Hermione had long given up hope of seeing in the darkness.
For a time, she thought maybe if she just let her eyes adjust, eventually some faint outline would become visible.
There were no glimmers of moonlight slipping through so deep in the dungeons. No torches in the hallways outside the cell. Just more and more darkness, until she wondered sometimes if she might be blind.
She had explored every inch of the cell with her fingertips. The door, sealed with magic, had no lock to pick, even if she had anything but straw and a chamber pot. She smelled the air in the hopes it might indicate something; the season, the distant scent of food or potions. The air was stale, wet, cold. Lifeless.
She had hoped if she just checked carefully enough, she'd find a loose slab-stone in the wall; some secret compartment hiding a nail, or a spoon, or even a bit of rope. Apparently the cell had never held an audacious prisoner. No scratches to mark time. No loose stones. Nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
She couldn't even talk aloud to relieve the unending silence. It had been Umbridge's parting gift after they had dragged her into the cell and checked her manacles one last time.
They had been about to leave when Umbridge paused and whispered, "Silencio."
Prodding Hermione's chin up with her wand so that their eyes met, she said, "You'll understand
soon enough."
Umbridge giggled, and her cloying, sugary breath ghosted over Hermione's face.
Hermione had been left in darkness and silence.
Had she been forgotten? No one ever came. No torture. No interrogations. Just dark, silent solitude.
Meals appeared. Randomised so she couldn't even keep track of time.
She recited potion recipes in her head. Transfiguration technique. Reviewed runes. Nursery rhymes. Her fingers flicked as she mimicked wand techniques, mouthing the spell inflection. She counted backwards from a thousand by subtracting prime numbers.
She started working out. It had apparently not occurred to anyone to restrict her physically, and the cell was spacious enough that she could cartwheel diagonally across it. She learned how to do handstands. Spent what felt like hours doing push-ups and things called burpees that her cousin had been obsessed with one summer. She found that she could slot her feet through the bars of the cell door and do crunches while hanging upside down.
It helped turn her mind off. Counting. Pushing herself to new physical limits. When her arms and legs turned to jelly, she'd slump down into a corner and fall into a dreamless sleep.
It was the only way to make the end of the war stop playing in front of her eyes.
Sometimes she wondered if she was dead. Maybe it was hell. Darkness and loneliness and nothing but her worst memories hanging before her eyes for forever.
When there finally was a noise, it felt deafening. The screech in the distance as a long abandoned door swung open. Then light. Blinding, blinding light.
It was like being stabbed.
She stumbled back into the corner and covered her eyes.
"She's still alive," she heard Umbridge say, sounding surprised. "Get her up, let's see if she's still lucid."
Rough hands dragged Hermione from the corner and tried to pull her hands away from her eyes. Even with her eyelids squeezed tightly shut, the pain from the sudden brightness felt like knives driving into her corneas. She wrenched her hands back to press them over her eyes again, ripping her arms from her captors' grasp.
"Oh, Merlin's sake," Umbridge said in a sharp, impatient voice. "Overpowered by a wandless Mudblood. Petrificus Totalus ."
Hermione's body stiffened. Mercifully her eyes remained closed. "You should have been smart enough to die. Crucio ."
The curse ripped through Hermione's immobilised body. Umbridge wasn't the strongest caster Hermione had been cursed by, but she meant it. The pain tore through Hermione like fire. Unable to move, she felt like her insides were twisting into knots, trying to escape the pain. Her head throbbed as the pain built and built without any release.
After an eternity, the pain stopped, and yet didn't. The curse was ended, but the agony remained coiled inside, as though her nerves were flayed.
Hermione could feel her brain scrabbling to escape; to break free of the suspended agony. Just break. Just break. But she couldn't.
"Take her up for appraisal. Let me know promptly what the healer says."
She was levitated, but the world remained a blur of sound and agony. So much sound. It felt as though the vibrations were grating across her skin. She must have been kept inside a barrier ward because suddenly the air exploded with noise and light.
She tried to hold on by focusing only on the tap of footsteps. Straight for ten paces. A right. Thirty paces. A left. Fifteen paces. Stop. One of the guards levitating her rapped on a door.
"Come in," said a muffled voice.
The door grated open.
"Put her over there."
Hermione felt her body drop onto an examination table. She felt a wand prod her.
"Recent spell work?"
"Immobilisation and the cruciatus," answered a new voice. Hermione thought she recognised it, but her mind was too awhirl with agony to place it.
"While immobilised?" The healer sounded peeved. "How long?"
"A minute. Maybe more."
A hiss of irritation. "We hardly have enough as it is. Is Umbridge trying to ruin them? Strap her down. She'll injure herself otherwise when I take the spells off."
Hermione felt leather straps bind her wrists and ankles, and something was forced between her teeth. There was a wand tap on her temple.
"Yoo-hoo. Little witch, if your mind isn't already mush. This is going to hurt—a lot. But," he continued cheerily, "you will feel better afterwards. Finite Incantatem! "
Hermione's world exploded. It was like being hit with the cruciatus all over again. Finally mobile, her body recoiled, and she screamed and thrashed. The straps holding her down barely stopped her from arching backward as she writhed, and rocked, and wailed in agony. It seemed like an eternity before she could stop thrashing. Long after her voice had given out. Her muscles still twitched violently, and her chest heaved with sobs.
"Alright. You can go now," the healer said as he prodded Hermione again with his wand. "But tell Umbridge if another one arrives like this, I will report her for sabotage."
Hermione cracked an eye open and watched the guards leave. Her vision blurred. Everything was so agonisingly bright, but she could make out vague shapes and the light hurt less. Or rather, other things hurt more than her eyes did.
The healer returned to her. He was a large man. She didn't recognise him. She squinted, trying to see him clearly.
"Oh good, you're tracking movement." He turned her wrist to get the prison number from the manacle. "Number 273..."
He pulled a narrow file off a shelf and furrowed his brow as he skimmed it.
"Mudblood, obviously. Hogwarts student. Oh, very good marks. Hmmm. Unknown curse to the abdomen in fifth year. Not a very good sign. Well, we'll see what we have to work with."
He performed a complex diagnostic spell over her. She watched her magical signature float overhead and various orbs of color arrange themselves along her body.
The healer prodded them and scribbled notes. He was particularly interested in her abdomen, especially an orb tinged with purple.
"What—," she rasped around the gag still between her teeth, "—what are you looking at?"
"Hmm? Oh, a variety of things; your physical health, mostly. You're in remarkably good condition. Where have they been keeping you? Although none of that matters if I can't figure out this old curse you're still carrying."
He worked in silence for several more minutes before chuckling. With a complicated flip of his wand and an incantation Hermione couldn't make out, she watched a dark stream of purple flame shoot into her stomach. Her insides suddenly started bubbling, and she felt something writhing alive among her organs. Something crawling inside her.
Before she could scream, the healer sent a red spell streaking into her. The writhing stopped, and it felt like something had dissolved inside her.
