Polls: Sorry – I haven't had the time to tally the votes yet, but all of you want her out and none of you (if I recall correctly) wanted her COMPLETELY batty.
I'll update my bio with the polls after my bath, but I just wanted to get this up for PrincessJulie-Potter 'cuz it's her birthday, and we December girls gotta stick together.
--
A/N: Wow…I think I might actually get those fifteen chapters in by New Years like I promised. Not to mention a little somethin' somethin' for Christmas. (Keep an eye out for that, btw) Enjoy the chapter.
--
--
"Morning Death."
The bundle of rags stirred and shifted, luminous eyes catching the torchlight from the back shadows of the six by six cell, and very cautiously the shape crept on silent hands and crouched legs out of the darkness and to the fringe of the light that penetrated the bars in a half circle. The shape didn't cross.
One lone hand reached out, stark alabaster beneath the film and grime, and crooked fingers – nails packed with white powder – clutched the lip of the wooden bowl resting against the door. It grated loudly against the stone floor as the lopsided bowl was dragged out of the light and into the safety of the darkness.
A high pitched squeal of laughter rebounded off the walls and the creature in the darkness flattened itself to the floor.
"Yu shouldn't be so loud," the giggler warned, pressing his long, sallow face to the bars. "They might hear you."
Glowing eyes widening in the reflective gloom, the shape grabbed its bowl and scurried back to the far wall, slipping over last night's waste.
The man howled with laughter, purple lips curled back over jagged teeth. The shaking creature's pink tongue darted out across its own teeth, reflexively checking their condition at the repulsive display.
"Death cracked quick." The straw-haired boy who'd awoken her leered. "You owe me dinner, Hyena."
The lanky man laughed deliriously, spittle dribbling over his stubble beard. Death hunched over her bowl and slopped the watery gruel furiously into her mouth to drown out the conversation and in the vain hope that it would put the smallest dent in her agonizing hunger. It didn't. Two bowls of gruel every third day was hardly enough to sustain a growing girl, and she spent a great deal of her days sleeping to escape the pain of her empty stomach.
When she was finished, she slid the misshapen bowl back across the stone and it clinged! to a stop against the bars.
"Lesse your pretty face, duckie," the blonde hissed. She shook her head despondently in the gloom and pressed her back flush against the wall.
The first night, Death had curled up against the bars to sleep, comforted by the dim firelight, and had been awoken by a scaled hand against her back and an acrid breath sucking at her happiness and turning her body to ice. She hadn't made the same mistake twice. In fact, she rarely ventured out of the darkened half of her cell, for feat that she'd be in reaching distance should one of the remaining Dementors appear.
The little light didn't seem so comforting now.
Blabber was awake now, screeching and hollering and banging her bowl vehemently against the row of bars. Scarecrow threw his lick-cleaned dish in her direction and the woman let out a petulant squawk.
Blabber, Scarecrow, Hyena.
Yes, she knew all their nicknames, though, she never used them. Actually, she hadn't said anything since that first night. She hadn't even tried. And, after all, what was there really to say?
Hyena had been the one to name her – said she was 'silent as the grave'.
They'd never called her by her real name, and she'd have bet her own dinner they'd already forgotten it. They'd forgotten their own, and the only thing she knew them by were their ridiculous nicknames.
Shuffling to the corner opposite the one filled with shit and mold, to the only place she kept remotely clean, her dark-adjusted eyes found the dark swaddle of cloth she'd torn from her robes. Carefully peeling back the sides, she unearthed her most prized possession.
She'd taken it when one of the human guards had been making his rounds of her cell block. He'd been tallying up how many occupants had "served their sentence" – exchanging each rotting body with a meaningless line of chalk.
As the man had passed by her cell, the broad stick of powder was deemed too whittled down to write with and had been discarded. She waited ages after the man had moved on, rooted to the spot and fixated on the small pebble of ivory sitting unwittingly at the edge of the torch's light.
Only when she was absolutely sure that he had moved on, did she slink forward and snatch it up into her hands. It was heavenly and god sent – a small piece of home in an unfamiliar place.
