She wondered if he'd worn that outfit when he'd killed Ginny, Minerva McGonagall, Alastor Moody, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Professor Sprout, Madam Pomfrey, Professor Flitwick, and Oliver Wood. He probably always had it on under his Death Eater robes.
Ironbelly hide was highly resistant to magic and almost impenetrable to physical attacks. In a duel, unless the attacker could land a headshot or used a killing curse, Malfoy would be difficult to beat. Someone with manacles blocking their magic would have no chance against him at all.
Then again, when had Slytherins ever cared about fighting fair?
His eyes met hers from across the room and he studied her carefully.
She crossed her arms protectively across her chest.
"Remember me now?" he asked.
"To my profound dismay," she said glancing away from him. He approached slowly.
"I informed Stroud about what happened. Apparently she didn't bother to verify that fertility potion wouldn't interact negatively with a legilimency session," he said with a faint sneer.
"I doubt the combination is something regularly studied by potion masters," Hermione said in a dry voice.
There was a pause and Malfoy pulled a newspaper out of thin air and handed it to her. She plucked it from his fingers with a curious expression.
"You've clearly been putting your reading to good use," he said as she unfolded it.
"Peace Talks in Scandinavia!" announced the front page.
She smiled to herself as she skimmed the article.
"How did you guess?" he said after a minute of silence.
She looked up from the newspaper.
"About this?" she said, widening her eyes innocently and indicating the article.
He rolled his eyes.
"No."
The corner of her mouth quirked.
"I'm a healer," she said, then glanced down at her wrists. "Or I was, at least. I specialised in healing dark magic. I know the signs of magical corrosion. Too much of certain kinds of dark magic and it turns to poison in the body. The body and the magic try to assimilate it. Once there's dark magic at a cellular level, there's no going back. The magic eats the body from the inside out."
She set the newspaper aside. "The magic is still highly potent of course. He's still one of the most powerful wizards in the world. But physically he's deteriorating. Even all that unicorn blood he's imbibing and bathing in can't sufficiently manage the symptoms. Lying in a torpor under a nest of snakes is just delaying the inevitable. Even if he's immortal, he'll be little more than a shade soon. He'll fade into ether. With Harry dead, he has no way to rebirth himself again. If all his horcruxes have been destroyed — he'll just — cease to exist."
Malfoy looked at her sharply and she met his eyes.
"The tethers, they're called horcruxes aren't they?" she asked.
He nodded slowly.
"New memory?" he said.
She nodded.
"During the seizure," she said, leaning back in her chair. "The Order was hunting them. Ron and Harry were assigned to."
"Anything else?" he said, his voice low and dangerous.
"Ron was upset about the casualty rates. We were starving. I doubt it's anything you don't already know," she said quietly.
She looked up at him steadily, expecting him to immediately move to invade her mind. To verify it. He just stared at her.
She looked away. After a minute she glanced back up, hesitating.
He noticed her attention and inclined his head, arching an eyebrow.
"Kingsley Shacklebolt..." she said. "Hannah didn't mention him. Everyone keeps saying that I'm all that's left of the Order, but I don't remember—"
"He died a few months before the final battle," Malfoy said, looking away from her. His jaw rolled slightly.
Hermione had known — but she still felt a sharp ache in her chest when she heard the confirmation.
She felt sure she already knew the answer to her next question too.
"Were you the one who—?"
He met her eyes and nodded. "He was in my way."
Chapter End Notes
Tight brains that she'd kept coiled at the back of her head by meriyart.
Chapter 18
Hermione stared down at the square of paper she was holding in bewilderment.
She furrowed her eyebrows as she folded it in half, and then stopped, feeling at a loss.
She couldn't remember how to fold an origami crane.
She'd folded more than a thousand of them. Large and small. Day after day. She had distinct memories of folding them.
But somehow—
She couldn't remember how to do it anymore. She'd kept trying to, each morning after she read the newspaper, but somehow she couldn't figure out how to make them anymore.
She couldn't remember the order of the folds. Was it a diagonal fold first? Maybe she was supposed to fold it in half and then again? She tried both ways.
She couldn't remember. The knowledge was — gone.
She had none of her previously folded cranes to look over in order to reverse engineer the process. The elves always banished them all by the end of the day.
Hermione sighed to herself and set the paper aside.
It must have been lost during her seizure. Perhaps there had been brain damage.
The memory — the knowledge — had vanished from wherever she'd kept it. Like it had never existed. Except she knew it had. She remembered, distinctly, of being able to fold them.
No matter.
She didn't even know why she folded cranes. She couldn't remember when she'd learned it. Maybe in primary school...
She pulled on her cloak and headed outside.
The estate was dreary and muddy. Winter was giving its last gasps before spring. The windows were occasionally tinged with frost in the morning, but the days warmed and it rained in sheets for days at a time.
The rain was only coming down lightly so Hermione ventured forth.
She had gotten to the point that she could traverse most of the gardens surrounding the manor; as long as it wasn't too open. Open spaces she still couldn't handle.
When she occasionally tried to force herself past the hedges and into the open, rolling hills, she felt as though someone were dissecting her; slicing her nerves out of her body and laying them out in cold and the wind. Her mind would just fold in on itself and leave her alone in a state of stark terror.
She couldn't — couldn't manage.
She wondered if she'd ever be able to handle it. Whether she'd ever recover from the agoraphobia. The fear felt as though it had rooted itself deeply, twining inside and through her; from her brain and down her throat, wrapping around her lungs and organs like an invasive vine; waiting to strangle her to death.
On the days it wasn't pouring rain Hermione spent most of her time wandering the estate. She would return inside caked with mud and have no choice but to trail it inside and through the halls. Wizarding homes had no traditions of keeping door mats or boot-scrapers when a quick scourgify could banish most mud. Hermione muttered internal apologies to the house-elves each day.
Her days had sunk into a sort of dreaded monotony.
She woke up and had breakfast. She read the newspaper repeatedly. She had folded origami. She ate lunch. When it wasn't pouring outside she went and explored the estate for hours upon hours. If the rain was too heavy she only went out briefly and then exercised in her room until she was ready to collapse. She showered. She explored the manor. She ate dinner. Sometimes Malfoy came and performed legilimency on her. Sometimes he came and fucked her indifferently over a table. She went to bed. She woke up and repeated the routine.
Day after day.
There was nothing more novel than the news.