They needed Malfoy. They desperately needed him, and a bit of adrenaline made her lose her head.
He was right, she couldn't handle the dread. The constant anticipation. Exhausting herself wondering about what it was he wanted. What he intended to do to her. Constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was eating her alive.
If he was going to hurt her or fuck her, she just wanted to know and have him do it.
Going to him every week, uncertain of what he might do to her next—
It was breaking her to pieces.
She bit down on her lip as she huddled against the door. She tried not to burst into tears as her rush of norepinephrine lost its hold on her, and she found herself sharply dropped low. She was awash in horror and despair.
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed quietly.
Her anxiety had quite possibly just cost the Order the war. Or at least countless lives.
She had to find a way to fix it.
She wrapped her arms around herself, and tried to calm down and think.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
When her chest finally stopped stuttering, she stood up and brushed away the tears.
She made her way up to her potion supply closet, she stored the fluxweed and spent several minutes trying to organise her thoughts and force her hands to stop shaking.
She went on to her room.
The door was ajar. Which was odd, because both she and Ginny were generally fastidious about keeping their door shut and locked. Grimmauld Place wasn't broadly accessible to the Resistance, but there were occasionally nosy individuals with little respect for privacy or personal possessions.
Hermione peeked in and then jumped back in surprise.
Ginny and Harry were half-naked and, if they weren't already, they appeared mere seconds from shagging.
Hermione cast a quick privacy charm on the door and hurried away. On the landing of the steps she paused and hesitated. Grimmauld's rooms were crammed currently. A number of the older children from Caithness had been brought there.
The parlour downstairs was currently occupied by all the insomniacs. There weren't many places left to sleep.
She was so tired. Her bout of crying left her feeling internally hollow.
She crawled into a window seat and tried to drift off, but her mind wouldn't quiet itself. She kept replaying her conversation with Malfoy. Fretting over the potion she needed to brew. Re-living the moment all the rage poured off Malfoy and he roared at her.
He hadn't hurt her.
He'd had every opportunity and more than sufficient fury, but he'd held it back and driven her off instead.
A murderous Death Eater with some sort of moral code. An oxymoron if ever there were one.
It had to be connected to his motive for aiding the Order.
What did he want?
It aggravated her deeply that she couldn't figure it out.
After tossing about on the window seat for half an hour, she sat up with a sigh. She didn't want to try brewing Severus' potion until she was rested. She clambered up and went to the uppermost floor of the house. There was a practice room there.
She looked in and found it empty.
She made her way into the middle of the room and, drawing her wand, began making her way through some of the duelling poses.
When she'd returned from her healer training throughout Europe, she'd only participated in two small skirmishes before the Order decided the pull her permanently from combat. After the years away she'd gotten rusty, far less proficient in duelling than anyone else in her age group. The rest of DA were fast and cast powerful spells, dodging and weaving while maintaining excellent precision even from a distance.
Healing was subtle. It almost always required holding back. Close work with attention to tiny details.
Trying to duel again was such a reversal in the technique that she'd been awful.
Ron and Harry devoted quite a bit of time trying to help her catch up, but before she'd managed to do so, Kingsley advised pulling her entirely from combat. No one made so much as a murmur in disagreement.
Hermione understood the rationale, but years later the decision still hurt. She'd felt as though she'd failed somehow and was being shunted off — away from everyone else.
The original DA had become a tight-knit combat unit that she was not a member of.
Hermione bit her lip and cast a protego as powerfully as she could. The shield bloomed in front of her.
She sighed in relief as she withdrew the spell. At least she could still manage that.
She cast a series of hexes at the dummies across the room. Half of them hit their targets. None of them precisely.
She flushed and tried again. She was somehow worse the second time.
Hermione berated herself. She was standing still. Not on a battlefield. Not while having any spells directed back at her.
She was shite.
In the unlikely event that Malfoy trained her, he would tear her to pieces for how inept she'd become.
She squared her shoulders and tried again.
She cast a few more complex curses.
Well, she could manage that.