𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐈𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐀

☾ Chapter 3

☾

Hermione had refused the alarm.

She hadn't wanted to wake anyone from their precious sleep in the middle of the night, so instead, she sat rocking back and forth, knees hugged to her her chest as she stared intently at the clock's red numbers with tired, fluttering eyes.

Her old appointments were at eleven in the morning on Tuesdays. She found the change unsettling, but was quite excited to stand under a steaming hot shower. Lesser people arrived at the Health Center in the early mornings, so she could hog the blazing liquid for herself.

Hermione no longer felt pity for those who'd been captured. Other than her small band, she'd taken to revolving around an 'every man for themselves' ideology.

Her considerateness from her school years hadn't seemed to make any difference. Every kind act she committed was never repaid, and only violence and ignorance ever seemed to breach out of her peers. So instead, naivety was the personality trait she unlearned.

The blonde man in the black cloak returned, screeching metal against the concrete as he opened the cell door, coaxing for Hermione to follow him with a cock of the head.

She was incredibly uneasy, having never been fond of the dark. The crickets and soft trickling water from the creek nearby were comforting to hear, but her eyes betrayed her per usual, seeing shapes in the shadows, monsters behind trees.

It was a mere thought — one she found revolting, one that disgusted her as it seeped through her mind and out again. She only heard the inner voice for a moment before pulling herself back to reality.

The guard, walking silently beside her — she'd noticed he didn't pull as hard as the others.

She should not in any means find that compassionate, and yet it bled through her doubts as a microscopic source of relief. Anything she could get, she would gladly take.

She was unsure how long they'd been walking, the silence around them filled with pattering footsteps and the soft howls of wolves far in the distance. The summer air had cooled. Perhaps walking at night had it's benefits. She no longer had to trudge through mud in the smoldering heat.

No.

She would not allow herself to appreciate the little things. Feeling relieved in the slightest would lead to false hope, an emotion Hermione dreaded feeling ever again.

Harry and Ronald had been executed, and she hadn't allowed herself to feel it since.

False hope got you killed, and despite Hermione's extreme urge for utter death, a confident, passionate eleven year old witch was lost somewhere in her heart, pounding it from the inside with small fists as she begged to be released, all the while willing her twenty one year old self to stay alive.

Hermione couldn't kill that little girl. Even the thought itself brought her to tears.

But she would not cry in front of the man. She refused to appear as another weak, adolescent school girl who'd gotten wrapped up in a war with no choice.

No.

Hermione would embrace it.

She embraced every slap, every punch, every attempt at arithmancy that poked and prodded at her brain in attempt of finding some bit of useful information. She embraced the metal pail in her cell, the rusted bar door, the stained white mattresses.

The only thing she would never embrace was the ivory Victorian dress that sat sown around her body, changed every two weeks during the Health appointment she was trekking towards currently.