A month. She had a month. A month to find a way to control him.
Control him. Even if she could, she had no idea how she was possibly going to demonstrate it.
Hermione felt as though she were going to have a panic attack. She stared at Draco in despair.
“Don't be afraid to use your elbows,” he said. “When you're fending off close range attacks, punching won't have much force. Elbows are hard and ideal for close attacks. Better than something as ineffective as slapping.”
“Slapping worked rather well on you,” Hermione retorted.
Draco snorted faintly. “If you're attacking a thirteen year old, by all means, slap him.”
Hermione scowled.
“Again,” he said, after she had caught her breath.
He lunged toward her. Rather than try to bolt, she moved toward him and then side-stepped at the last minute. He pivoted and turned back, but she'd already hit him with a stinging hex and caught his ankle with a leg locker. He was too close for more spellwork. She tried to leap away but he grabbed her by the arm, knocked her wand away and dragged her to the ground with him.
Hermione kicked, scratched, and snarled as she tried to fight free, but he weighed at least fifty pounds more than her. She tried to wrench herself away, but in a minute she was entirely pinned beneath him.
“If I were a werewolf, I'd already have ripped your throat out,” he said in a low voice. His mouth was near the base of her neck, and Hermione became abruptly aware that the length of his body was pressed against hers. His breath was brushing against the sensitive skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His legs were between hers, and as she kept trying to get free, she kept bucking her hips against his.
He abruptly tore himself away from her and stood up glaring. His jaw rolled slightly, and his eyes were black.
“If you're ever fighting off a werewolf, I would not recommend doing it that way,” he said in a tight voice as he pulled out his wand and removed the leg locker jinx on his ankle.
“How should I do it?”
“Use your head to break his nose, and when he lets go of your wrists, tear his eyes out,” he said stiffly. “Go for knees, groin, eyes, ankles. As previously mentioned, you're trying to disable your assailant.”
“Right.” She picked herself up of the floor and stared wistfully at him.
“Again,” he said. He attacked her again.
By the time Hermione apparated away, she was covered in bruises. Draco had knocked her down again and again as he'd lectured her on hags', vampires', and werewolves' preferred methods for attack.
She hid in the bathroom when she got back to Grimmauld Place and rubbed Murtlap Essence all over her body. She studied self-defense. She reviewed all her notes on Draco.
She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to control him. She didn't know how to prove that she could.
She didn't know what he wanted. Her. In some way — for some reason — he wanted her. But she interfered with whatever else it was that he wanted.
She sorted through her memories exhaustively: turning them over, organising them, trying to find something to unravel.
She lay in bed at night and wondered if she were risking the war effort. Maybe she was compromised. Unreliable. Maybe Severus was right, and Draco was better off dead. Maybe if he was such a centralised figure in Voldemort's army, getting him killed and leaving a power vacuum would be the most effective use for him.
But she couldn't reconcile it. She refused to believe it.
She curled into a tight ball and felt as though she might die from the sense of despair she felt.
Each successive week when Draco trained her, she was distracted. She went through the motions, but she was uncommitted, and Draco noticed.
“Is there any point in my training you if you aren't even paying attention?” he asked, his expression irritated.
Hermione's mouth twisted, and the corners of her eyes ached. She looked away from him. “I just don't really see the point anymore.”
He stared at her for several seconds, looking faintly aghast. “I thought you didn't want to die,” he finally said.
“If I'm ambushed by a pack of werewolves, I doubt I'll survive it. If I do, I'll be in so many pieces I doubt it would even matter,” she said quietly.
He shifted back and stared at her as though he were reevaluating something. “What's wrong?”