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My question is how did Hermione not hear the house elves giving her food? Did they do it soundlessly on purpose? Because from what I understood, Umbridge put Silencio on her and didn’t silence the whole dungeon. If she did, Hermione wouldn’t be able to hear the door opening at the beginning. Did I miss something?

If you read the books in Harry Potter, all the food that appears out of thin air in the Great Hall came from the kitchens and was magically transported by the House Elves without their being visible.

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Hi what did Voldemort think happened to Draco and Lucius at Malfoy Manor? Lucius said that Voldemort was summoning him via the Dark Mark. Did Voldemort figure out that Hermione's manacles were freed and that Draco's Dark mark went blank? Did he assume that all three died at Malfoy Manor, or did he suspect that any survived?

In my mind, they noticed that Hermione's manacles had gone offline, which was why Lucius was summoned, when Lucius failed appear, Death Eaters were dispatched and found the Manor in flames, and s it was assumed that the reason was that everyone was being killed in the fire, which disconnected the manacles etc.

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It's like the third time i've read your masterpiece and as i did, i kind of had deja-vu moments. Not because i've read it already twice but because it reminded me of something else. And now i finally know! I heavily got reminded of Reylo. Like it has so many parallels and when i saw that you're also writing Reylo i couldn't help but wonder if Manacled is a bit based on it? Or is it pure conicidence?

It wasn't a conscious choice but I've heard that from a number of a reylo shippers. I think because of the type of role Draco has in the story, it definitely has bit more of a reylo dynamic than dramione fics necessarily have by default.

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Did Astoria and Draco ever have sex or share a bed/kiss or be affectionate at all? I know they didn’t consummate the marriage I think was written

They did consummate the marriage, but not until Astoria was supposed to be fertile, since their arranged marriage was the first stage in the repopulation efforts. Astoria had her own rooms in the manor, however Draco did not live there until Hermione was assigned as a surrogate, which is when he moved back in.

#draco #astoria #pre flashbacks

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hi sen!! i know theo was driven mad by bellatrix but i was wondering if there was anyone who was taking care of him during the war and what happened to him after?? also i’m not sure if you have answered this but what happened to blaise? love your writing x

He was placed in Janus Thickey after that.

I never did anything concrete with Blaise in the final version of Manacled. Originally he said something anti-Voldemort to Draco when Hermione was imprisoned in the manor and Draco was forced to report and execute him before Voldemort saw the exchange in Hermione's memories, but I decided to omit that. So there's nothing official that happens to Blaise in manacled.

#blaise zabini #theodore nott

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draco did everything for hermione in manacled. was there a line he wasn’t willing to cross?

For himself, no. I think if he saw it as a means to an end, he’d do almost anything. He was willing to be as monstrous as he needed to be.

However, there are limits to what he’d put Hermione through (which arguably were also much too high) but at least in her case, there was a threshold of harm where he would have just mercy killed her rather than put her through anything else.

#draco #Hermione

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Hi, Sen! I remender reading one of your answers to asks about Manacled that you imagined after Aurore was born, they'd have to deal with the trauma about their intimacy. I gathered you wont be writing about it, but could you tell a little of how you imagined the process went and how much they managed to heal? I hope I dont sound morbid, once H remebered it was different, but I wonder how a couple could heal and try to focus on their love after so much hurt. You keep making me reflec a lot.

I feel like it was a bit of a push and pull process for them. They’re both survivors and the thing about people who push things down in order to survive is that it can reach a point where they struggle to ever deal with it.

I think Draco was the one who needed it more because for him the trauma was linear, he always remembered their relationship, whereas for Hermione, because of the disconnect she had due to her memory loss period, she was more capable and inclined to just suppress the period of her imprisonment in the manor because that Hermione was a different person who operated under a different context.

You can see that difference in the way they both approached having sex after her memories come back. For Draco having sex with her again is like a form of redemption that he doesn’t think he deserves. Whereas for Hermione, it’s a reversion and a reclamation of something she regards as having been lost/taken that she’s determined to have back.

The thing about their resuming their sexual relationship so quickly (much too quickly) is that in a way it was necessary for them in order to have the degree of intimacy and trust needed for the escape, but on a strictly relationship level perspective, it would have been much better for them to have reconciled more gradually and intentionally. The fact that they did rapidly revert back to their wartime sexual emotional codependency made it harder for them to actually start dealing with what happened once they were safe on the island.

I think the biggest hurdle was probably talking about it at all. And then once that finally happened it was a very slow process of dealing with it in small enough pieces that it didn’t trigger their survival/suppression impulses. Hermione I think would have been willing to just ignore it, she has a tendency to sweep things under the rug for herself once she’s decided they were necessary (eg her almost complete lack of guilt over bombing Sussex, or her reaction to the revelation that Draco killed children as High Reeve), she’d rather just move on than deal with the trauma. But for Draco, I think he needed to process it because he was afraid Hermione was only staying with him only because she wasn’t actually acknowledging that he’d harmed her.

#draco #Hermione #epilogues #post epilogues

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“Malfoy’s lips remained pressed against Astoria’s but as he kissed his wife he raised his eyes, looking over Astoria’s head. His cool, grey eyes immediately locked onto Hermione’s face.”

I have always wondered, what was Malfoy thinking in this moment?

He’s known she was watching him the entire evening, but because of the constant scrutiny and attention he received, he couldn’t look up at her. So, when he was kissing Astoria it was the first opportunity to look up at Hermione. And then, once he met her eyes, he couldn’t look away. I don’t think there was a reason behind it beyond that he couldn’t help himself.

#draco #pre flashbacks

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Hey Sen, I was wondering if you could tell me the end of the other surrogates such as Angelina, Cho, Parvati, Katie, Romilda, Hannah.

