Author's Note: Hello loves. Welcome to a new fic. Without the alpha help of LadyKenz347 and MsMerlin13, this fic would not exist; I'd have scrapped it ages ago. Similarly, the pretty polishing has been brought to you by tofadeawayagain; any remaining errors are my own.
I've projected this will end around fifty-ish chapters-perhaps more-with four parts. Part one is entirely written. This will be a slow burn Dramione. The fic includes war and violence, and some aspects of the plot may be triggering. Please keep your mental health in mind; I won't be offended if you forego reading this. You may hate some characters at some points, but I hope the premise is enough to keep you around. Redemption is sometimes a long arc.
Part one warnings include non-con elements, psychological torture, psychological manipulation, and graphic depictions of wartime violence.
Disclaimer: I own no part of the HP franchise, much to my dismay.
Part 1: The Breaking
Chapter 1 - The Fool
Hermione Granger: Undesirable No. 1.
The posters hung all over London after she'd been found at the scene of a horrific murder, the victim's blood staining her hands. She could still hear Umbridge's sickeningly sweet voice making the proclamation, her amplified voice echoing throughout London while Hermione darted from shadow to shadow in a desperate bid for somewhere to hide: "Hermione Granger is wanted for high treason. She is to be considered armed and dangerous."
Peering out the dingy windows of the shack she had squatted in for the night, Hermione huffed out an annoyed breath. Hermione had sent her Patronus to search for respite in the dark alleys and hovels of London, desperate enough for answers that she'd risked her safety. When no answers had returned, she'd ended up in the shack, having Apparated out of London to the first location should could think of, a field she'd seen from the Hogwarts Express with a decrepit shack near the treeline. She was out of food, and her clothes scratched across her skin after endless weeks of wear. A slick grime coated her face and arms, but she didn't dare stop long enough to let her guard down, not even to bathe or wash her clothes.
She was Harry Potter's murderer. If she stared at her hands hard enough, she thought she might see the rust-coloured stains of his blood beneath the dirt caked into the lines of her palms.
Don't think, don't think, don't think.
A flicker of light flashed outside the dirty window, and she cringed backward into the shadows, reaching for her wand. An intruding Patronus sailed through the window, landing on the remains of a once-sturdy table that had been reduced to rubble. Hermione couldn't say what exactly the Patronus was, perched on a piece of wood, but they studied each other with keen eyes. It was a bird of some sort, maybe a crow or raven. Whatever it was, it opened its beak, and the now-familiar Patronus spoke.
I've secured enough Polyjuice potion that you should manage a trip into a nearby town. Not for long; just get enough food to tide you over. Try to blend in. No one knows you're here.
The Patronus ruffled its feathers and took flight, sailing back out the window. Hermione stared hard at the place it had stood, trying to make sense of the circumstances. She supposed that she was far enough from London now to venture from the cabin she'd found herself in after she had Apparated out of Diagon Alley.
She had hopped from location to location, sometimes only barely recalling photos she had seen in textbooks from primary school. She found that she couldn't quite bring herself to wash away the dirt and mud that she'd accumulated after each awkward landing. It was a shield, a barrier between herself and the reality she had promptly exited without forethought; this reality was foreign, sharp and harsh, and she thought the grime rather matched the circumstances. The blood grounded her, reminded her where she had come from. Of where she was now. Of what she had yet to do.
She didn't know the disguised voice of the Patronus, the animal unrecognizable and giving no indication from whom it had originated. It had appeared one day after she had plucked the hair of an unsuspecting Muggle; the odd little bird had materialized without warning or invitation and urged her to run, to hide. They knew where she was, who she was. They were coming. She had scoffed and rolled her eyes. She wasn't called the brightest witch of her age without cause; surely they wouldn't look for her in the dirty little hovel she had been squatting in. She was a wanted fugitive, but she had thought they would assume she would maintain her creature comforts near books and well-kept fireplaces.
The crack of Apparition and the ensuing duel had proved her wrong. She hadn't killed anyone that day, but she had stolen several wands and hairs from each of the wizards' heads after incapacitating them. Potion supplies were admittedly hard to come by while on the run, and it was ludicrous to think she'd be able to stay in one location long enough to brew anything useful, but she would be remiss if she hadn't at least taken the necessary precautions on the off chance that she came across an abandoned potions laboratory.
