Beginning at the End ⏃ Dramione

Chapter 6: Speculation

After they had both eaten, Hermione stood and walked over to her bed. Annoyed that she had not acknowledged that his potion had clearly done its job in giving her back the use of her legs, Draco decided to wait, just in case she was merely forgetting. It was hard not to gloat or annoy her, but as he was about to give her wand back, he did not want to be on her bad side.

Draco rummaged through his bag for sheets of parchment, he found some old and some new, and it gave him an idea. For his own internal experiment, he placed a pile of new parchment and two sheets of old parchment on the counter with a quill pen between them. He would bet his family's fortune on which parchment she would choose.

"Here are your supplies, and your wand, let me know when you're done." He shuffled away to allow her space while she came up with her questions.

As Hermione approached the elaborate display of vials and ingredients, she scanned everything Draco left out on the counter and quickly grabbed her wand. She was so relieved to have it back in her hands, it made her mind flood with so many things she should do with it. Okay, calm down, just make the potion first, write some questions, get what you can out of him. Then, if he is difficult, I'll be prepared.

Hermione waited for Draco to make himself busy elsewhere, as if she needed privacy to rummage through his things, even though he had already given her permission. Once she was sure he had left, she began by opening a bulky case, to find a series of little drawers meticulously labeled.

He must have spent years collecting these items... I've never even heard of some of these, and who knows where he got them. Her eyes were drawn to a little drawer that had an image of fingers with their bones sticking out. Another depicted an eyeball, and still another was labeled with what she thought might be a tongue. The wording below was illegible, but she hardly needed it. She gulped, Well, I'm not opening those.

Feeling disgusted, she scanned the rest that looked to have newer labels and did a double-take when she recognized some of the names. Why are these drawers labeled with peoples' names? 'P. Parkinson, B. Zabini, B. Lestrange, V. Crabbe Jr., R. Weasley, H. Granger-'

The moment she saw it, she wrenched opened the drawer and found - there was to no mistake - strands of her own hair.

Is that... my hair!? He keeps MY hair in his drawer? Where did he get that? WHEN did he get that? Recently? In my sleep?

She glanced up to where Draco lay sprawled on the couch near the entrance of the tent, his nose in a book. She then looked back to the case.

To be absolutely sure, she opened the drawer labeled 'R. Weasley'. There was no mistaking Ron's vibrant Weasley hair. Sure enough, the drawer contained several short strands of straight, coppery hair.

This is just creepy, she decided. Then, another thought occured, Was he going to use polyjuice to turn into us? HAS HE ALREADY? Is he experimenting on our DNA, like some mad scientist?

Just when her trust had begun to peek out like a turtle from its shell, finding the collection of hair had her curling back in for safety. She put the items back, thinking she would confront him later about that, leaving it there as proof. It was all too important now to create her own veritaserum, even if she had to wait. Wouldn't he know that I would find this collection of hair? Did he think I would be okay with that? What is his game here? Maybe he forgot? No, Draco is too clever to forget. He's sneaky,maybe he wanted me to find it... but why? I should address this in the questions I ask him.

With that thought in mind, she turned back to the task of making her potion. Moving on to his pile of journals, she wondered how he could be so trusting as to share them with her. At a glance, Hermione estimated there were about forty thin, black journals, all identical, and stacked and labeled. She filtered through them until she found one that read 'Veritaserum'. The list of ingredients was on the first page, with in depth notes about the measurements on the following pages. Every detail had been painstakingly itemized: what it did, measurements to adjust for length of time as related to potion efficacy, strength, and more.