Malfoy doesn't come back by the arrival of the next meal, which is brought perhaps a day later; she doubts they are fed more than once a day. The guards don't bother searching the cell. Hermione thinks perhaps it is a weekly thing. The stench from the burning still hangs in the air, and the half-charred corpses are left there in their heap for now, beginning to gradually rot and stink more, in different ways. It is like hell, the smell. She waits for Malfoy, huddled in the back of the cell. She waits, and waits, for several more meals, growing more and more frantic as time goes on. He may be Draco Malfoy, former enemy, but she has accepted his story and now he is a lifeline, he is all she has. Her best hope, right now. And he hasn't come back.