Chapter 3

Hermione braced herself for a hard impact as she calculated the momentum with which her body had been catapulted across dimensions. She imagined she was a metal pendulum being pulled taut before being released abruptly. So, she was surprised to find that her trajectory slowed suddenly so that she landed delicately on a wobbly surface.

The material under her feet was not quite solid but not so unfirm as to make her sink. It felt like a wide expanse of soft rubber. As was her luck, there was no way to make out what material she was standing on, let alone what sort of place she had been dropped in. She could barely see the outline of her fingers in this place.

The area (chamber, elaborate cage, dim swamp?) was pervasively dark as if the light was manually and loving sucked away like the last droplets of desert water on a greedy tongue. This left the area barren and cloisteringly cold with only a shimmering sky to see by. Although, there was no way to accurately describe the light source far above her as she did not possess the words to describe it. The shimmering colors seemed to be a light within themselves like self sufficient stars peppering space without an engorged sun to support their light.

The shimmering miasma, spread like soft, sparkling jam on the heavens above her, undulated and slithered across the sky with a choking gentleness, like baby soft hands crushing her windpipes. The girations and reckless dancing reminded her of the way the bead swished and swirled indeterminately like a neurotic puffer fish. She realized it was what she could see from outside the bead. Her voice faltered at this discovery before calling out a tentative hello. The gooey silence swallowed up her fearful call like a salivating flytrap. Only buzzing silence answered her. She quivered with a growing understanding of true isolation. Her hammering heart told her that not one solitary creature, quill or particle of dust communed with her in this unholy space. She would have run, just to greet her sweat as a companion, but she could not see in any direction that stretched beyond her fingertips. Her voice was swallowed up by the atmosphere and she surmised that whatever space she was in was not big enough for a proper echo.

She yelled nonsensically a few more times. She began to run erratically towards the left hoping to smack into a wall. She tripped before she could make it very far. The ground was too unsteady to run and she found the substance stickier than she'd guessed before. She began to crawl on her hands and knees when her efforts to move upright were continually thwarted. She pulled up legs and hands one at a time in order to peel her skin and clothes off the surface before starting the process again. She felt like a fly attempting to rescue itself from sticky fly paper.

She had no concept of time or how long she had been struggling to move around but her extremities hurt and she didn't sense any thing like a door coming closer. She cursed that her wand was sitting on her bed as useless as anything. Hermioine had to rest or risk complete exhaustion. She allowed her whole body to fall against the floor with her head tilted towards the side. She breathed in deeply and fully. Upon her exhale, her stomach dropped giving a sickly dip to her spine. She was sinking! Hermoine scrambled to get up but the ground was bent on taking her. A raspy cry tiptoed out of her mouth but was caught as an air bubble when the steady goo entered her nose and mouth, suffocating her. Her body was drowned in blinding tar and her body was stuck in sticky stasis as it moved down, down, down into the muck like a newborn baby swimming through the birth canal-slimy and new.

Before the existential crisis could fully emerge in her breast, she felt her nostrils clear and the sensation of floating came upon her. The stringy blackness was gone and the sinking sensation erased! She had passed the threshold (of what she was not sure).Her limbs were free and she felt warmth fanning her from below. She felt light and airy like a soft, whipped cheese. With a nervous clench she looked straight down and gasped.

Underneath her slowly drifting body was an expanse of tightly huddled clouds whispering softly to one another. She was hovering above the heavens! Her mind brightened with elation for a short moment. She had never enjoyed flying and was amazed to find herself enjoying the feeling of weightlessness caressing at her legs. However, her soft experience quickly gave way to abject horror.

