She massaged her damaged muscles into compliance and began working through the exercise regime she'd memorised. Push-ups, sit up, burpees. She found that she could slot her feet through the bars of the cell door and do crunches while hanging upside down. She taught herself to do handstands.
It helped turn her mind off. Counting. Pushing herself to new physical limits. When her arms and legs turned to jelly, she'd slump down into a corner and fall into a dreamless sleep.
It was the only way to make the end of the war stop playing in front of her eyes.
Hold on, Hermione, she kept reminding herself when she was so cold and broken-hearted she didn't want to go on anymore. All there was in her head was death. Everyone screaming.
Sometimes she'd press both hands against the stones, draw her head back, and prepare to smash her forehead into the wall in the hopes of making it all stop.
But she always held herself back and then drew away.
“Hold on. You promised you wouldn't break.”
She couldn't always remember why.
When she did remember, she pushed the thought away and forced herself to do something else. Calculate the cubic feet of her cell. More push-ups. Could she count backwards from a thousand all the way to zero before her next meal appeared if she doubled the subtracted number each time? Two thousand? She'd keep going until she was too tired to think anymore and then huddle in a corner and trace her fingers along the walls.
The walls were the only things she always knew she could find in the dark
“Someone will come for you. Someone always comes for you.”
No one came.
Everyone was dead. She'd seen them die. No one was going to come for her.
The walls of her cell were all she had.
Everything else was darkness.
Chapter End Notes
Illustrations by Avendell, follow her on tumblr and instagram.
Additional Illustrations:
Hermione's patronus by favnia.
A sky of burning dementors by frumpologist.
Hermione's patronus by grapesodaandpuddin.
Fleeing Sussex by winchesterchola.
Everything else was darkness by minxchester.
Bombing Sussex by saharok_illustration.
Hermione's Patronus by jjupiter.
Draco by Flyora.
Manacled cover by nadiapolyakova.
Draco and Hermione by thelastlynx.
"You don't have to be lonely, because you're mine." by te al latte.
Draco and Hermione by flyora.
Draco and Hermione Past and Present by jjupiter.
The flashback gifset by ectoheart.
Draco Malfoy gifset by ectoheart.
Hermione Granger gifset by ectoheart.
Chapter 64
June 2005
Regaining consciousness was like striking the ground after an interminable fall.
Hermione's head was throbbing; an agonising, bleeding pain, as though her mind had been ripped out and torn into pieces. She tried to get up from where she was lying, but her body couldn't move properly. The motions jerked, and her hands trembled.
She could barely see. She tried to push herself up, but her arm shook and wouldn't support her weight. She tried to breathe. Her heart was racing, a painful rapid thrum in her chest.
She reached out tremulously in the darkness trying to find her bearings.
Something touched her shoulder. She screamed and turned.
Draco was standing next to her, his pale hair visible in the dark. She jerked away but then froze and stared at him. Her heart was in her throat. She studied him with wide eyes.
He was older.
His face was the same, but his eyes were older, as though it had been decades since she'd seen him. His expression was closed, but his gaze was familiar and intent as he stood beside her bed.
“You're still alive,” she said. Her throat was dry, and her voice broke with relief. “I thought you'd died.”
She started to reach instinctively towards him. He was alive. He was still alive. She'd kept him alive.
His eyes widened.
“Ginny. She was the first body they brought back.”
Her hand froze.
Everything hit her. Manacled. Imprisoned in Malfoy Manor to be bred.
He was the High Reeve.
Terror welled up inside her. Her blood ran ice cold. She felt as though she'd been struck so brutally she would die from it.
She gave a ragged gasp and snatched her hand back. Her jaw trembled, and she pushed herself away from him with shaking hands until she reached the far side of the bed. She slid off the mattress and knelt on the floor, staring across the bed at him as she struggled to breathe. Trying to reconcile everything.
It was Draco. He was still alive.
But he'd hurt her. He'd raped her. He'd told her he didn't want her; that he couldn't wait to kill her.
She felt like an injured animal struck on the motorway, bewildered and dying and trying helplessly to find a way to escape and hide. She wanted a dark corner to curl up in where things would stop hurting.
What happened?
As she tried to think, an agonising pain laced through her brain so abruptly her vision disappeared. An anguished moan escaped through her teeth. She buried her face in her hands as she struggled to keep conscious and tried to remember through the blinding pain in her head.
“Let's be clear, Mudblood. I don't want you. I never wanted you. I'm not your friend. There is nothing that will bring me more joy than being done with you.”
He'd killed Ginny.
He'd killed everyone.
She looked up and started breathing faster and faster as she stared at him, trying to understand.
“Are you still a virgin, Mudblood? Is that something you even remember?”
The sensation of her skirts being pulled up, exposing her as she stood bent over a table, gripping it, trying not to shake or make any sound.
He'd dragged her before Voldemort and held her in place while her mind was torn to pieces and then left her lying on the floor in a pool of rotting unicorn blood.
Hermione kept staring at him. There was a tearing pain in her chest — in her heart — as though there were a blade slicing through her as she struggled to breathe. Her chest contracted sharply and a broken, gasping sob was torn from her as all the gaps and inconsistencies merged into a single horrifying narrative.