Given her current state of duress and woefully empty pack, luck had not been on her side recently. She hadn't been able to procure Polyjuice potion in months, and her protruding ribs were testament to the the lack of food in the dead of winter. She didn't relish the thought of trapping animals, so she'd managed meager meals of water that didn't look too dirty and whatever scraps she could summon from the waste bins of bars and pubs on the outskirts of disreputable villages. She'd also taken to scavenging eggs from chicken coops along the way. It was food, however unappetizing it looked, and it had sustained her thus far. She avoided thinking about warm meals when she could, and she spent many nights cursing the Five Bloody Exceptions to Gamp's Laws while her stomach rumbled its discontent.
She made her way to the door of the little shack she'd stumbled upon the night before and pulled on the hiking boots she'd acquired from one of the houses in the last village. She'd felt terrible at the time, but she was desperate; the trainers she'd been sporting since going on the run had been falling apart, so she'd left the last few pounds she'd had stowed away in her beaded bag and a hastily scrawled "sorry" in their stead. Opening the door of the shack, she shook off her guilt and steeled herself against the blast of cold air that enveloped her.
The Patronus squawked at her again from the perch it had taken up outside the building and took off between the trees. Freeing her wand from the holster on her hip, she crept through the trees, mindful of where she placed her feet lest anyone was within hearing range. The Patronus in front of her rounded a tree, and Hermione followed, glancing behind her as the bird landed on a hollowed-out tree, squawked once more, and dissolved into the air.
Alone once more, Hermione knelt at the bottom of the tree and called out a barely audible Accio. With bated breath, she waited as the small bag she summoned flew into her outstretched palm. It settled comfortably in her hand, its slight weight easing the tension in her shoulders, but her ears strained to hear the slightest disturbance in the forest around her. Content after a few moments that no one was lurking nearby, she shook the contents into her palm. A sharp sigh escaped her. The bag contained exactly what the Patronus had said: a small container of Polyjuice potion, enough for a few hours in the nearby village.
Carefully, Hermione extracted the small beaded bag that had somehow survived her time on the run and extracted a single, nondescript brown hair — the last of her supply from the duel. She sighed heavily and popped the lid of the potions vial. Distantly, she wondered if the potion was safe to drink. Deciding that she didn't particularly care if she lived or died, she dropped the hair in, watching it bubble to life.
When the potion settled after turning several stages of a stomach-turning puce, she plugged her nose and tipped the vial into her mouth. She shoved a knuckle into her mouth and bit down sharply to avoid crying out in pain as the transformation rapidly overtook her. Skin bubbled, shifting to stretch across newly-lengthened bones, the pain a live wire that had been coiled dormant under her skin, and she rapidly shot upwards a few inches. The newfound height felt strange until her body rapidly muscled, filling out the baggy shirt and jeans that she'd taken from yet another empty cottage's closet. She sighed and stood, cracking her neck. When she realized she couldn't stall any longer, Hermione picked up her wand, slipped it into the pocket of her trousers, and set off into the woods.
The walk to village wasn't long, but it was still too long for Hermione's liking. The Polyjuice wouldn't last, and she needed to be back to the safety of the shack before darkness settled.
Prowling through the woods, she kept her eyes peeled for signs of humanity. Since the night she, Harry, and the others had been ambushed and captured in Hogsmeade, she'd grown overly obsessive in watching her movements. It wasn't that she didn't trust herself, but the world wasn't as she knew it anymore.
If Harry had been here—
Don't think, don't think, don't think.
Despite her mantra, the thought ripped through her defenses. If Harry was here, maybe she wouldn't have to skulk through the woods like prey.
She shook off the thoughts and the sting of tears that they threatened as she reached the edge of the small Muggle village. The buildings were nondescript and easy to blend in with, just like her disguise. Anyone but Hermione Granger would go undetected here.
Cautiously, she made her way to the market in the center of the town. The village was too small for a proper butcher and even had she found one, being on the run wasn't conducive to keeping fresh meat or produce. She settled on some salted strips of meat that would be enough to keep her stomach from tying in knots when the starvation settled in. She also bartered with a squat woman selling bread, losing over half the money she'd managed to scround together. The jerky would keep the longest; the three apples she'd bought would have to last as long as she could keep them in stasis with magic. Even with the help of her magic, anything fresh tended to go first, and she couldn't risk another brush with scurvy.
As she handed the small coins over to the woman behind the table, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Without her bidding, her muscles coiled in anticipation, and she shifted her weight to her left, feeling her magic flare to life along her fingertips.
