Lucius looked desperate.
Her eyes widened.
Voldemort aspired to immortality. He had no intention of having a successor. He only cared about power so long as he controlled it.
He'd burn the Wizarding world to the ground rather than let anyone else rule.
“He's going to kill Draco if you fail, isn't he?” She felt his fingers flinch almost imperceptibly. “The injury last week — it wasn't a test, it was your punishment. Are you the one who had to crucio him?”
Lucius' eyes flickered before turning colder.
When Hermione saw it, she tilted her head back gave a choking laugh. Of course, she should have known they'd have the same tells.
She held his gaze and leaned forward.
“I am the last Order member. The very last one,” she said after a moment. “Everyone else is gone now. I'm all that's left.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I did blow up Sussex.” She kept looking into his cold eyes. “Harry — Harry was dead. Everyone was dead or captured, there was no one to stop me. I created the alchemy and designed both of the Order's bombs. The poison you found so interesting, I invented it too. Thestral blood. Monkshood. Asp venom. Arsenic. Pufferfish. Water hemlock roots. Newt skin. It was mine.”
She drew a deep breath. “You're right though — there was a spy among the Death Eaters during the last year of the war. I was his handler.”
There was a flash of triumph in Lucius eyes. Hermione wanted to spit at him.
“But you won't save Draco by finding him.” She studied his bloodied face and heard his laughter as Ron died screaming. She leaned closer, her voice dropping into a whisper. “The spy who killed Umbridge and destroyed the locket is your son.”
Lucius' expression went blank for a moment before twisting into an enraged sneer. He seized her by the throat, jerked her forward, and slammed her back into the bars of the cage.
“My son would never ally himself with the Order.”
Hermione choked but didn't break her eye contact with him.
“He — hates Voldemort,” she rasped out. “He — has always — hated him. Why do you think there's a cage in your drawing room? Voldemort kept your wife in it.”
Lucius jerked as though she'd struck him. “You're lying!”
His grip on her throat tightened, and Hermione gasped as she fought to breathe. His fingers were pressed brutally into the esophagus, and the skin on her face grew taut from the pressure.
“Voldemort — tortured her — in this room. That's why Draco took the mark and killed — Dumbledore…” she could barely force the words out. She clawed at his hand, trying to tear herself free. Her lungs began spasming and burning.
“Do you expect me to believe you?” He released her throat, and she gasped desperately for air, dragging it into her burning lungs as she collapsed against the cage.
His wand jabbed dangerously close to her face, and he snarled. “Legilimens!”
Lucius was not a legilimens. His magic for mind invasion was weak. It was like having her mind roughly pried apart with a blunt stick. If she'd had magic, he would never have been able to penetrate her mind.
She didn't have magic.
He forced his way in.
There was no precision. He simply crushed her consciousness under his as he shoved his way in.
He didn't focus on individual memories, just pushed his way through them until he collided with one.
Draco …
His fingers running along her spine as he kissed across her shoulders and neck. His other hand tangled in her hair, holding her close so that his bare skin pressed searingly against hers.
“I love you.” “I love you.” “I'm going to take care of you.” He muttered the words against her skin.
Hermione tried to tear the memory away but couldn't summon any magic. She could feel her manacles starting to burn around her wrists.
Draco pressed her back against the headboard, wrapping her legs around his waist as he pushed into her. The devastating adoration in his face unmistakable as he kissed her. She tangled her fingers into his hair and kissed him back as her hips met his.
She could feel Lucius' horrified rage.
She didn't know how to show him the correct memories. She wasn't even altogether sure where they were. He'd crush her mind to pieces long before he found them on his own.
She was staring up into Draco's face. “I found what I was missing to remove your Dark Mark.”
“Oh.”
“Phoenix tears. I'd be able to remove it if I had a vial of Phoenix tears.”
She forced herself to focus through the pain. Narcissa. She had to show him what happened to Narcissa.
Narcissa. Narcissa.
Narcissa's portrait swam into view. “She didn't want him to ever know. You don't know what she put herself through to ensure he didn't find out. You thought that potion's withdrawal was difficult after three doses? She took it more than a dozen times just in order to see him. Draco used to beg her not to.”
Lucius stopped brutalizing his way through her mind and seemed frozen for several seconds.
Hermione seized the brief respite to scrabble through her memories for the right ones. There was a throbbing pain in the back of her head as though a scalpel were slowly sinking into the base of her skull.
Narcissa. Narcissa. She needed memories of Draco talking about Narcissa.
Draco's furious face appeared, and he glared down at her.
“After you and your friends had my father thrown into Azkaban, the Dark Lord went to my house. I wasn't even home from school yet. When I got there, he was waiting for me. He had my mother in a cage, in our drawing room. He'd been torturing her for nearly two weeks.”
Lucius jerked. She could feel his growing horror.
“She — she never recovered. The tremors — they never stop, not after that much cruciatus. I don't even know what else he did to her — before I got there—,” his voice broke. He shoved his hair away from his face and seemed to be struggling to breathe. “The whole summer — I couldn't… I couldn't do anything but tell her I was sorry.”
Draco was breathing so rapidly his hands were shaking, and he kept talking, the words just pouring from him. “My mother — she — she was never very strong. She nearly died when she was pregnant with me, and she never recovered from it. She — was always fragile after that. My father always said we had to take care of her. He made me swear, again and again growing up, that I'd always take care of her. When the Dark Lord finally left the manor — I tried to get her away; somewhere he couldn't find her or hurt her again. But she wouldn't go — she wouldn't go anywhere without me.”
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I was trying to take care of her. I was trying to keep her safe. I was trying to figure out a way to run — and then — she was burned to death in Lestrange Manor—”
Lucius wavered for a moment. Hermione thought perhaps he'd withdraw from her mind.
He shoved himself deeper into her buried memories.
Her mind was recoiling. She could feel an agonising, fracturing pain begin radiating out from the back of her head
There was screaming surrounding her.
Her voice. It sounded so much younger than she remembered it being. “D-did your father know?”
Draco swallowed. “No.” He looked away. “My father — he — he was very protective of my mother. If he'd known—”
He was silent for a moment. “Occlumency isn't a talent he has. Not to the level he would have needed it. He would have been vengeful, and it would have damned us all. My mother insisted we hide her condition from him. There was a potion prescribed by a Danish mind healer; it masked most of her symptoms. Prevented her from panicking when she was required to make appearances. She took it when my father visited. The Dark Lord had mostly kept my father in France and Belgium following his release. He assumed she was cold and distant because she blamed him for my taking the mark.”