Her stomach plummeted, and her hands crept protectively down to her stomach. Draco's eyes followed them.
“I don't know.” She looked down at the swell of her stomach, running her hands nervously over it. “Last time — I didn't take a Calming Draught beforehand. I didn't expect it. It was — it was hard to handle.”
Draco's expression tensed, and something indecipherable flickered in his eyes.
She forced herself to smile. “But if we do things properly — if I'm ready for it, and it's just the once — I think it could be alright.”
He was silent for several seconds. “We don't have to go. We could stay here. I'll let Ginny know you can't safely travel.”
She looked down at her stomach again. “It's not very safe here though, is it? We're still in Europe. Denmark has a treaty with Voldemort; the terms of the armistice require them to turn fugitives over. Even if they didn't, they'd never protect you.” She drew a deep breath and looked up. “It'll be fine. Maybe — just a day or so longer, then we'll go.”
Draco's expression had closed; he stared at her stomach for a moment before nodding.
She got up and took a shower. She still had dust in her hair from the explosion in the manor, and the curls were badly tangled. She spent ten minutes hand-detangling them before she remembered she had a wand again. She dried it and braided it loosely in a long plait. By the time she was tying it off, her headache had come back. It bore through the back of her skull until she could barely keep standing. She pulled her shirt and knickers back on, downed a nutrition potion, and then curled around her stomach in a miserable heap in the bed, falling asleep again.
When she woke the next morning, there was a brain diagnostic hanging over her head. Draco was staring at it with a drawn expression as he manipulated the reading.
It felt like being dunked into cold water. The warmth vanished, and she lay frozen for a moment, staring at all the scarlet, thread-like fractals branching through her brain. She reached up and shoved his wand away. The diagnostic disappeared.
She looked away towards the window.
There was a long silence.
“Hermione, what happened? What did he do to you? Are you going to tell me?”
She was quiet for several minutes, swallowing hard before she finally spoke.
“I'm not actually sure. He didn't know how to use legilimency, so he just — crushed things that were in the way. Even now that I have my occlumency back — there are certain spots in my memories that I can't — can't reach them anymore. It — feels like a building where parts have collapsed. I feel like if I go near or disturb it — more might fall apart.”
She pressed her lips together. “Some of the things I started to remember again — I don't know if I'll still remember them after a while. Every time I wake up, they feel like they've faded. The details are all disappearing.”
Draco's fingers brushed lightly against her cheek. “What—” his voice was tense, “what do you not remember? What's fading?”
Hermione was silent. “All the times you told me about your mother. There are gaps in those memories now.”
Draco gave a heavy sigh of relief. “That's fine. That's fine. You don't need to remember that.”
Hermione just stared out the window and swallowed again. “It's not fine. Those were important. They were important to me, that you told me, that I understood what happened to you. I'm afraid my memory is going to fall apart someday. Like there are cracks all over now, and someday something will push it wrong, and it will all break. What if I forget you again?” She couldn't hide her rising panic. “All that time in the manor, I felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest. You were right there — and I didn't know I was looking for you.”
The warmth and tranquility of the cabin suddenly felt mocking. Like it was all a daydream she was clinging to.
He turned her face so that their eyes met. “It wouldn't be the same.”
She nodded, but her mouth twisted. “I know. I know that rationally. I just—” her eyes dropped as her voice started shaking. “I don't know how to believe it. As soon as I start thinking, my heart starts pounding, and I can't breathe. Even when I try to occlude, it's like my body won't stop panicking. I should be relieved, but I'm just as terrified that I'll lose you as I was in the manor. I feel like I'm still holding on with my fingertips. Every second feels only moments away from everything falling apart and turning back into a nightmare.”
She drew a ragged breath and sat up, pressing her hand against her sternum as she made herself breathe slowly. She stared down at her wrists. “I–I thought that everything would be fixed once my manacles were off and we escaped. I thought I'd be better — the way I used to be...”
Her voice faded away.
She sat frozen as she recalled it.