Hermione didn't sleep at all that night, filled with incensed anger and despair at Malfoy's ultimatum. If he was so angry that she wasn't working hard enough on breaking his parents out, why hadn't he told her? His threat was the most horrible, passive-aggressive threat she had ever seen…and she was friends with Ron.
And to value the sliver of a chance his mother might not be murdered over the certain deaths of numerous fellow students! It was sick, it made her want to throw up. Hermione tried to remember that Draco seemed wholly incapable of murdering anyone, but the Death Eaters he was planning to break into the castle would have no such qualms.
It felt like he had bound her hands to a speeding vehicle and had thrown out the steering wheel and brake. Hermione spent most of the night crying, considering whether she could kill him before the Vow kicked in and killed her first, and planning a way to break Narcissa out of her wretched fucking manor. Hopefully if she could at least pull off a Narcissa prison break before the end of the school year, he would abandon this foolish plan for a ghastly murder spree.
Hermione finally fell asleep an hour before daybreak, and slept through to midday, cursing when she woke up and realised she had missed morning classes. She ran down to Transfiguration and sat in class for almost five minutes before realizing how pointless attendance was given the circumstances. Professor McGonagall let her go easily as she claimed she was unwell, and Hermione dragged herself to the seventh floor.
No one was on the door, and she erased the no thanks! that she sent what felt like a very long time ago to ask Draco how to enter the Room with the cabinet.
Ask for somewhere to throw something away, he sent back, and Hermione angrily thought that she would very much love somewhere to throw a fucking terrible wizard away as she stomped up and down the corridor.
The Room door appeared and Hermione checked no-one was around before entering.
"Where are you again?" she yelled into the room, shutting the door closed behind her.
"Right until the Arithmancy books, then left until the broken tables," he yelled back, voice distant. The instructions were close enough, and Hermione found him at the cabinet, flitting between it and pages upon pages of handwritten letters, spread across the table.
"No Crabbe or Goyle today?" she asked, dropping her satchel beside the table.
"I told them someone else was guarding me," Draco said absently, continuing to stare at the cabinet. "Wasn't even a lie, was it?" He finally turned to look at her.
"I fucking hate you," Hermione spat, but Draco merely shrugged indifferently.
"I don't hate you," he replied simply. "Do you want to work on breaking my parents out?"
"Yes," she said shortly, and to her relief Draco turned away from the cabinet and watched as she pulled books and draft documents out of her bag and spread it across the floor. "And I want to propose a further compromise."
"What is it?" Draco said, frowning.
"That we focus on getting your mother out first. We could use her help breaking into Azkaban," Hermione half-lied.
"Good thinking," Draco replied, sitting on the ground across from her.
"Yeah. Well, I've fought your father. Can only assume your mother is more capable than he is," Hermione said, unraveling a list of tasks she had devised to try and keep Draco away from the cabinet as much as possible.
"Charming, Granger," Draco replied sarcastically. "Fine. The manor first."
"Here," she said, handing him her list. "I need a map of your house, as much detail as you have on historical protections, what protections you think or know have been added now it's crawling with Death Eaters, and how often Voldemort and any other key Death Eaters are there."
Draco frowned at her list. "Ok," he said. "I'll get you what I know over the next day or so."
"Good," Hermione replied. "So. Narcissa."
An uncomfortable sort of grimace passed over his face at his mother's name. "I take it she won't go willingly?" Hermione asked, though it wasn't much of a question.
"No. She only sees one way out," Draco replied, eyes flickering to the cabinet.
"It would be better not to have to physically drag her out," Hermione said thoughtfully, digging holes in the parchment with her quill. "Though if we have to we can. Do you think either of us could Imperius her?"
"I think the odds of that going badly are high," Draco said. "She's on constant alert at home. I think we may need to trick or – or overpower her, to get her out of the manor. Once she's out, I…might be able to convince her."
Hermione bit her lip as she tapped her quill against the floor rapidly. "Convince her?" she repeated. She had a thousand questions about that idea which she was fairly sure neither she nor Draco had a good answer to.
"Well. Convincing her can be your job?" she suggested diplomatically. "You just let me know if there's anything I can do to help?"
