XV.
Hermione jolted upright. The soft glow of the moonlight appeared through the massive windows. She was in a bed. And not her own. Nor was it a bed in any of her safehouses. The vaulted ceilings held eerie shadows from the thick forest outside the large bay window. She looked down and found herself in her Muggle denim and jumper, but her coat and boots were gone. She slid her sleeves up and saw the cuff was still clasped around her wrist, and her watch was gone.
The squeak of leather snapped her head toward the door. There, in a leather wingback chair, sat Draco Malfoy. Oxygen was pulled from the room. His long leg was crossed over the other, and his elbows were perched on the armrests. He brought his long fingers together and rested his lips against them as he stared at her. He looked positively ruinous. His furrowed brows encased his gray eyes in a scowl Hermione recognized from their school years. To say Draco was angry was an understatement.
He had probably searched her entire head by now. How long had she been unconscious? He would know everything. He’d know about Pansy and Theodore. Her chest fluttered with anxiety. She was back in Malfoy Manor. And she was at the mercy of his family again.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t trust her own voice. She quickly scanned the room for any kind of help or escape. The window was too high up, and it didn’t look like it opened at all. She noticed a lamp in the corner. She might be able to throw that at him and distract him for a moment. But her magic had been extinguished by whatever this bracelet was. She’d have to fight like a Muggle to get out of here. But even if she got out, what could she do? Her cover was blown. Her accomplices were compromised. She couldn’t keep doing any of this without Pansy and Theo.
Her eyes darted back to Draco. He was still in the same position, but now he was swirling the signet ring he wore on his right hand. She hypothesized possible outcomes of her captivity. Ministry Draco was softer, kinder. He placed an apple on her desk every day. In the final battle, Draco killed his aunt when she was poised to kill Hermione and then fought alongside her. So what would he be like here? Who was he now?
“The silencing charm wore off hours ago.”
The deep timber of his voice nearly made her tremble. He was so calm and composed.
“Hello, Draco.”
He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his fist.
“Granger.”
“You have to let me go, Malfoy.”
He quirked his brow.
“Do I?”
“You’re a capable wizard,” she said. “You must know that I wouldn’t be doing anything this reckless without a purpose.”
“Which is?”
“Haven’t you already searched my mind?”
His scowl deepened.
“I would love nothing more than to scour through the contents of your brilliant mind. But I would never do so without your consent.”
“Ever the gentleman.”
His jaw flexed under the insult.
“That doesn’t mean my patience is infallible. So I would start offering up the information I want.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll start. I’ll let you know all the little breadcrumbs I found, and then you can fill in the tiny missing pieces. And if you’re still unwilling to speak, then perhaps I can demonstrate the extensive training I received as an Auror for interrogations.”
Hermione glared at him. He couldn’t know everything. He was just as arrogant as a man as he had been as a child.
She crossed her legs on the bed and scooted back against the headboard. She grabbed one of the pillows and placed it across her lap. It was hard to ignore his scent.
He snapped his fingers, and various files and belongings filled the bed space before her.
“I’ll reveal all my cards, Granger. Take it as a showing of good faith.”
Her chest tightened at her parents’ last birthday card to her. She didn’t open it. Seeing her mother’s handwriting would be too hard. It would distract her, soften her. That’s what he wanted. She saw a note she’d written Harry. Her planning book. Her perfume. A case file with her parents’ names on it. Her ministry identification card. Her stomach sank. All the clues she’d left for Harry and Ron had fallen on deaf ears. It hadn’t been them that found her. It was Malfoy. That clever bastard had no business poking around in her disappearance. She knew the Ministry would assign Ron and Harry to the case. It should have been them. It was always supposed to be them.
Malfoy snapped again, and two dozen photographs appeared before her. Death Eaters. And her parents.
She looked up at him with a masked expression.
“Someone’s been a busy witch.”
She looked back down at the photographs and picked out four Death Eaters. She pushed them forward on the bed back in his direction.
“So you admit to claiming the lives of the rest of these?”
She stared blankly ahead. She pictured herself in Snape’s potion cupboard. She was categorizing and organizing the various bottles and vials. First alphabetically. Then by size. Then by origin. She manipulated and moved the contents on the shelf in a stoic and rhythmic pattern. The gentle tings and clangs of the glass against the wooden shelf comforted her. The smell of old parchment and cauldrons.
She felt like she was weightless. Like she was floating above the ground. Her eyes focused on the present and realized she was hovering above the ground. Draco now stood before her as she hovered against the wall. She reached her arms out, but he pinned those against the wall with the same magic.
“Put me down,” she gasped.
She wasn’t very high but was now eye-level with Draco’s hulking form. He leaned forward. His lips rested right outside her ear.
“I often wondered where you would Occlude off to.”
His whisper sent chills up and down her spine.
“I think a library would be too easy. It’s already too organized. You’d have nothing to do there. And I know how much you like that brain of yours to be working.”
She hated him. She absolutely loathed the arrogant way he purred truths into her ear. She hated that he knew her mind better than Harry and Ron. She hated that he’d been the clever one to see her clues. She hated that he saw right through her.
“I think you put yourself in a chaotic Occluding space. And I bet you sit there and let your brain recategorize all the contents inside it. A messy broom cupboard. Or the Room of Requirement. Or Weasley and Potter’s cubicles.”
She snapped. She threw her head against his and connected hard with his nose. He cried out and let his magic slip as she sank down the wall. She landed and took off in a sprint toward the door.
He leaped over the bed and pulled her arm around toward him. She gripped the lamp by the chair he was sitting on and threw it against his chest. It clattered noisily against him and shattered. But it didn’t stop him. He was a brute of a man. He took her other arm in his hand and forced her around to look at him.
“That hurt,” he chastised.
He pushed her into the chair he was sitting in. Thick vines began wrapping around her arms, legs, and neck. She struggled against them, but they just tightened against her with each strain.
“I took the properties of Devil’s Snare and used them as a binding spell,” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed.
He pulled the chair forward with magic. Their knees brushed against one another.
“I thought you would think that was clever.”
He held his wand to his face and healed his broken nose. Then, he plucked the various pieces of ceramic out of his jumper that she’d smashed into his chest. He smoothed his hair back down and looked as posh and composed as he had when she woke up.
“Now then,” he said. “Where were we?”