"Harry, don't go, please! I'm serious this time!"
"I have to, Hermione. If I don't, he'll just kill more people."
"Including you! Harry, go to the hospital wing, your arm looks horrible and it's bleeding everywhere-"
"No! I'm going after him now!"
"Don't!"
Hermione shot up out of her fitful sleep. Cold sweat drenched the brown hair on her forehead, and her heart was beating furiously. Her eyes were swollen from crying, stinging as the cool air from the window touched them.
Wiping the perspiration off her face with the sheets, Hermione spotted a young man in the corner. It was a guard with his shoes off and his head lolled to one side in sleep. Ever so slowly, memories began to spill into her like warm molasses, coating everything that might have begun to feel pleasant.
Hermione shook herself from the thick daze. She was still in the hospital wing, but the curtain was gone. The only people in the whole room were her and the young guard, who had started to drool out of the corner of his mouth.
The bed that Harry had been in was made, and there was no sign that anyone was ever there, except a few trodden-on flower pedals.
For a brief moment, Hermione thought she was going to start crying again, but she didn't. She couldn't. She felt like a dry sponge, like someone had stolen all of the moisture from her body. Even if she wanted to, she would not have been able to force any tears out.
Hermione wanted answers, and realized that crying wasn't going to get her any, so she quietly slipped out from under the covers, making her way to the door. She could find someone to help her, even if Dumbledore and a few others weren't on her side.
She hadn't gone more than a few steps when a rather large brown bird perched itself on the windowsill. It started to squawk shrilly, eying the food tray next to Hermione's bed. The guard stirred in his chair.
"Shhhh!" Hermione hissed, and began to wave her arms above her head in an attempt to scare the bird away.
"Squawk!" it answered sharply.
Hermione groaned inwardly, and took another look at the guard. He wasn't sleeping so deeply any more; his socked left foot began twitching erratically. One sound more and he'd be fully awake, Hermione imagined. She quickly ran to the tray and ripped off a bite of toast and threw it at the bird. The toast sailed past the bird's head, and he flew away to get it. Hermione sighed in relief and put the remaining piece of bread back on the plate.
Her hand accidentally touched the glass of juice, and before she knew it, the floor was littered with shards of juicy, sticky glass. She silently cursed herself as the guard woke.
". wha--?" The guard's eyes drifted open and his unfocused gaze landed on Hermione. With his eyes half shut he smiled at her, and then let his head droop again.
Suddenly, as if just realizing that Hermione was out of bed, the guard jumped up and pulled out his wand.
"Watch out!" Hermione said, trying to warn him of the glass.
"Don't you move!" The guard said, pointing a finger at Hermione. "Stay where you are! I don't want any trouble!"
"But I was going to-"
"Don't move, I said!" He took a step towards her, and Hermione grimaced as his socked feet mingled with the glass.
The guard stopped, then looked down at his feet. His eyes widened as his blue socks began to soak purple.
"What did you do to the floor?" He exclaimed, backing into his chair where he started to examine his feet.
"I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn't listen." Hermione crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. She normally wouldn't have talked to an adult like that, but the guard couldn't have been more than 19 years old, and he was being rude. Hermione, careful not to step on the glass, sat on her bed and swung her legs to the other side, which was mostly glass-free, and walked over to the guard.
"What are you doing? Stay where you are." The guard was obviously very jumpy.
"Well I was going to help you with the glass in your feet," Hermione answered.
The guard looked at Hermione with a furrowed brow, as if unsure what to make of her. "Okay." he said with thick hesitation.
Hermione walked over to the chair and crouched to her knees. She began to take off his right sock when he gasped, bit his lip and shut his eyes. She paused, watching him with fascination and amusement.
He opened one of his eyes. "Well? Hurry up. It hurts!"
'What a baby,' Hermione thought as she peeled one bloody sock off, then the other.
"I'm going to need your wand," she said, holding out her hand. The guard didn't move. "Okay, fine. I'll just pull out every piece one by one."
"Okay!" The guard handed her his wand. "Just don't try anything funny."
"Don't worry, I lost my sense of humor years ago." Hermione waved the wand. "Detergeo!"
The miniscule shards of glass melted away and the skin healed instantly.
"There," She said, handing him the wand. He was reluctant to take it back from her, acting as if she would bite him if he wasn't careful. Hermione went back to her bed carefully and sat on top of it, pulling her knees to her chest. She could have run for it at any time while he was injured, but she reasoned that she wouldn't have gotten far after he had woken up. She sighed to herself, and glanced up. The guard was staring at her oddly.
