Too Small for Hope or Promise
"The smell of him mixed with creosote, exhaust -- there, on the ground, slipping through the minutes, trying to notch them. Like taking the same picture over and over, the spaces in between sealed up (...) And words, little words, words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing but soothing nonetheless." - The Torn-Up Road, Richard Siken.
_
The Slytherins were already waiting in front of the Solarium’s entrance when Hermione arrived, most of them scowling, decidedly annoyed at being kept waiting. Nott waved as soon as she appeared.
“Nice of you to show up, Granger,” called Nott loudly. Hermione frowned.
“I’m just a couple minutes late,” she said, then begrudgingly, “but I apologize.”
As she hurried to take down the wards, Hermione felt Malfoy’s gaze burning a hole in her skin. She resisted the urge to look at him, preferring to ignore the strange fluttering low in her stomach. You had one decent conversation, Hermione, she berated herself, get your act together.
“Please, go ahead,” she said after the last of the wards had come down. After all of them filed into the room, she entered behind them, taking the chairs out of her purse and enlarging them. “Why don’t you just leave them here?” asked Malfoy, taking one of the chairs. “Is there a furniture thief at large?”
Because I still haven’t told Cartwell that we’re in the solarium, thought Hermione grimly, still refusing to look at him. He chuckled when she didn’t respond.
When all of the group had found their seats, Hermione picked herself a chair, setting it in her usual place in front of them. “Today, I wanted to talk about dark magic,” she said.
“According to Spellman’s Syllabary , dark magic is any type of magic that can be used to cause harm or exert control over others,” said Nott with a sly smile. Hermione wasn’t sure if he was impersonating her or not.
“I don’t need the textbook definition, but thank you, Nott,” said Hermione. “What I want to talk about is your relationship with dark magic. I think we’ve all experienced it, whether we’ve cast a dark spell or had one cast against us.”
“Dark magic is just magic, Granger,” said Malfoy, his tone making it clear that he was stating the obvious.
Hermione finally let herself look at him properly -- she needed to, if she wanted to get a semblance of the meaning behind what he said. Malfoy was always posturing, making things seem lighter than they really were. Nott did it too, in a completely different manner.
When it came down to the core of it, Hermione thought only one of them seemed to be using it as a shield. “Care to expand?” she pressed, hoping he didn’t notice that she looked at his forehead rather than his eyes.
Malfoy let out a deep sigh. “Hogwarts, the Ministry, and the so-called light side have a superficial conception of what dark magic is supposed to be. Any magic is a magic that should be mastered, and like with anything, what matters is the wizard’s intentions.”
Hermione hummed in thought. “I can’t disagree, but it’s known that dark magic affects the wizards who use it. Dumbledore used to say that it damaged the soul.”
“Typical of you to bring up that batty gaffer in a debate,” Bulstrode huffed a laugh, twirling a curl in her finger.
Hermione forced down the urge to come to the late headmaster’s defense, then said, “I’m not trying to debate you. Like I said, I just want to understand how you relate to that type of magic.”
“What Malfoy here was trying to say,” intervened Nott, “is that there are ways to, ah, how can I put it?” He scratched his non-existent beard. “Have a better control of how the dark arts affect you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hermione, genuinely confused.
“Theo,” snapped Parkinson. “Some things are meant to be kept within certain circles only,” she muttered through her teeth.
“I don’t think there’s any harm in talking about it. It’s not like Granger is going to go around casting dark charms or brewing dark potions,” Nott shrugged, then turned to Hermione. “We’ve talked about how pureblood families have a connection to earth magic,” he said.
“That’s just a story,” said Hermione.
“ You would think so,” said Malfoy, “but all of us were taught about the intricacies of magic and how we connect to it. We learned, at a very young age, how our self-conceptions affect our magic and the importance of strong mental shields”
“I think that’s enough,” said Parkinson, shooting an infuriated look at Nott and Malfoy.
