ANGEL OF A DEVIL
Chapter 21: Get Back, Back, Back To You
DISCLAIMER: Much as I would love the critical acclaim, billions of fans, incredibly huge bank balance and world travelling that goes along with the ownership and founding of the Harry Potter empire, it's not mine. Sucks.
Hermione stumbled back into the Gryffindor common room almost an hour later, her clothes neatly in place and her expression calm. After all the practice she'd had at schooling her features for the last few months, there was barely any chance of even her best – ex-best, she reminded herself – friends noticing that anything untoward had occurred during the course of the detention.
Carefully, she avoided the accusing eyes of the few sixth and seventh years still up at the late hour and quietly made her way towards the tip of red hair showing over the top of a comfy armchair stationed by the window.
She rounded the chair to see Ginny burrowed into the cushions, legs under her body, arms wrapped round herself, snoring so gently it just sounded like steady breathing. Hermione debated whether or not to wake her up but knew that if she didn't, Ginny would be mad at her for not telling her how the 'argument' with Draco went.
If there was anything Hermione did not need, it was yet another person angry with her. Besides, doing it now, with the four or five others in the common room would help speed up the rumours of the major argument between herself and Draco.
"Gin," she gently reached out her hand and shook the girl's shoulder.
"Hey," she blinked up slowly, "the detention over?" At Hermione's nod she sat up and glanced around the room, "How'd it go?" she enquired softly.
"Well, Malfoy and I had a screaming slagging match and then he hexed me," she could almost hear the collective intake of breath from the others in the room, her voice purposefully raised just enough so they could hear her clearly, "the bastard."
"Are you okay?" Ginny sat up straighter and looked more alert, her eyes scanning Hermione, trying to distinguish any injuries.
"Yeah, I'm fine, he won't do it again. Although I think the students we were supervising were traumatised. And I bet it's gonna be all over school tomorrow too. More gossip, that's just what I need."
She shot a withering glance at the open-mouthed students who flushed at being caught openly eavesdropping.
"Anyway, it's been a long night so I'm gonna go to bed, thanks for watching out for us," on impulse she bent and hugged the younger girl.
"No problem," Ginny hugged her back, looking surprised at the sudden display of affection.
Hermione quite possibly felt more emotionally exhausted than she had since the whole thing began. Throughout it all, everything that had happened, both to her and around her, she'd been able to retain some semblance of self – she knew who she was.
She didn't know whether she was evil or good, still didn't know whether that was predetermined, but she'd known she was Hermione Granger. A 17 year old girl with a messed up life and a screwed up family.
Now she had no idea whether she was even human anymore.
Seconds away from the door to her room, Hermione stopped. Something was wrong. She barely had a chance to realise that this wasn't the first time she'd felt this way before something ripped at her chest, the world shimmering around her as she watched her body fall to the ground.
A blink. That's all the time it took for the warm comforting Gryffindor tower to evaporate around her and be replaced with the same dark, threadbare room she'd come to despise.
"Good evening, Hermione."
She couldn't help the sigh that escaped her at hearing his voice yet again. Knowing that anything she said would probably be used as an excuse to cause her pain, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes down.
A low chuckle intruded, closer than the voice had been and Hermione shivered as he spoke again.
"At least you've learned respect for your elders. That's something. But your re-education is not going as quickly as I anticipated Hermione, and I'm very disappointed in you."
Hermione looked up at those red eyes that haunted her, "I'm not going to do what you want," she had no idea where the strength behind her words was coming from. Maybe it was because she was so tired of all the lies and all the horror that seemed to have become her life now.
"So you might as well just kill me or let me go."
"Like it or not, you're my daughter. I'm not going to leave you alone Hermione. And though I will kill you if I have to, I have plans for you that I would like fulfilled. So when I return you to your body, you will leave the castle grounds and you will be brought to me."
"I'm not going to do that," Hermione was slightly incredulous, there was no way she would leave the relative safety of the castle. True, he could get to her, but there was nothing he could do to hurt her while she was in the incorporeal status that came with being summoned by him.
"If you want to see your mother again, you will do exactly as I tell you."
"You're bluffing."
His white face looked more horrific than ever, red eyes glowing with maniacal fervour as he split thin lips into a cruel twisted smile.
"I don't bluff."
Cruel laughter rang in her ears as she felt the now-familiar dizziness pulling at her.
"Hermione!"
There was a hand shaking at her shoulder and a warm voice calling her name. Blinking dry eyes, Hermione gazed up at the worried face of Ginny Weasley.
"Are you ok? What happened?"
Though Ginny was asking concerned questions, all Hermione could hear was that laughter, mocking, merciless, evil.
"Ginny, I have to go."
"What?" She pulled back as Hermione scrambled up from the hard floor.
"I've got to go. You need to give Draco a message from me. Tell him I went to see my father, and I don't know when I'll be back, my mum's ill."
Ginny followed Hermione as the panicked girl ran back down the stairs and through the common room.
"Tell Draco? What about Harry and Ron?"
"Tell them whatever you like, just please give Draco that message.
"You can't leave! What just happened? Hermione!"
Hermione left her concerned friend in her wake as she sprinted out of the common room and through the deserted corridors of the castle.