"What?" Hermione said, shrugging.
"Nothing," said the guard, putting his wand away. "It's just, well, you're a lot nicer than I thought you would be."
"You've never met me before," Hermione said incredulously. "Do you always try to determine what a person is like just by watching them sleep?"
"No!" he said defensively. "But your reputation doesn't compliment your personality very well," he continued in a more calm tone, "that's all."
"Reputation?" Hermione let her knees down so that one leg was off the bed and the other was folded underneath her. "What do you mean?"
The guard raised one of his eyebrows. "You are a murderer. What did you expect me to think of you?"
"A murderer!" Hermione almost laughed. "I'm not a murderer. I don't know where you got that idea, but I definitely-"
"Albus Dumbledore told me." The guard crossed his arms. Hermione shook her head in disbelief. Professor Dumbledore wouldn't start a rumor like that.
"Well, you must have heard wrong," Hermione said, hands on hips. "I've never killed anyone."
"Right," the guard said, sarcastically. "From now on I'm going to believe you instead of Albus Dumbledore. He told everyone about how you've been trying to get him kicked out of the school."
"What?" Hermione exclaimed. "I would never-"
"Yeah, he told everyone," he interrupted. "You've been trying to keep it a secret for the past year, but he said you made some special deals with outside sources. I guess he didn't know that deal would include murder."
"You're making this up!" Hermione yelled. "This is just a big joke isn't it? Murderer. Ha! If I'm a murderer, then who did I kill?"
The guard's sarcasm dropped instantly and his lips became very thin.
"You killed Harry Potter."
Hermione stared at the guard. What did he mean she killed Harry? He didn't actually think that she would do something like that. of course, he didn't know that they were best friends.
"I would never do a thing like that," Hermione said with narrowed eyes.
"According to Dumbledore, you would, and did."
"Really? Well, listen Mr., uh, what's your name?"
"Josh Grumpki"
"Listen, Mr. Grumpki, I don't appreciate being wrongfully accused of killing my best friend!" Hermione was seething with anger. "You don't even know me! I wake up and you're telling me all this stuff that's happened all year, but the last thing I can remember happened on the Hogwart's Express! How would you feel, huh, if you woke up and your best friend was dead? Or better yet, you find out he's dead and everyone thinks you killed him!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Josh said shaking his head. "Calm down. Just calm down a minute." He seemed to become genuinely concerned all of a sudden. "What do you mean you don't remember?"
"I just don't remember." Hermione said plainly. "I don't know exactly why I don't. but I don't."
Josh looked at her curiously. "Professor Dumbledore told me that you might start trying to convince me of that."
"I'm not lying!" she said, almost pleadingly.
"How can I be sure?" Josh was obviously torn. Hermione could sense his need to perform his duty: guard the murderer, but she could also hear something in his tone of voice, something that was desperately hoping that she was telling the truth.
"Harry Potter was my best friend, I wouldn't just kill him, would I?"
Josh bit his upper lip and stared into Hermione's eyes, searching for the answer. He looked down, and shrugged. "I don't know."
Hermione groaned loudly and shoved her pillow off her bed harshly. She let herself fall onto the sheets. How could she prove to anyone that she was innocent? How do you prove that you've lost your memory? When someone thinks you're a liar, there's no way to tell them the truth.
Suddenly, Hermione jerked up.
"I know!" She said. "The truth potion! Oh, what's it called?"
She looked at Josh and shook her head with a total loss of the potion's name.
He shrugged and said, "Don't ask me, I dropped out of my wizarding school when I was 16." Hermione sighed. It wasn't like her at all to forget the name of a potion like that. Whatever it was that made her lose her memory must have been bad.
"Hey." Josh said, lost in thought. "Isn't there something you do to a wand to make it reproduce its last spells?"
"Oh yeah!" Hermione said, nodding. "Prior Incantato." At least she hadn't forgotten everything.
"If what you're saying is true, then your wand will be perfectly clean!" Josh actually seemed excited that there was a chance of clearing Hermione's name. Perhaps it was only because he was starting to believe her, or maybe because his kind disposition was beginning to show, but she was starting to trust Josh more and more.
"Listen," he said, leaning close, "I'm not really supposed to do this, but I can't think of another way to make it happen."
"What?" She asked.
"I'm going to try and get Prior Incantato performed on your wand," he whispered. "My brother is an Auror. I can tell him about it."