With hawkeye vision, she was able to see a large clearing in what she could only imagine was a cold forest with leaves scattered on the forest floor like bronzed corpses. The sight was magnificent and shimmering but it was what was at the center that made her blood run cold. A chained figure was in the dead center of the clearing. His chains, thick and dull gray, danced erratically in all directions as his body quaked. His wrist bonds yanked his arms behind him as if there was a boot in his back pushing his chest out. The shackles at his ankles pulled him to his knees in an unending bow. As she got closer she saw that the figure was a man and his neck was chained also. The chains must have been angled at different heights to create such an effect where his hands were stretched downward, his knees bent with legs straight back and his head bent slightly backward so he would always have a view of the sky. He was a bedraggled bloodhound baying out sorrows and bitter truths at a neglectful, scornful moon.

A guttural noise tore out of her belly as she got ever closer. The man had long, sweat flattened hair the color of a baby polar bear trembling with hunger. He had the face of an ancient aristocrat sneering coldly as the guillotine swung with arctic precision before a roaring crowd. And, now in the present day, the aristocrat's descendant was looking in her direction screaming something she could not hear just like a severed head grasping for a body that was no longer there.

As she approached the blanket of clouds, she realized her descent was hastening. What had begun as a meandering trot had accelerated into a full blown gallop, and she waved her hands and legs in order to slow her fall. She continued to move and thrash wildly until for a split moment she was blinded by flickering and flashing starlight. The moment zipped by her so quickly that she'd give over her eyes to catch that moment again and swallow it.

With barely enough time to register it, she was crashing through the threadbare trees and tumbling onto the dead grass and leaves below. She had crossed yet another space-time barrier, this time with an audible crack as she tore through the sky layer into the tree lined atmosphere. She knew something was softening her fall as she should be dead after such acrobatics. She was glad of it and was even more glad that was not back in that dark tar again even as her body continued to tumble through underbrush and branches. The flashes of autumnal colors splashing across her eyelids as her body moved unbidden and unreserved.

She suddenly stopped rolling and landed flat on her back on the far side of what she assumed was the clearing. Her body heaved sharply as she attempted to control her body and steady her winded mind. She was disoriented and yet doggedly determined. Her appendages were scraped and bleeding and she felt a limpness in her wrist and she was sure it was sprained. She exhaled sourly to let out the pain before pushing up her weary body. One glance up and she was reminded of the enslaved creature near her.

With brush and thistle sticking out of her hair, she ran towards Draco Malfoy. She slammed her body down just before crashing into him. His face was still upturned and his mouth was still contorted into a horrific display of throat gnashing screams but she could hear no sound. She realized with a start that she had not heard one sound outside her own voice since entering this place. She had not even heard the dry foliage crunching underneath her as she spun out.

She shivered involuntarily as she stood up to stand above the tortured man. She put her face in his direct line of sight. He did not appear to see her and his endless cries continued unbroken. She put a hand on his shoulder and for the briefest of moments she heard the far off keening of a great canine being stabbed repeatedly without respite.

"This one's soul howls loudly" an unspoken voice boomed quietly from the base of her spine reaching her mind's ears from a far off distance. The words were not quite true words she realized but impressions and sounds and colors that created an unexplainable meaning in her mind. She whipped her body around to locate the sound and fell backwards when she spotted a massive beast resting on its front paws like a large cat half shadowed in the brush.

The animal was well camouflaged in the bushes and vines latticing the other side of the clearing. Its eyes remained closed and its ears were downturned as if to blot out some terrible noise but its ivory antlers, elk's body and noble horse face were unmistakable. This massive creature had spoken into her bones with words that were not quite words. With its iridescent green fur like the inside of a seashell and its finely cut features like cut stone, she knew it was the fearsome Indrik.

WIth her cursory research before bed, she'd read that a stirring Indrik could make the very earth tremble, so she thanked Merlin that he appeared to be uninterested in moving. She had seen many magical creatures, been in awe of their otherworldly power, loved them beyond sense, but this creature was like the depths of the earth's core, rooted and untouchable. Hermione felt in that moment that some pursuits should not be uncovered. There were mysteries that the human mind should not attempt to uncrack. That even Voldemort's magic that had threatened to collapse the whole world with its hubris was in no league with this. This was a moment in time the was so achingly real that the human condition was not prepared for it. She had fallen into something so dark and so full of light that her brain might ever recover. That deep pressure she'd felt in the bead's presence was liking walking through a poppy field compared to this feeling of being flattened to the earth like ground bone. Her brain felt like it was condensing down to its dearest parts and something in her begged for the beast to not open his eyes.

