When The Bell Tolls

1

May 27; 7:05pm

Hermione snaps the clip shut on her briefcase and steps back, raising her arms in line with her shoulders, the suit jacket pulling tight across her back. She flinches as magenta flashes at her from the corner of her vision, the spell swirling circles around her before glowing at her hip. She reaches down, pulling her wand and raising her eyes to the guard.

"You'll have to check that," he says gruffly, grabbing a quill as he scrapes a case across the desk.

Thick eyebrows furrow as he glances between her Ministry Identification and the sheet of parchment, his hand moving quickly enough to suggest he has long ago grown familiar with the specifics of logging wands. He holds out his hand without a glance towards her, her heart giving three painful thuds before she drops her wand into his palm. She watches as if the contact will explode his skin, and stops herself from wiping the sweat along her hairline.

She should have taken more Calming Draught. She shouldn't be here at all.

"Miss Granger?" a woman asks beside her, and Hermione turns her eyes up to the strong jaw and firm eyes. "Follow me, please."

Hermione pulls her briefcase from the desk, giving one last furtive glance to her wand, and turns for the metal bars. A loud buzz sounds out, her spine pulling straight, and she walks stiffly past the bars when they open. They slide shut behind her as the two guards tap a pattern on the stone wall, her breath catching for a moment before the stone gives away. Four pairs of eyes look up at them from the stretch of a hallway, and she concentrates on the sound of her shoes clicking across the floor.

She runs over her plan again, remembering what Kingsley had told her, and nods to the guard at the end of the hallway. Four wands tap on the bricks as she runs her thumb over the smooth handle of her briefcase, back and forth, keeping her breaths even.

"We'll be escorting you to level five, Miss."

Hermione looks up at the two faces revealed on the other side of the wall and nods. "I have to go to level eight."

"Guards with that clearance will be waiting at level five." Right. That's something like what Harry told her.

The wall slides shut after she steps past it, listening to the keys jingle and clink against metal. She can feel the air pressing against her, the oxygen growing weaker in her lungs, and she almost jumps at the buzz of noise bouncing off the walls.

Prison cells. Hermione lifts her chin, keeping her eyes forward and her briefcase close to her leg. They are the ones waiting for their sentences at the Wizengamot, already branded guilty, and their impatience and restlessness is proven through the shifts of bodies and angry calls. Hermione feels like a prisoner, too, just as trapped as them as she reaches the bars that close off the hallway. The heckles and yells grow louder as the buzz sounds, the bars opening to more bars, and the other guard pulls out a ring of keys to open it.

They walk through a brightly lit room, guards chattering over a late breakfast or rifling through folders. They twist through corridors, lines of cells, up stairs and then down, down, down. The constant buzz, taps, buzz, taps. Hermione feels as if she is burying herself within the walls of Azkaban, and imagines a far heavier panic without the potion she took to calm her nerves. The closer she gets to where the Death Eaters are kept, the harder her heart pulses. She has to fight to knock the images from her mind, to remind herself that they are safely locked away, to keep her hand from traveling to the end of a wand that isn't there.

A distantly familiar face nods in greeting when she catches his eyes, and another man stares at her over a thick, scraggly beard. She meets his hard scrutiny for a moment before he turns, both guards muttering as their wands curve and swirl in unrecognizable spells against the wall.