Hermione nodded to herself and looked down. "If you and Severus remove my manacles, Voldemort will know. Even if he doesn't know that Severus was the one to help you, you're responsible for me. If I escape, the blame will fall on you. There's no way for me to leave Europe without Voldemort realising you betrayed him."
Draco said nothing.
Hermione stared up at him, a cold sensation creeping over her as the pieces of information she'd gathered over the months finally snapped into place. "That's the plan. Voldemort's dependent on you. You're the lynchpin, the thing stabilising the regime. That's why you exposed yourself as High Reeve, so that he couldn't try to replace you with someone else." Her mouth felt dry, and she swallowed, her fingers rolling the fabric of his cloak between them. "Have you — have you found a way to remove your Dark Mark then?"
Draco stood immobile by the door as his mouth curved into a smile. "Of course. Once your manacles are off, I'll be able to remove it."
He reminded her of the New Year's Party. Every motion was so perfectly practiced. Despite how much she'd hated him, she'd still watched him; noticed details whose meanings had eluded her. Now, fused with her past knowledge of him, she could see the glimmers of Draco underneath. The person she'd known, ground down under his runes. He'd almost vanished, but there were still traces of him left.
She tilted her head to the side. "How?"
He gave a smooth shrug. "Severus figured something out. He did work with Dolohov for years."
There was an unnaturally long pause.
"You're lying," she finally said.
He cocked his head and studied her. His freezing, mocking intensity suddenly surfacing. "Really? Do you think you still know me well enough to tell?"
Defensive. He was always cruelest when he was vulnerable.
The corner of Hermione's mouth quirked up sadly. "Yes." Her heart felt like lead in her chest. "You used to be mostly truthful — to me."
His mouth twisted into savage smile. "Yes, I was."
Hermione tried to breathe and found herself drowning in raw grief. There was a sea around her, and Draco was standing fifteen feet away.
Her heart was beating faster and faster. She took a slow breath, and she met his eyes.
"You're lying to me. You aren't going to remove your mark. You're not even intending to try. You're planning to die. You exposed yourself as High Reeve so that when Voldemort kills you for letting me escape, the regime will destabilise and collapse."
Draco stood staring at her for a moment before his lips curved into a smile bitter as poison. He sighed, and the facade fell.
"I had hoped the library would preoccupy you for at least a week." He looked disappointed and tired.
Hermione waited for him to say something else, but he didn't.
"That's your plan?" Her voice was shaking with disbelief. "Two years and your plan is still to hide me somewhere, get killed as a traitor, and think that I'll — I'll be alright with it?"
Draco was silent for several seconds, then he gave a low laugh. She felt it in her bones.
"Do you have a better solution this time too?" His tone was freezing. "After all, not every single horror that I've ever imagined has happened yet. Losing you and spending sixteen months trying and failing to find you. Finding you tortured and broken. Keeping you as a prisoner in this house. Raping you." His voice was growing raw with grief and rage. "Having to hold you in my hands, and feel you in my head while your mind was ravaged. Finding someone raping you in my garden—"
"He didn't," Hermione said quickly, her chest constricting. "He didn't. You got there in time."
His eyes flooded with relief, but his mouth sharpened into a razor-edged smile. "Well, there's that."
He gave a short laugh and looked down at the floor. "Where was I? Ah yes. Finding you with your eye nearly gouged out because my wife had attempted to blind you. Finding you bludgeoning yourself against a window. Watching you waste away because I'd gotten you pregnant. Arriving to see you collapse and then learn that the damage from your occlumency and the foetal magic was so severe you might not ever wake up — that I might have killed you."
He had turned white. His lips thinned as his mouth twisted and then curved into a sneer. "Is that not enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Should we endeavor to achieve all of it?"
He released a sharp breath, and his expression closed again. "If I removed your manacles, instead of having you taken to safety, I could put a wand in your hand and apparate you, pregnant, into the Dark Lord's Hall. It's been two years since you used magic, you can barely manage to walk up the stairs, and you still hardly eat anything, but never mind all that. Surely fighting for the greater good counts for something at some point."
Hermione flinched.