"This thing does not belong." The voice said without saying. In her mind's ear, she heard its bored dismissal. Hermione took a moment to realize the beast was addressing her and before she could process the words, the beast pushed air through its nostrils and the ground beneath her jumped as though shin kicked. Her body flew backwards but not before she unconsciously reached out for something to steady herself. She understood too late that she had grabbed a handful of Malfoy's long, billowing hair. With that touch, she could hear his spirit crying out in full volume and the sound surrounded her from all sides, a sonic boom bursting her ear canals. She felt hot blood trickle down both ears as she hastily let go of his hair save one strand that got caught in her jagged fingernails. While letting go, she saw his startling grey eyes swimming directly into hers. As soon as her hands were away from his hair, the mic caught off like someone switching off the sound board at the end of a party. Party's over mates- go screams did not end even as her ability to hear them did like unplugging her headphones from a still playing walkman with the gears and cranks of his mouth still spinning with no one to hear them.

She felt her belly tugging her upward through the stars, through the empty space, through the gummy ground and out of the crystal bead. She was not just being pulled from Malfoy but yanked back through dimensions like a yoyo being rewrapped after a trick sling. Before she could fully grasp her interdimensional travel, she fell back against her bed with a loud thump. The blood still dripping from her ears flew across her duvet and pillow. Her world turned black.


She awoke mid convulsion as if her body couldn't hold the memory of her evening inside her chest, a raging bull bucking for release. The convulsions did not stop instantly and she could only thrash in terror until the quaking calmed and only shocking tremors plagued her body. She did not stir until all involuntarily movement ceased. Her body was sore and pulsing and she'd vomited all over herself.

Her fingers shook as she grasped her wand and said the necessary cleaning spells. Her magic had never felt frail and insignificant but as she magicked away the traces of her experience, she couldn't compare her parlour tricks to the celestial bull who'd thrown her through purgatory and back again. She performed magic like a theater actor playing the role of a king- touring and dancing across her gilded stage in a cheap imitation of the real thing. The indrik was magic. She knew the distinction now better than any person who ever lived. Well except perhaps Draco Malfoy.

When she had collected her faculties as best she could, she checked the time and realized it was time for work. The regular concerns of eating and sustaining her flat helped level her and for that she was grateful. And she completed her mundane tasks with a religious fervor. Hermione knew she must be mad to tidy up, get dressed and go to work after what she'd just experienced but did so anyway. Somehow staying home to wallow would be worse than any scars that haunted her.

She was jittery at the bookstore. Her eyes darted around suspiciously with the sound of every person sipping coffee or turning the pages of a book in an easy chair or the constant sound of credit card receipts printing. She kept stretching and flexing her muscles. She didn't fit in her own skin. Her supervisor noticed her odd behavior and she feigned worry over a sick aunt. His eyes turned sympathetic and he told her to take the rest of the week off. His own grandfather was recovering from a nasty stroke and his lip quivered when he wished her well. She felt guilty about lying but conceded that her mind was churning too rapidly to focus on selling books.

She wobbled through both muggle and wizarding London aimlessly. She bought food and drink that she left on the table, she walked through shops without seeing the items and she waved at acquaintances without recognizing their faces. She continued to walk without care until she stopped in front of a slightly familiar door. She had subconsciously ended up a Saul's flat. She looked at the time and saw it was nearly time for dinner. She hesitated before knocking but did so anyway.

The door opened and she took in Saul's disheveled appearance. His shirt was stained with colored inks as were his fingers, his pants were rumpled from sitting too long in one position and his beard was scraggly and untapered. He looked at her frightened face and he immediately ushered her into the room. Although she was crossing yet another threshold in the short span of 10 hours, she felt warm and safe as though cloaked in the aroma of hot coffee. She sat down on one of his soft leather armchairs and told her story with cigar smoke brushing the air.

