"What were you tortured for this time?" she asked.
He smirked as he slid his wand up into his right sleeve. "Clearly you haven't been following the news lately. The public, through their vast collective intelligence, has somehow concluded that I am the High Reeve, even without the confirmation of the Daily Prophet."
The news piqued her curiosity. "Because of Montague?"
He shrugged. "It may have been related, but I suspect it had more to do with my appearance in Romania coinciding with the High Reeve's visit. The press in some of the other European countries is considerably less controlled than Britain's. Once one paper starts saying it, it doesn't take long to spread. I am now publicly acknowledged as the Dark Lord's protege. The previous anonymity was for my protection, of course."
"Of course," Hermione said. "But you were punished for it."
"Other people are dead," he said, eyes cold, "I was merely chastised."
"So just two minutes of the cruciatus then?" Hermione said in a biting tone.
"Five."
Hermione felt herself pale with horror as she stared up at him. He gave a thin smile.
"Don't worry yourself on my account, my conscientious little healer. It was days ago. I live on."
There was a pause.
"Why did you kill Montague?" she asked. She had been lying in bed for days, and wondering about it. If he was going to kill Montague, why not have done it immediately? Why publicly?
Malfoy smirked. "I was wondering when you'd finally ask that question. I would have thought it was obvious. He blatantly and intentionally interfered and endangered my assignment, despite being repeatedly warned that you were not to be tampered with in any way. I would have done it more formally, but with my trip I was unfortunately short on time."
"So you killed him in the middle of St Mungos?" she said, eying him doubtfully.
"Well, I was going to kill him in his hospital room, but he tried to run. I improvised." Malfoy's expression was indifferent. "Now, if you're quite done barraging me with questions I believe we have a legilimency session scheduled."
He didn't go through her eyes. Hermione wasn't sure if there was any healing literature about using legilimency following an eye injury, but Malfoy apparently had decided not to risk it and just drove through her skull.
It hurt a bit more than it usually did, but once he had forced his way through, the pain eased somewhat. Hermione wished there were some way of dissociating while he sifted through her mind, but legilimency dragged the victim through the mind alongside the legilimens. Wherever Malfoy went inside her mind, so did Hermione.
She had no newly unlocked memories, only fresher repetitions of the old ones; especially Ginny crying. It felt like she dreamt of it every night. Always the same memory. It always stopped at the same point.
He seemed to almost hesitate before delving with her recent memories. Of Montague. Of Astoria. Of Stroud's questions before and after his arrival.
By the time he jerked his consciousness out of Hermione's mind, she felt as though she had collapsed inward upon herself. Reliving it all was traumatic enough to make her jaw clench until she felt as though her teeth might crack with trying to keep from shattering internally.
She rolled over onto her side and curled into a tight ball.
Malfoy sighed, the sound barely audible, but didn't say a word. He lingered for a few moments longer before she heard him leave.
She lay in bed trying not to think; wishing she could just turn her mind off.
Dread swallowed her like a shroud; like the chill of a ghost, it hung inescapably around her.
She couldn't shake it. She barely bothered to try.
The day after Stroud's visit she left her room for the first time since the equinox. She kept to the North Wing, wandering aimlessly. Silent. Drifting from room to room. Window to window.
As her eye continued to recover, she could see clearly enough to discover that spring had finally begun to creep over the estate. The cold, grey English countryside was beginning to show the faintest glimmers of fresh green, peeking from the tips of tree branches and sliding cautiously out from the dark soil.
Watching spring unfold itself slowly almost felt like hope.
Except — the place inside Hermione where hope had once lived now felt like a hole. As though someone had reached in and cut away something from the core of her being. Where hope had once bloomed there was now nothing but something painful and rotting.
But still — spring was beautiful to see.
It felt surprising to find that there were still beautiful, untainted things in the world. Contrary.
Not rationally. Rationally, Hermione knew that Voldemort's rule didn't blot out the stars in the night sky, nor destroy the Fibonacci sequence, nor defile the first crocuses of spring. But somehow, it surprised her that she could still see that beauty.
Somehow she had thought that the ugly coldness of her life indicated that ugly coldness and cruel beauty were the only things left within her reach or sight.
As she looked outside at the estate as it began to adorn itself with new life, it made something inside Hermione shrivel.
If she had a child.... it would be beautiful. Untainted. Pale, and smooth, and pink. With trusting eyes that would only know to expect goodness. With hands that would reach for anyone who reached out toward it. A baby would be beautiful. Pure as spring. Sweet as summer.
And then it would be taken away. Hermione would die, and her baby would be left behind; trained and hurt and twisted up inside until it was a cold, cruel, monster like Malfoy, and Astoria, and all the Death Eaters.
Hermione tore herself from the window she was standing in front of, and hurried toward the inner rooms of the North Wing. Rooms without windows. She didn't want to think about spring, or life, or children, or beauty, or goodness.
She didn't want to think about beautiful things that had been, but were now destroyed. Or the beauty that still remained. It cast the horror into harsher relief until it made it physically painful to think — to breathe — to live.
If only a person could die just by wishing it fervently enough.
She couldn't eat. She could barely choke any water down. When a set of five potions arrived with a note from Healer Stroud she shoved them into a cabinet in the bathroom.
The dread twisted itself tighter around her heart, day after day; knowing her next fertile period was drawing closer and closer.
Malfoy walked unexpectedly into her room, and she nearly burst into tears.
He looked tense enough to shatter as he stared at her.
She shot to her feet as though electrocuted and then froze.
There was a pause, and Malfoy looked more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him.
"I thought sending word ahead of time might just make it worse," Malfoy said, watching her carefully.
"I — haven't prepared," she muttered, looking away from him.
"You shower every morning. I don't require you to be excessively washed." His voice was as sharp as the edge of a knife.
The portrait apparently still kept him appraised of everything she did.
Hermione kept standing and staring at him. It felt like the first night when she'd been in his room; trying not to tremble, wondering if she was supposed to just go over and lie down on her bed.
Would he want her near the foot or in the centre of it?
"Take this," he said, pulling a vial of something from his robes and holding it towards her.
She accepted it, and looked at the consistency and colour before removing the cork. A calming draught.
He watched her swallow it.
She felt the potion take effect as her jaw and shoulders loosened, and the twisting tension at the base of her skull relaxed somewhat. The knot in her stomach that had twisted itself tighter and tighter for the last twelve days finally eased slightly.