Walk
Hermione was in indescribable pain. She wanted to be anywhere but here.
Here was cold marble covered in her blood. Here was cold marble digging into her shoulder-blades. Here was: 3 blonde people with shiny hair watching as she lost her mind. Here was beneath a woman with magic so overpowering hers that she felt she'd never be off the godawful floor she was on. Here was: cold and pain. Here was: oh god it hurts so much. Here was: I can't think, except about the pain. Here was: saying please to a woman whose throat she'd rather silt. Here was: lying about the truth while a blade cut into her arm and set it on fire and put tendrils of black infection into her magic. Here was: somewhere she's never ever ever choose to be. Here was: her magic failing her for the first time. Here was: someone trapping her and her magic so viciously that she had wild thoughts about what if she is right and I do not belong?
anywhere but here
Here was: agony, agony, agony. Here was: tears falling before she could summon them. Here was: pain feeling like it would never end, like she would never live beyond these moments. This would go on and on and on and there was no world outside of this and how could the world go on when she felt like this? How in the world can anyone be monstrous enough to do this to another person? My blood is not muddy.
Here was: her magic reaching, reaching and trying and feeling like it was a bird in a hyena's mouth, trapped under sharp teeth that poked dangerously close to her arteries.
anywhere but here
Here was: please let this end. I cannot cannot go on. Oh god when will this end. Here was: I wish I had never become a witch. I wish I had never met Harry. Here was God I wish I was safe with my mother, drinking tea in the sun. Here was: I cannot handle this anymore and I'll die before this pain ends, and what is all this pain and misery for, and why is the world so hollow and so dark and why would magic lead to something as devastating as this.
anywhere but here
And through it all, here was: please, I will do anything, please, no more, it's a fake, it's a fake.
anywhere but here
Here was: her magic sparking uselessly, angrily, pushing at everything, pushing the world away. Here was: wishing she could just die and get it over with. Here was: a knife against her throat, a painful relief, thanking the heavens it was over. Here was: feeling the knife dig into her throat and feeling the pressure and the cut. Here was: something still struggling inside her to live, while another part of her was happy it was finally going to end. Here was... darkness.
anywhere but here
----------
When Hermione woke, she was in a familiar place. It was quiet, but she could hear her own screams inside her head. Water from the Black Lake lapped at her feet, a quiet swish-swash. Birds were singing songs of grace. The sky was pale blue, but there was light creeping from the end of the horizon, it was morning. At Hogwarts. She could still see some stars.
It was so peaceful after the year she had lived through. She thought if she'd died and this was heaven, then she was happy enough. She lay there and watched the sky lighten, it felt so strange. The world moved at a slower pace than her mind could comprehend, or was it a faster pace? She continued watching, but all of a sudden realized it was light, the sky bathed in gold of sunrise, and even though she had been watching so avidly, she could not pinpoint when the sky changed from a pale cold blue to a warm gold.
Her magic was also quiet, suspiciously quiet. She tried reaching out, and found it was curled up deep in her belly, a porcupine prickled, a small kitten trying to look bigger than it was by fluffing itself up in front of a larger older meaner cat, and then she realized there were tendrils of corruption originating from the bleeding cuts in her arm and they were spreading, spreading. Her magic was weak, depleted, unable to protect itself. She was bleeding out, her magic losing the little potency it had left.
It was this realization that awakened her from her peaceful stupor. She stumbled to her feet, her body felt broken. She staggered and fell. The jolt brought a terrifying, debilitating amount of pain. Her magic pulsed feebly inside her, helpless, and the black tendrils began sawing into the little fur-ball it was. She was enraged. It was the rage that made her get up and step ahead, no matter how she stumbled, no matter how much it hurt.
She had to save her magic. If only she could get to Madam Pomfrey, she would be fine, she knew she knew, she was just there. She had to get out of the shadows of the trees and then someone would see her on the grounds and would help, she was sure, she knew, she knew. Just out of the trees.
A few steps. She could do this in her sleep, she could, she could.
She did; one agonizing movement after another, eyes brimming with tears of pain and rage as she felt the tendrils drill further into her magic. Her inability to help when her magic, which had always helped her, drove her to push on.
Suddenly she saw three figures in front of her. She tried to call but her voice was hoarse, weak and feeble. She tried to reach, extended a hand out, but they got further and further ahead of her. She tried to ask for help, but the world was spinning and she couldn't see clearly anymore.
There was a disorienting moment, and the next she looked, she was staring straight at the sun.
How had that happened? When had the sun gone from just rising to high up in the sky? How long had it taken her to get from the Black Lake to the lawns? Hours, she thought hysterically.
A face cut through the glare of the sun. She saw inky hair, bright eyes, not reflecting stars this time. She had to tell this face something, something important, what was it? She could barely remember, she saw stars in her mind, spinning fast, glorious and bright, but this time-
"The stars are right now", she whispered to him.
Then she knew no more.