Glacial Greetings
The problem with top-security Azkaban wasn’t the abundance of dementors, or the roaring winds that were extra strong on the topmost floor of the tower. She didn’t have any hope or happiness left for the dementors to feed on, and the dry wind kept the pneumonia at bay.
The problem with top-security Azkaban was the lack of sound. No guards came this far into the prison, meals were magicked in and out of her cell, each cell was silenced so prisoners couldn’t communicate, her own voice didn’t even echo off the grey stone walls. There was nothing but the dull, never-ending roar of the ocean far below and the whistles of wind that drowned out the staccato of her heartbeat.
The deafening silence was what drove her mad.
This of course was just her biggest issue. If she were to be given a complaint card, Hermione would likely include other things; like how her water always had a thin layer of oil on it, how her food was never without either mold or maggots, how spiders and silverfish found their way into her paper thin blanket and her lumpy mattress no matter how many she squashed, how her chamber pot only emptied once a week and the smell never quite faded from her small space.
She knew that she didn’t exactly have grounds to be particularly picky. The top floor was intended for the worst of the worst of the magical community. Cells reserved for the Gellert Grindelwald's and the Bellatrix Lestrange’s of the population. They didn’t deserve warmth, or good hygiene, or comfort; she didn’t deserve them either.
But a girl could dream.
At least she used to be able to, in the beginning.
It’s probably why she thought she’d finally gone crazy the day she heard footsteps echoing outside her cell. It was impossible to know how long she’d been in Azkaban by then… years judging from how long her hair had grown and how thick the layer of grime was on her skin.
Long enough that when Nymphadora Tonks stepped into view with her wolf patronus and bubble-gum pink hair, Hermione simply blinked up at her from her place on the floor. Long enough that when the other woman awkwardly cleared her throat and half-smiled down at her, the first noise that burst from Hermione’s vocal cords in months was a hoarse, yet hysterical giggle.
She didn’t even realize she was crying until Tonks crouched down in front of her and wiped a tear from her cheek, the warmth of the woman’s touch causing Hermione to physically recoil with a whimper. She hadn’t been touched in so long, hadn’t felt anything but the cut of the wind and the aching cold of the unforgiving stones.
“Are you real?” She finally asked the woman in front of her, watching as something almost like pity flashed in Tonks’ dark eyes. Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper as she struggled to form words, so quiet that the roaring winds almost drowned them out completely.
Speaking felt foreign; her tongue too awkward to enunciate properly and her mind too scrambled to form thoughts into sentences.
“I’m afraid so, dear.” Was the only response she received, before a hand was grasping her gaunt shoulder so tightly it ached, and she was spinning into nothingness.
--
Her first thought when they re-materialized onto the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld place was that that was the first time she’d ever apparated. Her second thought was that Azkaban food tasted even worse when it was being thrown up onto one’s own bare feet. Her third was that she’d forgotten how good the air smelled when it was untainted by the smell of your own filth.
Heaving in breaths through her nose, Hermione brought a shackled hand up to shield her eyes from the light. Even the barely rising sun was too much for her, burning her pupils as she tried to blink away the pain, desperate to see her first sunrise in what felt like a lifetime.
The scrape of a scourgify on her feet pulled her attention away from the fiery-coloured sky.
“C’mon then, outside the wards is no place to dally.” Tonks urged, ushering her through the front door and into the entrance way of the old Black house. She felt as the magic protections on the house reluctantly let her through, pulling harshly at something under her skin in what felt like a warning. The thought was lost however, as her feet stepped onto plush carpet, and she had to focus solely on not crying at the sensation.
It was hard to hear in the dead silence of the house, her ears rang with the lack of noise to the point where she wanted to clap her hands over them in a desperate attempt to make it stop. She would not allow herself, it was bad enough she’d let someone see her cry. Slipping once was a moment of weakness, twice was unacceptable.
She was led gently by the other woman to a door, the pieces of her broken memories falling together to remember it was a bathroom.
“In you go” the Auror instructed, gesturing with the wand she’d kept clasped in hand since she’d stepped into Hermione’s cell. “I reckon a shower and a pair of fresh clothes will make you feel a wee bit better, afraid the cuffs got to stay on though.”
She shrugged in agreement, not really caring about anything Tonks had to say beyond the word shower. After Circe knows how long, the cuffs around her wrists were barely a thought in her mind anymore, and Hermione couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d had a shower.
It must’ve been only a day at most before she was arrested, but she couldn’t summon the memory. Couldn’t remember what it felt like to have warm water rain down onto her skin, or the consistency of soap suds when she lathered them between her hands, couldn’t recall how much exactly her hair weighed itself down when it absorbed the wetness.