Hermione glanced at the group. Rookwood was oddly silent. If Hermione didn’t have him in her immediate line of sight, she’d be able to pretend he wasn’t even in the room. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, his hand drawing invisible circles against his thigh, too intentional, to be a nervous habit.
He was paying attention, she figured, he just didn’t want to say anything.
“Are you saying you’re taught -- what, ” she said, searching for the right words, “a specific type of Occlumency to protect yourselves against the effects of dark magic?”
Malfoy looked reluctantly impressed, “If you believe that something belongs to you, that it’s a natural extension of you, can it truly harm you?”
Hermione tilted her head to the side. “One would’ve thought Voldemort would’ve known about that little trick.”
“Oh, he knew,” said Nott, “but then again, the Dark Lord wasn’t a pureblood, was he?”
Hermione thought about Bellatrix Lestrange. She was pureblooded. But the way she moved, the strident tone of her voice, how everything she said sounded like a taunt, how her eyes were always wide, too wide for her to be completely sane -- Hermione didn’t think it was as faultless of a solution as they made it sound.
“What Nott and Malfoy are not telling you,” said Rookwood, as if announcing his presence to the room. “is that when dark magic is used as it's meant to be used, there’s no reason for it to harm you.” Hermione turned towards him, seeing his eyes glued to her face.
“What are you on about, Rookwood?” said Malfoy.
“Some pureblood families never had to use mental shields to protect themselves against dark magic, because we know why we are using it in the first place,” he continued, “but then again, some of us think sharing pureblood secrets with a mudblood is acceptable.”
“Maybe that's why most of your family went, you know,” said Nott, pointing a finger to his head.
“I don’t think--” started Hermione, but Rookwood interrupted her, his words coming quicker as he went along.
“I’m not surprised,” he said, a threatening look in his eyes, “You want to understand our relationship with dark magic? We use it when we need to get rid of people like you . When I was a child, my father would take us to the muggle world, just so we could see the kind of scum we are dealing with.” His eyes glazed over as he talked, like he wasn’t in the room anymore.
Hermione didn’t say anything to stop him. She couldn’t. She was too focused on trying to control the puffs of breath that were coming out harder and faster, like she had just finished a marathon she wasn’t fit to have started in the first place. She balled her hands into fists, trying to keep herself grounded.
“We wouldn’t do anything. We are not stupid. But we would imagine,” he continued, leaning forward in his chair. “My dad used to talk about the rush, about the surge of power, about the rightness that you felt in your body when you used a Crucio on a Muggle. Like we were finally paying our proper respects to the earth.”
“Rookwood, you need to chill the fuck out--” said Nott, or at least Hermione thought he did. Hermione’s blood was rushing to her ears, everything was starting to sound muffled, like they were underneath water. Rookwood’s eyes were the only thing she could see as she tried her hardest to get air into her lungs.
“Didn’t you feel it? When Bellatrix crucioed you?” he asked, spit spraying out of his mouth as he talked. “Oh, you don’t think we knew about it?”
Night, gods, unbowed, unafraid, captain -- there was a chandelier in the room, hanging above her head. It would fall, eventually, she knew, it would kill her. It would make the pain vanish, it would take her out of there.
“Rookwood--” said Malfoy, his voice echoing in her ears.
Rookwood talked over him. “We used to laugh about it. We all wished we had the opportunity. It was a competition, who could get to Potter’s mudblood slag first?”
But this place is too light, the sun illuminating the room was all wrong. Hermione shook her head, trying to clear it. His voice morphed, shrank, and stretched, sounding oddly like the shrieks she heard in her dreams. Nothing looked or sounded right, everything was strange.
“You wanna talk about dark magic? Talk about how you felt when she used it on you, Granger. You probably felt like you were being put in your rightful place, for the first time. You knew it, didn’t you? All mudbloods know, no matter how much you fight it…”
_
“Ah, fuck,” said Theo.
The sound of the door slamming shut echoed throughout the solarium, silencing all one of them.
