He makes his way across the room, banishes the padlock, opens up the hatch, and hands her the tray of food with a side of pumpkin juice. And, as usual, he passes the table and stands silently next to the entrance, staring at the wall opposite him.
It's the same routine every day. Sometimes Hermione will be mad at him or begging to free her. Sometimes she will tell him stories of her childhood, what her idea of a future is. The most fun part is guessing who he is and seeing a change in his stance for a clue.
He never looks at her while she rhymes off every Slytherin from her year, two years above and two years below. And the masked death eater doesn't flinch when she goes into detail of how she will erase him from existence.
She's fifty percent sure he's Theodore Nott. She had noticed his finger twitching when she was giving him her top three most hated, most liked, and hottest.
She has surely lost her marbles at the one-sided conversations, but if not the masked death eater, then she talks to herself, and there is only so much of your own voice you can take before you snap.
She wants her mind to do that, to snap.
At least Hermione would be able to close off enough to not feel the invisible touches of Marcus, the sounds he had made in her ear, or the cries for help that no one answered. Because he'd cast a silencing charm on the dungeon, no one ever came.
And now she has this person, someone who flinches if their fingers touch when he hands her the tray.
She must be mad to be thankful for him.
Hermione would blame her attempt at dissociation every time Flint forced himself upon her, but no matter how many times she had tried to have an outer body experience to vanish from what he had been doing to her, she couldn't.
He's pure evil.
And his face haunts her.
"Good news, friend. I had a dream about Potions, and I was top of the class again. Can you believe it?" Hermione says while stuffing her face with potatoes. "Slughorn even asked me to help out with the first years."
He stands, mute, staring at the wall on her right.
"Did you do something different with your hair?" she asks her masked friend, snorting to herself. She can't see his hair, or his face, or anything but his hands. "Can you bring me a nail brush and nail clippers next time? I swear, they are growing faster than usual, and blimey, everything is caught under them."
She picks at her nails, then looks at the death eater's hands.
Her stranger is rather pale, she notices.
But he has nice hands. She wonders how many Muggleborns he has killed with them.
"Did you like potions? Oh, let me guess, you talked too much and didn't pay attention. You always talk too much."
She gulps down her drink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, shoving her matted hair away from her face.
"You really need to fix that drip. Merlin, I'm certain I can hear it morphing into music. If you listen carefully, can you hear it, too?"
She leans towards the drips, bobbing her head to a song she learned in second year.
Not a single word from the death eater. Hermione wishes she could throw the tray at his head.
Thankfully, before he leaves her in darkness once again, he wandlessly banishes the mess within the cell, the bucket she relives herself in, the vomit in the corner, before she feels tingling between her nails. Looking down, she notices the dirt and blood stuck in her cuticles are gone.
So he was listening.
The next day is the same for her. And the next, and next, and next. She has no idea how quick or slow time has been passing by, but the rain is torrential, the dripping is becoming unbearable now. A small puddle has formed on the floor, and it's slowly making its way toward her side of the room. Soon, she will be able to dip her hand in it and wash her face, maybe other areas that aren't being tended to.
She feels disgusting and foul.
If she is timing her days correctly, then her death eater will be taking her to the shower room today, and she will get five minutes to wash. All the while three of them will watch her scrub her naked body.
In the beginning, she felt sick not being able to see in the dark while others gawked at her nakedness, but now she couldn't care. They've seen her exposed, and she's been destroyed by Marcus. What else could happen to her?
If her new friend is Theo Nott, she remembers him being rather handsome. A Slytherin nonetheless, but he was extremely handsome regardless.
He didn't seem as evil as the rest, especially Draco bloody Malfoy.
She could only imagine what that cockroach of a boy is up to now, probably standing behind Narcissa while everyone does his dirty work.
Maybe Hermione will kill him on her great escape, for all the crappy things he had done to her and her friends over the years.
Yes, that seems like a great idea to her.
When the heavy shoes sound, she sits up again, breaking herself from mentally reciting one of the muggle books that prepared her for Hogwarts all those years ago, the Oxford history of Britain.
A second pair of shoes sounding has Hermione freezing all over.
Who is with him?
The room doesn't glow the way it usually does. No, it's bright, too bright. The flames of the candles nearly touch the roof as the new person nearly takes the heavy door off the hinges.
"The dark Lord has summoned you for your presence," an unknown voice comes from the second death eater while my friend stands by his side, hands behind his back. "Get up, Mudblood. Or I'll stun you."
She rolls her eyes, appearing unbothered. "Fine."
Hermione should be nervous, but she knows that it will only make whatever is about to happen worse.
Something that resembles a potato sack covers her head, hands bound as the two death eaters lead her to the great hall. The one on the right has a tight grip on her bicep, enough that she knows it'll leave a bruise. The other holds her delicately and doesn't tug her when she falls behind.
Maybe this is her friend. He has a familiar scent to him, but sadly it's nearly drowned out by the smell of death.
Hermione feels the coldness, the darkness, as soon as she hears the doors to the great hall open. She used to enjoy that sound, the clicking of the wood. Now it haunts her in her nightmares.
The bag is removed from her head, but she knows better than to look up. She knows if she does, she may catch a glimpse of who her death eater is, but she would pay for it under the Dark Lord's wand for defying orders to keep her head down unless told otherwise.
"Ahhh…" His voice makes her skin crawl. "Do you know why I've brought you before me, Miss Granger?" The way the monster says her name has her wincing, like poison on his tongue. She knows she'll not be getting back to her dungeon in one piece mentally, maybe also physically. "The Weasley girl, under veritaserum, has admitted that you were hunting Horcruxes before I defeated Harry Potter. Is this true? Are you the reason for my weakening soul?"
Hermione's body tenses, before nodding once, because what's the point in lying?
She braces herself, waiting for pain. And it comes not a second later as she looks up to see the young Tom Riddle standing from the chair Dumbledore once sat.
"Crucio!"