It was all trivial.
Everything that mattered felt too devastating to put into words. She was afraid if she started, she'd hyperventilate and have a seizure. And if Draco thought he upset her, maybe he wouldn't come see her, and she'd just be all alone again.
She'd thought in her cell that she'd held on, but in the cold light of day she found that she hadn't.
She'd broken.
There were only pieces of her left.
She sat in bed and nervously watched him as he stood by the window staring at the hedge maze.
She kept parting her lips to speak and then hesitated. She looked down as her hands and tried again.
“How — have you been?” she asked.
It was an asinine question. She blushed and wanted to take it back the moment it was uttered.
He didn't even look at her. “I'm fine.”
She swallowed and felt as though her heart was breaking. She straightened the flat sheet and brushed several wrinkles from the coverlet.
He was standing so far away, and she didn't know what to say to him.
“So…” she finally said, “you're married now.”
His shoulders went rigid, but he didn't respond for several seconds. When he turned and looked at her, his expression was a mask.
“Two years this October.”
She tried to meet his eyes, but after only a moment she looked down at her lap. She felt as though there was a chasm in her chest.
She didn't think there had ever been any kind of commitment on his end. Whatever they'd been had never been defined that she could recall.
It wasn't as though she'd ever thought he'd marry her.
But he was married, and it felt significant to her even if she couldn't articulate why. Why, in light of everything else, did it feel like it mattered at all?
He'd had to rape her thirty times. She was his prisoner. She was pregnant with his heir. But she was sitting in bed obsessing over the fact he was married, because everything else felt impossible to even begin trying come to terms with.
He'd gotten married three months after the Final Battle.
He had a wife.
Dainty, pretty, unfaithful, unstable Astoria.
“I was ordered to marry. If it hadn't been Astoria, it would have been someone else.” He said it in a flat voice.
It was a fact.
“I was commanded to marry her therefore I married her.”
Hermione bit down on the inside of her lower lip and nodded, still staring down at her lap.
A marriage arranged by Voldemort for the postwar repopulation effort. To make a spectacle of the Death Eaters and distract from Voldemort's fading health.
She understood the context.
She didn't know what to say about it. She didn't know what to say about anything. She wanted the past to vanish so she could reach out towards Draco without feeling that her heart was being mangled.
She wanted to touch him. Kiss him. To feel his hands caressing her. To remember what it felt like to be warm and wanted. To know if he'd still whisper “mine” against her skin.
But she felt broken. She wasn't the person he used to kiss. She was afraid if he touched her and it wasn't the same, it would poison all the past memories, and then there would be nothing left to hold on to.
He wasn't the same either. His eyes were filled with guilt and bitter rage.
He was angry at her.
He hid it, but she could feel it in the pit of her stomach. He didn't feel like he ever intended to forgive her for whatever it was.
After a minute she looked up. “Did you do something to her to make her barren?”
A cruel smirk twisted at the edge of his mouth. “I would have, but I didn't need to. The Greengrasses failed to disclose that they carry a blood curse. It would require considerable effort for her to conceive, and the manor had some unfortunate side effects. It didn't occur to her that some rooms are locked for a reason, or that she should restore the existing wards after she stripped the manor down to redecorate.” Then the sneer faded, his expression grew reserved, and he looked away from her. “I didn't think she'd ever go so far as to attack you.”
Hermione stared down at her wrists. The copper plating of the manacles was still as bright as it had been when they'd first been placed around her wrists. Property of the High Reeve.
She turned the metal so that the engraved words were no longer visible and then looked up again. “Will you be the one who takes me to Ginny?”
He shook his head. “Severus. There are restrictions on my ability to travel currently. Sentimentality is hardly a reason to endanger a safe house. He'll take you — or rather you'll take him with you — in order to assure he doesn't violate the terms of his Unbreakable Vow.”
Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. “His Unbreakable Vow?”
Draco's eyes flickered, and his mouth pressed into a flat line.
“At the end of the war, he made one with me, vowing not to interfere in my protection of you or to take you anywhere that you might be endangered. It was intended to ensure you left Europe safely, but it didn't end up mattering. You went by yourself and were captured anyway.” He glanced away. “The trip should be safe, but it's best to make contingency plans when possible.”
She twisted the hem of the cotton flat sheet between her fingers. “Will I see you after that?”
Draco quirked an eyebrow, and his mouth slowly curved into a cat-like smile. “Ginny doesn't particularly care for me.”
Hermione just kept studying him.
He shrugged. “It will depend on how things go. With luck I won't be in Europe for long afterwards.”
“Oh.”
Talking to him was exhausting. It felt as though there were countless details she needed to take note of, things that she should understand, that he was telling her, but she didn't know how to interpret them properly any longer.
We're supposed to run away together. You promised.
“You'll come — eventually?” Her voice was hopeful.
If they had time, they could pick up the pieces. She could find him under the mask of the High Reeve. Perhaps slowly she could find a way to become Hermione once more. For him, she would try to find that person again.
Then maybe he would stop standing so far away.
His quicksilver eyes glittered for a moment, and the corner of his mouth turned up; a shadow of a smirk. “If that's what you want.”
It felt like a lie.
A little more than a week after she regained consciousness she got out of bed and went slowly down the hall to take a shower. Topsy and the portrait followed her every step of the way. Hermione sat on the floor of the shower, her head on her knees while the water flowed over her. Her hands and legs were trembling with exhaustion. When she got out of the shower, she just wrapped a towel around herself and then collapsed on the bed of the attached bedroom.
When she woke, Draco was seated in the chair nearby, reading. She looked at him for several minutes before he glanced up and noticed she was awake.
His expression was open for an instant as their eyes met, and she could feel the heat of it down her spine. Then it shuttered.
He snapped the book closed, and it vanished. “Do you want to change rooms?”
She pulled the towel more tightly around herself. “I was just too tired to walk back.”
He eyed her for a moment. “You can change rooms. I'll just need a few days to get the wards in place here.”
“Astoria might notice.”
His lip curled. “She's not permitted in this wing of the house any longer. Even if she were, she's in France for the next month, buying a new wardrobe.”
Hearing that Astoria was not lurking in the manor unknotted an anxious tension in the pit of Hermione's stomach.
She stared up at the canopy overhead. “There's no need.”