He'd sat in silent awe as she recounted the previous night's events. Hermione picked out some details like unpleasant nut's in a snack mix and threw them away such as who the man was that she found bound to the ground. She may not have been told the truth by the Malfoys but she would keep up her end of the bargain and keep their secrets.

"To be trapped in such a prison is a fate worse than the dementor's kiss" he proclaimed after a long pause.

"So you think the person is alive?" Hermione choked over the words as the possibility slide over her faculties like slick soap.

"Possibly. The amulet could be a portal to the Indrik's forest. It could also be the purgatory of your friend's soul or something I haven't begun to dream up. Either way, you're lucky to have been cast out." Hermione's knee began to shake as a small sense the situation's gravity came to her. Saul put a steadying hand on her shoulder. They sat in strained silence and Hermione knew what he wanted her to say and she knew what she'd wish he'd say. Finally, she said, "I'll have to get to the bottom of this. For that poor man's sake."

Saul nodded. "Yes. This case is becoming most interesting but I fear it appears to only affect one individual. The situation we are working on in my department effects decorated dignitaries across international lines. I championed your cause as best I could with the higher ups but you know how that stodgy bunch can get on...political ramifications and all that. I will continue petitioning but I'm worried that every passing moment strings that poor soul closer to decay."

"A soul can decay?" she pressed as white washed screams flashed through her mind. He looked unsure of what to say reluctantly shook his head yes. "Then I know exactly what I must do now"

They both knew what she needed to do and who she needed to see. With a steadying breath she quit the room in search of the witches.


The Malfoy estate had not been so ravaged by war reparations that it was humbled. It was still as stately and domineering as it had been on that dark night so many years ago. The "mudblood" scar on her arm burned as she got nearer to the estate but she pressed forward. The wards surrounding the home must have been set to cover the entire area circumventing it because before she could reach the gate, a house elf appeared.

It was not particularly taciturn or welcoming and did not speak. It beckoned her forward through the gate with a knobby finger and promptly turned toward the front door without seeing if she would follow. She hurried behind the poor thing with rigid resolve. She would get to the bottom of this.

She was led through the front entrance like an expected guest and led into an intimate parlour with blushing wallpaper and peony covered arm chairs. She guessed this was Narcissa's intimate receiving room as she already saw two saucers with hot tea laid carefully atop a glass coffee table. She spotted the white writing desk off in the corner as she continued to look around. The papers were laying in a messy pile as if someone had hastily stacked them together in the hopes of appearing neat. Upon closer inspection, she noticed deep scratches in the wallpaper near an obscure corner by the fireplace as though a jailed mad woman had been counting down her prison days with a shiv or fingernails.

The door popped open with a bit too much force and Narcissa's face was splotchy underneath several dabs of facial powder. Her eyelids were red and slightly puffy as though someone had done a bad job of incanting a beauty spell. Narcissa's frame was wraith thin in form fitting robes. Her blonde hair was deeply white at the root as though something monumentally scary had spooked the color directly off her head. When she sat down next to Hermione in a poor attempt to maintain her elegant style, her foot wobbled and she ended up falling gracelessly into her seat.

Flushing deeply without comment, Narcissa took her hot drink and sipped it daintily. Her hands shook as she attempted to place it directly on the saucer. And she ended up spilling the liquid across the side table. Hermione averted her eyes as she knew how humiliating this must all be for a well bred and well trained woman. The quiet between them grew more uncomfortable as Hermione deliberated on how to proceed.

"You've seen him." Narcissa said bluntly. Her eyes were wild and her face was coldly set.

Sputtering with anger, Hermione growled like a challenged tiger, "You knew."

Narcissa tightened her jaw. "I refuse to apologize for protecting my son."