His eyes narrowed. "Probably not," Draco replied.
"There'll be muggle literature on cult deprogramming, I'll find some for you," Hermione offered, rummaging around in her bag to add the topic to her increasingly long to-issue list when she next came across a muggle library.
"Really?" Draco asked, suddenly brighter. "How good is it? How long would it take to convince her using that?"
"Oh," Hermione said, realising she had raised his hopes too high. "Um, it's not like other muggle stuff, sorry. It'll be better than whatever they've got in a magical library, I bet, but it's…it's not guaranteed."
She turned the quill in her hands, snapping off the end of the feather. "We don't need to think of it now, but…you should think about what to do if she will not be persuaded. At some point. And we'll need to um…you know. Detain her, in the mean time. If she resists being Imperiused."
Hermione looked up at movement in her peripheral vision, and saw Draco was hugging his knees. "Sorry," she said quietly.
"Don't be," he mumbled into his kneecaps. "You're right. We are going to have to imprison her. She's just going to try and hurt you."
Has this only just occurred to him? Hermione couldn't help but feel frustrated at his reaction. How happy did he think his mother would be to be homeless, disenfranchised, and to see her only child converted and bound to some mudblood? Did he think about this at all before threatening her?
It wouldn't be helpful to be so honest, she decided, and Hermione opted to be comforting rather than truthful. "It'll be ok, Draco. It's much better than her staying there where he could kill her any time."
He took a small, shuddering breath. "I thought this would – it would feel like a weight was lifted," he said, gripping his knees tighter. "But it doesn't."
She picked up her wand and hit him with a strong Calming Charm. The tension in his arms relaxed a little, and she moved over to crouch beside him, rubbing his back. "Well, of course it doesn't, you have to introduce your mum to your unsuitable girlfriend," Hermione quipped, and he made some sort of noise of acknowledgement of her bad joke.
It felt bizarre to be so kind to him when less than 24 hours ago he had been threatening her so horribly. But perhaps it had been a twisted sort of response to the stress he was carrying. He looked physically wretched.
"And you know what?" she whispered, continuing to try and make him crack a smile. "I would have helped you get your parents out even if I hadn't made a Vow. So who can't believe who made a Vow now, huh?" He groaned and finally raised his head from his knees, rubbing his eyes.
"You were always fucking mental," he croaked, clearing his throat.
Hermione reached out for a blank piece of parchment she had brought with her, and enlarged it. "Come on, then," she said, deciding distraction would be the best next step. "How about you give me the map tour of Malfoy Manor? Just in case Narcissa isn't keen to show me around."
He snorted and accepted the quill she offered him. "I don't think any of my friends got the guided tour," he said, starting to sketch out the floor plan.
"Did Pansy and Greg have to make their own way?' Hermione asked gently, using every gram of patience in her body to make nice about Draco's horrible friends.
"Vince and Theo would come over too…play quidditch, you know."
"I got dragged into quidditch this past summer," Hermione recounted, wincing, and Draco finally, properly laughed, quill swerving slightly on his map.
"Fuck. Bet you were awful."
"You are correct," she said. "I always sucked at flying. I'm finally not super terrified of it, though, so it wasn't a total waste of time."
Draco continued drawing out straight lines of the first floor. "I'm surprised you're scared of anything," he said, but he didn't wait for her reply and started explaining the floor plan. "Ok, this is the first floor. Entrance atrium is here, they've set it up with some security posts and stuff now, but that's the main thoroughfare…it's like a fucking Ministry reception these days. Key meetings with the Dark Lord usually take place in the Dining Room, sometimes in the Drawing Room. And they often need prisoners for those, so the door to the cellar is conveniently located off the dining room here." He circled a part of the map.
Hermione tsked. "So they displaced the wine collection? How thoughtless."
"You probably want to see the second floor. There's a library, you know," he said, ignoring her lame joke and flipping the parchment to start a second diagram. He had said the magic word on purpose, she could tell, but Hermione couldn't help herself.
