Chapter 7: The Thing Behind the Glass
TW for implied torture.
Updated 7/18/17
Friday, November 8th. Early evening.
"Why not?" she demands. Her hair is expanding around her face and her cheeks are heating up but she doesn't notice and wouldn't care even if she did. "I went last time and it was fine!"
"Hermione, please relax." Lupin raises his hands in supplication. He is seated at the kitchen table. Dawlish is leaning against the counter, his arms folded across his chest and his legs spread in a battle stance. The window behind him is pitch black, even though it's only just after five. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder.
"And a fat load of good you'll be to us if you decide to get yourself killed or captured!" Dawlish yells back. "Don't you understand? We need you for negotiations now!"
She is still standing in the doorway, where she has been for the last five minutes as the conversation has gotten increasingly out of control. She tried to be polite. She tried to rationally and calmly explain to Dawlish that she didn't understand why she wasn't invited to the planning meeting since she was as useful as the rest of them.
The last of the Aurors who were spending the evening in the kitchen have decided they would rather be anywhere else, carrying half-eaten sandwiches and scalding cups of tea off in hasty retreat. Dawlish is famed for his temper and no one who knows him wants to be in the blast radius when he goes off. Hermione, on the other hand, doesn't give a fig what his reputation says. He is being stupid and she cannot abide stupidity. "You'll need me more if they use the manticora again! And I thought you didn't negotiate with terrorists, or has Malfoy been upgraded to just plain old torture victim? It seems to me—"
"Bulstrode can do the wandwork if it comes to that," Dawlish barrels through the beginning of her diatribe. "But they won't be using it anymore since it didn't work in their favor last time!"
Hermione feels a quick sting of betrayal at this. But no, the analytic side of her brain pushes back, of course Mallory can fend off the fire beasts as well as she can. What Dawlish is saying makes sense, logically, but she can't stand the idea of being out of action for much longer. It has been three days since the last time she left the house and there isn't even anything new to read. Rage flares up again and this time she hangs on to it. She is starting to feel alive again. Her brain is slowly spinning back into rotation. "And what about Malfoy? Nothing to say to that? Your silence indicates that you agree he's just a torture victim at this point."
"Hermione," Lupin places a hand on her elbow, "Please. We're not asking you to sit here and do nothing. We need good wands on healing duty, too."
Dawlish grumbles something but she doesn't hear him. There is a shape moving just beyond the window behind Dawlish. It's only a dark outline against the inky black, but she is sure that it is there, pressed up against the glass. Looking in at them.
She acts without thinking. Her wand is in her hand and she shouts "Protego!" just as the glass explodes inward.
The power of her spell blasts Dawlish backward and into a wall, but as soon as it happens Lupin and Dawlish have their wands out and Aurors are rushing back into the room, pouring around her, wands at the ready and curses already flying. Spells are thrown out into the darkness, illuminating Andromeda's lawn in green and red light. A group runs out to check the lawn, but they find nothing. It is chalked up to an accident and Dawlish's temper.
When the confusion dies down, Dawlish walks up to her, "Fast reflexes, girl," he commends, "I suppose I let my temper go. It wouldn't be the first time I...lost control like that. It wasn't very professional of me." He looks embarrassed and still angry. "My orders stand, but I shouldn't have..." he growls, looking for a word, "lost it like that. I'm sorry." The words seem to taste bad in his mouth, but he spits them out anyway.
She nods mutely.
Dawlish claps her on the shoulder and edges past her into the living room to talk to a group of Aurors who are waiting for him there. She lowers herself shakily into one of the chairs. The window has been repaired and she is alone in the kitchen. When she rubs her hands over her face, she realizes that they are shaking and so she clasps them around her wand. She rubs small circles on its base with her thumb so hard that the wood beneath her fingers bends gently.
She knows it wasn't Dawlish who made the window break. It wasn't even anything in the kitchen. It was something outside. She knows this because, for half a heartbeat, she saw it. A long and sharp ink-black hand reaching for Dawlish as the glass shattered around it.
But maybe she doesn't know. The mind invents all sorts of things under extreme stress. She sighs heavily. Maybe it's a good thing she isn't going on the mission tomorrow. Maybe she needs the break more than she realized.
Sometime after midnight, Mallory slides into the seat across from her.
"Hey," she says as she places her cup gingerly on the table. She glances at Hermione's face. "Ok, I know Dawlish can be scary when he's mad, but he gets over it pretty quick."
"Hm?" Hermione looks up from her hands, confused by Mallory's words.
"I mean, you don't have to look so scared. I heard about the window thing," she nods at the window, "but I mean, there was this one time where he slammed his mug down so hard on the table that the handle broke and he punched the table. Broke two knuckles I think. It was hilarious. So, just relax, yeah? These things happen."