"It's all the same with you lot. So long as it's in pursuit of your dead son, damn the rest of the world." Hermione tumbled to her feet like a ferocious wild cat. "You could have consigned me to death too. Not that it matters to you."

Narcissa's eyes flashed ruthlessly but she did not speak.

"Furthermore, luring me in blindly hardly serves your purpose. If I had been killed too, no one would be looking for your boy." Her hands were on her hips in her know-it-all stance. She was full of righteous rage.

"I knew you wouldn't willing go save him if you knew the truth but I had to devise away for you to be a willing participant. It wouldn't work otherwise."

"You talk as though he's a living person to be saved." Narcissa simply looked at her as though Hermione was the thickest woman in England. Hermione glared in response although feeling as though the conversation was rapidly getting away from her. And what truth was she supposed to have known? She felt hot in her chest with all she didn't know.

"Daphne was right to suspect you." Narcissa said as she roughly rose from her chair and swept over to her writing desk. She grabbed the stack of unkempt papers and began flinging them around the room like a desperate farmer shucking dried seeds wildly upon barren earth and praying for rain. Hermione saw each page was covered with crossed out names and small margin notes that looked to be written by a hungover chicken.

"Can you imagine the time I've wasted!" Narcissa shrieked as she angrily swept her hand across her writing desk forcing her quills and ink pots on to the floor. "The shear power it took to obliviate en masse!" Narcissa continued yanking at precious mementos like framed photos and enchanted glass figurines that shrieked as she smashed them. She began kicking and scratching as she fell apart. She retreated into the damaged corner of the room (where Hermione had seen scrapes in the wallpaper) and Narcissa proceeded to fall on the ground and claw at the wall paper like a cat hooking its nails into a tree. Hermione, unable to see any creature in pain, approached the woman like she would a beeping bomb. Hermione dropped down to one knee in front of Narcissa like a dashing knight pledging allegiance to a neurotic tiger prone to histrionics.

"Go to him." Narcissa pleaded abruptly with some semblance of lucidity in her eyes. Narcissa whipped back to the mangled wallpaper and yanked hard on one loose piece of wallpaper and revealed a slip of blank parchment hiding between the wallpaper and the wall. She pressed the paper into Hermione's hand with one sharp index finger until her nail and the paper sunk deep into her palm flesh-producing blood. At the touch of her blood, symbols she could not identify began to appear on the paper. At the end of her strength, Narcissa released her and Hermione tried to pull the paper off but the paper immediately burst into flames. She blew furiously at the fire on her skin until the ashes of the paper whispered away leaving a brand of the symbol burned into her skin like a farmer's initials on a milk cow.

With a stretching smile that peeled across her whole face, Narcissa said, "Better to go on your own accord than to have them searching for you." Narcissa nodded to indicate the brand on her palm. "The Indrik are masterful debtors and they always collect."


Looking back, she'd wished she'd never told them. Ron was a thrashing ball of hate, Harry looked visibly sick and Saul looked like ever the rumpled academic.

The group sat in Harry's living room with worn bodies and a plethora of books, tomes and manuscripts scattered on every surface. While Saul collected books from his private collection that may have some useful information, Hermione explained the full story to Ron and caught Harry up to speed. Luckily, Saul popped through just before a big row erupted between the three of them. Saul, a practiced professor, put them all to work searching for clues to help Hermione out of this mess. It had been several hours with several book runs from various libraries but little had been found save for one obscure passage in an old manuscript.

Once forged, a blood pact was sealed with the old words. And should a bargainer fail to hold up her end of the deal, the Indrik would drag the person down to Irkalla for judgement. From their collective think tank, they'd surmised Irkalla was an afterworld and the branded symbol laid out a contract she had nonconsensually accepted. A contract she could not read. Sadly, there wasn't an Indrik to English translator's dictionary lying around to help flesh out the details.

The mood was plummeting with every chime of the hour and the dogged no's and absolutely not's were sounding more and more brittle. They all knew the inevitable. And Hermione was tiring of running.

