The moonlight, pale and judgmental, streamed through the narrow windows of Draco's chamber, amplifying the dread in Hermione's stomach. Draco paced before her like a caged animal, silver-blonde hair catching the ghostly light.
"Why don't you tell me about the Order first?" he said, his voice slicing through the tense silence.
Hermione's eyes darted around the room, taking in the drab stone and the looming portraits of disapproving ancestors before settling on Draco. "What do you want to know? I thought you'd be up to date with all the gossip."
"Some people have more important things to concern themselves with."
A blatant lie was embedded in his haughty tone and Hermione huffed out a disbelieving breath, shaking her head. "We both know that's not true. It's almost sad, Malfoy. Watching how the mighty have fallen."
Draco's hand clenched into a fist, his skin stretched tight over knuckles bone-white with fury. "Careful, Granger," he growled. "You're forgetting who's in charge here."
She let out a dry laugh, ready to twist the knife further, but the last shreds of her self-preservation halted her.
She dropped her gaze instead, trying to buy herself a moment to think. Why did Draco need to question her about the Order? The Malfoy family had clearly fallen from grace, if they weren't getting their information from Voldemort.
Something drastic had happened to them since the war ended and oh how she itched to find out what.
"So, which one of you brainless traitors is leading the Order these days?" Draco suddenly asked, startling Hermione out of her thoughts. "The oldest Weasley brat? Shacklebolt?"
"Both of them," Hermione answered truthfully.
"Who do you work under?"
"Bill."
"What does your division do?"
"Hm. We protect innocent people from the regime, mostly. Sometimes we perform house visits to old, irrelevant families for fun."
Draco frowned, irked by her underhanded response, but continued. "What about Shacklebolt?"
"Couldn't say," Hermione replied, coolly evasive. "The details are above my pay grade."
The lie slid off her tongue with ease. Draco studied her closely, seeking a crack in her armor, but finding none. It was a dance as old as war itself, a tango of truths and lies where the next step could mean life or death. But she had practiced and it seemed he had not.
"So what exactly have you been up to?" Draco asked. "Enlighten me."
"Oh, just a bit of housekeeping," she replied with a smirk that didn't reach her eyes. "Clearing out the rubbish. Rowle, Dolohov, Macnair—should I continue?" Each name dropped like a stone into the stillness of Draco's composure, rippling outwards with the implication of their deaths.
"You're lying." Draco stopped pacing and turned to look at her.
She watched, amused at the disbelief on his face.
"Ask your Dark Lord himself. His precious top officials, dropping off the map. Have you heard from those three in the last few months?"
Draco looked conflicted, like he felt a grudging respect for the skill it would take to hunt Voldemort's top henchmen, but his voice remained dubious.
"If you did dispose of them… how did you get close enough to them? They have security. Wards. Much more power than you and your little Order friends could ever dream of."
"It's hard, but not impossible," Hermione said. "I work with Tonks. Voldemort's inner circle isn't as invincible as you'd think, especially when we have your dear cousin on our side."
"One or two people alone isn't nearly enough," Draco said, eyes calculating. "Does this little… birdcage here have something to do with it?"
Hermione laughed, as if it were a ridiculous notion, but Draco's gaze was piercing.
"You wish," she retorted. "You wish you stumbled upon something of use, don't you? So you could scurry back to your master with it, begging to get back in his good graces."
Draco let out a low note of frustration. "Shut up and just tell me what it is."
"Well, since you asked so nicely," Hermione said, pausing for effect. "It's to bring your dead bodies back to the Order."
Draco watched her closely, his lips twitching up.
Everyone has a tell.
A reaction, a slip of a gesture that breaks their lie, no matter how carefully constructed. Tonks had told Hermione that hers was in her eyebrows, the way they would rise a fraction too high when she lied.
She knew instantly that her overzealous expression had exposed her, with the way Draco's whole expression had changed into something triumphant.
Dammit.
She'd pushed too far and he knew, levitating over a second chair with a gleam in his eye, planting it facing Hermione. He slowly inched the wooden seat forward before sitting down, his knees just centimeters from hers. Hermione eyed the proximity with wariness.
"I'm feeling charitable, so I'll give you another chance to answer," Draco said. He kept his voice light, but it was intoned with a clear threat. From the periphery of her vision, Hermione saw him lean in, folding his hands carefully with his wand in his palm. "You'll give me honesty this time, or I won't be so nice."
"You think you can sniff out lies like some bloody hound?"
He ignored her. Her jeers and insults were falling flat—he was done playing. Fear engulfed Hermione as she realized he'd backed her into a wall once again.
"Last chance, Granger. Tell me about the cage, or I'll make you," he demanded, his voice low.
"I've told you nothing but the truth, Malfoy."
