Hermione turned to face Malfoy calmly. Even without the potion she doubted she would feel particularly concerned. She stared at him as he approached. She had concluded that generally speaking he was neither permitted nor inclined to hurt her.
Even if he weren't desperate to get into her memories, Stroud had probably spelled out for him exactly why it would be inadvisable to break her psychologically.
"Do you keep a lot of people in cages?" she asked.
He stared at her. His face was slightly pale, and his eyes were dark and hardened with the rage that he was just barely keeping in check. She could feel it twisting around at the edges of him.
It occurred to her that if she were to try to get him to kill her it was probably the perfect moment. He was surrounded by the corrupting, addictive dark magic of the room. She could feel it seeping into her as she stood staring at him. A person could get high casting in an environment like that.
Malfoy's lips pressed into a hard line and she could see his jaw clench. There was so much under his endless cold. A slumbering rage was stirring, rippling just beneath the surface.
The drawing room had a strong effect on him. A sly provocation and she might make him snap. She wondered how to go about it.
Then he sneered.
"You're the only one I keep caged, Mudblood," he said. His expression abruptly became indifferent again, the rage seemingly dragged back down. "Haven't you noticed?"
Hermione's lip curled. Malfoy glanced around the room; his face seemed drawn but he smirked down at her.
"This is my father's wing of the manor," he said.
Hermione looked around sharply, half-expecting Lucius Malfoy to pop out from somewhere wearing a maniacal expression reminiscent of his former sister-in-law.
"Luckily for you," Malfoy continued, "he's been abroad since the end of the war. I like to hope that he wouldn't torture and curse you horribly if you happened to cross paths, but if I were a betting man I'd have to admit the odds are not in your favour. So I advise against regular visits here. Do you want a complete tour before we go? Just to assure yourself that there's nothing conveniently lying about for you to murder me with?"
He gestured toward the door of the drawing room and Hermione walked out. He followed her closely and then shut the door firmly. Hermione felt a pulse of magic as it clicked shut; the sense of darkness vanished from the air around them. The door was heavily wrapped in wards. Hermione realised it was probably one of the innumerable rooms she was not meant to enter. She wondered if the other rooms he kept her from were similarly dredged in twisted magic.
"Astoria didn't say there was anywhere I shouldn't go. I assumed I was allowed to explore the whole manor," she said.
"I'm sure she would be thrilled if you met an unfortunate end.The indignity of your mere existence aside, it might spell my demise as well. Then she'd become a wealthy widow and free to conduct all her tawdry affairs even more publicly than she already does," Malfoy said in an indifferent tone.
Hermione looked up at him.
"And you don't care?"
He glanced over at Hermione with a cold expression.
"I was commanded to marry her therefore I married her. I was never commanded to care," he said.
"You sound as enslaved as I am," Hermione said tauntingly.
Malfoy stopped short in the hallway and slowly turned to face her, quirking an eyebrow. He surveyed her for several seconds and Hermione stopped and stared back at him.
"Are you trying to provoke me or sway my allegiance, Mudblood? How terribly audacious of you."
Hermione studied his face for several moments before quirking an eyebrow of her own. "You've already thought it. If you hadn't, you'd be offended right now," she said.
He continued to study her face for several moments before a slow smile curled across his lips. "You know, you almost seem like a Gryffindor again."
"I've always been a Gryffindor," she replied.
His eyes flashed faintly.
"True. I suppose you have," he said.
The moment stretched out. They kept staring at each other. Hermione's eyes narrowed as she appraised him.
It seemed impossible that he was only twenty-four years old. No one so young should have had such icily restrained rage behind their eyes. Hermione had seen many faces aged by the war but Malfoy's expression was unique. He was so precisely contained, but his eyes were a storm; they looked like they contained the power of the sea.
How many people had he killed? People he knew, people he didn't know; none of it seemed to faze him. His face was somehow unmarked by worry; young and indolent. She could see the war in his eyes, though. All the deaths he had caused and seen, as though the grey in them were ghosts.
Ginny. He'd killed Ginny. Strung her corpse up in front of all her friends and left it to rot.
And Minerva. Poppy Pomfrey, who'd first taught Hermione healing. Neville, Hermione's first friend in the wizarding world. Moody.
Malfoy had killed everyone left after the war. He'd wiped out the Order of the Phoenix.