"Why aren't you supposed to do that?" Hermione whispered back.
"Because it's getting emotionally involved." He looked at the door to make doubly sure that no one was around. "Technically, I'm not even part of the case. I'm just the guard. But if I can convince my brother, he'll make it happen." Josh shot her a smile, which was surprisingly handsome.
For the first time since she had woken up, Hermione felt a surge of relief; it was like a huge weight lifting from her chest. She had the urge to give Josh a hug for everything. She managed to contain herself, though, and kept her celebrating to a minimum.
Then, Josh's words began to echo in her head strangely. "Emotionally involved." Did that mean what Hermione thought it meant?
She was about to ask him something, but he held up his hand to silence her, looking nervously at the door.
"Someone's coming!" He hissed. "Lay back down!"
Hermione threw the sheets over her legs, and picked up her pillow, which had fallen on the floor. Josh hurried back to his chair in the corner, trying to look alert, but not too alert.
No sooner had Hermione's head touched her pillow when the door to the hospital wing swung open. She closed her eyes, feigning sleep, which probably wasn't the best idea because she couldn't see what was going on in the rest of the room. She heard footsteps on the stone floor as a group of people entered the room.
"What's the problem, sir?" She heard Josh question, his voice deeper and authoritative.
"We're relocating, like I informed you of earlier, Grumpki," a baritone voice answered.
"Yes sir."
She heard more shuffling of feet, and someone prodded her back.
"Wake up. You're being moved elsewhere." Before Hermione had a chance to even pretend to wake up, she was pulled off the bed.
"Ouch!" The glass buried itself in the soles of her feet. They wouldn't let her away from the glass, so she kept stepping on it more and more.
"What is all this?" the burly man with the baritone voice asked. Pieces of glass crunched under his heavy shoes.
"Please! Ow! I accidentally dropped a glass of juice." Hermione tried to reach down to one foot, but a guard was holding both of her wrists.
"Accidentally, eh?" the huge man bent down a picked up a particularly large, sharp piece between his index finger and thumb. "This looks like it could be used for a weapon." He glanced sideways at Hermione.
Josh, who had been standing in the corner the whole time with a pained look on his face, pulled out his wand and walked over to Hermione.
"Hold up your foot," he said.
"What are you doing, Grumpki?" the large man asked skeptically.
Josh paused for a moment. "I don't think Dumbledore wants his hallways filled with bloody footprints, sir." Baritone Man shrugged, then nodded.
"Detergeo!"
Hermione felt her foot clear up and the pain diminish. Josh smiled at her barely, before straightening back up.
"Dungeons," The man boomed at the guard holding Hermione's arms. "He'll show you the way." He gestured to a withered old man standing at the door, a bony cat encircling his ankles. It was Mr. Filch. Hermione was pushed towards the door, and she had no other choice but to go. She did manage to look back at Josh, but his head was buried in his hands. There was nothing he would be able to do to stop them.
Hermione began to trip over her feet on the way out the door, but the man kept going, holding her arms tightly against her body.
'I'm being put in the dungeons,' Hermione realized. She remembered from Hogwarts, A History that the dungeons hadn't been used for imprisonment for over two hundred years. Professor Binns had taken his class on a mini field trip to the deep dungeons before. Hermione had actually seen the chains that were used to keep the prisoners against the wall.
She began to shake all over, and she felt her breathing become uneven. The ground looked so very far away. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. A growing rage began to replace her fear as they walked. She tried to yank her wrists out of the guard's hands, but they were inhumanly strong. She tried again, but the guard held even tighter.
Before then, Hermione had always felt that if the situation arose, she would be able to muster enough strength to get away from a person trying to force her somewhere. She had been severely mistaken. The moment she began to get violent, she heard wands being whisked through the air and spells going along with them. Her arms (which had begun throwing useless punches) were wrenched behind her back painfully, forming an X with her hands near her shoulder blades. It felt like there was a huge metal sheet wrapped around her whole torso, pinning her arms to her back.
"Don't try that again," the guard warned, a twinge of amusement ringing in his voice.
Walking down the stairs, Hermione's mind became more and more clouded. She wished Ron was there with her, or maybe even Josh. She could almost feel the hatred emitting from the guard like heat. With a rush of grief, Hermione realized that who she really wanted there was Harry. Harry would have been able to fix everything. Where was Ron? What was he doing to stop this?
Nothing. Hermione was alone. Josh was the only beacon of hope in a world that had turned black.
'Please do something, Josh,' Hermione silently wished. 'Please.'
