Breaking Hermione

The Beginning Of The End

The feeling of claustrophobia within the full body binding curse was horrific. But even worse, the undefeatable spirit within me who refused to believe that being sedated by Tom Riddle and having him acting as my personal prison guard was enough to crush me. I wasn't going to give up. Which meant of course that I had to endure all the torment I was going to face for choosing this. I couldn't stop myself, however. It was impossible. After all, I couldn't spend forever in the past constantly about to be killed by Tom. I had to form a plan to win. I had to beat the odds this time, or else I knew this psycological torment was just going to repeat itself over and over again. It was driving me insane. One moment I was winning and the next minute Tom had gotten the upper hand over my life. I had spent enough time alone in the Hospital Wing physically restrained by the drugs and the bed sheets to realise just how wrong I'd been. I needed to escape.

Beneath the hazy drug induced state I couldn't stop drifting in and out of sleep. Several times in the day Tom entered the room only to stare at me and talk words I couldn't hear. Only a few times did I manage to be coherent enough to piece together snippets of his words.

"...until you learn your lesson. Soon you will have no choice but to submit. So now is what we call the waiting game, Hermione."

I was painfully aware of an IV suddenly in my hand. I couldnt move at all but to see that needle jutting out of my hand was enough to make me feel sick. Tom was controlling the drug dosage leaving me weak and defenceless all day and subjected to his powers. When he wasn't looking I would struggle fruitlessly trying to concentrate enough to perhaps use non verbal magic. I had practised enough times I could've possibly summoned my own wand back. But whenever I started to feel the familiar tingle in the back of my mind of a spell starting to work the drugs turned my thoughts sluggish and everything was ruined once again. Several times when Tom wasn't looking or had his back turned I would thrash silently to no avail, even blinking hundreds of times in a frenzied attempt to drag myself out of the horrible hazy state myself. Of course this didn't work and on the times I was caught in the act it had only brought the hilarity to Tom who didnt miss a chance to tell me how fruitless my attempts were. The hours were painful, and dragged on. My leg seemed healed enough for me to not feel pain, and the heavy aching sensation from having fallen victim to the Cruciatus Curse were somewhat diminished by the sheer amount of sedatives in me.

Tom barely left my side. Now that I couldn't move he had started reading from his own written diary he had "gifted" me passages he had written about what the term "allegiance" meant, claiming that he was compelled to do so by the fact I apparently had no idea about its importance. Sometimes he would speak to me about letting me go free. But other times he would just play with me by saying that he was happy I was here and that this lesson was one I should take to heart.

After a while of not being responsible however Tom caught on quickly and lessened the dose of sedatives, obviously hoping I would decide to confess my wrongdoings. I didn't submit. I couldn't. I wouldn't.

I thought he was going to stay watching me for not just the day but the entire night as well but he was a Prefect and had to leave me unattended while he went back to the Slytherin Common Room to wrangle the younger students.

"If you try to escape, I will find out." He promised in a deathly tone. "I have Madam Pomfrey in my control. So of course you can try to leave all you want. But you won't get anywhere." He gave me one last haunting look with his black eyes before walking out of the room.

Finally.

Weak and tired, I closed my eyes and was slowly succumbing to yet another sleep when something started slapping my face. A hand. My eyes flew open.

"Hermione. Hermione!"
It must have been only mere minutes after Tom left when I was awoken by a strange sight.

"Hmmm?" I blinked, struggling to see for a moment. And then I sucked in a gasp. Corbin and Claudia, both wide eyed and looking shocked. Well, Corbin even more so than Claudia.