Manacled by Senlinyu

chapter 23

Hermione was standing in the kitchen of Spinner's End. She turned slowly, looking over the surfaces covered with notebooks, prepared ingredients and bubbling potions.

Hermione paused as she noticed one potion shimmering in the corner. She stepped over and watched the spiraling steam rising from the surface. She sniffed it surreptitiously. The spicy, earthy scent of oak moss, smoky undertones of cedar, the bruised scent of oxidizing leaves, and parchment—no. She sniffed again. Papyrus.

She stepped abruptly away and glanced at the other surrounding cauldrons.

"This is quite a variety of love potions you're brewing," she said, looking over to where Severus was stooped over a simmering cauldron.

"A new project for the Dark Lord. He's suddenly developed an interest in trying to weaponise it," Severus said, sneering down at the murky, lumescent liquid he was working over.

Hermione felt her blood run cold. "Is that a possibility?"

Severus shrugged with a faint smile. "I am both skeptical and unmotivated, so most likely not. I believe it was more of a passing notion than anything he has a sincere interest in. I'm drawing up a comprehensive report to present in case he asks about it. And I'm doing it in my home rather than in the lab to ensure no one offers any groundbreaking ideas."

Hermione surveyed the room. There were ten varieties of love potion and a few aphrodisiacs she recognised, as well as an additional fifteen that appeared experimental.

"What would constitute as a weaponised love potion?"

"Something of exceptional power that doesn't require redosage. I believe he images himself using it for interrogations."

"That's—obscene," Hermione finally said.

"Indeed. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he has other matters he regards as more urgent for Sussex to focus on."

Hermione woke, still lying on the cold floor of the bathroom. She continued to lie there; if there were an upside to her depression it was that it made sleeping easier. It was as though her body had given up. The rage she'd spent months cultivating had melted away and she was left tired and listless, as though her body weighed too much to even carry across the floor.

She could sleep and sleep in a state of despair for most of the day.

She pushed herself off the floor, went to her room, and climbed under the covers of her bed; burrowing into them and hugging them around herself.

Even her brain felt tired and listless. As though even thinking took too much out of her.

She glanced over at the clock. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening. There was a tray with dinner on it beside the chair, but Hermione had no appetite.

She wondered why Malfoy was in France; presumably it was to kill more people.

Would he still be masked, or would he do it openly? She wondered what he looked like when he cast the killing curse. Most people's faces screwed up in a revolting grimace when they cast the Killing Curse. Even Voldemort. But Malfoy's hatred and fury was so cold. Perhaps he looked the way he had when he was killing Montague.

Hermione wondered if getting exposed as High Reeve were intentional.

If Malfoy were moving to seize power from Voldemort, he'd need to be known. Known and feared. Being revealed had been a calculated risk perhaps; banking on Voldemort's need for a public figure to spare his life. If things in Romania were as unstable as had been implied, Voldemort couldn't kill Malfoy now—even if he wanted to. It would leave a power vacuum, destabilise the entire Death Eater army, and give Europe the opportunity to break free.