It had been several minutes since anyone said anything and it gave her a moment to reflect. Her righteous fury had capsized and she was left adrift. The reality was pressing on her and so too was Draco Malfoy's broken face. She hadn't allowed herself to think on him for the past two days. It would jimmy her moral compass and unlock her highest, most self sacrificing nature. She had kept it safely hidden but now as the adrenaline of the past few days settled, she felt her better self being pried open with butcher knife. She couldn't leave him there.

"Bugger that." Ron bellowed suddenly. He caused the other members to jump out of their own reveries.

"What's that?" asked Saul.

"Come again mate?" asked Harry.

Ron hopped from one foot to another while gesticulating wildly. "I can feel the martyr oozing out of you! It's SPEW all over again!" Hermione blinked like a feverish barn owl.

"I see it and I say no!" He pounded his palm on the coffee table while glaring at her. Harry's twin expression told her he too knew what she was thinking of and was equally displeased. Saul, unaccustomed to the trio's dynamic, looked aghast at Ron's display.

"I don't know if he's dead, alive or something else entirely but he is in unbelievable pain," she said quietly, "regardless, I have been tricked into some sort of bargain that must have something to do with going back through the amulet. I really don't want to see what Indrik bounty hunters look like."

As she spoke, she tore off her turtleneck jumper to reveal a cotton shirt underneath. The room had gotten too stuffy and hot. As she undressed, she heard audible gasps from the men. She followed their eyes and looked at her chest. She saw something unusual and ran to the framed mirror on the wall. She tore at her neck as she saw her reflection. Two fat red lines sat at the base of her neck like crude tattoos. And the color was deepening like blood bubbling up to the surface of scraped skin.

Saul vowed to force the ministry's hand and take this case or risk losing his services. Ron swore and flew in looping circles out behind the house. Harry held her to him like his own child. But in the end, they allowed her to go into the amulet.

She went into a spare room and closed the door. She did not want them to watch her being sucked into the afterworld. They were under strict instructions to not pursue her or interfere. After she'd gone, they would keep the door locked until hopefully the unspeakables figured out how to transport the amulet back to the ministry for testing (and safekeeping of course).

After she'd said her goodbyes and locked the door, Hermione grabbed a pillow and held it close to her body. When she'd gathered the nerve, she touched the amulet's charm and allowed her body to pulled across realities and then up and then down until she was back in the Indrik's forest. Not willing to let her fear catch up to her resolve, she ran to the clearing.


She saw Malfoy still chained. She did not see the Indrik hiding in the bush. She looked around and around but saw no sign of the beast. She did spot hoof prints like craters leading away from the clearing. She went to Malfoy. With a more focused look, she saw that the chains were cutting through his skin, down to the bone. She could easily hear his gut twisting screams from far off but up close the sound chewed through her eardrums and spat angrily into her exposed mind. The sound was so unbearable that she could not think. In a sandstorm cacophonic shrieks, she began to panic. Desperately, she tried to shake him or snap him out of it but nothing worked.

Her eyes darted from side to side and she bounced with indecision. She felt like grabbing her hair. "What to do? I don't know what to do!" She took shallow breaths and felt rooted to the spot. And she could not think decisively over his cries.

Deciding direct attacks were the best trial and error, she went over to him, grabbing his head between her hands like a sandwich. She tilted her head to look directly into his eyes. His eyes began to shift towards hers. "It's me, Malfoy. I am going to get you out," she screamed with feigned confidence.

She began bouncing from foot to foot. Her anxiety was a grim dance and her un-rhythmic stomping a poor relief. She looked about her wildly trying to infuse some plan into her scream-filled brain. She spotted the typical forest accoutrements: leaves, heavy brush, woodland plants and fungi scurrying about the forest floor but nothing of much use. How to break him out of his...what? Well exactly what was his issue? Was he trapped in his own mind? Was he a tortured spirit? Was this what happened to the soul of dementor victims? Souls screaming as the cataclysm split their souls from their bodies? What sort of affliction was he under?

