Brutal Beginnings
The thing about Azkaban that nobody realises, is that it breaks prisoners into pieces; fragments of who they used to be.
Nobody would understand anyway; how the walls take your memories, the foundations of who you are, and fray the edges of them until it’s hard to distinguish fact from fiction.
For Hermione, the worst part wasn’t the hopelessness of a life-sentence, but rather the flashes of just-out-of-reach memories. Images conjured up by her brain that felt almost familiar, but in a way that made her wonder if maybe she’d actually made them all up.
There were very few things her shattered self could be confident were actual memories, only a dozen or so moments of her life that the prison had decided hurt so much, that it was content to let her keep them.
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The enraged flush of Dolohov’s face when she’d silenced him.
A flash of violet fire slicing through her shirt, her skin, her bones. Burning as light bloomed behind her eyelids, before everything went black.
Waking up in a dark room, her torso held together by nothing more than gauze and prayers.
Vile-tasting potions that knit together her skin and eased the burn, but left the aching emptiness in her gut unchecked.
Nightmares, full of formless monsters and disembodied voices. Whispers in her ears when she was awake.
A darkness that seemed to grow inside of her, swallowing who she used to be.
Noticing a harsh glint in her eye one day, winking back at her in the mirror, the image of herself warping into someone -something- different. Honey brown eyes that no longer held any warmth.
Eavesdropping on Crabbe and Goyle leaving knockturn alley, the summer before sixth year. “Maybe Potter will have a little ‘accident’ on the train to school.”
Hot anger and then cold rage, a sapphire-coloured curse leaving the tip of her wand. Screaming, blood, the smell of burned flesh, the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction, a manic laugh bubbling from between her lips
Being bound by aurors, hours in an interrogation room, Priori incantatem, Dumbledore’s eyes looking down at her with disappointment.
A tear-stained letter from her mother full of only two sentences; ‘No daughter of ours would do something so evil. Don’t come home, ever.’
Evil.
Harry staring at her from the viewing area of the wizengamot courtroom, dull green eyes looking through her as though she were a stranger. ‘It was for you Harry’. The harsh lights of the room bouncing off the rim of his glasses as he turned his back on her.
The banging of a gavel, the snapping of her wand. Life in Azkaban, highest security. “You should be thankful; it should’ve been the kiss”.
The youngest witch to be sentenced to Azkaban, a murderer at 16.
A portkey shoved into her shackled hands. The roaring of an ocean as she was dropped into an empty cell.
The cold.