A.N. Hello folks. I finally got back to writing. My school year is almost at an end, so there has been more grading/work to do, but thankfully I only have three more weeks of school before I'm done for the summer. As always, a big thanks to Rotehexe and all of you who take the time to leave reviews and favorites. It means the absolute world to me!
"Well the first thing that needs to happen is you have to calm dow…" Remus barely managed to move his head in time before a ceramic pitcher shattered against the wall directly behind where his head had been.
"If you tell me to calm the fuck down one more time, I will kill you." Sirius's voice was angry and dark as he warned, a growl coming up from his throat as the air around him crackled with the potential for accidental magic. Regulus looked only at a fixed spot on the wall, a small chip in the wallpaper where it was beginning to fade and peel, clearly trying to think of anything but Hermione's disappearance.
Word had come through their enchanted coins nearly half an hour ago now and all that had occurred was a pitcher had been broken and there were three new holes in the walls of Sirius's flat. Regulus had managed to quell his brother long enough to drag him by the collar into the fireplace and over to Remus's home. When they'd arrived through the glow of the fire, it was to utter destruction in the man in question's parlor. It seemed that Sirius wasn't the only one with a penchant for breaking things when he was upset.
Remus paced the floor of the sitting room they'd moved into, restless against what felt like seemingly impending doom. Hermione was the key to all of their plans. Without her…he didn't even imagine what was possible. "Okay so what do we know?" Regulus finally spoke, his voice thick with confusion and anger. No one had an answer for that though, and it fell upon the room and stuck to them like a film.
What did they know? Hermione was gone, in danger at least. They knew enough to know that Dol was likely Dolohov. Regulus seemed to shiver at that, Hermione had warned him that Dolohov was a threat to her. He hadn't listened. He hadn't listened and now Hermione's life was in danger.
Sirius was having a similar collection of thoughts as he sank into the armchair across from Regulus. Remus stopped his pacing in front of Sirius, looking down with a sad resignation towards the man. "You know who we need." Remus's voice was strained as he spoke, and the realization slowly formed on Sirius's face as he transformed from fierce anger to rage.
"Bullshit. That wanker got her message too and where the fuck is he? And where the fuck is Malfoy?" Sirius sat straight up, placing his hands on his face and rubbing his eyes. He hadn't had a drop to drink since Hermione had brought Regulus back to him, but he could feel the blood flowing in his veins. The backs of his eyes buzzed, and his knee began to shake, desperate for a drink.
"They don't know where I live. And on top of that, its too dangerous for Malfoy to be talking with us. Like the man or hate him, his wife is pregnant." Sirius groaned, hating to know that Remus was right.
"Is…" The older Black brother heaved his chest as he rose from the chair, walking over to the small window on the opposite wall. "Is Snape still working at the apothecary on the corner in Diagon?"
Regulus and Remus both snapped their eyes to Sirius, amazed and distraught at the fact that he called him by his real name. The men were frozen for a moment before the younger Black slowly responded. "He does. As far as I'm aware. Sirius…why? You aren't planning on going to talk to him are you?"
Remus nodded his head along with Regulus's concerning, wordlessly agreeing.
"Of course I'm going to fucking talk to him. As much as I hate that twat, he's the only one who can get close enough to Dolohov to find anything out. You're supposed to be fucking dead…" Sirius pointed to Regulus who glared at the hand. "And you're still recovering from the moon yesterday."
Remus looked as if he wanted to fight back, but he knew he couldn't. The wolf was still too close for comfort right now. Not to mention if he saw Dolohov in this moment, he would likely not be able to contain his anger. Regulus didn't look any happier about it, but the room settled with a resigned annoyance that Sirius was right.
"Get Snape. Bring him back here if you can. Sirius please just…don't give him a reason. Hermione's life is at stake." Sirius's anger flared and then shrunk, disappearing for a split moment to reveal the sadness behind his eyes. He had already lost so much, he would not let Hermione be next.
