He hadn't hurt her.
He'd had every opportunity and more than sufficient fury, but he'd held it back and driven her off instead.
A murderous Death Eater with some sort of moral code. An oxymoron if ever there were one.
It had to be connected to his motive for aiding the Order.
What did he want?
It aggravated her deeply that she couldn't figure it out.
After tossing about on the window seat for half an hour, she sat up with a sigh. She didn't want to try brewing Severus' potion until she was rested. She clambered up and went to the uppermost floor of the house. There was a practice room there.
She looked in and found it empty.
She made her way into the middle of the room and, drawing her wand, began making her way through some of the duelling poses.
When she'd returned from her healer training throughout Europe, she'd only participated in two small skirmishes before the Order decided the pull her permanently from combat. After the years away she'd gotten rusty, far less proficient in duelling than anyone else in her age group. The rest of DA were fast and cast powerful spells, dodging and weaving while maintaining excellent precision even from a distance.
Healing was subtle. It almost always required holding back. Close work with attention to tiny details.
Trying to duel again was such a reversal in the technique that she'd been awful.
Ron and Harry devoted quite a bit of time trying to help her catch up, but before she'd managed to do so, Kingsley advised pulling her entirely from combat. No one made so much as a murmur in disagreement.
Hermione understood the rationale, but years later the decision still hurt. She'd felt as though she'd failed somehow and was being shunted off — away from everyone else.
The original DA had become a tight-knit combat unit that she was not a member of.
Hermione bit her lip and cast a protego as powerfully as she could. The shield bloomed in front of her.
She sighed in relief as she withdrew the spell. At least she could still manage that.
She cast a series of hexes at the dummies across the room. Half of them hit their targets. None of them precisely.
She flushed and tried again. She was somehow worse the second time.
Hermione berated herself. She was standing still. Not on a battlefield. Not while having any spells directed back at her.
She was shite.
In the unlikely event that Malfoy trained her, he would tear her to pieces for how inept she'd become.
She squared her shoulders and tried again.
She cast a few more complex curses.
Well, she could manage that.
It wasn't a lack of proficiency when it came to combat magic. She was simply terrible at the actual combat aspect.
That was some consolation.
Well, not really.
She kept going until she was so tired her hands were shaking from exhaustion. Then she dropped onto one the training mats and fell asleep.
“Hermione, bloody hell? Why are you in here?”
Hermione squinted the next morning and found Ron standing over her, flanked by Ginny, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Lavender, Parvati, Padma, Fred and Angelina.
She sat up with a groan and rubbed her eyes.
“'My bed got taken in the rehousing shuffle,” she lied, shooting Ginny a look. “I came here to sleep.”
“Oh,” said Ron. “Well, we're going to be practising an attack formation before Neville and Seamus have to head out on that recon mission. So — we need the room.”
Hermione nodded and stood.
“Can I watch?” she found herself asking.
Ron furrowed his forehead and stared at her.
“Sure. I guess. If you have time for it. Just — keep a shield up. Lot of hexes will be going.
Hermione backed into a corner and watched Ron lay out the strategy. She couldn't track all the terms they used. It wasn't traditional combat terminology, rather a sort of shorthand that had evolved among the fighters over time. Their own language.
As they scattered across the room, she cast a shield around herself. Ron activated one of the wards on the room with a charm, and then everyone started casting a series of hexes toward the walls.
The spells bounced off and ricocheted back and forth across the rooms. Soon the room was full of flying magic.
Hermione watched as the DA members began running through the attack formation. Their spells were all precise. Their shields powerful. None of them even got nicked by the flying spells. It was instinctive for them. They knew when their shields needed to be renewed. They knew how everyone else fought; who would cover for them. They fought closely and cast nonverbally.
Their combat skills were vastly superior to her own. It would take a miracle for her to catch up.
She watched them run through the formation twice before she turned and slipped out of the practice room.
She went to her potion supply closet, gathered up the ingredients, and got ready to begin brewing.
The following Tuesday she apparated into Whitecroft and approached the location of the shack slowly.
She wondered if Malfoy would be there. She prayed that he would.
She had no idea how to fix things if he refused to even appear. She could only hope that whatever was causing him to spy was sufficient motivation that her actions couldn't dissuade him.
If he weren't there, she would wait.
If he was there — she hoped he would just punish her and get it over with, rather than force her to continuously dread it.
The door had been repaired. She braced herself and pushed it open.
Empty.
After waiting for a minute she went over to the chair by the table. Her stomach was twisting itself in dread, and she tried to distract herself by reciting arithmancy formulas while she sat there.
She just needed to stop thinking about what might happen next.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack and she stood and turned sharply as Malfoy appeared. He stood staring at her, his expression indecipherable.
Hermione didn't say anything. She just looked at him. She was relieved she wasn't trembling.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. That needle-like sensation of terror began lacing through her spine. She suddenly felt cold. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as she braced herself.
She could see his jaw clench and he glanced away from her.
He was apparently not intending to speak first.
She took a deep breath. She needed him. He was clearly still furious with her but she had to fix it. Whatever it took.
“I'm sorry,” she said desperately. “I lost my head and crossed a line. I'm sorry. Whatever I need to do to make it up — I'll do whatever you want. Just let me fix this.”
Chapter End Notes
"Because I can," by _knar.m_.
Flashback 6
April 2002
Draco looked sharply at her, something she couldn't read flickering across his expression.
“It's fine,” he said in a hard voice. “When I said I wanted you willing, that meant you were allowed to say no. Although perhaps try saying it instead of purposely provoking me.”
Hermione stared at him in shock.
He clenched his hand into a fist and pressed it against his forehead as though he had a headache.
“Do you want to continue with occlumency?” he asked.
Hermione shifted slightly but didn't answer. She felt knocked off kilter. The conversation hadn't — she didn't—
What did he mean?
Was it possibly a feint, so he could catch her off guard?
If she were allowed to say no to things, he certainly hadn't bothered to communicate that to her. In fact he'd heavily implied the opposite. Although — he hadn't really done much that wasn't primarily to just to provoke her.