Hermione opened her eyes. She was standing in her library, but at a strange vantage point. She seemed to be suspended above ground, directly across the room from her beloved set of reading chairs. Their familiar, worn appearance comforted her. Rubbing the sleep from her eyelids, she started to walk towards the bookshelf on the opposing wall. As she stepped forward, she felt a strange fabric wrap itself around her body, constraining her movements and pressing her body back, keeping her from moving out towards her chairs and her books.
To say that she was startled would have been an understatement. She pressed a hand forward, and watched as the image of her study wavered, bending, as if she were looking through a warped glass. The bookshelf across from her expanded, stretched, and shrank again.
Panicking, she began to smash both her fists into the net. It was some sort of illusion, some enchantment. Break it, break it, she whispered fiercely. Someone must have captured her, stolen her away from home…
Home. Draco was at home. He was probably searching for her frantically. He had gone off on a top-secret Order mission, demanding that she stay at home so that she would remain safe. How ironic that she was now trapped in some sort of an alternate reality, abandoned by her kidnappers.
She stopped pounding at the spell, consciously making an effort to keep from draining her strength. She could hear the lessons from Auror training. Conserve your energy, keep calm, and breath. She leaned sideways, to the left, assuming that whatever enchantment this was would catch her and hold her upright. Instead, she fell directly to the ground in an ungainly heap. She groaned and looked up and around at her surroundings. She had not realized that she was not actually in the library, but in an entirely separate room. She was startled by the pitch darkness of the chamber in which she now lay, and swiveling around to look at her library, she saw that she had a very limited view of her beloved bookshelves, seeing only a small portion of her actual collection.
Hermione took a deep, steadying breath, carefully organizing what information she had about her position. She stood and began to move her outer extremities. Fingers and toes, then legs and arms. She could move normally, she ascertained, but only away from that projected…image of her home. She was prevented from moving outwards by some sort of curse, which took form as an invisible fabric that constricted her movements. Did she have her wand? Checking her pockets, she found none. Of course. Her captors would not have been that absentminded or foolish. Au contraire, they seemed highly intelligent. She had never heard of a spell that kept its victim imprisoned in such a manner as she was now. Hermione prided herself on her extensive curse knowledge, and that she did not know of this one at all suggested great innovation and cunning.
But how could she have gotten here? She had been at home, waiting for Draco to arrive.
Hang on, no she hadn't. She had gone after Draco. She thought hard, willing herself to recall what had happened. Why would she have left home? Did she want to help Draco? Perhaps she had been captured en route to finding her husband.
Cursing her foolishness, she walked about the room to stretch her cramped muscles and looked about once more. That was when she noticed a small pinprick of light to her left, twinkling in the darkness. Squinting so as to be sure of an actual object, she became certain of the existence of…something. Hopefully another sort of window, as it would be helpful in ascertaining her environs. She began to walk towards the glimmer, quickly and with purpose. She was slightly unnerved with the lack of sound: she could not hear her footsteps on the floor, yet she could clearly feel shoes upon her feet. Some sort of noise elimination was in effect, or a charm to absorb any sound.
She was close to the light source now. She began to run, eager to get some answers to her questions, wanting to escape and find her husband. But when she reached the source of the warm glow she stopped, stunned into stillness.
There, in front of her eyes, was yet another room in her house. It was her bedroom, just as she had left it. She could see the coffee cup and the skewed newspapers on the bed stand, as well as the hastily thrown open doors to her walk-in closet. The drops of milk from her clumsy spill that morning were present on her dresser, and the folded laundry lay on her bed with her pink chemise on top. Everything was exactly the same, down to the very last detail.
She turned away and saw another light in the distance, to her left again. She broke into a run, a fresh feeling of panic beginning to take over. The feelings intensified as the complete and utter lack of sound- no footsteps, no pounding, no exhale, God – no breathing, am I breathing? - began to encroach upon her reasoning. Where could she be? Where was Draco, Draco, Draco-
She remembered that she had runn to her room when he had not returned by the promised time. She remembered hastily grabbing robes and knocking aside that morning's paper as she searched desperately for her wand. She remembered running out the door, running down the stairs, running, running until she reached the front hall to apparate away to her husband's side.
And then? What happened then?
She had now reached the next light: it was yet another room in her house. Oh Merlin, she was trapped in the walls of her own house. She knew it; she could feel it. She took off running again, coming upon room after room, with each passing by as a blur. She felt like she was driving down a highway, with her view blending into a mélange of color, swirling and incomprehensible
But something strange was happening. Her surroundings were changing. She was becoming aware of voices in the background, and there were occasional glimmers of color. The voices were more and more clear now, yelling for her to slow down, to stop. Now her footsteps were sounding, eerie in their ungainly rhythm, echoing off of unseen walls that were still shrouded in darkness. She gave a little scream. The next second held both relief and terror. She was breathing; she could hear herself exhale, but her captors must be coming after her now, and she increased the pace of her haphazard running. At her right was another room in her house, the front hall. Looking to her left, she saw that there was a wall of burgundy, and she stopped in surprise. When had the black faded away? As she waited, watching in shock, the burgundy began to take on a pattern, a complicated baroque design in a darker maroon that extended upwards until it stopped at - stopped at the ceiling? There was a ceiling here? Apparently so, and an ornate molding had begun to form at the conjunction of wall and ceiling, gold colored.
This was all becoming so frighteningly familiar. Hermione struggled to place the room, which she knew she had seen somewhere before.
She stood stock still as still more details began to emerge. Furniture was slowly shimmering into view, and the dark was further dissipating. She watched as a beautiful wood floor started to appear, beginning at the base of the detailed wall and spreading towards her like spilled paint, rolling forwards and unfolding, revealing itself lazily. A dresser with more gold appeared, as well as a Napoleonic set of chairs with a sofa. Now there was a beautiful, low coffee table, and a few lamps were materializing: she had seen all of these before.
And then, on the wall, a small black rectangle emerged. It stretched, pushing its dimensions further, and a picture frame began to take shape. Inside the gold plated frame, a picture was coming into view, a beautiful painting…
Hermione's heart stopped. She knew, she knew, she knew. She knew what was going on! She was in the walls of her house, but not in the way that she had imagined. Good Lord, she was trapped in the paintings. This painting hung in the front hall; she had passed it thousands of times on her way out of the Manor. But to be in paintings, she had to be, she had to be - oh no.
She was dead.
In her mind, she saw now what had happened to her earlier that night. Her stupid, reckless rush into the Death Eaters' safe house flashed before her eyes, along with her stupid attempt to curse them all. She remembered three simultaneous flashes of sickly green light as she heard Draco jump out from under what had apparently been an invisibility cloak as he shouted out her name. She remembered that wild, panicked expression in his eyes as he leapt for her.
Too little for too much, too late.
She wept now, in that horribly familiar room that was no longer just a hideously tacky painting, but the new home of her pseudo, faux attempt at living, and wondered at her stupidity. She was dead and alone, and Draco was gone.
She heard footsteps and leapt up, searching for a means to defend herself. But just as she began to open drawers, she heard the footsteps enter the room.
She swiveled, hands as fists and raised, and upon seeing who had entered, sobbed with relief. There he was, in front of her, dressed in a suit, hands in pockets.
"Hermione," he whispered. "Hermione, it's alright. We're alright. I'm alright."
And it was just two more steps until he had her in his arms, and she was collapsing with grief and exhaustion.
He was here. He was dead. She was dead. They were dead together.
Trapped in a painting, frozen in time, forever and a day.