First it was the rain. Then there was the smell. The sharp, acrid smell so nauseating that she felt her stomach begin to turn. Her lids felt heavy and sluggish; where she would normally wake up, she had trouble moving any part of her limbs. She could feel the panic rising in her chest as she realized this, and with a sudden rush of adrenaline, Rowan shot up.

The smell of the warehouse immediately burned her nose. Resisting the urge to choke on it, she rolled over on all fours, reaching a hand out to the nearest object to support herself on. When the object gave underneath her grip, she followed her arm, shifting her weight to see what lay underneath her. Only to find Walter staring back at her; blank and unmoving. A black metal pipe protruded garishly from his back.

The fog in her mind cleared with a horrible speed, and Rowan scrambled backwards in horror. A scream reverberated throughout the warehouse, and Rowan jerked around looking for the source of it until she realized it was her own. She clutched at her head, her breath coming out in short gasps. Something was constricting her neck. What in Merlin's name had happened? What was the first thing that she had remembered? Then it occurred that there was absolutely no time for that. Someone could have heard her scream. They could be coming to check on her, and if they found her there with a dead body - with Walter's dead body....

She had to get out of here. But where would she go? She could hardly go to Zelda, it was the second night of Hanukkah. Her family was an absolute no. She didn't want to get Delight wrapped in this either. Angie was another option, but she had no idea where Angie was at this time of night. With her career, she could be anywhere in the world. As the seconds ticked by, Rowan realized she was running out of options. She'd exhausted the entire list of people she could go to. Except for one person.

He was the only option. The question was, did he want to see her after all this time? The sound of metal screaming through the air jolted her once more. Time had run out. Rowan scrambled for her wand. By the grace of Merlin it had only fallen out of her hand and rolled a few inches away. With a crack, she disapparated, eyes closed tight and envisioning the familiar filigree on the iron gate of a large cottage in Cumbria.

As soon as she landed, Rowan gave herself only a fraction of a second to let her lungs re-expand before she bolted forward to seize the gate. It wasn't locked, thank merlin. The barest flicker of a shadow told her someone was home. She prayed it wasn't just the butler or his valet. But how was she going to get his attention without alerting his staff? The answer came to her as soon as she thought it, and she didn't give herself any more time to process it before she turned on the spot again and reappeared in his empty hallway; the second gift Merlin sent her for the evening.

Her vision swam before her as she knocked on the door. Please let this be the one she'd remembered; why did they all look the same? And why was her cheek warm? With her hand she reached up to swipe at it. Pulling it away, she was startled to be met with a slick crimson color coating her fingers. She barely had time to take count of her injuries before the door opened.

---

In theory, he should have been more alarmed that she'd managed to get as far into her house as she had. While the Cumbria cottage was not regularly warded like the London townhome was, there was some complicated spell cast on it by his own father that only allowed people to apparate onto the property who were wanted and welcome. He would consider this later and be forced to evaluate his own feelings, but none of that was on his mind when he stood from the desk in his bedroom to answer the door.

Usually at this hour, nobody bothered him. It was not uncommon for him to be found with a cigar in one hand and a glass of bourbon in the other, and his staff usually knew not to bug him past sun-down unless there was something that required his urgent attention. Still, he wasn't as annoyed as he might have been other nights—he'd been pouring through financial documents and welcomed the interruption, but he'd expected to see his valet, or maybe even the butler.

Not her.

At first, he hardly recognized the figure. At first glanced it looked like a teenage boy, the cap covering a head of dark hair and dirt smeared across their fair skin. But once he met her eyes, he knew it was her.

That's when the panic set in.

"Yaxley?" he shout-whispered, his voice strained from the shock. He stuck his head out the door and glanced both ways before he hooked his hand around her elbow and tugged her into his bedroom, shutting the door behind her with a click. He didn't release his grip on her as his eyes scanned down her body, skin bloodied and clothes disheveled. His chest heaved, his breaths coming quicker and quicker as he searched for the source of her injury, but there was no one spot that a deeper crimson than another, and most of it coated her fingers rather than a spot on her abdomen.