Even under the potion, the hatred and rage she felt toward him for it was inescapable. She did not merely hate him emotionally. The fury over all he had destroyed was a structure in her mind. He deserved to suffer deeply for everything he'd done. She did not need to feel emotions to believe it.
She couldn't understand what he got from doing any of it. He was wealthy but he didn't seem to do anything with it. He was powerful but he was obliged to keep it anonymous. He had no apparent hobbies other than efficiently killing people and reading. He didn't even seem to particularly enjoy killing people.
His life seemed bizarrely empty of anything satisfying. What drove him?
She opened her mouth to prod but caught herself and refrained. She had to tread cautiously. She wanted to think more about it.
He smirked when he saw her mouth close.
"Composing a psychological sketch of me?" he asked.
Hermione quirked her mouth into a faint smile.
"Yes," she said.
"I'll look forward to seeing it," he said turning to continue down the hallway.
She sniffed and glared after him.
There was a sharp click of heels and Astoria suddenly came around the corner. When she caught sight of Hermione and Malfoy her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed themselves.
"Are we all socializing together now?" Astoria asked in a saccharine voice.
"Just touring the manor," Malfoy drawled, Astoria's face whitened slightly. "The door to the drawing room in the south wing was opened."
"Perhaps the house-elves left it open," Astoria said stiffly.
"Indeed," he said with a smirk. "It was undoubtedly the house-elves."
"I thought you had business today," Astoria said, changing the subject abruptly. "You said your day was quite full when I asked you to stop by the fundraiser this afternoon and yet here you are 'touring the manor.'"
Hermione wavered slightly as she stood between Malfoy and Astoria. There was something intensely unstable about Malfoy's wife and Hermione was disinclined to draw her attention—or ire. However, there was no way for Hermione to withdraw from the tense conversation without being obvious.
She remained frozen, watching the scene carefully while trying to be unobtrusive. The words felt laced with implication and mutual dislike. Astoria was seething with barely veiled resentment, her teeth flashing faintly as she glared up at her husband.
"The Dark Lord has been quite specific that the Mudblood takes precedence over everything else," Malfoy said with a cold expression.
Astoria gave a sharp, hysterical laugh.
"Goodness, I didn't know heirs were so important," she said glancing over at Hermione's stomach.
"The Dark Lord's instructions are what is important," Malfoy said, beginning to appear bored. He wasn't even looking at his wife, in fact Hermione realised, he was looking over Astoria's head and staring at a mirror on the wall that reflected himself and Hermione. "If he asked me to farm flobberworms I would be doing it with equal devotion."
Hermione nearly snorted.
"I haven't noticed any of the other broodmares needing so much devotion. You don't even let anyone near her. It's like you're hoarding her," Astoria retorted sharply.
Malfoy chuckled, a cruel glint entered his eyes as they dropped down to rest on Astoria's face. A flash of uncertainty flickered in Astoria's eyes as though she were caught off guard by the full-attention her husband was suddenly leveling her with.
"I was given to understand you didn't want to lay eyes on her, Astoria. Was that wrong?" Malfoy said, his tone was light—almost cajoling—but there was a freezing edge to it. "Would you rather I trot her about with me? Take her along to the opera? Perhaps have her join us on the cover of the Daily Prophet next New Years? The whole world already knows she's mine. Did you want me to reiterate it?"
Astoria paled visibly and glanced over at Hermione with undisguised loathing.
"I don't care what you do with her," Astoria snarled, then turned on her heel and stormed away.
The instability in the air evaporated with the receding sound of footsteps. Malfoy stared after Astoria with an expression of annoyance. He turned to direct his scowl towards Hermione.
"You've irritated my wife, Mudblood," he said.
Hermione looked up at him. He almost seemed to expect her to apologize.
"My existence irritates her," she replied indifferently. She eyed him. "If you 'care' you could easily remedy that."
He snorted and looked her over.
"That potion really does a number on you," he said. He looked at her so intently it felt as though he were committing her to memory.
She met his gaze calmly. She wished she could be so calm without feeling like she were frozen. There were so many things about him she wanted to unravel and exploit; if she could only rein in her psyche and manage herself.
There was so much about him that made little sense to her.
If she could only get closer.
"I feel like I can breathe," she said. "Like I've been drowning so long I forgot what oxygen felt like."
Then she grimaced.
"The withdrawal leaves something to be desired though," she added.
