It took a long time for Hermione to wake up. Her eyes were full of groggy dust and her limbs were heavy with sleep.
As soon as she realised that, she jerked the rest of the way into wakefulness with enough speed to give her whiplash. She hadn't slept in years; since she'd first met Gellert in the past. She'd forgotten how it felt to wake up sleepy and foggy and for it to take a couple of minutes for all her senses to come back online.
She blinked rapidly, throwing her hands out with her magic to find out what was gone, what was wrong.
There was no response. That burning pit within her was gone; severed, missing. Not exhausted... gone, like she was a muggle.
Her heart rate picked up, her breath coming in short gasps. What had happened? Where was she? Her head pounded and the dark world spun around her.
A hand brushed against her face, cool and small. The hand of someone else not yet fully grown. The hand hesitated then poked her chest, felt down her arm and then grabbed her reaching hand. It squeezed reassuringly.
Hermione blinked again but failed to make out anything in the darkness, and it was even more disorientating without her magic to act as a sixth sense. The hand squeezed again, and then Hermione heard the exaggerated breathing, echoing around what sounded like a large stone room.
She copied the breathing pattern until her own slowed and the world stabilised. The hand holding hers rose, bring Hermione's up until she touched the cool skin of the other person's face. It was a girl; her hair was matted and untidy, but even then it was almost certainly long enough to belong to a traditional witch. The cheekbones and jaw were gaunt enough to suggest severe malnutrition.
Feeling more grounded, Hermione reached out to either side of her, feeling the cold stone. Rough, massive slabs of stone made up the floor and walls with distinct and damp crevasses between each course join. She was probably in a castle of some sort, and it was one that had been poorly planned or maintained if it was this wet. Wet dungeons inevitably led to sinking foundations and eventually the entire castle would collapse.
She tried to ask the other girl if she knew where they were, but as soon as her mouth opened it was like she'd been punched in the face. It was like her teeth had been knocked out and she'd bitten her tongue at the same time. Her hand flew up, expecting to find blood at the least, but to her shaking fingers every tooth was solid and she tasted no blood on her tongue. It took several seconds for the abrupt pain to fade.
So it was a spell; one to stop her talking.
The other girl tugged at her hand and Hermione found herself crawling across the floor to another wall. A cool breeze brushed her face and Hermione reached up, staggering to her feet with the support of the wall. Her exploring fingers found the ledge, walking along it like a spider until they found several frigid metal bars. She followed the small window up and around, discovering that it was barely big enough to fit a cat through, but if she pressed her cheek right up against the bars she could see a single twinkling star, surrounded by a spattering of more distant specs.
She was in the past, wherever she was; the sky was never that clear in her time. Even places as remote as Scotland were polluted by the lights of cities and it was incredibly rare that anything other than the brightest stars showed.
That meant she hadn't woken up in her usual time for some reason? Had Tom Riddle done something in revenge for burying his book? Or perhaps with the chamber opened and the creature on the loose, it had continued to follow whatever directive had been last given to it, and she had been the victim? Petrification would explain why she'd never woken up, but it seemed awfully coincidental that it would happen exactly when she was attacked in the past - she would have been in bed in her Slytherin dormitory, surrounded by pureblood girls. It would be an incredibly risky place to attack her.
So, if she considered the unlikeliness of that then perhaps it was her missing magic that was holding her in the past?
She remembered being attacked - or, she remembered the complete lack of any attack. One minute she was searching for the Elder Wand in the woods with Gellert and Berg. She'd cut her way through a thicket of brambles, then she remembered nothing. That kind of abrupt cessation of memory could only mean that she'd been silently stunned.
Unable to glean anything else from the minuscule patch of stars the window afforded, she slid back down to the cold floor. The other girl pressed up close to her and they shared the whatever warmth they could create as the dark room leeched it from them.
Hermione shivered her way through several interminable hours as the sky lightened. Her eyes, blown wide and adapted to the darkness could make out several other huddled figures in the cell. They all watched her with dark eyes, set in ghostly pale cheeks which were shadowed with hunger and suffering. Hermione swallowed, finally recognising the girl next to her.
It was Petrovna Dolohov, and across the room was her mother. The older Russian witch still wore her battle robes, emblazoned with the insignia of her position as the mother of the Baba Yaga. Another witch, much older, smaller and frailer than the others wore the same robes and Hermione guessed that she was the crone - Anna Atanasova. Her granddaughter, Nikolina, was huddled at her feet. Hermione only knew of the two by Gellert's descriptions of their silvery blonde hair, influenced by their Veela heritage. That meant that the younger witch in battle robes must be the maiden, which meant the whole Baba Yaga was somehow imprisoned with her.
How had she not already heard about this? This was not reflective of the rather victorious image that Lady Grindelwald had portrayed in her last letter and it was visibly clear that the Russians had all been imprisoned for a fair while.
The door slammed open, interrupting her thoughts.
Every eye jerked up, watching the man that entered.
He was richly dressed; a heavy brocade cloak that wouldn't have looked out of place in France, if the colours were pastel instead of black and crimson. He carried polished black cane that Hermione was ready to bet held his wand and had a sword strapped to his waist. It was decorative, but the hilt looked solid enough that Hermione reckoned she could still do some damage if she could get her hands on it.
She wasn't given the chance as two pestilences shuffled past and grabbed at her shoulders, dragging her up by the scruff of Gellert's jacket. She fought briefly but one of the creatures backhanded her with it's foul smelling fingers and she fell limp, acknowledging that she wouldn't win. Pestilences had only their master's command as their objective and they would work towards it with no regard to themselves. The two that carried her had clearly neglected their own health already - unwashed and stinking, the one who had backhanded her had ragged fingernails with infected nail beds that made her gag.
She managed to get her feet under her as she was led out of the door and down a dimly lit corridor to another door at the end. This one was solid metal; pitted and rusted and it screeched loudly as the wizard shouldered it open.
Even without her magic, Hermione could tell that the room was designed for some horrendous dark ritual. A large, flat slab of crystalline stone took up the centre of the room and oversized manacles hung from thick rings driven into the corners. She would be spread eagled across the slab once the bindings were fastened. The wizard drew her wand and pointed it at Hermione. Defenceless, she had no way to resist.
'They say...' The man purred as his pestilences forced her down on the slab and tightened the binding painfully around her wrists, 'that you are the most powerful witch in a thousand years.'
Hermione couldn't reply, bound by whatever spell silenced her.
'This room is rather clever, you see; it will use your magic to power the wards. It will drain your continuously replenishing strength as your body eats itself alive in an attempt to sustain your magic.'
She couldn't shudder - her arms were stretched agonisingly over her head.
'I think it's really rather poetic - every single strike your nasty mother makes against the castle will be killing her own daughter.' The wizard continued as he pulled out a vial of pale, silvery liquid and a paintbrush. He used a small knife to cut her shirt open and exposed her stomach to the freezing air. Then he began to paint on the blank canvas of her skin; the silver liquid burned as it touched her; the cold burn that had enveloped her hands when she'd helped her grandfather peel stickers off a shelf when she was young and had accidentally spilled acetone.
'We will see, I suppose, whether you really are as powerful as they say. If you are, even the Lady Grindelwald won't be able to break through.'
He stepped back, evidently finished. Hermione refused to look at him, knowing that his expression would be unbearably smug. She knew that she was not as strong as Lady Grindelwald individually - perhaps in time she might be, but she was still a witchling. But if this spell could also draw on the strength of her sect... Hermione was far stronger. Either she would die in the next assault on the wards or she would remain on this slab forever.