"Oh," Hermione realizes now that Mallory must think she is afraid of Dawlish or something else equally ridiculous. "Oh, no. That's not," but she trails off. How can she explain the hand she saw reaching through the window towards Dawlish without sounding absolutely crazy? The Aurors searched the yard completely afterward, and they hadn't found a thing. Mallory is looking curiously at her.
"What?" Mallory prods gently, "What happened?" She leans forward slightly.
"Just before Dawlish—"
"Ah! Shit!" Mallory jumps to her feet, slapping at her wrist.
"What? What is it?" Hermione is on her feet, too, and her wand is waving blindly around the kitchen.
"Ow! Fuck!" Mallory inhales sharply through her teeth and pulls her hand away from her wrist, revealing a deep gash, glimmering as it fills with dark blood. "I was just sitting there and—shit that stings!—I must've snagged a sliver or something!"
Together they glance at the table and, sure enough, there is a thick piece of wood about as long as Hermione's pinky sticking up sharply.
"Fuck. I'm going to go mend this," grumbles Mallory, "Bad luck to bleed before a spat."
And then she is gone. Hermione looks long and hard at the table and then, following a hunch, she gets down on all fours and crawls under the table. It is dark underneath it, save for the light shining through a thin hole. She sticks her finger into the hole, and the wood around it is smooth, like someone punched a metal nail through the wood and took it out quickly. Quickly, she crawls out and looks at the chunk of wood sticking up. She had been sitting at this table for more than an hour now and would have sworn there weren't any irregularities in the wood.
The hair on the nape of her neck rises as she feels eyes on her. She whirls, but she is alone in the kitchen, at least as far as she can tell. Slowly, a new suspicion begins to form, but it is so outlandish and strange, that she will need to test the theory further before it becomes a true hypothesis. She rubs her thumb over the base of her wand and points it at the table. "Reparo!" she thinks, and she is rewarded with a small snap as the wood retreats back into place.
Saturday, November 9th.
Justin Finch-Fletchley is seated across the table from her. He looks pale to the point of turning green and every few seconds his Adam's apple bobs up and down as he swallows dryly. He is scared, Hermione knows this, but she is still too bitter about not going herself to want to offer him much comfort. This is the first time Hermione has seen him since he was on fire. He looks completely fine. Even his hair has been regrown and falls in soft golden curls around his face. It's hair she would have been jealous of had she been prone to that sort of vanity.
"It's a nice day, isn't it?" He says eventually. His voice wavers.
Hermione glances out the window. It is just past noon, and the sun is shining but it is deceptively cold, which she knows because she tried to sit outside with Crookshanks that morning. After about five minutes, he yowled to go back in. "Lovely," she answers dismissively and sips her tea.
"Have you read anything interesting lately?" He asks.
He must be very desperate for distraction if he's willing to ask her about what she's been reading, and so she takes pity on him. "Quite a lot. How about you? Read anything of note?"
He shakes his head and laughs nervously. "I'm not much of a reader, I guess. I do like movies, though."
"Oh," she says because she figures she should respond even if she doesn't want to.
"Yeah. Like, muggle films, you know? Of course muggle films. Anyway, I used to really like watching war movies. You know what I mean? But I never thought…never once…" and his voice cracks.
She reaches across the table and lays her hand over his. It is cold and sweaty, but she ignores the unpleasantness. "It's going to be fine, Justin. You are going to be fine. You've done this before. You know what it's like."
"Only once," he confesses, and he looks like he's going to cry, "and you know how well that went."
She squeezes his hand and is still trying to think of how to answer when Mallory tromps into the room. Her short hair has been brushed flat and her lips are dark red. Hermione wonders, absently, why she is wearing makeup.
"Come on, kid," she says and places a hand on Justin's shoulder. "It's showtime." She glances over at Hermione and offers a lopsided smile. "Hold down the fort, and with any luck, we won't see you until tomorrow."
Hermione nods in response. "Good luck," she says.
"Won't need it!" Mallory sings out and unwraps their port key and she and Justin vanish.
A few minutes later, Ginny wanders into the kitchen and takes the seat that Justin just vacated. The clock above the kitchen sink ticks loudly and Ginny chews her nails.
The sky is turning orange when Andromeda enters the kitchen. Today she is dressed in simple black robes and her long blonde hair is pulled back from her face in a severe bun. "Let's set up."
While Ginny and Hermione push the kitchen table against one wall, Andromeda places a large wicker basket on the table. The three of them unpack bandages and salves and neatly labeled bottles. The four potions that Hermione places on the wooden table are all Essence of Dittany. Ginny removes a bottle of Skele-Gro and two blood replenishing potions. The rest are three calming draughts and a single bottle of Wiggenweld Potion.
"Be careful with these," Andromeda warns them both, "That's the last Wiggenweld we've got."
When the medical station is set up in the kitchen, the three witches stare apprehensively at the back door.
