Manacled

Chapter 3

The bed Hannah had occupied was empty when Hermione was returned to the hospital ward in Hogwarts.

Healer Stroud poured a potion down Hermione's throat as soon as she was placed in the bed. The pain in Hermione's mind subsided slightly. She blinked, and the dancing black spots that kept obscuring her vision finally started to fade away.

Hermione felt nauseous. Her insides were roiling and cringing like she had poison inside that her body couldn't expel. She was still shaking. She wanted to roll over and curl into a ball, but she couldn't summon the strength to manage it.

"Guard her with your lives. If anyone wants to touch her or so much as look at her, they will require permission from me," she heard Healer Stroud say.

Hermione turned and could vaguely make out two large men standing behind Stroud. Their eyes were cold as they stared down at Hermione.

Stroud cast several monitor wards on Hermione that rose up, shimmering around her body. After she had inspected the projections for a few minutes, Stroud turned and strode away, her healer robes billowing out behind her.

Hermione stared up at the ceiling, trying to absorb everything that had happened to her that day.

She felt like she should be crying, but she couldn't summon the tears.

Resignation and hopelessness had entwined themselves with her soul since the moment she watched Harry die.

After watching most of the people she loved die in agony, she'd known her turn to suffer was lying in wait.

Now it had come.

Death had never frightened Hermione. Her fear had always been in the manner of death. She had watched the worst ways to go.

Harry's death had been a mercy killing compared to the torture the Weasleys, Remus and Tonks had been subjected to.

Lucius Malfoy had been standing mere feet from where Hermione was caged when he looked up at Ron and snarled "This is for my wife!"

Then he cast a curse that turned Ron's blood gradually into molten lead. Hermione watched as the curse slowly crept through Ron's body, destroying him from the inside out. She'd been helpless to do anything—helpless to spare him in any way.

Arthur Weasley had been left permanently addled by a curse during the war. He cried, not even understanding why he was in pain or that he was dying.

They had left Molly for last. So she'd watch all her children die.

Remus had lasted hours longer than anyone else. His lycanthropy kept healing him until he just hung there, unresponsive. Finally someone shot the Killing Curse at him out of boredom.

The deaths had replayed themselves before Hermione's eyes so many time she would have thought that eventually the pain of them would ease.

It never did.

Each time felt just as sharp. Just as fresh.

A wound that would never heal.

Survivor's guilt, she thought, that was the Muggle term for it. Such a paltry description. It didn't capture even a fraction of the breadth of agony in her soul.

For Hermione, being bred by a Death Eater was a fate that had never even occurred to her. Being raped—the risk had been considered. This felt like rape in slow motion. However, the situation was far more complex than simply that. Whatever she had hidden in her mind, it had been important. More important to her than anything else. She couldn't let it fall into Voldemort's hands.

She wasn't afraid of having her corpse rot in the Great Hall. That fate was nothing compared to giving up what she was protecting. Or compared to being raped and forced to carry a child that would be torn from her the moment it was born.