"I have to, Hermione. If I don't, he'll just kill more people."
"Including you! Harry, go to the hospital wing, your arm looks horrible and it's bleeding everywhere-"
"No! I'm going after him now!"
"Don't!"
Hermione shot up out of her fitful sleep. Cold sweat drenched the brown hair on her forehead, and her heart was beating furiously. Her eyes were swollen from crying, stinging as the cool air from the window touched them.
Wiping the perspiration off her face with the sheets, Hermione spotted a young man in the corner. It was a guard with his shoes off and his head lolled to one side in sleep. Ever so slowly, memories began to spill into her like warm molasses, coating everything that might have begun to feel pleasant.
Hermione shook herself from the thick daze. She was still in the hospital wing, but the curtain was gone. The only people in the whole room were her and the young guard, who had started to drool out of the corner of his mouth.
The bed that Harry had been in was made, and there was no sign that anyone was ever there, except a few trodden-on flower pedals.
For a brief moment, Hermione thought she was going to start crying again, but she didn't. She couldn't. She felt like a dry sponge, like someone had stolen all of the moisture from her body. Even if she wanted to, she would not have been able to force any tears out.
Hermione wanted answers, and realized that crying wasn't going to get her any, so she quietly slipped out from under the covers, making her way to the door. She could find someone to help her, even if Dumbledore and a few others weren't on her side.
She hadn't gone more than a few steps when a rather large brown bird perched itself on the windowsill. It started to squawk shrilly, eying the food tray next to Hermione's bed. The guard stirred in his chair.
"Shhhh!" Hermione hissed, and began to wave her arms above her head in an attempt to scare the bird away.
"Squawk!" it answered sharply.
Hermione groaned inwardly, and took another look at the guard. He wasn't sleeping so deeply any more; his socked left foot began twitching erratically. One sound more and he'd be fully awake, Hermione imagined. She quickly ran to the tray and ripped off a bite of toast and threw it at the bird. The toast sailed past the bird's head, and he flew away to get it. Hermione sighed in relief and put the remaining piece of bread back on the plate.
Her hand accidentally touched the glass of juice, and before she knew it, the floor was littered with shards of juicy, sticky glass. She silently cursed herself as the guard woke.
". wha--?" The guard's eyes drifted open and his unfocused gaze landed on Hermione. With his eyes half shut he smiled at her, and then let his head droop again.
Suddenly, as if just realizing that Hermione was out of bed, the guard jumped up and pulled out his wand.
"Watch out!" Hermione said, trying to warn him of the glass.
"Don't you move!" The guard said, pointing a finger at Hermione. "Stay where you are! I don't want any trouble!"
"But I was going to-"
"Don't move, I said!" He took a step towards her, and Hermione grimaced as his socked feet mingled with the glass.
The guard stopped, then looked down at his feet. His eyes widened as his blue socks began to soak purple.
"What did you do to the floor?" He exclaimed, backing into his chair where he started to examine his feet.
"I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn't listen." Hermione crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. She normally wouldn't have talked to an adult like that, but the guard couldn't have been more than 19 years old, and he was being rude. Hermione, careful not to step on the glass, sat on her bed and swung her legs to the other side, which was mostly glass-free, and walked over to the guard.
"What are you doing? Stay where you are." The guard was obviously very jumpy.
"Well I was going to help you with the glass in your feet," Hermione answered.
The guard looked at Hermione with a furrowed brow, as if unsure what to make of her. "Okay." he said with thick hesitation.
Hermione walked over to the chair and crouched to her knees. She began to take off his right sock when he gasped, bit his lip and shut his eyes. She paused, watching him with fascination and amusement.
He opened one of his eyes. "Well? Hurry up. It hurts!"
'What a baby,' Hermione thought as she peeled one bloody sock off, then the other.
"I'm going to need your wand," she said, holding out her hand. The guard didn't move. "Okay, fine. I'll just pull out every piece one by one."
"Okay!" The guard handed her his wand. "Just don't try anything funny."
"Don't worry, I lost my sense of humor years ago." Hermione waved the wand. "Detergeo!"
The miniscule shards of glass melted away and the skin healed instantly.
"There," She said, handing him the wand. He was reluctant to take it back from her, acting as if she would bite him if he wasn't careful. Hermione went back to her bed carefully and sat on top of it, pulling her knees to her chest. She could have run for it at any time while he was injured, but she reasoned that she wouldn't have gotten far after he had woken up. She sighed to herself, and glanced up. The guard was staring at her oddly.
