Chapter Text
Calling it darkness was egregiously wrong. It was blackness. The room or cell or chamber or dungeon was so black that it was disorienting.
Hermione could not move around the space without losing her balance. She fell and hurt herself regularly, but the pain was welcome. It reminded her that she could still feel a real bodily sensation. A bruised elbow or a scraped knee reassured her that she still had elbows and knees.
Meals and water were not delivered to her and yet she never felt hunger or thirst. She surmised that she must have been placed under some sort of stasis charm. This, unfortunately, meant that she was unable to measure time through meals. Meals would have also helped her to feel real if she could chew and swallow. She still had teeth. She never felt tiredness either but she could sleep, though it was very difficult. Apart from the fact that her captors had not provided her with so much as a blanket, disturbing nightmares of the war plagued her and she slept fitfully, frequently jerking awake in cold sweats.
She did not have her wand and it felt like a piece of her very being was lost. At first she tried to sense her magic running across her palms and down to her fingertips. She even tried in vain to do some simple, wandless charms that she had learned during her school days, but her magic was not resonating with her physical body. Perhaps the room was warded against magic use or maybe her magic specifically was nullified.
Hermione Granger was logical to a fault. She used that logic in her second year at Hogwarts when she figured out the powers of the basilisk and used a silver mirror to peek around the corners of the castle to avoid being murdered by the heir of Slytherin. She displayed that logic in her third year when she guided her best friend Harry through the past after utilising a time-turner to save Buckbeak the hippogriff and Sirius Black. She boasted that logic for months upon months while camping all over Britain with Harry and Ron as they hunted horcruxes and plotted how to destroy them, all whilst staying alive on the run as Undesirables number one, two and three.
She would not let that logic leave her now, alone in the blackness.
Muggle grounding techniques were her only ritual. She sat cross-legged and pushed the heels of her hands into her thighs. She still had hands and thighs. She screamed at the top of her lungs because she still had a voice and lungs.
She heard other screams too because she still had ears. The other screams were not logical however. They were desperate, filled with pain, unhinged.
Hermione was steadfast in not allowing her own mind to unhinge. So she stumbled around, she slept, she grounded, and she screamed.
She also thought. She thought about her parents. She fervently hoped that Monica and Wendell Wilkins were happy and safe in Sydney, Australia, with not one inkling that their magical daughter was incarcerated by the soldiers of a maniacal dark wizard and in grave peril. She thought about her friends and yearned for some hint that Ron, Ginny, Luna and Neville were alive. She needed them to be alive.
Mostly, she thought about the Battle of Hogwarts, ruminating on all of the insanity that had unfolded on that fateful day.
The images repeatedly flashed as if they were burned into her memory. Hagrid carried Harry’s lifeless form towards the castle doors where his friends, teachers and classmates stood. As Hagrid’s tears fell upon his limp body, Ginny cried out and lurched forward to reach him but Hermione did not flinch. Her feet were rooted, her heart was hammering so hard that it must have been visible through her shirt. Invisible, iron chains ensnared her, pinning her arms to her sides and crushing her chest, almost stopping her breath.
As Hermione stood fixed to the ground, her eyes glazed and a scene from a horror film played out in front of her. Lord Voldemort held court and peddled his narrative that he and his Death Eaters had caught the cowardly Harry Potter as he skirted The Forbidden Forest in search of an apparition point. Bellatrix Lestrange and a host of degenerates cackled cruelly as their master kidded that the sorting hat had obviously fumbled its words when it announced “Gryffindor” as the house Harry would spend his Hogwarts years in. Gryffindors were known for their bravery but The Boy Who Lived wanted to leave his friends to fight his fight while he ran away, too craven to face death.
Hermione then became vaguely aware of her friend Neville’s spindly form in front of her, shouting back at the opposition as they only snickered in return. The thought to call Neville back to safety or perhaps to join him in his stance against these perverse creatures briefly flitted across her consciousness but was quickly replaced once again by the paralysis that could only have been grief for her first friend or death itself. She hoped it was the latter.
A slicing sound pierced her desolation. Hermione’s head snapped up to see a snake’s head soaring in a perfect arc across the clear, blue sky. Before she even registered that Neville had beheaded Nagini, destroying the final horcrux and making Lord Voldemort mortal once more, there was a clock tick of appreciation for the beauty of the summer's day.
Once again, pandemonium reigned.
Lord Voldemort, enraged by the loss of his serpentine pet and his last safeguard against death, called his Death Eaters to battle once more and the Hogwarts clan responded in earnest. Curses and hexes, blue, red and green flew past her vision. Shrieks and explosions filled her ears. A base thrummed in her chest, as if she was at a rock concert. Arms surrounded her; grabbing, pulling.
The arms were lithe yet solid. When she finally looked up, they seemed to go on forever. Hermione followed with her eyes as they met broad shoulders which flowed into a slender neck which reached the beautiful and anguished face of Draco Malfoy.
His charcoal grey eyes looked like a storm as they bore into hers. His normally silver hair was a dirty grey with streaks of brick red, tainted by the dust and blood of battle. His facial muscles were contorted as if in agony. His thin lips were moving fast. He was shouting. Her Slytherin classmate, who tormented her with disgusting slurs and hexes in their school days, who had let his deranged Death Eater aunt and her sinister cronies into Hogwarts to murder Albus Dumbledore, who had stood by and watched as that same aunt disfigured her for torture and for fun, was shouting at her to move out of harm’s way.