She was eager to re-discover all these things, despite the apathetic expression she displayed to Tonks.
--
Hermione studied her reflection in the steamed-up bathroom mirror for a long while, relishing in the feel of the fluffy towel against her raw-rubbed skin as water dripped from her hair onto the tiles beneath her feet. The woman - because she’d somehow gone from girl to woman during her time in Azkaban - that stared back at her reflection wasn’t Hermione Granger. Whoever looked out from the other side of the mirror now, that was someone else entirely.
The biggest change was the eyes. Hermione Granger had warm honey-brown eyes. This woman’s eyes weren’t warm, they were so dark they looked almost black, and there was a hardness to them that glinted threateningly in the lighting of the bathroom.
There were other things about her appearance that had changed too, of course. She was thinner than ever from her abysmal prison diet; she could feel how her ribs stuck out too much, saw that her eyes had sunken into her skull and were accompanied by deep purple rings underneath them. Her skin was so pale from lack of sunlight that her veins were clearly visible under the thinnest parts of it, and was etched with black and blue bruises who’s sources were a mystery. Her white complexion also made her hair seem drastically different, causing it to look closer to black than the brown she remembered, and the sheer weight of it pulled her once unmanageable curls into stringy waves that hung limply around her waist.
Sneering disgustedly at her reflection that more closely resembled Bellatrix Black than Hermione Granger, she peeled away her towel to get dressed, only for her eyes to catch on a splash of purple across her abdomen.
The scar. It had been a still-healing wound when she’d been arrested, so the scar was new to her eyes. It was horrid, and had evidently grown as it healed.
A mosaic of purples, blues and reds spread from where her left hip-bone jutted out under her skin up across her torso to wrap around the left side of her ribs. Following the trail of horrible colour that crawled across her skin like lightning bolts around her body, Hermione turned so her back was facing the mirror. It curled around her side just under her shoulder blade, where it travelled up and across her spine until it wrapped around the base of her neck like a handprint, with fingers that stretched around her throat and over her collarbone.
It was disgusting and beautiful and every inch of it screamed dark magic. Like a piece of macabre art. It was mesmerising and she wanted to be sick all over again, even as she traced her fingers along the raised ridges and puckered valleys of it.
Ripping her eyes away, she hurriedly pulled on the clothes that had been left out for her. The cargo trousers were threadbare and hung low on her hips, and the white jumper clashed horribly with her pale skin. She looked like a ghost, and the accentuated pallor of her complexion made the scars that the neckline of the jumper couldn’t cover stand out even more. With a final sneer directed at her own reflection, Hermione turned away and wrenched the door open with more force than was needed.
Tonks was waiting for her on the other side, leaning against the wall with her face angled to the ceiling. Now that she’d recovered from her initial shock at seeing another person, Hermione could tell that Tonks looked worse-for-wear; her hair was less a bubble-gum pink than she’d first thought, rather hovering between pale pink and white gray. The auror’s eyes were rimmed with grey smudge marks from lack of sleep, and her shoulders hunched inward slightly, as though she’d been beaten down by the world. All in all, the once bubbly witch looked like shit.
Not that Hermione looked any better.
The other woman looked her over for a moment, grimacing slightly at the sight Hermione made. In a show of kindness that tested her stoic facade, and that only a Hufflepuff would ever think of; Tonks tapped her wand to the sleeve of Hermione’s jumper, changing the colour to a dark navy that didn’t accentuate her deathly pallor, as well as raising the neckline so that between it and her hair, her scars were no longer visible.
“Where’s Harry? What am I doing here? How long was I gone?” The questions spilled from her cracked lips without permission, falling flat on the floor between their feet as Tonks simply smiled that same sad smile she’d given her in the prison, and gently led her by the arm into the darkness of Grimmauld’s halls.
--
The walk seemed to go on forever, down endless halls and up steep stairs until the long-atrophied muscles in her legs threatened to give out underneath her weight. Tonks walked patiently alongside her, slowing whenever Hermione stumbled over her own feet but never offering to stop. Eventually they came to a halt outside another plain door just like the one that had led to the bathroom. She was too busy heaving air into her burning lungs to even attempt to figure out where in the sprawling house Tonks had led her.
Truthfully, Hermione didn’t particularly care, she was just thankful they’d finally stopped walking.
She could hear voices coming through the wood of the door, though the actual words were obstructed by her own heaving gasps for air. At least one of the voices was yelling, loud enough that once Hermione got her breathing under control, the words rang out into the hall loud and clear.
