“If we keep healing it every two minutes the spells will probably continue working for another twenty hours,” Hermione told her gently.
Poppy nodded and tucked the blankets gently around Rolanda's body.
“Severus left a new recipe for you,” she told Hermione. “He said you should get a flagon ready.”
Poppy reached into her pocket and withdrew a small roll of parchment and a vial.
Hermione lifted the vial up into the light.
Two drops of Acromantula venom. Probably worth more than fifty galleons.
She couldn't afford to make any mistakes. She slipped the vial into her pocket and unfurled the recipe to see what it would require to brew.
She had all the ingredients. Except fluxweed, which she had to harvest under a full moon. She calculated the next lunar cycle. She'd have to wait for a week before she'd have everything she needed to make a batch.
If the curse were as serious as Severus had indicated, she would have to hope that there would be no skirmishes before the full moon. Which was likely a delusional notion.
At the end of the recipe, Severus had included the counter spell for the acid curse in his spiky handwriting. She reviewed it. It was simple, as he had said.
Hermione copied the countercurse onto a fresh sheet of parchment. An injury involving acid would need to be countered immediately. Waiting a few extra seconds to call a healer or apparate the wounded could add days to the recovery. The countercurse was simple enough; every Resistance member could learn it.
She wrote a brief note of explanation, and with a flick of her wand folded the note into a paper aeroplane and sent it zooming through the house to find Harry.
“Would you be able to take your shift early?” Poppy said.
Hermione looked up and realised Poppy was looking grey with grief.
“Of course,” Hermione said quickly.
“I want to write Filius, Pomona, and Minerva. They might want to come say their goodbyes,” Poppy said, shoulders drooping. “The notes on what I've done are all in the logbook, and I just resealed the incision. So you can start a two minute count now.”
Hermione watched Poppy Pomfrey as she walked with slow, heavy steps out of the hospital ward.
Hermione went over and glanced over the logbook. There were no surprises in it. She walked quietly from bed to bed. Everyone was still asleep, and a few were dosed with Draught of Living Death. It was a method of keeping them alive while certain, slow brewing potions were being made to cure them. She ran a precautionary diagnostic on each body, and ran through a mental checklist of which potions she needed to attend to. She needed to send out the first doses of wolfsbane potion to all the Lycanthropes in the Order.
It was a quiet day in the hospital ward. Aside from the constant recasting of the healing charm on Madam Hooch, most of the other injuries simply required careful supervision and time.
Hermione sat and speculated about what Malfoy might be like during their next meeting.
The fact he was also a natural occlumens was — problematic, to put it in the mildest of terms.
It meant his control ran deep. Trying to find her way in and make him loyal would be nearly impossible if he was able to winnow away and contain any effect she had on him.
If she wanted to have any chance of succeeding, she would have to be slow and insidious. To dig herself so deep into his psyche that he couldn't drag or filter her out. Find a way into his heart. The one place that no amount of occlumency could block or sequester.
She shivered slightly.
She had never felt cruel before. Cold. Unfeeling. She'd been called those things, and believed they might be true. But cruel was a line she had always considered herself above. But what she was contemplating was possibly one of the cruelest things she could conceive of.
She squashed the hesitation.
He was the one who had demanded her.
Now and after the war.
She was well within her rights to ensure he paid full price for his demands. If he didn't want her, he shouldn't have asked.
She steeled herself, and summoned a book from her bag.
Chapter End Notes
"Boy with a box of sweets" by _knar.m_
April 2002
The following Tuesday, Malfoy behaved much in the way he had the week before.
He taught her occlumency, letting her practice the forms and techniques. He didn't make it hurt. He barely spoke a word to her. He only touched her once, to tilt her head further back in order to make eye contact. And then — while he was in her mind — she could feel his hand still resting on her neck, his thumb against her throat.
He didn't need to touch her. She knew. He could easily perform legilimency on her from several feet away.
He didn't pry. Didn't poke his head into memories that she overtly did not want him in. He just let her use his presence as a sort of practice dummy for learning evasive mental manoeuvring.
When he withdrew, she stared up at him curiously.
“Where did you learn that? I'm assuming your aunt didn't use the technique.”