CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN—Set the Screws
Author's Warning: Character Tortured
.
Hermione felt her temples throb each time she clenched her teeth.
Muggle Studies was a waste of time these days. Professor Burbage liked to bring in newspapers and magazines—and actual textbooks from actual Muggle schools. She encouraged the Muggle-born wizards to bring in their childhood toys and their favourite Muggle books to share with the class.
'Professor' Carrow brought in wizard-made approximations of Muggle toys and books written by wizards that clearly did not care much for their Muggle counterparts. A skewed view at every turn.
She and Seamus often griped in the Tower about the affair. Seamus vowed he'd quit if he didn't need another class to fill his slots. Hermione stayed, afraid of what lies would be spread if she didn't.
Like today's lesson, for example. She could not hold her tongue any longer:
"Muggles do not use—medieval torture devices in Muggle schools!"
Everyone froze.
Alecto set the thumbscrews on her desk, surprised at the outburst.
"I went to Muggle school, and nobody tortured anybody." Her quill vibrated in her fist.
"I think we can all agree that anecdotal…" Carrow paused to find the right word, "…instances do not make good evidence."
Hermione felt the feather start to splinter.
Alecto picked up the screws again. "My, my, Miss Granger. Two detentions in a single month? When I was a student, I must say, the Head Girl was the paragon of manners."
Hermione's face heated up.
Once the poor excuse for a class let out, Hermione stomped to the library to stew in peace. Said peace was shattered when Ron and Harry found her.
"Are you bloody mad, woman?" Ron hissed as he sat down.
Of course, they already knew. It had only been an hour but the news must have spread like a cough.
"Detention with a Death Eater?"
Harry stood across the table from them, arms crossed, mouth firmly shut to reign in his temper.
She didn't have anything to say. Neville had had detention with Amycus last week and came back bruised from a series of Stunners he couldn't block using the new technique they'd learned in class. That technique being dive behind another student, which he loudly refused to do in class and had no opportunity to do in detention.
"What can she do?" Hermione asked. "Find a Muggle to throw at me?"
Harry all but snapped: "Cart you off to Voldemort."
"I'm not going to leave the castle." She patronized him as he did her.
"She will Imperius you," he said.
"Not bloody likely," she sniffed.
Harry shook his head as he paced.
Ron said, "They're after us, Mione. We have to be careful, even here."
"She was telling everyone Muggles use torture devices on school children. It's not true and it's not right."
"I'm going to ask Nearly Headless Nick to watch the room, make sure she doesn't drag you out of here." Harry murmured it more to himself than his mates.
"I agree," Hermione said.
Now she was nervous.
Perhaps she should've been more nervous before.
…
Hermione left dinner, armed with her wand and her satchel. She highly doubted she'd be tasked with lines, or made to revise the days' 'lesson.' But if it came down to it, she'd toss the heavy bag and run.
The Muggle Studies office was on the sixth floor across the hall from the classroom. She knocked as her watch ticked eight PM.
The door swung open. Alecto did not glance up from her papers.
"Miss Granger, right on time. You can sit down."
Hermione did as she was told. Alecto finished reading two papers before she reached into a desk drawer, still grading, and pushed something across the desk.
The thumbscrew from earlier.
"Put it on," she said, holding up a report to read the tiny print at the bottom.
Absolutely not, Hermione thought. "I don't know what you mean."
"I thought I demonstrated it in class." She moved the paper out from in front of her face. "Would you like me to do it for you?"
She stared Hermione down.
Hermione pulled the heinous thing into her lap and stuck her left thumb through one of the holes.
Eyes on the thumbscrew, Alecto said, "I never doubt that you're paying attention; I just don't think you're retaining anything."
"I recall nearly everything you say, ma'am." She couldn't bring herself to call either Carrow a professor.
"Your homework, the few you turn in, never seem to reflect that, I'm afraid. I had heard such good things about your academics."
Hermione said a cold 'thank you' instead of what she wanted to say.
"Ah, well," Alecto sighed and looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. Hermione realized it had belonged to Professor Burbage—a gift from her father before he passed away, she had explained.
