Hermione was standing in the kitchen of Spinner's End. She turned slowly, looking over the surfaces covered with notebooks, prepared ingredients and bubbling potions.

Hermione paused as she noticed one potion shimmering in the corner. She stepped over and watched the spiraling steam rising from the surface. She sniffed it surreptitiously. The spicy, earthy scent of oak moss, smoky undertones of cedar, the bruised scent of oxidizing leaves, and parchment—no. She sniffed again. Papyrus.

She stepped abruptly away and glanced at the other surrounding cauldrons.

"This is quite a variety of love potions you're brewing," she said, looking over to where Severus was stooped over a simmering cauldron.

"A new project for the Dark Lord. He's suddenly developed an interest in trying to weaponise it," Severus said, sneering down at the murky, lumescent liquid he was working over.

Hermione felt her blood run cold. "Is that a possibility?"

Severus shrugged with a faint smile. "I am both skeptical and unmotivated, so most likely not. I believe it was more of a passing notion than anything he has a sincere interest in. I'm drawing up a comprehensive report to present in case he asks about it. And I'm doing it in my home rather than in the lab to ensure no one offers any groundbreaking ideas."

Hermione surveyed the room. There were ten varieties of love potion and a few aphrodisiacs she recognised, as well as an additional fifteen that appeared experimental.

"What would constitute as a weaponised love potion?"

"Something of exceptional power that doesn't require redosage. I believe he images himself using it for interrogations."

"That's—obscene," Hermione finally said.

"Indeed. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he has other matters he regards as more urgent for Sussex to focus on."

Hermione woke, still lying on the cold floor of the bathroom. She continued to lie there; if there were an upside to her depression it was that it made sleeping easier. It was as though her body had given up. The rage she'd spent months cultivating had melted away and she was left tired and listless, as though her body weighed too much to even carry across the floor.

She could sleep and sleep in a state of despair for most of the day.

She pushed herself off the floor, went to her room, and climbed under the covers of her bed; burrowing into them and hugging them around herself.

Even her brain felt tired and listless. As though even thinking took too much out of her.

She glanced over at the clock. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening. There was a tray with dinner on it beside the chair, but Hermione had no appetite.

She wondered why Malfoy was in France; presumably it was to kill more people.

Would he still be masked, or would he do it openly? She wondered what he looked like when he cast the killing curse. Most people's faces screwed up in a revolting grimace when they cast the Killing Curse. Even Voldemort. But Malfoy's hatred and fury was so cold. Perhaps he looked the way he had when he was killing Montague.

Hermione wondered if getting exposed as High Reeve were intentional.

If Malfoy were moving to seize power from Voldemort, he'd need to be known. Known and feared. Being revealed had been a calculated risk perhaps; banking on Voldemort's need for a public figure to spare his life. If things in Romania were as unstable as had been implied, Voldemort couldn't kill Malfoy now—even if he wanted to. It would leave a power vacuum, destabilise the entire Death Eater army, and give Europe the opportunity to break free.

There were no other figures in Voldemort's army that were even vaguely comparable. Voldemort had local government figures, but Malfoy was Voldemort's only visible crutch on a continental level

The most powerful General in the Dark Lord's army was what Astoria had said. A General for years; that was what Malfoy had said about himself.

Hermione paused puzzled. Malfoy had been a General during the war?

She didn't remember Malfoy being a General. She didn't remember much of anything about him after Dumbledore died. She had assumed his ascendance in rank had occurred at the end of the war, but perhaps that had been wrong. It had been hard to get good information toward the end of the war. Hermione hadn't been included in most of the specifically strategic Order meetings. It must have been a detail she'd missed.

There were so many things about Malfoy that felt incomprehensible. His power. The point of his ambition. His ironic talent for healing. His apparating ability.

A ritual intended as a punishment...

Hermione turned over the mystery in her mind.

It was probably what Voldemort had been referencing to when he'd spoken of Malfoy deeply disappointing him. Hermione wondered what on earth it could be. Dark magic rituals were generally physically corrosive and mentally eroding. Malfoy seemed suspiciously, even unnaturally, intact.

In fact, as she thought about it further, Malfoy was impossibly sane.

With the quantity of Dark Magic he was exposed to, both through his own use and Voldemort's, he should be poisoned by it. Unless he was spending all his time undergoing purification rituals, his relative health seemed impossible.

