The dripping was driving her mad. She shivered but it was only her body reacting to the cold, she herself was much too numb to care about such a minimal thing as temperature. Her mind was somewhere else, reliving memories that were so awful and horrifying that she knew she was teetering on the edge of her sanity, staring down into the abyss of dark madness.

But she could blame the dripping for now. Drip Drip Drip. It never stopped. Just one leak of water somewhere in one of the cells, dripping away….forever….she just wanted to die already.

She was starving to death. At first they'd offered her food, trying to gather information, and keep her alive in case she might be useful. They didn't take long in figuring out that she would never help the Dark Side, she was as stubborn as she was clever, and that the side of the Light knew better than to risk any more men trying to save her. The sad fact was that she was expendable.

She didn't really care anymore. Her parents were dead. She'd watched her father die. She'd held him in her arms as he'd bled slowly to death, felt his body grow cold and lifeless…they'd stared at each other in disbelief as he died, neither completely believing it. They didn't talk, he only struggled to hold on fruitlessly and she only weeping silently and painfully. Her mother's dead body was beside them, flopped untidily on the floor in a grotesque manner, so dead and gone that Hermione hardly even recognised it and certainly couldn't look at it. When the last breath had left her dad's body, her world had seemed to grow dark and cold. Endless days seemed to stretch out in front of her. Days without her family. She'd never felt so alone in her life.

She heard the crunch of footsteps outside her door now. Heard the little intake of breath. She waited, but said nothing. Draco Malfoy. He would walk on eventually.

He'd only come into her cell once. She had expected him to be sneering, smug and delighted with his success over her – he'd won, hadn't he? Instead all she'd seen were two pools of grey weakness and regret.

"I'm sorry, Granger," he'd said. And it wasn't because he was in love with her, or that he'd suddenly reverted to the Light Side. He was sorry because he had experienced loss as she had and knew how much it hurt. And petty rivalries seemed to pale in comparison to it.

Draco had held her in his arms as she'd wept and wept for hours.

There was nobody else down here now. The Dark side had won, hadn't they? Soon, perhaps, they'd remember that she was down here. They'd dress her up, perhaps, and sell her off as some trophy to one of the loyal Death Eaters. Or maybe they'd just leave her starve.

For now, it was just her and Draco.

And they were both prisoners, really, and both very very alone.


I know this is short, there'll be more added soon, this is just to get me writing again!