"What?" Hermione said, shrugging.
"Nothing," said the guard, putting his wand away. "It's just, well, you're a lot nicer than I thought you would be."
"You've never met me before," Hermione said incredulously. "Do you always try to determine what a person is like just by watching them sleep?"
"No!" he said defensively. "But your reputation doesn't compliment your personality very well," he continued in a more calm tone, "that's all."
"Reputation?" Hermione let her knees down so that one leg was off the bed and the other was folded underneath her. "What do you mean?"
The guard raised one of his eyebrows. "You are a murderer. What did you expect me to think of you?"
"A murderer!" Hermione almost laughed. "I'm not a murderer. I don't know where you got that idea, but I definitely-"
"Albus Dumbledore told me." The guard crossed his arms. Hermione shook her head in disbelief. Professor Dumbledore wouldn't start a rumor like that.
"Well, you must have heard wrong," Hermione said, hands on hips. "I've never killed anyone."
"Right," the guard said, sarcastically. "From now on I'm going to believe you instead of Albus Dumbledore. He told everyone about how you've been trying to get him kicked out of the school."
"What?" Hermione exclaimed. "I would never-"
"Yeah, he told everyone," he interrupted. "You've been trying to keep it a secret for the past year, but he said you made some special deals with outside sources. I guess he didn't know that deal would include murder."
"You're making this up!" Hermione yelled. "This is just a big joke isn't it? Murderer. Ha! If I'm a murderer, then who did I kill?"
The guard's sarcasm dropped instantly and his lips became very thin.
"You killed Harry Potter."
Hermione stared at the guard. What did he mean she killed Harry? He didn't actually think that she would do something like that. of course, he didn't know that they were best friends.
"I would never do a thing like that," Hermione said with narrowed eyes.
"According to Dumbledore, you would, and did."
"Really? Well, listen Mr., uh, what's your name?"
"Josh Grumpki"
"Listen, Mr. Grumpki, I don't appreciate being wrongfully accused of killing my best friend!" Hermione was seething with anger. "You don't even know me! I wake up and you're telling me all this stuff that's happened all year, but the last thing I can remember happened on the Hogwart's Express! How would you feel, huh, if you woke up and your best friend was dead? Or better yet, you find out he's dead and everyone thinks you killed him!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Josh said shaking his head. "Calm down. Just calm down a minute." He seemed to become genuinely concerned all of a sudden. "What do you mean you don't remember?"
"I just don't remember." Hermione said plainly. "I don't know exactly why I don't. but I don't."
Josh looked at her curiously. "Professor Dumbledore told me that you might start trying to convince me of that."
"I'm not lying!" she said, almost pleadingly.
"How can I be sure?" Josh was obviously torn. Hermione could sense his need to perform his duty: guard the murderer, but she could also hear something in his tone of voice, something that was desperately hoping that she was telling the truth.
"Harry Potter was my best friend, I wouldn't just kill him, would I?"
Josh bit his upper lip and stared into Hermione's eyes, searching for the answer. He looked down, and shrugged. "I don't know."
Hermione groaned loudly and shoved her pillow off her bed harshly. She let herself fall onto the sheets. How could she prove to anyone that she was innocent? How do you prove that you've lost your memory? When someone thinks you're a liar, there's no way to tell them the truth.
Suddenly, Hermione jerked up.
"I know!" She said. "The truth potion! Oh, what's it called?"
She looked at Josh and shook her head with a total loss of the potion's name.
He shrugged and said, "Don't ask me, I dropped out of my wizarding school when I was 16." Hermione sighed. It wasn't like her at all to forget the name of a potion like that. Whatever it was that made her lose her memory must have been bad.
"Hey." Josh said, lost in thought. "Isn't there something you do to a wand to make it reproduce its last spells?"
"Oh yeah!" Hermione said, nodding. "Prior Incantato." At least she hadn't forgotten everything.
"If what you're saying is true, then your wand will be perfectly clean!" Josh actually seemed excited that there was a chance of clearing Hermione's name. Perhaps it was only because he was starting to believe her, or maybe because his kind disposition was beginning to show, but she was starting to trust Josh more and more.
"Listen," he said, leaning close, "I'm not really supposed to do this, but I can't think of another way to make it happen."
"What?" She asked.
"I'm going to try and get Prior Incantato performed on your wand," he whispered. "My brother is an Auror. I can tell him about it."
"Why aren't you supposed to do that?" Hermione whispered back.
