A few hours later, after vomiting up everything that was in her stomach, Hermione searched for her wand. When she found it, she crawled into bed and wrapped herself in the sheets like a cocoon, knowing quite well she wasn't going to fall asleep again, and clutching the wand close to her. Crookshanks meowed and cuddled himself to her side. Mipsy cleaned up her vomit, and Hermione thanked her absentmindedly. Then, the elf brought her peppermint tea to drink, and Hermione asked, "Is You-Know-Who gone?"

Mipsy looked behind her as if scared they might be overheard. "Not yet, Missis," she whispered. "Drink your tea and try to fall asleep…"

Fear threatened to wreck Hermione's insides once more, but she sipped the tea in her bed, and it helped her calm down a little. When she finished, she put the mug on the bedside table and lay back, starting to doze off a little, but the memories of how Voldemort entered her mind, read her thoughts and dug over her memories without her being able to fight back or do anything to stop him – those memories did not let her sleep.

She stared at the ceiling for some time, deep in her thoughts. Then, she heard footsteps – they got louder, closer to her door. Hermione instinctively turned to the side, away from the doorway, pulling her knees up and wrapping her hands around herself. She heard the door open, and a small triangle of light appeared on the carpet coming from the hallway. Hermione closed her eyes and eased her breathing, pretending she was asleep. She felt his eyes on her. She was scared he might come in and drag her out of bed again. But he didn't get closer. He stayed in the doorway for maybe a minute, watching her sleeping form, but for Hermione, it seemed like an hour, like a whole night. Then, the door closed, and as she heard his footsteps get more distant, she breathed out heavily.

She fell asleep sometime later and woke up when sunbeams high in the sky were already threatening to invade her room through the stained-glass windows. She sat up, frowning. She put the wand that had pushed against her stomach while she slept and looked around. "Mipsy?" she spoke up.

Pop. "Yes, Missis?" The elf didn't whisper this time.

"What time is it?" Hermione asked.

"It's one past noon, Missis," the elf answered.

Hermione frowned. "Is You-Know-Who gone now?"

Mipsy nodded, "He left some five hours ago."

"And your Master? Where is he?"

"He's about to get lunch. He was waiting for you to wake up. Would you like to join him for? You must be hungry, and you really need to eat something."

Hermione swallowed. "Does he want to talk to me?"

"He didn't say that, he just asked me to let him know when you awoke."

Hermione was hungry. And she wanted to talk to him.

"Okay, I'll go," she said.

When she dressed up and went downstairs to the dining hall, the High Reeve gave her a single look, and then turned back to the Daily Prophet newspaper he was reading. She sat down and filled her plate while he sipped on what she assumed was coffee.

Hermione was in the middle of her meal when he finally addressed her, "How are you feeling?"

She looked up at him, startled. The truth would've been to say, Terrible. But she chose the correct way. "Better now."

He hummed to himself and kept on reading the newspaper. Hermione looked down at her plate, then back at him, thinking thoroughly of how she should address this.

"What happened tonight… I assume this was not a common occurrence?" she began, looking at his face.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he willfully did not look at her. "The Manor is warded from all sorts of intrusions, but it cannot be warded from Voldemort because that would be suspicious. I'm his right hand and he needs to know he can reach me anytime," he answered dryly.

Hermione realized he wasn't going to explain to her what exactly happened, and that if she wanted to find out, she would have to practically interrogate him.

"Does it happen often?" she inquired.

"Not often, no. He wanted to know what I've been doing with you all this time. You heard him. No better way to attack than to catch a low-life unprepared." She did recall words like that, but back then she was so out of it that she didn't really understand the meaning of them.

"So he knows you married me?"

"The idea is that I caught you roaming the streets freely, and I brought you here to interrogate you about Potter and the Order." He finally turned to her, his gray eyes as cold as steel. "As for marriage, in the past two years, it had gotten quite common for Death Eaters to marry war prisoners, especially women. You're smart enough to be familiar with how inbreeding has now become one of the greatest threats to pureblood families. That's Voldemort's way of battling this problem – he needs Death Eaters to breed future loyalists for himself."

