The following three days passed in much the same manner. The table appeared promptly at seven thirty each evening. Hermione went and leaned over it a few minutes before eight o'clock. Malfoy entered—performed—and then left without a word.

Hermione recited poetry to herself and tried to take her mind as far away as she possibly could. Anything to not think about what was happening to her body.

She wasn't there. She was lying across a table because she was tired. She traced her fingers across the subtle grain of the wood. Perhaps it was oak. Or walnut.

As soon as she was permitted to leave the table, she would climb into bed and pray for sleep to come. She wasn't allow to wash until the following morning, and she didn't want to feel the fluid between her legs.

She tried not to think about it. Not while it happened. Not afterward. Not the next morning. She just—tried not to even think about it.

There was nothing she could do.

She tried to shove it away into a corner of her mind. Take her mind as far from her body as she could and stay there.

When she woke the morning after the fifth day, she wanted to weep, she was so relieved it was—at least temporarily—over. The dead sensation of horror that resided in her stomach felt faintly eased.

She got up and bathed. Scrubbing every inch of herself ritualistically. Then she stood with resolution before the bedroom door.

She was going to go out. She was going to get out of her room and explore at least...four. Four of the other rooms along the hall.

She was determined. She was going to examine every inch, and see if she could find any potential weapon by which to kill Malfoy.

She had envisioned his death in a multitude of creative ways during the last several days. Carried herself through with the fervent desire to watch the light fade from his eyes. She would give anything to drive a blade into his cold heart.

She was willing to settle for strangling or poisoning him.

Aside from Voldemort and Antonin Dolohov, there was no one else's death which Hermione now wished for so fervently.

Dolohov had been the lead developer in the Voldemort's curse division. The most horrific curses that had emerged over the course of the war were attributable to him. Hermione wondered if he were alive, still inventing new methods with which to kill people with agonising slowness.

Now, Dolohov and Malfoy were nearly tied. Hermione wasn't sure which of them she wanted dead more. Probably still Dolohov, she supposed. Even if the body count were equal, at least Malfoy wasn't such a sadist.

She pulled the door open and stepped out. She didn't pause to close it behind her. She didn't give herself time to freeze. She rushed down the hall into the nearest room.

When the door was shut, she dropped her head against the frame and forced herself to breathe. Slow deep breaths. Air all the way down into the bottom of her lungs and then slowly out to a count of eight.

Her shoulders were shaking, and her fingers twitching. She turned resolutely to examine the room. It was almost identical to hers but with two chairs and a chaise.

She turned around, taking in all the general details. As she did, she nearly cursed when she caught sight of a painting on the wall. It was a Dutch still-life. A table of flowers and fruit. Beside the table was standing the witch from the portrait in Hermione's room. She was watching Hermione with a faintly challenging expression.

Hermione wanted to throw something at the painting, but she curled her fingers into fists and forced herself not to react. She walked slowly around the room. Peeking into the wardrobe. Under the bed. Into the bathroom.

She slipped behind the heavy winter drapes and looked out over another section of the hedge maze.

She checked every floorboard, but none of them so much as squeaked.

Of course it wouldn't be easy.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to walk slowly into the next room.

It was almost exactly the same. The portrait followed and kept watch by sitting down to an impressionist style picnic laid out beside a river. Daintily nibbling cheese while she studied Hermione.

The third room was the most heartening. Not that it actually contained anything even remotely useful, but the bathroom contained a shower. Hermione's heart leapt slightly. She was dying to shower.

Washing her hair in a bathtub was just one of the innumerable things she hated about her life. When she'd awoken in the Hogwarts infirmary after passing out, her hair and body had been scourgified to remove the months of grime. She couldn't remember when she'd last washed her hair properly.

She went on to the next room. She kept going. Her panic attacks seemed slightly under control when she focused on moving from room to room. Making herself count slowly to four with each inhaled and exhaled breath.

It was primarily the hallway that bothered her. The vast, open, unknown...

Individual rooms were contained. Manageable.

She made her way through all the unlocked rooms in the hallway. The closest thing to useful that she found in any of them was a fireplace poker—which she couldn't touch.

She made her way back to her room and curled up in the chair by the window.

She felt at a loss. What was she supposed to do?

She closed her eyes.

Her insides shriveled slightly. She needed to get close to Malfoy.

