A/N: Credit goes to the Obsessionist, who's the inspiration for this here ficlet. I do not own HP.
Petrified.
Being petrified was horrifying. Not being able to move, to see everything, feel everything, but not being able to move, to speak… breathing happened by some miracle, possibly a spell cast upon her by the medi-witch.
She'd wanted to scream, to tell Harry it was a basilisk, or to at least pry open her hand, but he never even held her hand, nor did Ron. It frustrated her beyond belief, and she wanted to smack the living daylights out of them – but she just couldn't move!
When they finally found the piece of paper she'd torn from the library book – she still couldn't believe she'd done it. Books were sacred, and she'd just torn a page from it.
But it was a necessary grievance. Being a muggleborn, she knew the basilisk was coming for her. She'd started carrying a mirror around – looking around corners. She didn't expect it to be so soon after she found out it was a basilisk. But secrets have a way of coming out, that was why it wanted to silence her. She'd figured it out. A twelve year old girl, against a thousand year old snake. What harm could she possibly do to it?
She could let it be known that she knew what it was. She could bring about its utter demise. It seemed ludicrous. A twelve year old girl that could slay the mighty beast?
Later, when she woke up, she was just so glad to have feeling back. To be able to move, to breathe lungfuls of fresh air, to eat… she forgot her anger towards her two friends, hugging them each instead, a large smile plastered to her young face.
But she never wanted to feel hopeless like that again. Not being in control… she went over the twelve uses of dragon blood perhaps a dozen times, the countless lessons on Goblin wars flashed through her mind, her transfiguration lessons…
She couldn't even sleep without it being potion induced, as her eyes were open…
She honestly preferred death.
Years later she learned that even if she could move, scream, and fight back – she was still tortured! All thanks due to Bellatrix Lestrange. Sometimes Hermione would wake up screaming, the feelings of crucio so utterly realistic that it scared her.
A pair of warm hands always seized her, and she stopped screaming. Whether it was Harry that was sleeping over after a long day, Ron having slept over at her flat, or Ginny… her mother, or her father, once even George.
It always reminded her that it was over, that Voldemort and Bellatrix and everyone else that could harm her, torture her, were gone. Figures in nightmares – her own boogeymen.
Like Ron had the spiders, Harry had the memory of Voldemort and the dementors – she had Bellatrix and a great basilisk.
Knowing they all had a weakness left her with a small piece of comfort. She wasn't alone with her ghosts. And they all supported one another. How many times had Ron called her to kill a spider? How many times did Harry show up on her doorstep, his face ashen, thinking his dream had meant Voldemort was back?
They always reminded one another that it was over. That everything would be fine.
After all, it's not as if anything can raise the dead.
. . .
A/N: Well, there you have it. I don't know if this is dark or what, but it just seems to me that people rarely wonder what Hermione, or any of the others as a matter of fact, went through after the war. The repercussions it had.
