With a wink, he disappeared.

Hermione closed her eyes and filed away the embarrassment. She moved an armchair in front of the door before changing out of her robe and into proper clothing.

~*~

All further news of Draco was passed on from Narcissa. He'd finally left his room for the first time a day later. He'd walked by himself through the Manor's gardens on the next, and finally on Monday, he'd left the Manor for the first time.

Hermione kept her curiosity to herself, wondering where Draco went, how he spent his free time—afraid to hear that it was official Death Eater business that had called him away.

She looked for him in the mornings from her window, hoping to glimpse him walking through the grounds, testing his new ribs, but she never spotted him.

On Tuesday she decided to resume her daily library visits. After a late breakfast, she pushed open the doors, intent to dive deeper into Occlumency after her routine sweep of the Horcrux information.

She followed her normal path straight to where the book mentioning Horcruxes lay, tucked between two large, leather-bound tomes in the Dark Arts section.

It wasn't there.

Hermione blinked, checking the surrounding shelves. The misplaced book was nowhere to be found.

Her heart pounded as she weighed her options. After a minute or two, she cleared her throat and chanced asking the catalog. But the book finder glowed a dim red, indicating the absence of such a book in the library.

Someone else was reading the only book in the vast Malfoy library containing information on Horcruxes.

Vibrating with anxiety and indecision, Hermione paced. Had Lucius tracked what she'd been reading, pulling it to stop her research—or to better understand her interest? Did the Malfoys even know about the Horcruxes? Lucius had Tom Riddle's diary for years before ensuring its delivery to Hogwarts, but hadn't Harry told her that Dumbledore doubted he even knew what it truly was?

Without a way to deduce the answers to her building questions, she decided she had even more reason now to focus her attention on Occlumency.

She was able to find several other books in the library to help with some of the more advanced practices, including how to fend off an attack of Legilimency. The first Occlumency book she'd taken from the library only covered the basics, such as concentration and meditation. One of the advanced techniques that had resonated with her was thinking of her mind as a bookcase or a series of shelves. Her introductory textbook had a short summary on it, and she'd experimented with it before using pure intuition. But now she had pages of detail and theory at her fingertips.

There were ideas of bringing other memories forward—or, in her case, displaying a memory on an easily reachable shelf. Although the techniques were incredibly advanced, Hermione couldn't help but soak in the information, always seduced by the most challenging ideas.

Hours later, Hermione sat in one of the grand armchairs, facing a large window that overlooked the pond as she focused her mind on still waters and hidden shelves. She tried to bring forward only memories of her parents, a process that involved the effort to push things onto different shelves. She thought less and less of her parents as she stared at the pond from the window, and focused on the memories that were always at the forefront of her mind.