Draco stared at the door, trying to prevent himself from doing something he’d inevitably regret later. This isn’t your place , he thought. Granger should’ve known better than to play with fire. This was going to happen eventually.
But she had known, he thought. There were limits they both knew better than to cross.
“Are you daft?” said Theo, turning to look at Rookwood, “What were you trying to accomplish with this?”
“I’ve been itching to take the mudblood down a peg or two for weeks now. Most of us have been.” Rookwood let out a humourless laugh. “Why are you so pissed, Theo? You and Draco have been so chatty with her, I figured you were getting your money’s worth by getting a piece of her mudblood pussy, as disgusting as mixing with that animal is, but--”
Before Draco realized what he was doing, he was standing up. He cut the distance between them in two short strides. Rookwood stood up from his own chair, puffing out his chest. He was shorter than Draco -- not much, but enough he needed to raise his head to look him in the eye.
“You getting brave with Granger is cute,” spat Draco, “but we all know that you spent the entire war begging your way up the ranks and cleaning up after your wacky-arse daddy and your dim-witted brother. No one took you seriously then, and no one takes you seriously now.”
“You want to talk about my father? What would Lucius think about you defending that mudblood whore?”
“He’d think I have more than two braincells, unlike you. Are you daft? Don’t you see the problem you’ve caused? What do you think is going to happen now? Granger is going to go straight to Hughman and the Ministry bastards, and you’re going to get your probation tripled. If I somehow get mixed in your bloody mess, I swear to Salazar you’re going to regret the second you decided to open your mouth.”
“Okay, that’s enough, lads,” said Theo, moving between them. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said to everyone else. “What, you want to be here when she gets back?”
The five Slytherins picked up their belongings and left the room. As they left, Pansy and Millicent bowed their heads together, whispering, occasionally throwing furtive glances at Rookwood. Before he disappeared down the hallway, Rookwood shot Theo and Draco a nasty smile. Draco rolled his eyes.
When the others had gone, Theo turned to Draco. “Mate, you should probably find Granger.”
“What are you on about, Theo? I’m not going after her.”
“We both know you’re not this pissed just because Granger is going to write that up in Rookwood’s file,” hissed Theo.
“Theo, if you think this is the right time for your baseless insinuations, I’d think twice--”
“Okay, fine, if it makes you feel better, go find her and make sure she’s not going to implicate us in whatever the hell she does.” He grinded his teeth. “Better? Then get the hell out of here.”
“Why don’t you fucking go, then?”
Theo exhaled a deep sigh. “Me? Please. Granger would just hex my arse up.”
_
She was sitting on the floor. Blood pounded in her ears. She shivered, the shaking taking over her body. She couldn’t grab her wand: her hands shook too much, she’d just drop it. She didn’t even know where it was.
She wanted to apparate, she wanted to go home, she wanted her parents, but there was an arm holding her down and she couldn’t fight against it. She’d tried, for too long, she didn’t have the strength anymore. There was no use.
Bile was rising up her throat, she was choking. Her chest felt unnaturally tight, like there was a bear inside of it, pounding its fists against the inner walls of her body, begging to come out. She’d explode from the force of it. She knew it.
“Granger.”
She pressed her hands to her ears, trying to drown out the sound of screams around her, undulating baritones and sopranos.
“Granger, fucking hell.”
The chandelier was going to fall, if she looked up, it’d smash her skull open. “Fuck Theo, I’m not cut out for this,” a voice whispered, Then, more firmly, “Granger, snap out of it.”
There would be blood everywhere, Harry and Ron would find her like that -- they would see the inside of her and the remains of her body. “Granger, I’m serious, don’t test my patience.”
They would see the word being carved into her skin. Her arm felt numb, unmoving, a phantom pain making her want to rip it off. Hermione was going to have to rip it off --
The sudden force of an open palm smacking her in the face made Hermione gasp, her eyes immediately watering. “Oh my god,” she said, pressing a hand to her stinging left cheek. “What? Oh my god.” She breathed out, her chest deflating like a burst balloon.
