Through the Darkness
The first thing Hermione noticed when she regained consciousness was the oppressive silence that wrapped around her. It was thick, dense, like a tangible thing, and it pressed in on her chest, making it harder to breathe. The sharp, sterile smell of antiseptic filled the air, a scent so familiar it should have been comforting, but it only made the unease settle deeper in her bones. Her head throbbed, a dull, constant ache that seemed to reverberate through her entire body. Her limbs felt as though they had been drained of all energy, heavy and sluggish, as if they were no longer hers to command. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here, couldn’t remember how she’d moved from the jungle, from the ruins, to this quiet, clean place. It felt as though she had slipped between worlds, into a place where nothing was real.
When she attempted to lift her hand, she found it harder than she expected, as though the simple action required an immense amount of willpower. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she was able to move them, just enough to touch her face. The skin was warm, but there was something off about it. A lingering sense of unfamiliarity washed over her, and it felt as though her body was a stranger to her. She wanted to call out, to say something, but her throat was dry, scratchy, and every word felt like it had to fight its way through a layer of exhaustion. She swallowed, the motion painful, as though her throat hadn’t been used in far too long.
“Where am I?” she tried to say, but her voice cracked, barely a whisper. Her mind was still disoriented, fuzzy with the remnants of whatever had happened, whatever spell had hit her. But as she tried to focus, a gnawing sense of wrongness settled over her. It was as if she could sense the shift in the air, the tension that hung heavy in the space around her. Something wasn’t right. She felt it, more acutely now, as the haze of disorientation began to lift, though the weight of it still lingered like a fog in her mind.
She opened her eyes—she knew she did, because she felt her lashes flutter and the way her eyelids moved, but instead of seeing the familiar comforting world around her, there was only darkness. It wasn’t the kind of darkness that followed a heavy night’s sleep, the sort of peaceful nothingness she had known so many times before. No, this was something different. Something deeper. Something that felt suffocating and absolute, as though the entire world had been swallowed whole, leaving her adrift in the void.
The shock hit her all at once, and her heart leapt painfully in her chest. She blinked again, harder this time, but the darkness remained. She thought she could feel her pulse in her throat, the panic rising with each second that passed. No, no, no, she thought desperately, trying to will her eyes to work, trying to force the world into existence again, trying to dispel the emptiness that now defined her reality. It’s not possible. It can’t be. I can’t be blind. Not now. Not like this.
But it didn’t change. There was nothing. No light. No shapes. No movement. Only the cold, unyielding void that surrounded her like a prison. She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. How could she explain what she was feeling when she couldn’t even explain it to herself? She opened her mouth, willing herself to say something, anything, to push against the rising tide of panic, but it was the voice that finally broke through, cutting the silence like a blade.
“Hermione?” The voice was low and soft, and there was something so achingly familiar in it that Hermione’s heart skipped. Anthony. Anthony. Her mind tried to latch onto the sound of his voice as though it were a rope thrown into the dark abyss, pulling her out of her fear. He was there, somewhere nearby. She could sense it. But her mind raced, trying to place him, trying to find some semblance of normality in this chaotic world.
“Anthony…” she whispered, her voice so hoarse it was barely audible. Her lips felt cracked, dry, and the words barely made it past her throat. She wanted to say more, wanted to tell him she was scared, wanted to ask what had happened, but the effort was too much. All she could manage was his name, and even that felt like a struggle. Her body felt distant, like she was separated from it, unable to feel the full weight of the sensations it was offering.
His hand found hers then, warm and steady, a familiar touch that immediately anchored her, even though she couldn’t see him. She wanted to press into the touch, to hold onto him and feel his presence more strongly, but her limbs still felt unresponsive, sluggish.
“Hermione,” he said again, his voice full of concern and something else—something raw, as though he had been holding his breath ever since she had fallen unconscious. “You’re awake. You’re safe. You’re at St. Mungo’s. We’ve got you.”
