DRAGON'S HEARTSTRINGS || dramione | harry potter

Chapter Eight

For the upcoming weeks, Hermione was learning Occlumency with the High Reeve. He exhausted her to the point of sobbing every day, making her relive the worst moments in her life, repeating that it's the only way he'll make her fight back. Hermione wanted to believe she was getting better with each passing Legilimency session, but the truth was a bit different – she was so drained by the constant attacks on her mind that she didn't get the time to recover from, and she could tell her performance got worse as time went on.

"Let's take a break for a few days," the High Reeve said after what must've been their twentieth lesson. "You're losing your focus, perhaps rest will help."

"Okay," was all Hermione said, relieved that she will have a chance to not worry about the horrors she'll have to relive tomorrow, even if it was going to last only a few days.

Hermione felt as if the High Reeve now knew everything there was to know about her, every little secret she had been trying to keep was exposed to him, every precious moment with her loved ones was no longer just her own, all her fears and anxieties about herself, all her being was a book, opened wide for him to read in the language only he and she could understand.

The only thing she managed to hide in the very corner of her consciousness was her teenage infatuation with a certain blond Slytherin. She hid that part of her well and deep inside, so well and deep she was even beginning to doubt that crush was ever real. It was. But she would never let him know that.

Even though Legilimency lessons took only a few hours of her time a day, she would feel so weary afterward that she didn't have the energy to do anything else the remaining of the day, only read and cuddle on the sofa with Crookshanks on her lap in the library of her room. Now that she had a few free days, she finally had the time to spend in the lab.

It was one of the last days of her break when she was working on a technique to make a stronger sleeping draught potion using fewer ingredients, but so far, it wasn't working out very well. She had already tried to make it five times but all she got was a purple mess. Crookshanks was also somewhat nervous that day, meowing at her, begging for attention, following when she went to the dungeons, and scratching the door when she closed them before the cat's nose. Annoyed with the mewls and the scratching Hermione decided to let him in and Crookshanks spent the whole day with her in the lab, getting purple dye on his fur when he threw one of the experimental vials to the ground.

Hermione groaned, picking Crookshanks up and taking him to her bedroom to give him a bath. She wasn't spared the vicious attack of a cat thrown in the water, and her hands were now littered with bloody scratches. When she finished washing him and wrapped him up in a towel, Crookshanks mewled sadly in her arms like the drama queen he was. She brought him down to the living room and sat him in front of the fire so he could warm up a bit.

She stared at the smoldering fire, deep in thought, when suddenly the orange glow turned to roaring green flames, and Crookshanks ran away from her lap, roaring and hissing. Hermione stood up with her wand in hand just as someone appeared in the fireplace.

A tall figure stepped out of it, clad in Death Eater's robes with a skull-like mask on their face. Hermione stared at the person, dumbfounded. Then, in one swift move, they took off their mask, and Hermione immediately recognized the dark-skinned black-haired man, looking around and smiling at her, recognizing her too.

"Lovely to see you, Granger," Blaise Zabini said, looking at the wand in her hands, then up at her. He was smiling but upon closer inspection she noticed his eyes were serious. He asked her if the High Reeve was at home.

"He should be in his office, I thi—"

Zabini's gaze slipped past her, and she heard a voice say, "I'm here. What is it?"