Hermione had been ill just from entering Voldemort's Hall, while Malfoy had seemed entirely indifferent to it; and he surely went there multiple times a week. People didn't become indifferent to Dark Magic. It was like a poisonous drug. Addictive. Effecting.

Deadly.

Dark Wizards tended to use more and more, and stronger and stronger types of dark arts until they eroded themselves away the way Voldemort was, or went mad the way Lucius and Bellatrix had.

But Malfoy was intact. Physically and mentally he was—pristine.

And capable of apparating across an entire continent.

How on earth was that possible?

Hermione kept turning the question over and over until she finally gave up. She had too little information to enable any guesses.

She moved on to a different problem.

She couldn't figure out how she fit in. Whatever Malfoy's scheme was, it seemed like she must be somehow included in it. Malfoy was too devoted to her care and maintenance for it to be otherwise. Hermione had thought it was simply because he was doing as ordered, but she was beginning to strongly suspect his attention went beyond that. He seemed personally and emotionally invested in her. The way he stared at her; the undivided intensity of it was almost undeniable. She was significant to him or to his plans.

Where did not getting Hermione pregnant fit into the strategy?

He hated raping her; didn't appear to enjoy it at all and didn't try to. It made him ill. So, wouldn't he want her pregnant as soon as possible?

Unless it had to do with her memories. The idea that a pregnancy would unlock the memories was theoretical at best. But if Malfoy suspected there were something in her memory that he didn't want unlocked... that could possibly explain it.

But even without a pregnancy, the memories were slowly beginning to re-emerge.

If she were pregnant, it would buy him nine months of exclusive access to them. So long as she was not pregnant, arbitrary memories might emerge for Voldemort to find.

Why would he keep forcing them both through five days of monthly trauma?

Hermione couldn't account for it.

She mulled over the question again.

The only additional element she could think of was that Malfoy had to know she would rather die than get pregnant.

Would that matter to him?

She kept wondering until she fell asleep.

She was anxious all the next day; on edge and fidgeting until she started fearing she'd start picking her skin off. She barely skimmed the Daily Prophet before she began tearing it to pieces and folding it into every shape she could think of. She couldn't fold cranes, but she could fold aeroplanes and all sorts of other geometric shapes. She poured her nervous energy into folding until her fingertips felt raw.

She started walking through the North Wing, trailing her fingers lightly along the walls as she went.

When evening came, Hermione took a bath without instruction. Topsy did not appear but dinner did. Hermione ignored it. It was nearly nine when the House-elf suddenly popped into the room.

Topsy averted her eyes as Hermione stared down at her.

"The master is back. You is to get ready."

There was a pause.

"I'm already ready," Hermione said.

Topsy nodded and then disappeared.

Hermione went and sat at the foot of her bed.

When Malfoy appeared at the door they stared across the room at each other for several minutes.

There was nothing to say.

He walked across the room and withdrew a vial of Calming Draught which he handed to her without a word. She swallowed the contents, and then handed it back.

While he was taking his own potion, Hermione slid back on the mattress and laid down, staring determinedly up at the canopy over her bed.

She didn't flinch when she felt the bed shift. She didn't make a sound when she felt him shift her robes aside and expose her. When she felt him move between her legs, she bit her lip as she continued to stare up at the canopy. When he muttered the lubrication charm she balled her hand into fists.

When he entered her, she gave a small gasp and turned her face toward the wall in despair, writhing with internal anguish.

Her body had anticipated it. Attuned and waiting. It was ready. Wanting.

It was such a profound betrayal.

Knowing her arousal was physiologically natural didn't ease the guilt.

When the rape was clinical it was endurable. When the rape was drugged it was endurable. But when it was just her, her own mind and physiology, it was the worst of all. It twisted and tore at something inside her.

I'm being raped and my body is enjoying it, she thought bitterly and wanted to curl away.

She thought she might just vomit.

She didn't want to know if Malfoy could tell the difference. Whether he knew.

She stared at the wall and tried not to make another sound. When he came, he immediately removed himself, jerked her robes down, snatched up his robes, and apparated.

She didn't turn to see what he looked like before he vanished. She just pulled her legs closed and lay there. She could feel her tears leaving cold trails along her temples.

