She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders before she slowly turned to make her way back to the North Wing, turning everything over in her mind.
It was past nightfall. Hermione was seated in her chair, staring out the window and studying the hedge maze, when she felt the air shift. She turned and found Draco standing at the door.
"You didn't ask for any books." He was studying her carefully.
She shook her head. "I've been thinking."
She saw his eyes flicker and his expression grow more reserved.
"When I think about it, there are things that don't add up for me."
"Not all of us have your dazzling intellect." His tone was light. He hadn't moved from the door. Hermione studied the space between them and bit her lip as she hesitated.
"Today, you didn't say you'd always come for me. You used to say that to me before you left. Whenever—" she looked down and wrapped the hem of his cloak tightly around her fingers so they wouldn't twitch visibly. She furrowed her eyebrows, trying to recall a clear memory of it, but unable manage. A bleeding pain started to spread up from the base of her head. She gave up and looked back at Draco again. "I think — I think I remember that. Whenever you had to go, you'd promise to come for me. Didn't — you?"
Draco froze for a split second. Then he blinked, and his mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he looked away. "Well — I thought it was a rather empty-sounding promise at this point."
Her throat caught, and her hand started to move towards him. "You looked everywhere. That wasn't your fault."
He gave a short, barking laugh and stepped back as though struck. The abrupt sound made Hermione start.
He stared at her for a moment, and then his eyebrows arched upwards.
"Right," he said slowly. "Everywhere. I looked everywhere." He rolled his jaw as though he were feeling the shape of the word inside his mouth. "Except the one place that mattered — where you were — but everywhere else, certainly. I suppose I deserve credit for my effort if nothing else."
There was something cruelly familiar in the relentless intensity he spoke with. Her stomach curdled.
"
She couldn't remember when he'd said it. Was it a memory from during the war? No, after — in the Manor.
Draco gave another laugh, and it startled her from her reverie.
She stared at him.
His expression was twisted. " — not my fault?" he was saying. The words were so clipped it was as though he were biting off the end of every one of them. "Is that how I should think about it all? That nothing is ever my fault? Not my mother. Not Dumbledore — or really anyone I've ever killed. If I rationalise enough, I had no choice in any of it, did I? What about you? Is what's happened to you not my fault either? Should I blame you instead? Or the Dark Lord? Or perhaps the world in general?"
He was breathing through his teeth, the words pouring out of him.
Then he seemed to abruptly catch himself. His mouth snapped shut, and he just stared at her for several seconds.
Hermione blinked away the memory, her heart in her throat when she tried to swallow.
Draco sneered and laid a pale hand over his heart. "Would embracing eternal victimhood somehow make me feel better?"
His voice, beneath the caustic tone of sarcasm, was vibrating with suppressed rage.
Hermione looked down at her lap, breathing in slowly through clenched teeth. Her fingers kept trying to spasm nervously. Her whole body was tense as she tried to stay focused.
There were so many things she was trying not to think about or panic over that, it was like trying to keep her face above the surface before she drowned in the morass of her mind.
Her memories wouldn't come back with any kind of clear order. She had hundreds of memories of Draco, but she couldn't tell exactly what sequence they were supposed to go in. They were distant blurs and then flashes of clarity; things she knew but couldn't quite pull together into anything sufficiently cohesive.
Instinctively, she felt certain there was something more to what was happening and Draco was hiding it from her; something he didn't want her to know. If she just knew him better — if she could remember more clearly — she'd know what it was, but she couldn't pull it together clearly enough.
"That's not my point. I'm not — trying to talk about that yet," she finally said after spending several seconds trying to focus herself. "The part I don't understand is if everyone in the Order is dead now, and you can't kill Voldemort, how exactly are you going to defeat him and cause the regime to collapse? That doesn't make any sense to me."
She glanced up. "You aren't planning to have me kill him, are you?"
Draco stared at her and didn't even dignify the question with a response.