The next morning, Hermione dragged herself from bed and into the bathroom down the hall with a shower. The hot water beating down and radiating around her was the closest thing to physical comfort that she had access to.
She closed her eyes and stayed there, eventually sinking down onto the floor and hugging her knees as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about the previous night.
She focused on her shower.
One of the most under-appreciated aspects of magic was the never ending supply of hot water. The temperature never faltered or ran out. It just streamed down upon her. If she stayed there for an entire day the water would still come out hot.
When she finally forced herself to turn off the taps and climb out, she stood in the middle of the steamy bathroom trying of summon the willpower to dry off and dress.
She had never felt so unmotivated. Existing seemed like such a unfair demand.
Hermione would give anything for a book—anything to read but the news. She was sick of the news.
Perhaps she would go for a walk. She hadn't been outside since the equinox. She didn't know if she was ever going to be able to go near the hedges again, but perhaps she could manage a walk along one of the lanes. She could inspect the buds on the trees. Count daffodils. Something.
She walked out of the bathroom and went down the icy hallway wrapped in a towel. Back in her room she went over to the wardrobe to pull a fresh set of robes out.
Laying them out on the bed she dropped the towel and surveyed herself.
The remaining scars from Montague had all faded entirely. There was a spot on the inside of her right breast that still felt scarred in the tissue.
Hermione ran her fingers over it thoughtfully. It had been so deep, it probably should have required a more specific healing charm. The area felt taut.
It had been deep enough that the damaged tissue was not just dermal. Typical healing charms were designed for skin and muscle repair. There was probably a specific spell for repairing mammary tissue, but Hermione couldn't remember it off the top of her head. She closed her eyes, and tried to think back and see if she could remember learning it.
She could remember a large book of healing spells. She'd carried it with her constantly for several years. Shrunk to fit in her pockets, always on hand. Stained with blood and potions that spilled and sank into the pages when she was too busy to charm them away in time. Dog-eared to the most important sections. So many dog-eared pages. Crammed with her notes in the margins.
It had been the first thing she bought after Dumbledore died. She remembered the large owl that flew into the Great Hall of Hogwarts and dropped it for her.
Everyone else had been talking about restarting DA. Buying books on defense magic. But Hermione had turned to healing. It had been the start of the schism, the space that slowly grew between herself and everyone else her age within the Resistance.
While they had been drilling shield charms and stunners, she had gone to Madam Pomfrey and asked for an apprenticeship.
She spent most of her days with Madam Pomfrey, memorising every healing spell and advanced diagnostic charms the school matron could teach. Learning which signs and symptoms to look out for.
Healing spell work was highly precise—subtle. It required the ability to filter out distractions and focus, to channel magic with extremely delicate nuance. Determine the proper spell, perfect the inflection, and then funnel down one's intentions with precision.
Healers didn't use physical scalpels, but magically speaking the mental exactitude and wandwork was comparable.
Hermione had memorised diagram after diagram of human anatomy. Drilling herself on all the details she needed to train her eyes to pick up in a diagnostic; puzzle pieces of information that had to be assembled in order to identify what might be wrong.
Then in the evening she'd head to the dungeons to study potions with Snape.
When she had finished with healing and potions, she would sequester herself into a corner of the library, rifling through book after book in search of useful spellwork for Harry. Until she'd fall asleep there.
Slowly, she had drifted away from her friends.
They were all so righteously angry and yet optimistic following Dumbledore's death. There was a fire of certainty driving them that Hermione couldn't seem to spark within herself even at the very beginning. The more she learned, the more her confidence regarding the outcome of the war seemed to wane. No one else seemed to appreciate how hard it was to keep people alive.
When she failed to share the optimism it offended them. She was Harry's friend, why wouldn't she believe in him? Why was she so determined to make everyone feel scared? Did she think she was smarter than them? She couldn't even cast a patronus anymore. Maybe if she spent more time practicing her defense spells she'd stop being so morbid.
