Nobody’s Daughter

After breakfast, Hermione wanders around the Manor for no less than fifteen minutes before finally finding the library. Did he purposefully give her a location she’d never been to before in this labyrinth of a house just to frustrate her? She yanks the door open and decides the answer must be yes.
The library and vast and unbelievably beautiful. There are floor to ceiling arched windows across the entire outer wall. The room is painted gold and even seems to shimmer with the light—possibly enchanted, possibly paint constituted with real gold. The shelves stretch nearly to the ceiling, filled to the brim with books that appear weathered and books that appear hardly touched. The arrangement of the shelves creates small alcoves between them. They’d make perfect reading nooks, Hermione thinks, but the Malfoys seem to indulge in everything except for coziness. The ceiling is enchanted to look like forest tree cover, branches and leaves swaying with the wind. There are plants hanging from the ceiling and well-tended vines spill over the pots. Some nearly reach the ground.
Malfoy stands on the far end of the room. There’s a wooden podium in front of him, papers strewn about it. Books and pieces of parchment swirl around him slowly; he flips pages and leans down to scrawl a note on one of the strewn pages, then straightens and continues to rifle through the assortment. In this context, Hermione can see the studious boy she rivaled with so fiercely at Hogwarts. She outpaced him in every class except Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions. Their marks constantly inched past each other’s. She’s often thought it’s the reason he disliked her so fiercely; how dare she, a Mudblood, perform better than him academically?
The preoccupied look has returned to his face. His hair lays neatly, but there’s an icy strand that seems to have been worried enough to have fallen in his face. He truly looks focused. In this moment, when his attention is on a project and not on terrorizing her, she can see his youth. It’s hard to conceive what he’s become.
She steps forward into the library. She’s sure that she doesn’t make a noise and she doesn’t even think Malfoy has noticed she’s there until he begins to speak.
“You know, it’s the most curious thing,” he begins, continuing to rifle through his collection of spinning information, “I compiled a list of locations I thought Potter most likely to hide. There are certain limitations. He’s a Parselmouth but doesn’t possess any other linguistic talents, so it makes most sense that he’s in an English speaking country. Somewhere geographically distant from England—it wouldn’t do to hide the Boy Who Lived in Glasgow or Derry, that’s just a hop and a skip. If I were hiding a wizard, I’d want them separated from their seeker by an ocean or mountain range.”
Malfoy waves his wand and a translucent, almost smoky map of the world appears. The UK is marked in red with the rest of the continents in blue. The countries are segmented with black lines.
“That led me to America, some European countries, and Australia.”
Those regions glow a vibrant green. Hermione swallows.
“America’s an enormous chunk of land. I’d want to rule everything else out first, and America’s so intertwined with British news that sightings of him would’ve been reported. Of course, that’s true of most European countries as well.”
More countries are marked out in red.
“But Australia…” Malfoy trails off and steps out of his cylinder of books and paper. They continue to float. He walks towards the map, his hands clasped behind his back. “Australia seems as good a place as any to look. It’s not too big, and population density is fairly segmented. Enough people that one or two more won’t cause a fuss. English speaking, not unlike British customs. It was only emancipated from the Commonwealth in 1942, as I’m sure you know. Freed fully in… what is it, 1984?”
“1986,” Hermione says quietly. Her throat is painfully dry.
“Ah, that’s right.” Malfoy nods. “1986. And Australia really couldn’t be farther away from England, could it? If I were a bright witch or wizard wanting to tuck someone away until the storm of evil passed, I’d choose Australia. Wouldn’t you?”
He turns his head to look at her now, and a snake of ice slithers down her spine. She feels like she’s choking. His face is cruel and analytical. He’s talking about her parents. He’s found them. It’s supposed to be impossible, it was supposed to be… well, everything he said. Densely populated enough to hide them, English enough for them not to sorely stick out, far enough away to be an afterthought.
She feels like she can’t breathe. She opens her mouth to say something, but she can’t force words out. Her heart is pounding and her nails dig into her palms.
“You did a good job,” he says encouragingly with a nod. “Excellent, really. A False Memory charm—I assumed it was a simple Obliviation. But you’re too thorough for that, aren’t you? It’d be too easy to find the Muggles that have no memory of the first two decades of their lives. But Wendell and Monica live full, happy lives. Isn’t that good to hear, Granger?”
Hermione walks towards him, her body moving without the input of her brain. Her hand reaches out to grab his wand—she’s fast, but he’s faster. He grabs her wrists and shoves her backwards. Her back lands against the endcap of a bookshelf. He’s gripping her wrists still, holding them in front of her. He’s so close that they’re pressed to his chest. She tries to yank them loose, tries to use her body and her legs to push him away from her. A guttural cry escapes her, angry and bereaved. Not her parents. He puts a hand over her mouth and presses her head into the bookshelf. His other hand is holding both of her wrists like it’s nothing.