"Are you hurt?" was the first question out of his mouth, followed by a more panicked, "What happened!?"

---

Of all the questions he asked, she could only confirm it was indeed her. His initial expression of confusion reminded her that she had been dressed in her brother's clothes, and as he seized her arm, she quickly doffed her cap to reveal her hair nearly fallen out of its updo. It was all she could do to not collapse against him in exhaustion. Blinking rapidly to try and clear her mind and answer his other questions, Rowan briefly registered the stinging at her cheek. She swiped at it again, and looked down at her hand. More red; she was bleeding. Ohhh, not in here, she would ruin any one of the valuable tapestries or furniture pieces or —

"I'm - I'm alright," She managed to stammer, though she hardly knew if it was true or not.

She was still scrambling to sift through what had happened that night. She remembered stealing her brother's clothes. Walking down the street and disapparating to somewhere in London; an abandoned factory? From there, she could remember nothing else. "I - I don't know what happened...I just remember —"

The vision of Walter's dead body floated in her vision and she inhaled sharply. "Walter - the body, oh my god, Malfoy I - I woke up and —" Her breathing was coming in short spurts again as she tried to tell him how she'd found the man's body next to her. By the time she'd finished telling him how she'd screamed and gone to the first place she thought of, her eyes were stinging hot and something was blurring her vision. Another series of rapid blinks told her she'd started crying. Oh Merlin, now wasn't the time to break down.

---

She was conscious, but she wasn’t well—that was apparent enough. She was stumbling over her words, scratched and bloody, and looked utterly exhausted. He frantically dug into his back pocket until he found a handkerchief, and then his other hand slid down her arm to her wrist. He made quick work of wiping the blood away, but it left a crimson stain on her skin that wouldn’t disappear as easily. Magic, he needed magic. But where was his wand?

He dismissed the idea of scouring the room for it, worried that if he left her alone for even a a few seconds that she’d collapse. He stepped closer to he and brought the handkerchief to her cheek, doing his best to clear the blood from the scratch. She was stammering through her explanation, speaking in fragments that he struggled to put together. His free hand found her waist, a gesture meant to steady her while he wiped away the last of the dirt and blood and tears that had begun to crust on her face.

“Who’s Walter? And—a body?” He found her gaze, his eyes wide but not panicked. Not yet. For all that he’d practically begged her to leave her job, he hoped this was something Ministry related. Her clothes suggested otherwise.

“—You need to stop and breathe,” he said, feeling her body jerk and shake under his touch. He needed answers, but he needed her to not collapse on his bedroom floor even more.

---

"Yes, Walter!" She exclaimed hysteria climbing in her voice as she beseeched him to understand. "He was the one that attacked us the night of the Minister's ball, when I lost that pearl broach they gave us." The words came out in another rush before she realized it wouldn't do. He likely wouldn't remember that anyways. She wanted to remain coherent, but she worried that time had long since passed.

She wanted to bat his hand out of her face like swatting at a fly - almost did if it weren't for the fact that his hand settled on her waist. Miraculously it seemed to ground her enough to focus on the fact that he was trying to help her, and the fact that she was doing nothing of use to help him understand what had happened.

Stop and breathe. Stop - and breathe. So she did just that. She wanted to hold onto him, to steady herself, but the blood on her hands prevented her from doing so. It occurred to her that it might not be all her's. She could feel herself grow clammy. Stop and breathe. Where to start her explanation when the memories themselves were so fragmented? "I stole some old clothes from my brother. I wanted to...I wanted to find out who had hurt my sister. She —" Breaking off, she fished in her pocket with her good hand for the slip of paper: the drawing, and the letter. She handed both to him. "She drew this one day last month - couldn't stop, and said it kept popping up in her dreams. I thought it might have something to do with her attackers, so I found the building."

