Breaking Hermione

The Art Of War

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James Baldwin

Nobody Knows My Name (1961)

Hermione

Dusk was falling. From this high up in Ravenclaw tower you could just make out the tall goal posts on the outermost edge of the Quidditch Pitch, already partially concealed by darkness. It was the School holidays, and most students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had gone home to be with their families. Sadly, I wasn't so fortunate. With no family in the past who I could stay with I was left to suffer in the presence of my arch enemy Tom Riddle, helplessly wishing I was anywhere but here.

The wind howled as it battered the windows, the faint keening sound it made was an eerie lament that echoed across the grounds. My eyes watered as I looked down at the last light of the sunset deflecting off the top of the glass greenhouses bordering the castle and I blinked, turning away. As I sat in silence I contemplated what I should do.

What could I do?

Alone and confined to a room in Ravenclaw tower, I was trapped and scared for my life. Tom Riddle had executed his scheme perfectly - so far the initiation ceremony in the Forbidden Forest was complete. I had been the central piece to a very ancient dark ritual which involved me losing my heart to the darkness. I had no idea what this ceremony entailed. I was constantly kept in the dark. Tom wanted me to transition into one of his Death Eaters, and didn't want me to know what he was going to do, or when he was going to do it. He wanted me all for himself.

Even now as I was thinking over his plan for what felt like the millionth time - it was easy to see that every tiny detail had been thought out rather meticulously. If I was cut off from the rest of the School in this tower room, how would I escape?

I suppose I could smash a window and summon a broomstick, but who knows how Tom would retaliate. It wasn't as if I was born with any ability to stay airborne either and on top of that I wasn't certain what enchantments were securing the premises. I was truly isolated here. The irony was, for my own safety and wellbeing, I had to bite the bullet and stay put.

And that is what Tom Riddle wants.

I walked away from the window sitting down on the soft bed gingerly. My arm was still broken, every now and then sharp stabbing pains would shoot through my nerves rendering me breathless. I had been strictly forbidden to heal myself and it was beyond hellish to deal with the agony. Nothing was fine.

"If I come back and find that you have mended your arm, I will not only break the other arm," Tom had told me, eyes shining maliciously, "But I will break your legs too."

And just like that, he had disappeared like a shadow out of the door, the lock closing behind him before I even had a chance to do anything about it. I didn't have to get up and rush to the door to know it was sealed off with unimpenetrable Magic. The truly striking thing about Tom Riddle was that he was an exceptionally powerful dark wizard who had accumulated a wealth of knowledge beyond his years. Highly academic, he was a lot like me in the way that he had read numerous books on Magical practice and theory. Knowing this made me even more scared about being his prisoner. He wasn't stupid, he was methodical and evil. And patient.

Time moved ahead sluggishly. I sat there on a single armchair in the same spot I had frequented for two days. My legs dangled off the side as I stared out into the glow of the sunset through the window. I knew that it was pointless to escape my twisted enemy this time. He had finally got me, and if I decided to play my cards now the consequences would be dire. My health was too diminished to act. For now at least, I would feign weakness to conceal what strength I had. As intelligent as Tom Riddle was, there was a chance he had not read the ancient military treatise The Art Of War by Sun Tzu. I had found it on the bookshelf in my family home when I was sixteen. What were the odds that Tom knew military strategies? Did he ever consider needing to use them, or was he too overconfident that he had crushed his enemy?