A/N4: Happy New Years!
A/N5: Since my full header is huge, I'm not going to post it every chapter. See the first chapter for all the disclaimers and all that good stuffs. Chapter specific warnings, word counts, and author's notes will be the only things in the header from here on out. Enjoy!
Word Count: 551/?
Day One
"So, what are you in for?" a witch with too bright eyes and stringy hair asked, perching on the arm rest of the threadbare couch Hermione was curled up on in the 'common area'.
"You make it sound like this is a prison," Hermione scoffed. She had been in the long term ward for all of less than an hour, and it had felt like forever. Maybe the weird, semi lucid girl was right - this was a prison.
"Did you skin a frog with your bare hands?" the girl half asked, half sang.
"No," she answered slowly, shaking her head. So much for the lucid, semi or otherwise.
"I did," she whispered, inching closer to Hermione's side of the couch, "and then I eats it."
"Don't let her bother you," another fellow prisoner, this one with black hair and a scraggly beard that reminded Hermione so much of Sirius she wanted to cry, "Frog-Girl likes to mess with the new folks on the floor."
Running away was looking better by the second.
"You really call her that?" Hermione asked, indignant on behalf of the girl who was currently trying to repaint the ward with finger paints charmed against such an action. Great Gryffindor, defending the small and weak, even when they couldn't save themselves.
Especially when they can't save themselves, an inner voice that sounded more like Snape or Draco whispered in her head. Resolutely, Hermione didn't answer back. She had enough problems without adding auditory hallucinations to the mix.
The man snorted, "Practically all the healers call her that. Chit wont answer to much else."
"So, what do the call you?" she asked, bracing herself for some ridiculous response. 'Man with Too Much Beard', or something. Out of the corner of her eye, one of the ward sisters had finally put down her Witchly's Weekly to see Frog-Girl's attempts at artistic stylings. She was now chasing the girl, whose was laughing manically, wand in hand.
"I'm the Boy-Who-Lived," he told her blandly with a hint of a yawn.
It took three sisters and not a few well placed calming and stunning charms before they could pry her off him.
Snape would be so bloody proud, she thought as a powerful stunner broke through her weakening shield, Eight years later and I can still hold off four stunners at a time without a wand.
The healers don't question her much about attacking Peirce (the very fake "boy who lived"). A fact that Hermione was very glad for, although it seemed to wildly go against their nature of sticking their fat noses into every other facet of her life before this. The healer in charge of leading group (or Healer Muttonhead, as Hermione calls her in her head. Partly due to the mass of frizzy, wool like hair, and mostly due to the fact she's a moron.) tries to get her to talk about her work. The healer assigned to her individual sessions (or Healer Dingbat) attempts to talk to her about the trial. She doesn't answer any of them, instead floating through her day in a sedative induced fog.
Even if they asked, she never would've told them "a boy with that title hurt me once". She can't even admit the words to herself.
She won't. Ever.