He moved quickly. As though he were simply verifying that none of them were accessible yet. After checking through them, he moved into the present.
He seemed amused by her growing hatred. By how desperately she wanted to kill him. He watched her explore the other rooms and run across the estate and sit bored on the steps of the veranda. How she had read The Daily Prophet. Her panic attack.
He examined her repeated efforts to remember the details of Dumbledore's death, and how she couldn't remember something about the warlock's arm. That detail sparked his interest. He tried to find the information, but wherever Hermione had concealed the details in her mind, he couldn't tell.
She could feel his irritation as he finally moved on to her appointment with Stroud and their walk across the estate and how deeply she disliked the gardens. When he reached her horror after he ordered her onto the bed, he finally withdrew from her mind.
He sneered down at her.
“Rest assured, Mudblood, I have no particular desire to touch you. I find your mere existence within my manor offensive.”
“The feeling is decidedly mutual,” Hermione said in a dry voice. It wasn't a particularly good retort; her head was throbbing. It felt as though Malfoy had inserted his entire mind into hers, and it had bruised her internally.
Malfoy straightened and looked down at her as though he expected her to say something else. She stared up at him.
“Did you really kill Dumbledore?”
He smirked and leaned against a bedpost, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side.
“You somehow forgot that too? Is there anything useful you remember? Or do you just habitually forget everything that you haven't gotten from a textbook?” He glanced down at his nails for a moment and then buffed them against his robes in a bored manner. “I suppose that was all you ever were good for. You didn't even fight during the war, did you? I certainly never saw you. You weren't ever out there with Potter and Weasley. You just hid. Spending all your time in hospital wards. Waving your wand about futilely, saving people who ended up being better off dead.”
At his words, Hermione felt the blood drain from her head so abruptly that the room swam before her eyes. She gasped as though she'd been struck by a bludger.
All the times she's healed Ron, Bill, Charlie, George and Fred, Tonks, Remus, Ginny, Hannah, Angelina, Katie…
Saved them for the end of the war. Saved them to be tortured to death. Saved them to be enslaved and raped.
She clasped her hands over her mouth and pressed her fingers tight against her lips until she felt the outline of her teeth. Her whole body shook on the bed, and she tried not to sob. A muffled whimper tore itself through her fingers. There was a pricking sensation in her eyes the moment before Malfoy's face blurred from the tears. She rolled to her side and curled into a ball.
“Since you're so curious to know. The Dark Lord personally requested that I kill Albus Dumbledore at some point during sixth year. So one Friday morning, when the bumbling idiot walked past me in the halls, I cursed him squarely in the back with a Killing Curse. He'd stopped to chat with a few first years about sherbet lemons or some other equally asinine subject. Quite careless to leave himself open like that. But that's Gryffindors for you. They never expect that someone might choose to simply assassinate them in broad daylight. I am fairly certain he even knew I was going to try to kill him, but he still put his back to me. Perhaps he presumed I lacked the nerve.” He snorted faintly in disdain before sighing. “That is the one drawback of using the Killing Curse on someone's back; they miss out on that split second of realisation before they die.”
Hermione bit her lip as she listened to Malfoy's drawling recitation. She had expected, if she ever asked the question, that he would be horrible and conceited about it. Somehow it still shocked her to hear it.
“I suppose your master was quite pleased with you,” she said without looking at him.
“He was, especially after I presented him with the old fool's wand. He had dinner with me and my mother that night, here in this very manor. I was declared a protege.”
He tone seemed vaguely hollow. Hermione glanced over her shoulder at him. He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were locked on the window, and he looked almost wistful and pensive. As though his mind had gone somewhere else.
He abruptly roused himself and smiled thinly down at her.
“Any further details you need me to provide?” He arched an eyebrow as he asked the question. His expression was mechanical.
“No,” she said dropping her eyes from his face. “that was all I wanted to know.”
“Well.” He straightened his robes and turned to leave, “The outside world beckons me. Try not to have a seizure in my absence, Mudblood.”
Chapter End Notes
Illustrations by Avendell, follow her on tumblr and instagram.
Hermione and the High Reeve by Nikita Jobson.
Malfoy and Hermione by milenova_art.
Hermione on the steps by enselius.
Chapter 10
i am trying to remember you
and
let you go
at
the same time.
Nayyirah Weheed
Harry Potter was sitting on a rooftop, smoking cigarettes, staring off into the distance. Hermione clambered out of a window to join him.
“What happened to us, Hermione?” he asked when she got close.
“A war,” she said quietly, reaching out and turning his face toward her. There was a gash on his head. His pale skin was faintly red from the blood he'd washed off. His expression was sad, tired, and angry.
“Who changed? Was it you or me?” he asked as she laced her fingers through his hair and pushed it aside so she could close the wound.
“Me,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
“Why? Do you think I won't be able to do it?” he said. “Are you trying to brace yourself that I'll fail?”
She cast a diagnostic charm on him. He had two fractured ribs and bruising on his abdomen. She pushed him back so he'd lie down before she started healing him.
“I think you can do it. But — the prophecy. It's a coin toss. After Dumbledore died—,” she faltered slightly.
“Death is just one curse away from us all,” she said after a moment. “I can't just sit back and watch, waiting for fifty-fifty odds to land and assume I know the outcome. Not when there are so many people depending on us. What you have, the way you love people, it's pure, it's powerful. But — how many times have you killed Tom now? As a baby, because of your mother. In first and second year. But he's still here. He's still fighting you. I don't want to assume anything is enough.”
“You don't think Good can just win,” Harry said. The reproach in his voice was heavy.
“Everyone who wins say they were good, but they're the ones who write the history. I haven't seen anything indicating that it was actually moral superiority that made a difference,” she said as she murmured the spells to repair the fractures.