Hermione sat shaking on the damp floor of the shack for a long time.
No one talked about Colin.
Out of a combined consideration for both Hermione and Harry, the topic was assiduously avoided. Anything that even vaguely broached it was treated with utmost delicacy.
After it had happened, Hermione had hidden the memory in the recesses of her mind and it had festered like a wound. Malfoy had come across it while teaching her occlumency.
Having him drag it out and use the trauma to berate her was such a staggering blow she felt as though she were going into physical shock from it.
There were very few things that still felt sacred to Hermione.
Not her body.
Not her soul.
But Colin's death — it had always been such a private agony. It had driven her from her friends. It had taken her across Europe and back. It had driven her all the way into the shack in which she sat. All the way to Malfoy, who had used it to belittle the last pieces of herself that still remained.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until they ached. Trying to recentre herself.
She was late for her shift in the hospital wing when she finally dragged herself from the floor and headed to Grimmauld Place.
She felt as though she were floating through the day. Weirdly detached. As though there were glass between her mind and the rest of the world.
Hermione went through the motions of healing and then a long evening of brewing.
The Order needed large batch of Draught of Living Death. It was their method for dealing with prisoners. They wouldn't kill them, and had neither prisons nor enough people to be able to spare some as guards. So Death Eaters they caught were kept in an unplottable location in suspended animation. Bill Weasley and his wife Fleur were in charge of it, using their skills as former Curse Breakers to weave elaborate enchantments and wards in order to accommodate the considerable number of prisoners the Order had accrued over the years.
As she sat waiting two and a half minutes for the potion to settle, she glanced at her watch. It was almost eight o'clock.
She sighed and buried her face in her hands. She did not want to see Malfoy again. If she did, she would probably punch him in his cruel face.
He probably wasn't expecting her to show up anyway.
Her wand chimed to indicate that the time had passed, and she dropped the last bit of Valerian root in.
The potion turned pale pink.
She warded it, and put it carefully aside.
She picked up her jar of salve and rolled it about in her hands. She was almost out of Essence of Dittany. She'd used most of it treating his runes. She tried not to calculate how many other injuries she could have healed with it if she weren't using it on Draco; tried not to quantify his value against the lives of others. How many he'd saved, how many he'd killed, how many lives his intelligence was or was not worth.
He'd killed Dumbledore. The number of deaths he was responsible for because of that act alone was sufficient to damn him. He'd never rebalance the scales, no matter how many people he saved.
Unless he helped them win. If they won, it might be enough.
She smiled bitterly to herself.
Draco Malfoy was exactly the same person he had been the night before. The only difference was that her knowledge of him had broadened slightly.
She couldn't understand him.
Why get so angry and monstrous because she didn't want to hurt him when he was already severely injured? He was so unreasonably angry and bitter. It felt as though she'd shattered the fragile peace between them.
But provoking her with Colin's death was low, even by her standards for him.
Maybe he was actually concerned that she was going to die.
She scoffed to herself. If he were, it was probably only because he didn't want to risk having a non-occlumens as his contact.
Before she could think more, she slipped the salve into her pocket and then headed to the shack. She was four minutes early.
Being there again felt exhausting.
She sat down on a chair and pulled a picture from her pocket. It was of herself, Ron, and Harry in the Great Hall, all mid-bite and looking up, faintly annoyed over being photographed. Colin had taken it.
She always stared at it when she felt depressed.
She put it back in her pocket and then leaned across the table and buried her head in her arms.
Maybe she would dose herself with Dreamless Sleep potion when she got back. She could feel the nightmares in the back on her mind. Just waiting for an opportunity to claw their way to the surface of her consciousness.
She'd already taken the potion eight times that month. She was still having nightmares from all the victims from the curse development division that were brought to her.
She'd tried. She'd tried so hard to save them.
There had been nothing she could do. Almost every single one had died. Those that didn't, she euthanised; to spare them the endless agony they'd been magically trapped within.