The room is still empty and silent when Hermione emerges from the bathroom, and she sighs softly, shoulders sagging with both relief and disappointment mixed. She does what she has done the past few days while Malfoy is gone serving his Dark Lord; sits and tries to read, to sleep, to think of a way out, to lose herself in happy memories – to do anything but sit and dwell on the trauma and fear that make a toxic stew in her stomach. The worst thing is not what has happened, she thinks, as she sits in the armchair with the book she has been trying and failing to read for the past half-hour.