A/N: Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me for the past four years and for being patient with my slow butt. This rewrite of my original Time Turners and Hippogriffs is being done to appease almost 90% of my furious readers: longer chapters. While the beginning ones will be slightly longer than the original 100 words/chapter from before, please expect that, as the story progresses, the plot will thicken, and so will the word count. Again, thank you for your patience, and thank you all for reading. Please, leave a review and let me know what you like about it, what you don't like about it, etc. The original story will not be taken down, but left in the archives as is.
Please enjoy.
Her screams ricocheted off the stone walls, echoing in all the corners and down the winding staircase that led to the dungeons. She was almost sure the boys were chomping at the bit to break free and help her. Because she only needed help. She didn't need to be saved.
"What did you take?" Bellatrix hissed in the brunette's face. "Tell me!"
"Please," the other voice sobbed out. "I didn't take anything!" It was the truth. Neither she, nor Harry, had taken anything from the older witch. This whole mess started about the sword, but if Harry and Ron were to be believed, the sword had been found at the bottom of a lake. Someone had led them to it. So it hadn't been stolen by them. They had found it.
It hurt to sob when the older woman relented in the curses to give the girl a reprieve, only to make the pain worse the second time around.
"Tell me!" Bellatrix's breath was hot and putrid as she leaned over the prostrate teen, as if she refused to take care of herself in her madness. The woman started to write on the girl's arm with her wand, the tip pressed painfully against the brunette's skin. Hermione's screams rose in pitch, and her throat felt so ragged, it hurt to swallow when Bellatrix let up enough to let her. There was no relenting in the pain that was forced upon the brunette, and once the carving was complete, Hermione had bitten through her lip to silence her sobs, her face turned away to prevent seeing the horrors being done to her. In the back of her mind, through the taste of blood in her mouth and the pain in her entire body, a voice niggled at her, commenting on how lucky she was that it was Bellatrix on top of her right now instead of another Death Eater. A male DE would have used other methods of getting her to talk. Hermione was strong. She knew she could bear the physical marks of torture without shame. The mental marks of torture, however-
"TELL ME!"