There was a flash of poisonous green light. As Hermione glanced back, she saw the Killing Curse sailing through the air. Remus finally went fully limp. The last of the Marauders.
She was pulled through the hallways, only half-lucid through the jumble of trauma in her mind and the remaining physical pain from all the cruciatus. The hallways were stripped bare. There were a series of large iron doors that the guard had to pause and unbolt as he dragged her further and further into the bowels of the castle. Down into the dungeons, past the classrooms, past the wall that had concealed the Slytherin common room, through a heavy door into an unfamiliar hallway.
Umbridge was standing by a door. She gave a saccharine smile as she looked Hermione over.
“This is where we kept our problematic prisoners until transfer to Sussex. Without the wards on the castle, we can't be too careful with a prisoner saved for the Dark Lord's exclusive interrogation. I'm sure you'll do quite well here until he thinks to call for you.”
Hermione was shoved into a small room, barely illuminated by the torchlight outside the cell. Stone walls. Straw in a corner. A chamberpot in another.
She turned as the door was being swung shut, then it suddenly stopped, and Umbridge stepped through, as though she were re-considering something.
Her eyes ran up and down Hermione.
“We must obey the Dark Lord's commands, mustn't we?” she said in a musing voice as she gestured at Hermione with her wand. “Intact. That's very important. We don't want you sitting down here gibbering like a loon, chattering away to yourself like a filthy little savage. Let's keep you — very quiet.” The tip of a wand dug into the dip behind Hermione's jaw, forcing her head up. “Silencio.”
Umbridge gave a small giggle, and her cloying, sugary breath brushed across Hermione's face.
“You'll understand soon enough.”
Then Umbridge turned and walked out the the cell. The door swung closed with a heavy thud, and in a matter of seconds even the torchlight outside the cell was gone.
Hermione was left in darkness and silence.
She felt her way carefully to the corner with the straw and curled up into a tight ball. Her muscles were burning and spasming painfully. It was freezing in the dungeons, and her clothes were thin.
She kept blinking, and peering into the darkness, hoping that if she waited long enough, eventually she'd be able to make out a faint outline.
There was nothing, nothing but darkness.
Eventually she curled her head down and returned to her occlumency.
Except — it wouldn't—
She tried again but her memories—
Moving through her mind was laborious. As though she was mentally weighted down and she could barely crawl through her mind with occlumency.
She froze with dawning horror. Her twitching fingers went to her wrists, feeling the metal locked around them as she tried to breathe calmly.
It had never occurred to her — with her magic suppressed she'd lost her ability to use occlumency. Her mind was locked in the exact state it was in at the moment the shackles were fastened around her wrists. A sea of trauma at the forefront of her mind, and Draco hidden so far away she could barely draw up a clear memory of him.
She pressed her hands against her mouth and forced herself to breathe.
She inhaled slowly. To a count of four.
Exhale, through her mouth. To a count of six.
In and out.
Again and again.
She forced herself to think carefully. This was for the best. Voldemort would bring her in for interrogation and find a chaotic jumble of memories. If she were careful not to think about Draco, Voldemort might not be able to find him.
She wrapped her hands around her shoulders, shivering in the cold. She just — couldn't think about Draco. Not at all. She couldn't let herself.
Hold on. That was what she had to focus on. Hold on.
Her ring suddenly burned painfully.
Hermione gave a silent gasp and gripped her hand. Her ring burned again and again and again. Then the burning stopped.
Hermione twisted the ring around her finger. Draco might come for her, before Voldemort called her in for interrogation. She had to be ready.
He always came for her.
She couldn't let herself waste away.
“Hold on. Hold on, Hermione,” she mouthed the words over and over.
She didn't know if it was merely hours or a day later when her ring burned again. She was in so much pain she barely felt it. Her body was screaming from the muscle damage of the cruciatus and the cold and her hunger. She could barely move.
Regardless of whether she had her eyes opened or closed, all she could see was the dead. Harry dying before her eyes. Over and over. Ron's screams as he died. Colin. Molly and Arthur. The hospital ward. They were at the forefront of her mind, and there was nothing else to think about.
There wasn't any food. There was no water either.
She thought it had been a day, but she had no way to be sure. There was no sound outside, not even monotonous dripping. There was only endless silence and darkness.
Perhaps Umbridge intended to starve her to death.
Her ring burned again hours later, she pressed her hand against her chest. Several hours later she suddenly smelled food and half dragged herself across the floor. She found a plate with bread and some kind of meat and a large bucket of water.
Her muscles were still spasming so badly she nearly dropped the bucket while gulping down water.
After that meals appeared. Randomised. There never seemed to be any set amounts of time between them. Sometimes it felt like days. Other times it seemed like only a few hours had passed.
After what she thought had been a week, her body stopped burning and spasming. She forced herself to get up and explore every inch of the cell with her fingertips. The door was sealed with magic; there was no lock to pick even if she had anything but straw and a chamber pot. She sniffed at the air through the bars on the door in the hopes it might indicate something. The air was stale, wet, cold. Lifeless.
She had hoped that if she just checked carefully enough, she'd find a loose stone in the wall; some secret compartment hiding a nail, or a spoon, or even a bit of rope. Apparently the cell had never held any problematic prisoners for very long. There were no scratches to mark time. No loose stones. Nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
Her ring kept burning. Every time she'd give a small gasp of relief and start crying from the reassurance Draco was still alive somewhere.
Then she'd catch herself sharply. She couldn't think about it. She couldn't let herself think about Draco. If Voldemort got to her first, she couldn't have him in her mind when she couldn't occlude him. She used the barest, smaller bits of magic and pushed her memories of him further out of reach. As though she were an oyster, carefully burying each memory under the tiny layer of occlumency she could wield without activating the magic suppression.
Her ring kept burning, every day, with almost blistering intensity. The fiftieth time it burned, she set her jaw and pulled it off, hiding it carefully in the corner. Before three meals appeared she felt her way back across the cell and put it back on, terrified that if she wasn't wearing it, it would somehow disappear.
It didn't burn again after that. She didn't know if it meant Draco somehow had known she had taken it off.
Or if he'd died.
She huddled in the corner of the cell, feeling the rough texture of stones in the darkness, and tried not to think.
She recited potion recipes in her head. Transfiguration technique. Reviewed runes. Nursery rhymes. Her fingers flicked as she mimicked wand techniques, mouthing the spell inflection. She counted backwards from a thousand by subtracting prime numbers.