He shushes her softly, shaking his head. A look of concern is etched across his brow, but his mouth spreads into a slow, wide smile.
“I told you that you were going to help me.”
Hermione shoves against him again. Tears are prickling at the corner of her eyes. A lamp behind Malfoy explodes with the force of Hermione’s rage. He contains her movements like a boa constrictor wrapping around its prey. The more she fights, the tighter he holds her. She finally goes limp against the shelf, just trying to catch her breath. Her muscles are exhausted and it’s hard to breathe while working so hard with a hand over her mouth.
“Let me spell this out for you. Australia’s the best guess I’ve got so far. That’s trouble for you, isn’t it? So point me in a different direction. If Australia is a bad lead, give me a better one. Don’t scream, it’s really quite irritating.”
His hand falls from her mouth and he shoots her a warning look. Hermione drinks in large breaths of air, still fighting off tears.
“Please get off of me,” she says raggedly. Malfoy releases her wrists and steps away from her, still keeping his eyes fastened to her. Hermione scrapes the loose curls away from her face. “There are no Order outposts in Australia. There would be nowhere for him to go.”
Malfoy raises his eyebrows and nods. He looks pleased. Hermione’s throat burns with guilt. She shouldn’t be giving him any information whatsoever about the Order. But what choice does she have? She orphaned herself to protect her parents, and Malfoy… he has to stay away from them. He has to.
“Where are the Order outposts, Granger?”
Hermione shakes her head. She feels like she’s going to vomit. She braces one hand against the bookshelf and tries to catch her breath. She’s dizzy and hot. One hand presses against her chest, trying to palliate the pain spreading through it. Her arms are tingling and numb.
“Something’s wrong,” she gasps. Her vision begins to swim. She drops to her knees, breaking her fall with her palms. The carpet in the library is so soft. She could just lie down there and go to sleep. “Draco, I think I’m dying.”
She manages to choke this out before she’s completely unable to take a breath. She’s aware of Malfoy’s hands on her and he’s saying her name. She can’t speak. She can barely see. Hermione reaches deliriously towards the feeling of losing consciousness.
Her world goes black, and it’s sweet. No pain from the bruises on her face, no fear, no anger, no crushing devastation. She’s just floating. Intermittently, she returns to her body long enough to force her eyes to crack open. She sees Malfoy’s chest, can feel his arms wrapped around her. He’s carrying her somewhere. She can hear muffled shouts all around her and something is being poured into her mouth. She gags at first, then falls asleep.
She has no idea how long she slept before she wakes. She’s laying on the bed in the room Malfoy told her to sleep in. It’s dark outside, so it must’ve been hours. She didn’t dream. Hermione groans and rubs her eyes; her head is pounding. But finally, she can see clearly again, and she sits up to look around.
Malfoy is sitting in the chair in the corner, eyes fixed on hers. She gasps and draws back. The idea of him being at her bedside while she was insensate and unaware is horrifying.
“What happened to me?” Her voice is a croak. Her throat is still sore. Malfoy gestures to the glass decanter of water on her nightstand, and she pours it into the small accompanying cup and gulps it graciously.
“I’m not sure,” he says musingly. “You seemed pretty stressed out, then you just… keeled over. Said you thought you were dying and had me pretty convinced, too. We gave you Dreamless Sleep and it seemed to settle you down.”
Hermione remembers now. The library. Malfoy detailing how he found her parents… asking for information about the Order posts. Hermione had a panic attack.
She looks at him from across the room, her eyebrows drawn together. He’s so confusing to her. Since she’s been there, he’s alternated wildly between demonstrating cold cruelty and acting like he could give a good goddamn about her. He’s certainly manipulative; the question is simply what his angle is, and what he’s truly like under all of that intention.
“Granger,” he starts, leaning forward slightly. There’s an earnestness in his voice. “I’m not going to deliver Potter to the Dark Lord.”
This takes her aback. “What are you going to do, then?”
Malfoy takes a breath. It looks as though he’s tossing something over in his mind. “I’m going to kill him.”
Hermione doesn’t know what else she expected. Of course he is. Whether he’s going to do it out of loyalty as a Death Eater or to exact his own personal vendetta—it doesn’t matter. Hermione knows that Malfoy finding Harry isn’t going to result in Harry’s survival. Hermione draws her knees up to her chest and scrubs at her face.
“You’re truly vile,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut. She hears Malfoy sigh and stand. She looks up at him, expecting something he thinks is witty and is actually insensitive and irritating.
“I know,” is all he says back. His voice is quiet.