The Cell

Prologue

"How did you get it?!" Bellatrix screeched, bending on all fours over Hermione's prone body in the middle of the drawing room floor.

She could feel droplets of spit fleck her face, rancid breath washing over her as Bellatrix leaned in closer.

"Tell me how you got into my vault, mudblood filth! CRUCIO!"

Hermione had just enough time to register the increasingly crazed look in the sadistic bitch's eyes before her body was wracked once again with blinding, searing agony. A scream ripped from her throat as her back arched off the floor, every nerve on fire.

The spell let up and her head lolled to the side, tears she hadn't noticed she was shedding slid down her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose. Barely coherent, she saw a blurry outline standing stark and still near the corner of the massive stone fireplace. Dark and slim with a shock of white-blonde hair.

"So, the little girl wants to play," Bellatrix cackled. "Okay, let's play."

Hermione heard a rustling, but she couldn't turn her head to see what it was. She blinked and her vision cleared slightly. The blob across from her was none other than Malfoy – Draco to be exact, seeing as there were presumably three of them floating around the manor. He was rigid, his lips pressed into a tight white line, icy gray eyes wide with... well, what exactly she couldn't be sure.

Before she had time to analyze further her mind was flooded with a different kind of pain. An excruciating burning sliced across her right forearm. She opened her mouth to scream again but nothing came out, her lungs tightened and threatened to rip apart, like an over-wrung sponge, and all she could muster was a strangled gasp and a choking sound.

"Hermione!" She heard someone call distantly, the voice muffled. Bellatrix pulled away slightly and then dove back in with the knife before Hermione had a second to catch her breath. She wasn't even asking any bloody questions anymore. While the blade dug into her arm, deeper and deeper, her whole frame began to shake.

Some distant part of her brain registered that this was a known after-effect of the cruciatus. Continued nerve pain, tremors, and, in extreme circumstances, grand mal seizures. She mulled that over as her jaw locked and her bladder, rather humiliatingly, released, soaking the inseam of her jeans.

Bellatrix hooted - "Aww, did little baby mudblood have an accident?"

Hermione's body relaxed after a moment and Bellatrix raised the knife again. Her vision was starting to swim and sounds distorted, as if they were carrying toward her through a long tunnel. She wondered if this was it, if she was going to die here. She was in so much pain she almost wished it was. That it would just end.

As the demented witch lunged forward, several things happened at once.

"Expelliarmus!" someone cried, the knife soaring out of Bellatrix's hand and clattering across the floor before coming to rest near the French doors.

"Hermione!" She heard the voice from before yell again, this time much closer. Shadows danced around the edges of her vision and she saw flashes of green and red light flying overhead.

There was a tremendous crash that shook the ground, a piercing scream, and then everything went black.

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