Draco's eyes narrowed, and Hermione recognized the expression immediately: Do you take me for an idiot?
With a swift flick of his wrists, Draco delved into her mind with Legilimency, his mental intrusion strong and sudden.
She was ready.
Many historically Dark pureblood families trained their children in the mind arts from a young age, and the Malfoy family was no different. Hermione hadn't learned Occlumency until after the war, but she'd made up for lost time, practicing in long, exhausting hours with Kingsley. The Horcrux knowledge needed to be protected at all costs. And then there were the countless other secrets she'd amassed.
Hermione scattered her immediate thoughts, reaching for the mental block she'd perfected in the last year. Images, conversations, faces—they all swirled behind the fortress of her concentration.
Draco's Legilimency was forceful but clumsy. Encountering Hermione's shields, he tried to push through through sheer will, but her defenses held.
"You're going to have to try harder," she hissed through gritted teeth, every ounce of her energy focused on protecting her mind.
She held fast against the onslaught, but she was acutely aware of the toll it took. Her temples throbbed with the effort to keep her thoughts shrouded, the pressure building like storm clouds. She couldn't let him win.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Draco withdrew, frustration etched into the lines of his face.
"You've been trained," he accused.
Hermione didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything. A tremor of exhaustion whispered through her mental barriers, and for a second she thought she might faint. She took a few deep breaths, slowly blinking away the dizziness, trying to hide just how close he'd come to breaking her shields.
"I didn't know Mudbloods could learn the mind arts," Draco said, his frown deepening in suspicion.
"You don't know a lot of things," Hermione said, fighting to keep her voice stable.
"If you've been trained, that only proves you have information worth hiding."
Hermione shrugged nonchalantly. "Don't we all?"
"Everyone breaks eventually, Granger," Draco asserted, his voice rough. "I have an eternity to find out what you're hiding."
He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled against his lips, contemplating her. There was no way he didn't notice the faint sheen of perspiration on her brow, the way her breath came slightly quicker. He could press on, crack her shields one millimeter at a time.
But Legilimency was just as expensive as Occlumency was—he wouldn't retry it immediately. She had just bought herself a little more time to dig.
"Why haven't you sent me to your precious Dark Lord yet, anyway?" Hermione asked. "Isn't that the strict protocol around Undesirables?"
Draco's eyes flashed at the sudden change of topic. "Maybe I want to have my fun with you first. Break you down. Deliver you to the Dark Lord in pieces."
"We both know how the Dark Lord would feel about you tampering with an Order member. This is treason, Malfoy. You keeping me here."
Draco's jaw visibly tightened, and the air between them stiffened. "It's past midnight, Granger. The Dark Lord wouldn't want to be disturbed at this unholy hour. Besides, I… have my own reasons for not parading you before him just yet." His response came out smoothly, but Hermione detected the faintest tremor, betraying his composure.
"Of course, your reasons," Hermione murmured. "You're not so eager to crawl back into Voldemort's embrace, are you?"
Right as the taunting words left her mouth, it struck her.
She was absolutely correct.
Draco had hesitated in the most critical moment of the war.
He had failed to identify Harry in front of Bellatrix after he'd been brought to the Manor with Ron and Hermione. It had been over two long years ago, but Hermione herself had mulled over the moment often, wondering what exactly had gone through his mind.
Harry's face had swelled awfully after the rough disguise attempt, but recognition should've been trivial to Draco, his classmate and sworn enemy of six years. Had it been fear that had held his tongue? Guilt? Deliberate treason?
Hermione bit back her next words, a spark of reluctant acknowledgement flickering within her. Draco was the reason she was still alive. His hesitation hadn't saved Harry, or Ron, but it had given her enough time to escape and warn the rest of the Order of what was to come.
There was an unspoken debt between them, and as soon as she remembered it, she wished she could forget it.
"Enough of this. You're not here to psychoanalyze me," Draco snapped, rising abruptly.
Interesting.
He turned away from her probing gaze to inspect the cage resting near the bedframe.
He leaned closer to the cage, his nose almost touching the enchanted metal. A sharp intake of breath, and then his expression changed. "Prolixus," he murmured, almost to himself.
The recognition in his voice sent a jolt of panic through Hermione's veins.
"Did you come to poison us?" Draco asked, tracing a finger along the cage's edge.
"What?"
Draco shot her a sharp look. "Quit your acting. I can identify Prolixus anywhere. Why did you coat the cage in it?"
How in Merlin's name does he know?
Prolixus was an obscure, antiquated potion. It was only used in conjunction with poisons, to enhance the magical properties and speed up certain torture or death. There was no world in which Hermione would've expected Draco to identify it.
"Quite the Potions Master, aren't you?" Hermione quipped, keeping her expression casual. "Is that what you've been up to since getting kicked out of Voldemort's circle?"