Hermione looked down at her plate, busying her hands by nibbling at the food in it. "I wasn't told I'd be expected to give you an heir," she said quietly.

Her crush for the youngest Malfoy reached its peak in the sixth year, right before all the horrible things went down, but it truly started in the fourth year, right after the Yule Ball. Naturally, during that time, she wondered plenty of times what their children would look like. Would they have blonde hair? Would their hair be wild like hers? Would their eyes be brown like hers or gray like his? Would they be as tall as he is? But now, when that possibility was so real and got so close to her, the idea of their children made her shiver – she wasn't entirely sure whether with fear or excitement.

"Stupid matters like these don't interest me in the slightest, Granger," the High Reeve said. Of course. He didn't care about any of it, as he'd stated previously.

She swallowed thickly, then breathed in and lifted her eyes to him, bracing herself. "I know that what you did—I know you did it to distract me while You-Know-Who used Legilimency on me so that I wouldn't reveal what we're truly doing here. Although surely you could've warned me of what was going to happen—"

"Had I warned you, you wouldn't have been able to stop thinking about it, and all my efforts would be for nothing," he interrupted her, his gaze tearing through her.

"Of course," she said. "I hope I didn't cause you any trouble with what he read in my mind," she added quietly.

"From what I've gathered, you didn't show him anything incriminating," he said, then his eyes seemed curious for the first time as he leaned his head to the side. "What did he see, anyway?"

Hermione felt her cheeks get hot and hoped he didn't notice her blush. "Uhm… Nothing serious. Your… distraction worked quite well."

The High Reeve didn't seem amused. "Doesn't mean it will work next time. You need to learn how to guard your mind."

Hermione remembered how Snape taught Harry Occlumency in their sixth year and how poorly Harry performed back then. However, Harry was only sixteen and Hermione was twenty-two now.

"How?" she asked.

The High Reeve watched her for a moment. "I'll teach you," he said finally.

They were in his work chambers – there were big desks with some chairs, a case of all sorts of magical objects, some of them dark artifacts, others simply there for aesthetics. It was quite dark here, so he turned on the light. Hermione looked around curiously, trying to swallow the lump of anxiety in her throat.

He gestured to one of the chairs. "It's better if you sit down. This will be your first time, so it might be difficult to stay on your feet once I start working." She did as he asked. He continued, "As you know, Legilimency is an art of invading one's mind, of shuffling through one's thoughts and memories to extract what's needed. One way to block a Legilimens attack is with Occlumency – a quite obscure skill which helps to clear one's mind from all and any thought." He circled around her chair like a hawk, once, twice. "This is how it's going to work – I will use Legilimency on you to invade your mind and you will try to block me and eject me from your thoughts. Understood?"

"How do I do that?" Hermione asked. She knew about it in theory, but she had no idea how to do it in practice.

"Focus. Fight me with all might of your mind."

Well, that wasn't helpful at all.

The High Reeve stilled to stand in front of her, taking his wand between his lithe fingers. It was one of the rare occasions he wore no gloves, his fingers seemed ghostly pale. "Ready?" he asked.

Hermione swallowed, then nodded.

He raised his wand. "Legilimens."

The High Reeve's face evaporated, and his chamber flew away.

Hermione was at the cinema with her dad when she was fourteen. They found their seats and talked about things of little importance. Then the giant screen before them lit up – the film started. And…

It was a film about her life.

She is sitting at the dentist's office and her dad is pulling out her tooth while she cries and squirms in her seat… It's the beginning of the war, she and Harry dance in their tent a few weeks after Ron abandons them, their movements slow, and sad, and somewhat comforting… She visits a magical creatures shop in Diagon Alley, and the shopkeeper tells her that the bright orange cat has been staying there for years, waiting for someone to take it…

She feels the High Reeve's sneer even if she cannot see it…

It's not real, it's not a film, he's seeing this…

No, no… Get out!

She slumped in her chair, trying to catch her breath, soaked in cold sweat.