“I respectfully don’t give a flying fuck about what you all agreed upon behind my back, I will not have her here. She’s not only batshit crazy, but a convicted murderer! You need to send her back!” The angry voice -that was obviously talking about her- was familiar, at least to Hermione’s subconscious. The sound of it shot through her as she scrambled to piece a memory together, trying to pinpoint who the voice belonged to.
“You’re being short-sighted about the situation, we need her.” The other voice responded tiredly. It also sounded familiar, but less so than the first voice. This person dragged out their words, like speaking in and of itself was a chore.
“What could she possibly offer us? She was nuts before Azkaban, she’s only going to be worse now. I’d be surprised if she’s any more than a babbling mess by now.” The first angry voice retorted. There was so much anger behind the words that Hermione actually winced a bit at the tone. Who the voice belonged to still escaped her, but the awful words cut deep regardless of whether she knew who they came from or not. Tonks cast a sympathetic glance her way, Hermione pretended not to see it.
“She was once your best friend Mister Potter, have you no faith in that fact any longer?” Another voice, an older one, cut in on the angry voice’s rant.
Harry. The old voice continued talking, but the words faded into the background of her mind as the pieces clicked together. It was Harry Potter on the other side of the door. Harry Potter, with his wild dark hair and piercing green eyes. It was Harry who was so angry about her presence in the house that he was yelling at Dumbledore -who’s voice she’d finally recognized-, and wanted to lock her back up in Azkaban.
Maybe it was a mercy that she didn’t hear Harry’s answer to Dumbledore’s question, that the blood that rushed to her head brought back the ringing from earlier and made dark spots swim in front of her eyes until she slumped against the wall. Certainly, his answer would have hurt more than the bruise she would get from falling into the old photo-frame.
Taking advantage of an apparent lull in conversation within the room, Tonks wrapped a hand around her forearm -much firmer than she had previously, another bruise for her collection- and forcefully yanked her off the wall and through the doorway, which she opened with a wave of her wand.
All conversation halted the second she stepped over the threshold. A dozen sets of eyes in the room landed on her simultaneously, but Hermione only met two pairs -Dumbledore’s twinkling blue ones and Remus Lupin’s tired amber ones- before her attention was captured solely by a pair that were painfully familiar.
Dull green eyes looking through her like she was a stranger. The harsh lights of the room bouncing off his glasses as he turned his back on her.
The memory flashed behind her vision like wandlight, causing her to physically recoil. She never thought she’d see his eyes again. The few times when she’d allowed herself to imagine such a scenario, they were never as hateful as they were now. Emerald eyes that once held nothing but affection for her, now glared in a way that felt like hot knives slicing into her skin.
“Miss Granger, thank you so much for joining us.” Dumbledore broke the tense silence. Instinctively, Hermione squared her shoulders and straightened her posture as she turned her attention to the old wizard.
“Albus.” She nodded in the man’s direction in greeting. “I’d say you’re welcome, but I’ve gathered that I really didn’t have any choice in the matter.” Hermione shook her shackled wrists so that the chains clanged obtrusively, to emphasise her point.
He chuckled at her words, but the ever-present twinkle in his eyes had dimmed at the clear vitriol in her voice. He gestured with a flippant wave for Tonks -who still had a bruising grip on her arm- and the rest of the room’s occupants to leave them.
Harry lingered a while after everyone else had left. He didn’t say anything, but rather shot hateful glares to both her and the aged wizard standing at the head of the table. Hermione took advantage of this moment to study Harry. He looked different -harder- than she remembered. The last bits of childhood had melted away in the time she’d been gone, and the man that stood before her was all sharp edges and harsh shadows.
This tense moment stretched uncomfortably before what sounded like a growl vibrated in his throat and he stormed out of the room, making sure to slam the door behind him.
Still unused to noise, the loud bang of the door colliding violently with its frame caused Hermione to jump. Irritated by her reaction, she forced her posture farther upright, tilting her chin defiantly up despite the way the effort made her hips and legs ache..
After holding her ground for an appropriately uncomfortable amount of time, Hermione allowed herself to settle into the nearest chair at one end of the table. Shortly after, her former headmaster sat himself gracefully at the opposite end, an annoying half-smile still present on his face.
“I’ll say Miss Granger” he began conversationally, flicking his wand in the direction of the tea service in the middle of the table. “It’s been a long while since anyone as much younger than myself as you has addressed me as anything less than a formal ‘Professor’ or ‘Headmaster’.”
