AN: There's no way I will get this story anywhere near 50,000 words by the end of the month, but let's see how much I can do. Lyrics are from Understanding by Evanescence.

-Ophelia

The pain that grips you

The fear that binds you

Releases life in me

In our mutual

Shame we hide our eyes

To blind them from the truth

That finds a way from who we are

Please don't be afraid

When the darkness fades away

"Kingsley! Kingsley!" Hermione burst through the doors of the Great Hall like a hurricane, subsequently knocking one of them off its newly repaired hinges. She scarcely noticed; there were far more important matters on her mind. "I need... to talk... to you..." she gasped, completely out of breath. It was seven floors from the Room of Requirement to the Great Hall, and she had frantically sprinted down each one. Only now did she see that she had interrupted a meeting with the Order of the Phoenix, who were looking at her with some concern. Mr. Weasley, ever the gentleman, pulled out a chair and gestured towards it. The young witch slumped into it gratefully, panting as if she had just run a marathon.

Kingsley calmly turned to her. "I take it you have spoken with Miss Black, then." Bellatrix had clearly set him straight too; she was having none of that Lestrange nonsense. Kingsley's voice remained calm as ever, but people around the table suddenly looked stricken, horrified. "What did she have to say to you that was so important?" Hermione was hideously aware of everyone watching her intently, holding their breaths as they waited for an answer. Their open expressions said what their closed mouths did not. What on earth could that wretched woman want with our Hermione? Hasn't she hurt her enough? Outrage, disgust, and pure, unadulterated hatred burned in their eyes. They wanted revenge. They wanted to see her suffer.

The Gryffindor knew that she, too, had wanted it. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Hermione witnessed Bellatrix's suffering and couldn't bear it. She saw, as if imprinted on the insides of her eyelids, the beaten body dangling from those chains like so much damp laundry hung out to dry. That is, if one is in the habit of tearing the cuffs of their shirts before hanging them by the end of the sleeve. She withstood the abuse that the Death Eater gave her, but couldn't stand to see her broken like that, not if there was anything she could do about it.

However, perhaps there was something she could do about it, a way for Hermione Granger to right this wrong and provide a more humane justice. The evil witch deserved to be locked up, no doubt about that, but the manner in which she was confined was appalling. The Order would never forgive me for helping her, even just a little bit. Nevertheless, she knew she had to. She would never forgive herself if she didn't.

"May I speak with you alone, Kingsley?" she asked. There was a sudden silence in the room, an unnatural and uncomfortable pause as heads turned to stare at Kingsley. Slowly, deliberately, he pushed back his chair and stood up. Hermione felt a rush of relief that the newly appointed Minister of Magic was willing to give his time for a private conversation with her, a teenage girl of no official importance. He had known her for years and the young witch trusted him, but she was quite unsure if he would agree to her requests. After all, the treatment of a prisoner of war was not to be taken lightly, and what Bellatrix had endured was most likely premeditated and well thought out. The thought made her shiver; she had always reserved such brutality for the Death Eaters alone and had a hard time comprehending how the Order felt justified with such actions. Kingsley cleared his throat and spoke, breaking her out of her thoughts.

"Of course, Hermione. Right over here." He led the way out of the hall through a back door behind the high table, the one that Harry used after his name was pulled from the Goblet of Fire. Hermione had never been in this room before, but it looked cheerful enough, with a crackling fire in the hearth and comfortable chairs before it. The pair sat down and Kingsley looked the young witch over carefully before slowly speaking again.

"She did not give you any trouble, I trust. We took extra care to make sure she is relatively weak and firmly restrained. Furthermore, a certain poison was administered in the food she received this morning, and will be given each morning that she stays here. She is to receive the antidote every night. She is not aware of this, but it ensures that if she manages to escape our custody she will die within a couple of days. We decided to keep her in the dark, which we found triggered memories of Azkaban that incapacitate her better than any chain. She poses next to no threat; else we would not have allowed her to talk with you."

