Malfoy laughed faintly.
"Like it?" he asked.
She tilted her head to the side. He was easy to look at now that she didn't feel frightened or overwhelmed by her hatred of him. She did have a conscious awareness that he was dangerous, but her body didn't have any physical reaction. No twisting in her stomach. No tripled heart-rate. He could have been a statue.
"It feels like I'm dead," she said.
He nodded as though the statement didn't surprise him.
"The effects are temporary. It will fade after twelve hours. And eventually you'll become immune. It should work long enough for you to acclimatise to the manor and estate."
Hermione stared up at him.
"You're being different to me now. You're less mean. Why are you even doing this for me?" she said. She furrowed her brow in confusion. Apparently she was still able to feel confused.
He quirked an eyebrow and leaned forward so close his breath ghosted across her cheek.
"I'm not doing this for you, Mudblood," he said softly into her ear. "I'm doing it for me. You wouldn't react anyway."
He straightened.
"See? Nothing. No elevated pulse. No pounding heart. I could bring in a boggart or bend you over a table and you wouldn't blink. Not much fun."
Hermione nodded thoughtfully. If she were wanting to commit suicide it would be easier to do so while under the effect of the potion. Malfoy might not be able to detect anything until too late.
Malfoy became stone-faced. He gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"
She went to get her cloak and followed him outside. He paused on the veranda and watched as she descended the steps by herself. The snow had been cleared from the gravel path but she could feel the cold already biting her toes through her shoes. It was bitterly cold that day.
She hesitated for a moment, trying to decide where to go. Then she walked over to the hedge maze. On all her walks with Malfoy he had never gone into it. She was quite curious about whether she could find her way through.
It was huge. The hedges towered over her. It made her recall the hedge maze from the Triwizard tournament. She doubted Malfoy's hedge would try to eat her or contained any dark creatures. She wandered through the looping, twisting, winding path and thought about the potion Malfoy had forced down her throat.
She'd had the passing thought that he was dosing himself with it in order to be such a cold and evil bastard, but she dismissed it after a moment's thought. The killing curse was emotion based magic. Impossible to cast with detachment.
Although, Malfoy seemed terrifyingly capable of somehow bending the rules around that curse.
Putting aside Malfoy and the mystery of his bottomless well of hatred, she could use the potion. She could make far more progress in pursuit of escape under the influence of the potion than she had been able to in the last month. So much so that it seemed suspiciously careless of Malfoy.
She paused to consider.
Malfoy was not careless. No matter how much he hated monitoring her. He wouldn't be careless. There must be some kind of failsafe that made him confident enough to dose her with something so powerful. He wouldn't possibly risk it otherwise, even if he found monitoring her to be a form of torture.
How could he be certain she wouldn't do anything when her heart-rate and pulse were unlikely to tip him off?
She'd quite nearly flung herself off a balcony and he'd only just stopped her. Known exactly when he needed to appear...
She looked down at her wrists.
He had to have sensed it through the manacles. But how had he known to come then but never bothered to appear during her panic attacks. A monitor charm, even a specialised one, couldn't possibly differentiate that precisely.
Unless...
Malfoy was somehow reading her mind through them—
As soon as the thought dawned on her she felt certain she was right. How, she wasn't sure. But she was willing to bet on it.
How irritating. She should be enraged but couldn't summon it. She should be swallowed by despair. But intellectual aggravation was as much as she could muster.
As though his legilimency wasn't invasive enough; trawling through her mind as though it were his own personal oyster bed. She was certain he was also somehow reading her mind through the manacles.
He never skimmed her thoughts. She had noticed. She remembered how Snape used to do that with students. Dip in through the eyes and glean what was forefront. When she made eye contact with Malfoy he never bothered to.
Hermione turned around. She stalked out of the hedge maze and made her way back to the veranda where Malfoy seemed immersed in a book on alchemy.
He snapped the book shut and looked up at her while she stood staring at him. Hands on her hips.
