manacled by senlinyu

Chapter 11

Malfoy laughed faintly.

"Like it?" he asked.

She tilted her head to the side. He was easy to look at now that she didn't feel frightened or overwhelmed by her hatred of him. She did have a conscious awareness that he was dangerous, but her body didn't have any physical reaction. No twisting in her stomach. No tripled heart-rate. He could have been a statue.

"It feels like I'm dead," she said.

He nodded as though the statement didn't surprise him.

"The effects are temporary. It will fade after twelve hours. And eventually you'll become immune. It should work long enough for you to acclimatise to the manor and estate."

Hermione stared up at him.

"You're being different to me now. You're less mean. Why are you even doing this for me?" she said. She furrowed her brow in confusion. Apparently she was still able to feel confused.

He quirked an eyebrow and leaned forward so close his breath ghosted across her cheek.

"I'm not doing this for you, Mudblood," he said softly into her ear. "I'm doing it for me. You wouldn't react anyway."

He straightened.

"See? Nothing. No elevated pulse. No pounding heart. I could bring in a boggart or bend you over a table and you wouldn't blink. Not much fun."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. If she were wanting to commit suicide it would be easier to do so while under the effect of the potion. Malfoy might not be able to detect anything until too late.

Malfoy became stone-faced. He gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"

She went to get her cloak and followed him outside. He paused on the veranda and watched as she descended the steps by herself. The snow had been cleared from the gravel path but she could feel the cold already biting her toes through her shoes. It was bitterly cold that day.

She hesitated for a moment, trying to decide where to go. Then she walked over to the hedge maze. On all her walks with Malfoy he had never gone into it. She was quite curious about whether she could find her way through.

It was huge. The hedges towered over her. It made her recall the hedge maze from the Triwizard tournament. She doubted Malfoy's hedge would try to eat her or contained any dark creatures. She wandered through the looping, twisting, winding path and thought about the potion Malfoy had forced down her throat.

She'd had the passing thought that he was dosing himself with it in order to be such a cold and evil bastard, but she dismissed it after a moment's thought. The killing curse was emotion based magic. Impossible to cast with detachment.

Although, Malfoy seemed terrifyingly capable of somehow bending the rules around that curse.

Putting aside Malfoy and the mystery of his bottomless well of hatred, she could use the potion. She could make far more progress in pursuit of escape under the influence of the potion than she had been able to in the last month. So much so that it seemed suspiciously careless of Malfoy.

She paused to consider.

Malfoy was not careless. No matter how much he hated monitoring her. He wouldn't be careless. There must be some kind of failsafe that made him confident enough to dose her with something so powerful. He wouldn't possibly risk it otherwise, even if he found monitoring her to be a form of torture.

How could he be certain she wouldn't do anything when her heart-rate and pulse were unlikely to tip him off?

She'd quite nearly flung herself off a balcony and he'd only just stopped her. Known exactly when he needed to appear...