Unexpected Solace

It was true, what Lucius had said.
No one had thought to feed her in at least three days. She was starving. As soon as she had the power of movement again, she sat up and crawled to the little steel bowl under the food slot in the corner, picking through the desiccated maggots and grotesque powdering of mold to see if any stray vegetable or piece of bread remained.
Nothing.
Her side was on fire, and she knew for certain that a rib was bruised, if not broken. It seemed a lifetime since her body had been free of pain. Since she'd eaten a decent meal. Since she'd laughed or felt a gentle touch or listened to the sound of thunder coming in over the hills. At least her family was safe, and Crookshanks. They were far away, hidden with scores of other refugees in the Americas, along with a few members of Ron's family and nearly all of the Ministry of Magic cowards. Hedwig had been taken with them...it was the last Portkey to safety and Hermione had still lingered behind in the hope that Dumbledore would return and save the day again. And she had stayed to fight for him, even if he never returned.
Whether he had or not, the good guys lost. The good guys always seemed to lose these days.

Oh god...poor Harry.

Hermione wondered if he was still alive. She missed him with an ache like fire. Damn Malfoy, damn them all. If there was any justice at all in the world, somehow this would all turn out to have been just a very bad, very real nightmare.

She picked up a maggot, wondering if it would taste as awful as she had always heard. She wished she had her wand. Turning a maggot into a meatloaf would have been preferable to crunching up the bug au naturale, but it seemed she had little choice. Tentatively, she did the unthinkable, and ate the maggot. How far? How far must one sink before they will do such things?
Her pathetic meal too soon over, Hermione moved to the very back of her cell and curled into a ball under the bunk, trying to disappear into the cold stone. Everything hurt. She cried, softly to herself, the misery in her soul too great a wound to express.

A commotion in the hallway some hours later stirred her from her torper, and she chanced a peek out through the bars.
Someone was being dragged, kicking and screaming, down the hall and past her cell. A wordless shriek of pure terror, a face so contorted with fear and pain that it seemed hardly human, and Hermione watched in horror as Cho Chang was led away to the darker rooms a floor below.
The rooms where they flayed people alive. The rooms where the braziers were kept hot and full of coals, ready to bring the branding irons and the tongue-pincers and the breast-rippers and the dozens of other pain-bringing iron and steel contraptions to a glowing, red-hot level of cleansing agony. A month ago Hermione would have been screaming too, screaming with Cho and for her and railing at the guards with all of her strength.
But fear sealed her lips, sliding down her throat in a cool draught of cowardice. Fear lest she be drawn out as well and taken down the dark stone staircase with the leering gargoyles and strapped to a table next to Cho, face-down, waiting to be skinned or flogged or raped over and over again with a variety of tools. A variety of people. Faceless wizards, the captors, the victors, the Masters of her and everyone else's fate.

She sobbed quietly, and when night fell she did not get up from her cramped position. Though her bladder burned with the need to urinate and her stomach rumbled in desperation, she did not rise. The warm liquid trickled out of her, wetting her ragged clothing and stinging the cuts on her thigh, but she did not even bother to turn.

'Let me stink', she thought, 'Let me smell so bad that they won't want to touch me.'
But she knew it would be no deterrant to them, that she was filthy and starved and ugly and soaking in her own piss. They would splash her with water before tying her down and taking her. She has, alas, seen it before. Gentle Neville Longbottom, sobbing so hard he could not stand, being raped brutally amidst much laughter in the cell across from her. The image never really left her mind, and sometimes at night she would awaken from a nightmare to find the sound of flesh slapping against unwilling flesh tugging at her heartstrings until she feared she would go mad.
Even her nightmares were different now.
Before she would have bad dreams of monsters and bats with red eyes, maybe dreams about failure or being rejected. But now her nightmares were a cruel joke. She dreamed of being home and safe, warm and well-fed, loved and happy...only to open her eyes upon Hell itself and find that her dreams had been mocking her again.