---

He froze in place, one hand on her waist and one still holding the handkerchief to her cheek, the words the one who attacked us at the Minister's ball stuck on his head in a loop. At first he didn't understand; unless he'd been that drunk, he didn't remember Yaxley being there.... unless. He visibly cringed, his eyes squeezing shut and his forehead lining with wrinkles, as the reality set in: the girl he'd danced with, the girl he'd practically tried to seduce, was Yaxley. He didn't know how to explain himself. It was so long in the past, and she hadn't hated him for i—obviously, given that the last time they'd been together she'd had her lips on his and her fingers threaded in his hair. His heart jumped at the memory.

He decided not to acknowledge that he'd heard any of that at all, focusing on what she'd said last.

"You're telling me that, in the middle of the night, you decided to track down some... some criminal?" And on her own no less! His expression flitted between anger and shock as he stared at her. He'd told her to be safe. He hadn't found the courage over the last month to reach out to her, but she'd promised to take a hiatus. Every morning he'd read the paper, scanning the Crime & Politics section for her name, and he hadn't seen anything—a sign that she was alive and staying out of trouble at work. But now she'd gone and done this!?

He scanned the letter, but passed it back a moment later, his mind in no state to try to decode the numbers strung across the page.

"You said something about a body. Is it...? Walter?" He hoped it wasn't Walter. Or maybe he did—better a criminal dead than a helpless bystander. No, his real fear was something else entirely: that Yaxley had done the killing.

---

Rowan flinched at the outrage in his voice as he relayed to her his understanding. Her shock reverberated as she realized she didn't know he was capable of looking at her in such a way; he'd always sneered at her, smirked or had some other equally infuriatingly smug expression on his face that anything bordering on remotely caring for her was still a foreign concept. As irritating as it was, Malfoy's admonishment alone had effectively hauled Rowan back to her senses - as good an effect as if he'd slapped her across the face.

Gritting her teeth, she stared at him as panic took a backseat, only to be replaced with indignation that he would think her to be that idiotic. Never mind that she had been foolish enough to go down this path on her own without taking - or at least telling - Angie or Zelda or Delight. Perhaps deep down she knew that any of them would have insisted on coming with her, and the prospect of putting any one of them in danger had not sat well with her. Angie and Delight had their jobs and Zelda had her family; she wasn't about to ask any of them to put themselves at risk.

"I didn't go looking for some criminal." She corrected, snatching the letter back from him and hastening away, tugging at her collar as she did so. She could feel herself fading; began pacing instead to try and hold on, to not collapse on the floor from exhaustion. Everything hurt, but that was okay because the pain helped keep her awake.

"I went looking for the building because that was clearly something of significance to Maisie, I didn't expect to run into anyone." Least of all Walter, but when she'd sniffed the air it was all too easy to put two and two together. "Walter....he works with my father. I still don't know how he ties into all of this."

The feeling of dread sat heavy in her chest as she realized he no longer worked with her father; would never work with him again because of what Rowan might have done. The mingled fear and apprehension on Malfoy's face was enough to convince her that she might as well have killed him. "I - I found him there and confronted him." Yes, it was coming back to her. She tugged at the collar of her shirt. She needed air. "He said something about a memory charm, and that they had already fired him. That he was as good as dead."

Her mind raced, staggering to recover the rest of the memory of the evening. "And then he..." She struggled to find the words to describe the way he'd looked at her; leered at her. Just remembering the way his eyes raked up and down her body made her skin crawl and her hand came up to tug at the collar of her shirt again. Something pinched at the base of her neck and she flinched, hissing in pain. Frowning in confusion, her hands came up to undo the top buttons on the shirt as she walked to the large gilded mirror on the wall. She wrenched back the collar of her brother's shirt. They were faint at first, but it was easy to see that the marks were only going to get darker: A necklace of purple rosettes scattered right above her collarbone; bruises.