The Gryffindor's mouth fell open in shock; the situation was far worse than she had imagined. She had never believed the Order could be capable of such horror. He said all of this in such a calm fashion that Hermione wanted to scream at him. She found herself having trouble keeping her voice from shaking with rage. "You had her beaten nearly to death. Have you seen her? She might die even without poisoning her. What if she refuses to eat? What if she can't eat because the pain is too great? You would kill her. You don't even care." Kingsley's face remained impassive.

"You know what she is guilty of, Hermione. You know what she has done. Would it be a real loss if she were to die?"

A hard lump rose in Hermione's throat. She wanted to jump up and throw things, anything to make herself be heard, but forced herself to remain seated. It was S.P.E.W. all over again, humans treating other beings like scum and feeling perfectly justified in doing so. Well, no more, she resolved. This would end, and there was no time to waste. "I don't care! She's a human being and you have her chained up and... and tortured and you don't think there's a problem with that!"

"Of course there's a problem with that. It is exactly the kind of thing that she does to her victims," he said in that deep, soothing voice of his. It wasn't calming anyone down now.

"So you want to descend to her level? That's how you want to show her who the bigger person is?" It was like arguing with Harry and Ron about Malfoy, but this was so much bigger. Kingsley shook his head.

"It sounds needlessly cruel, Hermione, but this is the best solution, the only way to make our point. We spent a very long time discussing this when she was captured after the fight." So it was premeditated. They planned this all out so carefully, Hermione thought, her stomach churning. She pressed her lips together in a thin line, not trusting herself to speak just yet. "This is the world she is used to. She understands that physical pain means she did something wrong, so we hurt her and tell her that it is her retribution. We punish her in the only way she knows to make her grasp that her actions are unacceptable. Her mind is like a child's; she needs us to help set her straight." His face remained perfectly straight as he spoke, his voice emotionless.

Hermione gaped at him; his logic made even less sense than the Death Eaters'. "I think I'm missing something. What you're saying is, you hurt her to show her that hurting people is wrong," she said slowly, unsure if this twisted idea was what he actually meant. Surprisingly, Kingsley nodded in agreement. "Even if she does think like that, it still puts you in the wrong. You would lose all authority you might have had over her. Furthermore, she didn't seem too childish to me. Do you think she considered Azkaban to be a time-out, then?" Hermione's voice dripped with derision, but Kingsley looked thoughtful.

"Maybe she did. Perhaps you ought to ask her." He leaned towards her, finally getting to the reason he agreed to this little audience in the first place. "What did she want to say to you?"

That conversation felt like it happened a year ago already. "She didn't really say anything. I thought she was sentenced to death, and I told her that. She... got angry." It was far too easy to could remember the older witch's bloody face contorted with rage, shrieking at her from across the room. "She told me that she had been guaranteed to live if she talked to someone on our side, so she asked for me. She didn't say why she picked me, though..." she trailed off, thinking. Why would Bellatrix want to talk to her of all people, one of her more recent victims? She couldn't contact her sister, who the Order decided was neutral in the war, as they had only allowed her to speak to someone aligned with the Order. So why Hermione, what could she want from her?

Kingsley cleared his throat, interrupting her reverie. "We did promise her life, but that was an attempt to make her cooperate. She just wouldn't stop screaming…" He sighed and fell quiet, lost in the memory. Does he find it a pleasant one? Hermione wondered. Does he enjoy holding this power over her? She considered the hideously calm wizard before her, while he considered enraged teenager before him. After a long moment of silence, he said, "She actually spoke to you, Hermione, which is much more than we have been able to get from her. Perhaps she has more to share." With that, he stood up and left the room, the unspoken order hanging in the air.

Hermione let out a breath that she hadn't realized she had been holding, leaning back in her chair and staring into the fire. She watched the flames dance for a while, trying to figure out what could possibly have made the Order mutate their core beliefs to the point where they sanctioned and intricately planned out torture. "War makes monsters of us all," she decided, mildly annoyed that Kingsley had already left the room and didn't hear her assessment. He needed to hear it, certainly. Perhaps Bellatrix did too, she who had existed in a perpetual state of agony or conflict for the past twenty or so years. Once the fight ended, the monsters would return to their normal human selves, wouldn't they? Wouldn't they? There was only one way to find out. She stood and turned away from the fire, exiting the room.