“Fortunately for you then Albus, you’re no longer my professor or my headmaster, so I suppose you’ll be hearing more of it so long as I’m around.” Dumbledore’s face tightened at her tone, the skin around his eyes tensing in what she might’ve recognized as annoyance. Hermione didn’t care much, she continued unperturbed. “You actually raise a few good points though. Most significant of which being that I was technically disowned by my mother upon my conviction, so I guess ‘Miss Granger’ isn’t all that fitting of a title for me anymore.”
“Do you happen to have another surname you’d prefer? Or shall I simply address you as Hermione?” Dumbledore responded, the irritating little twinkle flaring back up in his eyes.
A ghost of an idea flickered in the back of her mind, splinters of a memory -a plan- from what felt like another lifetime. A teacup landed in front of her, a single sugar cube and a too thick slice of lemon settled at the bottom of the steaming amber liquid. Instinctively, she wrapped her palms around the cup, letting the warmth of it seep into her bones.
“I’d like to go by Wilkins now actually, Hermione Wilkins.” She offered. The new name felt foreign to her mouth, but not entirely wrong.
“Very well then, Miss Wilkins.” The grayed wizard nodded in assent as he spoke. “Were there any other questions you wanted to ask me before we address the reason for your presence?”
“Just one more thing I think; exactly how long was I gone? It’s a tad bit hard to keep track of time when it’s always dark in Azkaban. I’m assuming it's quite a while based on the changes to my own appearance alone, I’d just like to know exactly how long that is.”
She tried to sound nonchalant when she asked it, as though the answer wouldn’t affect her one bit. Internally she was dreading the response despite what time frame it might be, dreading being faced with how much of her life had been ripped away from her.
“Today’s date is September 18th, 1998.”
“So, I’m eighteen.” Her brain offered up the age -her age- immediately. Before the shock of knowing she’d been imprisoned for nearly three years had even fully set in.
“For one more day, yes.”
Three years. 36 months. 156 weeks. 1095 days. She’d always been good at numbers, always had an affinity for counting. Despite the damage Azkaban had done to it, her broken mind still seemed perfectly capable of throwing the numbers at her so that they could bounce around her skull. She’d lost three years.
She’d missed sixth year, seventh year, NEWTS, graduation, getting her apparition licence. She never got the chance to be Head Girl, or take her Muggle driver’s test.
Unwilling to let herself stray too far from the present situation, Hermione stuffed down the overwhelming feeling of loss that threatened to drown her if she let them, there was time for weakness later, when she was alone.
“Why don’t we skip to the part where you tell me why you’ve brought me here then.” Hermione redirected the conversation; away from herself and the discussion of time lost.
“Are you not pleased to be here?” The wizard across the table asked, cocking his head to the side while he looked her over, his gaze examined her in much the same manner one assessed potion ingredients that might’ve gone bad. It made the hairs on her neck stand at attention for some reason she couldn’t quite identify.
Her patience for the old man -which had been thin to start with- didn’t appreciate her questions being answered with more questions.
“I’m quite certain you didn’t have me removed from my top security Azkaban cell because you thought it would please me Albus, so why don’t we skip the runaround and dressed up riddles you give to Harry and the rest of your little club. Why am I here?”
“I’m afraid you’re here Miss Wilkins, because we’ve run out of other options.” He responded solemnly, all traces of humour and twinkle gone from his wrinkled expression.
“Yeah, I’m going to need a little bit more clarification, been in solitary for three years, remember?” She slouched back in her chair, letting the plushy velour envelop her shoulders as she brought the steaming cup of tea up to her lips. It was too weak with far too much lemon for it to be truly enjoyable, but it was also the first cup of tea she’d had in years, so she allowed herself to savour the flavour and the warmth anyways.
“I’m sure you remember Miss Wilkins, the events at the end of your fifth year prior to your imprisonment?” His words brought back the memories, the ones illuminated in flashes of violet and sapphire. She flinched as the images cycled behind her eyes again like a horrible film.
“They ring a bell.” She responded coolly, blinking away images of two sentence letters and empty green eyes.
“Well in your time away, Voldemort’s power and influence has only grown.” The look in the old wizard’s eyes was distant as he stared into his own cup of tea. Hermione waited a dozen heartbeats in silence, expecting further elaboration that never came.
“That was exactly no help.” She sighed in annoyance, setting her teacup too heavily onto the dark wood of the table. The chains around her wrists chimed, and hot tea sloshed over the rim onto the thin skin of her palm. Hermione hissed as the too-hot tea burnt the over sensitive flesh. “Is there any way you could tell me what happened without me having to pry the questions out of you?” She lifted her glare from the offending tea to her former headmaster.
