manacled by senlinyu

Chapter 2

"Hermione..." she heard someone breathe.

Looking up sharply from her manacles, she saw a head poking through the dividing curtain. She squinted and stared. It was Hannah Abbott.

A low gasp of horror escaped Hermione's lips.

Hannah only had one eye.

Her right eye was staring at Hermione, but her left eye was gone. There was a black, gaping hole in her head as though it had been plucked out.

Hannah's hand immediately darted up and covered the left side of her face.

"Sorry. It's always awful for people the first time they see it."

"What—happened?" Hermione forced the words out.

She didn't know of any curse that removed eyes in such a manner. There were plenty of blinding hexes, but none with such grotesque results.

"Umbridge—she popped it out with the tip of her wand when—when I tried to escape. She made the healers keep it like this. For effect." Hannah turned her head slightly away to conceal her face further.

"She got into trouble for it though." Hannah lowered her face so that she was gazing at the floor. Her voice sounded as if she was somehow dead. "She normally cuts off fingers now. If you're disrespectful. If you try to get away. If you look at her wrong. Parvati and Angelina, they hardly have any fingers left."

Hannah looked hard at Hermione with her remaining eye.

"Let your Gryffindor die, Hermione. Don't try to be brave. Don't try to be clever. Just keep your head down. People have been trying to get out for months. Anyone who gets caught gets maimed. Anyone—who gets out—it took too many tries before we realised—the manacles we've all got—," Hannah raised her own copper encased wrist, "they've got a trace in them. If you get past the wards, they send the High Reeve and hang the corpse in the Great Hall so that we all have to watch it decay."

Hermione felt as though she'd been struck violently in the chest. Her fingers spasmed against the fabric of the blanket covering her. She could barely breathe. "Who?"

"Ginny. She was the first body they brought back. We all thought maybe you had actually gotten out. Because you disappeared. We didn't realise they'd just put you somewhere else..."

Hannah's voice trailed off, and she stared at Hermione. "You don't even know why they brought you out, do you?"

Hermione shook her head.

"The guards talk a lot. After the war, we all expected the Dark Lord would start enslaving the Muggles. But—it turns out his ranks were more exhausted than we realised. Apparently being immortal makes him patient. He decided that repopulating the ranks of pure-blood wizards should be first on his agenda. He personally paired off all the pure-bloods. Made them all get married with orders to start reproducing."

Hannah's face was twisted with disdain as she recited this information.

Hermione's eyebrows furrowed with surprise. A repopulation effort? The war had dragged on with high casualties given the size of the wizarding population, but Hermione hadn't thought Voldemort would notice, much less care. Arranged marriages weren't exactly uncommon among pure-bloods—but having them mandated seemed extreme. She wondered how his followers had felt.

"There were—barely any babies. Pure-blood fertility rates have been dropping for years. There were a few pregnancies that set everyone abuzz. Most ended up squib and got terminated before the end. Or miscarried. Well,"—Hannah's voice grew bitter—"apparently facing the extinction of the European wizarding world has opened the Dark Lord's mind somewhat in regard to blood purity. Magic is might, you know. He's decided to start a breeding program with all these half-blood and Muggle-born prisoners he happens to have on hand. Just us girls, since it's a fate worse than death to have a Muggle-born male touch a pure-blood female. We're all to be made to produce babies until our uteruses give out."