Author notes: My favourite chapter of Deathly Hallows is "The Silver Doe." My second is "Malfoy Manor". I dwell on the things I favour, things I want. I brew concoctions from my ponderings. It's almost like my cooking habits. I want pasta; I brew concoctions. I want angsty D/Hr; I brew concoctions. This is that concoction.
Numb
He stood completely still, staring at the horrifying scene before him.
No matter how much he wanted to close his eyes and imagine it was someone else enduring the terror of this aunt, he could not. It was her hair that was spread out across the floor of his home; it was her petite figure writhing and thrashing as every wave of pain hit her every nerve ending.
Her first scream sent ice through his veins, her second and his blood was boiling. The anger, the fear, the hurt and the hopelessness washed over him in one steady second but nothing could draw his eyes from the scene. Nothing could break the regret that had filled him. Nothing could take back the years that he had hated her. Nothing could save her now.
"HERMIONE! HERMIONE!"
The screams of her name from a single floor below shook through the walls and forced his hands into fists. Her scream of response threw movement to his neck and after another he was looking away.
"HERMIONE!"
He clenched his eyes shut as he ground his teeth but the screams he anticipated never came. The silence caused his body to numb and his breath to hitch.
Several seconds of silence numbed the room.
Opening his eyes he saw her there so limp and so beautiful.
Her beauty had been tortured in his home. Her beauty had been tortured to silence by his family.
He swallowed and gagged and prayed.
He prayed that she was only unconscious where she lay.