"I will be on my best behavior." Sirius promised, returning his boyish smirk as if nothing was wrong. In a moment he was gone, nothing left of him but the dust of floo travel and a shattered vase.
When Hermione's heavy eyes finally fluttered open, it was to the narrow beam of light coming through the board covered windows shining in her eyes. Her head was throbbing and her limbs felt weighted down. Soreness and aches moved up and down her arms as she tried to pull herself to a sitting position.
Why does my body hurt so much? Hermione thought to herself, before flashes of Dolohov's sinister grin and the light leaving his wand came back to her. Choking back a scream, she slowly moved towards the wall, half-crawling and half rolling. After a few minutes of struggle, Hermione managed to get herself sat up.
She had no concept of time. No way to know how long she'd been asleep or how long she'd been gone. The coin around her neck was outside of her jumper so she knew that she must've been able to get a message through to her friends. Fear gripped her, and as her lungs began to burn with the pressure of filling them with air, her shoulders began to tremble. Crying seemed like a weakness, but she couldn't hold back. Normally she could swallow back her tears or force her feelings away until she was ready to face them, but there was nothing left of her to fight.
Being tortured at Malfoy Manor had been the worst moment of her life. It truly had been, and the scar on her arm would be a constant reminder, an ever-present companion to remind her that the world she had nearly died to save would never truly accept her. Hermione had never cared about any of that, always pushing through. Putting one foot forward until eventually her slow and steady march would lead her to a better future. Every name, jinx, and curse sent her way knocked her down and made her stronger until she had created an impenetrable collection of mental armor that protected her. Of course, that had all shattered when Harry Potter had died.
It wasn't even the cruciatus that hurt her the most. It was the helplessness. Hermione had calculated and researched and prepared so that she would never again be helpless. Yet here she was, locked in the decrepit remains of some kind of pureblooded estate, wandless and weak.
Dolohov had been too much of a risk, an unexpected variant she hadn't calculated. The Dolohov in her time had been in Azkaban. How was she to know that the curse he'd cast on her gave them some sort of twisted connection. Hermione took a deep breath (as best she could with the pressure in her lungs) and focused herself on her occlumency. It was not one of her best skills, but it would help with the pain.
Leafing through her memories, she painstakingly began to block off her mind. Dolohov was not a skilled legillimens by any means, but the knowledge she held was too important to chance. Brick by brick, she locked away all her memories. Locked away Lily and James and Sirius and Remus and Severus and Lucius. Locked away the horcruxes and the basilisk venom and her journal. Hours seemed to pass as she excruciated under this process; ignoring the bitter stinging in her bones, aftershocks of the curse.
By the time the familiar crash of footsteps against the creaking wooden floors began to approach, all of her thoughts and memories were safely behind the wall of her creation.
"Ahhh lastachka. You're awake." Dolohov was eating an apple, the crisp crunching of his teeth digging into the juicy red fruit causing Hermione's stomach to turn. She didn't even know how much time had passed since she'd last eaten. Refusing to respond, Hermione simply stared blankly ahead of her.
Dolohov seemed amused by this, wiping the juice from the apple away from his mouth with the dirty cuff of his robes. Some stubble rubbed against his sleeve, and Hermione noticed that his appearance was far more haggard than the last time she'd seen him at Lucius Malfoy's birthday ball. The darkness yesterday…or maybe earlier that day, she really had no concept of how long it had been, had prevented her from truly seeing his face. Now in the small bits of sunlight she could manage, there was only one reasonable conclusion. He was finally on the run.
Hunger set in as the wizard took another bite of the apple, and against her wishes, Hermione's stomach let out a loud gurgle.
"Oh so you're hungry pet. Can't have that can I? What kind of host would I be if I didn't offer my…honoured guest some refreshment?" As if to add even more humiliation to her existence in this nightmare, Dolohov tossed the apple at the floor in front of her, silently watching it roll until it came to a halt by her leg. It was simple though, the decision to not take it. She'd rather die.
