Hermione stopped breathing, and her eyes widened.
The baby. She'd forgotten that she was pregnant.
She was pregnant with his heir. For the breeding program. To force her memories to come back.
There was something she was missing, but the pain still overshadowed everything. She tried to think, but reaching towards her memories was mind shattering.
She couldn't remember—
Her chest started spasming.
“I don't understand,” she forced the words out. “What happened? Why — why—”
She tried to breathe, and it made a gasping sound in the back of her throat. Her chest started jerking faster and faster.
Draco's fingers under her head tightened in her hair. His expression was open as he stared down at her, his face only inches from hers.
“Grang — Hermione, you need to breathe slowly. Hyperventilating when pregnant can increase your risk of having another seizure.” His eyes were imploring. “Please breathe, Granger.”
Hermione gave a low sob and nodded.
Inhale, to a count of four.
Exhale, slowly to a count of six.
She studied his face. She felt a ravenous desperation as she looked at him, but there was also growing well of hurt. She didn't know how to reconcile the person she knew with the person she'd spent six months imprisoned by.
As her breathing slowed, tears began sliding in cold trails down her temples.
Draco's gaze dropped away from her face, and he withdrew his hand and straightened.
He looked down at her, hesitating, his hand curled into a fist at his side. “I'm sorry. Severus and I thought we'd have you out before February. I didn't think you'd be here for so long.”
She bit her lip and tried to think of what to ask him. What happened? Why didn't you come? Why did you hurt me? Why did you rape me?
Why did you become the High Reeve?
“Why—” she gave a low sob, “Why did you kill everyone?”
His eyes flickered, and his jaw twitched as he straightened and looked away from her. “I was trying to find you.”
Her heart stalled with a mixture of horror and relief.
“You — looked for me?” Her voice was shaking.
He looked back at her. “Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”
She blinked and tried to remember clearly, reaching towards the back of her mind and grasping at the memories she could sense there.
“When you never came I thought maybe—” as she pushed into her recollection, the pain in her head suddenly sharpened, and her vision wavered. She bit down on her lip and tried not to black out.
“I thought you must have died.” Her eyes burned, and her voice shook and faded away.
She lifted her arm and stared at the manacle locked around her wrist. “I–I lost my occlumency when my magic was suppressed. They said Voldemort was going to interrogate me. I was afraid if I thought about you — that he might find you in my mind. I was trying to protect you. But”—her voice grew smaller—“sometimes I thought if I held on, eventually you might come. Then, when you didn't, I thought you must have died.”
Draco looked as though she'd gutted him. His hand twitched and reached towards her.
“Fancy an outing, Mudblood?.. The Dark Lord is eager to see you.” He gripped her by the arm before she could back away.
The visceral terror of the memory swallowed her. Her breath caught in her throat, and she tensed as he got closer.
His hand closed and dropped to his side as he looked away. “I looked for you as soon as I returned and found you gone. The Warden — Umbridge didn't file you as a prisoner in Hogwarts. There were no records of you beyond the transfer paperwork when you were captured. Severus and I both submitted requests trying to locate you, but every time we did, we were told there was no file or record of a prisoner with that name or number. You'd just vanished. Everyone at the Hogwarts celebration was either drunk or shell-shocked, there were few clear memories of you being there. I volunteered to track down anyone missing in the hope of it giving me a chance to find you.” The muscles in his jaw twitched. “I had to bring them all back. If I'd failed, the job would have been reassigned.”
He stared up at the ceiling; his expression was drawn.
“I tried everything to find you. I searched the prisons. I went through all the existing cell blocks in Hogwarts. I went through every prisoner file. I made a genetic trace spell. It found your aunt and cousins. I followed it all the way to Australia and found your parents where you'd hidden them.”
Hermione flinched and stared at him wide-eyed.
Draco looked down, and his lips thinned when he saw her expression. “They're all fine, I didn't harm them.”
His head tilted slightly to the side, and his jaw clenched as he swallowed. “I even tried scrying you several times, but—” he flicked his hand dismissively, “—nothing. It didn't occur to me that it was because you were being kept imprisoned without any light or sound. I assumed it meant that wherever you were was entirely undetectable. I travelled all over Europe. Death Eaters and allies with certain — reputations. It had happened a few times before. When I couldn't find you anywhere, I assumed that was what had happened to you. I thought it must be why you'd vanished.”
He looked away again. “Severus and I did everything we could think of but bring you up as a person of interest to the Dark Lord himself. I thought as long as the Dark Lord was preoccupied with his obsession with immortality, I'd have a better chance of finding you and getting you away. Then, when there was talk of using the prisoners as surrogates for a breeding program, Montague went to the Dark Lord and proposed that you be the face of the repopulation program, bait for any remaining Resistance allies, and a final mockery of Potter all in one. He'd been looking for you ever since he'd gotten his mark, and I'd — left him be; I thought at some point he might find something I was overlooking. However you still didn't exist within the prison system. It wasn't until the Dark Lord personally demanded you by name that Umbridge admitted she'd had you the whole time.”
Hermione didn't know what there was to say.
“I—” Draco started to speak again. His jaw shook visibly and then locked, and he didn't say anything else.
There was a long silence.
“Why didn't you assume I was dead?” Hermione finally managed to ask.
The corner of his mouth twitched, and Draco raised his right hand into her line of sight. The onyx ring showed dimly in the low light.
Hermione stared for several seconds before looking in confusion at her own hands. There was nothing there, but she felt a sense of certainty that there somehow should be. As she stared, her index finger on her left hand distorted and shimmered, the black ring suddenly visible.
Her throat felt thick, and she swallowed several times before she could speak. “I–I forgot it was there.”
“After you were cursed and nearly died going to Surrey, I added a life signature monitor to your ring. I'd wanted to add a trace, but they're detectable, and could have been intercepted. I thought, with a basic charm, at least I'd know if you died. So — I knew you were alive.” He dropped his hand out of sight once again. “Although it did stop at one point, immediately after I'd sent a signal. I thought I may have caused whomever was keeping you to notice it. When it reactivated several days later, I didn't think I could risk signaling again. I wasn't certain whether it was still you wearing it, but I thought it meant you might still be alive. So I kept looking.”