His untouched whore. In her elegant suite.

Her eyes closed, drifting off, remembering his skin surrounding her.

~*~

Narcissa visited often. She offered to retrieve books from the shelves, bring fresh sleeping clothes, take dinner requests.

On the fourth day, she turned from her bedside and said, "It's such a beautiful day out. Perhaps in the afternoon, we could take a stroll."

Her eyes drifted down to Hermione's arm and back, where twice her own sister had cut into her.

"No," Hermione tested. "I don't really fancy a walk. Thank you, though." She watched, waiting. Wondering how far her illicit freedom stretched.

Narcissa smiled pleasantly. "I'll leave you to rest then."

She gathered the books Hermione had finished, floated them to the bookshelves, and moved toward the door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"My sister… cannot be excused. But she is my blood, so I feel I always must excuse her." Narcissa turned back to her. "I stopped approving of her actions a long time ago. And she stopped approving of mine. But her behavior is not a reflection of this house, or its inhabitants."

Narcissa nodded to her, and left.

Somehow, incredibly, Hermione was struggling less and less with that concept.

~*~

She started rising from bed and moving around her room in the mornings. Her muscles ached, but every day became easier.

It had been ten days since she was electrocuted and poisoned, and ten days since she'd seen either of the Malfoy men. She dressed slowly, intent to get out of bed and leave her room.

The portraits hissed at her as she passed, muttering things about her dirty blood. An older man with the same long blond hair as Lucius but a rounder face and stomach humphed at her as she passed his portrait and said, "Shameful. We would have locked her away in the dungeons in my day."

She sneered back at him, dragging her fingers across his ornate frame as he gasped in indignation.

It was difficult for her to have no purpose. Ever since she was eleven, Harry had needed her. She knew things. She had answers. And if she didn't have the answer, she could look it up.

But she was incapable of answering certain questions with books now. She had survived and was being protected for reasons that were impossible to understand. All her captors seemed to ask of her was to merely exist. She'd turned over a dozen possible motives in her mind over the last few days, each more preposterous than the last. They were Order sympathizers. Double agents. Saving her as a bargaining chip in the event that Voldemort was defeated.

Whatever their reasons for keeping her safe, one thing was certain: people were dying. Her friends were dying. She'd already lost too much time.

Pushing open the library doors, she shuffled to the texts on dark magic.

It seemed that she had several problems.

Firstly, Voldemort had the Elder Wand — something she had never put as much faith into as Harry had. She was always more interested in the Horcruxes. They were tangible, and weren't rooted in fables.