The Cell

Chapter 2: Day 2, Conversations in earnest

Humility has such power. Apologies can disarm arguments. Contrition can defuse rage. Olive branches do more good than battle axes ever will.

- Max Lucado

Hermione woke slowly in the quiet of the cell, rolling onto her back and staring up at the dark, cavernous ceiling. Turning her head to the side, she saw Malfoy on the ground nearby. Well, everything was nearby given the size of the room, but he was only a meter or two away.

In the dim light, she studied his sleeping form. Pale, aristocratic features with a chiseled, angled jaw. In another life she had thought him too sharp looking, pointy, but here as he slept, she could see a softness in his face. His shoulders rose and fell rhythmically, and she noted his eyes flickering behind their lids.

He looked almost as poor as she imagined she did. He was thinner than she remembered, and his hair was lank and limp with dark, bruise-like circles under his eyes. He had stuffed his jacket under his head and had an arm curled up and around it.

With a start, her eyes fell on his other forearm, hanging downward across his torso with the sleeve still rolled up. It was turned towards him, but she could see the edges of the black ink, barely visible from where she was laying, but most definitely still there.

So, he was marked then. Harry had been convinced of it last year, since they had seen Malfoy bare his arm in Borgin and Burke's, but they hadn't had incontrovertible evidence.

Her eyes returned to the ceiling above her as she pondered the implications.

While it was unlikely, there was a chance that Malfoy had been placed in here with her with the intention that she would talk to him and reveal something of use to Voldemort's faction. She almost laughed at the thought, as if they would be sharing secrets and plaiting one another's hair.

Besides, it was unlikely that the pureblood prince would be forced to live in such squalor unless actually found guilty of some misdeed, although what a Death Eater could possibly consider a misdeed probably didn't even register on her moral scale. Even then, she was having a hard time accepting it was the result of his misidentifying Harry.

She didn't know what had happened to Malfoy after he fled Hogwarts with the rest of his merry band of butchers and psychopaths. Harry had said that he had lowered his wand when faced with killing Dumbledore, which was a small consolation, though she couldn't help but wish he had had that particular moral crisis before letting a pack of deranged murderers into the school.

She shifted her hips slightly and realized she had to use the loo. She looked toward the pail in the corner with disdain. While it seemed unlikely that they'd manage to maintain any semblance of privacy or dignity trapped in here together, and he'd already seen her in just about the most vulnerable, degraded state possible, she still balked at the thought of purposely going to the bathroom in front of her childhood nemesis.

She sat up and started to quietly untangle the mass of blankets that her head had been resting on. Suppressing a gag and breathing through her mouth when several dead bugs fell out, she separated the fabric into three individual pieces. Two she tossed sideways into the middle of the room near Malfoy, but the third she gripped as she climbed to her feet.

She heard a rustle and, out of the corner of her eye, saw him sit up.

"Here, help me," she said over her shoulder.

"Of course," he grumbled, pushing himself upright. "I live to serve."

After several attempts, they managed to combine their weakened power to use a sticking charm on the top two edges of the blanket, fastening them on either side of the corner and placing the pail and stack of towels behind it.