanted you," he admits, hoping she can understand. "I wanted you for so long, since Hogwarts probably, so I just took you."

"You can't just take, Draco."

"I know..." And he does... he knows that. It seems it should be rather obvious now, where before he'd ever considered anything else. "I can't believe... everything I've done..." his breath hitches, and then she is there, closing the distance she herself put between them.

Her arms wrapped around him, Draco swallows hard. Hermione is compassionate. A champion for the lost and abused. He understands her affection for him might be based on his broken soul, but he can't find it within himself to care. He returns her embrace, pulling her into him and burying his face in her hair.

"I'll help you," she promises, and he clings harder, taking what she promises. He hopes she can fix him, that he can be fixed. He hopes she will stay.

Though she sometimes has to leave, returning to her life outside, Hermione stays with him in all ways that matter. She fights for him, pulling him from the mire of his regrets and defending him relentlessly. She gives herself to him completely, so that he doesn't have to take.

He is hers, gratefully and with no reservation. Months turn into years, and, even after his freedom is granted, she stays. She is the presence of light and he loves her completely. He hadn't realized how much until they siphoned the darkness, tearing it from his skin and his blood. Hermione Granger saved him as surely as the healers.

In the dark, she trails her fingertips against his skin and whispers affections.

Though still, there is a voice. It is soft and rough, a rasp that slithers across Draco's mind. He's not sure if it belongs to him or someone else, so he does his best to silence it. Maybe there was always darkness inside him. Perhaps it is inherited from his father? Or in his blood? Or simply a part of his mind after so many years of inflicting pain. He doesn't tell Hermione. He is at least in agreement with that darkness: Hermione belongs to him, and he will never give her up. Her light chases his shadows to the corners no one can see.

In the dark, he holds her tight, all the voices inside agreeing he has everything he needs.

Thank you again! I would very much like to hear your thoughts!