His lips were pressed into a straight line as he started healing them. Some were so deep and ragged it took multiple spells to fix them. His expression was clinical and intent as he worked. Hermione stared at him, still unable to control her shaking.
He'd barely touched her until then. Aside from the minimal contact when he attempted to impregnate her, the only other times he had touched her at all was when he'd stopped her from throwing herself off the balcony or when apparating her.
He worked efficiently and finally sat back and looked away from her.
"Anywhere else?" he asked.
"No," Hermione said strained voice, pulling her mangled robes closed and hugging herself.
He glanced over at her for a moment as though weighing whether or not she was telling the truth. Then he vanished the basin of blood and water and stood up.
"I'll have Calming Draught and Dreamless Sleep Potion sent up for the next week," he said. "I'm sure you heard, I'll be away for the next several days. You — should stay in your room until I return."
Hermione said nothing. She just clutched her robes closed and stared at the floor. She could see his shoes as he stood beside her. Then he turned and walked out of her room, shutting the door behind him.
Hermione continued to sit frozen for several minutes. Then she stood up and went into the bathroom. She let her robes and dress fall off as she watched the water fill the tub.
She left the clothing on the floor and hoped the House-Elves would burn it all rather than repair and send them back.
The water turned red from all the residual blood on her and she drained it and refilled it, scrubbing herself until her skin felt raw.
She could still feel Montague's teeth sinking into her. The skin that Malfoy had healed was still new and over-sensitive. She fought against a temptation to claw at it.
She sat in the bath and cried until the water grew cold and she started shivering.
Climbing out of the tub and clutching a towel against herself she walked falteringly back to her bed. Two vials of potion sat on the narrow bedside table. She drained the Dreamless Sleep and crawled into bed.
The next morning she stayed in bed. There was no reason to get up.
She didn't want to move. She didn't want to think. She just wanted another dose of Dreamless Sleep. Try as she might she couldn't sleep anymore. She took the Calming Draught and felt the knot of horror in her stomach ease faintly as she lay curled in her bed.
She couldn't stop thinking.
Her mind would never quiet itself. There were always realisations, guilt, and mourning; something to obsess and worry over.
Montague...she didn't even want to think about Montague.
There was little from the previous night that wasn't horrifying.
She'd somehow assumed that the situation was the same for all the girls in the breeding program. That whomever they'd been given to would be treating them much the same way that she was treated. Clinically. Mostly left alone. The conception efforts entirely non-sensual for all parties.
But that was clearly not the case. It was obvious in retrospect that the surrogates had never been intended to be that way. Healer Stroud might consider the magi-genetic breeding program to be legitimate science, but essentially and far more fundamentally, it was a diversion. It made a spectacle out of the Death Eaters but it was also a bribe. The surrogates were sex slaves.
Hermione realised with a bitter pang that she had been so absorbed in her own situation she hadn't considered how much worse it could be for the others.
It had always clearly been intended to be that way. No bra. No knickers. The way the buttons on their dresses popped off with the smallest tug.
Accessible.
The Death Eaters were required to rape them on their fertile days, but the instructions had made no reference to the fertile period being the limitation.
Somehow being given to Malfoy made her — lucky?
He seemed clinical about utilising her.
Perhaps it was simply because Voldemort didn't want her too damaged until her memories were recovered. Perhaps he wasn't allowed to hurt her, or rape her the way he'd like to.
But — that didn't seem right. He didn't seem interested. It wasn't like he was restraining himself. He always seemed eager to be done with her. To get away from her. She was a chore to him.
Was it possible that the High Reeve was the least inhumanely cruel figure in Voldemort's government?
That didn't seem accurate either. Not after what she'd seen him do to Montague. Watching him coolly stand there as he unspooled Montague's organs with his bare hands was — terrifying.
The matter-of-factness.
The ease.
Malfoy had plenty of cruelty in him. Simmering just beneath the surface, waiting to be let out.
Perhaps rape wasn't his thing.
A strange thought, but the most plausible one she could think of. He hated touching her; avoided it at much as was possible.
Apparently Malfoy was not a complete monster.
Not that it matter. None of it mattered. None of it ever mattered.
It was the same as her realisation that Voldemort was dying. Realising that it was worse for the other girls didn't make any difference. There was nothing Hermione could do.
Even if by some miracle she found a way to escape, which was itself a sheer impossibility, she couldn't stop to save anyone else. She had to run. She had to run and run. The best she could do would be to try to find whomever it was that remained of the Order and see if they had a way to save everyone else. But if there were any way to do such a thing, surely the Order would already be doing it. Surely the Order wouldn't have left the surrogates for so long if there were any way to save them.
Hermione couldn't think of anyone but herself. If she had the information Voldemort and Malfoy seemed to believe she possessed then the most vital thing she could do would be to keep them from ever getting it from her.
She needed to escape.
She was running out of time.
It seemed an utter miracle that she wasn't pregnant. She had been sure that after the fertility potion she'd be pregnant.
Once she was pregnant—
Hermione felt as though she couldn't breathe. Her chest and throat felt compressed, and she started shaking as she tried not to cry.
Her odds of escaping already felt infinitesimally small. Once she was pregnant they would be practically non-existent and would only grow smaller with every progressing day.
She couldn't even walk across a field or along an open road as it was. An escape with the additional and evolving challenges that a pregnancy would present would be impossible.
Once she gave birth, Malfoy would tear the child out from her arms (assuming he even let her hold it), then he'd take Hermione to Voldemort and kill her and she'd been eaten by Voldemort's vile pythons and her baby would be left alone in Malfoy's horrible house to be raised by him and his horrible wife...
Hermione's chest heaved and before she could stop herself she began sobbing so violently she choked.
Even if she did escape Malfoy would never stop looking for her.
There was no way to escape. Every idea she could think of, none of it panned out. She was like an insect, pinned to board.
The manor was a flawless cage.
Unless by some miracle she could convince Malfoy to let her go...
And there was simply no way.
She wasn't even sure if he could let her go, even if he wanted to. There was something about the way he occasionally eyed the manacles that made Hermione doubt that he could remove them.
He could only kill her. And he was already planning to do that.
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the canopy in despair.