Author's Note – Quidditch League Round 4 Entry
Team: Tutshill Tornados
Position: Chaser 2
Prompt: Freak show!
Additional prompts: cat (creature), clock (object), Twisted Fairytale (au)
Word count: 1,558
Trigger warnings: None
FYI: Dear Mods, I'm taking advantage of the ambiguity in one of the bonus prompts. You didn't say "the" Twisted Fairytale universe, you just said Twisted Fairytale. So I'm taking that and running with the soon-to-be-out Rapunzel Twisted Fairytale...apologies if I read that wrong!
Free as a Feline in a Freakshow
Hermione sighed, twisting a silver lock of her wild, silver mane around her finger as she stared aimlessly out the only external window in her tower. Alone as she was, for the moment at least, she relished the opportunity to just be. It was easy to feel like a one-woman freakshow with the eyes of everyone else in this tower burning their way into her skin. But ever since Mother Dolores had changed, that is what she had become – a freak.
Hermione felt a smile grace the planes of her face as her only friend and companion, a ginger cat, jumped from the branch of a nearby tree to the windowsill Hermione was leaning against. Her only friend pawed at her long, luscious locks, unafraid and unaffected by the deadly potential held within the tresses themselves. With time crawling to a seeming stop as it had, and with nothing better to do than to count time, Hermione envied the stray cat that had come across her lonely tower one day, only to never leave. Crookshanks, as she had taken to calling him, was clever, warm and her only friend in the world. But unlike Hermione, Crookshanks had the ability to leave the freak show behind. He wasn't required to simply sit here being poked and prodded, experimented on until he could no longer take it. No, no, that was all on her. Yet another way she was entirely alone.
It had been alright when she had first been sent to live with Mother Dolores. Hermione's mother had been the one to suggest it, in fact: Queen Minerva had not been completely well since she had taken the Essence of Moondrop before Hermione's birth (or so Hermione had been told). To be fair, this was just information Hermione had been able to glean from sneaking around the castle and listening in on meetings as a young child. When you were a freak, everyone was either scared of you or for you, and no one wanted to be your friend.
So, when Hermione had been seven years old, she had been sent away with Mother Dolores, the powerful goodwife who had served as Hermione's nursery attendant since her birth. Mother Dolores had been the only one that hadn't stayed away from her when everything had changed, she had encouraged the Queen to send Hermione away before she hurt anyone.
And she could very well hurt someone. Anyone, really, if she never learned how to control this new power. That's what Mother Dolores had said, that the clock was running down and eventually she'd lose control and hurt someone. It was a side effect of taking an essence with such a high concentration of the Moondrop flower. It hadn't hurt Hermione's mother but it had given Hermione the power to hurt others. That fact she hadn't been told by the goodwife but had instead read in a textbook, one she had rapidly consumed after listening in on a particularly important council meeting. That was one of the last days she spent at the castle, free to roam like the Princess she'd been born as instead of the freakshow she'd become.
And so Princess Hermione was sent away to live with Mother Dolores, tucked away in a corner of the kingdom of Hogwarts, not to be seen or heard from again until she managed to tame the magic within her. As the carriage discreetly made its way through the Forbidden Forest and towards the solitary tower it housed, Hermione knew the news of her departure did so as well. It had to; news about anyone, let alone the royal family, never stayed quiet for long in Hogwarts. Whenever Hermione was a young girl, one that would sneak out of the castle to explore the village, she always delighted in igniting the whispers. Hair tucked away (as best as it could be when there was so much of it) and head lowered, Hermione would engage with the villagers and see the rumours practically spread like wildfire. No one had quit yet, but, give it time. The fact that said news just happened to be that the younger daughter of the revered Queen Minerva was being sent away to live with the family nurse, was reason enough for the blaze of gossip to burn through the entire kingdom. The day that she had left the castle had been the last time she had seen her family, her people, any part of the life she had grown up with. And today, on her 17th birthday, the day she reached her majority, she was more desperate than ever to break out of this prison.
"Come on Crookshanks," she urged, picking up the cat and holding him securely in her arms as she walked to the corner of her room. The only other bright spark in her day was the part of her prison that housed the books she treasured so. Mother Dolores had deigned to put in a cozy armchair and provide her a blanket, two creature comforts she hadn't wanted to accept but had slowly come around too after one too many days watching the clock and seeing time pass. The tick, tock, tick, tock of the clock hands seemed to echo less when her mind was occupied with fair off lands, strange creatures and new adventures.
She also had less time to think of the state of her life (though, as she sat stroking Crookshanks's hair, she found herself contemplating exactly that). It had all started a year or so after they had arrived at the tower. Everything was fine, Hermione was completing her lessons, only this time with Mother Dolores's help instead of Royal Instructor Flitwick's. But then, when Hermione turned 10, everything changed. Gone was the warm, mother-figure that she had grown to expect. In her place was the cold, calculating curator of her current torment, ring-leader of the show in which Hermione was the star. With this new visage came a litany of doctors, nurses, even a magical investigator or two. Interviewing her, taking physical samples and magic readings all day long.
Her days of eavesdropping hadn't abated with her distance from the castle, though, and so one day, when Mother Dolores had come into the room and she had feigned sleep, she heard her speaking to an accompanying doctor.
"We'll just need to do a few more tests, and then she'll be ready," a voice she recognised as her main doctor's spoke.
"And then you and I, doctor, we become very wealthy indeed!" Mother Dolores responded.
On and on it went, Hermione carefully listening in to conversations to gather evidence so that she could evaluate what exactly Mother Dolores had planned to do. It turns out that the power that so frightened Hermione would soon be used to manipulate her, a tool through which Mother Delores would make money while stealing from and harming others. And Hermione would have absolutely no say at all.
She sighed into Crookshanks's fur, rubbing gently behind her companion's ears. Would he come with her? Be her companion yet a little while longer, as she continued to waste away as a freakshow on another stage, somewhere else. Because there was no way that the next stage of whatever this plan was would still have her in chains. Perhaps physically this time as well...she couldn't help but wonder how much slower time would pass if her freedom was completely taken away.
Time was an interesting concept for her now. It seemed endless to Hermione, a marker of her descent into loneliness and despair rather than a true indicator of time. Crookshanks existed outside of time, a consistent and steady friend that seemed to promise with each visit that he'd always return for another visit. But not even Crookshanks could live with her constantly. She was the oddity here, the freak on the stage that everyone wanted something from. Crookshanks didn't have to stay, he wasn't tied to this one place. He seemed to exist out of time because for him time was endless; no sign of an end and no need to count down a clock. He held the freedom she so desperately wanted; a freedom that, in her gilded cage, she knew she would never get.
Instead, Hermione was here, looked away as if she were a science project, or a freak show act led by a cunning ring leader. The clock never gave anything up for her; time passed slower and the world spun for everyone else – everyone that didn't have exceptionally long, silver locks of hair that could and would hurt anyone that prompted a response.
She lived in fear of hurting herself, being shut in the tower forever and never getting to live my life. She just...she couldn't go through with this another day.
She had to escape today, break free from her podium forevermore.