It wasn't that they weren't taking the war seriously, but that their perspective was narrowed. It was Light vs Darkness, Good vs Evil. Light always won. Look at the stories look at the history books. Yes, some people would die, but it would be for the cause; a worthy death. They weren't afraid to die for that.
Eventually Hermione had stopped talking and withdrew with her books. There was no point in noting that history books were written by the victors. Or that there were plenty of wars in the muggle world where lives were just another form of ammunition; where battles failed to mean anything, or produce more than a new list of casualties; a fresh row of graves.
Maybe they all needed to believe such things, but Hermione couldn't. She'd needed to prepare. She buried herself in healing, in potions, in books until the Ministry of Magic fell and the War officially began
Then she'd been rushed off to begin studying in France. Then Albania, when France became too dangerous. Then Denmark. Then—Austria? No.
Had there been somewhere else, before she went to Austria? It felt like there was a gap. A blur. Hermione pushed at the blank space in her memory. Somewhere, somewhere else she'd gone to study. Where could it have been? Why would she forget it? She forced her mind toward the blur and it was just dimness. A low golden light emanating from a lamp, dust, the scent of old paper, dry and green, and the thin chain of a necklace in her hands.
Nothing else. She pressed harder, but the memory faded into the back of her mind again. She couldn't remember anything more.
Just like she couldn't recall the spell for repairing mammary tissue.
She sighed to herself as her fingers fell away from the knotted tissue.
The faultiness of her memory was increasingly unnerving.
Sometimes she wasn't even sure she knew who she had been during the war. She remembered herself as a healer. Just a healer and a potion mistress.
At some point she had diverged from that person, and she didn't know how or when it had happened.
When had she become someone that Voldemort would describe as dangerous? A person who leveled half a prison. Who burned dementors, and stabbed Graham Montague with poisoned knives?
Hermione had no idea where that version of herself could have come from. She found it difficult to believe the person had ever existed.
Somehow that mysterious person had been swallowed up in the darkness beneath Hogwarts. Without the second-hand accounts of Voldemort, Malfoy, and Montague, she would never have even known such a person had existed. She almost would think it was some sort of deception if she didn't have so many scars she couldn't account for.
She glanced down at her left wrist, ran her finger tips over the scattered, silvery scars that mottled her sternum and collarbones, and then traced over the long, thin scar between her seventh and eighth ribs.
Healer Stroud had said the fugues in her mind weren't a dissociation or multiple personalities, but Hermione rather felt that they must be. Hermione as she knew herself to be would never have leveled half a prison and killed countless other people in order to break-in. Not even for Ginny. Hermione wouldn't have treated everyone else as collateral damage in a rescue attempt. She didn't know how fill a sky with burning dementors. She had never carried poisoned knives, much less learned how to stab anyone with them.
There was something cavernous in her ignorance, and she didn't know how to reconcile it.
She pulled on her robes, went downstairs, and wavered at the veranda door. The air was warm and smelled loamy, with faint traces of sweetness. There were huge beds of daffodils and irises that had seemingly sprung up in previous two weeks. The birds were singing.
It was as though the outside world had transformed itself while Hermione had been lying in her darkened room. Nature had dropped its shroud, and stopped mirroring the coldness and gloom of Hermione's life. The world had left her behind. It had sprung to life again, but Hermione was still trapped in a cage, cold and deathly.
She turned and walked back inside.
She didn't want to feel the stirring of spring; not on her skin or in her blood. She didn't want to think about life stirring. Not around her. Not inside her.
Topsy appeared before dinner.
"You is to get ready now," the House-elf squeaked.
It was hours earlier than Malfoy had ever come before. Hermione had no idea what that could possibly be the reason for the change. Every bit of added unpredictability only made it worse. She went cold with dread.
She went in the bathroom and bathed. As she toweled off with shaking hands, she remembered the potions Healer Stroud had sent. She'd been so nervous the night before, she'd forgotten them.