"Ok, so, I know there's horrible stuff in there, but what else -"
"Some pretty good stuff, actually," Draco interrupted. "Not all of it is made up shite. There's an alchemy section –"
Hermione gasped softly in delighted surprise. "Really? Oh, I was so disappointed with the Hogwarts alchemy collection when I looked. I really want to read more about it one day – ever since first year, I was so interested to learn more, but the books are so expensive…"
Draco continued drawing. "If you and I and the library make it through all this, you can have every alchemy book in there."
"Oh, you will absolutely regret that," she replied confidently. "Congratulations – you gave away a priceless Malfoy family heirloom. I can't even give you one back, I doubt there's anything in my family home you'd want. It's very muggle…middle-class, not everyone has a trust fund, you know…"
"I already robbed your family blind, Granger," he said. "And the third floor is mainly bedrooms and bathrooms. I don't think there's anything to note except a hid-" He suddenly stopped drawing and looked up at her. "Is Potter still in touch with my family's old house elf?"
Hermione gasped and grabbed his shoulder. "Draco! That's a brilliant idea! Yes, he is. I'm sure he'd share what he knows about the manor if Harry asked him."
Draco ducked his head back down to focus on his map, but she saw the faint smile and slight blush that crossed his face, proud of his good idea. "That can be your homework, then," he said. "I'm sure it won't be hard to plant that idea in Potter's head."
"No," she agreed. "Can you remember what that spell is for clearing something so only you can read it? All of this probably needs a few layers of information security."
"We probably want both of us to be able to look at this though, right?" Draco asked. "That might be more complicated."
"Oh, good point," she replied. "Ok, I'll just hex it for now. And I'll go to the library to find out if there's a two-person version of that spell we can use for all this," she said, gesturing at the sprawl of parchment around them.
Draco looked up at her as she stood up and put her bag on her shoulder. "You're going now?" he asked.
"Well, it might take a while to find," she said. "And I should probably go to class and do the least sensitive parts of this work there. I know you've given up on attending but it'll look really suspicious if I start skipping right before exams."
"Ah," Draco said. "Yeah. Yes, you're right."
Hermione could practically see the anxiety swirl around him again, like a flock of gathering birds.
"Do you want to come to class too?" she offered. "Could Disillusion you into Arithmancy with me."
He made a negative sound, one of his old, familiar sneers appearing on his face. His go-to mask. "Why would I want to hide in a class full of number nerds?" he said.
Because you obviously don't want to be left alone in here, Hermione thought, but if he was throwing out childish insults there was clearly no convincing him. "Well, suit yourself," she said. "How do I get out of here again?" But Draco didn't answer or move, and she could see his shoulders were rigid with stress and anger again.
"You know where to find it," Draco said eventually, voice harsh with anger now. "I know what you're doing. Don't be so careless about an Unbreakable Vow, Hermione. Least amount of interference."
They both knew his anger was a projection, so Hermione merely hesitated a moment in case he wanted to apologise.
"Ok," she said simply, after a moment of his aggravated silence. "I'll come back later with dinner." She turned and left quietly, finding the door with a little difficulty, and sent him a comforting message through her bangle after checking out several books on household wards and information security spells from the library: It'll be ok.
She had to half-participate in double Arithmancy at the end of the day to avoid too much suspicion, but there was at least some time during class to skim-read a couple of her latest clutch of books and surreptitiously take notes to go over with Draco later that evening. Hermione hoped he would have started on his list of protections on the Malfoy manor while she was out, but thought it seemed unlikely given he seemed quite determined to hold fixing that accursed cabinet over her head.
She was going to have to spend an absurd amount of time with him to try and restrict his efforts on the Death Eater plan, Hermione realised, as she headed down to dinner early to try and snag some food to bring back to the Room of Hidden Assassination Plots. Harry and Ron would believe any library excuse this close to end of year tests, but it would be hard to convince all her teachers that she suddenly lost interest in her grades.
Hermione swore as she saw dinner was a difficult to transport vegetable stew moment, and shoved a loaf of bread and a butter bowl into her bag before heading back to the seventh floor. A couple of wide-eyed second years watched her make off with an entire side dish, but she ignored them.
"Sorry, dinner sucked," she called out as she entered the Room. "Hope you like bread."
But there was no response, and as Hermione got to the clearing in the enormous pile of abandoned objects where the broken cabinet was located, she could see with her own eyes. Draco was not there.
