Secrets and Masks

55. Hell on earth

TW; graphic depictions of violence

31st March

"When you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes." That was what a lot of people said was supposed to happen. You take your last breath, your heart stops beating and then - what? A light? A tunnel? And when you come out the other side you see your whole life flash by before the screen fades to black forever?

Hermione guessed that it was meant to be a comfort, a way to make someone's passing a little easier, a little less painful, but after everything she'd seen during the war, after everything she'd done, to her it felt more like a punishment than a kindness.

She'd asked Harry about it once. She'd asked what happened that time in the forest, if he saw anything before the resurrection stone had brought him back to life. He'd just laughed and said, "You'd never believe me if I told you."

She'd wanted to know more after that, how could she not have?! Harry's answer had been so vague that it raised more questions than it answered. But she never found the time to ask him about it again, always let herself get distracted by something else in the war.

And she fucking kicked herself for it now.

She supposed it was funny, if she really thought about it, that her life would end like this.

Even though her mother and father had known nothing about wizards and magic at the time, they'd been so proud when she'd received her acceptance letter to Hogwarts. She remembered how the next day they'd taken her to the local library and checked out every book that referenced witches or magic or spells, and they spent the whole weekend reading together, preparing as best they could for her new life.

Of course, almost everything they read was bullshit, tales and false facts made up by old religious fools and muggles who knew nothing of the world they were writing about.

The only thing that turned out to have a sliver of truth in it were the witch trials. She wondered what her parents would think if they could see her now, tied to a post, hands bound behind her back and about to be burned to death like one of the witches in those old textbooks.

But the flames Hermione had been waiting for, they didn't hurt the way they always did in her nightmares, didn't burn like they had when Voldemort had shown her the vision.

How ... odd. Perhaps the pain she'd felt in her nightmares had been lying to her. Or perhaps the pain was so severe that she blacked out and went numb to it?

No, no that couldn't be true. She knew the fire was there. She felt the temperature rise. She heard the embers leave Narcissa's mouth and then ...

She heard screaming. High, agonized wails that all melted together to form a tidal wave of pain. But it wasn't her screams. They didn't sound like hers. Didn't sound like her voice at all.

She supposed shock could make it appear that way, dissociation was a common response to trauma. She supposed that she could have left her body, that her mind might've detached itself when the flames hit as a way to process what was happening to her. That, or maybe her nerve endings had been completely disintegrated in the blast and her body simply couldn't register the pain anymore. But if that were true, she would have at least felt the flames first, wouldn't she?

There would have been a moment, at least a second of unimaginable agony before she went numb to it all. She was sure of it.

Something wasn't right. Something wasn't making sense.

When Hermione slowly opened her eyes, she saw several things, each more confusing than the last.

The first thing her eyes chose to focus on was Bellatrix. She'd expected to find her laughing or smiling wickedly, enthralled by watching the way Hermione's skin slid off her bones, but she wasn't smiling, wasn't looking at Hermione at all. She was staring off to the left with an equally horrified and furious expression on her face.