Despite the phrasing it didn't feel like a command. Hermione stared at him for a moment longer before she walked into her room anyway.
He was still standing in the hallway when she shut the door.
The next morning's paper had a picture of Malfoy and Astoria on the cover. It captured the moment Malfoy reached forward and ran his thumb across Astoria's lips before leaning down to kiss her, fireworks and streamers exploded behind them.
It looked sweet and romantic and intimate.
On the next page was a picture of the High Reeve killing several people in France. One girl looked vaguely familiar. Hermione thought she might have visited Hogwarts during the Triwizard Tournament.
Hermione hadn't realised Malfoy had left the country earlier in the week.
Hermione folded the picture of Malfoy and Astoria into a herringbone tessellation and amused herself by making Malfoy and Astoria bounce apart and then squash into each other.
She tore the picture of the High Reeve into tiny strips and wove it into a coaster. In another life, she thought, perhaps she might enjoy creating complex lattice-work pie crusts.
Then she stood up and started her exercise routine.
She was getting ridiculously fit, which was a satisfying although mostly pointless feeling. It didn't really matter how much of a punch she could pack if she wasn't able to actually drive her fist into Malfoy's face. There wasn't much point in stamina when she nearly had a panic attack every time she pulled her hand away from the yew hedges or tried to move at a speed that wasn't glacial.
Malfoy appeared late in the afternoon to go through her memories. He didn't seem to find anything of particular interest in her recent past. He didn't even react when he encountered her memory of Astoria shagging someone in the hallway. The portraits had probably already informed him. When he finished sorting through her memories he straightened.
Hermione blinked away the headache and sat up, looking at him.
“I'll be sending a final vial of the potion up tomorrow,” he said.
Hermione nodded. He didn't say anything else before he turned to go.
That night Hermione laid out a careful plan for the next day in her mind. If it was indeed her last dose of the potion then there were a number of things she wanted to try to attempt before the effects wore off.
The next morning she did not pause to read the newspaper. She knocked back the potion before she could hesitate or dread the withdrawal she'd suffer later. Then she headed out the door with cool determination.
Her first destination was the South Wing of the manor. The only part of the house still unexplored. She started on the uppermost floors and worked her way down. They were the ones in which she was least likely to encounter anyone so she could move more quickly.
As she reached the first floor she felt the air take on a cold, twistedness that she could detect even through the cushioning effects of the potion. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and her body broke out in a cold sweat.
Dark magic.
It was so thick in the air she could almost taste it.
She froze on the stairway for several minutes calculating.
Hermione's instincts were strongly urging her to turn around and leave. But they were smothered under the potion.
Her curiosity wasn't.
She descended the last several steps and moved in the direction of the feeling. There was a door ajar. She peeked in. It was a large drawing room. Entirely bare. Not a stick of furniture. No drapes. No portraits on the walls. Even the wallpaper appeared to have been peeled off.
There was nothing but a large cage sitting in the center of the room.
The dark magic hung over the room, but seemed most concentrated around the cage.
Hermione walked slowly into the room and approached it.
People had died in that room. A lot of people. Slowly.
Hermione's mind automatically began cataloguing the dark rituals she knew of that created such a lasting presence of twisted magic.
It had probably corrupted some of the ley lines of the estate.
As she drew nearer she found that the cage was built into the stones of the floor. Quite literally irremovable unless the foundation stones of the manor were torn out, and even that might not be enough.
Just standing near the cage caused her to taste a tang in her mouth like the copper flavour of blood.
She looked it over carefully.
It was an inch shorter than her. Probably exactly five feet tall and about three feet wide. Tall enough for a prisoner to stoop or huddle in.
She wondered how many people had been kept inside it.
A noise startled her. She turned and found Malfoy at the door staring at her with irritation that bordered on rage.
“Of course you would lack the sense not to come in here,” he said in a hard voice as he stalked toward her.
Chapter End Notes
Hermione making paper cranes by hoffnungclaws.
The New Year Kiss by enselius.