After dressing, she went and pulled one of the vials out of the bathroom cabinet. It wasn't a Draught of Peace; the color and consistency were unfamiliar. She sniffed it. The scent was tangy in her nostrils, slightly citrus and peppery. She put a drop on her fingertip and tasted it. It was warm and mildly sweet on the tongue.
She waited a minute. She felt less cold with anxiety.
She swallowed it, and it was hot sliding down her throat. As it reached her stomach, the heat seemed to bloom outward through her whole body.
Her skin tingled and grew almost achingly sensitive. Hermione froze, gasped with horror and lurched forwards, staring wide-eyed in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dilating as she studied her reflection. She pressed her hands over her mouth and stumbled back.
Stroud had given her a lust potion.
Hermione wanted to burst into tears as she tried to steady herself and will away the effects of the potion currently burning through her.
This couldn't be happening.
It was just boundlessly cruel.
Hermione's hands were shaking as she tried to think of some solution. Some way to neutralise it. She snatched up the cup from beside the sink and gulped glass after glass of water in the hope of flushing it from her system. It didn't work. The heat through her body seemed be dropping lower, beginning to radiate from her lower abdomen.
She walked into her room. She couldn't understand why Stroud would do this.
Punishing Malfoy for whatever interference he had made in the breeding program was one thing, but tricking Hermione into dosing herself with a lust potion was a whole new level of callousness.
Hermione climbed unsteadily onto her bed, laid back and closed her eyes. If she just held still and focused it might be alright.
The click of the door made her flinch.
She opened her eyes and found Malfoy standing there, cold and tense as he unclasped his outer robes and shrugged them off his shoulders. He was studying her as he crossed the room, draped the clothing over the edge of the bed and stared down at her.
"Do you want another Calming Draught?" he said.
It was possible a Calming Draught could help. Hermione calculated, it might ease the physical reaction her body was burning with. She gave a sharp nod and sat up.
As she took the vial from his hand, their fingers brushed and she bit her tongue to keep from gasping.
She unstoppered it and gulped it down while Malfoy knocked back his own potion.
The Draught of Peace had a worsening effect. Rather than ease the symptoms it made her body relax further into them. She dropped the vial onto the bed as she tried to hand it back.
She covered her mouth with her hands and burst into tears. Malfoy stared at her for a moment.
"What's wrong?" he demanded.
"Healer Stroud sent a set of potions that she said would make things easier," she said, smearing away the tears and staring determinedly down at the covers on the bed. "I forgot about it yesterday, but I took it tonight, just before you arrived. I thought it would be for anxiety. That's what it seemed like when I tested a drop. It's not like I can do spell analysis. So I took it, but—" she choked slightly. "It was an aphrodisiac."
There was a stunned silence.
"You are an idiot," Malfoy finally said. "Do you just swallow anything without asking questions?"
Hermione flinched.
"Last time I asked you to identify a potion sent to me, you forced it down my throat out of sheer spite. Was I supposed to assume it would be different with you this time?"
Malfoy was silent. The rage emanating from him was palpable. Like heat waves around a flame, the air almost seemed to distort around the edges of his body as he stood there, glaring down at her.
"You are an idiot," he said again.
Hermione wanted to curl in on herself like a ball.
The heat in her core was distractingly steady, and her whole body felt too warm and sensitive. She felt hollow inside. She wanted to be touched. No one had touched her in so long...
No. No. No.
She took a deep shuddering breath. "Can't you wait and do it later tonight? I'm sure it will wear off after a few hours."
"I can't. I've suddenly been required in France tonight. That's why I came here early, I won't be back to the manor until late tomorrow," Malfoy said.
Hermione gave a small sob.
"Fine." She choked, and forced herself to lay back down onto the bed. "Just—do it."
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on counting backward from a thousand by doubling the subtracted number each time.
Minus one.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine.
Minus two.
Nine hundred and ninety-seven.
Minus four.
Nine hundred and ninety-three.
Minus eight.
Nine hundred and eighty-five.
