Breath Mints / Battle Scars

Chapter 43: XLIII

February 22nd, 1999

They don't deliberate.

They muse and mull and drag their way through it, as if they know each and every second has Hermione grinding away another thin layer of her teeth. Her jaw aches. Her eyes itch and sting. She stares resolutely at the base of Burbage's podium, because glancing to her left is out of the question right now.

And all the while, the same word bounces back and forth off the walls of her head.

Why?

Why - why - why?

She's not a fool. She has no misgivings about the human heart - no silly daydreams about love at first sight. People don't fall that way. Not very often. And she's convinced the ones that do have actually just suffered some sort of synapse malfunction. An ill-timed dopamine release.

Most people - like her - like...like him - take a lot more convincing.

Malfoy didn't love her on that cold marble floor. Those eyes she stared into - through the strain, through tears, with a knife carving into her skin - they weren't the eyes of a lover. There was just fear. Hers and his. Fear and desperation and disbelief and just this silent plea of please - please, you know me - we were classmates - please.

And at the time, she'd thought that plea went unanswered. At the time, everything sort of fit.

Malfoy made her life a living hell in school, so why would he lift a finger now? It fit. It fit.

This doesn't.

Her eyes glaze over, losing focus, and the podium starts to morph into two the longer she stares at it. She doesn't even realize she's tracing the letters of her scar until the ragged edge of one of her fingernails - bitten raw over the past few weeks - snags on the rough skin and sends a jolt of pain up her arm.

She blinks her eyes back into focus and glances down at it, watching a little fresh bead of blood trickle down over the word 'BLOOD' itself.

Poison. How could she not have known? How could she not have felt it, seeping into her? Even amongst all that pain? How could she have missed it leeching through her skin, in and then back out again?

How could she have missed Malfoy's moving lips?

She thought she remembered everything about that day.

Instinctively, her eyes flit left - before she can stop them. He's staring back at her through the bars. Bloodshot, hoarse. Heaving. A single strand of blond dangles between his piercing eyes, sweat-soaked.

She's seen Malfoy in lots of states, she thinks, but never like this. Even half frozen to death - even in a fit of rage - he's never looked quite like this.

"Look what you've done," he says, low and breathless. Quiet enough it's only for her ears.

Hermione's barely conscious of the rest of the room. It seems to fall away when faced with the look in his eyes.

Even as Burbage calls out, "We have reached our verdict," she finds she's only half-listening. Can't tear her gaze away. The words "probation," and "damages," glide across the podium to her, but they're meaningless. Words that don't make sense.

All she can hear is him.

"Look what you've done," he murmurs again. "Now, it was all for nothing."

Harry has to talk her through what happened.

Everything after Malfoy's cage sank back below the ground is a blur in her memory. But apparently there was quite the uproar. Many witches and wizards - not just Dawlish - had crammed their way into that trial to watch Malfoy fall. As Harry explains it, some of them actually tried to throw things at the Wizengamot before being escorted out.