He was the closest thing to a key that she had. As long as he remained a mystery, she would have no way of predicting which ways he was and was not careful.

He appeared meticulous. Everything was unbreakable. A portrait in every room and bathroom. But no one was perfect. Everyone has some weakness, and she would find Malfoy's and use it to end him.

It would, of course, be a game of cat and mouse.

Any weaknesses she discovered, he would find quickly in her mind. If she didn't know anything about him and just tried to be unpredictable, he would still find it in her mind. The trick would be getting to know him well enough that she could move faster than he could stop her.

The thought of being anywhere near him was terrifying.

She hissed faintly through her teeth and curled into a tighter ball. Just the thought of being in sight of Malfoy made a needle-like sensation of terror slide down her spine and coil in her lower back.

She buried her face in the chair.

She would do it.

She would.

Just—not yet.

She needed a few more days to get her bearings. To separate from the last five days she'd just endured.

Maybe the day after tomorrow.

Malfoy did not give her time to separate or find her bearings. He walked into her room when she was finishing lunch the next day, and she was so horrified she nearly screamed.

He just stood, staring at her for several seconds, while she clutched the back of her chair and tried to keep from cowering.

Why was he there? What did he want? Was he going to rape her again?

Her fingers twitched and spasmed as she tried to steady herself.

His cold, pale eyes slid over her as though he were taking note of every detail about her. Something flickered in them when he noticed her hands spasming. It vanished quickly into unwavering, attentive coldness.

Like a viper, the instant before it struck.

"You haven't been following instructions," he said after studying her for a minute.

Hermione stared at him, at a loss.

Was she not supposed to go into other rooms? No one had told her she couldn't. He'd said she was allowed to go out of her room. She realised as her stomach knotted itself—it had probably been a trick. To give him an opportunity to punish her.

She felt as though there was something lodged in her throat as she tried to swallow her terror and guess what he'd do.

"You're supposed to go outside for an hour everyday," he said in clarification, his lips twisted faintly. "Seeing as you barely leave your room, that set of instructions has apparently been ignored by you. I will not have your mental instability interfere with my ability to obey my Master."

He gestured sharply toward the door and then paused and looked her over again.

"Do you have a cloak?"

Hermione shook her head faintly. He grimaced and rolled his eyes.

"I imagine letting you develop frostbite would qualify as neglect and torture," he said with a sigh. He withdrew his wand and, with a flick, conjured a heavy, deep red cloak which he flung at her.

"Come!" He stalked from her room and down the hallway.

She followed him automatically as he led her down the main stairs of the wing and out onto a large marble veranda.

Hermione gasped as she stepped outside and felt the icy breeze on her face. She bit her lip and tried to steady herself as she stood in the doorway.

He turned sharply.

"What?" he asked, his steely eyes narrowed.

"I—haven't been outside since the day Harry died," she said in a voice that cracked faintly. "I forgot—what wind feels like."

He stared at her for several seconds before he snorted and turned away.

"One hour. Go," he said, conjuring a chair and pulling a newspaper out of thin air.

Hermione's eyes immediately locked onto the headlines she could make out. She was so starved for information it drew her attention more sharply than the abrupt sensation of being outdoors.

Repopulation Efforts Underway! Screamed the words at the top.

She felt something twist inside her, and she pressed her lips together and looked away. Malfoy noticed her glance.

"Care to see?" he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle. She heard the snap of the paper unfolding and glanced over to find a picture of herself, unconscious in a hospital bed, on the cover of the The Daily Prophet.

She stared in horror.

"Potter's Mudblood is among the first surrogates chosen by the Dark Lord to increase the magical population," was the summary included below the headline.

Malfoy glanced at it with a smirk.

"Look, I'm included too." His mouth twisted into a thin, malicious smile and his eyes glittered as he pointed to a picture of himself further down in the column. "In case anyone in the whole world wants to know exactly who is fucking you and where you are."

Hermione felt like she might vomit into the potted blue spruce by the door.

"I thought it was a rather obvious trap," Malfoy added with a sigh, looking away from her and leaning back into his chair. He pulled the paper open with a bored expression. "Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence. Something more subtle would probably elude them. The Dark Lord is quite hopeful that if there's still anyone left, they'll feel morally obligated to come haring in to save you the way Potter always liked to."

Oh god...