She couldn't say anything but she could glare.
He seemed to realise that she couldn't say anything and just smirked faintly and looked back at her.
"Yes?" he finally said after nearly a minute.
"Are you reading my mind?" she said.
He smiled broadly.
"And it only took a month for you to realise it," he said in mock praise. "Although granted, you have been rather busy crying and moping and being afraid of hallways and the sky."
The nice thing about having no emotions was that Malfoy's nastiness merely felt like pebbles being dropped into a pond. A small, quick splash into her mental imperviousness and then stillness and indifference again.
"How is that possible?" she asked raising a skeptical eyebrow. It defied several fundamental laws of magic.
"Rest assured, Mudblood, I am not reading all of your thoughts. If I had to subject myself to the constant stream of your consciousness I would probably Avada myself. You only register when you're doing something—interesting. And it spares me from having to show up just because you're trying to descend a staircase by yourself."
Non-drugged Hermione would have flushed angrily at his mockery. But Present Hermione just blinked and considered the information.
So it wasn't a constant thing. That was good to know. But when something registered enough he was somehow able to delve in and read her foremost thoughts. That—was a problem.
She studied him. She would have to steal whatever it was that he was monitoring her with. Umbridge had described it as a charm carried by the head of the household. Hermione wasn't sure what it could be. Magical charms were normally something metal to channel the magical connection. And they needed to be worn; necklaces or bracelets or rings were the most common.
Malfoy didn't seem to wear any jewelry, not even a wedding band. The only visible piece on him was the black ring on his right hand.
Maybe that was it.
"You can't steal it," Malfoy drawled.
She looked at him sharply.
"It's not a thing. It's not this," he said, and raised his hand to show her the band she'd been eying. He slid it off his finger and tossed it to her. She caught it reflexively and studied it.
It was some type of black metal. It didn't seem to have any kind of strong magical signature the way something connected to the manacles would. But maybe it still was. He might be lying. Maybe he was trying to misdirect her.
She wondered what he'd do if she swallowed it.
He burst out laughing.
"Don't swallow it."
She looked up sharply and he quirked an eyebrow knowingly. He smirked and held out his hand. She reluctantly dropped it into his palm and he slid it back onto his finger.
"As I said, it's not a thing. You can't steal the trace. Not the one on you. They used blood magic to make your manacles."
Hermione stared at him in astonishment.
"I'm in your head?" she said, her mouth dropping open slightly as the realization struck her.
They had taken her blood.
When she was at Hogwarts, they had taken vials of her blood, and her hair. She had assumed it was for genetic testing. It hadn't occurred to her that it would be used to perform a blood magic ritual.
That meant that she was, by her lifeblood, tied into Malfoy's consciousness. He could sense her in the back of his mind. It was like blood wards on estates and castles, creating a subconscious connection to the Lord in possession of it. Blood wards allowed the owner to detect when someone entered or tried to tamper with anything. Hermione existed in Malfoy's mind in a similar manner.
If she weren't entirely emotionless she would have been cold with horror.
He nodded.
"You're Potter's Mudblood. Additional security measures were considered necessary. So, let us establish now how things work: I will always know what you're doing and I will always be able to find you. Unless you can get those manacles off." He eyed them and gave a faint smile. "I would dearly love to see you manage such a thing."
He laughed.
"Perhaps you can start by seducing me," he advised drolly, leaning back in his chair and looking her up and down. "Steal my heart with your wit and charms."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Right. Maybe tomorrow," she said, her mind already churning. "Well, this has all been very illuminating," she said. "I won't disturb your reading further."
Then she turned on her heel and strode back into the hedge maze.
She wound and twisted through the hedge-maze as she thought. Her options had narrowed further. Malfoy clearly did not expect her to escape. He did not even appear concerned about it. She didn't blame him. She didn't expect to be able to escape either.
It had already been a fool's hope. Now it felt like total idiocy. She sighed faintly and watched her breath puff away as a cloud in the cold air.
