PROXIMITY

PROLOGUE - CHAPTER ONE

MARCH 1998

"...The Granger girl—she's the Mudblood, she's the one—"

"Cissy, do it."

"He needs to watch, Cissy."

"Say it."

"I only want to protect him—"

"If you want to save him, do it!"

"You don't want him with a Mudblood do you?"

There were nothing but distinct, familiar voices sounding in Hermione's ears—though, the clamor had grown incoherent with each passing sequence, and the more the clouding darkness in her eyes grew, the more her surroundings were beginning to fade out of existence, compressed into a tight hole of tenebrosity.

Piercing tones and mendacious noises.

Because clearly there was absolutely no chance that this was real—that she was stuck, pinned down beneath Bellatrix Lestrange, her breath fanning faintly against Hermione's cold cheek. It held nothing but abhorrent incantations and iniquitous contempt, seething from her tongue and tracing along Hermione's numbing skin.

She thought she was close to screaming when one of the witches' sharp teeth snagged against the tenderness of her flesh, dragging it like a blade across her cheek and down her trembling jaw. There was blood, she could feel it—there was so much of it.

The voices had continued to reverberate around the embellishments of her mind, echoing across each section of her brain as she tried to focus.

Nothing worked.

Hermione's chest suddenly constricted with air, the woman above her started to taunt her with a noxious laugh, it was cold and unrelenting, and it scraped along her eardrums.

She heard several different words, all of which were muddled up into different directions, but she could feel that they were all meant for her to hear—that half of them were full of deception.

Something cold had twisted around the tip of Hermione's spine, curling it inward until it reached the back of her throat, and prickled through the top of her mouth. She was choking. There were tears now, gliding along her cheeks and interlacing between the blood that had started beading over her jaw and neck.

This wasn't about the vault anymore—this was different.

It was more than just seized items that the woman above her was attempting to carve and pull out of her. She didn't understand how she figured it out, how the notion had felt more than just inequitable. But there was something wrong, something in her chest that tingled with perilousness. It slithered along her spine and wrapped around her bones. It felt like magic. The tip of it was susurrating through her mouth and at the tip of her fingers. There was magic inside of her that wanted to extirpate the woman in front of her.

Hermione had never felt such an intense amount of magic in her life.

And there was something threatening it.

More than just Bellatrix Lestrange slicing a blade through her flesh—there were faint words being whispered, and they were binding her to the flagstone. It was more than just magic wrapping around her fumbling limbs, it seemed to be deeper than that—darker. Desperate to seep into her bloodstream and render her immobilized, incapable of speech and motor-movement in her arms and legs.

It hurt.

And there was something about the way Draco Malfoy was looking at her. It was unreal, and it felt forced, as though he was being punished.