Hermione patiently examined the complex series of manacles and constraints that kept her contained in her cell (they'd tried dementors—they ran off); a weakness was bound to slip in one of these days. She pried with what limb movement she had available, and extended subtle tendrils of magic to probe the runes on her restraints. This continued until she was sure she'd examined every nook and cranny, every element patiently dissected in her mind.
There wasn't anything that would let her escape yet, but the rate of near-mistakes had been increasing over the years and the latest set showed no sign of reversing the trend. Amusing that the Unspeakables' own experiments wore her chains out so often—truly, how people sow their own downfall, she grinned to herself. Her investigations were promptly interrupted by the sounds of footsteps—Rookwood, now head of the Department, coming to perform his regular interrogation.
Don't you want your suffering to stop?
crooned Rookwood, in that obsequious manner of his.
Yes, but only without my death,
replied Hermione.
Ah, that is where we'll have to disagree,
said Rookwood, false affability dripping from every word, it would be much easier if you would tell us where your horcruxes are.
He quietly continued assembling the tools for the later 'experiment'—a variety of specialised wands, various enchanted probes, and a dizzying array of various tools of the same like. Hermione vaguely recalled—Rookwood liked to drop 'hints' at the end of each experiment, presumably as an exercise in sadism—that today would be yet another round of examination of her modified flesh and organs. She'd hardly been shy about replacing parts of herself with more effective magical enhancements, down to her very heart—it was why her prison was so elaborately designed to keep her contained. And it amused her to no end that, judging by the feverish pace of experiments, they had yet to find their own designs of comparable power to hers.
You assume I even know where they all are,
she said, I created far more than the mere seven horcruxes your former master did, and I was hardly obsessed with making a particular set of artifacts my horcruxes either.
Though she did end up making a rather particular set of artifacts her horcruxes, more due to luck than design. The Elder Wand she gained after she followed the thread of mastery that had been buzzing in the back of her mind since the manor and pried it from Voldemort's corpse. The Stone and the Cloak she gained from Harry's belongings after he finally fell in battle three years into the war. A brief moment of grim amusement at the collection, and soon after that, three more horcruxes for her. The rest of her three hundred and forty-three horcruxes were hardly that grand, but included, rather ironically, her new heart—not that it would help the Death Eaters if they knew that, given that the trouble getting past her skin was the reason for half the tools in Rookwood's set. At least she'd managed to pile novel and unique enchantments on top of her horcruxes.
Don't be so difficult,
said Rookwood, while cleaning a wand designed for specialist *Crucio* variants like a particularly beloved scalpel, You could suffer for more than immortality's worth.
As if to make an attempt at doing so, he put that wand to good use for half an hour, but for Hermione, familiarity with these tortures bred boredom. What is there to value and appreciate in a thousand inelegant agonies, easily withstood with experience of such and the patience of an immortal madwoman?
Oh, if only you'd get one with this,
groaned Hermione, her voice tinged with loathing and terminal boredom. She briefly amuses herself by thinking back to the fiendish spellwork required to make her horcruxes repair themselves so long as even one remained—no gallivanting about destroying them one by one for the Death Eaters. But such triumphs are in the past, and all she can do now is wait. Wait for the inevitable mistakes.
Beginning experiment no. nine thousand, two hundred, and eighty-one,
droned Rookwood into recording charms as he began his experiments. Hermione continued waiting.
Some people, in Hermione's place, would have thought this situation was inescapable, or mourned the trap of immortality for dooming them to eternal torture. But Hermione merely smiled. After all, to eventually get out of here, all she needed was time. And time was a resource Hermione had in inexhaustible supply.