“Don’t kill me, I didn’t know what else to do.”
Hermione’s eyes focused enough to see Draco Malfoy. He was crouching in front of her, his knees touching the floor. They were surrounded by grey walls -- they seemed to be in a storage closet, boxed in by shelves of office supplies. She didn’t remember getting there.
“Did you slap me?” she murmured incredulously.
“It’s not like I had a choice!” he exclaimed. He looked at her nervously. “You were having a fit, Granger, you were muttering nonsense and dry heaving. I heard you as soon as I turned the corner. I thought you were going to pass out.”
“And your solution was to smack me in the bloody face?” she said.
“It worked, didn’t it?” he said, then stood up, brushing the dirt off his pants. “Well, if you’re all better, I’m just going to go.”
Hermione didn’t say anything, her palm slipping from her face. She stared at her outstretched legs; the room was so tiny that soles of her feet touched the opposite wall. Her chest was still burning, and she couldn’t believe Malfoy had seen her like this.
She heard him sigh, then what sounded like his back slipping down the wall. He sat beside her, his right leg momentarily touching her left leg as he settled on the floor. Malfoy sitting on a dirty floor, she thought incredulously. I never thought I’d see the day.
“Weren’t you going to leave?”
He shrugged, which made his shoulder brush against hers. “Do you want a cigarette?” asked Malfoy.
“That’s a nasty habit.” Hermione made a face. “It gives you lung cancer, don’t you know?”
“You’re a goody-two-shoes even when you’re going mad, go figure,” he muttered, then grabbed the cigarette from behind his ear. He lighted it with his wand, which he slipped into his pocket before taking a drag.
“I’m not going mad,” her voice sounded weak to her own ears, “I had a panic attack.”
“A what?” he asked, blowing the smoke from the corner of his mouth so it didn’t touch her face. That’s nice of him, she thought. “Why are you staring at me?”
“A panic attack is an episode of intense fear. It causes a severe physical reaction,” she explained, ignoring his other question.
“And you’re scared of what?” he frowned. “Augustus Rookwood? That’s ridiculous.”
Hermione felt a twinge of irritation. But he can’t possibly know what it means, she rationalized. He was being nice, or the version of nice a Malfoy could muster.
“Not of him,” she said. “His words reminded me--” she paused, “of other stuff.”
Malfoy turned to look at her. He stared at her for a couple of seconds. She didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly, but he seemed to have found it, because he just nodded and looked straight ahead again, taking another drag of his cigarette.
“I smoked once,” she said, then her eyes widened, what the hell am I doing?
“What?” Malfoy huffed a laugh. “You just went off on me about it.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she said. “I was hardly going off on you, I just alerted you to the consequences of your actions. You might be young now, but your body will catch up--”
“Backtrack a bit, Granger,” he interrupted. “You just told me you smoked, then proceeded to lecture me about it? You’re a fucking hypocrite.”
Hermione wrinkled her nose. “It’s not like I made it a habit,” she said, weighing how much she should reveal. “I was in Australia a couple of years ago. I had to take care of some things there after the war,” she explained, seeing his curious look.“But, you know, it didn’t go as planned. I couldn’t manage to do what I needed to, and I was feeling frustrated--”
“So you smoked?” he arched a brow.
“I was sitting on a bench at Circular Quay, staring at Port Jackson like it had the answer to all of my problems,” she sighed. “I must have looked so pathetic, because this man just came up to me and handed me a cigarette. He said I looked like I needed it.”
Malfoy chuckled. Hermione smiled against her own will.
“Did you enjoy it, at least?”
“That’s the worst part!” sighed Hermione. “I couldn’t even finish the thing, I was coughing so hard.” Malfoy outright laughed at that. Hermione thought it was a nice sound.
They remained in silence as Malfoy finished his cigarette, his gaze pinned to the wall in front of him. Hermione tried to do the same, but snuck quick glances at him whenever she thought she could get away with it.
