“Yes,” Hermione said, looking down at the blanket on her lap. It was threadbare and smelled so strongly of antiseptic she wanted to gag from the olfactory assault.
“Then you know what a normal, healthy magical brain looks like. This is yours.”
A simple wand manipulation drew the magically projected image of Hermione's brain into view.
Hermione's eyes narrowed. Scattered across the projection were little glowing lights; some clustered, some sporadic. All over her brain. She'd never seen such a thing before.
“What are those?”
“My best guess is that they're magically created fugue states.”
“What?”
“At some point during your isolation, your magic began trying to protect you. Since you couldn't express any magic externally, it internalised itself. You worked hard to keep yourself from, as you said, slipping. However, the mind is hardly equipped to handle such a thing. Your magic has walled off parts of your mind. As a result, it fragmented you somewhat. Normally a fugue is general, but these appear almost surgically precise. Although mind healing isn't my specialty.”
Hermione stared in horror.
“Do you mean I–I disassociated?”
“Something like that. I've never actually seen anything like this before. This might be a new magical malady.”
“Do — I have multiple personalities?” Hermione felt suddenly faint.
“No. You've simply isolated parts of your mind. I think your magic intended to protect them from mental attacks, but by extension it prevented you from accessing them.”
Hermione was reeling internally.
“What — don't I remember ?”
“Well, we aren't entirely sure. You'll have to be the one to discover what you've forgotten. What are your parents' names?”
Hermione paused a moment, trying to calculate if the question was based on seeking a diagnosis or potentially to extract information. Blood drained from her face.
“I don't know,” she said, suddenly feeling as though she couldn't breathe. “I remember I had parents. They were — Muggles. But — I can't remember anything about them.”
Struggling to tamp down on the panic rising inside of her, she stared imploringly at the healer.
“Do you know anything?”
“I'm afraid not. Let's try another question. Do you remember the school you went to? Who were your best friends there?”
“Hogwarts. Harry and Ron,” Hermione said, looking down as her throat tightened. Her fingers twitched uncontrollably.
“Good.”
“Do you remember the headmaster?”
“Dumbledore.”
“Do you remember what happened to him?”
“He died,” Hermione said, squeezing her eyes shut. Although the details felt fuzzy, she was sure.
“Yes. Do you remember the circumstances of his death?”
“No. I remember — he was reinstated as headmaster after it was confirmed that Vold-Vold — You-Know-Who had returned.”
“Interesting.” There was more scribbling. “What is it that you remember of the war?”
“I was a healer. I was in the hospital ward. So many people I couldn't save — I remember losing. Something — something didn't work. Harry died. They — they hung him up off the Astronomy Tower, and we watched him rot. They — they hung Ron and his family next to him. And Tonks and Lupin. They tortured them until they died. Then they put me in that cell and left me there.”
Hermione was shaking as she spoke. The hospital bed shook and made an angry creaking noise.
The healer didn't appear to notice and scribbled more notes.
“This is very unusual and interesting. I've never heard of a fugue state like this before. I'm anxious to hear what a specialist thinks.”
“Glad to be so interesting,” Hermione said, her lip curling as she opened her eyes to glare at the healer.
“Now now, dear. I'm not entirely callous. Look at it from a medical perspective. If there was anything in your past that would be logical for your mind to protect itself from, it would be the aftermath of the war — which you are clearly traumatised by. Instead, what did you subconsciously decide to protect? The identities of your parents, and the Order's war strategy. Your magic didn't choose to protect your psyche, it chose to protect everyone else. That is very interesting.”
Hermione supposed it was, but it just all felt like too much.
Just being able to see again was overwhelming. Being able to speak. Being out of her cell. Everything felt like it was too much. Too raw. Too bright.
She didn't say anything else. After a few minutes of scribbling, the healer looked up again.
“Unless the specialist has an objection, you'll stay in the infirmary for a week for recovery before we process you. That will give you time to acclimate to light and sound again and undergo the therapy you'll need for your torture recovery and that concussion you got during your check up.”
The healer started to walk away but then paused.
“I hope my saying this is unnecessary, but I suppose given your house and history I should say it nonetheless. You are at a crossroads currently, Miss Granger. What will happen to you next is inevitable, but you have a choice in how unpleasant you force it to be.”
With that parting — advice? A threat? A warning? Hermione wasn't entirely sure. The healer disappeared behind the dividing curtain.
Hermione glanced around at her surroundings carefully. She was still in Hogwarts. She had been changed out of her prison clothes into a set of hospital pajamas. Pulling up the sleeves, she noted with disappointment that no one had made the mistake of taking off the manacles locked around each wrist.
She held a wrist up in front of her face to inspect them. They had been snapped onto her immediately before she had been imprisoned in her cell, and she had never gotten a chance to really see what they looked like.
In the light, they simply appeared to be a pair of bracelets around each wrist. They shone like a new penny. They were copper-plated, as she had guessed.
In the darkness of her cell, she had spent an untold amount of time trying to ascertain exactly what they were. The simple answer was that they suppressed her magic. How exactly they did so, and how she might get around them while blind and mute had taken much thought.
When she finally admitted to herself that it was impossible to get around them, she began to figure out how they worked.
She both hated and admired whoever had developed them. She was positive by the way the copper conducted her magic that they had a dragon heartstring core in each of them, possibly even taken from her own wand.
The manacles felt specifically attuned to her.
In her cell during all her attempts to wield wandless magic, the magic slipped down her arms toward her hands to be cast and then just — dissolved when it reached the manacles. Confirming for herself now that they were copper-plated, she understood immediately how it worked.
Copper sucked the magic into itself. She remembered Binns lecturing in History of Magic about the attempts to use materials other than wood for wands. Copper had been one of the obvious choices due to its natural magic conductivity. Unfortunately, it was too conductive. It sucked up any flicker of magic that it detected, whether it was meant to or not. Spells exploded out of copper wands before a wizard could finish casting. They could barely touch the wands without having them go off. Two blown up wand labs and the loss of four toes convinced wand makers to try something other than copper.
The core of the manacles, Hermione felt positive, was iron. The copper paired with dragon heartstring snatched up her magic and then deposited it into the iron core where it was effectively neutralised.