St. Mungo’s. The name should have been a comfort. It should have brought her a sense of relief, knowing she was in the hands of skilled healers who could mend broken bones, fix curses, and undo hexes that most would consider impossible. But it didn’t feel like safety to Hermione. Not now. The silence in the room, the way her own body felt so strange to her, it made her doubt every word he said.
She opened her mouth again, this time with a sense of desperation that rose from the pit of her stomach. “Anthony, I... I can’t see,” she croaked. She could barely make sense of the words herself, but they were the only ones that mattered now. The only thing that was real to her in this moment was the absence of light, the absence of the familiar world she had always known. “What happened to me?” The words were clumsy, broken, as though they had been pulled out of her unwillingly, but she needed to know. She needed him to explain this new reality to her. She needed him to tell her that this was a nightmare, a spell gone wrong, something they could fix, something she could fight against.
Anthony’s hand tightened around hers, and for a moment, she could feel his fingers trembling. “Hermione…” He paused, and she could hear him swallow, like the words were caught in his throat. “We... we’re still trying to understand it. But the curse... it wasn’t just a curse. It did something to your nerves. You’re blind, Hermione. And it might not be something we can fix right away. It’s not just your eyes; it’s deeper than that. We’ve stabilized you, but it’ll take time to undo the damage. A month. Maybe more.”
The words hit her like a physical blow, crashing through the fragile walls she had built to protect herself from the truth. A month? Maybe more? Her mind couldn’t make sense of it. She tried to wrap her mind around the idea that she might never see again, that this endless, suffocating darkness could be her reality. She was blind. She could feel the truth of it settle over her like a blanket, heavy and suffocating. She had read about curses like this—dark, ancient magics that corrupted not just the body but the very essence of life itself. But reading about it, knowing it in theory, was so different from experiencing it.
Her chest tightened with the weight of the realization, the sheer finality of it almost suffocating her as the full truth began to settle in. She couldn’t escape the sensation, the horrible feeling that this was permanent, this was her life now. It felt as if the world had shifted beneath her feet, leaving her off balance, unmoored. But it wasn’t just the sense of having lost something—it was the crushing, unbearable thought that she might never regain it. She could feel the pressure building behind her eyes, a tightness in her temples, and for a split second, she thought she might suffocate on it. The tears that she had been holding back for so long threatened to spill over, but she couldn’t let them. She couldn’t. She wasn’t ready to break. Not yet. She had to hold on, had to stay strong, but the harder she tried to keep herself together, the more fragile everything seemed, like a thin veneer cracking under the weight of everything she couldn’t control.
The overwhelming feeling of helplessness began to encircle her like a storm, the fear sinking deep into her chest until it was all she could feel. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so powerless—so utterly out of control. It had never been like this before. Every challenge, every obstacle she’d faced had been something she could fight against, something she could try to outthink, outlast, or outmanoeuvre. But this, this was different. This was beyond her. There was no spell, no incantation, no knowledge or strategy that could undo what had been done. She was trapped in a world of darkness. A world where she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t even sense the world around her in the way she was used to. She couldn’t look at Anthony, couldn’t see his face or read the emotion in his eyes, couldn’t tell what kind of comfort he was trying to offer with his words, with his touch. And the worst part was that, deep down, she was beginning to believe she never would again.
The weight of that realization—of never being able to see the faces of her friends, the faces of the people she loved, never again—was a kind of suffocation that she wasn’t sure she could survive. The thought of never again watching the sun rise, or sitting by the fire with a book in hand, or gazing at the stars on a clear night, made the world feel impossibly small and cruel. The world she had once known, so full of color and light, now felt like a distant memory. She had lived so much of her life through her eyes, her senses, her intellect. To have it all ripped away was like losing the very fabric of her existence. What if I never see again? The question echoed in her mind like a hollow drumbeat, a constant reminder of the terrifying unknown. What if she was trapped in this impenetrable blackness forever? The very thought made her feel like she was disappearing, like a shadow being swallowed by the night.
