He looked away, and the movement drew Hermione's gaze from the ring on her hand.
He looked ground down, like a weapon that had been honed in excess. There was a deadly over-precision about him that she could suddenly see.
His fingers twitched, and he closed them. “I would have gotten you out sooner, but Severus was already in Romania when you were transferred to the manor. It was supposed to be only three months, but the Dark Lord keeps extending the assignation there. As long as you were being brought in to have your memories examined by the Dark Lord — there were — I couldn't do anything that would have indicated — anything.”
Hermione's stomach dropped as though the bed had vanished beneath her. Of course. Voldemort had watched everything. Her every interaction with Draco. He'd been overtly, sadistically curious in his brutal bi-monthly examinations of her mind.
Draco had been performing for Voldemort through Hermione's eyes.
The realisation felt like her tenuous hold on reality was abruptly inverted, and she was free falling.
What was real then? Any of it? None of it.
She tried to think, but it was still difficult to focus through the pain in her mind. She could barely keep her eyes open. She was exhausted and so hungry. She couldn't remember when she'd last eaten. Her head hurt with such intense pressure she expected to find blood seeping from her eyes and nose.
She wanted to close her eyes, but she was terrified that if she lost consciousness, it would all slip away, and she'd forget. The past would vanish into the darkness, Draco would fade away, and when she woke, it would be Malfoy again.
But there weren't two people. There had only ever been the one. Draco was buried somewhere under all the layers of cold.
She didn't know what was supposed to happen. She didn't know what any of it meant. Even if he'd been acting, not everyone else had been. All the stories about him in The Daily Prophet, and from the other women in the breeding program before Hermione was sent to Malfoy Manor.
“Hannah said you hung Ginny's body in the Great Hall—”
“It wasn't Ginny.” His voice was flat. “When I couldn't find you at Hogwarts — I initially thought there may have been a mistake and it wasn't you caught and transferred. I looked for you in the rubble at Sussex.” He looked down. “There was witch who'd survived the explosion. She'd made it beyond the wards and into the Ashdown Forest, one of the only survivors. She was nearly dead from the experimentation and the explosion. But she had red hair. When I brought the body with me to Hogwarts, the prisoners assumed it was Ginny with Spattergroit. No one had seen her in months, they assumed the disfigurement was due to the disease.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt almost afraid to breathe. “McGonagall… Nev—”
Draco's expression tensed, his jaw twitched and then set. “I couldn't hide them, even if Severus had been willing to entertain the idea. After what the Crouches had done to smuggle Barty Jr out of Azkaban, the Dark Lord required that every body be extensively examined for interference. They were all verified.” He looked away. “I made it quick for them.”
An icy sense of despair washed over her. She curled into a ball on her side. She could feel herself fading with pained exhaustion.
“Go to sleep. I'll tell you whatever else you want to know tomorrow.”
She forced her eyes open.
“But what if I forget again?” Her voice was small — childish and nearly trembling with fear.
He didn't say anything. She wanted to reach towards him and reassure herself once again that he really was there. Real. Warm. Touchable.
Her hand twitched, but the potion had left her almost paralyzed.
“Will — will you go back to being the way you were if I forget you?”
“As long as you're pregnant, you're safe. It doesn't matter if you remember, Severus and I will get you out.”
“Then what?”
Draco said nothing. The room seemed darker. She could barely make out Draco's silhouette.
“Then what happens?” she forced out.
“Then you'll go take care of Ginny the way you promised Potter you would.”
That wasn't the question she'd been asking, but she didn't have the strength to ask again.
When she woke again, Draco was gone.
The pain in her head had eased somewhat. Topsy appeared with broth and potions, which she entreated Hermione to try to keep down.
Hermione swallowed a foul smelling nutritional potion and held herself rigidly while her body convulsed and tried to force it back up.
When her throat stopped contracting, she stared at Topsy.
“I knew you.” It felt like a nail was being driven into the base of her skull. She winced. “I saw you before — didn't I?”
Topsy gave a tentative nod. “The Master is saying yous shouldn't be forcing the memories.”
Hermione tucked her chin down against her shoulder. His absence clawed at her. “When does he come back?”
“He is been being in this room since you is having the first seizure. He is having many things he is needing to do now.”
Hermione swallowed, and her fingers twitched repeatedly. She could feel her chest tightening. What if he didn't come back? What if he died? What would she do if he died?
She could feel her hands trembling. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on something else.
“Did he get behind on his executions?” she forced herself to ask in a dry voice.
The question was sarcastic, but Topsy nodded seriously.
Hermione released a low breath and curled into a tight ball around her stomach.
Topsy vanished a few seconds later.
Hermione spent the day replaying the past six months. Taking note of all the details she'd missed. The familiar traits and tells that she had forgotten about Draco.
He'd known her. He'd known her when she arrived. When she'd been scheming to kill him. When he'd raped her.
It wasn't surprising that he hadn't wanted her to look at him when it happened.
She was pregnant, with his heir. Her baby.
Their baby.
He'd raped her, and now she was pregnant.
When she thought about it, her stomach twisted, and her throat contracted, and she vomited violently off the side of the bed.
She slumped down and covered her face with her hands as she tried not to cry or hyperventilate. Topsy appeared to banish the mess and gave Hermione a glass of water.
Hermione tried to stop thinking about it. She tried to just focus on Draco and not think about the fact that she'd been raped, that she was pregnant, that Draco didn't refer to the baby as being his, and she didn't know what that meant.
He wasn't there to ask, even if she thought she could manage the conversation.
She just tried not to think about it.
Instead, she tried to untangle Draco. She knew that she knew him, as though he'd been branded into her. But she couldn't recall concrete memories, it was more a general sense of knowing him. Instinctively, she knew him. She remembered the way he looked, the ways he moved, how he restrained himself, how the colours in his eyes betrayed his carefully hidden emotions.
When she tried to reach further into the past, before her imprisonment, it caused an agonizing pain to start bleeding across the base of her skull until she was afraid she'd cause herself to have another seizure if she pushed.
She couldn't think about it.
She had to simply accept that it was there.
She lay in bed, trying to reconcile herself with the version of Hermione that had faded away in the darkness of Hogwarts.
Someone who had fought. Who'd levelled half a lab. Who had burned dementors and stabbed Graham Montague with a set of poisoned knives.