Draco straightened, ignoring the barb. His eyes locked onto hers with newfound intensity. "I'll bet you used this to get in the wards."
Her heart pounded against her ribcage, the implications of his discovery dawning on her with terrifying clarity.
It's only a guess, she told herself weakly.
But it was already too late—with minimal effort, Draco would be able to confirm that the contraption would allow him to enter pureblood wards previously thought impenetrable. He needed only to levitate the cage in and out of the wards to test his hypothesis. He could then reproduce the cage, bring the technology to Voldemort, perhaps even develop a defense against it…
Hermione exhaled slowly, weighing her options as her mind flew away with distressing possibilities. With his hands already on the cage, withholding information seemed futile. Perhaps she could get something out of it—buy herself some leverage.
"Fine," she finally conceded tiredly. "You're right."
"Am I?" His eyes lit up with insincere, ravenous delight that she'd changed her tune. "So you soaked a human-sized birdcage with Prolixus, and somehow managed to get through our wards."
"Exactly. You may want to invest in a better front door for the future."
"Where did you get it?"
"Get it? You think I bought this from Knockturn Alley?" she asked, huffing out a laugh. "I made it. It's based on Muggle technology—something called Faraday cages. They block electromagnetic fields using conductive materials. Copper, usually. The Prolixus is conductive to nefarious magic, and I figured magical fields might have similar properties to the physical world."
"You invented this?" Draco asked, raising his eyebrows. There was an undercurrent of awe in his tone, quickly veiled by a sneer. "Charming. Inspired by Muggles, no less."
"Actually, Muggles are far ahead of us in many ways. They've made advancements we can't even dream of because they don't have magic to fall back on."
"Advancements," Draco scoffed, rolling the word around like a foreign concept. "And yet, here you are, bound by magical ropes. How very advanced."
"Your ignorance is showing, Malfoy." Hermione let the words drip with condescension, but the bite was swallowed by a sudden yawn she had to stifle. "Just because you refuse to acknowledge something doesn't mean it's not valuable."
"Enough of your Muggle propaganda," Draco interjected, leaning back against the dark oak of his desk, arms folded across his chest. "Most of us don't have the Mudblood roots to care enough about them."
"But caring about them got me in here, didn't it?" Her voice wavered at the end, finally betraying the fatigue clawing at her consciousness. She stifled another yawn. The strong burst of Occlumency had caught up with her in a wave of exhaustion, and her eyelids were starting to grow heavy.
Draco smirked. "Tied to a chair, at my mercy. I wouldn't be counting my lucky stars yet if I were you, Granger."
"I'm not…"
"Would you care to explain why you were lurking in my manor in the first place?" Draco interrupted, seeming to realize that his captive's time conscious was running low. "Hoping to add a Malfoy crest to your collection of fallen Death Eaters?"
Hermione's eyelids fluttered, a frown creasing her brow as she fought against the pull. "I don't collect crests," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Then what?" he pressed, leaning forward. "Why take the risk to come here?"
Hermione's eyes shut for a protracted second, before she cracked them open again.
"I'm here..." Hermione faltered. "Doesn't matter. A job needs to be done."
"Killing me?"
"Voldemort," Hermione mumbled, her voice slurred as she succumbed to the tug of sleep. "S'not personal."
Draco's gaze lingered on Hermione, whose chest now rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. He sauntered closer to her unconscious form, the proximity allowing him to catch the faint scent of her hair—a mix of ink and something floral that didn't belong in the musty confines of Malfoy Manor.
He'd been powerless for too long, and now he had something so intriguing, so valuable, stashed as a secret in his room.
Satisfaction bloomed in his lungs, expanding into every fiber of his body.
He set his eyes back on his captive. The dim light of the moon cast shadows across her face, accentuating the pallor of her skin and the dark circles that had formed like bruises beneath her eyes. Her head lolled to the side, chestnut curls framing her face in disarray—a stark contrast to the fierce determination that usually set her features alight.
As he examined her peaceful form, he glimpsed the barest hint of something in himself—something dangerously close to admiration.
"Pathetic," he muttered under his breath. He sat back down on the chair opposing the girl, drumming his fingers against the wooden armrest, an uneven cadence that marked the battle raging inside him.
He should be repulsed by her presence, by the threat she posed to both him and his family. Yet he found himself captivated by the contradiction she was—a formidable Order member turned so disarmingly vulnerable as his prisoner.
His brow furrowed as he remembered the list of top officials she claimed to have killed. It made no sense; his family had been severed from the Death Eaters, yet they were on the hit list following Rowle, Dolohov, and Macnair?
He couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to her presence here than mere coincidence or revenge. He would take his time extracting the truth out of her, and he would enjoy every damned second of it.