The next two days were the same.

There was little sense of relief the morning after the fifth day. Hermione just felt cold.

Her room and bed had lost all sense of comfort to her.

She pulled a fresh set of robes from the wardrobe and went down the hall to the bathroom with the shower. Then she curled up into a tight ball, seated on the floor of the shower and stayed there under the water.

There was no point in denying it. Things had shifted. Nothing felt the same. Not any longer.

The potion was a significant factor but Hermione couldn't deny the array of other elements.

Malfoy was not the monster she had initially perceived him as being. After learning what was happening to the other surrogates; after what Montague had tried to do to her; after Astoria; after becoming terrified of what cruelty Lucius Malfoy would devise if her surrogacy were transferred. The person she perceived Malfoy as being had shifted.

Being 'saved' by him had affected things.

He touched her. No one had touched her in so long.

He'd healed her, far more than he needed to.

He didn't even want to rape her.

Though he insisted his protection of her was entirely borne from from self-interest—because he'd been commanded to—she was almost certain he was far exceeding what obligation demanded.

The influence of the manacles also contributed to it. They'd always been intended to cultivate compliance and dependence. To remove her ability to resist.

If she could resist Malfoy's violation; if he were physically forcing her down as he raped her, it would be easier for her to stop growing resigned and accustomed to it. It was the lying quietly and experiencing it. The anticipation of an inevitability that she had no ability to resist.

If the ways he hurt her were more voluntary and less obligatory, it would be easier to see him for who he was.

Although even then, the mind was cruelly adaptive. The subconscious will to survive was written into humans more deeply than almost anything else. Survival did not require Hermione to be intact. To be decent. To be herself. Survival would carve away any part of her that made enduring harder.

It would smooth away the mental anguish. Latch onto every glimmer of kindness. It would make life cease to ache.

If she weren't careful, it would steal away every bit of her until she was so broken inside that she would accept her cage.

Hermione shivered beneath the scalding water still beating down on her.

She needed to stay away from Malfoy.

She wouldn't talk to him. She wouldn't let herself ask him questions. If he asked her something, she would answer as briefly as possible. She would stop engaging with him, stop trying to understand him.

She might not be able to control what her body did, but she could control her mind. Anything he wanted from her, he would have to force from her.

She dropped her head down on her knees as a sense of desolation came over her.

She was so tired of being all alone. She pressed her lips together as she struggled against crying.

Even her memory was a lonely abyss. Almost all the years of war had been alone.

Studying alone in Hogwarts. Then studying in Europe, there had been no time for anything but professional relationships. When she'd returned she'd practically lived in the hospital ward.

There was never time for friendships. When she had any spare time, Harry and Ron were gone on missions. When they were back, it was generally in the aftermath of a battle, when Hermione's skills have been most urgently needed. She had so few memories of being with either of them in non-professional circumstances.

Then, after the Final battle, Hermione's imprisonment under Hogwarts had been like an endless fall. Alone. Alone. Alone. Until Hermione's memory had cannibalised itself.

When Hermione had finally been dragged out and forced into the breeding program she had become reduced to her function. To Healer Stroud she was a womb. To Voldemort she was a potential source of war intelligence.

She was not a person.

Not to anyone except Malfoy.

He treated her like a person. He answered most of her questions, and he looked at her as though he saw her. He talked to her. He treated her as though she personally were of significance to him. When he hurt her it always seemed forced and unwilling.

Everyone else just hurt her because they could.

Even the House-elves would barely look at her.

There was no work to bury herself into in Malfoy Manor. No endless void to become lost in. It was just Hermione, sitting and wondering and folding paper; trapped in a cold house.

Malfoy was only bit of warmth or life or human contact she had. Whether he had intended it or not, Hermione was latching onto him in her desperate isolation.

She couldn't.

He had killed everyone. He had murdered or executed them all. Willing or not, he was raping her. She was just a pawn to him.

She wasn't going to betray her friends' memories in such a horrific manner. She wasn't going to betray herself.

If she died in Malfoy Manor she would do so clinging to the bits of herself that remained. Like Death itself, Malfoy had stolen everything away from her, and he was waiting to take more.

She could stay away from Malfoy. She could refuse to engage unless he forced and coerced her.

She could. She would.

She was used to being alone.