She frowned and pulled off her bangle. It only displayed her message from before, when she was in the library.
Where are you? she etched into it, pulling her food haul out of her bag and setting it on the table. But after waiting for a couple of minutes, with no enchanted message or arrival, she left the Room and headed back up to Gryffindor Tower. Maybe she could catch up with Ron and Harry for dinner, and drop by the Room later.
The walk to Gryffindor Tower had transformed, however. It was now through several circles of hell. Another young student looked at her unusually, and then Hermione saw Lavender whispering in Hannah's ear, their reaction to seeing her sudden and telling. The foreboding uncertainty landed on her, like a swarm of insects that whispered and stared knowingly.
Some girls a few years younger than her walked past:
" –osie, no way –"
"I heard it from Jemima! And she's cousins with Parkinson –"
"Harry Potter would not –"
Lavender and Hannah and what felt like a hundred different eyes watched her as she tried to walk normally, like she knew what they were talking about, like there wouldn't be a really horrible truth that she hadn't fully grasped waiting for her in Gryffindor Tower. The bangle stayed cold against her wrist, all the way through the Fat Lady's portrait, cold still into the unusually empty common room where Harry sat with Ron and Ginny. Harry's face was white with shock, and his body was damp with blood that she was sure was intermingled with hers from fights in the Room of Requirement.
Hermione's body felt heavy and not all that connected to her soul as she crossed the room to sit by Harry, taking his stained hands in hers. "Did you kill him?" she asked, outside of herself.
"No!" he said urgently. "There was just a lot of blood…Snape said he'd be fine –"
Hermione physically felt the relief hit her chest, like a gasp of air after struggling underwater, or a defibrillator. It took several moments before her brain resumed actually listening to Harry recount the terrible fight he and Draco had in the bathroom.
"-rying, and then he saw me, and then it was just some hexes until he tried to Crucio me, and I remembered the Prince had said this spell was for enemies, I didn't know what it was going to do. He just – he fell, it was Dark Magic, there was so much blood. But Snape was suddenly there and he did this countercurse immediately, and he said he'd be fine."
"And he knew that it was in the Prince's book?" Ron asked.
"He used Legilimency, and told me to bring all my books, so that's why I ran up here and asked for yours," Harry said, the story falling out of him quickly and guiltily. "And I shoved mine in the Room of Requirement-"
Hermione's eyes widened, but after a moment she realised there was no way Harry could know he had guessed the room Draco was working in – the Room where everyone's stuff got hidden was enormous. And Draco was not there to be caught red-handed, because he was bleeding out in the bathroom Harry had just left.
"-a liar, he saw you had written Roonil Wazlib in the Potions book, and he gave me detention every Saturday until the term ends." Harry finally stopped to take a breath. "Then I came back here and told the team. And then Professor McGonagall shouted at me about how she totally supports Snape and that I'm lucky not to have been expelled."
Hermione thought that the only reason Harry had not just evaded expulsion, but also a magical world-equivalent to a manslaughter charge, was because he was receiving lessons from Professor Dumbledore on how to defeat Voldemort. How are they going to smooth this over with the Malfoys, she wondered stupidly, until she remembered that in a few weeks it wouldn't matter. One way or another.
"I'm not surprised you thought it was worse, Hermione," Ron said. "Gin said that Parkinson bitch is shouting some twisted version from the rooftops across the school."
"Already visited him in the hospital wing, of course," Ginny said, rolling her eyes.
Hermione was surprised at the overwhelming rush of affection she suddenly felt for Pansy. It was a tangible relief to know that Pansy had visited Draco so quickly, that she was defending her friend through every gossipy channel in the school…
And then the conversation turned to bickering as Harry continued to defend the murderous Prince, announcing he intended to get his book back as soon as he could. Hermione stalked off to her bed and angrily stared at the ceiling, processing as much of what had happened as she could bear before going back to the Room of Hidden Things. It seemed much more enormous than when Draco was there, silent and unforgiving. The cabinet loomed larger. She tried to ignore it and her growing, infinite guilt as she dedicated her full attention to working on how to break Narcissa out of her gilded cage.