Manacled

Chapter 1

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.