"How are you feeling today, Mr. Malfoy?" The sudden and rapid changes in his demeanor were unnerving her. She needed to get this done quickly so that she could go home and take some of her "emergency medicine".

One moment he had seemed eerily similar to the Malfoy she knew at Hogwarts. The next, the muscle in his jaw was working and he stared guardedly in her direction through narrowed eyes.

To be fair, she supposed his suspicion made sense. She wondered if the secretary witch had magically warned him ahead of time or even asked his permission for her entrance. No matter what sort of security they had him under, they wouldn't force people upon him, would they? But his reaction had been so surprised and so strong. How many visitors had come to see him, anyways? He had cronies back at school, but perhaps not quite friends. Regardless, Hermione had been allowed in simply for meeting a fan. Were they showing him off like a zoo animal?

"I feel fine, thank you." His voice was slow and steely. He seemed as if he was trying not to make any sudden movements. Each time he spoke it was a bit less gravelly. It would have been a somewhat nice voice, albeit robotic, had it not been Malfoy's.

Her eyebrows rose incredulously. "Fine?"

A glare was clouding across his features, moving in like a slow, dark storm. "Fine."

She swallowed, nodded, looked down and breathed. She had always been brave. She could do this. She began her questioning. Most of it was basic: "Where have you been?", "What have you been doing?", "Have you been in contact with anyone?", etc...

As the questioning went on, he seemed to relax on and off. When she asked if anyone had known of his location throughout his disappearance, he sniffed disdainfully. With his head held high, looking down at her through his pale eyelashes, for a moment he was the boy from Hogwarts. Just a bully with a rich father.

"Does your mother visit you quite often?"

He was slow with his answer, his chin dipping back down to a normal height. He was less focused on appearing proud, perhaps. For a moment, those grey eyes studied her. She swallowed hard, trying to meet his eyes without shaking anymore than she already was. His eyebrows furrowed a bit, perhaps at her reaction and perhaps in thought.

"I think so," he murmured finally. His aristocratic drawl was quite evident when he spoke quietly, and the bit of softening in his expression assisted Hermione in unclenching her back just a bit.

She was quite displeased with her findings. It seemed as if he weren't completely sure about much himself. When he did divulge details he hurried through run-on sentences and often repeated certain words over and over. Every so often his answers were one or two words that seemingly had nothing to do with her questions. She wrote those down and circled them in her notebook.

"Were you ever in danger?"

He stared at her hard. His lips twitched down for a moment, but that was all. A few moments passed, and she simply scratched in a blank underneath that question, added a star in the margins, and moved on. He was, she hoped, relaxing a bit and she did not want to push that. It was hard enough for her to be here already, though she thought to herself that she was doing well at appearing unaffected.

"Did you eat often?"

"Drink." It took her a quick moment to discern that the statement was both a correction and an answer. She wrote it down.

"Alcohol?"

"Most nights."

"Did you enjoy the outdoors as a kid?" She wanted to get away from any possible flashbacks to a drunken time, in case the memories were stressful for him. This question was meant to sound harmless and light. In reality, she suspected that a feeling of comfort may have drawn him into the forests at a time of great stress. From there, he could have gotten lost.

"Flying. The garden. Pansy." He paused, staring at the wall to his right, before tacking on "Ponds," as well. She thought it odd.

"What about ponds did you enjoy?"

Once again, he met her gaze, but for the moment his eyes were simply blank, open. It may have been that he wasn't totally alert, or perhaps she was seeing a completely unguarded Draco for the first time in his life.

"The fish. There were large ones in the garden, in the ponds there. Ducks in the winter." As he seemed to ponder that, she made a note: Thinks for long periods of time about (simple?) details. The parenthesis and question mark around "simple" were squished in as an afterthought.

At times when he seemed less alert, his fingers would travel to his knee or to his jaw. In either place they would press down hard, relax, and press again at strange intervals. It was like he was using his body as a stress ball. Between the scruff and the shadows that resulted from his back facing the window she couldn't be sure that the bruises she had seen earlier would match the shape of his fingers, but the thought made her want to pace or run or just move in any way possible.

"This won't be in a paper, then?" he asked abruptly. She jumped a little at the sound, but tried to smooth herself back down quickly.

"No, it will not. This is for personal research..." Her voice faltered and she looked at his eyes. He seemed as confused and uncertain as she felt.

