She studied him. She would have to steal whatever it was that he was monitoring her with. Umbridge had described it as a charm carried by the head of the household. Hermione wasn't sure what it could be. Magical charms were normally something metal to channel the magical connection. And they needed to be worn; necklaces or bracelets or rings were the most common.
Malfoy didn't seem to wear any jewelry, not even a wedding band. The only visible piece on him was the black ring on his right hand.
Maybe that was it.
“You can't steal it,” Malfoy drawled.
She looked at him sharply.
“It's not a thing. It's not this,” he said, and raised his hand to show her the band she'd been eying. He slid it off his finger and tossed it to her. She caught it reflexively and studied it.
It was some type of black metal. It didn't seem to have any kind of strong magical signature the way something connected to the manacles would. But maybe it still was. He might be lying. Maybe he was trying to misdirect her.
She wondered what he'd do if she swallowed it.
He burst out laughing.
“Don't swallow it.”
She looked up sharply and he quirked an eyebrow knowingly. He smirked and held out his hand. She reluctantly dropped it into his palm and he slid it back onto his finger.
“As I said, it's not a thing. You can't steal the trace. Not the one on you. They used blood magic to make your manacles.”
Hermione stared at him in astonishment.
“I'm in your head?” she said, her mouth dropping open slightly as the realization struck her.
They had taken her blood.
When she was at Hogwarts, they had taken vials of her blood, and her hair. She had assumed it was for genetic testing. It hadn't occurred to her that it would be used to perform a blood magic ritual.
That meant that she was, by her lifeblood, tied into Malfoy's consciousness. He could sense her in the back of his mind. It was like blood wards on estates and castles, creating a subconscious connection to the Lord in possession of it. Blood wards allowed the owner to detect when someone entered or tried to tamper with anything. Hermione existed in Malfoy's mind in a similar manner.
If she weren't entirely emotionless she would have been cold with horror.
He nodded.
“You're Potter's Mudblood. Additional security measures were considered necessary. So, let us establish now how things work: I will always know what you're doing and I will always be able to find you. Unless you can get those manacles off.” He eyed them and gave a faint smile. “I would dearly love to see you manage such a thing.”
He laughed.
“Perhaps you can start by seducing me,” he advised drolly, leaning back in his chair and looking her up and down. “Steal my heart with your wit and charms.”
Hermione rolled her eyes.
“Right. Maybe tomorrow,” she said, her mind already churning. “Well, this has all been very illuminating,” she said. “I won't disturb your reading further.”
Then she turned on her heel and strode back into the hedge maze.
She wound and twisted through the hedge-maze as she thought. Her options had narrowed further. Malfoy clearly did not expect her to escape. He did not even appear concerned about it. She didn't blame him. She didn't expect to be able to escape either.
It had already been a fool's hope. Now it felt like total idiocy. She sighed faintly and watched her breath puff away as a cloud in the cold air.
When the potion wore off she was going to be severely depressed.
She explored the entire hedge maze. Her feet were numb with cold and soaked by the time she exited again. She limped back to the veranda. Malfoy said nothing and she walked past him back into the manor and up to her room by herself.
Emotionless as she was, it was nice to feel more like a functioning person again. No grief. No fear. No depression or despair. She didn't have to worry her body would betray her with a panic attack.
The potion could easily get addictive.
Not that Malfoy would allow it. Healer Stroud had mentioned that potions for anxiety could interfere with pregnancy, so she was probably only going to be dosed with it for a short time.
Hermione wished she knew more about magical pregnancy. It had been a largely overlooked aspect of her training as a healer. Given parchment and a quill she could write a thirty inch essay on anxiety potions and how they interacted with healing magic and dark curses. But pregnancy was excluded from casualty healing. Almost no one had babies during the war and if they did, they stopped fighting and went to a midwife.
She wondered how the potion was made. She was almost positive it contained billywig sting slime, valerian and sopophorous bean. Maybe sloth brain mucus too. She thought back over the flavor and tingling as she had swallowed it. Perhaps that was a reaction of the sting slime combined with syrup of Hellebore.
It was nice to have something new to think about. Her brain had felt like it had scratched itself raw ever since the war. Completely starved of anything new to turn over in her mind. It was full of the past. Reviewing it over again and again. Wondering what had gone wrong.
Her past was like a millstone. Always dragging her down. Dragging her inexorably back as she wondered again and again what had gone wrong.
Had she known? Had she known why the Order had lost the war? Known and hidden that information? Chosen to torture herself by concealing it?
Why? As Malfoy had said, she had lost the war. What would she bother protecting even in the aftermath? Knowing that everyone she cared about was already imprisoned or dead?
Like Dumbledore's death the details surrounding the end of the war felt foggy. She couldn't remember why they had gone to Hogwarts. She couldn't even remember getting captured. She remembered Harry dying. And then she was in a cage watching the Weasleys being tortured.
She'd assumed she'd blanked due to shock.
Hermione explored the entire wing of the manor from top to bottom before nightfall. The attics, every closet, and servant's stairs and tunnels. She didn't comb through the rooms, but she hoped if she grew familiar with them that she'd be able to come back without panicking or having a nervous breakdown even without the potion.
She wondered how many house elves the Malfoys had. There wasn't so much as a cobweb in the darkest corners of the attic.
The next morning she woke and felt like a boulder had been placed on her chest. Pinned to her bed and overwhelmed by the whiplash of despair she'd been unable to experience the day before. She fought to breathe.
The twelve hour respite made all her emotional pain hurt more. Cast it into stark relief. She hadn't realised how deep the cuts of grief and loneliness reached inside of her until she was briefly freed from the pain of them.
As the weight of it bore down on her once more she felt as though she were being ground to dust. She could almost feel the edges of herself crumbling and breaking. Dissolving into ether. There was almost nothing left of her but hurting.
Her spine and the back of her neck felt overheated. While the rest of her body was clammy and icy cold. Her skin was damp. As though she'd sweated the potion out in the night.
She rolled from the bed and was violently sick upon the floor before she could bolt for the bathroom.
She slumped down, shivering. Her body felt leaden. She could barely move her arms. She wanted a shower. She was too hot and too cold.
She was thirsty. She was desperate for water.
She wanted a hug.
A fresh wave of loneliness struck her so abruptly she burst into tears.
Feeling sick and weak made her feel like a child again. Desperate for her mum to fuss over her and lay a hand against her forehead. For comfort.
She couldn't even remember her mum but she missed her nonetheless. She recalled being in bed and having cool fingers on her face, brushing away a lock of hair and then resting on her cheek.