Did they end up finding closure, were they honoured?

Reading about how the other surrogates were treated hurt me so bad.

To be honest, I did not plot out what happened to the other surrogates in very much detail because the plot was so complicated, I didn’t want to bring in a lot of extra threads that weren’t going tie in in multiple places. In order to give myself some flexibility in the process of writing, I left certain threads loose in case I realized I needed them later, but ultimately because the story is so limited by the POV, there was a lot of information that never had a natural place to come up.

I think there was gradual healing for a lot of them. Ginny’s efforts really helped to protect them and gave them opportunities to heal, but of course those types of atrocities aren’t the kind of thing you ever just “get over.” But as you do see with Angelina in Diagon Alley, the surrogates did go on and live lives after that, lives that were obviously shaped by the war and the repopulation program, but their stories didn’t end with the liberation.

#epilogues #post epilogues

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I was thinking how it took a while for hermione to get pregnant in manacled. Was draco using a contraceptive?

Yes he was. He had never intended for Hermione to get pregnant and only stopped when Stroud threatened to have Hermione transferred to Lucius.

#draco #pre flashbacks

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What was the hardest decision for draco to make in manacled? And hermoines?

Draco: choosing whether he should keep Hermione prisoner in the manor or if he should just mercy kill her when she arrived so that she wouldn’t be raped.

Hermione: that’s harder. I think choosing to become a healer was really hard for her, even though she didn’t fully know the fallout of the decision, she knew it was going to change things for her and that no one would appreciate the personal sacrifice that it was. With Draco, lot of her hard decisions are situations like Sussex or amputating his arm or even agreeing to be traded to him, those were decisions where there was no real question about which choice she’s going to make, despite how painful it was. But choosing to become a healer wasn’t something anyone was asking or pushing her to do, it was a decision she made fully on her own and then privately bore the consequences of as well.

#draco #Hermione #flashbacks #pre flashbacks

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In Manacled, Hermione believes Draco might kill her because his obsession for her might get in the way of his true motive for spying for The Order. So, did Draco ever actually think about killing Hermione when he realized how attached he was getting?

No. That was Hermione’s own sense of insecurity from regarding herself as ultimately expendable in all her relationships affecting her perception of Draco.

#Hermione #draco #flashbacks

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Hi Sen, this isn't a question but I can't stop thinking about the parallel in Manacled where Hermione feels bad about accidentally taking away Draco's ability to feel it when he performs Dark magic because "when you tear your soul you should feel it" and also when she says she hadn't wanted Draco to be gentle when he took her virginity. Do I have some profound analysis of this? No. But has it been plaguing my brain ever since I made the connection? Nonstop. Anyway I'm hoping that sharing it will help release its hold over me lol I don't know if it was an intentional parallel on your end but it's my favorite one

Yeah. It’s not a parallel I was specifically thinking about, but both details are in line with Hermione’s personal philosophy about consequences, she has a very self-destructive/self-harming mindset that borders on having a borderline religious fervor behind it because of how powerless she feels. There’s a lot of alters and sacrifice imagery that emerges whenever she’s cornered because of this sort of subconscious conviction that she can somehow personally pay the price of saving everyone if she’s just willing to suffer enough for it.

#hermione #flashbacks

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Hey Sen! Manacled is everything for me. This work has become my safe place and can comfort me anytime I feel bad. Thank you!

I have one a question for you. Please, tell me, does Draco’s cologne exist in our boring muggle world? If it does, I wanna know the name and immediately buy it!

Haha, there actually is. Here’s a previous post where I linked to the two colognes most similar.

There’s also a candle that someone made that smells like him.

#draco

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Ok so I think it's pretty obvious that ManacledDraco would probably win in a wizarding duel against LIATOTZADraco, but since your Draco has had much more exposure to muggle warfare, do you think he'd win in a mixed muggle/magic fight? I'm thinking he'd own ManacledDraco in a fist fight for sure. @senlinyu I'm curious to know your thoughts as well. Either way, they are both fascinating characterisations!

Aww! Haven’t these poor babies been through enough, now they gotta fight each other? 😆😆😆 Send them to Mama Rizzle. They can both rest their weary blond heads in my lap 🤗. I’ve read this speculation before and your theory seems to be the common one. I think it comes down to what’s at stake. If it’s a certain brown-eyed Gryffindor witch, or their children, then I’d say all bets are off. They’ll both die before they lose, so maybe they’ll make sure neither of them walks off that field alive.

#draco #meta

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Manacled question, what did Draco do with the note that hermione left him before she left for Sussex? When they’re about to make their escape attempt, Draco gives hermione her satchel and she says “you kept it”. That part gives me a little headcannon of him having a heavily warded box under his bed with her satchel, note, and maybe some other things of hers that he opens and looks at on extremely hard days.

I debate a lot with myself about where exactly he'd keep it. Whether he'd hoard it, hide it, or carry it. So, it's one of those details I consider kind of open ended in my mind depending on the day.

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Why did Lucius' fake legilimency affect Hermione so much more than Draco or Voldemort's forced legilimency sessions? I think that Hermione's memory deteriorated after Lucius destroyed the memories of Narcissa, but didn't Voldemort also destroy her memories of crane-folding and meeting Draco's horses? Was it because Lucius was such an unskilled legilimens?

Draco's legilimency was surgically precise, he was being careful as he could be. Voldemort also had surgically precise legilimency but he's sadistic and enjoys feeling his victim's pain, so his torture was carefully done in a way that wouldn't compromise Hermione's usefulness. And Lucius was just indiscriminate destruction. It's like Draco picked the lock to break in, Voldemort broke a window, but Lucius used a wrecking ball to find the room he was looking for.