He laughed and his eyes finally left her face. "If I didn't leave you on the floor retching you might make the mistake of thinking I care," he said in a dismissive voice.
Hermione looked at him.
"You seem surprisingly concerned about my thinking such a thing," she said coolly.
Malfoy paused and stared at her again for a moment before a slow cat-like smile graced his lips.
"Are we moving on with the agenda then?" he drawled.
Hermione's eyes narrowed.
"What was it again? Explore the South Wing, try to find the kitchens, look for a garden shed or stables, find Malfoy and try to find a weakness to exploit? Are we that far down already? You're quite efficient."
Hermione stared at him. She wanted to be angry but the potion had such a reaction carefully stifled.
"You were in my head last night," she said at last.
"I was trying to sleep but you were thinking rather loudly," he said in a bland tone, picking a nonexistent piece of lint from his robes and surveying his foyer as though he were an interior decorator.
"Well, have fun," he said after a moment. "The stables are beyond the rose gardens on the south side of the manor. And the garden shed is on the far side of the hedge maze. I have it on good authority that you cannot touch pruning shears or pitchforks. You might be able to try strangling me with a bridle, but somehow I doubt you could bring yourself to actually do it."
He smirked down at her wrists before turning and ascending the staircase without another word. Hermione stood and watched him disappear down a hallway and then glanced around, mulling him over as she calculated her next move.
He had been reading her mind the night before. She wasn't surprised but it made anything she did feel horrendously futile. He didn't even need to wait to perform legilimency on her; he could just glean her schemes from the forefront of her mind.
She went back to her room and put on her cloak and changed into her boots. As she exited the manor at the veranda she began mentally counting upward by two.
Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve...
As she counted, she let her mind meander, thinking lazily.
Draco Malfoy was an enigma. There were so many contradictions swirling beneath his cold facade. What were his ambitions?
Twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight...
He seemed to be accumulating power without having any specific purpose for it.
He knew he was shackled by orders he couldn't disobey. Marry Astoria, sully his bloodline with half-bloods, keep Hermione under constant supervision...
He followed Voldemort's commands with devotion despite having no apparent taste for them.
What did he get from it? What was it that drove him? His power and status seemed pointless. He didn't seem to be getting anything from it that he wouldn't have as a mid-tier Death Eater.
Sixty-six, sixty-eight, seventy, seventy-two...
Of course Hermione might be missing something. He spent days away during which she had no idea what he did. There could be countless things he was doing that she had no knowledge of.
There was something she was overlooking. A detail she felt she knew subconsciously but couldn't place. Something... something. Like a puzzle she was piecing together, built from all the contradictory information she had been accumulating in her mind.
One hundred and thirty-two. One hundred and thirty-four. One hundred and thirty-six.
She felt something in the back of her mind crack and a page of a well-worn notebook filled with her handwriting swam before her eyes.
"The fanfare is in the light but the execution is in the dark, the purpose being always to mislead. Intention is revealed to divert the attention of the adversary, then it is changed to gain the end by what was unexpected. But insight is wise, wary, and waits behind its armor. Sensing always the opposite of what it was to sense and recognizing at once the real purpose of the trick, it allows every first hint to pass, lies in wait for a second, and even a third. The simulation of truth now mounts higher by glossing the deception and tries, through truth itself to falsify. It changed the play in order to change the trick and makes the reason appear the phantom by founding the greatest fraud upon the greatest candor. But wariness is on watch seeing clearly what is intended, covering the darkness that was clothed in light, and recognizing that design most artful which looks most artless. In such fashion, the wiliness of Python is matched against the simplicity of Apollo's penetrating rays."
Hermione paused wondering where the words had come from. It wasn't a book she could recall. She had memorized the words. As soon as she saw them in memory she recalled memorizing them.
The fanfare is in the light but the execution is in the dark.
She repeated the words to herself several times.
Then she started counting by three as she proceeded on her way through the hedge maze in the direction that Malfoy had claimed the garden shed was.
The day passed pointlessly, filled with counting. There was nothing useful she could find during her final exploration of the Malfoy estate.
The garden shed Malfoy directed her to was locked.
She did discover that Malfoy kept a stable of winged horses; enormous Abraxans, Granians, and Aethonens. All of which stared down at her through barred stable doors and stomped their hooves when she got close.
A dainty Granian was the only one who didn't step back when Hermione approached. It fluttered its smokey wings and shoved its nose through the bars, nickering and tossing its head at Hermione.