There was a tornado inside of her. Her head was buzzing with it - the aftershocks of her panic attack still running through her body, then her complete bafflement at having Malfoy there with her, actually managing to calm her down, in spite of himself. It was enough to make her forehead throb in a headache.
“I can’t believe you actually slapped me in the face, Malfoy,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I can’t either.”
Malfoy stubbed out the cigarette against the wall. He looked at the ground, seeming to be gearing himself up to say something,
“Look, Granger. Rookwood was out of line, but--”
“If you’re going to defend him--” said Hermione, sobering up.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say!” barked Malfoy. “I was going to say that he was out of line, but he’s a bloody bastard, so it’s not like you should be surprised.”
“Oh,” said Hermione, surprised. “Thanks, I guess.”
Silence again.
After some time, Hermione said, “Parkinson is pretty aggressive too,” mostly to see how he’d react.
“Yeah, but she isn’t cruel,” he sighed. “That’s not to say you should let your guard down around her. She’s a Slytherin.”
“And I can let my guard down around you?” she asked skeptically.
Malfoy stared down at her, “I’m not saying that either.” he said. When Hermione didn’t reply, he continued, “the best thing you can do right now is brush it off, let it die.”
“No way,” she said. “Fuck him. I’m reporting his arse to Hughman.”
He nodded. “Sure, you can do that,” he said, giving her a smarmy smile. “Or you can let him suffer. Start the next meeting as if nothing happened. He’ll be waiting for an Auror to burst in, maybe even Scar-Head, to come in and rough him up for fucking with you. Even Rookwood is scared of Potter. When that doesn’t happen, he’ll start to freak.”
“So I let him get away with it just so I can play a mind trick on him?” She frowned, “That’s not really my style.”
“Yeah, I know, and he knows that too. And I’m not telling you to not do anything, by all means, fuck him over. But make him sweat first, then act on it when he least expects.” He shrugged, then stood up, “That’s what I’d do, at least.”
Hermione looked up at him, still seated on the floor. She thought about the process to report Rookwood to Cartwell, then having to explain the entire situation to Hughman, who would inevitably have to notify a Ministry employee about it. Harry would find out, she was sure.
She knew it was the right thing to do, and she’d do it, eventually, but the thought of going through those motions made her so physically exhausted, she could lay her head down on the floor of this supply room and fall asleep. I will do it, she argued with herself, but there’s no harm in waiting a little while. I’m not doing it because Malfoy told me to.
“Well?” he said, “are you going to stay here all day?”
“I’m not going back to the meeting,” she said.
“Don’t be mad Granger, they’ve all gone home by now. You really think they’d wait for you?” He rolled his eyes.
“It would be the polite thing to do,” she said, then slowly stood up, taking a step back when she almost ran into Malfoy.
“We’re not exactly a polite bunch,” he muttered, then cracked the door open just a fraction. He hesitated for a moment, his gaze flickering between the door and Hermione. “Do you feel better now?”
They exchanged stares. In Malfoy’s eyes, Hermione thought she saw the same unease that was stirring deep inside her chest. She didn’t know what any of it meant, or if it even meant anything. He was still Malfoy, even when it was getting harder each day to get a clear idea of what that implied.
He made her curious - and Hermione didn’t know how to let go of things that made her curious. She’d poke at it, crack it open until she could unearth the secrets, until she could make sense of whatever it was supposed to be. Malfoy is not a book, though , she thought, he’s a person, a person I don’t even like. And wasn’t that the scariest thing on earth?
Hermione finally nodded at him. She thought he’d stay, if she said she wasn’t. And wasn’t that even scarier?
He nodded, then opened the door the whole way and left. He didn’t look back to see if she’d follow. She didn’t. Instead, she held the door half-open, staring at his disappearing back. When he turned a corner, Hermione finally opened the door and left the room.
Before walking down the hall, she turned to look at the door -- she’d never be able to pass it without thinking about his platinum hair, shoulders rubbing against shoulders, and the mind-blowing realization that she was in over her head.