"We have a further hour and forty minutes." Alecto picked up her wand. Hermione braced herself but she only flicked it.
And then the thumbscrew clicked.
Hermione jumped. The pressure had increased—or had she imagined it?
By the time her racing heart returned to normal, the screws clicked again. And again sixty seconds later.
Hermione stared at the wood and rusty screws secured around her thumb. She had left it on loosely, but enough it wouldn't fall off; she thought Alecto was going to examine it, not put the blasted thing to use!
It wasn't turning all the way around each time, but Hermione guessed—and she was fairly good at guessing—it was going to be uncomfortable by the end of these one hundred minutes.
At best, it would be painful bruising.
Carrow marked papers.
The thumbscrew clicked.
Her thumb zinged with pain that calmed fifty-seven seconds later.
The thumbscrew clicked.
An hour in, Hermione could not keep quiet. She would either curse in pain or berate Alecto—so she chose: "You don't know anything about Muggles, do you?"
Alecto set aside a fully marked essay. "I know how they cry when I burn down their houses. I never cared to learn past that."
"You honestly believe I—as a child—found a wizard and somehow stole his magic?"
Alecto laughed. "Obviously not. But I don't make the rules. Well, at least not very often." She shrugged and returned to her pile of essays. "My job is to make all these kiddies as scared of Muggles as I can, so that they're scared of people like you. How do you think I'm doing?"
Hermione sneered at the closed door separating her from help, and freedom, and Nearly Headless Nick. "No one believes all that nonsense. Except for people already ready to hear it."
"You win some and lose some." Alecto set her elbows on top of the remaining four papers. She drank in Hermione's red face and shaking arm. "You are more fun than the firsties."
Hermione glared at her, distrust mixing with her body's underlying panic. "You've done this to firsties?"
She shrugged. "This and that—the punishment fits the crime. They start panicking immediately."
"You're repulsive," Hermione said. Nothing between her sneer and Alecto, no wand in her hand, no remorse.
Alecto let lose a slow grin. "How about another detention, just to be sure?"
Hermione twitched at the turn of the screw.
"I've faced down better Death Eaters than you, and here I am."
Carrow's smirk turned into a spiteful grimace. "Thankfully, for both parties involved." Alecto gave her a friendly, cheeky smile, and settled back in her chair. She put her feet up on the desk to finish marking. "I'll see you at eight, tomorrow."
Hermione refused to look at the grandfather clock Alecto pilfered. She couldn't think of the late professor like this. It would be too much.
And she would let this thumbscrew tighten completely before she gave Alecto the satisfaction of a sob.
To look at her wristwatch would require turning over the heavy device. Her hand throbbed, spiraling out from her trapped thumb.
Had this been a quicker process, Hermione would be screaming. But the slow pace gave her time to acclimate, at least a bit. The flare of pain would dull into numbness before it would click again.
Her stomach clenched tighter with each revolution. Her eyes watered more each time she had to blink back the tears. Her face grew hotter but she would not make a noise, not now.
Was she nearly done?
Would she actually be permitted to leave at two hours?
Hermione realized Alecto could Imperius her this moment and she'd never be able to stop her.
Hermione let go of her aching wrist. She moved her hand up her sleeve to rest on her wand.
She wouldn't be able to do much.
Her breath caught in her windpipe. Spikes of pain laced up her bones and stopped at her elbow joint.
Her breathing became shallow.
She shook, but kept in her shout, her curses, any moue of pain, all of it.
Hermione looked anywhere but her thumb. Alecto kept grading, smirk on her thin face.
Hermione looked up at the ceiling.
It clicked again. Her whole body jerked.
She panted. Her thumb was on fire, screaming that it would splinter at this rate.
It turned again.
Her eyes gushed with warm tears and she gasped in each breath. She stared at the ceiling and vowed no firstie would go through this, not if she could help it.
It clicked again.
Hermione slammed her teeth together.
Hermione didn't look at the clock. She recited potions ingredients in her head. Pain throbbed through her hand.