They finally came for her in the night as she knew they would, so late it was early, and there were five of them. Lucius Malfoy was there, and several others she did not recognize. The biggest one held her down, her arms above her head, while the other four took turns raping her. Her crude dress was pushed up, they mocked the state of her body, her stink and her scrawniness and the cold smell of fear that oozed forth from her pores. They ripped her legs apart and slapped her face even though she begged them not to, told them she wouldn't fight, just please don't hurt me don't! The first one spilled his seed inside her, the second drew out at the last moment and aimed for her eyes. Lucius demanded that she be bent over for the cruelest intrusion yet, a pain like fire and a rending of her tender skin, blood lubricating the way for his vile member. The fourth man penetrated her mouth, cutting her lip, even before Lucius finished with her backside. And the big one, the one who had held her down, merely stood over her and urinated. The crude laughter hurt her almost as much as the yellow acid spraying her wounds.

That was it. She was nothing then. Nothing but garbage, a toilet, a heap of bleeding meat to be used any way one wished. ' It' had no feelings. 'It' had no soul.
That is how Hermione was broken, that night when she accepted her status as a thing.

In the bruised aftermath, she crawled up onto her bunk and wrapped herself in the ragged thin towel that served as a blanket. She did not cry. Blood trickled down her bottom and from between her legs and from the cut on her mouth. The dim sound of Cho - or was it someone else? - screaming from somewhere down below her filtered up through the stone. Hermione thought of Crookshanks. She missed his warm fur against her face. The last time she had seen him, he was in her mother's arms, her mother was weeping and begging Hermione to come too.
But there was a last fight to be fought.
The old members of Dumbledore's Army wanted to help, to fight beside the last remnants of the old ways, those witches and wizards who could not bear to allow something as evil as Voldemort to prosper. She fought and was defeated and thrown into a cage crowded with all her dear friends, watched the grown-ups being tortured and killed, waited her turn while Harry held her in his arms and Ron rubbed her back. and she knew what would happen, what would happen soon. They were all thrown into one cell for a time, until the Death Eaters could spare the time to terrorize the children properly. Hermione made a last act of defiance that night, the night that the last of the adults loyal to Dumbledore were burned at the stake in the courtyard, a revolting parody of the way witches and wizards were treated in the Dark Ages. But there was no escaping the mage-fire, and no escaping the faint screams as the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles of the three dozen or so teenagers in the dungeon were slowly roasted alive.
Hermione took Harry's face in her hands and kissed him, kissed him until their tears mingled and she couldn't feel anything anymore.
"Don't let them take my virginity." she whispered, and Harry understood. He always understood. While Ron sat unseeing and unhearing, rocking back and forth in the corner and muttering to himself, Harry took Hermione to a shadowy place behind the stacks of moldering cots and rude blankets and lay her down. He fumbled a bit, trying to learn what to do with their bodies, but finally slid inside her and broke her hymen and made love to her for the first and last time in their lives. She tasted a sense of freedom then, a tiny triumph before the long defeat of the rest of her life. And while the five men had raped her, a small secret part of her smiled.
Her virginity had not been taken by these scum. It had been taken by a dear friend who loved her. The memory of that one simple act of compassion would warm her through the endless cold.

Hermione started like a scared rabbit.
Someone was clumsily prodding the bars, opening a minute window in the crackling shield. A hand slipped through, clutching a small bundle. Only one torch was lit outside, and she could just make out the rough shape of some crouching figure. She shrank back in terror, her mind spinning. Was this some sort of new torment? The hand laid the bundle on the floor and gave it a little push. A fold of cloth fell away, revealing the unmistakeable sight of a crusty loaf of bread. Without thinking, Hermione pounced on the food like a cat on a mouse, tearing large chunks off with her teeth and devouring it before it could be taken away. An apple was also in the bundle of cloth, and a small flagon of clean water. She ate everything, even the seeds and the stem, and drank all of the water, eyeing the silent figure beyond the bars. After a few moments, it rose.
"Wait." Hermione whispered desperately, "Who are you?"
"Sleep, Her-my-oh-ninny. Sleep and I vill bring you more food ven I can." He, for it was most surely a he, had a deep and gentle voice. One that she recognized.

And then he was gone.