She'd used it sparingly at first, fearing that the tiny morsel of chalk she could only grip between her grimy fingernails would run out, but when each day passed and the size remained undiminished she expended her energy with fervor.
She didn't have her innocence to keep her sane like Sirius. She was guilty and she knew it, and only two things kept her from turning into the mindless monster in the cell beside her. The first was the knowledge that, without a doubt, she had done what she believed to be right. The second was a security blanket of sorts, but what did Hermione Granger turn to for comfort?
Her work.
"She's at it a'gin," Colonel crooned, as she lifted the chalk to the stone wall. He'd earned the nickname by camouflaging his face black every day, or so Scarecrow had rambled. She didn't want to know what he was using for paint.
Her chalk lines moved gracefully across the slick stone as she worked. From memory, she mapped out the Tempus spell she'd used to bring forward the Marauders besides its incantation and with deliberately slow and calculated drawings she began to dissect the ritual's components. Breaking it up into every tiny piece she hoped to be able to fashion a counter-ritual that would have the power to send them back.
She would spend the rest of the day mapping it.
At least, she thought it was the rest of the day. She had no way of telling time without windows, or clocks, or a time awareness charm, and each time she laid down to sleep it might have been for minutes or half the day.
The only sign of time's continuous flow were the meals; though, Death couldn't be sure if they were being delivered at the same time or really even every third day. It had bother her at first – not knowing – and she'd spent hours haranguing herself and counting off the seconds before she relented. The fact was time simply didn't matter here. It wasn't as if she had a freedom date to count down to, and the thought of ticking off the seconds to a lifetime sentence was rather depressing indeed.
Rolling the chalk between her fingers, she crouched down into the corner, continuing her list of ritual components all the way down to the floor. Her eyes had grown accustom to the dark and her writing, compared to the blind scribbling from the first days, had managed to be as neat and precise as always, despite the odd writing surface.
She drew an arrow from one line to another, paused, scribbled some odd symbol, then swiped the flat of her hand across the lot of it, wiping it all away and starting once more from the beginning.
After a very long time she felt the scrape of nails on stone, and looked in horror at the miniscule pellet that was all that was left of her chalk. She whimpered softly, looking longingly over the work left to be done. For a moment, her eyes moved restlessly between the two, hoping against hope that she'd somehow be able to make the chalk last.
She readjusted her grip on it experimentally and choked as the pebble cracked and threatened to crumble into a dozen pieces.
"What'sa matta, Death?" Colonel snipped, hanging through the bars. "Lost ya thought?"
Death scurried back to the clean corner and throwing herself to the hard ground, breathlessly lowered the chalk piece back into its cloth cradle like it were the holy grail itself. When it remained intact throughout its depository, she gave a sigh of relief and folded the ends back over it, hiding the precious parcel in the darkest shadows of the corner.
Dotted eyes looked back out at her from the rather lopsided head of a stick figure she'd drawn that first day as a protector of her sacred chalk. He and his equally sticky partner beamed idiot smiles from their painted faces and maintained their guardian stance on either side of the walls that meet in the corner.
"I bet you all dinner, she don't make it to the raid." Colonel looked expectantly down the row; at least as best he could with his cheek smashed against the steel rods.
"Hyena ain't got any dinner left," Scarecrow looked pointedly at the cell to his left and its occupant who broke into delirious snickers – amused by his own imminent starvation.
Still lamenting the loss of her prized possession, Death scrambled over the mold-slicked stones – the sound of her dry lips moving clearly audible as she mouthed the words across the wall trying to figure out where her next piece of chalk would take her. One line. Scramble. Scramble. Two more lines from another wall.
"POTTER'S SPY!" Blabber shrieked suddenly, and Death hit the floor instantly. Quaking with furious terror, the girl lay flush against the floor for a full minute – scarcely daring to breath. When there were no icy breathes nor the foul stench of rotting flesh she cautiously lifted her head beneath the tangled brush of her hair and got up into a crouch.
She froze there, like a rabbit sensing a wolf on its trail, and peered, wide eyed with luminous irises through the gloom and out into the light.
"Ickle wittle Death," Hyena chortled through a thick cough of phlegm and worse.