The whole world knew that Voldemort had turned her into Malfoy's sex slave for the repopulation program. She was being used as bait.

Hermione staggered back, feeling faint. She needed to get away from Malfoy and his cruelty before her mind snapped. She clapped her hand over her mouth as she stumbled down the gravel path.

"If you get lost in the hedge maze, I will send my hounds to drag you out." Malfoy's hard voice seemed to follow her.

She ran.

She hadn't run in ages, but she had stayed quite fit inside her cell. All the jumping and push-ups. Everything that she had done to turn her mind off.

She needed her mind off.

She couldn't think. She needed to move until she couldn't anymore.

She bolted down the path until it opened into a lane. She sped down it. The towering hedges around her felt suffocating.

Everything was suffocating her.

Her hands darted up, and she unclasped the cloak Malfoy had given her. She felt the wind wrench it away.

She'd rather freeze.

She ran and ran until the hedges ended and the lane carried on through large fields. She kept going. Because if she stopped, she'd think. If she thought, she'd cry. She couldn't cry. Not until she figured out a way to get away and keep any surviving members of the Resistance from trying to save her.

Oh god.

Oh god...

Finally, she stopped.

Her lungs felt as though they were on fire. The stabbing, burning need for oxygen was sharp as her chest heaved. Her whole body was slick with sweat that rapidly became bitingly cold on her skin. There was a stabbing pain in her side. Her shoes were almost in pieces. Her skirts caked in mud.

She stood panting and turned to survey where she was.

The Malfoy estate seemed endless. Grey hills of dead winter grass and dark clusters of leafless trees in the distance, all set against a grey sky.

It felt as though all the color had been leached out of the world. Except her. She stood in scarlet red. Stark against the monochrome.

She pressed her hands over her mouth as she kept gasping and panting.

When her chest finally ceased heaving, she became gradually aware of how cold she was becoming. There was a sharp wind that cut through the flimsy clothing she wore. Her hands were growing starkly white. She could feel her cheeks and the tip of her nose slowly begin to hurt. There was an icy sensation in her toes beginning to radiate up her legs as water soaked into her shoes and up her stockings.

She turned to look back in the direction she had come. The hedges were tiny in the distance.

She pressed her icy hands against her eyes for several minutes. Trying to think.

There was nothing.

Nothing new. Nothing more she could do.

Her plan remained the same. Nothing had changed.

Her situation was exactly the same as it had been the night before. The only difference was that her knowledge of it had broadened slightly. The options were still just as limited; the stakes had simply been raised further.

She slowly turned back.

She doubted Malfoy would really send hounds after her. Getting mauled by a pack of hunting dogs would potentially interfere with her reproductive abilities.

She wondered idly if the manacles would permit her to fight back against an attacking animal. If she were truly desperate to die, perhaps she could fling herself into the path of a deadly creature. Someone as vile as Malfoy might have something like a manticore stashed away on his estate. Or perhaps, if there were traps for would-be rescuers, she could fling herself into one of them.

Her teeth started chattering as she continued down the lane toward the hedges. She was too tired to run again and try to warm herself.

She hugged herself and continued on.

It hadn't occurred to her that Voldemort would publicise the repopulation efforts. In retrospect, it was obvious. It wasn't a secret that could be easily kept when surrogates were being distributed to seventy-two of the most preeminent wizarding families in Britain. Better to put it out entirely in the open.

She wondered idly how Malfoy felt about being publicly associated with her. The Mudblood he had hated so much back in school, now intended to be the mother of his children. All the world would know.

He was so slavishly obedient to whatever his Master wanted, he probably rationalised it somehow. She sneered to herself in derision.

The number of ways in which Hermione could hate him were almost mind-boggling. Every time she saw him, it was as though she found a whole new aspect of him that only added to the number of reasons why he deserved a slow, cruel death.

The sharp rocks of the gravel lane eventually cut entirely through her shoes. Her feet started to bleed as she was reaching the hedges. She pulled the useless shoes off and flung them up into the yew where they caught. The muddy red stood out starkly.

She continued on. Shivering.

When she finally made it back to the manor and walked around the corner, she found Malfoy was still there, reading a book. His newspaper tossed aside.

She stopped. Hesitating. She didn't want to interact with him, but she was agonisingly cold. She didn't know how else to get inside.