Those answers would not come in this dark shroud of blood thinning death. Only a calm and quiet discussion of what had brought him so low would shed any light on both their fates. She had a feeling she couldn't break him out of his spell so easily especially not understanding what manner of torture he was being subjected to. She missed not being able to hear his shrieking. Feverishly she wished she could knock him out cold. And so, with a shameful sigh, she did.

Unsure if her magic would make any impact on this spirit world, she whipped out her wand and stupefied him. He went limp immediately and ceased his haunted howling. The quiet that proceeded was harrowing. It was as if all air and particles had suddenly ceased to move. She imagined it was what living inside a piece of glass felt like, eternally still and immediately fragile.

She scraped her hands over her face, neck and hair vigorously as she tried to come up with some plan. Hermione had slipped into this metaphysical conundrum without any real idea of how she was going to save Malfoy or herself. She'd always been praised as the steadying hand amongst her group of friends, never running off with only a wand and an ideal to feed her. Now look at her, acting with bravado like an idiot. She would never resolve to such childish antics again.

Meanwhile, there she was with a limp body and a soundless atmosphere. There were no sounds to frighten or comfort her. Birds calling home, streams traveling swiftly, rushing wind searching for relief- all were absent. And the light that wafted onto the ground, as though taking a steamy, leisurely bath, was diffused and unassuming. She realized that the color, intensity and position of the light had not changed since she'd arrived and was exactly the same as it had been upon her first visit. Pushing her head from side to side like a champion swimmer, she examined the area. Nothing was any different from before as she compared her mental image of the area with her present viewing. Not even an errant acorn could be seen out of place. Like a fawn frozen in fright, her body stilled at the lack of life and chaotic movement that typically accompanied the presence of all natural things. She was in a mausoleum, a place for the eternally still. Suddenly she wished for a sound or a moving object in the breeze. She even wished to hear Malfoy's soul scraping screams. Anything would be company.

Her breath came out in staccatoed jerks. She wobbled on her legs as she searched for any markers of the living- a dangling tree branch, the caterwauling of an errant owl, grass being broken by hooves. No sounds or sights of life. Only increasingly loud silence welcomed her. Her legs shook a bit too much and her body began seizing roughly. In a moment of clarity she realized she was having a panic attack. And so Hermione, like a broken-winged swan, fell elegantly atop Malfoy's still form.

How much time had passed was unknowable as Hermione roused from her blackout. The hazy light above her had not moved directionally or lessened in intensity. She could not tell the passage of time by it. She imagined animals felt similarly; being distrubed to find their feeding grounds decimated by steel mouthed predators with metal feet and all encompassing fire, not understanding that it was human industry at work. She was a small rodent watching with dazed eyes as beings of higher power shuffled around her perceptions of time and space without a thought to her comfort.

She was thick with sweat and cotton mouthed as she rolled off of Malfoy's body. She checked to see if she'd suffocated him because she wasn't sure if spirits (or whatever he was) could be killed again. His chest moved up and down and her stupefy had not worn off. She must not have been out for very long as the spell had not yet lapsed. Now that her episode was over, she felt sluggish and yet renewed.

If she did not come up with a solution, who knew how long she had before she was permanently stuck. She wasn't even sure if that was a thing. She knew so little and felt herself reaching a wall. She needed a lead or direction to go in. She had no books to consult or tomes to pour over. She was in the wilderness with no guide.

Her mind in turmoil, she began to feel that now familiar feeling of panic and anxiety clawing at her throat again. She was completely alone. And nothing was safe. Her eyes traveled at lightning pace. Had the light above her always been so cloudy? Had that treeline always been so close? Was the forest closing in on her? Mindlessly she backed away from the copse of silent trees staring at her like rigid sentinels ready to fire on the ready.

Immediately she fell over Malfoy's foot and landed directly on her back. As she stared up into the sky that resembled a smoky plume, she accepted that she was not actually alone. She had Draco Malfoy and that could make all the difference. A choking laugh escaped her dry lips. Of course.

