She couldn't beat them.
Eventually she had collapsed onto the floor, drained to the point that she struggled to remain conscious.
As she lay there, watching the room swim before her eyes, she began to realise the reason the manacles were so powerful. They were using her magic. Wizarding folks had no more ability to stem the magic inside them than they could turn off their adrenal glands. Whatever effort she poured into overpowering the manacles, the manacles had in equal measure to repress her.
She couldn't even scream or rage with frustration when she realised it. She had so much fury inside herself she felt as though she might burst into flames.
She wanted to break something. She wanted to use magic and make something explode. She wanted to do something that would hurt.
She wanted to punch a mirror the way people did in movies. To see the glass shatter and fracture until it looked the way she felt. She wanted her knuckles to split and bleed and feel the pain in her metacarpal bones, through her palms and into her wrists… She was desperate to feel something other than the emotional agony she felt she was drowning in.
But she couldn't.
She tried circumventing the manacles in various ways.
The compulsion went beyond merely not screaming or speaking unless spoken to. She couldn't be loud because she was commanded to be quiet. She couldn't bang a door or stomp. Any method that occurred to make noise; when she tried to do it, she was stopped.
That was when it began to dawn on her that she was also the one controlling the compulsions. She was commanded to be quiet. It was her awareness of being unquiet that activated the manacles. Anything that she considered loud, resisting, disobedient, she couldn't do.
That was why Healer Stroud had been so concerned with ensuring the mental stability of all the girls. If they lost their minds, the compulsions couldn't control them. That was why the screaming girl had been able to attack someone.
The manacles were as limitless in their restrictions as Hermione's creativity.
Hermione tried to focus on something else as she tried to stomp her feet or slam a door. Performing mental arithmancy. Mentally reciting the recipe for a Draught of Peace. The manacles still activated.
She had run out of new ideas about how to try circumventing them.
She turned away from the snowy landscape and began exercising in her room. It had felt awkward with the attention of the portrait but after nearly a month, she no longer cared.
She was so tired of thinking and despairing afresh.
Not that she could stop herself from thinking even as she slotted her feet under the wardrobe and began doing sit-ups until her abdominal muscles felt like they had been injected with acid. At least it was a way of directing her rage.
She wouldn't be able to kill Malfoy. The manacles made it impossible.
She couldn't escape on her own either.
Umbridge hadn't even bothered with laying a compulsion against escaping. That was how certain she and Healer Stroud were that the girls couldn't get the manacles off. That detail was the only loophole Hermione currently had to exploit. She could do things with the intention of escaping.
She had reviewed everything she knew about the manacles carefully. Hannah had made no mention of anyone ever getting them off despite whatever laxness or camaraderie had been developed with the gossiping guards. The manacles had a trace in them but rather than just get someone to take them off, Angelina had attempted to steal the trace.
Quite a number of people had managed to escape Hogwarts. All the people Malfoy had killed. No one had ever successfully escaped entirely because none of them could get the manacles off.
What had Hannah said? Unless Hermione could cut her hands off, she'd never escape.
How did the manacles come off?
Two Death Eaters had come to Hogwarts the day the new ones had been put on. Yaxley and Rowle. They had been called up when the guards started stunning all the women, and they'd been gone when she'd been rennervated.
Only Death Eaters bearing a Dark Mark could remove the manacles.
She had two options. She had to find a way to make Malfoy either kill her or help her to escape. There were no options that excluded him. It didn't matter if the Manor had an entire set of camping gear, a basket of portkeys, and a weapon she could somehow touch, it would all be useless to her if she couldn't get the manacles off.
She snarled quietly to herself in frustration and rolled over and started doing push-ups until she couldn't lift herself off the ground any more.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
Draco Malfoy, where is the chink in your perfect armour?
As if on cue the door opened and Malfoy walked in. She turned her head to look at him, still too tired to try dragging herself off the floor.
He stared down at her, something flickering in his eyes after a moment.
“A Muggle thing, I'll assume,” he said.
Hermione rolled her eyes and forced herself to stand up. She felt as though her whole body were made of jelly.
He glanced around the room. His eyes landed on the vial of potion Hermione had refused to take earlier. He summoned it across the room wandlessly and caught it deftly in his right hand.
“I realise that, being a Gryffindor, there are certain obvious things that you will always somehow fail to comprehend. I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised that you somehow missed the implicit instruction that you should swallow this,” he said, his mouth quirking in faint bemusement.
Hermione crossed her arms stubbornly. While it might be strategically advisable to seem docile and obedient, as a former Potions Mistress, Hermione was far too paranoid to agree to such a thing.
“What is it?” she asked.
Malfoy's expression grew gloating.
“I'll tell if you swallow every drop like a good girl,” he said, flashing a malicious smirk.
Hermione did not budge. Malfoy smiled faintly as he stared at her.
“Come here, Mudblood,” he commanded after a moment.
Hermione glared at him as her unwilling feet carried her across the room to him. They didn't stop until she was mere inches from him, so close her robes brushed against his.
She stared balefully down at his shoes.
“Look at me, Mudblood.”
Her chin raised itself until she was staring into his eyes. He was still smiling.
“Surely you are aware that I'm not going to kill you,” he said. His eyes were dancing with cruel amusement. “After all, if I were, I imagine you'd feel obliged to come running.”
Hermione glowered. Yes, she knew, but poison was only one of the innumerable things he could dose her with. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and it made her ears roar.
“Open your mouth,” he commanded, unstoppering the vial and then proceeding to upend it into her opened mouth. “Swallow all of it.”
Hermione's mouth closed, and she swallowed. The potion tasted bitter, with a faint tingling effect on her tongue and throat as it slid down to her stomach. She felt it pause there for a moment before it dispersed itself into her system.
It felt like an egg was cracked across the back of her mind. Something cold oozed over her consciousness until her mind felt entirely enveloped inside it. As though someone had plucked out her brain and placed it inside a tank of ice water. Her body was there, but her mind was — not. It was like experiencing herself in third person.
Her heart rate dropped to a steady beat.
She should be panicking. It was as though her consciousness had been severed from her endocrine system. There was no surge of adrenalin or norepinephrine. No fear.
It was merely an observation: she should be panicking. She was not.