Manacled || Written by Senlinyu ||

Chapter Thirty- Seven: Flashback 12

August 2002

"Find each person's "handle," his weak point. The art of moving people's wills involves more skill than determination. You must know how to get inside the other person...First size up someone's character and then touch on his weak point. "

Hermione stayed up half the night re-analysing Draco. She scrapped her entire notebook and started a new one.

She felt as though she were brimming with new theories about him. She wasn't sure if any of them were based on reality or merely brought on by her sleep deprivation, but she felt as though she had hit upon something. As though she were breaking into a muggle vault and finally heard the first tumbler click into place. A warm sense of elation made her smile to herself while she brewed potions that day.

Her heart felt almost light.

This could work. She could win. She could bring him to heel. Seal his loyalty.

She hadn't realized how much the belief that he was simply a monster with a moral code had convinced her that she could never succeed. She'd had a sense of certainty that eventually he'd turn and kill her along with everyone else; it had been entrenched. Despite her heavy reliance upon occlumency the conviction had bled into how she thought and treated him as a whole.

Despite the game they played. He'd kissed her and taught her occlumency. He'd told her she could say no. And she healed him and followed his instructions about dueling and exercising. Beneath the learning and the partial niceties, it always felt like they were two vipers waiting for the other to finally strike.

Now she was reconsidering.

He was not a monster. Not entirely. He was trying to fix something. There were some sort of amends that he was trying to make. Not for killing Dumbledore or anyone else, but for something.

He knew he was fallen. Somewhere along the way something had happened that he was willing to suffer for, even die because of. Something he was trying to make right. He wasn't a spy out of ambition. He wasn't just playing the Order and the Death Eaters against each other in order to come out on top. He was trying to fix something.

Not the war. Not the killing. But there was something he was trying to make amends for.

Her initial assessment had been right. Draco Malfoy wasn't all ice. Under the death, rage and darkness there was more to him. She could use it.

Hermione doubted he'd tell her what was driving him. He was clearly determined not to reveal it. Playing a game of misdirection until her head spun. But she could be patient. Now that she had figured out that spying was some sort of penance for—something. If she refused to really hate him now; if she continued to be kind and comforting and interesting and clever to him. She could find a way in.

She could win.

As evening drew on and she got ready to go tend to his back, she took a moment to pause and steady herself.

She'd have to start over again.

There was something between them that—that she had difficulty letting herself think about too carefully. A tension between them that she'd likely wrecked with her outburst.

She'd have to begin cultivating it again carefully.

She had to be subtle.

Subtle as poison.

Hermione closed her eyes and shifted through her memories; winnowing out her strongest feelings and setting them aside.

Tamping down on her elation, on her bubbly sense of inner-confidence; stifling them until she was clear-headed. Focused.