"Research," he repeated. She nodded. He was beginning to bristle, but she ventured just a bit further.

"One final question. An original report of the night you were... found states that an accidental hex was fired inside of the muggle police station. What do you know about this?"

She wished that she had kept her eyes down. He was shaking, hands suddenly balled into fists at the sides of his thighs. His forehead was creased, his mouth twitched, and his eyes were wide and wild, unmoving, focusing hard on her face.

"What do I know? Me? You want to- you said- that... this..." He was bearing his teeth, jaw and lips twitching while his eyes never left hers. She expected him to begin screaming and she very much wanted to cower. She wanted to, but she wouldn't.

Instead of rising higher in pitch and volume, the next time he spoke was impossibly low. His breath was shaking, he himself seemed to be trembling. He looked how she felt. Was he having a flashback? A panic attack?

"I think you know exactly what happened with that hex," and it felt like the most threatening thing anyone had ever said to her. She was done, and as quickly as she could she practically leapt from the chair, fumbled with the doorknob and threw herself outside of his room, slamming the door behind her. She ran the way she came, but slowed to a stop halfway back to the lobby area. Panting and shaking, she sat down on the floor in the middle of the hall, pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them as tightly as she could. There were no thoughts in her head, just the feeling that her blood was trying to eat through her and a buzzing noise in her right ear. Far away, she wasn't sure if this were better or worse than the times her brain refused to shut off.

Hermione was used to repression of her own volition. Sure, she could force back thoughts, skip around certain subjects, and distract herself like mad to avoid a day-ending flashback that would ruin her plans. But she wasn't used to doing it subconsciously anymore.

It must have been around a year since her brain had done this to her, and it brought back past frustrations with herself that she had long thought she had come to terms with.

The real Hermione would think about Draco. About what he said, how he looked, every movement. She would pull out her notes and make a map of things, do mind-numbing and mind-bending research, delving into a tough topic like none other. The real Hermione might -okay, probably would- even have another subject to research simultaneously. Since her disorder had sprung up, this sort of researching was exactly how she avoided dangerous thoughts. Even before, however, she had always been known for loving her books, her information, her almost overwhelming amount of knowledge.

Today, however, she felt no will to do any of those comfortable, Hermione-like things. She sat in her office chair and stared into the distance, something wildly out of character for herself. She wanted to work hard, she really did. But her mind felt as if it were shrouded in a thick fog. Her eyes felt tired but her body did not, simply relaxing and breathing slowly. She should be taking notes of how the body tried to take care of itself, forcing relaxation and bringing her completely out of character. She couldn't be bothered to do so.

And when she did force herself to think Malfoy, her shoulders and back muscles would clench a little and she would find herself immersed in daydreams about becoming an owl and flying without fear, or mapping out the entirety of the Hogwarts castle all on her own.

Her psychiatrist, Dr. Wilkes, had told her that some people came to enjoy their repressive tendencies. Instead of mourning over loved ones, they would daydream constantly, lulled into safety without even a hint of fighting it. He mentioned that your brain often repressed things for the body's own good and a little bit of repression was to be expected, that she simply should not use it as a crutch and work to move on. For the first few months, whenever she caught her brain in such an unusual lull she would make a note of it and take it back to Dr. Wilkes. He told her it was helpful for him, but maybe not for herself so early on. That she needed to relax just a little in order to get back to normal.

She wondered if refusing her brain's try at help so early on had led to this ridiculous feeling. Then she wondered if anyone would notice if she napped at her desk.

Obviously, she didn't wind up doing something so un-herself. But she did wish she could have, at least a little bit. At least then she would have done something other than staring at her door for the full eight-hour day. She wanted to care, to be fed up with herself, but she couldn't even pull that much.

As she was closing the door behind herself, someone cleared their throat. She looked up to see Gregory Beak, looking down at her with worried brows. She smiled a tiny smile, and felt utterly defeated, unable to even fake an expression anymore.

He smiled back as jovially as possible. The man never really looked upset, and even in his concern she felt like she was looking at a slightly younger Father Christmas.

"Ms. Granger, dear, how was your break?" His voice was always loud, but he apparently was trying very hard to be quieter for her sake.

"Oh it was quite nice actually. Thank you very much for the help... I may have overworked myself however," she tacked on, hoping it was a good excuse.