"Not bad," he said. "Now let's try getting deeper."

Hermione took a deep breath as if readying herself to dive into water.

It's the Battle of Hogwarts, she sees Hagrid surrounded by Death Eaters, coming to the castle with Harry's body in his arms, and Hermione knows everything is lost… She runs for her life with Ron by her side, they're at the Department of Mysteries, she gets hit with an immobilizing curse to her back and Ron screams her name… She and Ron are in the Chamber of Secrets, they're taking out the Basilisk's fangs, but the water suddenly rises, washing over them, and she thinks this is the end, but no, they're alive, and they're so glad to see each other that they kiss… Then, she sees the High Reeve's reflection in the water by the giant snake's skeleton…

No, no, this is mine, you can't see that…

She and Ron are running to catch Nagini, Hermione distracting it while Ron tries to attack it and stab it with the fang… But the snake turns away from Hermione, turning to Ron, its fangs out, and it bites him once, twice, thrice while Hermione tries to curse it, but of course, to no avail… She runs to Ron, but he is bleeding furiously, there's nothing she can do to save him, she only cries, holding his viciously jolting dying body close…

NO NO NO

Hermione was on the floor, her entire body trembling with the aftershocks of her memories. She tried to steady her breathing, but all she wanted to do was cry.

"Not fast enough," she heard the High Reeve say. "You need to be quicker if you don't want me to find out about your deepest darkest secrets."

She wanted to ask him to stop but his wand was already up.

She's at the Malfoy Manor, being dragged together with Ron and Harry… The young seventeen-year-old Malfoy says he doesn't recognize any of them… He's saving them… Surely, he knows it's them…

They bring both Ron and Harry to the dungeons while Hermione sees Bellatrix get excited with even the thought of torturing her… Bellatrix asks her about the Gryffindor sword, but Hermione doesn't know anything, she cannot answer that… Hermione screams and cries and begs for mercy while Bellatrix carves a word on the skin of her arm…

Please, go away… Please… Please…

The High Reeve released his clutches from her mind. She wasn't able to eject him this time – he left himself.

"That's enough for today," he said.

Hermione couldn't stop the sobs wrecking her chest. "I didn't say I was ready…" she cried.

"Next time, Voldemort won't ask if you're ready, he will simply attack," the High Reeve hissed. Then, he reached out his hand for her, helping her stand up, addressing her with a slightly softer voice, "Let's go, it's about dinner time."

Hermione took his hand.

She barely ate anything at the dinner table, though, only pushing her food from one side of the plate to the other.

"Has You-Know-Who used Legilimency on you?" she asked quietly.

"Yes. Plenty of times," he answered emotionlessly.

She looked at him. "Then how are you hiding things from him?"

His eyes bore into her. "I've learned to occlude so well no one can read my mind, not even the all-powerful Dark Lord."

Hermione swallowed. "How?"

"Voldemort… taught me… himself. I guess you could say I had the best teacher," he said, scoffing. He looked away from her, staring ahead with unseeing eyes, lost in memories. "Aunt Bella was also quite fond of learning my deepest darkest secrets." He laughed darkly, the sound making Hermione shiver. "They used all they found out against me until I had nothing but one thing left. My mother, my father – they were nothing but pawns in a game to break me, to mold me into Voldemort's greatest weapon… It was either giving away my dearest secret and letting them destroy me with it, or learning how to use Occlumency so my mind wouldn't betray me ever again."

Hermione looked at his face, hardening with every word he spoke. She almost reached out her hand to touch his shoulder but refrained from that at the very last moment. She wanted him to say more, to hear more of what happened to him, but she knew if she pushed him too much, he might never open up again.

Small mercies.

"I'm so sorry," she said quietly. "And thank you for teaching me."

The High Reeve glanced at Hermione, her voice bringing him back to reality. "Don't pity me, Granger, and for Merlin's sake, do not thank me. I'm anything but a kind teacher." Hermione still smiled slightly. He stood up, looking down at her, "Finish your dinner and make sure to get a good night's sleep. We'll resume the lessons tomorrow."