Alecto picked up her wand. Hermione clutched her wand through her sleeve. The 'teacher' turned her ear towards Hermione.
Click.
With a satisfied smile, Alecto waved her wand. The screw disengaged and the thumbscrew fell off onto Hermione's lap.
"I will have to commend Filch on how well he has maintained our old means of punishment," Alecto said.
Hermione picked up her bag and left. She kept her injured hand close to her body. Once she left the corridor, she sprinted to her rooms. Each footstep pounded up through her body and to her thumb.
She had just brewed Bruise-B-Gone for Madam Pomfrey. If Severus hadn't delivered them yet—
Hermione carefully removed her wand from her sleeve to cancel the enchantments from her common room. Her thumb looked like it belonged on Hagrid's hand instead of hers. If Hagrid was violently purple.
Hermione crept to her room lest Anthony come out and see her like this.
She dropped her bag on the bed and ran through to the dungeons.
Severus watched her from the doorway of the washroom, thin hair wet. She bolted past.
Thankfully he didn't lock the door between the sitting room and his personal lab.
Where is it, where is it? She used her wand to light the lamps.
Right where she left it was the box of Bruise-B-Gone.
Something for the pain, she panicked. Blue bag.
All the way in her rooms.
Hermione shakily sat in one of the only two chairs in the room. It was too hard to think. Her thumb burned. Her fingernail started to blacken—it would probably pop off at this rate.
She burst into tears.
Of course, Severus came in at that moment.
"What—"
He paused when he saw her hand. Swiftly, he moved to one of the cabinets behind his lab table.
Hermione's knees trembled.
Severus set a series of vials on the table next to her.
The professor gently pried her arm away from her body.
Pain raced up her arm.
"What happened?"
"I fell," she said through grit teeth.
He waved his wand over her hand. The flash of pink meant something was cracked, but not snapped.
"On the way to or from detention?" Severus turned to the bottles he had pulled from the cabinet.
"During," she forced out. Hot tears poured down her face.
Severus handed her an open bottle. "Drink the whole thing," he ordered.
She grabbed it and knocked it back. It tasted like ground up aspirin on the back of her throat. She screwed up her eyes against the taste.
Severus shoved another small bottle into her hand. "Half of that."
Hermione squinted at the dark blue liquid. All of the bottles he brought to her were unmarked. She sipped half of it. Based on the taste, it was something for the injury site. The nerves in her thumb erupted, like the bone had ignited.
She curled around her wrist. Severus pulled the Bruise-B-Gone from her lap and opened it for her.
"Take this when the burning stops," he said. His level of calm was the exact opposite of how she felt.
Thankfully that first, vile potion worked quickly. She reached for the Bruise-B-Gone—and paused when her hand touched his.
His eyes narrowed but he didn't say anything. Hermione was appalled at how much her injured hand shook when she reached for Severus's hand, still holding the bottle. The swelling was at least a duller purple, now.
The pain lessened as soon as her wrecked hand touched his. She didn't realize how shallow each breath had been until she could breathe as normal.
Severus must think her mad, but he didn't move a muscle.
"Carrow," she said. Her breath sounded ragged.
"Which one?"
"Alecto."
"What did you do?"
"Told her Muggles don't use thumbscrews on school children."
"Was it worth it?" He was more tired than sharp.
Hermione couldn't meet his eye. "She said she did the same things to first-years." She shook her head. "I won't let her."
"You intend to so fill up their time that they can't give detentions to anyone else?" he snipped.
"I—I haven't really thought that far ahead." She remained polite. "I had to stop thinking about it when my thumb was about to shatter."
Severus ignored her to examine her hand, still on his. "The solution I gave you usually doesn't work this quickly."
"The nearness," she explained. "When this law was made, they were at war. They didn't want people to bog down the Healers if they could just stay at home. I—I didn't think it would work on such a severe…problem."
She pulled her hands away. The pain inched back in. She bit her lip and said nothing.
He thrust the Bruise-B-Gone at her again. "Half."