Someone was watching her.
Covertly, she scanned her surroundings. Sweeping her eyes up the building and over the rooftops, she found nothing. She tried to avoid tapping her foot while waiting for her change as static energy swept over borrowed skin. The uninvited gaze caressed her skin obscenely, every instinct urging her to run.
When her gaze landed on the woman in front of her, shrewd eyes peered back at her. The woman's lips pulled back in a gummy smile as she began bagging the items Hermione had bartered for. Each one went into the small canvas bag like grain through an hourglass, painfully slowly as she counted the seconds in excruciating agony.
Hermione prided herself on her instincts; they had, after all, only failed her once. She willed her body to remain calm—to anyone else, she was only a stranger passing through. No one had seen the face before, and she didn't look like the witch on the run.
The woman bagged her apples last, and Hermione fought not to rock on the balls of her feet impatiently. Finally, after what seemed like ages, the woman extended the bag to Hermione. As she accepted the handles of the bag, a gnarled hand grasped her wrist.
"Run, little girl. The wolves are out to hunt." The woman's crystal blue eyes turned milky and sightless, her mouth twisting into a horrible imitation of a smile. A seer providing a warning.
With a gasp, Hermione dropped to the ground, primal instinct coursing through her, forcing her to choose: fight or flight. Emerald and ruby bolts of spell fire collided in the space she had been standing. Her heart pounded a staccato rhythm in her chest, each beat punctuated with the crash of wandfire above her. Her hands plunged into both pockets as she rolled onto her back.
In her left, she clutched a knife. In her right, the stolen wand.
Her wand sliced through the air, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the cocoon of a shield surrounded her. Within seconds, cloaked men appeared in the square. They'd practiced since she'd last encountered them. Their disillusionment nearly perfect, she hadn't spotted them in her haste to find food and escape her thoughts.
Once more, she'd made a mistake.
Visions of another night with similar rapid wand fire filled her mind. Piercing screams echoed through her mind, one louder than all the others—Harry's. His final word, her name, reverberated in her head amongst the screams, a hellish chorus of the damned. It mingled with the screaming of the townspeople as they fled the square, the screams becoming a white noise that paralyzed her action.
Wandfire pummeled her shield, the ache in her arm at the increasing onslaught a tell-tale sign of her indecision, her mind carding through her options causing the ward's strength to wane. Sweat pooled along the small of her back, and she grit her teeth as heat cut through the winter air and surrounded her. Each blow to her shield felt like a promise, a morbid caress of death. They'd likely already placed anti-Apparition wards on the area if they'd known to target her here, so that wasn't an option.
Fight or be captured.
Harry's voice echoed in her head, and she stood in a fluid movement, casting the countercharm for her shield.
Six men stood in a semicircle between her and the path she had taken into the village. She didn't have to look behind her to know that more likely blocked her way out. All of them were masked, the hoods of their robes pulled up to cover their hair. Her assailants fired curse after curse at her, each one closer than the last, and as she blocked the spells, paralyzing knowledge coiled around her heart as fruit disintegrated in the wasteland of carnage from their spellwork. They cast stunners and charms intended to disarm her, but not a single ripple of magic glowed the familiar heart-stopping shade of emerald green. Horror tightened a knot in her lungs and she drew rasping breaths in with each step backward, her shields rapidly failing.
They weren't sent to kill her—no, they wanted her alive. They intended to capture her.
The odds weren't good, but capture wasn't an option—it never had been. Since the moment Harry died, it was death or escape. She'd never surrender to these men. If she were to die, she would take as many of them down with her as she could to atone for Harry's murder.
She shifted into action, sending bolt after bolt of vibrant light at the encroaching wizards. As luck would have it, she caught them by surprise, each one looking to their neighbor for the briefest of moments. She flipped the table of fruit and crouched behind it, the old woman long gone, scattering with the other Muggles. Mind whirring with calculations and plausible outcomes, she transfigured the discarded fruit around her to stone with a hasty Duro charm, preopelling them at her assailants one by one.
Shattering rock clattered to the ground, and spells rent the air. Hermione launched herself over the table and used the confusion and flying debris to incapacitate the man nearest her with a well-aimed Sectumsempra. She avoided watching the spray of blood and tried to block out the gurgling of the man's breath as she whirled on her feet to cast a spell at another attacker. The crunching of rock alerted her to a presence just behind her, and she threw her weight to the left at the last moment; with a bang, the place she stood a moment before was reduced to a charred and smoking pit of rubble.