He opened his mouth to answer, but before he got the chance another voice joined the conversation.
“Voldemort and his death eaters, they’re in charge now. They’ve got Hogwarts and the ministry under their thumb, the aurors too.” Hermione whirled around to face the origin of the voice to find Harry slouched against the door frame behind her seat, his invisibility cloak draped over an arm. He wasn’t looking at her this time; she didn’t know if she felt disappointed or relieved that his gaze remained fixed on his shoes.
“How?” Her voice cracked over the single word, like his very presence had knocked the wind from her lungs.
“Death Eaters raided the castle end of sixth year, nobody knows how they got in, but they razed the place. Killed Sprout, Flitwick, Trelawney, Susan Bones, Terry Boot, Zacharia Smith, Marietta Edgecombe, they think they killed Professor Dumbledore too.” Harry’s voice sounded empty as he rattled off the list of names from memory, like he’d rolled the names through his head so many times that the words had lost all meaning. She could see the way the grief weighed down on his shoulders, no doubt he blamed himself for every death. It was interesting that all those deaths; of her teachers and her classmates, had no effect on Hermione. No waves of grief or sadness at the news that they’d been murdered at the hands of death eaters. Rather there was a hint of relief; relief that it hadn’t been Harry.
“They think they killed him?” She questioned in disbelief, finally processing the rest of what had been said. Hermione made a point of looking over at the very-much-alive wizard who sat calmly at the other end of the table, her question clear on her face.
“Snape.” Was the only elaboration Harry offered. “We let them think they succeeded, but that meant we lost our connections in the castle and the ministry. There’s a lot more you should probably know, but that’s the big stuff.”
“When exactly do we get around to the part where one of you actually explains to me why I’m here, why now?” It seemed both men in the room were determined to skirt around her first question as long as possible, if she had more energy Hermione would probably be more annoyed. Now, she just remained mildly irritated as she slouched deeper into the comfort of the chair underneath her.
“You’re here Miss Wilkins,” Dumbledore rejoined the conversation, straightening up in his seat. He placed his tea back on the saucer in front of him as he spoke, and Hermione thought she saw him wince as he set the cup down. “Because the Order of the Phoenix needs your help to defeat Voldemort. You’re our last hope.”
The words hung in the air for six loud ticks of the clock on the wall before Hermione burst out laughing.
It was less happy laughter and more mad cackling, but it still rattled her lungs and made her stomach cramp while she tried to regain her composure. Holding a hand to her chest as she heaved for breath, she looked up into the stony -and quite serious- expression of the old wizard before turning to observe a similar -though much angrier- expression on her former best friend’s face.
“Oh my god, you’re serious.” She exclaimed. “You really broke me -the youngest convicted murderer in English wizarding history- out of the highest security prison in the entire wizarding world because -and I really just want to make sure I’ve got this part right- you need my help saving Britain?”
“That’s quite right.” It seemed almost painful for Albus Dumbledore to admit that he needed her help. And that pleased Hermione to no end. The old wizard seemed to be waiting for her response, his gaze assessing her as though he could gauge whether she’d agree or not.
Three years ago, before Azkaban, before she’d changed; she probably would’ve leapt at the opportunity. Thrown herself down at her former headmaster’s feet and happily agreed to be his soldier, to die for the greater good. She might have relished in the glory of being hand-picked by one of the most powerful wizards in history. Now though, she wasn’t nearly as keen on martyrdom. Hermione recognized the shift in power in the room, as she realized she held the upper hand, and both men realized that she’d realized that fact.
Putting her sock-clad feet up onto the shiny wood of the table, Hermione reclined farther back in her chair so that both wizards could be in her field of view at the same time. A grin crept onto her expression, she felt it grow into one that would‘ve put the Cheshire cat to shame.
“What’s in it for me?” Harry’s demeanor tightened at her words, his lips thinning as he physically restrained himself from speaking. Dumbledore however, his eyes simply sparkled as he tilted his head to her in acquiescence.
“What would you like?”
“Well,” she held up four fingers on her left hand, tapping each one with her right index finger as she listed off her conditions. “I’d like a full pardon for my crimes, as well as immunity for any I might commit during my heroic endeavours” she watched in glee as Harry flinched at her tone. “I’ll also of course need a new wand, since my last one was snapped at my trial. And I want Antonin Dolohov, alive.”
Twelve ticks of the second hand on the clock, six flexes of Harry’s fingers around his wand, twenty-two taps of her fingernail against the arm of her chair.
“You have yourself a deal, Miss Wilkins.” She felt something ignite in her chest at his words; something primal, dark, and twisted. Something glorious.