Her movement or colour caught Malfoy's attention. He glanced up sharply and stared, looking faintly aghast as he took in her bedraggled appearance. Then he quirked an eyebrow and smirked.

"Taking your status seriously, I see. Blood red and mud." He chuckled faintly for a moment before his expression grew hard. "You shouldn't have lost your cloak. You've still got," he glanced at his watch, "ten minutes before you're allowed inside."

Hermione shrank back in misery and went back around the side of the manor. She found a spot that was somewhat out of the wind and curled up against the building in a tight ball. Trying to conserve her body heat.

She was so cold.

Her shivering had stopped, and she was growing just terribly sleepy.

Which—she vaguely realised—indicated hypothermia.

Hermione had never treated real hypothermia during the war. Only the variety brought on by dementors.

Hypothermia was not something wizarding folk tended to suffer from. Warming charms were so easy, most first years could perform them. Wizarding outerwear usually had the charms woven in.

She should go tell Malfoy that her body temperature was becoming dangerously low.

But—if she waited... maybe she'd die from it.

That would solve all her problems.

She scrunched up more closely to the side of the manor and closed her eyes. Breathing shallowly.

Things slowly became comfortingly vague.

"Creative." Malfoy's harsh voice invaded the fog in her mind.

Something uncomfortably hot struck her entire body. Startled, Hermione yelped. She realised after a moment he'd cast a warming charm on her. The dramatic contrast in temperature had been physically painful when the magic of the charm collided with her skin.

Malfoy was already stalking away when she looked up.

Horrid bastard. He'd warmed her just enough to counteract the hypothermia but not enough to relieve how bitterly cold she felt.

She huddled against the manor and tried to guess when ten minutes had passed. Her feet and hands were aching into the bones from the chill.

She was feeling very regretful about wherever her cloak had ended up. Apparently she did still have a little bit of Gryffindor impetuousness left. Just enough to allow herself to occasionally do very stupid things. Now that her rage and horror had eased slightly, she was able to appreciate her impulsive idiocy more.

Trying to stick it to Malfoy by refusing the care he was mandated to provide was not hurting anyone but herself. It was like refusing to eat. Weakening herself to show him she could still be obstinate was the exact opposite of what she should be doing. Malfoy wasn't going to become careless if he thought she still had fight in her.

She was cutting off her nose to spite her face.

She groaned and smacked her head against the wall of the manor.

A minute later the sound of crunching gravel caught her attention. She looked up to find Malfoy approaching once more.

His expression was cold as the wind.

He reached out and dropped her cloak at her feet.

"You found it," she said, looking down.

"Magic. The Accio spell is quite useful for those of us who can still use it," he said with a cruel smirk. "Are you going to get up, or shall I drag you? I do have more to life than merely monitoring you. There are so many Muggles still alive. There are also several house-elves I haven't kicked lately."

He smiled thinly at her.

Hermione bit her tongue. Picking up the cloak, she stood and wrapped it around herself. He turned sharply on his heel and strode back to the veranda. He stopped by the door and waited for her to catch up.

When she reached him, she realised he had paled slightly and was staring at the ground behind her. She turned and saw that she had left bloody footprints across the white marble. He grew faintly contemplative as he studied them.

"Surprised to realise our blood looks the same?" she asked in a mild voice.

He sneered.

"All blood looks the same. My hounds bleed the same colour. So do my house-elves. The question of superiority is answered by power. Given that I am the master of the hounds, and the elves, and you, I do believe the answer to that question is sufficiently clear."

"Yet I'm the one intended to give you heirs," Hermione said, meeting his eye with her own cold expression.

" That is due to Astoria's failing, not mine," he said, his lip curling faintly. He drew his wand and banished the blood from the marble. Then he sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I suppose I can't have you ruining the rugs, regardless of how amusing it would be to leave you bleeding."

He flicked his wand at her feet and scourgified them before casting a series of careless healing charms. Then he banished the mud caking the hem of her robes.

"I trust your brain still functions enough to find your own way back to your room. If not, you can sleep on the floor somewhere." He vanished with a crack.

Hermione stood alone before the door for several seconds. She was freezing but—

She darted over and snatched up the copy of the The Daily Prophet that had been left lying on the ground. Slipping through the door, she moved just far enough into the hallways to get away from the biting cold before she hurriedly opened it and began devouring every bit of information it contained.The following three days passed in much the same manner. The table appeared promptly at seven thirty each evening. Hermione went and leaned over it a few minutes before eight o'clock. Malfoy entered—performed—and then left without a word.