His chuckle was loud but she wasn't in the same world as he seemed to be, so she did not flinch.

"Overworked yourself on your break, eh? Why am I not surprised? Did you at least get some rest?"

Her work at a smile continued on. "As much as I could muster, of course."

"Grand! You have a new special project then, I can assume?"

She faltered a bit, but her mind could not bring itself to really give a shit. "I suppose you could say that, yes."

"Ah, how typical of such a thoughtful person! By the by, the Missus and I were planning on having a cookout this weekend. I've invited about half the office so far, would you be interested in attending? Mary would love to see you again, and she keeps dropping hints for me to try to steal that cake recipe from you that you brought last time. Whaddaya say?"

"Oh, of course. That sounds good." God, she sounded like she had taken one too many pain pills.

"I'll email you the details then! Thanks much!" He began to walk away, but a few steps out he stopped and turned to look at her. "Oh, and Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"It's fine if you have a day or two that does not result in your best work, but let's not make it a habit, hm?" The reminder was gentle and accompanied by a grandpa-esque wink. Still, she felt horrible. Greg walked away, whistling to himself. Of course he hadn't meant anything by it, but... still.

Draco was pacing. Narcissa was unsure if she felt glad for his newfound energy or disturbed by it. Her son had always been a bit... dramatic. More so than his father, in fact. Lucius preferred his shows of emotion to be quiet, jarring, mysterious. His heir, while retaining the haughty demeanor of his parents, was never quite as aloof. To most outsiders, Draco was still a force of nature, something almost inexplicable. Almost constant attention had to be spent to keep track of what he might be thinking. To a Malfoy, however, his sort of personality was almost unacceptable. Usually, he kept himself at least partially masked. However, when pressed, he became overeager and rash, emotions spilling out without control. If a threat from Lucius was one from a fox, a threat from Draco was one from a wolf: volatile, emotional. He was both unpredictable and easily-read at the same time. More than once Lucius had explained away Draco's more obvious emotional outbursts as childish, but something the boy would grow out of. Yet, Draco had not.

He had pushed his bed from the center of the room to the far wall, up against the windows. The intricate threadwork of his new comforter shined in that sickening honey-colored light that forever permeated the space. Emerald and forest greens seemingly did nothing to soothe her son.

Once more, he reached up to push the phantom fringe from his face, hand falling as it encountered nothing. Certainly, his hair was still wild, a bit mussed, but it had been so long and disgusting when first entered St. Mungo's that the Healers had had it cut. Narcissa, for once, did not disagree with their decision.

Pushing it from his eyes must have been a nervous tic he had developed while living out wherever he had been. Malfoy's should not have nervous tics, and each time he reached up Narcissa lifted her chin a bit, a movement that should have reminded the young man of who he was. He no longer noticed these signs from his mother. It made her feel sick.

"My son," she ventured. He faltered, stopped. The final click of his heel echoed shortly in the room, the sudden absence of sound causing an unpleasant ringing in the regal woman's ears.

"Yes mother?" He almost stuttered. It sounded so wrong coming from him, a hiccup in his speech that had always been perfect.

"You seem upset. Has something happened?"

He stared for a moment. He looked proud, untrusting. It was better, she supposed, but not a look that she should have ever received from him.

"Yes. I had... That is, during your absence today there was... a visitor."

"A visitor? A nurse?"

"No. Not-... Not a nurse." His voice was clipped in comparison to her long, smooth words.

"Then who?" Anger was beginning to rise within her, but she only narrowed her eyes. They had allowed someone else in?

"Someone from Hogwarts."

"Pansy?"

"No, most certainly not Pansy."

"Theodore, then?"

"No. Not a friend."

Flummoxed, a tiny wrinkle appeared in her otherwise flawless brow. The woman had been weakened for years by stress but had never lost her vanity. She shared a silent moment with her son, before he elected to share with her.

"It was Hermione Granger."

At home, she made herself some tea, barely collecting enough concentration to finish that task. Robotically, she found herself sitting on her couch, hunched forward, her arms crossed and laying over her legs. Her hair had grown long, and she allowed one finger to catch in a curl and play with it idly.

She was staring at one place fixedly. She would catch herself, try to shake it, move her gaze a bit, and then stare for a while at the next place that her eyes had landed.

Frustrated with herself, she lay down and closed her eyes altogether. That ought to do it.