Chapter 4
The blanket was softer than she would have thought, and warming enough she could retain body heat when curled within its dingy embrace. For three long days she had been left without Dolohov’s abuse, meals pushed through a slot in the door twice a day. It was more regular food than Hermione had had in so long she had to force herself not to scarf it down. Bland fare of toast, fruit in its juice, plain oats, milk, but it was manna in her aching belly.
In the space between meals she would recall her classes and books she had read; her near eidetic memory was a weak balm for boredom, but it suited her better than dwelling on torments experienced and imagined. There were potions to brew in cauldrons crafted from shadow, phantom books to read in the dark.
And plans to find whatever Horcrux they had missed, should she ever escape her plight.
Sometimes, when the slithering darkness pressed in too close, Hermione would lie on the pitiful excuse for a mattress laid for her and sing. Songs of her childhood, muggle lullabies and radio hits, songs from long summer drives or sitting in ice cream parlors, or leaning against her mother’s shoulder. Hermione’s voice wasn’t particularly good, nor was it necessarily bad. The tune in her bucket sloshed, so her mother would joke; her father’s tune missed the bucket entirely.
Ancient hinges groaned in the closeness of the cell and Hermione sat up, tightening the flannel blanket around herself. In the silvery light slanting into the room she could make out a shadow with features just readable.
“What's wrong, little mudblood? Did I interrupt your song?” His teeth shone wetly in the dim wand light as he smiled, kneeling over her. “Little songbird. And here I thought you were a kitten. Though I suppose both have claws.” Dolohov moved to tuck a curl behind her ear, but Hermione flinched back. The darkness in his eyes grew. “I had thought you would appreciate company after your last few days.”
She scoffed. “The darkness is far preferable to what you think of as companionable.”
“Do you think so?” Something dangerous swam behind the sliver of charcoal that was his iris, but she jutted her chin and kept eye contact. “Very well.” The Death Eater stood and turned away from her with the rustling of dark cloth. He swung the door behind him, the shadowy block taking away the light and sealing her reality once more.
Hermione had always prided herself on her internal clock; it was such a small thing, but one that nonetheless had served her well. She was rarely late for classes, hardly ever stirred her potions at the wrong moment, generally woke seconds before her alarm went off. It was a paltry innate talent, but it was one of her few, so she clung to it.
In the darkness that saturated her days following her dismissal of Dolohov her awareness of time was sliced away sliver by sliver until her hours began to bleed into one another, her days merging into monstrosities, her existence a knotted line within it.
Her meals came sporadically now, her bucket magically emptied. There was no crack in the invasive door, no changes in her little cell.
It was the second day after the interruption that she started hallucinating. At first these visions were little things. The ceiling of darkness above appeared to whoosh into the night sky, stars popping into velvety navy night, twinkling at her in unknown constellations. As she attempted to chart them, eyes dancing from one to another, they changed. She'd go back to the start and have to place them anew.
They were her most frequent imagining. Around the fourth day they spiraled from the sky to dance around her like tiny fairies, though they failed to illuminate her world further.
She spent that day trying to count them.
The seventh day she began to see beyond the tiny cell, bare limbs of silver limned trees reaching out toward her. They shivered in invisible, silent wind.
Day ten the whispers began.
That's what she told herself, but Hermione had merely been trying to ignore auditory hallucinations before that point.
“Hermione.” The voice crooned in her ear and the girl slapped a shaking hand over her mouth. It was so close she should feel the warmth of her mother’s body. “Hermione, come home. Why are you hiding?”
She choked back a sob, pressing herself into the corner that had become her safe place.
Still her mother called. And her heart broke.
That was the day she stopped trying to keep track.
“One for sorrow,
Two for mirth.
Stir three times clockwise and twelve anticlockwise.
Three for a funeral,
Four for a birth.
Add powdered billywig wings. Stir stir stir, let sit for thirty seconds.
Five for Heaven,
Six for Hell.
Seven’s the Devil,
His own self.
And--”
“The Devil, hm?”
Hermione paused with her hand hovering over the cauldron she’s conjured in her mind.
“Nothing to say, mudblood?”
The dry cotton of her tongue flicked across chapped lips. “I had wondered when I'd hear your voice. I'm surprised it took so long.”
“Are you hearing voices?” The words were warm against the shell of her ear.
She snorted. “Wouldn't you?”
The voice seemed to consider. “Alone? In the dark? For weeks? Perhaps.” Softness tickled against her cartilage and Hermione’s heart sped.
That was new.
“I think I prefer the other voices to yours.”
Warm, soft lips lingered there. “And if this is real?”
Damnable logic wriggled at the back of her mind, but she tried to smother it with a blanket of nothingness. “All I can see is in my head. If this were real I'd be able to see reality.”
“Lumos.”
Lightning seared through her retina and Hermione cried out, forearm thrown over to shield her eyes as purple afterimages flashed over the backs of her lids.
Warm, calloused, tangible hands gripped her shoulders. “Is that real enough for you, mudblood?”
Her pulse sped to the whir of a hummingbird’s wings and she took great gulps of air before the voice of reason offered a solution to her panic.
- 993. 986. 979. 972…
“How long?” Her voice was dry, grinding against the stone in her throat.”
The too real man hummed. “I don't think you need to know.” Scant tears wetted the little hairs of her forearm as a sob groaned out of her. A hand slid from her shoulder to her wrist, gently guiding down her arm. The light through her eyelids was still almost unbearable, but Dolohov murmured and it dimmed. “There, now. That should help.” He tilted her chin up and she batted clinging lashes apart.
The details of his face, though shadowed, were clear, more clear than anything she had seen in so long that she felt herself drinking in the way eyes gleamed in soft light, the fine pattern of stubble on his cheeks, the texture of real skin. His forefinger was warm and stark against her chin.
“I thought perhaps you would enjoy a bath.” Her mind flashed back to her body stretched and hosed with cold water, eyes flinching. “Upstairs.”
The word was clamorous in her skull. “Up… Stairs?”
His lips curled as softly as the whisper of a knife. “Yes. Come.”
He pulled her to her feet, wrapping an arm around her waist to help the weak girl support herself. They padded up the stairs and up another flight, but her feet stuttered as they came to the threshold of the house proper. She had only known cold stone for so long.
“Are you coming, or shall I put you back in your cell?”
Back in the darkness she had tried to carve an existence out of, or to a reality where she had to rely on the Death Eater beside her. But then, she relied on him for her existence either way so long as she lived.
She stepped lightly into the hall.
“Good girl.”