When the potion wore off she was going to be severely depressed.
She explored the entire hedge maze. Her feet were numb with cold and soaked by the time she exited again. She limped back to the veranda. Malfoy said nothing and she walked past him back into the manor and up to her room by herself.
Emotionless as she was, it was nice to feel more like a functioning person again. No grief. No fear. No depression or despair. She didn't have to worry her body would betray her with a panic attack.
The potion could easily get addictive.
Not that Malfoy would allow it. Healer Stroud had mentioned that potions for anxiety could interfere with pregnancy, so she was probably only going to be dosed with it for a short time.
Hermione wished she knew more about magical pregnancy. It had been a largely overlooked aspect of her training as a healer. Given parchment and a quill she could write a thirty inch essay on anxiety potions and how they interacted with healing magic and dark curses. But pregnancy was excluded from casualty healing. Almost no one had babies during the war and if they did, they stopped fighting and went to a midwife.
She wondered how the potion was made. She was almost positive it contained billywig sting slime, valerian and sopophorous bean. Maybe sloth brain mucus too. She thought back over the flavor and tingling as she had swallowed it. Perhaps that was a reaction of the sting slime combined with syrup of Hellebore.
It was nice to have something new to think about. Her brain had felt like it had scratched itself raw ever since the war. Completely starved of anything new to turn over in her mind. It was full of the past. Reviewing it over again and again. Wondering what had gone wrong.
Her past was like a millstone. Always dragging her down. Dragging her inexorably back as she wondered again and again what had gone wrong.
Had she known? Had she known why the Order had lost the war? Known and hidden that information? Chosen to torture herself by concealing it?
Why? As Malfoy had said, she had lost the war. What would she bother protecting even in the aftermath? Knowing that everyone she cared about was already imprisoned or dead?
Like Dumbledore's death the details surrounding the end of the war felt foggy. She couldn't remember why they had gone to Hogwarts. She couldn't even remember getting captured. She remembered Harry dying. And then she was in a cage watching the Weasleys being tortured.
She'd assumed she'd blanked due to shock.
Hermione explored the entire wing of the manor from top to bottom before nightfall. The attics, every closet, and servant's stairs and tunnels. She didn't comb through the rooms, but she hoped if she grew familiar with them that she'd be able to come back without panicking or having a nervous breakdown even without the potion.
She wondered how many house elves the Malfoys had. There wasn't so much as a cobweb in the darkest corners of the attic.
The next morning she woke and felt like a boulder had been placed on her chest. Pinned to her bed and overwhelmed by the whiplash of despair she'd been unable to experience the day before. She fought to breathe.
The twelve hour respite made all her emotional pain hurt more. Cast it into stark relief. She hadn't realised how deep the cuts of grief and loneliness reached inside of her until she was briefly freed from the pain of them.
As the weight of it bore down on her once more she felt as though she were being ground to dust. She could almost feel the edges of herself crumbling and breaking. Dissolving into ether. There was almost nothing left of her but hurting.
Her spine and the back of her neck felt overheated. While the rest of her body was clammy and icy cold. Her skin was damp. As though she'd sweated the potion out in the night.
She rolled from the bed and was violently sick upon the floor before she could bolt for the bathroom.
She slumped down, shivering. Her body felt leaden. She could barely move her arms. She wanted a shower. She was too hot and too cold.
She was thirsty. She was desperate for water.
She wanted a hug.
A fresh wave of loneliness struck her so abruptly she burst into tears.
Feeling sick and weak made her feel like a child again. Desperate for her mum to fuss over her and lay a hand against her forehead. For comfort.
She couldn't even remember her mum but she missed her nonetheless. She recalled being in bed and having cool fingers on her face, brushing away a lock of hair and then resting on her cheek.
When the wave of nausea finally passed she dragged herself into the bathroom and after drinking several glasses of water, dropped herself into a lukewarm bath.
