Mentally, something inside of her had fractured during her imprisonment, and she didn't know how to fix it. She couldn't reason her way through it. It swallowed her from the inside.
She stared down at her lap. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, down her cheeks, and along her lips before falling. The sharp cut of the wind made them feel like ice on her skin. She smeared them away and drew her cloak around herself more tightly. Pulling up the hood.
The cloak was almost smothering her with the warmth it provided, but Hermione still felt cold with horror as she sat silently on the veranda. Trying to think.
She'd been alright. Yesterday. She'd been alright. Why? Why hadn't it bothered her then?
Some kind of agoraphobia. It must be. Somehow, in the cell without light or sound or time, she'd latched onto the security of the walls. The containment had become the only constant in her life. So now, whenever she was free of the urgent horror of her current situation; whenever she had time to think…
The sense of openness created a fear that swallowed her.
Outdoors was far worse than the hallway upstairs.
Maybe she'd just been unprepared. Maybe now that she knew, she'd be able to push through the panic. If she gave herself manageable goals: Walk down the steps. Walk across the gravel. Walk to the hedge.
If she paced herself.
She certainly wasn't going to be getting lost in the hedge maze anytime soon.
Her stomach twisted. Her timeline for escape kept getting longer. She hadn't even had a chance to investigate options for getting away. The longer she took—
She might get pregnant.
She might already be pregnant. If she weren't, every additional month being ordered over that table increased the odds that she would be.
She wanted to cry.
She glanced over at Malfoy who was studying Quidditch scores avidly.
What useful information was she supposed to learn about him? All he did was seethe and read and then go away and murder people.
She was never going to escape. She was probably going to die on the estate.
She studied him in despair.
He was just cold. Angry.
Icy rage seemed to hang over him. She could feel the Dark Magic twisting around his edges.
Who did he hate so much? Was he like Lucius, blaming the Order for Narcissa's death? Were all those Killing Curses revenge? Was that what fueled his rise?
Everything about him had changed. There didn't appear to be even a shred of the boy she had known so many years before.
He had grown, taller and broader. The haughtiness of his school days had faded, replaced by a palpable sense of power. Deadly assurance.
His face had lost every trace of boyishness. It was cruelly beautiful. His sharp aristocratic features set in a hard unyielding expression. His grey eyes were like knives. His hair still that pale, white blond, combed carelessly aside.
He looked, every inch of him, like an indolent English Lord. Except for the almost inhuman coldness. If an assassin's blade were made into a man, it would take the form of Draco Malfoy.
She stared at him. Taking him in.
Beautiful and damned. A fallen angel.
Or perhaps, the Angel of Death.
While she was studying him, he closed the newspaper crisply and looked over at her. She met his eyes for a moment before glancing away.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked after staring at her several seconds.
She flushed faintly and didn't answer.
“If you won't tell me, I will just pull the answer from your mind,” he said.
Hermione struggled not to flinch at the threat. She stared steadily at the hedge.
“I–I think it's called agoraphobia,” she said after taking several deep breaths. “Something about — about open spaces makes me panic.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. It's not like it's rational,” she said bitterly as she inspected the stitching of her cloak. The uniform needlework was something orderly to stare at. Something predictable. Something that made sense. Something unlike her irrational mind.
“You have a theory, I'm sure,” he said with a challenging tone. As though he were daring her to refuse to tell him, so he could just force his way into her thoughts and drag the conclusion out for himself.
She felt tempted to lie, but it would be pointless. He would, undoubtedly, be in her mind again before she escaped. If she didn't tell him now, he'd still know by tomorrow. Or the next day. Or whenever he decided to investigate her thoughts again.
“It's probably from being in that cell for so long,” she said after a minute. “There was nothing — It was like a void. Everyone was dead. No one was going to come for me. I was just there, and I didn't even know how long it had been. The walls — were the only real thing. I guess — I came to rely on them. So now — when I try to walk somewhere, and I don't — I don't know where it goes… I don't know. I can't — it feels like—,” she struggled to explain the terror. “It's like — I'm abandoned all over again. That everyone is dead, and I'm just alone — And I can handle it when my world feels small — but when I remember how big it is — I can't. I can't—“