Expectantly, he waited for her to react, but when she didn't move his patience began to wear thin. Approaching where she sat, leaned against the wall, Dolohov squatted down just far enough away so he was out of arms reach. He may be a bastard, but he wasn't stupid enough to get close.
"I have some questions for you lastachka. The first, why were you at Lucius Malfoy's birthday party disguised as some pureblooded French whore? What is it you want?" Hermione managed to swallow down the bile that had risen in her throat. Her disgust for Dolohov settled into her stomach like a lead weight. Taller than she was, and nearly twice as broad, she knew she didn't stand a chance physically. The only way out would be with mental strength. It was an inevitability that he would torture her again, but if she could just hold out until they came for her, then that was victory enough.
Instead of answering the question, Hermione sucked on her teeth, forcing saliva to form in her dehydrated and dry mouth. Rearing back her head so she was staring in his black eyes, she spit in his face. "I will never tell you anything." The words were a promise, carried by the will to live not for herself but for all those who she had sworn to protect.
Dolohov stalled, frozen as the spit ran down his cheek. Grabbing a grimy looking grey handkerchief from his robe pocket, he wiped it off as he stood. "I did offer you a less painful way to give me what I want. Don't forget that."
As the wand in his hand raised towards her, she prepared herself for the cruciatus…for the pain that she had already endured to turn up again. Dolohov was a sick bastard though, so her expectations fell far short from what he had planned.
An unfamiliar greenish light filled the room, as a smoke emitted slowly from the tip of Dolohov's wand. "What? What is this?" Hermione wondered aloud, her lungs burning as she began to breathe in the vapor. Holding her breath, she darted her eyes around her in a crazed frenzy. She couldn't stop herself from breathing forever and she had no idea what Dolohov had just done.
"You've locked your mind out to me lastachka, so in return I've trapped you inside of it. Enjoy the prison of your mind. Hopefully when I come back, you'll be a little more…pliable." Once again, all his teeth showed through his smile, like the big bad wolf right before he swallows up Little Red Riding Hood. Desperate for air, Hermione had to take a breath, allowing the smoke to fill her lungs.
He approached her as her body slowly fell to the pain of the spell, forcing her mouth open and pouring down a potion of some sort. Hermione wanted to stop him, wanting to scream and move her arms, claw his eyes out, but she couldn't do anything.
Once again, like a scratched record playing over, the last thing she heard before she felt the darkness drape around her like a blanket, was Dolohov's footsteps once again leaving her alone, wandless, and without an escape.
"I assume you are here for potions ingredients, Black." Snape's low drawl cut through the mindless chatter of two of the shops patrons. Sensing an air of antagonism approaching at the two men made eye contact, the women who had been shopping made a quiet exit, their wide eyes looking over their shoulders to catch one final glimpse of the impending drama.
"Snape could I…" Sirius swallowed his pride and vitriol and straightened his back. Even if he was negotiating with a snake, he wouldn't lose his dignity. "Could I speak with you in private for a moment. It's about a…mutual friend of ours."
Snape's black eyes were emotionless as he observed Sirius, folding his arms and looking around the now empty shop. Noting the sheen of the grease on the man's hair, Sirius bit the side of his cheek to refrain from making a snarky comment. I mean did the bastard have to make it so easy? Sirius thought to himself, balling his hand into a fist as the other wizard's cold eyes appraised him.
"Very well." Snape pulled out his wand, casting a spell that Sirius had never seen before.
"What did you do?" Sirius's feet moved subconsciously into his battle stance and he prepared for a fight. If there was one thing Mad-Eye had managed to get through his head during Auror training, it was that he should never let his enemy take him off-guard.
Snape grimaced at the shift in Sirius's posture, sneering as he scoffed. "A muffling spell. If someone were to stand outside or use a listening spell they wouldn't be able to hear what we were saying."