Hermione lightly stroked its velvety muzzle and felt the warmth of its huffing breath against her palm. If Hermione's mind hadn't been smothered she might have cried at the realization that a horse was the first warm and gentle thing to touch her in years.
She stood for several minutes petting the horse's forehead and lightly scratching its chin while it nuzzled her robes in the hope of finding an apple or carrot. When it realised Hermione had nothing to offer it pulled its narrow head back through the bars and ignored her.
Hermione lingered there for longer than she should have.
Hermione took to the paths and found the entrance of Malfoy Manor. Large iron wrought gates stood closed and would not open for her. Hermione wasn't sure what she would have done if they had.
She wandered across as much of the estate as she could.
Hermione found the family cemetery. Countless headstones and mausoleums buried under snow. The Malfoy Family was ancient.
Only one mausoleum was carefully cleared of snow. On each side of the door there were enchanted daffodils, blooming. Hermione studied the words carved into the marble.
Narcissa Black Malfoy. Beloved wife and mother. Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.
A large headstone for Bellatrix Lestrange stood nearby. The Black Family crest adorning the marble. Toujours Pur.
Hermione left the cemetery and continued exploring the estate. It felt endless. Isolated. Uninterrupted snowy hills stretching out as far as she could see, blindingly white under the clear blue sky. When night fell Hermione continued wandering, staring up at the constellations until she felt the potion's effects begin fading away.
She felt so ill the next morning she thought she was dying. She vomited off the side of the bed and it took her hours before she could drag herself into the bathroom. She didn't know if she could become immune to the potion but she didn't think it was possible to continue surviving it to find out. Even if Malfoy sent it she doubted she'd be able to handle dosing herself again.
She was sick for two days, pressed against the window as she shivered and sweated the potion from her system. Mulling over Malfoy and the drawing room in the South Wing again and again when she wasn't too feverish to even think coherently. On the second night she dreamt of Ginny.
Ginny was huddled next to a bed and quietly sobbing. She turned sharply when Hermione entered the room. Ginny's expression as she turned and caught sight of Hermione was anguished, her chest was stuttering sharply and ragged breaths were being gasped rapidly through her open mouth. Even her red hair was wet with tears.
As Hermione approached Ginny's hair slipped back and exposed a long, cruel scar twisting down the side of her face from her forehead down to the jaw.
"Ginny," Hermione said. "Ginny, what's wrong? What happened?"
"I don't know—" Ginny forced the words out and then started crying harder.
Hermione knelt down next to her friend and hugged her.
"Oh god, Hermione—," Ginny gasped. "I don't know how—"
Ginny broke off as she struggled to breathe. Choked hiccoughing sounds emerged from deep in her throat as she struggled against her spasming lungs.
"It's alright. Breathe. You need to breathe. Then tell me what's wrong and I'll help you," Hermione promised as she ran her hands up and down Ginny's shoulders. "Just breathe. In to a count of four. Hold it. And then out through your nose for a count of six. We'll build up to that. I'll breathe with you. Alright? Come on, breathe with me. I've got you."
Ginny just cried harder.
"It's alright," Hermione kept saying as she started taking deep demonstrative breaths for Ginny to follow. She held Ginny tight in her arms so that the younger girl would feel Hermione's chest expanding and contracting slowly as a subconscious cue.
Ginny kept crying for several more minutes before her sobs slowed and her breathing slowly began mirroring Hermione's.
"Do you want to tell me what's wrong or would you rather I go get someone else?" Hermione asked when she was sure Ginny was not going to keep hyperventilating.
"No—you can't—," Ginny said immediately. "Oh god! I don't—"
Ginny started sobbing into Hermione's shoulder again.
She was still crying when Hermione woke from the dream.
Hermione replayed the memory in her mind.
Ginny had rarely cried. When Percy died she had cried for days but as the war wore on her tears had dried up along with everyone else's. Ginny had barely cried when Arthur was cursed or when George nearly died.
Hermione couldn't remember Ginny ever crying so much.
Hermione kept turning the memory over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of it.
She couldn't remember the scar on Ginny's face. It had appeared to be several months old in the memory but Hermione had no recollection of when Ginny could have gotten it. It had looked like someone had crudely carved out a section of Ginny's face with a knife.
Hermione wondered if she had been the one who healed it.