---

She was infuriating. He'd always known that, and yet he still found himself surprised every time she went out of her way to put herself in danger. He remembered being at Hogwarts with her, knowing she was a Hufflepuff and assuming she would eventually settle down into an easy, boring life once she decided she was tired of bickering him. Hufflepuffs were supposed to be boring, and yet Raphael continued to be appalled at how little regard for her life she had, even well into her twenties.

As she snatched the letter, the tip of his finger tingled at the brief brush of her bare skin against his. It was maddening, really, to be so aware of how his body reacted to hers, even as he stood there thinking than she might be better off in an asylum for the night than being allowed to roam the streets at this hour. She was going to get herself killed, and then he'd... well, he didn't know what he'd do, but the idea of her death caused the muscles in his chest to seize uncomfortably.

He seethed in silence as she tried to explain herself. She wasn't making any sense, and even worse, Raphael didn't think she realized it. It dawned on him how little he knew of her family beyond these casual mentions. He didn't know their names, how many siblings she had, who she was closest to. Hell, he wouldn't recognize any of them in the streets unless they looked exactly like her. He pieced together that her sister was Maisie, and that she'd been threatened by some man who worked with their father, who had also been the man who tried to attack them? His brows knitted together as he tried to follow, but he found himself distracted by her movements.

She approached the mirror, and he turned to watch with concerned eyes. He was hyperaware of her body—how it moved, its dips and curves even under the oversized shirt, the spots where it looked soft and smoothed and the others that were bruised and scarred. He took a step towards her as she began to tug at the shirt's collar, needing to see what she was trying to get a look at, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the scar she'd gotten before their previous encounter.

And then there were the bruises. Her words settled in as he he stared at her reflection, his eyes drawn to the bruises. He stepped closer—one, two, three steps, one after another until chest nearly brushed her shoulder. The bruises were fresh, shadows of purples and blues contrasting against her fair skin, little veins visible around the edges. They looked like fingerprints, he realized, and suddenly his rage at her was directed to another: Walter.

"Is he dead?" he asked, finally breaking his silence as his gaze slid to hers through the reflection.

---

He'd tried to kill her. That much became certain as Rowan stared at her reflection, hardly aware that Malfoy was drawing nearer to her; gone was her urge to get away from him, and in its place a sinking feeling. His hands had made their way around her neck and he'd squeezed, hard enough to leave bruises that would only get worse. Her mouth felt dry, and she teethed at her bottom lip as she felt her heart quickening and realized just how close to death she'd gotten. How stupid she'd been to do this alone. Malfoy had only asked a simple question - one that she could easily answer; she'd seen the way his body had been completely run through by the pipe - and yet she couldn't stop staring at the marks that dotted her skin.

So instead she nodded, a small movement at first, then as she met his gaze, blazing and hard as iron, she nodded with more finality. The man was dead. She'd seen the vacant look in his eyes, the pool of blood beneath him that had turned into a red river as rain pelted over them. Rowan's fingers came up, still tipped with red and brushed against the splotches. It was then that she realized her hand was shaking, and that her vision had quickly become blurry. Eyes freshly hot and stinging, she blinked again. She would not start crying. This wasn't the moment to break down.

"He's dead. But —" There was still the matter of the body.

Throughout the buzzing in her brain about how foolish she'd been, how absolutely terrified she felt in this moment, and how much she wanted to turn a fraction and collapse into Malfoy, one thing had crystalized amongst the rest: if someone found Walter and traced his death back to her, Walter's attempt on her life was the least of her problems. Slowly, her eyes drifting to rest on the fine brocade of his jacket, Rowan turned finding his shoulder and leaning against it. She just... she needed something solid, something to ground her again. That was all this was supposed to be, she told herself. "But I have to go back....to get rid of - of the body. To delay them finding it as long as possible..." She still didn't know who 'they' were. Just knew that the man who attacked her made it very clear that he was only at the very bottom.