If there was any chance at all that he would go through with his threat, Hermione would never be able to live with herself.
Pain.
Her whole body ached, every muscle on fire at the slightest twitch.
Hermione crawled out of the soothing nothingness of unconsciousness and opened her eyes to harsh, watery sunshine.
The walls of Hogwarts loomed above her. She lay in a crumpled heap on the wrong side of the grounds.
Questions jostled for attention within her mind as she held onto the walls and pulled herself to a standing position.
What was she doing here? Racking her memories, she couldn't remember anything after the discussion she'd had in the Room of Requirement with Draco after the detention. But that had been at night, it was clearly just past dawn, why was she outside the castle?
Why was she in so much pain? And why were her clothes torn? Wearily, Hermione dragged herself along the walls, the need to get into the castle grounds an almost tangible weight, taking in her ripped clothing and scratched, bruised, dirty skin in an almost detached manner.
Staggering through the gates and up towards the huge wooden doorway into the castle, Hermione went over the previous nights events in her mind. Had Draco's curse finally caught up with her and affected her in a strange way?
From the sounds in the great hall just off the entrance hall, she figured most of the castle was at breakfast. Breakfast sounded good, she hadn't realised before how hungry she was.
Her brain was fuzzy, she couldn't focus for too long on one thing. Maybe she needed to rest. First, though, she would need to do something about the pain. Deciding to clean herself up and find Draco to perform a couple of healing spells on her, she made her way towards the stairs.
Oblivious to the stares of the few nameless students she passed on her way, Hermione coaxed and goaded her stiff limbs into climbing the stairs and making the seemingly endless walk towards the Gryffindor common room.
"Hermione?" She'd reached the top of the staircase when someone behind called her name.
Surprise and shock marred Ginny's face when Hermione turned to see who had called her.
"Hi Ginny," she managed, "I'm just going to clean up before I get breakfast." Every word was painful as it was pulled from a throat so raw she felt she'd been swallowing razor blades.
"Where have you been?" Ginny's worry was evident as she ascended the staircase.
"Outside. I think something Draco did to me in last nights detention had a delayed reaction."
If it was possible, Ginny's eyes filled with even more concern, "Last night? Hermione you've been missing for over a week."
"What?"
"You ran out of the castle 10 days ago, remember? You said something about your father and left. We've been looking for you ever since."
"No. The detention was last night." Hermione was confused, the pain she was feeling, coupled with hunger and a bone numbing weariness was making it difficult for Ginny's words to penetrate her befuddled brain.
"Hermione, please stay here, ok? I'm going to get some help."
"I'll be alright after a little bit of rest," she insisted weakly, "I need to find Draco, he's good at healing charms."
"Right, you stay here and I'll go get Draco. He can help me get you back to your room, ok? You need to stay right here though."
"Ok," Hermione let her body slip to the floor, leaning carefully against the wall.
Everything was fuzzy after that. Voices and faces swam above her, sentences reduced to random snippets as she felt hands under her body moving her gently.
"…malnourished…terrible abuse…get her to the hospital wing…questions…"
The words dipped in and out, too far away to make any sense of. She did know that they weren't spoken by Draco but by a kindly female voice which conjured up blurred images of stark white aprons and rows of beds.
Her body was placed carefully onto a soft surface and the voices drifted further away leaving Hermione in darkness and peace.
Until the screaming started.
The flickering candlelight threw distorted shadows onto the bare stone walls, freezing air shivering across her sweat soaked skin as her body burned.
Blood red eyes stared at her through the darkness, laughter mocked her, and through it all there was the pain.
The cold chains around her wrists and ankles prevented her from huddling into a ball on the unforgiving floor as images seared their way behind her eyes.
Bodies littering a grassy field. Flames licking up the side of a castle. Flashing spells impacting screaming people. Death. Destruction. Fear. Pain. Horror.
And Hermione stood in the centre of the carnage. A cold smirk on her lips, her wand raised, eyes burning red and soulless, taking in the power that flooded through the battlefield. The power of those who died, pouring into her, making her stronger with every life that slipped away.
The images ceased as abruptly as they had started, and she was left in the stone room, surrounded by hooded figures. They chanted as the red-eyed creature who called her daughter approached, wand held high, triumph in his distorted face.
He disappeared behind her and her matted hair was roughly yanked out and up, away from her neck. A searing pain shot through the back of her neck, continuing down below the surface of her skin, infecting her.
Hermione's eyes opened abruptly, breathing heavy and laboured as she blinked into the brightness of the hospital wing. The back of her neck stung, and for a second she had the panicked notion that she knew why.
Vaulting out of the crisp bed she'd been laid on, she scrambled across the room, muscles weak and sore, towards the mirror hanging over the small washbasin in one corner of the room.
Pulling her hair back, she looked at her bruised face and her deep brown eyes for a second before turning her back to the mirror and craning her face round to see the back of her neck.
There it was. He'd marked her, tainted her even further than she already had been. There was no denying it, she thought as she stared at the dark mark branded just below the hairline. He was never going to let her go.
"Hermione!"
A/N – I'm in the middle of the next chapter. Reviews feed the muse…