She never spoke to anyone but Malfoy and Stroud.
Knowing the breeding program was all a ruse didn't change anything. Knowing Voldemort was dying, that he had horcruxes, didn't change anything.
Not for her.
Malfoy was still spending all his time trying to hunt down whomever it was that had destroyed the locket. When he came to inspect her memories he had looked visibly ground down. He only explored her mind briefly, as though he were afraid of damaging her and causing another seizure.
Hermione began to suspect that Voldemort crucio'd him regularly; every time Malfoy reported that he still hadn't caught the culprit.
He wasn't, she realised, returning to the manor looking pale with fury; he was pale from the physical shock caused by torture. In fact, he looked like he was being tortured daily. The symptoms showed more distinctly each time she caught sight of him. He seemed visibly eroded; as though he were on the verge of a breakdown.
Crucio did that to a person. When used too frequently, even if it didn't drive a person insane, its effects could become long-term.
His hands twitched the way Hermione's still sometimes did. She wondered if he was getting therapy for the torture. Whether he had time to.
Surely he would; he'd gotten her treated after her seizure. He would probably use the same healer. He had to have one. He'd likely put a healer on retainer during the war. He wasn't the type to go sit in St. Mungo's waiting room.
She tried not to notice the symptoms; the pallor, the occasional spasms in his fingers, the dilation of his pupils. She reminded herself that he was trying to hunt down the last of the Order; every time he came back tortured it was a sign that he had failed and the Order survived.
But it bothered her, as a healer. The deterioration; she couldn't stop herself from noticing it and gnawed inexplicably at her conscience.
She ignored it.
Voldemort was dying. Voldemort was dying and Malfoy knew and he had responded by climbing the ranks, and wiping out the Order. She had wondered why he was so slavishly obedient even in the face of having her as the mother of his future children, now she knew why. Of course he'd be willing to do anything to stay in Voldemort's good graces.
Ron had been right. Malfoy probably regarded himself as the successor. How could he not? The High Reeve. The Dark Lord's 'Hand of Death.' When Voldemort finally faded, who would dare dispute that Malfoy was next in line? There was no other Death Eater who could compare.
Malfoy clearly intended to become the next Dark Lord and unless Voldemort happened to kill him before then, Hermione fully expected him to.
She wondered what kind of Dark Lord Malfoy would be. What did he even want from it? Hermione still didn't know. Maybe she would never know. She'd always wonder and never understand him.
He deserves to die, she thought to herself. He deserved to be crucio'd. The world would be a better place if Draco Malfoy were killed or driven insane.
But the thought of him blank-eyed in Janus Thickey bothered her somehow. Passively watching the toll that regular torture was taking on him made her feel oddly guilty.
She couldn't do anything about it, she coldly reminded herself as she strode through the hedge maze, even if she did want to help him. Which she did not. He was a Death Eater. It wasn't as though anyone had forced him to become a Death Eater or to murder Dumbledore or be the one to kill off the entire Order of the Phoenix and a large percentage of the Resistance as a whole. He deserved every bit of suffering that went in hand with his servitude. More even.
If she didn't get to kill him, the irony of it being Voldemort who slowly did the deed was both fitting and satisfying to contemplate.
Mostly.
Hermione sighed and stopped walking, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. Trying to clear her mind and stop thinking.
It seemed that she had managed to retained a bit of a bleeding heart, even for depraved monsters. She'd always hated the mere idea of torture. It had bothered her to witness Umbridge's. Apparently she couldn't even enjoy Malfoy's.
Her next fertile period was made distinctly worse by the fertility potion.
As it approached her breasts swelled several cup sizes larger and without a bra to support them they hung and ached and were throbbingly sensitive. Her lower abdomen swelled in a way that made her look as though she were actually in the early stages of pregnancy. It was horrifying. Hermione found herself suddenly vividly, viscerally confronted by the idea of pregnancy in a way that she had managed to ignore and avoid until then.
She cried. Her clothes didn't fit. She couldn't exercise, it was too uncomfortable. She felt extremely tired and on edge. She just curled up in her room and tried to ignore all the things her body was doing.
When the table appeared she found it somewhat painful to lean across it and feel her weight pressing down on her chest. She swallowed hard. Her entire body felt over sensitive, particularly in places she very much did not want to think about. When she heard the door open she focused intently on the pain, bearing down harder on her breasts than necessary and forcing herself not to pay attention to anything else.
Please don't get pregnant. Please don't get pregnant, she begged her body.
After the five days, when Malfoy appeared to inspect her memories, he seemed slightly less on edge. Not so deathly pale. Less recently tortured. She feared that it meant he'd made some of break-through in his investigation.
He examined her memories carefully. More thoroughly than the previous time but still without disturbing any of the locked memories. He did watch Hermione's conversation with Ron repeatedly as though checking for details. When he came upon her reluctant concern over his torture symptoms he withdrew from her mind.
"Worrying about me, Mudblood?" he said with a sneer. "I have to admit I never thought I'd see the day."
"Don't take it as a compliment," Hermione said stiffly. "I felt sorry for Umbridge when he tortured her too but I'd gladly dance on her grave."
His mouth quirked with amusement. "Unfortunately the snakes ate her."
Hermione found herself smiling before she could stop herself. Malfoy gave a barking laugh.
"You are a bitch," he said with a faint shake of his head.
Hermione's smile vanished. "Some people deserve to die," she said coldly. "And the ones who didn't — you killed anyway."
He rolled his eyes as though she had merely critiqued his manners.
"I did what I was instructed to do," he said with a shrug.
"Do you tell yourself that to ease your conscience?" She sneered at him as she sat up on the bed. "When you strung them up and left them to decay? Did you think you were being noble?"
He gave her a thin smile and quirked an eyebrow. "Your Resistance was quite boundless in its hope even after Potter died in front of them. They were the sorts that would never believe reports of death based on Death Eater hearsay. How many more fighters do you suppose would have tried escape if they hadn't seen the bodies rot with their own eyes? Surely you don't believe in encouraging suicidal optimism?"
"Someone is still out there," she said. "Someone you haven't caught."
He smirked faintly. "Not for long."
Hermione felt the blood drain from her face so sharply it felt as though her head had been hollowed out. "Have you—?" Her voice shook.
"Not yet. But I can practically guarantee it," he said with cruel smile. "Long before the Dark Lord has faded, your last Order member will be dead and your precious little Resistance will never know they even existed."
"You don't know that," Hermione said fiercely.
"I do know it," he said, his expression became so hard he could have been carved from marble. "This is a story with only one ending. If your Order has wanted a different one they should have made different decisions. Perhaps some hard, realistic ones. They should have let go of their fairytale notions that they could somehow win a war without ever getting their hands dirty. They were idiots, nearly every one of them." He sneered down at her. "Do you have any idea how easy it is to kill someone when you know they're hoping only to stun you? Very. So easy I could do it in my sleep at this point."