"He had me on clean up with Aster, in a nearby wizarding village that he'd decimated," Malfoy says, and his voice is a smoke-roughened rasp, and the muscles in his jaw twitch and jump as he steels himself against the memories of the day. He shuts his eyes for a long moment, head falling back against the door, breathing. "Some of them were – were still alive when Aster put them on the fires. He likes... I managed to put most of them out of their misery, but not fast enough. Never fucking fast enough." His voice cracks and breaks over the words, expression pained; eyes still screwed shut and brow furrowed. Hermione thinks of twitching limbs and burnt screams, of the stench of flesh and faeces in the smoke, and a wretched empathy for both the victims and Malfoy seizes her.