Hermione recited poetry to herself and tried to take her mind as far away as she possibly could. Anything to not think about what was happening to her body.

She wasn't there. She was lying across a table because she was tired. She traced her fingers across the subtle grain of the wood. Perhaps it was oak. Or walnut.

As soon as she was permitted to leave the table, she would climb into bed and pray for sleep to come. She wasn't allow to wash until the following morning, and she didn't want to feel the fluid between her legs.

She tried not to think about it. Not while it happened. Not afterward. Not the next morning. She just—tried not to even think about it.

There was nothing she could do.

She tried to shove it away into a corner of her mind. Take her mind as far from her body as she could and stay there.

When she woke the morning after the fifth day, she wanted to weep, she was so relieved it was—at least temporarily—over. The dead sensation of horror that resided in her stomach felt faintly eased.

She got up and bathed. Scrubbing every inch of herself ritualistically. Then she stood with resolution before the bedroom door.

She was going to go out. She was going to get out of her room and explore at least...four. Four of the other rooms along the hall.

She was determined. She was going to examine every inch, and see if she could find any potential weapon by which to kill Malfoy.

She had envisioned his death in a multitude of creative ways during the last several days. Carried herself through with the fervent desire to watch the light fade from his eyes. She would give anything to drive a blade into his cold heart.

She was willing to settle for strangling or poisoning him.

Aside from Voldemort and Antonin Dolohov, there was no one else's death which Hermione now wished for so fervently.

Dolohov had been the lead developer in the Voldemort's curse division. The most horrific curses that had emerged over the course of the war were attributable to him. Hermione wondered if he were alive, still inventing new methods with which to kill people with agonising slowness.

Now, Dolohov and Malfoy were nearly tied. Hermione wasn't sure which of them she wanted dead more. Probably still Dolohov, she supposed. Even if the body count were equal, at least Malfoy wasn't such a sadist.

She pulled the door open and stepped out. She didn't pause to close it behind her. She didn't give herself time to freeze. She rushed down the hall into the nearest room.

When the door was shut, she dropped her head against the frame and forced herself to breathe. Slow deep breaths. Air all the way down into the bottom of her lungs and then slowly out to a count of eight.

Her shoulders were shaking, and her fingers twitching. She turned resolutely to examine the room. It was almost identical to hers but with two chairs and a chaise.

She turned around, taking in all the general details. As she did, she nearly cursed when she caught sight of a painting on the wall. It was a Dutch still-life. A table of flowers and fruit. Beside the table was standing the witch from the portrait in Hermione's room. She was watching Hermione with a faintly challenging expression.

Hermione wanted to throw something at the painting, but she curled her fingers into fists and forced herself not to react. She walked slowly around the room. Peeking into the wardrobe. Under the bed. Into the bathroom.

She slipped behind the heavy winter drapes and looked out over another section of the hedge maze.

She checked every floorboard, but none of them so much as squeaked.

Of course it wouldn't be easy.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to walk slowly into the next room.

It was almost exactly the same. The portrait followed and kept watch by sitting down to an impressionist style picnic laid out beside a river. Daintily nibbling cheese while she studied Hermione.

The third room was the most heartening. Not that it actually contained anything even remotely useful, but the bathroom contained a shower. Hermione's heart leapt slightly. She was dying to shower.

Washing her hair in a bathtub was just one of the innumerable things she hated about her life. When she'd awoken in the Hogwarts infirmary after passing out, her hair and body had been scourgified to remove the months of grime. She couldn't remember when she'd last washed her hair properly.

She went on to the next room. She kept going. Her panic attacks seemed slightly under control when she focused on moving from room to room. Making herself count slowly to four with each inhaled and exhaled breath.

It was primarily the hallway that bothered her. The vast, open, unknown...

Individual rooms were contained. Manageable.

She made her way through all the unlocked rooms in the hallway. The closest thing to useful that she found in any of them was a fireplace poker—which she couldn't touch.

She made her way back to her room and curled up in the chair by the window.

She felt at a loss. What was she supposed to do?

She closed her eyes.

Her insides shriveled slightly. She needed to get close to Malfoy.