"Always does this." Scarecrow, apparently tired of the show, rattled the bars surreptitiously and flung himself to the floor to lay.
Another minute passed without movement from the girl and then...
Scramble. Scramble.
She was at it again.
He lips were like river reeds rasping and rubbing together in a faint and dismal sound. Keep working, keep working – that was the key.
Her prison mates ignored her.
"Coming, they're coming," Hyena chanted in a falsetto giggle. "Set me free, set me free."
"Shut up," Scarecrow snapped irritably. The Dementors had kept them all up the night before.
Scramble. Scramble.
"We trusting Blabs?" Colonel was pacing an odd hourglass shape in his cell.
"Shut up."
"Set me free. Coming, coming."
Rustle. Rustle.
"Bitch, whore!" Blabber shrieked. There was a loud thump! as Death careened into one of the walls. "Kill her! Kill her they will!"
"Set coming, free-free!" Hyena cackled gleefully, leaping and flinging himself about the small cell in a warped, demented dance, misplacing the words in his excitement.
Scramble. Rustle.
"SHUT UP!"
Death flew back into the filth ridden corner as if she'd been physically struck. There was a sound of tearing cloth as the seam of her robe ripped right down the side and then she was slipping into refuse and muck.
As her hands and legs sank into her own cooling defecation and she felt the mess slide between her fingers, Death's insides were screaming. It was disgusting and it was vile and she was covered in it.
Frantically trying to get free, she reached for the walls, but her dung coated hands slipped on the damp stones. In a panic, she dug her splintered nails into the crevices and heaved herself desperately to her feet. Their cruel laughter surrounded her as she stumbled free, feet squelching in the muck.
One hurried step and she was flat on her face, her worn Mary Janes failing her and losing traction against the spilled pile of filth. Vicious and spiteful the cells around her roared with a laughter that spilled across the hall as quickly as the demeaning story could be passed along.
She could feel is seeping beneath her skirt and nearly screamed. Slipping around in the shit and sick, she only succeeded in spreading it farther out into her small cell smearing mud like streaks and circles as her hands tried to find purchase. She was crying, the waste melting down her cheeks the only thing that made her aware she was doing so.
She finally found her purchase and gripped to the crevice in the wall with a newfound adoration. Sobbing pathetically, she was trapped between shying away from the bestial laughter of the others and the rank corner from which she'd just extricated herself. Her arms and legs were coated with shit and worse, staining the front of her robes as well, wide amber eyes peeking out from a face smeared with teary filth.
The smell was overpowering, nauseating, and oxygen depriving. Head rolling, she tried to breathe through her mouth. The moment her lips parted the slime rolled over her trembling mouth and dripped down her throat.
She retched violently and suddenly, purging the day's meal instantly from her system. The vomit seeped into her robes and dribbled down her chin as she choked and gagged out the last of the watery meal.
Stumbling two nauseated steps forward amid Hyena's insane guffaws and Blabber's unintelligible shrieks of 'filth', Death fell to her knees and screamed.
She screamed and screamed and screamed. The liquidated feces splattered to the stone floor in sludgy droplets as gravity pulled the refuse down her body, and still she screamed. The bile burned her throat and the tears burned her eyes, but underneath it all it was her heart that burned the most.
She screamed because Azkaban was killing her.
She screamed because there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Like a blaring beacon, light filled the hall, intensifying Blabber's disjointed crowing, but it was only the light at the end of a wandtip. Two stocky guards came running in with a woman guard just ahead of them. They stopped in front of Death's cell, because it was obvious her screams were the cause of their sudden investigation.
"What the bloody hell is the matter with you?" The woman barked fiercely, keeping a safe distance from the bars, but lifting her wand just high enough to cast a weak light into the cell. The screams subsided into wheezing breathes and then into silence.
Feral, and with the primal look Eve must have given God as he cast her out from Eden, a lone honey eye peered out from beneath the sepia torrent of curls before the mess of tattered clothing and grime sunk to the floor on its knees.
"Looks like the piggy wanted a bath." One of the men rapped his wand along the bars.