Hermione gave her head a quick shake and blinked her eyes. She must have been imagining that Malfoy was standing by her, shouting at her and pulling her body. “Move your fucking ass Granger! Do you want to fucking die?”
Malfoy forcibly pulled her through the crowd, sending the occasional jet of light at whoever blocked their path, whether it was a student, a teacher or a Death Eater. Every jet was green. He pulled her through the colossal double doors and started up the castle's steps, still grasping the top of her arm when Hermione finally dragged her brain into this reality.
“Let go of me!” she barked and tried to pull her arm free of his merciless grip.
“No Granger, you are not fighting anymore.”
“Malfoy! My friends -”
“Can deal without you for once, fucking hell!”
Hermione planted her feet and refused to climb the stairs anymore. As she opened her mouth to argue with the young Death Eater, he jerked her by her upper arm so she was pulled flush to his chest. She struggled against his hold but her stubbornness was no match for his immense strength. He towered above her so she had to tilt her chin to lock eyes with him and give him a half-hearted glare. He lowered his face until his nose grazed hers and snarled through gritted teeth at her.
“Saint Potter is dead. Your precious Order are dead or dying. This is it. This is the end. You will do as you are told. You are leaving.”
Hermione became enraged. “I am not going anywhere with you, you fucking Death Eater. You are one of them!”
He rolled his eyes as if what she had just said was just some boring answer that she had offered in Professor Binn’s class. “Whatever you say Granger, but you are still leaving. Let’s go.” he drawled and gave her arm another sharp yank so she was forced to follow his lead.
Hermione was incredulous and her mind was spinning with questions; was he truly a Death Eater, was he a double agent, was he going to hand her over to his father or someone worse, had he switched sides, was he going to hurt her, what was his plan, did he even have a plan, where were all of her friends, were they dead?
She lost all composure as she was dragged up the stairs and began to sob. “Malfoy please, I beg you, let me find my friends. I don’t know why you are doing this but please, let me help them!”
Malfoy ripped back a tapestry to reveal a small covered alcove that was on his left and thrust her inside. He barrelled in behind her and quickly adjusted the tapestry to hide them. He then shoved her roughly against the wall and covered her mouth with his hand. His hand was so large that it wrapped around her whole jaw and held her still. Her eyes widened as he menacingly murmured “Shut the fuck up, Granger.”
Hermione had never had much respect for Malfoy in school. Separate from being her tormentor in youth, she felt that he was a pampered, pure-blooded prince. He was second to her across all academics except potions class. He had only a handful of authentic friendships and relationships. As their school years progressed, his teasing and name-calling has mostly ceased and she came to think of him as stunted and pathetic. By the time they reached their sixth year, she felt nothing but pity for him, watching him become thinner and weaker as all the life in his eyes died out. Now however, the sense of authority and warning in his voice and in his eyes made her do exactly as she was told. She shut up and focused on taking deep breaths to calm herself down. As she inhaled, she could recognise spearmint on Malfoy’s breath. She found it strangely soothing.
As her own breathing slowed, the tension eased marginally from Malfoy’s shoulders. He removed his hand from her face to produce an ornate, silver snuff box from his pocket and to check a silver watch that he wore on his left wrist, right below his vile Dark Mark. “This is a portkey. It activates in seven minutes. It will take you to a safe place. You will use it.”
Hermione opened her mouth, prepared to contest his statement but he immediately cut her off. “No, Granger! If you stay you will be taken. They will rape you. They will torture you. They will kill you. I will have to watch or join in. This is your only chance. You are fucking going.”
Her jaw dropped at this crass admission. Was Lord Voldemort’s youngest Death Eater and her childhood bully really trying to protect her?
As if Malfoy realised he had revealed too much, he groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyelids screwed together in frustration. Hermione, ever the impulsive Gryffindor, could not resist. She took this fleeting moment that Malfoy did not have his hands or his eyes on her and she darted out from behind the tapestry, determined to return to the battle and find her friends.
She made it down one flight of steps with the sounds of Malfoy’s footsteps pounding after her when she ran directly into something large and immovable. She landed in a heap on the floor and looked up to see the looming figure of Antonin Dolohov.
“Would you look at that! Baby Malfoy actually got one. She's the best one, in my opinion. Well done, lad!”
Panic tore through Hermione as she spun away from Dolohov to search for Malfoy’s face behind her. He had reached her and was frozen a few steps above her. His already pale face had drained to grey. His clear, mercury eyes were now clouded, occluded.
Those eyes were the last thing she saw before she heard the stunning spell and all went black.
When she regained consciousness, the blackness had already begun. She had no wand. She had no knowledge of how much time had passed or how it was passing now. She did not know which of her friends had lived or died.
She did not know what the hell Draco Malfoy was trying to achieve by getting her out of the castle. It was unthinkable that he actually wanted to protect her after the childhood torment she had endured at his hands in the past. How did not handing her over to Voldemort serve him? What was motivating him?
The only thing she knew was that Harry was dead and Lord Voldemort had won the war.
In between her grounding practices, Hermione replayed the events of those hours over and over again until she had a migraine. With all her logic and cleverness, Malfoy’s surreal behaviour was a puzzle she could not yet solve.
Her contemplation and speculation was perpetual until her skin started prickling; a crack of light, her eyes burning after the eternal blackness, a groaning sound, an open door. Hermione rubbed her eyes and blinked and squinted until she could make out the nightmarish figure of Antonin Dolohov standing in the door frame, grinning twistedly down at her.
“Hello, beautiful.”
