Secrets and Masks

12. A soul worth saving

AN; I just wanted to take a moment to say how much I appreciate everyone's love on this fic 🥺 The highlight of my day is seeing all your lovely comments and reading all your theories on how this is going to play out. So thank you, it's really appreciated ❤️

TW; substance abuse

20th January

Hermione and Malfoy pushed their way through the sea of students as they followed her double walk through the busy castle with Harry. It was hard to keep up with them in this memory, and even harder to hear their conversation through the roaring chatter going around them.

Even though Hermione knew, in the rational part of her brain, that the sea of students weren't actually there and therefore she didn't need to be mindful of their shoulders, she still was. She still bent and ebbed her way through the crowd to avoid knocking into their small bodies. It was a force of habit, the war had engrained it into her, made her automatically want to be mindful and protective over small and helpless things - even if they weren't really there.

Malfoy, however, didn't suffer from the same affliction. He marched through the hoards of smaller witches and wizards and regarded them as exactly what they were; nothing. Projections of Hermione's mind. He didn't bend and veer his shoulders to allow them to pass, instead, he barged straight through them, and their bodies evaporated into thick clouds of smoke as he walked through them like ghosts.

By the time she rounded the next sharp corner, Hermione had caught up with her younger version, and was walking side by side with Malfoy. She still struggled to keep up with his pace. One of his long, smooth strides matched two of her shorter ones. She had a feeling he was doing it on purpose, just to make her breathless and piss her off. Again.

"Tell me what Arthur said?"

"If Dumbledore is travelling, then it's news to the ministry," Harry replied, his eyes on the floor and far away. The younger version of Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off when Harry sharply met her eyes again, as if inspiration had suddenly struck. "But, what about this? That night at Borgin and Burke's? Draco was looking at a vanishing cabinet."

Hermione felt Malfoy's cold eyes slide to her face at the mention of his name. She kept looking forward, and forced herself not to shiver under his gaze.

He'd been doing that a lot recently, almost daily since she'd started choking up blood after their sessions. His eyes tended to drift over and watch her while her memories unfolded before them, studying her a lot more intently than the memory he was supposed to be observing.

The elves seemed to be growing concerned about the amount of blood she vomited after their sessions, and had started supplying her with Pepper Up and Blood Replenishing potions afterwards. Malfoy didn't seem to care though. He was still just as relentless as ever, and refused to drop the length or number of sessions despite the elves advice - but he had started to watch her and somehow, Hermione found that worse.

She'd rather him ignore her or spew degrading insults about her 'fragile Mudblood health', or make a joke about the 'lesser species' not being able to handle this kind of harsh magic and then pretend she didn't exist afterwards- like he had been doing since her arrival. Now he seemed to be going out of his way to be as close to her as possible while they walked through her memories, shoulders practically touching, close enough she felt a cold chill from his proximity.

His constant observations were starting to unnerve her. She felt like an ant under a magnifying glass, twitching away from every movement, anxiously awaiting the moment he turned the glass towards the sun and burned her with it. It was bound to happen eventually, and the waiting was making her skittish.