The Cell

Chapter 7: Day 14, Tumbling down

I think I might've inhaled you

I could feel you behind my eyes

You'd gotten into my bloodstream

I could feel you floating in me

Words can be like knives

They can cut you open

And the silence surrounds you

And hunts you

- Stateless, Bloodstream

It was getting worse. She was laid on the ground in the same position she had been in every day for the past six days, Malfoy kneeling near her head with his left palm pressing firmly on her shoulder and his right hand hovering over her right arm.

"Again," she growled, muffled by the gag. He cast without pause, face carefully blank, and her legs spasmed for two excruciating minutes before he let up.

She ripped the fabric from her mouth and gasped, noting in some distant part of her mind that he hadn't moved his hand from her shoulder. She raised her arm and examined it, trying to choke back a cry of frustration. It hadn't changed at all from an hour ago when they started.

At first the cleaning charms, unbearable as they were, had helped, reducing the swelling and whisking away some of the redness and discharge. She even felt slightly better after them. But now her arm was mottled with angry red splotches, extending away from the rancid gashes and engulfing her from wrist to elbow.

They had briefly considered the idea of amputation, but even if they could get through her arm with dulled severing charms, she would unquestionably bleed to death without blood replenishing potions and proper cauterization spells.

She couldn't hold it in anymore, not caring what Malfoy thought of her. It wasn't as though it mattered now. His hand slipped off her shoulder as she got to her feet, tears pouring down her cheeks, choking as she tried to gasp around the sobs wracking her body, nearly doubling her over. She swiped her left arm across her face and violently shook her head.

No. This was absurd. She wasn't going to die like this. She was supposed to die in battle, fighting for the light, protecting Harry. Not fade into nihility, forgotten in her own filth and surrounded by nothing but endless grey.

She whipped around and strode toward the door, ignoring how her head spun from pain and blood loss.

"Let me out of here!" she shouted, pounding her fists against the cold iron and spattering blood across the floor. "Let me out you bloody, buggering bastards!"

She struck the metal over and over again, screaming and swearing until she was hoarse and her whole body ached. Malfoy knelt unmoving on the ground where she had left him, next to a pool of her blood, silent as the grave.

Her blood. It all came back to her filthy, muddy blood. The irony wasn't lost on her. All these years clawing her way to the top, proving that she was better than they thought she was, and she was going to die of sepsis. Hermione Granger was going to perish from a literal fucking blood infection. She distantly heard a hysterical laugh bubble from between her lips.

She eventually collapsed in a heap against the base of the door, curling in on herself and crying so hard she couldn't breathe or see. She barely registered when two strong, steady arms wrapped under her shoulders and legs, scooping her up easily and depositing her on the makeshift bed in the corner.

He made to pull away, but her shaking hands curled desperately into the fabric of his shirt and he paused.

"Please," she begged, emotionally shattered and utterly deprived of human contact, "please."