He was the closest thing to a key that she had. As long as he remained a mystery, she would have no way of predicting which ways he was and was not careful.

He appeared meticulous. Everything was unbreakable. A portrait in every room and bathroom. But no one was perfect. Everyone has some weakness, and she would find Malfoy's and use it to end him.

It would, of course, be a game of cat and mouse.

Any weaknesses she discovered, he would find quickly in her mind. If she didn't know anything about him and just tried to be unpredictable, he would still find it in her mind. The trick would be getting to know him well enough that she could move faster than he could stop her.

The thought of being anywhere near him was terrifying.

She hissed faintly through her teeth and curled into a tighter ball. Just the thought of being in sight of Malfoy made a needle-like sensation of terror slide down her spine and coil in her lower back.

She buried her face in the chair.

She would do it.

She would.

Just—not yet.

She needed a few more days to get her bearings. To separate from the last five days she'd just endured.

Maybe the day after tomorrow.

Malfoy did not give her time to separate or find her bearings. He walked into her room when she was finishing lunch the next day, and she was so horrified she nearly screamed.

He just stood, staring at her for several seconds, while she clutched the back of her chair and tried to keep from cowering.

Why was he there? What did he want? Was he going to rape her again?

Her fingers twitched and spasmed as she tried to steady herself.

His cold, pale eyes slid over her as though he were taking note of every detail about her. Something flickered in them when he noticed her hands spasming. It vanished quickly into unwavering, attentive coldness.

Like a viper, the instant before it struck.

"You haven't been following instructions," he said after studying her for a minute.

Hermione stared at him, at a loss.

Was she not supposed to go into other rooms? No one had told her she couldn't. He'd said she was allowed to go out of her room. She realised as her stomach knotted itself—it had probably been a trick. To give him an opportunity to punish her.

She felt as though there was something lodged in her throat as she tried to swallow her terror and guess what he'd do.

"You're supposed to go outside for an hour everyday," he said in clarification, his lips twisted faintly. "Seeing as you barely leave your room, that set of instructions has apparently been ignored by you. I will not have your mental instability interfere with my ability to obey my Master."

He gestured sharply toward the door and then paused and looked her over again.

"Do you have a cloak?"

Hermione shook her head faintly. He grimaced and rolled his eyes.

"I imagine letting you develop frostbite would qualify as neglect and torture," he said with a sigh. He withdrew his wand and, with a flick, conjured a heavy, deep red cloak which he flung at her.

"Come!" He stalked from her room and down the hallway.

She followed him automatically as he led her down the main stairs of the wing and out onto a large marble veranda.

Hermione gasped as she stepped outside and felt the icy breeze on her face. She bit her lip and tried to steady herself as she stood in the doorway.

He turned sharply.

"What?" he asked, his steely eyes narrowed.

"I—haven't been outside since the day Harry died," she said in a voice that cracked faintly. "I forgot—what wind feels like."

He stared at her for several seconds before he snorted and turned away.

"One hour. Go," he said, conjuring a chair and pulling a newspaper out of thin air.

Hermione's eyes immediately locked onto the headlines she could make out. She was so starved for information it drew her attention more sharply than the abrupt sensation of being outdoors.

Repopulation Efforts Underway! Screamed the words at the top.

She felt something twist inside her, and she pressed her lips together and looked away. Malfoy noticed her glance.

"Care to see?" he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle. She heard the snap of the paper unfolding and glanced over to find a picture of herself, unconscious in a hospital bed, on the cover of the The Daily Prophet.

She stared in horror.

"Potter's Mudblood is among the first surrogates chosen by the Dark Lord to increase the magical population," was the summary included below the headline.

Malfoy glanced at it with a smirk.

"Look, I'm included too." His mouth twisted into a thin, malicious smile and his eyes glittered as he pointed to a picture of himself further down in the column. "In case anyone in the whole world wants to know exactly who is fucking you and where you are."

Hermione felt like she might vomit into the potted blue spruce by the door.

"I thought it was a rather obvious trap," Malfoy added with a sigh, looking away from her and leaning back into his chair. He pulled the paper open with a bored expression. "Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence. Something more subtle would probably elude them. The Dark Lord is quite hopeful that if there's still anyone left, they'll feel morally obligated to come haring in to save you the way Potter always liked to."

Oh god...

