Footprints in the Sand
Hermione swung around. She turned a full circle of the ball of her foot. The dusty plains stretched away as far as the eye could see. In the distance, she heard explosions. The sky was so bright a blue that it hurt her eyes, and over head, the mass of heat, the ball of flames hung in the sky like a terrible omen. She started to breathe very fast. The last thing she remembered she had settled down for a sleep, with Harry sitting beside her, drinking the last of the water. He was gone, now. She was totally alone, in a country she barely knew except for pictures in books.
Hermione pulled her ripped robes around her. She was wearing only a vest top and shorts underneath, and she could feel her flesh beginning the fry in the heat. She swallowed back tears, and made some decisive decisions. She had to find some shade, and preferably water. Her hand went automatically to the pocket in her robes - and of course it felt nothing. Voldemort had her wand. He had every wand in the whole damn world. Who could have guessed it would come to this? Voldemort, and the Death Eaters, in war against the rest of the wizarding world.
She ran a hand through her hair, and felt a straw-like mass, engrained with specks of sand and dirt. She chose a direction at random, and started to walk, slowly, her feet slipping and sliding in the ever-shifting sands. She pulled off her sandals, and hastily put them back on again. The sand was red-hot - in an instant it had burned the soft soles of her feet. She examined the weeping skin carefully, and threw her hands up in despair. Her throat felt as callous as sandpaper, and her eyes were drying out , and sore from the sand that was being constantly flung right into them. She was walking into the wind. Even the wind was warm; jets of hot air marred her every step, twinned with cruel handfuls of loose sand carried by it.
After an hour, she looked back at the way she had come. She could see a faint trail of footprints behind her. It seemed as though she had come no distance at all. Hermione started to hallucinate. She started to talk to herself in a high-pitched voice, screaming about strange things like colours and shapes. She closed her eyes as she walked, and swayed slightly. She walked straight into something hard, and fell back onto the sand. She opened her eyes against the wind, and let out a blood-curdling scream. Her hands flew up to her face, and her burnt face drained white. Voldemort stood in front of her.
"Well, well!" he said delightedly.
Hermione would not look him in the face. The last time she had come face to face with Voldemort, he had tried to kill Harry; and had taken Ron instead. Ron had thrown himself in front of Harry, and took the Avada Kedavra curse himself.
"Hermione," he continued, and laughed in his cruel high-pitched laughter. "What's a nice girl like you doing out here, all alone?" He grabbed her arm, and she shrieked in pain at his embrace. Each finger clamped around her skin felt as though it was burning layers of flesh away, and would soon reach the bone. Just when she thought she would pass out with the pain, he let go. She fell back, nursing her wrist.
"I'm sure you, of all people, know where Harry Potter is," continued Voldemort.
"I have no idea," Hermione choked out, tears spilling down her cheeks.
"Hermione!" he crooned. "I'm asking you nicely! You want to see me turn nasty? Just tell me where the piece of filth is, girl."
"I don't fucking know!" she screamed at him.
Voldemort shook his head, and muttered, "You asked for it." He whipped out a wand from his flapping cloak, and yelled, "CRUCIO!"
Hermione fell backwards onto the sand, the burn of the heat of her cheeks nothing when faced with this. The pain shot through every pore, every nerve ending was torn and on end. She flailed uselessly, like a dying fish washed up on land. Voldemort laughed, and carelessly flicked the wand away, breaking the spell. Hermione lay there, shaking violently.
"Sure you don't want to tell me?" he asked in mock-gentleness.
Hermione tried to say that she really had no idea where Harry was, but her lips just trembled, and a tear splashed down the side of her nose.
Voldemort sighed. "You have no use to me anymore," he said, and raised the wand.
"NO!" Hermione managed to croak out, and put up a hand. "Please," she begged him.
"What reason would have for keeping you alive, whore?" he snarled.
Hermione shook her head. "Please," she choked out again.
Voldemort seemed to be thinking. He suddenly smiled. "Actually, you do have a use," he said. "A girl like you only has one purpose." He grabbed her by the hem of her top, and wrenched her from the ground. "Satisfy me, bitch," he yelled in her ear. She flinched, but slowly nodded.
Voldemort tore away her top, exposing her pale skin to the unresisting heat beating down on the Australian Outback. Her cupped her breasts in his hands, and sniggered quietly. "Very nice," he muttered.
Hermione was sure she would throw up, but she could do nothing as he pulled her face roughly towards his, and plunged his tongue into her mouth. He was far stronger than he looked, and he pushed her once more onto the burning sand, pinning her down with his weight.
Hermione shut her eyes as he did all manner of things she had always been warned about. Strange men, that her mother had told her about when she was eleven. She thought of Ron, and how they had been planning to have sex for the first time only the day before he was killed. Now she would lose her virginity to the man she hated most in the world.
She tried to block her mind out from what was happening as he roughly tore away the rest of her clothes, and raped her. She screamed in pain, but he ignored her. His weight almost crushed her ribcage, and it had already killed her spirit. When she was sure she would die from the torture, he suddenly went limp, and pulled away.
Hermione lay naked and vulnerable on the sand, unable to move. She watched through half-open eyes as Voldemort pulled on his clothes, and ignored her. Just before he left, he said one parting comment that blew out the almost-dead flame in her heart.
"Very good," he said. "Once I find Harry Potter, I'll do the same to him, too." With that, Voldemort disaperated.
Hermione lay in the mid-day sun, her skin scorched and raw. Blood trickled through her clothes, and stained the dust-coloured sand scarlet. Her breathing grew shallow, and as the Australian light slipped further westwards, her hair whipped around her paling face.
Hermione clawed at the sand with her bleeding fingernails. She dug her fingers into the ground, and her hand balled into a fist. She knew she was dying. The sounds of gunshots filled the air, and the cobalt blue sky shattered into pieces of glass as a bomb divided the peace.
As she drew her last breath, her soul left her ravaged body, but it was trapped in a bubble of resentment and hate. Her soul could never be free. It floated above her torn and bleeding shell, hung for eternity on a diamond hook, in the war-torn sky.