Her breath hitched in her throat, and the tears, the ones she had been desperately trying to suppress, came anyway, hot and unrelenting. She could feel them trailing down her cheeks, but she couldn’t wipe them away, couldn’t even see the proof of her own misery. This can’t be happening, she thought, though it was as if saying it aloud might make it true, might somehow undo the terrible reality of it. She whispered the words, barely loud enough for Anthony to hear, the sound of her voice broken and small. “No,” she said again, the word escaping as if it might make a difference, as if it might change something, anything. “No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t real.”
She wanted it to be a nightmare, a terrible illusion, something that would fade with the morning light. But deep down, she knew it wasn’t. It was too real, too solid. The fear that it would never end, that she would never find a way out, took root in her chest, growing like a thorn that pierced deeper the more she tried to resist it. There was nothing more terrifying than the idea of being trapped in this state of endless uncertainty, of never being able to undo what had been done.
But then, Anthony’s voice broke through the fog, soft and steady, like a lifeline thrown into the sea. “I know,” he said, his tone thick with something Hermione couldn’t place. It wasn’t just reassurance—it was the weight of his own grief, his own fear, that she could hear woven into each word. He was holding it together for her, trying to be the steady one in the storm, but she could hear it in the crack in his voice, the way his words seemed to be carefully chosen, as if he feared saying the wrong thing, as if he feared breaking her with the truth. “I know, Hermione. But we have to take it one step at a time. We’ll get you through this. We won’t give up on you.”
We won’t give up on you. The words were meant to comfort her, to give her hope, but they only made the fear sharper. What if they couldn’t? What if there was no way to fix her? The thought sank deeper into her heart, a poison that she couldn’t escape. It gnawed at her relentlessly, twisting her insides, making her feel smaller, more insignificant with each passing second. How could they help her when they didn’t even know how to fix it? What if they didn’t find a way? What if time ran out? What if she was left like this—blind, helpless, and broken?
She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to imagine a life where she never saw again, a life where she couldn’t even trust herself to walk from one room to the next without stumbling. The idea of living in darkness forever was an unbearable weight on her shoulders, a suffocating weight that felt like it was crushing her from the inside out. But even in the face of that, something inside of her refused to let go. It was a thread, small and fragile, but it was there. It was the last vestige of the Hermione Granger she used to be—the Hermione who had fought against impossible odds, who had refused to be defeated by the dark forces of the world. That Hermione had never given up before. She wouldn’t start now. She couldn’t.
Not yet, she thought, her breath coming in shaky bursts. I won’t give up yet.
She wanted to believe Anthony. She wanted to believe that there was still hope, that they would find a way through this together. She wanted to hold onto the lifeline he was offering her, but it felt so fragile, so thin, like a single thread that could snap at any moment. She didn’t know how she could hold on to it when she felt so lost, when the world seemed so far away and beyond her reach.
Her voice trembled as she whispered again, the words coming out in a breathless rush. “Just… don’t leave me,” she pleaded. The words slipped from her mouth without her thinking, a desperate request she didn’t even know she was making. She wasn’t sure if she was asking him to stay for her, or if she was asking herself to hold on, to find the strength to keep fighting, to keep going. But in that moment, with the darkness pressing in on all sides, it was the only thing she could say. It was the only thing that mattered. Please don’t leave me alone with this.
“We won’t leave you,” Anthony promised, his voice thick with emotion, nearly breaking as he spoke. There was a rawness to his words, a depth of feeling that seemed to carry the weight of their shared grief. “Never. We’ll find a way. We’ll fix this. I swear it.”
The certainty in his voice was what she needed, what she clung to with everything she had left. His words weren’t a guarantee—they couldn’t be, not when no one knew the answers, not when they were standing at the edge of something so uncertain. But in that moment, it didn’t matter. His promise was enough. It was enough to spark a flicker of hope deep within her, fragile and small, like a candle fighting against the darkness, but it was enough. She wasn’t sure how, or when, or if things would ever be the same again. But for now, for this moment, she could hold on to his promise. And that was enough to keep her going. Even in the dark, she wasn’t truly alone.