"Clever." Sirius complimented, perhaps not as genuinely as he should have. He knew that Snape had a reputation in school for tinkering around with spell creation. Even he and James had used a spell that was rumored to have been of Snape's own creation. Lily hadn't spoken to James for a month after that. A ball of shame built in Sirius's stomach. Hermione would've hated it too.
"They have Hermione." His mouth ran dry on her name, the first time he'd spoken it out loud since the news came through. Somehow it felt like knives coming up his throat.
Snape's sneer fell from his face, his perfect mask breaking for just a moment at this news. So he must not have had a chance to look at his coin yet. Sirius doubted that he would've checked it during his shift.
"Who has Herm….Granger?" His disinterested and vague emotional cover placed slowly over his features like a cold current running through his body. Sirius marveled at just how reptilian he'd seemed in that moment.
"Dolohov." The moment that the word left Sirius's lips Snape was in a flurry, moving quickly to lock the door and close the blinds. Gone was his emotionless mask, replaced by the one emotion Sirius had not expected…fear.
"We have to move quickly." Snape insisted, walking swiftly towards the hallway to the back of the shop. Along the walls were various illustrations of potion ingredients as well as a handful of paintings of past owners, dating back to mid 17th century. Other than a raised eyebrow or two from the witches and wizards that decorated the hall, nothing moved in the painful staleness of the room. When they arrived at the third door on the left, Snape pushed it open and motioned for Sirius to follow him inside quickly.
It looked to be a small potions lab with something foul smelling brewing. The putrid smelling red liquid was the least of Sirius's worries as Snape began to speak.
"Dolohov looked particularly proud of himself when he waltzed in here earlier for ingredients. I didn't think anything of it then but now that I know he has Granger…" Snape trailed off, his robes swishing behind him as he searched the shelves lining the walls for the correct book. "Its an old potion; French in its origin." Eyes dashed over tomes of red, gold, green, blue and yellow leather before finally landing on a worn black tome with faint silver lettering.
"Based on my…brief meeting of Dolohov and his reputation, I assumed he'd be a cruciatus man." Anger flared behind Sirius's eyes and he forced his hands into fists, digging his nails into the skin of his palm. If Dolohov had even had a passing thought of hurting Hermione there would be nothing left of him to go to Azkaban.
"This potion…its dark. Darker even than my tastes care for. The design of the potion was by a dark wizard who was unsatisfied with the power of his torture methods. From my understanding, it locks someone inside their own mind. If he gave this to her…" Snape paused over the words on the page before quickly snapping the book shut. "I'll brew the antidote but whatever she is experiencing. She will wish it had just been the cruciatus."
Sirius felt the air rush from his lungs like Snape's words had dealt him a blow. "When we find her, I'm going to kill him." The words dripped from his lips like a promise, with no fire and no anger following them. It wasn't a question or a hope, it was a certainty. Where there should've been rage, there was nothing. Numbness flowed in his body, as if replacing his blood. Nothing mattered. Nothing other than her.
"The antidote takes 12 hours to brew. Find out where Dolohov has her. When you do that we can arrange a drop off for the antidote. You've already been here too long. Go now." Snape rushed them out of the room, locking it behind them.
"Don't get it twisted Snape, I still fucking hate you." Sirius glared, shuffling along in front of the man towards the front of the shop.
"Likewise Black. But she's…less intolerable." Snape didn't mean it, they both knew that. Even Snape's frozen and blackened heart couldn't keep from growing a fondness for Hermione, although he'd likely never admit it. "I owe her a debt. This will be more than enough payment."
With a whip of Snape's wand, the blinds reopened, and the muffling charm lifted. "Enjoy your ingredients Black. I do hope you never need to come here again." There was an unspoken awkwardness between the men, for the first time in their life speaking at least somewhat civilly. Another unspoken thought between them was the deep worry they all felt. Hermione wouldn't have called for help if she didn't need it.
"Me too Snape…Me too."