The whole world knew that Voldemort had turned her into Malfoy's sex slave for the repopulation program. She was being used as bait.

Hermione staggered back, feeling faint. She needed to get away from Malfoy and his cruelty before her mind snapped. She clapped her hand over her mouth as she stumbled down the gravel path.

"If you get lost in the hedge maze, I will send my hounds to drag you out." Malfoy's hard voice seemed to follow her.

She ran.

She hadn't run in ages, but she had stayed quite fit inside her cell. All the jumping and push-ups. Everything that she had done to turn her mind off.

She needed her mind off.

She couldn't think. She needed to move until she couldn't anymore.

She bolted down the path until it opened into a lane. She sped down it. The towering hedges around her felt suffocating.

Everything was suffocating her.

Her hands darted up, and she unclasped the cloak Malfoy had given her. She felt the wind wrench it away.

She'd rather freeze.

She ran and ran until the hedges ended and the lane carried on through large fields. She kept going. Because if she stopped, she'd think. If she thought, she'd cry. She couldn't cry. Not until she figured out a way to get away and keep any surviving members of the Resistance from trying to save her.

Oh god.

Oh god...

Finally, she stopped.

Her lungs felt as though they were on fire. The stabbing, burning need for oxygen was sharp as her chest heaved. Her whole body was slick with sweat that rapidly became bitingly cold on her skin. There was a stabbing pain in her side. Her shoes were almost in pieces. Her skirts caked in mud.

She stood panting and turned to survey where she was.

The Malfoy estate seemed endless. Grey hills of dead winter grass and dark clusters of leafless trees in the distance, all set against a grey sky.

It felt as though all the color had been leached out of the world. Except her. She stood in scarlet red. Stark against the monochrome.

She pressed her hands over her mouth as she kept gasping and panting.

When her chest finally ceased heaving, she became gradually aware of how cold she was becoming. There was a sharp wind that cut through the flimsy clothing she wore. Her hands were growing starkly white. She could feel her cheeks and the tip of her nose slowly begin to hurt. There was an icy sensation in her toes beginning to radiate up her legs as water soaked into her shoes and up her stockings.

She turned to look back in the direction she had come. The hedges were tiny in the distance.

She pressed her icy hands against her eyes for several minutes. Trying to think.

There was nothing.

Nothing new. Nothing more she could do.

Her plan remained the same. Nothing had changed.

Her situation was exactly the same as it had been the night before. The only difference was that her knowledge of it had broadened slightly. The options were still just as limited; the stakes had simply been raised further.

She slowly turned back.

She doubted Malfoy would really send hounds after her. Getting mauled by a pack of hunting dogs would potentially interfere with her reproductive abilities.

She wondered idly if the manacles would permit her to fight back against an attacking animal. If she were truly desperate to die, perhaps she could fling herself into the path of a deadly creature. Someone as vile as Malfoy might have something like a manticore stashed away on his estate. Or perhaps, if there were traps for would-be rescuers, she could fling herself into one of them.

Her teeth started chattering as she continued down the lane toward the hedges. She was too tired to run again and try to warm herself.

She hugged herself and continued on.

It hadn't occurred to her that Voldemort would publicise the repopulation efforts. In retrospect, it was obvious. It wasn't a secret that could be easily kept when surrogates were being distributed to seventy-two of the most preeminent wizarding families in Britain. Better to put it out entirely in the open.

She wondered idly how Malfoy felt about being publicly associated with her. The Mudblood he had hated so much back in school, now intended to be the mother of his children. All the world would know.

He was so slavishly obedient to whatever his Master wanted, he probably rationalised it somehow. She sneered to herself in derision.

The number of ways in which Hermione could hate him were almost mind-boggling. Every time she saw him, it was as though she found a whole new aspect of him that only added to the number of reasons why he deserved a slow, cruel death.

The sharp rocks of the gravel lane eventually cut entirely through her shoes. Her feet started to bleed as she was reaching the hedges. She pulled the useless shoes off and flung them up into the yew where they caught. The muddy red stood out starkly.

She continued on. Shivering.

When she finally made it back to the manor and walked around the corner, she found Malfoy was still there, reading a book. His newspaper tossed aside.

She stopped. Hesitating. She didn't want to interact with him, but she was agonisingly cold. She didn't know how else to get inside.