Hermione had not had much use for the divine art of legilimency since her school days traipsing through the countryside like a common criminal in search of salvation. Needless to say, she was a bit rusty. Time was squeezing between her fingers and she did not have the patience to sift through Malfoy's mind like a fine meshed sieve to find one kernel of information. That would have to come later. She needed to know how to revive him- the sane version of himself- not the cursed spirit she'd happened upon.

After practicing her wand work and her spell casting voice, she gripped her feet to the forest floor, relaxed her casting arm and breathed out from her belly- producing a hefty sigh. Without preamble, she directed her wand at his grimy head and cast her spell.

Instantly, she was surrounded by the acrid damp smell that had greeted her upon her arrival in this netherworld. The smell wound its way throughout Malfoy's mind like a viral infection. That stench colored all of his wisps of thoughts, snapshots of thoughts and slivers of memory in a decrepit, sickly putrescence. She gagged mentally and feared that rotting smell would forever coat her mind. She tore through his memories in a frenzy but only heard his echoing screams and his tattered musings singing in a discordant harmony. If only she could see the Malfoy from before he was dragged into this hell. She felt rather than saw that the old Malfoy was underneath all of this madness and desperation but she was becoming too ill to continue. She felt herself melting into his fractured mind-stream and she feared she would not be able to climb out. She withdrew from his torrential mind-scape in a tumble of stunted screams.

Gasping for air, she spat and coughed and hacked to get that stinking yellow madness out of her mind. It took several long moments before she was able to function properly, even then that smelling color was still faintly present behind her eyes. She knew then that Draco Malfoy could be of no help to her. If his mind was assaulted with such torments, she could understand his arrested screaming. She had never experienced such all encompassing hell. She pitied Malfoy then; to be trapped in the prison of one's own mind must surely be a deeper punishment. This Malfoy was no use to her.

And like the soft embrace of mother, the answer sweetly settled around her. This Malfoy was indeed unhelpful. His brain was so poisoned that nothing could escape it. An old version of Malfoy would not have such problems.

Hermione spent a few moments rummaging through her store of varied knowledge before creating a makeshift spell out of threadbare latin and tattered proto-Germanic roots. She swivelled her body towards a tree drooping with age and uttered her cobbled up spell. The tree limbs quickly wound upwards like an old jack-in-the-box being wound back into its container. The tree trunk, like a saggy unused balloon being blown into with hot air, blossomed and bloomed from its withered, wizened state into a slightly smoother, younger shape. Hermione smiled.

After practicing her spell on as many trees and branches as she could, Hermione turned to her companion. His jaw was beginning to open and she saw his eyes twitching behind his thin eyelids. The stupefy was dissolving. The time was now. He'd already been under too long. She grated her teeth sharply as her wand wobbled in her hand. She pointed it at his forehead before clenching her eyes shut and yelling her new spell, "Mutabilis Forana Gamundiz!"

Malfoy's body trembled slightly. The deep lines scrawled into his forehead were softening and his shaggy, unwashed face seemed to redden prettily underneath all the grime. His eyes opened in a heartbeat and he was on his feet in another, pushing her wand away from his face as he did so. His back remained slightly hunched as his weak legs strained to keep him upright against his thick chains. His skin was drawn back like corpse's and his cheeks were sunken and hollow. His eyes were straining and red like he'd been crying for days. In one instant, his skeletal form took her in. His eyes were dry and parched like a Savannah too long without water- dried and crackled.

'It's too late for you now," He said abruptly as though it was the most singular thing he had or would ever utter to another living creature. A cold heat rapidly zipped up her arms and back. His voice came out in a strained gargle as though his vocal chords had been first ferociously plucked and then violently snapped in two, which she supposed, they had.


Thank you all so much for your continued support. It means so much to me. I apologize for any errors! I tried my best to edit but I, of course, probably missed something.