“One a day. It's best if you take it at the same time every day. I'll make another batch this week and give you a month's supply.”
“Thanks, Hermione.”
Ginny slipped away, and Hermione packed the box back up onto the top shelf.
She had lied. Contraceptive was not a potion she kept on hand. It had been Hermione's personal supply which she had been taking as a precaution since the day after Moody approached her about Malfoy.
The next week Malfoy was in the shack when Hermione arrived. When she opened the door, he stared at her with an expression of mild irritation.
She looked at him confusedly.
“Am I late?” she asked glancing at her watch.
“No,” he said, his tone clipped.
She closed the door awkwardly and waited.
“I think we're done with occlumency,” he said after a minute.
“Alright.”
She started to open her mouth to ask him if he intended to train her in dueling but then shut it again and waited. Something about his mood unsettled her slightly.
“We'll start with basic dueling so I can see how bad you are at it,” he announced.
Hermione rolled her eyes.
“Fine,” she said. “What are the rules?”
“None for you. Do whatever you want,” he said. “I'll restrict myself to stinging hexes. I want to see how long you can last.”
Hermione blushed.
“I'll just tell you now I'm going to be awful,” she said.
“Yes. I'm expecting that.”
She glared at him, put her satchel on the floor by the door and placed a protective ward around it. Then she turned to face him.
He'd moved across the room and was leaning lazily against the wall.
“Alright.”
He reached into his robes and withdrew his wand. She cocked her head to the side.
“That's not your wand from school, is it?” she asked.
He looked down and spun it in his fingers.
“No,” he admitted. “My unicorn hair didn't handle the dark arts very well so I had to replace it. Still Hawthorn wood, but less yielding, with a dragon heartstring core. It's also a few inches longer.”
He raised his eyebrows suggestively as he said the last line.
Hermione filed the information away for future analysis. She thought there was a book on wand theory at Grimmauld Place in the Black library.
She got into dueling position.
Malfoy straightened and entered the same position with a flourish.
Hermione had been trying to practice dueling whenever she could find the time to sneak into the practice room. She shot a nonverbal stunner at him and he deflected it easily with a shield as he shot a series of stinging hexes at her.
She cast her own shield rapidly and kept it in place with a fianto duri spell.
Malfoy cast an endless stream of hexes and carelessly knocked any spells she sent toward him without even moving.
Despite the low impact of the spell he was using, the rapidity with which he cast hexes was wearing down Hermione's shield.
Before she could recast her shield, he shot a low hex at her feet. She yelped slightly as she was struck on the ankle.
It went rapidly downhill from there. She jumped backward without thinking, and left herself open. He immediately struck her with an additional five hexes.
“Alright!” she shouted. “You've won. Stop it!”
“That's not how it works, Granger,” he drawled while continuing to nonverbally shoot hexes at her. “In the battlefield you win or you die. Or you run away.”
Hermione physically dodged his spells and finally managed to recast her shield. She was standing gingerly on one foot. Her side, where he'd repeatedly struck her, was swelling and inflamed.
She angrily shot a slightly dark curse at him. Not anything deadly but more serious than a stunner.
Malfoy deflected it and quirked an eyebrow.
“The kitten has claws,” he said with mock wonder.
“Oh, stuff it,” she snarled as she cast a series of nonverbal spells in his direction.
“Good god, Granger, your aim is atrocious,” he told her while still machine gunning her with stinging hexes. “I'm not even moving and you're missing me.”
“I am aware.”
“No wonder they pulled you from combat.”
“Shut up!”
“Struck a nerve, have I?” he said dryly. His grey eyes were glinting, and she realised that he was punishing her for something. Whatever had been irritating him when she'd arrived, he was getting back at her for it.
Passive-aggressive wanker.
He wasn't even trying. He already knew she was rubbish. He was just doing it for his own personal amusement.
She spun away from his hexes and cast her shield again. She was already getting tired from the combination of dodging and casting.
She gripped her wand tighter and kept going until he struck her wand hand with so many hexes she couldn't hold it anymore.
Her wand fell to the ground. Rather than try to dodge, she just stood there as he struck her on the torso and legs with dozens more hexes.
Then he finally stopped and she stared at him.
“Feel better now?” she inquired.
He smirked and put his wand away.
“I've wanted to hex you for years,” he said with a satisfied gleam in his eyes.
“I already told you you could,” she said in a wooden voice as she began mentally cataloging everywhere on her body she'd been struck. “But I suppose you like to pretend you're giving a sporting chance.”
“It's not my fault you're so pathetic at defense.”
“No. That's on me,” she said quietly, lifting up her hand and wincing slightly as she tried to move her fingers.
The stinging hex was non-permanent in its damage, but it also couldn't be reversed magically. With the quantity and concentration Malfoy had used, it would take her more than a day before the pain from all the welts faded. She was certain he'd chosen the hex specifically because of that.
“For the record,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “This qualifies as interfering with my work. So perhaps use a reversible hex, or keep it all to one location next time.”
Malfoy said nothing.
“So—“ she asked after a minute. “Do I get to know why?”
“When it comes to cursing you, Granger, your mere existence is reason enough.”
She pressed her lips together, and swallowed hard. An aching sensation spread across her nose and cheeks and she blinked it away.
“Did you have any information this week?”
“No.”
“Alright. Well, I'll be going then,” she said, kneeling stiffly and picking up her wand with her left hand. Then she went over and pulled her satchel onto her shoulder, flinching slightly when the strap landed on several of the welts.
Malfoy didn't say a word as she walked out.
She stood outside the shack, feeling at a loss. Not at Malfoy's cruelty, but over what she was supposed to do. She couldn't go back to Grimmauld Place and have someone realise she'd been hexed. She'd have no explanation for it.
She walked gingerly over to the stump and sat on the edge of it.
With a sigh, she pulled her satchel off her shoulder and began pulling sacks and bottles out. She'd have to throw away all of the potion supplies she'd foraged. They required careful storage in order to maintain their magical efficacy. She wouldn't be able to perform the necessary spellwork with her wand hand in its current condition.
She sadly dumped the murtlap tentacles onto the ground. She would have to snare and kill another one. And the fairy wings. Then she dumped out all the rest until she had nothing but a bundle of stinging nettles left.
With grimace, she snatched them up and pressed them against both ankles and all over both hands and wrists. Then she lightly brushed her face with the bundle as well. She dropped the nettles onto the ground and watched as the multitude of tiny welts blistered up across her skin and obscured all the hexes her clothes didn't conceal.