Torture smells like spring.

Like daffodils and tulips and snowdrops. Like the bouquets brought inside from the manor gardens to lend their life to cold stone walls that house criminals. Easter mixed with madness makes sense in this twisted landscape; Draco’s only chance at survival is to endure it. He knows this. But that doesn’t quell the twitching in his calves, the flexing in his fingers.

Granger lifts her hand off the floor and Draco nearly loses his lunch, stomach churning as he watches her extend her arm, reaching through the translucent cord, reaching towards him. He tries to blink it away, blink blink blink, but both she and the cord are stubborn, persistent things.

[In which a soulmate bond appears while Hermione is tortured at Malfoy Manor. Canon divergent from that moment onward.]