Hermione felt as though her head were about to crack open; as though the pain were a form of pressure that threatened to break through her skull. The pain was agonising. Her eyes were welling up with tears, and she bit down on her lip to try to keep from crying.
“Drink this,” he ordered, slipping a vial of pain relief potion into her hand. “Otherwise you may black out when you try to apparate. I wouldn't recommend it.”
She swallowed it, fairly certain he wasn't going to poison her.
“Did that happen to you?” she asked when the pain began easing so she could speak again and her vision was no longer littered with flashing black spots.
“More than once,” Malfoy said shortly. “My training was — rigorous.”
She nodded. It still seemed hard to believe he was the same school bully she had known.
Coldness and harshness were built up around him like the walls of a castle. All that scarcely subdued rage.
The boy who got boxes of sweets and had a spot bought for him on a quidditch team, who cried and whined over a scratched arm, was gone. Everything soft and indolent and pampered about him was carved away by the war. He hadn't bought his way through Voldemort's ranks with galleons. He'd paid in blood.
Everything was so hard and exacting. His smirking and leering, and the vagaries of his courtesy all felt like an act. Like a mask he was wearing to disguise just how cold he was.
If she wanted to succeed, she needed to get past his mask and coldness and rage. He might be intending to use her just as a form of vindictive or amusing stress relief, but she was still determined to become more.
She needed to draw out his confidence until she could understand his motivation — until she found a vulnerability she could slip through.
No one was pure ice. Not even Malfoy.
There was something about him. In his eyes. Something that looked like fire hidden deep within. She needed to find a way to reach it and then fuel it into something she could utilise.
He expected her to hate him and try to manipulate him with false kindness and sympathy. She had to be clever about it. More clever than him.
“Was that after fifth year?”
He looked at her somewhat sharply.
“Yes,” he said it in a clipped tone.
“Your aunt?”
“Hmm,” he hummed in confirmation.
They were both staring at each other intently.
“Not the only thing you learned that summer,” she said.
“Are you needing a confession for something, Granger? Should I tell you everything I've done?” He drew closer so that he towered above her, and sneered down in her face.
She forced herself not to shrink or cower back. She stared up into his eyes.
“Do you want to?” she asked.
There was the faintest flash of surprise in his expression. He seemed caught off guard by the question.
He was lonely. She'd suspected as much, but now she felt certain. Dead mother, insane father. He was high up in Voldemort's ranks and they were notoriously filled with backstabbing. If he ever had any regrets, he'd never told anyone.
“No,” he said, voice sharp as he stepped away from her.
She didn't push. If he thought she were pushing, he'd shut up like a clam. She didn't need to know. She just needed him to realize he wanted to tell someone—
— that he wanted to tell her .
It would make her emotionally valuable to him. It would be a hook. An opening.
It would make her interesting.
“Did you want to go again?” she asked after a moment.
He stared at her, silver eyes flat. “When I was trained, she'd have someone crucio me while she was trying to break into my mind. That's probably what will happen to you, if you're ever caught.”
He didn't give her time to react to the information before he slammed his way in. When he stopped, he didn't wait for her to regain her breath before dropping a new scroll of information next to her and vanishing.
That week Hermione went back to Waterstones. She bought books on the psychological effects of loneliness. Books on orphans. Research of the psychology of child soldiers.
She didn't hesitate as she underlined sections on their vulnerabilities; the ways by which they were prone to being taken advantage of and manipulated.
In a notebook upon which she placed a rather nasty security curse she began to draw up a psychological sketch of Draco Malfoy. What she'd noticed about him. Questions and theories she had.
The center of him — his motivation — remained a mysterious blank. But she felt as though she were beginning to get a sense of his edges.
The following Tuesday, he did not start by forcing his attentions on her. He set himself to provoking her in other ways.
He did not restrain himself at all when he invaded her mind for another round of occlumency training. He scrabbled into the back of it, and then meandered through the memories he happened to come across. Forcing her to relive some of the deaths she tried hardest not to dwell on. Then, quite by accident, he came across the memory immediately following her conversation with Snape. She flinched when he drew near it, and he immediately pounced.
He watched her examine her facial features critically before stepping into the shower. And when she stepped out and appraised her naked body in the mirror, he stopped and stared, following her mental fault finding. She could feel his condescending amusement as he took her in. She writhed with embarrassment, and he felt that too.
He stayed in the memory for far longer than it lasted and then withdrew entirely from her mind.
“Well,” he said, looking as though he were about to start laughing. “That certainly is one way to distract a legilimens.”
She glared up at him. She was sorely tempted to kick him in the groin and then try to stomp his teeth out.
“Pleased with your purchase?” Her tone was corrosive.
He gave a short laugh under his breath. “You're rather scrawny. If you'd sent me the memory beforehand, I might have asked for someone else,” he said as he stepped back to look her over in person.
“A pity for us both then,” she said, her mouth twisting as she folded her arms defensively.
“Perhaps... But then again, if I hadn't gotten you I would never have had a chance to encounter a brain organized like a filing cabinet.” His voice was light and casual, but his quicksilver eyes abruptly hardened. He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Moody didn't train you. You're a natural occlumens.”
Hermione nodded resignedly. She had assumed he'd realise it eventually. When she'd invented the lie, she hadn't expected him to spend so much time poking around in her head.
“Self-taught, then?”
“I had a book,” she said stiffly.
He gave a barking laugh. “Of course.”
He was staring at her with an expression she couldn't place. As though he were reassessing her. The realisation seemed to be making him to re-evaluate something about her.
Hermione didn't want him to re-evaluate. If he did, he might decide to change his strategy. She liked the current way in which she was not having sex with him.
“What?” she snapped at him impatiently, hoping to break his train of thought. It seemed to work, the narrowed expression of his eyes eased slightly.
“Nothing,” he waved her off. “I've just never encountered one before.”
He smirked.
She stared at him with her own eyes narrowed.
“You're one too,” she said with rising horror. She was trying to slip past the defenses of someone who could also shutter and isolate their emotions and desires.
He gave a mocking bow.
“What are the odds?” he mused with a faint shrug.
There was a long silence.