“See you in your dreams, witchling"
He couldn't have said the words out loud, she had silenced him. Being alive was proof of it but Hermione knew she had heard them.
Dumbledore and Madame Pomfrey had assured her that it had most likely been a hallucination. After all, she had been kept in the hospital wing, in and out of consciousness, for weeks following the Department of Mysteries incident.
Hermione had nodded in agreement and yet it had been no surprise when she found herself in a large stone room with Antonin Dolohov after falling asleep.
Fear gripped her but she forced her voice to be steady. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to teach you, witchling”
Hermione’s eyebrows shot up, she had steadied herself ready for the usual threats and insults about her blood status. “Teach me? What could you possibly teach me?” she asked incredulously.
He let his eyes roam up and down her body, “ask me again in a few years,” he said with a smile Hermione didn't quite want to explore the meaning of, “but for now, I want to teach you magic.”
She rolled her eyes, putting a hand on her hip, “You realize that I study magic every day. It’s kind of the point of a school of witchcraft and wizardry,” she said, her tone laced with sarcasm. “Also, how real is, “she gestured to him and to the room around them, “all of this? How is it even possible?”
Hermione flattened herself against the wall as he strode towards her at an unhurried pace, twirling his wand, “This,” he said, touching the tip of his wand lightly to the top of the purple scar visible over her neckline,” should have killed you.”
Hermione stiffened at the reminder as he continued, “it’s a curse that allows me to penetrate and destroy the victim’s psyche causing a painful drawn-out death.” His casual tone made her shiver, “but you, clever little witch,” he tapped the tip of her nose with his wand and she swatted it away with annoyance, "silenced me just in time, I can’t hurt you but the mental connection between us is permanent.”
Dolohov looked up at the arched stone ceiling and the room around them morphed into a snowy clearing surrounded by trees, “and to answer your other question, this is all as real as I choose to make it.”
Hermione pushed off what had been a wall but was now a tree, “and what kind of magic would you teach me if I agreed?”
She noticed his incisors were prominent, lending a wolfish quality to his smile, “the kind they do not teach at your school of witchcraft and wizardry, witchling.”
She watched him vanish before her very eyes and an instant later she felt his breath against the shell of her ear, “You can give me your answer tomorrow, little witch.”
Hermione whirled on her heels only to find herself all alone in the clearing.