---

He's dead, she said, and all he could think was Good. If Walter hadn't been dead, he would have been in his final minutes, because Raphael couldn't imagine not killing him after witnessing the marks he'd left across Yaxley's skin. What kind of man tried to kill a woman? Tried to choke a woman? His brain refused to even conjure the image of someone attacking Yaxley in such a way, his eyes squeezing shut even as the thought of it crossed his mind. He took a deep breath, trying to think rationally.

Yaxley was injured—not terribly so, but her wounds ran deeper than surface wounds. Her entire body was shaking, and from where he stood he could see how red and glassy her eyes were. He wanted to tell her that this was all a bad idea, that nobody would know it was her (who would suspect it, anyways?) and that she'd be safer anywhere else. But at the same time, Raphael knew she was right: if Walter was tied as closely to the family as she claimed, and if the aurors were somewhat useful they'd be able to figure out what had happened and who was involved. They would have to rid of the body. They—not her, not him, them together. He wouldn't let her go alone, and he wouldn't know where to start.

He wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and squeezed gently, trying to catch her eye in the mirror.

"I'll help you. We'll... we'll dispose of it somewhere they won't look." Raphael wasn't a mastermind or body-hiding expert, but he had something going for him: resources. Discretion. Privilege. Nobody would think of him, and nobody would accuse a Malfoy without absolute proof—and even then, they might not. That's what his father had always said, and he believed him.

---

There was a reason she'd come here, because she wanted help; with exactly what, she hadn't known but the minute he suggested he would help her, relief shook her shoulders once more and she could feel her voice catch in her throat. Horror was the next however, as Rowan realized this would most certainly put him at risk too. His entire family. She knew he was certainly allotted more protection than any of the people she had thought of first (and perhaps that's why she'd given into going to see him; or perhaps it was something else)...but —

"No," Her voice was firm for the first time in the past few minutes; clear and simple. She stepped back once more, shaking her head as the fog started to clear for her once more. "No, I can't ask you to do that for me." In the series of mistakes she'd made that night, coming here had quickly moved to the top of her list. She couldn't ask him to do such a thing; what would he think of her after, when it was all done and he could properly process what they had just done?

A year or so ago she wouldn't have cared two sickles how he thought of her, but somewhere in the span of the past few weeks that had changed. She could barely look him in the eyes now for fear of what she might find there. "Thank you, I just...needed somewhere to clear my head." Even as the excuse she was giving had turned from being true to a complete lie; she wanted him to help but the fear of what waited on the other side of tonight had her firmly in its grasp. Another shake of her head. "I'll be alright, I just...I just needed to catch my breath."

---

Raphael scoffed and rolled his eyes, finding it all too easy to slip back into the his usual attitude with her now that she was being difficult. It seemed she'd forgotten that he could be just as stubborn as her, if no more. The only difference between the past and the present was his motivation; back then he would have refused to help her hide a body, all while proclaiming how mad she was. Now he was annoyed that she wouldn't ask him to help her.

"You're not asking me. I'm telling you," he said. This time he reached out and gripped both her shoulders with his arm, gently but firm. He stepped closer to her until he had to look down to look her in the eyes, his eyes sliding down the length of her arms to her elbows. It was frankly ridiculous how easily he found it to touch her now that that barrier had been broken between them. It felt like a necessity—like he couldn't imagine not touching her while she was panicking. "Do you honestly think I could sit at home and think about all the types of trouble you could be getting yourself into? I wouldn't sleep at all. And besides, you can't do this on your own. You're smart enough to know that."

---

Glaring back at him was automatic, even though she knew she was in no position to be offering him any sort of retort given the position she'd put herself into. But she couldn't help when she saw the familiar glimmer of irritation crossed his face, and she just about opened her mouth to stop whatever nonsense he was about to give her. But then he took her by the shoulders. Without her consent, her mouth closed. She had no choice but to meet his gaze, infuriated with herself - with him - how easy it had been for him to stop her talking.