"Now what do we do?" Ginny asks.
"We wait," Andromeda's voice is gentle, but the lines in her face betray her nerves, "and we prepare to receive either the injured or word from Lupin."
"And you do this every time?" Ginny asks incredulously.
"Every time," Andromeda replies, and for the first time, Hermione sees her shoulders sag like the weight of the world rests there. Hermione realizes, then, that Andromeda's daughter and Andromeda's husband are both out fighting. If all goes well, she won't see them until tomorrow. The only way she will see them sooner is if something goes wrong.
Ginny is dozing at the table, Andromeda is knitting, and Hermione is reading at 11:37 that evening, when Lupin's Patronus bursts through the wall.
"We are safe," it says, "Dawlish will want to talk with Hermione in the morning and Tonks sends her love," before vanishing into the air.
Andromeda lets out a sharp sniff, Ginny relaxes against the table, and Hermione closes her eyes, thanking god or good luck that the news wasn't worse.
Wednesday, November 13th.
Hermione transfers the teeth from the pocket of her jeans to a pillbox her mother gave her years ago and then slips the pillbox into her beaded bag where she knows she won't lose it.
She wears boots and casts a water repelling charm on herself. She wraps a winter cloak around her shoulders. She doesn't comment on the whelk that's their port key today. She slogs through shallow water toward the squat, gray monolith. She follows the guards into the long brick structure. She walks in single-file between Dawlish and Mallory. She hands her wand over without being asked. She walks down another narrow hallway. She thinks about how fortunate it is that she doesn't mind narrow places. She follows Dawlish through the waterfall. She is soaked to the bone again because the water repelling charm doesn't last through the Thief's Downfall and the winter cloak is heavy with all the water it absorbs.
They stop at a bare stretch of wall, and she still can't see any difference between this patch and the rest of the wall stretching in either direction. One of the guards—and she can't even tell if it's the same set as her last visit—holds the small gray ball out to her again. "If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on this. It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication, and we will be alerted."
"Alright." She takes the ball. It is soft and it is warm and it feels familiar in her hand.
"Do you have a comfortable grip on the ball?" the guard asks in a bored tone.
"Yes."
"You will be provided with a chair. Please sit in the chair and please refrain from leaving the chair once you are seated. The prisoner will be able to hear you and see you. The prisoner will be unable to approach the bars. Do you have any questions?"
"No."
"There will be a line painted on the floor in front of the chair. Please do not pass the line on the floor. Please do not move the chair, pass anything to the prisoner, or approach any of the walls. Do you have any questions?"
"No."
"When you are ready to leave, loosen your grip on the ball or transfer it to your other hand. If you do not signal for termination of the meeting before the allocated half hour, at the end of the allotted half hour, we will come in to remove you from the meeting room. Do you have any questions?"
"No."
The door creaks open, and, "Please proceed," says the guard.
Before she can walk through it, Dawlish puts a hand on her shoulder. "Don't forget what we talked about." His warning is barely more than a whisper.
She nods and enters the room.
At the end of the short hall, Malfoy is sitting up on his cot, his legs planted firmly on the floor and his hands laced in his lap. He watches, silent, as she sits down in the chair. "Hello, Malfoy," she sighs.
He doesn't reply. Doesn't even blink. He just stares at her with his flat, pale eyes. There is more hair on his head than there was the last time she was here, and it shines like a faint golden halo around his head. His left eye is so swollen and bruised that it cannot open. The cheek under it is sunken sharply in. His nose is still crookedly smashed against his face. She swallows hard and looks away from him.
"It worked," she says next, because they only have half an hour and she isn't going to waste any more time that she has to. "Whatever you told Dawlish, it worked."
He nods once and closes his good eye.
"We—"
He raises a finger to his lips and she falls silent, very aware of the sound of her breath going in and out and the way the sodden fabric of her cloak shifts as she moves restlessly. After a few moments, though, she can hear it, too: It is not a sound, exactly. It is more the absence of sound, or the movement of air around a body. Perhaps it is in her imagination but she feels precisely the way she felt alone in the kitchen the week before. Fear prickles along her arms, raising goose pimples. She wonders if he knows something she doesn't, but before she can figure out how to phrase the question, he speaks.
"Hello, Granger," he says. She jumps in her seat. His voice is rusty from disuse, but the words are crisp. "I did not mean to frighten you."
The words don't sound like an apology at all, but she wouldn't have expected one anyway. "We want to know where else he might be."
"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific than that, Granger." Other than the movement of his mouth when he speaks, he is completely still. If she did not see his lips open and shut, she would have doubted even that. His good eye remains fixed on her and it does not waver. He is waiting for her next move.
She folds her arms across her chest. "Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Minister of Magic." He knows that's why she's here, and so this must be intentional. He is playing dumb for some reason, but she doesn't know what. He's had a week to think about this, probably, to figure out what he's going to say next to her, and she won't let him stay ahead of her like this.