"Because it's getting emotionally involved." He looked at the door to make doubly sure that no one was around. "Technically, I'm not even part of the case. I'm just the guard. But if I can convince my brother, he'll make it happen." Josh shot her a smile, which was surprisingly handsome.
For the first time since she had woken up, Hermione felt a surge of relief; it was like a huge weight lifting from her chest. She had the urge to give Josh a hug for everything. She managed to contain herself, though, and kept her celebrating to a minimum.
Then, Josh's words began to echo in her head strangely. "Emotionally involved." Did that mean what Hermione thought it meant?
She was about to ask him something, but he held up his hand to silence her, looking nervously at the door.
"Someone's coming!" He hissed. "Lay back down!"
Hermione threw the sheets over her legs, and picked up her pillow, which had fallen on the floor. Josh hurried back to his chair in the corner, trying to look alert, but not too alert.
No sooner had Hermione's head touched her pillow when the door to the hospital wing swung open. She closed her eyes, feigning sleep, which probably wasn't the best idea because she couldn't see what was going on in the rest of the room. She heard footsteps on the stone floor as a group of people entered the room.
"What's the problem, sir?" She heard Josh question, his voice deeper and authoritative.
"We're relocating, like I informed you of earlier, Grumpki," a baritone voice answered.
"Yes sir."
She heard more shuffling of feet, and someone prodded her back.
"Wake up. You're being moved elsewhere." Before Hermione had a chance to even pretend to wake up, she was pulled off the bed.
"Ouch!" The glass buried itself in the soles of her feet. They wouldn't let her away from the glass, so she kept stepping on it more and more.
"What is all this?" the burly man with the baritone voice asked. Pieces of glass crunched under his heavy shoes.
"Please! Ow! I accidentally dropped a glass of juice." Hermione tried to reach down to one foot, but a guard was holding both of her wrists.
"Accidentally, eh?" the huge man bent down a picked up a particularly large, sharp piece between his index finger and thumb. "This looks like it could be used for a weapon." He glanced sideways at Hermione.
Josh, who had been standing in the corner the whole time with a pained look on his face, pulled out his wand and walked over to Hermione.
"Hold up your foot," he said.
"What are you doing, Grumpki?" the large man asked skeptically.
Josh paused for a moment. "I don't think Dumbledore wants his hallways filled with bloody footprints, sir." Baritone Man shrugged, then nodded.
"Detergeo!"
Hermione felt her foot clear up and the pain diminish. Josh smiled at her barely, before straightening back up.
"Dungeons," The man boomed at the guard holding Hermione's arms. "He'll show you the way." He gestured to a withered old man standing at the door, a bony cat encircling his ankles. It was Mr. Filch. Hermione was pushed towards the door, and she had no other choice but to go. She did manage to look back at Josh, but his head was buried in his hands. There was nothing he would be able to do to stop them.
Hermione began to trip over her feet on the way out the door, but the man kept going, holding her arms tightly against her body.
'I'm being put in the dungeons,' Hermione realized. She remembered from Hogwarts, A History that the dungeons hadn't been used for imprisonment for over two hundred years. Professor Binns had taken his class on a mini field trip to the deep dungeons before. Hermione had actually seen the chains that were used to keep the prisoners against the wall.
She began to shake all over, and she felt her breathing become uneven. The ground looked so very far away. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. A growing rage began to replace her fear as they walked. She tried to yank her wrists out of the guard's hands, but they were inhumanly strong. She tried again, but the guard held even tighter.
Before then, Hermione had always felt that if the situation arose, she would be able to muster enough strength to get away from a person trying to force her somewhere. She had been severely mistaken. The moment she began to get violent, she heard wands being whisked through the air and spells going along with them. Her arms (which had begun throwing useless punches) were wrenched behind her back painfully, forming an X with her hands near her shoulder blades. It felt like there was a huge metal sheet wrapped around her whole torso, pinning her arms to her back.
"Don't try that again," the guard warned, a twinge of amusement ringing in his voice.
Walking down the stairs, Hermione's mind became more and more clouded. She wished Ron was there with her, or maybe even Josh. She could almost feel the hatred emitting from the guard like heat. With a rush of grief, Hermione realized that who she really wanted there was Harry. Harry would have been able to fix everything. Where was Ron? What was he doing to stop this?
Nothing. Hermione was alone. Josh was the only beacon of hope in a world that had turned black.
'Please do something, Josh,' Hermione silently wished. 'Please.'