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Hermione turned to face Malfoy calmly. Even without the potion she doubted she would feel particularly concerned. She stared at him as he approached. She had concluded that generally speaking he was neither permitted nor inclined to hurt her.

Even if he weren't desperate to get into her memories, Stroud had probably spelled out for him exactly why it would be inadvisable to break her psychologically.

“Do you keep a lot of people in cages?” she asked.

He stared at her. His face was slightly pale, and his eyes were dark and hardened with the rage that he was just barely keeping in check. She could feel it twisting around at the edges of him.

It occurred to her that if she were to try to get him to kill her it was probably the perfect moment. He was surrounded by the corrupting, addictive dark magic of the room. She could feel it seeping into her as she stood staring at him. A person could get high casting in an environment like that.

Malfoy's lips pressed into a hard line and she could see his jaw clench. There was so much under his endless cold. A slumbering rage was stirring, rippling just beneath the surface.

The drawing room had a strong effect on him. A sly provocation and she might make him snap. She wondered how to go about it.

Then he sneered.

“You're the only one I keep caged, Mudblood,” he said. His expression abruptly became indifferent again, the rage seemingly dragged back down. “Haven't you noticed?”

Hermione's lip curled. Malfoy glanced around the room; his face seemed drawn but he smirked down at her.

“This is my father's wing of the manor,” he said.

Hermione looked around sharply, half-expecting Lucius Malfoy to pop out from somewhere wearing a maniacal expression reminiscent of his former sister-in-law.

“Luckily for you,” Malfoy continued, “he's been abroad since the end of the war. I like to hope that he wouldn't torture and curse you horribly if you happened to cross paths, but if I were a betting man I'd have to admit the odds are not in your favour. So I advise against regular visits here. Do you want a complete tour before we go? Just to assure yourself that there's nothing conveniently lying about for you to murder me with?”

He gestured toward the door of the drawing room and Hermione walked out. He followed her closely and then shut the door firmly. Hermione felt a pulse of magic as it clicked shut; the sense of darkness vanished from the air around them. The door was heavily wrapped in wards. Hermione realised it was probably one of the innumerable rooms she was not meant to enter. She wondered if the other rooms he kept her from were similarly dredged in twisted magic.

“Astoria didn't say there was anywhere I shouldn't go. I assumed I was allowed to explore the whole manor,” she said.

“I'm sure she would be thrilled if you met an unfortunate end.The indignity of your mere existence aside, it might spell my demise as well. Then she'd become a wealthy widow and free to conduct all her tawdry affairs even more publicly than she already does,” Malfoy said in an indifferent tone.

Hermione looked up at him.

“And you don't care?”

He glanced over at Hermione with a cold expression.

“I was commanded to marry her therefore I married her. I was never commanded to care,” he said.

“You sound as enslaved as I am,” Hermione said tauntingly.

Malfoy stopped short in the hallway and slowly turned to face her, quirking an eyebrow. He surveyed her for several seconds and Hermione stopped and stared back at him.

“Are you trying to provoke me or sway my allegiance, Mudblood? How terribly audacious of you.”

Hermione studied his face for several moments before quirking an eyebrow of her own. “You've already thought it. If you hadn't, you'd be offended right now,” she said.

He continued to study her face for several moments before a slow smile curled across his lips. “You know, you almost seem like a Gryffindor again.”

“I've always been a Gryffindor,” she replied.

His eyes flashed faintly.

“True. I suppose you have,” he said.

The moment stretched out. They kept staring at each other. Hermione's eyes narrowed as she appraised him.

It seemed impossible that he was only twenty-four years old. No one so young should have had such icily restrained rage behind their eyes. Hermione had seen many faces aged by the war but Malfoy's expression was unique. He was so precisely contained, but his eyes were a storm; they looked like they contained the power of the sea.

How many people had he killed? People he knew, people he didn't know; none of it seemed to faze him. His face was somehow unmarked by worry; young and indolent. She could see the war in his eyes, though. All the deaths he had caused and seen, as though the grey in them were ghosts.

Ginny. He'd killed Ginny. Strung her corpse up in front of all her friends and left it to rot.

And Minerva. Poppy Pomfrey, who'd first taught Hermione healing. Neville, Hermione's first friend in the wizarding world. Moody.

Malfoy had killed everyone left after the war. He'd wiped out the Order of the Phoenix.