It was like having a hangover while sick with the flu. Perhaps it was what withdrawal felt like. Hermione had never experienced a drug addiction as far as she could recall.
Of course Malfoy wouldn't warn her that she'd feel like death once the potion wore off. She cursed him strongly in her mind and hoped he'd feel it.
She wanted to drown herself.
When she went back into her room the floor had been cleaned.
She felt feverish still. She dragged the blankets off her bed and huddled under them, pressing her cheek to the window.
She was sick the whole day and apparently Malfoy had anticipated it because he didn't show up expecting her to go outside. The following afternoon he arrived without a word despite the daggers she'd glared at him and led her out to the veranda. She discovered that the potion had acclimatised her somewhat. She was able to manage walking off the veranda without having a total panic attack. She shook and had to fight against hyperventilating but her fear didn't swallow her. Getting across the gravel and into the hedge was the hardest. But once she was among the towering yew, brushing her fingers against the walls, and focusing on navigating the route, she was able to get herself to breathe somewhat evenly.
When she returned to the veranda Malfoy was gone. Apparently satisfied that he was no longer obliged to monitor or walk her.
The potion appeared again the next morning. Hermione spent several hours debating with herself over whether to take it again. The mere thought of spending another day going through withdrawal made her nauseated. In the end she gritted her teeth and downed it.
She crept through the manor like a shadow and explored the main wing. She was constantly on alert for the sharp tap of Astoria's shoes. She hadn't encountered the witch since the night she'd taken Hermione to Malfoy's room. But Hermione had occasionally caught glimpses of someone watching from the windows when Malfoy had taken her outside. She wasn't interested in testing whether Astoria's early threats had been sincere.
She explored most of the main wing that day. There were so many doors that were locked she realised that Malfoy had probably keyed the manor with her blood. Caged her within her own blood signature.
The next day her withdrawal was worse.
Then three days later the potion did not appear with breakfast. Hermione suspected she knew why and could barely eat. She paced madly in her room and then went and sat under the spray of the shower down the hall for an hour while she tried to stop shaking.
After dinner a house elf appeared to take the dishes away.
"You is to get ready for tonight," it said before vanishing.
Hermione sat frozen in her chair. She'd assumed as much. Confirmation still felt worse. Having had an additional month to dread it made the horror feel colder. It felt as though something were twisting her organs into a tighter and tighter knot until she felt like something was about to tear. Her chest felt so tight she could barely manage to draw even shallow breaths.
She went into the bathroom and bathed. When she re-emerged she found herself glancing repeatedly toward the center of the room. She was terrified that Malfoy might choose to vary the experience. She found herself clinging to the hope that the table would appear and he wouldn't do anything novel.
She didn't want to be raped in a new way.
She nearly sobbed with relief when the table appeared at precisely 7:30.
She wanted to slap herself. In what world of horror was a woman happy that she was going to be raped in a familiar manner?
Malfoy came and went for five evenings without a word to her. In precisely the same manner as he had during the previous month.
Every evening Hermione gripped the table and imagined herself brewing the anxiety potion. She had so much free time to mull over things she had started trying to guess how to reverse engineer it.
She tried to make it as real to herself as possible. Trying to recreate the scents and sensations. She was exacting about the details. Obsessive.
Far far away from the rocking. From the bite of the wood into her hip bones. From the sliding sensation inside of her that she refused to allow her mind to attend to.
She was not there.
She was brewing a potion.
She removed a pewter cauldron from the shelf using a step-stool. With a practiced flick of her wand she conjured a flame. She waited until the metal reached a medium temperature before adding the billywig sting slime. She would hold the vial in her right hand, and tip it. The sharp scent would tickle her nose.