"Let's make it squeal again," the other hissed. A door banged open somewhere down the hall as if a sudden gust of wind had knocked the catch free on the latch. It ricocheted back shut.
Death clapped her hands over her ears as the wailing began.
The faces in the cells around her disappeared into the gloom, and even one of the guards looked uneasy. "Let's go," he insisted. "Those Dementors are nasty blighters."
The other man looked disappointed, but started off in the opposite direction of the slamming door. The woman gave Death one last sneer of superior contempt and knocked her perfectly shampooed blonde hair over her shoulder before stalking after her companions.
The wailing was getting closer and Death melted to the floor. Hand over hand, feeling as though the wails had drained her very strength, the sewage-slicked girl dragged and slid her body to the far wall where she curled up – back pressed to the freezing stones.
Terrified eyes watched the lines of mildew freeze in a cracking spider web, getting ever closer to her until she was surrounded by the sheen of ice and her breath was coming in short, fogged breathes. And then she squeezed her eyes frightfully shut. The tears started again and she curled up as tight as she was able – not even the smell of waste and vomit was worse than the creatures that stalked the corridor a scant six feet from her shaking body.
She knew they'd be reaching for her, even before she felt the fingers curling and drawing at her soul. It felt like a hundred thousand ants crawling across your bare flesh, and when they drew at you it was as if they were trying to pull the happiness straight through her skin.
Her eyes snapped open with a shuddering breath as they got a taste of her and beckoned the others to come and share the deliciousness of her happiness. They were crowded against the bars, scaled hands appearing from beneath the ragged cuffs of their cloaks and the brittle fingers curled into tight fists again and again. Death's body jerked with each pull at her soul and filth splattered unnoticed across the floor with each spasm.
She could see the terrible vision of Sirius falling through the veil, the attacks on her fellow DA members, the attacks on Hogwarts. Professor Lupin's bloody and mauled body – caught half transformed in his death, surrounded by the innocent Muggles he'd been loosed upon by Death Eaters. People were screaming in her head – each familiar and each with a matching face that ripped gasping sobs from her lips.
These memories had been too terrible to witness the first time. But that only attracted the Dementors more, and they brought the same scarring images forward again and again. Just like every time before.
Shrieking in tormented agony and despair, she reached out – fingers straining – to touch the childlike drawings. Ron was grinning dumbly at her, the chalk-line smile never faltering, and beneath his unique scar, Harry's smile did the same.
Another fist, another spasm, and another unwanted memory.
"Harry," she whispered, voice cracking. "Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry..."
She didn't want to be here anymore. She wanted to go home where it was safe and where Harry and Ron were. She wanted them to tell her how she studied too much, she wanted to watch them concentrating over a game of Wizard's Chess, she wanted to watch them play Quidditch again.
"Harry." She sobbed his name, desperately repeating it again and again like a sacred prayer.
They'd almost fed their fill off her. She recognized the blackness dotting her vision of the two chalk stick figures and the heavy weight against her wet eyelids.
She had no idea that miles away, her best friends were reading her letters and crying as well...
Thousands of miles away from home, Death's dirty tears slapped rhythmically against the stone in weak accompaniment to the sobs of her best friends in the silence of her room.
She whispered Harry's name one last time and pressed her fingertips to his blocky hand. She wished more than anything to have him there, with her in the dark cell, holding her dirty hand.
The Dementors moved off, leaving the broken and empty girl lying on the floor and creating a trail of wailing cells behind them. Shuddering with each heavy breath, she passed into unconsciousness just after a light pressure squeezed her hand. Her arm fell limply to the ground beside her.
There in that pitiful and disgusting heap of rags and filth, dreaming of screaming faces and bloody bodies, Hermione Granger turned eighteen.
--
Wah! I'm so mean to Hermione.
As always, hope to have the next bit up by tomorrow, who knows though…finals are next week and my teachers are pretty gay with last minute homework.
Just, fyi – I was seriously planning the last bit even before PrincessJulie-Potter told me today was her birthday. Honest. Kinda freaky. (But also what a coinky-dink) Coincidence; for those of you who don't speak my language