Her movement or colour caught Malfoy's attention. He glanced up sharply and stared, looking faintly aghast as he took in her bedraggled appearance. Then he quirked an eyebrow and smirked.

"Taking your status seriously, I see. Blood red and mud." He chuckled faintly for a moment before his expression grew hard. "You shouldn't have lost your cloak. You've still got," he glanced at his watch, "ten minutes before you're allowed inside."

Hermione shrank back in misery and went back around the side of the manor. She found a spot that was somewhat out of the wind and curled up against the building in a tight ball. Trying to conserve her body heat.

She was so cold.

Her shivering had stopped, and she was growing just terribly sleepy.

Which—she vaguely realised—indicated hypothermia.

Hermione had never treated real hypothermia during the war. Only the variety brought on by dementors.

Hypothermia was not something wizarding folk tended to suffer from. Warming charms were so easy, most first years could perform them. Wizarding outerwear usually had the charms woven in.

She should go tell Malfoy that her body temperature was becoming dangerously low.

But—if she waited... maybe she'd die from it.

That would solve all her problems.

She scrunched up more closely to the side of the manor and closed her eyes. Breathing shallowly.

Things slowly became comfortingly vague.

"Creative." Malfoy's harsh voice invaded the fog in her mind.

Something uncomfortably hot struck her entire body. Startled, Hermione yelped. She realised after a moment he'd cast a warming charm on her. The dramatic contrast in temperature had been physically painful when the magic of the charm collided with her skin.

Malfoy was already stalking away when she looked up.

Horrid bastard. He'd warmed her just enough to counteract the hypothermia but not enough to relieve how bitterly cold she felt.

She huddled against the manor and tried to guess when ten minutes had passed. Her feet and hands were aching into the bones from the chill.

She was feeling very regretful about wherever her cloak had ended up. Apparently she did still have a little bit of Gryffindor impetuousness left. Just enough to allow herself to occasionally do very stupid things. Now that her rage and horror had eased slightly, she was able to appreciate her impulsive idiocy more.

Trying to stick it to Malfoy by refusing the care he was mandated to provide was not hurting anyone but herself. It was like refusing to eat. Weakening herself to show him she could still be obstinate was the exact opposite of what she should be doing. Malfoy wasn't going to become careless if he thought she still had fight in her.

She was cutting off her nose to spite her face.

She groaned and smacked her head against the wall of the manor.

A minute later the sound of crunching gravel caught her attention. She looked up to find Malfoy approaching once more.

His expression was cold as the wind.

He reached out and dropped her cloak at her feet.

"You found it," she said, looking down.

"Magic. The Accio spell is quite useful for those of us who can still use it," he said with a cruel smirk. "Are you going to get up, or shall I drag you? I do have more to life than merely monitoring you. There are so many Muggles still alive. There are also several house-elves I haven't kicked lately."

He smiled thinly at her.

Hermione bit her tongue. Picking up the cloak, she stood and wrapped it around herself. He turned sharply on his heel and strode back to the veranda. He stopped by the door and waited for her to catch up.

When she reached him, she realised he had paled slightly and was staring at the ground behind her. She turned and saw that she had left bloody footprints across the white marble. He grew faintly contemplative as he studied them.

"Surprised to realise our blood looks the same?" she asked in a mild voice.

He sneered.

"All blood looks the same. My hounds bleed the same colour. So do my house-elves. The question of superiority is answered by power. Given that I am the master of the hounds, and the elves, and you, I do believe the answer to that question is sufficiently clear."

"Yet I'm the one intended to give you heirs," Hermione said, meeting his eye with her own cold expression.

" That is due to Astoria's failing, not mine," he said, his lip curling faintly. He drew his wand and banished the blood from the marble. Then he sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I suppose I can't have you ruining the rugs, regardless of how amusing it would be to leave you bleeding."

He flicked his wand at her feet and scourgified them before casting a series of careless healing charms. Then he banished the mud caking the hem of her robes.

"I trust your brain still functions enough to find your own way back to your room. If not, you can sleep on the floor somewhere." He vanished with a crack.

Hermione stood alone before the door for several seconds. She was freezing but—

She darted over and snatched up the copy of the The Daily Prophet that had been left lying on the ground. Slipping through the door, she moved just far enough into the hallways to get away from the biting cold before she hurriedly opened it and began devouring every bit of information it contained.