The pewter and heat would cause the levitating properties of the sting slime to evaporate after boiling for one minute. She would bottle the steam and use it as an anesthetic on localised injuries. She would remove a sloth brain from a jar and using a long knife slice it so thinly the pieces were transparent. The brain under her hand would be spongy and delicate. Her touch would be very light and the knife blade razor sharp. After one minute she would reduce the temperature of the slime to a low simmer and place the slices of sloth brain across the surface, allowing two minutes for the sting slime and sloth brain to amalgamate, slowly turning into a steel blue colour with a viscous consistency.
In the meanwhile she would prepare the sopophorous bean. She would use twenty. Crushing them under her silver dagger's blade before extracting the juice. Feeling the pressure in the knuckle of her thumb as she bore down. She imagined the sensation of the bean giving way under her blade. Once the juice was added she would stir the potion clockwise twelve times with a silver brewing rod and then eight times counterclockwise with an ash rod. Then the potion would be covered and left to brew on a low temperature for seventy-three hours. The slow brewing was necessary to nullify the somnolent properties of the sopophorous juice. The potion would turn pale green. In the seventy-fourth hour she would add minced murtlap tentacles, a crushed squill, valerian, and powdered ashwinder eggshells. She would bring it to a rapid boil for thirty seconds and then use a cooling charm to reduce the temperature to just above freezing. The potion would become midnight blue with an aqueous consistency. Then she would drip syrup of hellebore over the surface. One drop for ten slow clockwise and then counterclockwise stir rotations. Her arm would tire slightly. Thirty drops in all until the potion thickened and stuck to the ash stir rod. Stir it three times with a silver rod and bring it to simmer for five minutes before removing it from the heat and allowing it to drop to room temperature without magic. It would become dark grey and syrupy. It would yield twenty-five doses.
She brewed it in her mind every night. Adjusting quantities and techniques. Revising the order of added ingredients. By the fifth night she was almost positive that she had figured the entire recipe out.
On the sixth day she forced herself to go outside alone for fear that otherwise Malfoy would show up and order her to.
Conquering her agoraphobia, she had decided was her first priority. Any schemes involving Malfoy would wait until she could manage going outdoors consistently.
Deep down she suspected she was merely deluding herself and avoiding him. But she was at a loss as to how to trick him into killing her when she couldn't even talk to him without his permission. As for seducing him, per his suggestion, well, the idea was so absurd it was almost laughable.
The next day he showed up in her room, pinned her to the bed and tore through her memories. He barely spoke to her. When he was done he simply turned on his heel and walked out.
Hermione had a dream two days later of Alastor Moody standing in front of her in a small storage closet. His eye spinning around suspiciously. It was as though they had been underwater, the words exchanged were indecipherable. He had looked at her intensely as he said something, watching her reaction. She remembered feeling skeptical but determined. Moody said something else and Hermione shook her head. He nodded sharply and when he turned to leave he had been stone-faced. But his eye as he looked back had hesitation in it. Alastor never hesitated. After Alastor had gone she stood alone for several minutes.
She didn't know what the dream meant. She tried not to dwell on it.
Hermione explored the main wing of the manor. The portraits were apparently strictly forbidden from speaking to her. They watched her with a gimlet eye but never uttered a word. She explored the hedge maze until she could walk through it with her eyes closed. She couldn't quite manage anywhere else outdoors unless she crept along the side of the manor.
Open spaces were still very difficult. She couldn't even peel herself off the wall when walking down the larger hallways. And she could barely stand to set foot inside the ballroom in the main wing of the house.
After ten days Healer Stroud arrived again to see if Hermione was pregnant. Hermione was not. Hermione had been exercising aggressively in her room to funnel her rage. Healer Stroud was pleased to see the improvement in Hermione's physical condition.
The next day when Hermione entered her room shivering from her walk she found Malfoy there, waiting for her in full Death Eater regalia.
"Fancy an outing, Mudblood?"
Hermione stared at him, taking in what he was wearing. His face was an expressionless mask as he approached her.
"Did you forget?" he asked, his silver eyes flickering. "Two months. No pregnancy. The Dark Lord is eager to see you."
He gripped her by the arm before she could back away and apparated.