A year.
12 months.
52 weeks.
365 days.
8,760 hours. No, not 8,760 hours because she was taken at approximately 4 am on that first day and that meant-
The counting was endless now. It had become more than a habit to track time. It was now her only link to sanity, counting days, hours, cracks in walls, strings on the spider webs, bites in her food, hairs on her head. Counting was how Hermione Granger desperately tried to keep hold of herself as a year had passed on in the world outside of Malfoy Manor.
There had been a blade, a small sliver of razor blade inside the cell when they first pushed her inside. Mockingly dainty compared to the knife that had dug into her skin, marking Mudblood into her arm, and yet it was just as dangerous. From across the room, Luna had called that she didn't have one. The blade was meant for them to share or perhaps compete for. The dark games their captors played made her head hurt from day one.
It gave them choices. A weapon that could be used against themselves or one of the masked figures taunting them beyond the bars but without having to say it, both Hermione and Luna knew neither choice could be made. Both would end in each other's destruction.
She had decided to use it to mark the days instead. Each morning, when the grandfather clock in the hall above them sounded, she would hold the razor blade steady in her hand and scratch another mark into the stone wall.
It had taken 13 of those marks before the cheers and parties in the manor finally ended, each night adding to her nightmares as magical fireworks blasted on the ground and amplified cheers sang of their victory. 9 more until the number of feet she heard crossing over them all day died down to a smaller number. Only 2 more after that before Bellatrix had made her way down to them, reading with her high-pitched, cackling voice the headlines announcing the new world order before her sister called her back up the stairs again.
It was useless information. They'd known a long time ago which side would win.
On day 38 Hermione had woken up alone in the cellar. Luna was gone but they had suspected for a while now, in the whispered conversations they shared when house above was loud enough to cover them, that he would come for her eventually. Probably for Hermione, too but she hadn't cared enough then to think about that, focusing instead on keeping her frightened friend calm.
Being alone had changed everything.
The counting became more important then. Vital.
After 86 days, they had let Hermione outside. Three of them, hulking leering men with dark beards and matted down hair had hauled her up the stairs as masked figures watched. The sky had been full of stars that first night but they didn't let her look up long enough to count more than a handful of them. She was walked back and forth across a patch of the grounds behind the manor, passed between different sets of the Death Eaters as they moved her this way and that. The absurdity of what they were doing made her nearly delirious, memories of whining to her parents about always wanting a little puppy she could take on walks like her grade school friends had swirled around her mind as the grass tickled her feet.
Now she was the puppy, the mutt...the mangy dog dragged from the pound that no one wanted and yet no one would let go. Or put out of its misery. The Death Eaters said nothing to her, only collecting her out of the dank and dark cellar every 11 days for this display as more watched on from the windows. They walked her over the grounds, contorting her body into stretches that she would never admit gave her a relief.
Why she was there, Hermione had a million speculations for but no answers. Ever since the time Bellatrix had been caught taunting them with the news, there had been silence. Grunts and the occasional slur, but nothing of substance.
Nothing to help her understand and so Hermione Granger kept counting.
The walks, the ones that made her feel like an animal, at least gave her something new to focus on. She had begun to etch an extra little swipe next to her marks on each 11th day. Those were the special ones.
She always made sure to prepare, often saving extra bits of the mushed food levitated over to her twice a day to be as strong of body and mind as possible for each new 11th day.
The third time they manhandled her out past the patio doors, she had managed to catch a glimpse of a small meeting room just off the back end of the Manor. Their masks were off in there, and while she had only caught a fraction of a moment, she had seen him there clearly.
Catching his dark eyes had left her feeling more disoriented than ever and so as much as she was tempted, Hermione never looked for that little room again on her 11th days. It was too much to think he was there watching her- the one who had taken Luna away.
Sometimes she had thought of ways to escape on those walks, carrying the bit of blade inside her hair in case there was ever a time to use it. She counted the steps it took to reach the back door, memorized the way different Death Easters felt when they grabbed her thin arms and waited. The right moment would come.
It had been a new mantra, interrupting the counting before the numbers that grounded her returned.
On day 251, Hermione thought she had found that right moment. That had been the day only two had come to pull her up the stairs and quickly across the expanse of Malfoy Manor. A deviation from the rhythm established in her captive life that she had taken as a sign. Sparks went off behind her eyes as if her brain had come back to life at last.
