But — if they won the war as that point, the victory would be owed to him. Hermione had agreed to be the price for that. As much as she loathed him, if he saved them all, she knew she'd feel obliged to uphold her end.
No matter what it was he intended to do to her.
She suddenly felt nauseated. She was shaking, and simultaneously hot and cold.
She pulled her forehead from the glass.
Her breath had created a circle of condensation on the window.
After a moment, she reached out with a fingertip and drew the rune thurisaz: the force of destruction and defense, hardship, introspection, and focus. Beside it she drew its reversal. Its merkstave: for danger, betrayal, evil, malice, hatred, torment, and spite.
Herself.
Malfoy.
She watched the runes vanish as the condensation evaporated back into the air.
She turned back to her books.
Moody found her that evening. "We have a time and location."
"Where?"
"Forest of Dean. Friday. Eight in the evening. I'll scout it and apparate you to the address the first time."
Hermione nodded, meeting Moody's eye. There was a bitter part of her that wanted him to remember the moment. To drive into his memory what she looked like — before.
He seemed to hesitate before his expression hardened. "You need to keep his interest as long as you can."
Hermione's mouth twisted but she nodded.
"I realised that," she said, running a fingertip along the edge of her book until she felt the crisp pages were about to cut into her. "I'm not sure if I can, but I'll do my best. Is there any chance I could speak to Severus before Friday? I have some questions for him."
"I'll set it up," Moody said. Then he turned and left.
Friday.
Two days away.
So little time to prepare.
But so much time to dread.
She hadn't eaten since her first conversation with Moody. Couldn't bring herself to. Every time she tried to take a bite, her throat closed. She'd been living off tea.
Hermione closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe evenly.
She snapped the book she was holding closed and focused on her occlumency.
According to Severus she had a talent for it.
She slipped through her own memories and thoughts, sorting and organising them. She bolstered the walls around important Order meetings. The horcruxes. Then she shoved away all the memories that she tried not to think about.
There were so many memories of people dying inside her head.
She pushed them into the back of her mind and tried to squash them so she couldn't hear the dying screams that they were filled with.
She filtered her hatred of Malfoy out and packed it carefully into a corner where it couldn't distract or overwhelm her.
Practicing occlumency was the closest thing to mental peace she could find.
It was part of what made her a talented healer. She could shutter her sympathy and empathy and simply focus on the process and procedure of healing.
It seemed like it was a common trait among healers.
Someday, when the war ended, perhaps Hermione could do a study on the number of natural occlumens in the field of healing.
She suspected that most casualty healers had at least a bit of a subconscious proclivity toward it. Occlumency was so rarely taught, most people probably didn't realise when they used it. Hermione hadn't.
For a long time, she had just thought she was cold. As the years of the war rolled by, her growing tendency to turn off her emotions and simply be rational was stark in its contrast to Ron and Harry's emotional drive.
She wasn't unfeeling — she felt things. But the emotions were supplemental. They didn't decide things for her.
It was always head first, heart followed.
It had started after Colin died. She couldn't be like Harry. That death became a defining moment for each of them.
After watching Hermione try to save Colin, Harry had become utterly convinced of the pure evil of dark magic. He became driven by what he felt was right; how he believed things were supposed to be.
For Hermione, the opposite had occurred. She realised the impossible advantage that the Death Eaters had over the Order. It was her awakening to the price of failure. She became convinced that almost any means could be justified to stop Voldemort. The cost of choosing to ascribe to idyllic morals and lose was too steep. It was simply the logical conclusion. The longer the war lasted, the more good and innocent people would suffer and die.
That difference in conclusion created a schism between herself and Harry.
Dark magic was responsible for robbing him of his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, Colin...They'd all been stolen away by the dark arts. That Hermione's solution was to fight like with like was unthinkable to Harry.
Harry was determined: they weren't going to be killers. The Order wasn't going to be like that. Love had defeated the killing curse before. It would defeat Voldemort.
The cynical and pragmatic members in the Order were all but shouted down by everyone else. Even as the war grew worse, the conviction only became more firmly entrenched with each new life lost.