"Ah yes. The muggle-lover." If there was any emotion at all behind the words, she would be able to at least guess what he is thinking, but he sounds like he is reading off of a script and she doesn't know what he means. Is it a compliment? Is it an insult? Does it make a difference at all? She wants to ask, but Dawlish told her not to show any interest in anything he says if she can help it. We don't want him feeling like he has something you want. You are a mouthpiece, Granger. Nothing else. Don't let him think otherwise for a moment. His lips move silently like he is talking to himself, but they are moving too quickly for her to make out words.
Her lips thin and she grinds her teeth. "Where is he?" she barks out. "There weren't any prisoners at the house in Dorchester. Only a dozen low-level recruits. We will find the minister. Give us another address."
"Do you like my teeth, Granger?" he asks and his mouth widens, exposing two rows of white, rounded teeth. Healed teeth. A full set. The gesture isn't a smile and she thinks about a dog flashing a snarl before it attacks.
"We need another address," she repeats, because Dawlish warned her not to get off topic.
"The teeth, Granger," he edges forward on his mattress, leaning toward her, into the light. He holds a hand before his face like he is framing his mouth for her to see, but all she notices is that there are no fingernails on his left hand. Only black scabs.
She lowers her eyes. "Very nice, Malfoy."
"Indeed. The wonders of modern magic never cease to amaze. It was dittany, of course. Rinsed my mouth out with Dittany. It will be better. Can't grow them out, rinse your mouth out with Dittany, it'll be better." He smiles then, the corners of his mouth pulling up in an almost-human expression, exposing all of his perfect, intact teeth
She is losing him again. His eyes are alive, glimmering with a light that is not at all sane. "Malfoy, we need another address. Malfoy!" she says sharply.
His eyes drift languidly to hers, gray and unseeing, flat as a mirror. "Cleverest witch of our age."
"An address, Malfoy. If you aren't going to cooperate, I'm going to have to leave," she warns. "We have half an hour to talk, but if they look through my memories and see that I'm not getting anywhere with you, they might not let me come back."
He waves a hand sluggishly before his face, "They have no choice. It is you or the silence and life is very long in silence and your Muggle-Lover-Minister does not have a long silence." His grin is almost drunken, sloppy on his features. "I have a long silence. I have the longest silence there is. You will come back because they are desperate for a sign."
She sighs and glances down at the ball in her hand, but before she can change her grip on it, he says sharply, "Where's Potter? Where's the beacon of hope in these dark times?"
The question is so different from his previous tone that she almost answers but catches herself before she makes the mistake. "Malfoy, we need an address."
"And what should I ask for in return, pray? What will you give me?"
Maybe for them not to tear out your fingernails. Maybe for them to fix your nose. "I can't answer that, Malfoy." but her gaze drifts back to the scabbed over nailbeds.
His eyes follow hers down and he raises his hand before his face like he is examining his fingernails. "No, I think not, but it is an idea. I want a newspaper. A Daily Prophet. From November. Is it still November?" His gaze does not leave his hand.
"Yes, Malfoy," she says slowly.
"Is it still a Tuesday?"
She pauses before answering. Does this count as too much information? She looks at him then. Really looks at him. He is thin, thinner than she ever remembers him. He is in his own head more than he is in the world. His gray Azkaban robes are stained in places with what looks like it might be dried blood or dirt. His nose is still crooked and half his face is sunken in but his posture is rigid like he is still holding a crown on his badly beaten head. She set out to rescue him from Death Eaters and now he is being tortured for information in a prison. Some savior she turned out to be. If he was not in need of rescuing when she found him, he certainly is now. This is the least that she can do. "No, Malfoy," she says eventually, "It's Wednesday now. We last talked eight days ago."
He drops his hand back to his lap and pierces her with a sharp stare. "Do you pity me, Granger?"
And there is the ghost of his old self in the words. Clearly articulated and condescending, a shadow of the boy who tortured her at Hogwarts, the boy who taught her what death looked like. He was responsible for the death of the greatest wizard she will ever know. He killed her idea of what the world could be. Yes, he has suffered, but it has been his own wrongdoing that has brought this down on him, and still, even now, he is making deals. Still, even now, he is making demands and messing with her head. "No, Malfoy," she bites out, "I do not pity you."
He seems pleased with this and nods once. "See that that does not change, Mudblood. Do not waste your pity on me. It would be unwise."
She stands and transfers the ball to her left hand. "I told you not to call me that, Malfoy." she spits out, "And I will do whatever I bloody please regardless of what you think is wise or not."
The guards are opening the door then and she is already walking toward it, her back to him. She will not look back, even when he next speaks.
"Then I will eat you alive, Mudblood" he calls after her, "Skin, bones, and soul."