She had counted her steps and pulled out that bit of blade, slashing it wildly towards one of their throats before pushing off into a full run with all of the energy she could possibly muster. Of course, she had failed. Her body hadn't been strong enough, crumbling to the ground before she thoughts could even track the motion.
They caught her, whipped her with a series of bright purple hexes until she laid still and whimpering, unable to even beg them to stop. All she had was her counting, the number of spells, how many steps back she was dragged down to her prison, a number of times Bellatrix laughed at her tears. Counting kept back the bile rising in her throat when the stone surrounded her again.
When another 11 days passed without being shoved back out of the cellar she had felt the end of those walks with a real pain as if mourning Luna all over again. Tears that she never expected came barreling out at the loss of her small bit of freedom the dank stone that was always in her vision now. A disgusting smelling one of Death Eaters came down to spit at her and tell her it was her fault they'd taken it away. The new orders were to leave her alone until she wasted away.
Hermione had hoped it wouldn't take much longer.
Yet still, she counted the days. Scratching them with her precious blade into the stone by her head. She only moved to eat the gruel that still floated down to her. Their cruel, confusing joke of keeping her alive.
Or at least giving her the option.
On day 361, someone had come down. Alone. And Hermione wished he hadn't.
He wasn't wearing a mask, at least not one made of silver and cloth. He had a manic grin that identified him from the rest, she'd seen it before and it was clear then why they had sent him without an entourage. She had known all along that eventually it would be him to come at last for her.
She would never be able to escape Barty Crouch Jr.
She hadn't the first time, when they caught her hiding out in Luna Lovegood's home, trying to do anything she could to stay alive, all Gryffindor bravery and pride long ago set aside for the chance at a new day's breath. Only he'd come, Crouch, to find them there. Taken them both to the Manor for a handful of coins they exchanged right in front of them. Lives traded with the same eager grins they'd seen too many times over the years. True evil.
Luna had been half-carried to the cellar, her silvery-blue eyes wider than Hermione had ever seen as her pleas to be let go echoed off the walls long after she was out of sight.
Hermione remembered how stiffly Barty had stood then, how his eyes tracked his prey unblinking as Luna was dragged below before turning to her, his dark eyes and flicking tongue an actual nightmare.
Here he was again, looking worse for wear than when she had last seen him through the tiny room by the back doors.
Memories of the morning she had woken alone, nothing in the night waking her to the horrifying fact that her friend was gone, came flooding back. Luna had whispered for days before she was taken, that she knew he would come back for her. Hermione had listened but she hadn't understood but somehow the other witch had known. She wondered if Luna had faced death with the same curiosity she had in life.
It hit her hard in that moment that now, like the Angel of Death of stories her family had told, Barty Crouch Jr. was here for her.
She wouldn't let him take her. Not him. He wouldn't have the satisfaction of destroying her too. In a gesture of defiance, although she knew it would mean nothing to the madman glaring down at her beyond the bars, Hermione grabbed for her bit of blade and made a mark for tomorrow- day 362- her eyes never leaving his as she moved her fingers back and forth over the line. He would not win. She would be here tomorrow.
For Luna's sake, she would survive this monster and any others that tried to break her.
The Death Eater knelt down in front of her, keeping the intensity building in their locked stare as his glare never wavered. "You want to stay in this prison, Mudblood? Perhaps little Luna was wrong after all. And to think she's counted down the days."
Luna! "How dare you?!" She had wanted it to sound like a protest but her voice was too weak to give him anything than a cracked series of whispers.
As if to answer an unspoken request, he fished a flask from a pocket in his long duster. "Drink," he grunted, shoving it between the bars but not bothering to wait for her to reach from it. "The girl will have my head if you arrive sounding like that. You look and smell bad enough as it is."
She hadn't taken the flask. Her hands wouldn't move to pick it. She only stared at him with her heart beating too loudly in her ears.
He'd left then, snarling frustrations. Hermione retreated back into the furthest corner of her cell, closing her eyes and wishing it had all been a bad dream. That all of it had been a bad dream.
Another day ticked by and then another. The grandfather clock chiming in the third day, day 365, since Crouch had come to plays tricks on her mind marked a full year.
A year.
One year measured in scratches in the stone that surrounded her all the time. At a loss of what else to do, as even tears stopped before reaching her eyes, Hermione Granger counted back the days, forwards and backward, reaching 365 before stopping and starting all over again.
It was all she had now.
Four-part fic. More posting soon!