Hermione continued throwing hex after hex at her attackers, ducking behind overturned tables and piles of mushed food to protect herself from the onslaught of spells. She didn't have time to cast a shield, and she didn't dare pause to catch her breath; any hesitation gave them an advantage.
Each move seemed a terrifying dance with her own death; she'd move inches closer to the path leading out of the village only to be driven backward several feet. The odds were against her, and even months on the run didn't provide her with much of an advantage. Fatigue from the lack of food slowed her reactions, and a stitch in her side hampered her ability to move and forced wheezing breaths from her throat.
At last, the men surrounding her fell out of formation. She took the opportunity to rush them, and she put all of her strength into one last Bombarda, sending the men flying. She sprinted toward the opening, her heart in her throat, until she was blindsided by a blasting spell.
Her body was thrown several feet into the air and crashed into the remains of the seer's wares. The landing knocked the breath from her lungs, and she fought to regain it. Dark spots danced in her vision. She recognized the smell of blood blooming in the air around her, and her breath took on the distinctive wheeze and rattle of liquid in her lungs. Her mind raced as she realized that she'd managed to keep hold on both her wand and her knife, and she cast a quick, though feeble, shield around herself. She didn't have enough stamina to continue fighting her way out with magic, so she steeled herself for the inevitable, briefly weighing the merits of plunging the knife into her own chest, robbing them of their bounty.
Two men raced toward her, one less graceful on the debris than the other and crashing to the ground in a series of colourful curses, knocking her body back into the hard ground. As spots danced in front of her vision, his accomplice stomped down on her wand-bearing hand. She shrieked as several of the bones in her hand shattered with a loud crack. Vaguely, she could make out the sound of laughter from the men elsewhere in the dust-filled courtyard. He bent over her, his breath fanning across her face.
She shot upward, plunging the knife just below his ribs and twisting it upward. His breath left him in a strangled wheeze, and blood pooled from his mouth. Hermione swiftly removed the blade, curling her injured hand against her chest as he keeled to the side. Wand hand useless, she shot upward brandishing the knife, ready to fight anyone else that neared her.
The kill left her numb; he was neither the first nor the last man that would die by her hands, but the adrenaline quickly wore from her system as the men closed in on her. This was the end. She'd either die or be taken captive here.
She readied herself for their attack, but the men hovered at the fringe, another figure stepping forward. He was dressed in robes such a deep shade of crimson that they were nearly black. She only noticed the difference in color now that he was so close. Slowly the figure drew a wand from the depths of the robes. "Kneel," a cold voice commanded from behind a steel mask. With a flick of his wand, Hermione dropped to her knees, and her head was wrenched upward: a subservient position for the broken witch. Her heart plunged into her stomach and a soft whimper escaped her lips as her fingers were forced open, releasing the dagger and the hawthorn wand that had kept her alive all these months. Her only lifelines, gone.
Rough fingers tugged the crimson hood backward, and the clatter of his mask hitting the ground sealed her fate with the death knell of her heart.
Ronald Weasley, her friend, cocked his head to the side as he examined the broken witch, a cruel smile flirting with the hard lines of his lips.
Cracks of Apparition sounded around her.
"Ron, don't do this. Please, I know you're in there somewhere," Hermione pleaded. The cloaked wizards moved closer to her, tightening their ranks.
Ron cleared his throat. Gone were the familiar lines of laughter around his eyes; in their stead was a cold impassivity that shook her to her core. "Hermione Jean Granger, you are under arrest for murder and high treason against Our Lord."
With a lazy flick of his wrist that was uncharacteristically suave for him, her wand flew into his waiting hand and ropes wound tightly around her wrists, binding them behind her back. Unrepentant scoffs echoed around the circle as she cried out, the broken bones grinding together as a sadistic smile corrupts the lines of Ron's familiar face.
He stalked forward, heavy booted feet kicking up plumes of dust, and at long last, Ron's gaze locked on hers—glassy and emotionless. The warm blue eyes that she'd come to know—come to love—were gone. A cruel sneer curved the hard line of his lips upward. "Don't worry about being too gentle with her. The Dark Lord wants her alive, but he never said anything about leaving her unharmed."
His words left Hermione's knees weak, and she slumped to the ground. The last thing she saw before her vision went black was Ron rolling up his sleeve to press his wand to a Dark Mark.
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