Instead Hermione picks her book up off her lap and sits back in her chair, pointedly shifting her focus to the black script on the parchment even though she can't take in a word of it, holding her firewhiskey glass in one hand. She entirely ignores Malfoy, and that seems to be what he wants; in her peripheral vision she can see him slouch, and some of the stiffness melt out of the way he holds himself, his features slacken, and his gaze goes unfocused – staring out the window at the gardens in the dying sunlight. Hermione sits and drinks her firewhiskey in small, measured sips, pretending to read while she watches him like a hawk. He takes gulps, not sips, and keeps pouring refills with a clumsiness that only gets worse as the alcohol takes effect – drinking down the bottle level fast. His features are drawn and exhausted, and his whole body is filled with a trapped kind of despair that she can sense in the air around him like an aura.