Chapter Text
I am tired. So very, very tired. My mind is fuzzy, as if filled with soap bubbles. It hurts to think. I’ve lost my little string of sane thought again.
I start over.
My name is Hermione Granger. I am alive. I am twenty one years old.
I should have died at seventeen...
I get distracted with a tiny spider making its way across the cobblestone beside the fireplace. The fire crackles so comfortingly. I realize I lost that little string again.
I start over.
My name is Hermione Granger. I can breathe. The war is over. It was over a long time ago. Everyone is dead. Dead except me…
I finally swim back to focus. My mind wonders for the millionth time to the time of the war, the terror, some three or four years back.
The Dark Lord won. Harry was killed….. killed with such savage torture, driven beyond madness as he watched his captured friends falling. He was forced to watch. So was I. So was Ronald. The men were slaughtered. The women, the girls, the desired ones, were given off as prize and reward to those whom the Dark Lord though worthy.
Ginny Weasley went to Rodolphus Lestrange. Luna Lovegood to Avery. Cho Chung to Nott….Faces swam past, white with fear. Fear. It was almost tangible in the air.
I was the last one to go. They said I was the most valuable, the most prized, the jewel of the Golden Trio. I cared not. I felt no fear. No pain. I died that day, seeing all my friends and all my family Cruciod and killed.
Stripped almost naked, I stood on a rising as I heard some voice far, far away telling the gloating crowd who I was. Whose deaths I have caused. I did not flinch as stones and spells flew at me, sent in rage for the fall of fellow Death Eaters. I was already dead. Hollow. A shell of a human.
I wasn't given away the same day. The Dark Lord kept me for himself that night. I would be gifted in the morning, sent to whomever would be my master.
The memories of that night are locked far in my mind. I willed myself to forget all the pain, the torture, the despair that went through my shell of a body. Pain beyond what I thought was possible. Horror beyond imagination. Terror beyond consciousness.I locked it deep inside and threw away the key.
I do not remember the morning. Or the next three days. Bloodied and unconscious, I was delivered to the Malfoy manor, gifted to the head of the Malfoys. Lucius Malfoy. He fell in favour again near the end of the war, outmatched now only by Severus Snape.
The house elves cleaned me. Healed my physical wounds. Washed my hair. Dressed me in soft silk for nightgowns. I felt nothing.
It was almost a month after the Night-Not-Wished-To-Be-Remembered that passed any different to my usual day of being in apathetic-comatose form. An elf came in, forcing me to eat. Food passed my lips with no feel to it. I did not know whether I was eating pumpkin pie or steak, nor did I care. I was like a doll, like a mannequin that the little elf Dwinky was playing with.
I was brought into a grand bathroom. I memory like a shard of mirror-glass shot through my distressed mind. The prefect bathroom at Hogwarts. The same countless number of tabs, the same stained glass. The bottomless pool.
Dwinky washed me, bathing me in endless bubbles, scents of flowers tickling her nose, making her ears twitch. She dried me with care, dressing me, the clothes slipping easily over my thinned frame. She carefully tamed my waterfall of brown curls. I thought of S.P.E.W. and all it’s dead members. When I drifted back from the past I was standing in front of an ornate door, black wood carved with careful designs. Dwinky knocked once, twice, thrice and vanished leaving a faint smell of gunpowder behind.
“Come in” the voice behind the door was authoritative, a silk of a bass.
I didn’t move.
A moment passed. Then another. Footsteps sounded behind the door, coming closer, fast and impatient. With a soft creak the door flew open, making a dull thud on the cobblestone of the wall.