She spent the rest of the day resolving herself. Bracing herself. Malfoy was due for another legilimency session. He always came after her fertile window.

When he did, he would find all the thoughts in her head. He would probably taunt her.

She wouldn't respond.

She spent the afternoon building a card tower.

The day passed. Dinner came. Malfoy did not.

Hermione tried not to be anxious. She tried not to keep glancing at the clock. She ignored the tightening sensation in her chest as she kept expecting him to appear.

He was probably doing it on purpose, she reminded herself. Perhaps he'd been reading her mind when she had been thinking earlier. He was probably torturing her intentionally.

She kept expecting him to eventually appear until it was past eleven, when Hermione usually was asleep. Finally she went to bed.

She couldn't sleep.

She just lay there, wondering why he hadn't come. Maybe he was traveling again. The newspaper hadn't said anything but perhaps he still was. Maybe he was out with Astoria at some event, Hermione didn't think she remembered anything being mentioned in the society pages. Maybe they'd just gone to dinner. Did he and Astoria go to dinner together?

Hermione lay in bed wondering until the clock on the wall indicated it was nearly two in the morning.

She got out of bed. There was a nearly full moon.

She went to the door and left her room, wandering through the moonlit hallways of the North Wing. The portrait followed her like a pale wraith.

Hermione's fingers trailed along walls as she walked. She never had panic attacks inside the manor, but the sensation of the wall beneath her fingers was steadying.

The moonlight cast long, sharp shadows across the floors and walls.

A thought abruptly struck Hermione. What if Malfoy died? Would she even know? Probably not. Not for days. Healer Stroud would come and take Hermione to be transferred to some other legilimens. Maybe Voldemort would bring Snape back from Romania and order him to impregnate her instead.

What if she were already pregnant? The thought made her cold. What if she were pregnant and Malfoy died? Would Voldemort wait for her to give birth and then drag her memories out himself? Or would he make Stroud abort the baby so Hermione could be transferred? If she carried it to term then, what would happen to it? Would Voldemort give the baby to Astoria?

Astoria would kill it. She'd torture it to death. If it looked like Malfoy and Hermione, Astoria would probably tear its eyes out and burn it, starve it to death...

Hermione gasped and started hyperventilating in the hallway.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing. She couldn't do anything.

She had spent months wishing Malfoy would die but now the thought filled her with terror.

What if he was dead?

She kept breathing faster and faster. Her hands and arms started pricking as though there were needles grazing her skin. Her chest felt compressed as though she were being crushed. She couldn't make herself calm down.

Suddenly there was a shifting in the darkness. Hermione froze, choked down a gasp, and glanced around.

Malfoy stepped out of the darkness. She was certain he hadn't been there a moment before.

The moonlight caught his pale hair and skin, and he looked terrifying and angelic at the same time.

She stared at him, feeling her initial panic fade away. He wasn't dead or dying. The sense of relief she felt at seeing him—

She tried not to dwell on it as she studied him carefully.

There was something about his face...

The tension in it seemed slightly eased from the hard cold expression she was so used to. He looked less on the verge of a breakdown.

He came closer to her. His eyes traveling down her slowly as he sized her up.

"Granger."

Her name rolled from his lips like a purr. She felt a shiver of uncertainty pass through her. He never called her by her surname, not once since she had arrived. She was always Mudblood.

Her eyes widened.

He was drunk.

His steps remained steady and his voice was unslurred, but—she was sure of it.

She didn't move.

He drew nearer, until she shuffled backwards, but he kept coming closer. Until she was trapped against the wall, and he was mere inches from her.

"Oh, Granger." He sighed, staring down at her. He raised a hand and placed it across her throat, but didn't squeeze; he just left it there. She could feel the heat of it seeping into her skin.

She stared up at him. Even drunk, his expression was a mask. She wasn't sure what he intended to do next. He slid his thumb lightly along her neck and she felt her skin prickle.

He sighed again. "If I'd known what pain you'd cause me, I never would have taken you."

He just stood there, holding her throat. She could feel her pulse fluttering against his hand. She wasn't sure what he meant; if she was supposed to apologise.

She could smell the alcohol on his breath.

"But," he said after a minute, "at this point, I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder, if you'll burn too."

His face was suddenly close to hers, she could feel the air from his words brushing against her skin.

His lips crashed into hers.