And she did not care one bit for the sensations that invaded her senses as his hands skimmed down her arms to rest at her elbows. Indignation ignited once more in her as she found herself glued to the spot, unable to move. Her brain also refused to cooperate enough to allow her to think of a response to his first question. It implied too much, that he cared about her enough to feel restless thinking about what would happen to her. The last bit, however, she could respond to, and she almost did if it weren't for how he ended.

You're smart enough to know that.

She'd allowed herself a few moments ago to seek him out to ground her, not give her the verbal equivalent of a slap across the face. But it did the trick; revived her enough, and made her see sense that she was being too stubborn — and, more exasperating — that he was absolutely right. Finally, after moments of silence, of searching his expression for any signs that he would retract his statement or pull back, she nodded slowly. "Alright." She murmured, her gaze lowering in defeat. "Alright."

---

He nodded, finding that it was the only thing he could do at the moment. They were going to hide a body. His death might have been justified by his attacking of Yaxley, but it wasn't enough to get them out of trouble if they were caught disposing of his body.

His hands remained on her elbows, now more a way to comfort himself than to steady her. He looked at her long and hard. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears, her cheeks red and puffy. He needed her to be okay enough to do this or else they'd end up in trouble. Raphael trusted her competence, the multiple close encounters with near-death experiences enough proof that she could keep her calm under pressure, but there was something more... personal about this. This wasn't avoiding death; this was staring it in the eye.

"Do you need anything before we go?" They'd need supplies, of course—their wands would mostly do the trick, he thought, but he wasn't referring to that. He needed to make sure she had everything she needed for her sake.

---

The settling feeling of going to a dilapidated warehouse to get rid of the dead body of someone Rowan had known for years was heavy and nauseating. No matter how much Malfoy insisted that he come along with her, she couldn't help but feel as if she was dragging him to his ultimate demise. Even as he surveyed her, she only managed to hold his gaze for so long before she averted it, scared of what she might find once the reality hit him of what he was about to help her do.

Did she need anything else? It was a good distraction to wrench her mind away from thoughts of him. She pulled out of his grasp and turned away, her head collapsing into her hand. She just needed a few moments to process this, to steel herself, to get ready to face what she'd left at the warehouse.

She only came with what she had on; turning back, Rowan shook her head silently. "I'm ready." Then her eyes fell on him once more, and she stared. "You might want to...erm..." She let her hand rise and then fall uselessly in a vague gesture towards his body. "Wear something a little less conspicuous." As if Malfoy had ever had the occasion to be discreet. But this wasn't a ball they were headed to — not that he would ever think of bringing her to a ball or anything of the sort — Oh, Rowan stop thinking. "Something you wouldn't mind..." Getting blood on. "—if you got dirt on it."

---

He let her go reluctantly, willing to give her those few moments to herself if it meant she would be in a better headspace. He watched her back, studying her outfit. He wasn't sure if her clothes had already been so worn off if her scrap with Walter had been enough to tear the hem of her pants. When she turned back to him, his eyes flew to hers and his cheeks flushed, not because he'd been ogling her but because he was afraid that that's what it looked like.

"Good," he replied, taking a step towards her before coming to a halt at her suggestion. He glanced down at his own outfit—bed robe, white shirt, ankle-length trousers. He looked back up at her, a single brow raised in question, and then let his robe drop the floor without a second thought. "I was more worried about the blood honestly," he quipped, flashing her a smile that didn't quite meet his eyes. It only stayed there a moment before his lips dipped back into a straight line, his worry too much to keep any sort of banter going.

His trousers would do, but she was right, at least about the shirt—the blood would be impossible to get off, and more than that, anyone who saw them would see the blood with ease. He turned and moved towards the armoire, discarding the shirt along the way. It only took a moment to find a darker shirt, and he tugged it on, for once not caring how wrinkled it was. "Better?" he asked, gesturing down to himself.

---