She felt Malfoy pushing her robes aside and shivered.
Minus sixteen.
Nine hundred seventy-nine.
Minus thirty-two.
Malfoy's fingers near her core abruptly shredded her concentration, and she let out a smothered moan as her eyes snapped open.
Malfoy was looking down at her with wide, horrified eyes.
She stared at him. She had never really seen him as someone sexual before. Despite five months of having him bend her over a table, the sexual aspect of him had never really registered. He was cold and dangerous. Beautiful, but only in the aesthetic, like a marble statue. Not something hot-blooded. Not something she wanted any kind of physical contact from.
She had never, ever wanted to be touched by him in any sort of way.
Now she wanted to feel his lips against hers. To feel his hands on her. The weight of him that she'd been so desperate to escape from the night before—she wanted to feel it; to have him bearing down on her. Pressing into her.
The burn of arousal in her core was mind-numbing. She had never felt the need to have something inside her before, but as she lay there she felt ready to scream if he didn't touch her.
She hadn't thought the second night could possibly be worse than the first, but it was a thousand times worse.
She forced her eyes shut again so that she'd stop studying his face; stop taking in all the details of him that she'd never cared to take note of before. His hair and sharp cheekbones, the intensity of his eyes, his thin lips and straight white teeth, the precise lines of his jaw, and his pale throat disappearing in the black collar of his shirt.
"Just move," she said, and nearly sobbed with the effort it took not just move herself.
A moment later, she felt him prod and slide into her, and she immediately canted her hips forward to take him deeper.
She buried her face in her hands and tried to tear her mind away while she gasped against her palms and felt ruined.
She was shaking.
All she could think of was how much she wanted him to move. Hard and fast.
Whimpers kept forming in her throat and she couldn't smother them. She held herself so rigidly her entire body shuddered as she tried not to allow any kind of reaction.
The coil of want was drawing up tighter and tighter inside of her. She bit her lips together. She wouldn't give in.
She just needed to hold out. He'd come soon and it would be over. Then she could leave the potion to burn itself out of her system. His thrusts were becoming longer and harsher the way they did as he reached the end. He sped up slightly and she bit down hard on her tongue as she tried to keep hold.
And then—
She broke with a despairing sob.
Her whole body spasmed around him. She could feel herself clenching and seizing as he thrust into her a few more times, and then he shuddered with a tortured groan.
After a moment he jerked away, and she barely opened her eyes in time to see him snatch his robes off the bed and then apparate straight out of the room. She caught a glimpse of his face before he vanished; he looked grey, as though he were going to faint.
She lay there on the bed and cried as her head slowly cleared. Reality, bitter as poison, started slowly bleeding into her as she absorbed what had happened.
She had just had the first orgasm she had any memory of.
She didn't know if she'd been a virgin before she was sent to Malfoy. If she hadn't been, the loss of it was one of the many details that had vanished from her mind. It seemed like an odd thing to have chosen to protect. So most likely she hadn't had sex during the war.
Everything felt foreign. Nothing had given her any indication that such things were something her body had been familiar with.
The lust potion had altered things. Permanently, she feared. Awakened her body to a new aspect of these physical invasions that had previously lain dormant.
Hermione lay unmoving for ten minutes.
When the time finally elapsed she got up and went into the bathroom. She pulled out every remaining vial of potion and poured them down the sink before dropping the vials into the bin.
When she looked up the portrait was there, watching her in the mirror. Always watching. Always silent.
Hermione gave her a bitter smile and then slumped to the ground.
The pale young witch stared at Hermione.
Hermione felt cold, as though she were going into shock. She curled up into a tight ball, hugging her knees and trying to breathe.
She was going to go mad.
She was going to go mad.
She couldn't keep holding on. She didn't even know why she was holding on. Why she hadn't just let herself go while she was locked under Hogwarts.
Malfoy Manor was worse.
She buried her face in her hands. She could feel the fluids from herself and Malfoy on her thighs.
She fell asleep on the floor.