AU of Hermione's capture in Malfoy Manor, if Harry and Ron had not been able to save her, and she'd been left alone.

~o~

Hermione did not have the strength to move.

Her last dying wish was that her memory could be erased or that she could go back in time.

For each step or breath she took, the Death Eater had placed another dagger into her chest and taunted her.

"Mudblood, you're over," Bellatrix laughed and revealed her mask. "I have you right where I want you mudblood. Awww," the older woman cackled and put a mock sweet, babyish voice. "Is the mudblood in pain? Does she want it to be all over now?"

Hermione tried not to listen to Bellatrix's taunts. Hermione knew she was bleeding profusely and her hands and skin were white as sheets.

Bellatrix might be right: she did not have much time left. And the reality was so agonizing that Hermione Granger wasn't sure she was enjoying these last seconds of her life.

Hermione closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on an image of Ron and Harry's faces, before they'd been taken away from her. She wanted an image of peace to be her last one.

But Bellatrix stepped over her body, grabbing her wrist with one hand while she pummelled her black boots onto Hermione's already damaged chest. Hermione opened her eyes, with what little strength she had left, and saw that Bellatrix's dark black eyes had a glint in them as she stared down at her.

"Enjoy this, mudblood." The older woman grinned as she took out her cursed blade again and lifted it to the bare, sheet-white pale skin of Hermione's wrist.

Hermione's eyes closed again as she felt Bellatrix's knife carve fiendishly into her wrist, opening the last blood vessels and ensuring her death.

Earlier, she might have screamed, but truthfully there was so little blood or strength to feel in her body that it actually almost felt like it was happening to someone else. Like the real Hermione Granger was starting to watch the scene from above, while her true body lay injured and dying. She supposed, faintly, that it was because you could only torment someone for so long before they snapped out of it or broke.

Hermione had not expected to break—she had been so strong at the beginning, or arrogant, she reflected now. She didn't think any Death Eater and certainly not Bellatrix or Voldemort could destroy her. How wrong she was. Without her wand and captured by them in their fortress, they had turned her life into a living hell.

Now she just wanted to leave, in the only way she could, in the only way she could have some recourse to power or relief.

"Well mudblood, have you anything to say before you go?" Bellatrix taunted again, grinning, her sharp teeth licking at her lips. "Any last words?"

'No,' Hermione thought because she didn't even have the strength to speak anymore. 'I don't have anything more to say. Funny how I always had something to say, always raised my hands with the answers...but now that I'm at the end, I'm speechless.'

Hermione shivered and her last thought was of Ron—Ron had wanted to be with her those last few days in the tent before they'd been captured—and then her last breath expired.

Hermione J. Granger was dead.

Her small, pale-white body lay on the floor surrounded by a pool of her own blood.

And that's where it should have ended.

~o~

Except it didn't.