She was slouched, bleary eyed from the long night of bathroom runs, rubbing the boy kicking holes in her belly as the priest taught the morning lesson. Her mind drifted back to Harry. What sort of a father would he be? What about Ron? Was she being stupid, not providing her son any way to connect with his father or her friends?
But Harry was in Azkaban and Ron was still on the run. They would turn her child over to The Ministry. Use it to further besmirch poor Harry.
Sadness gripped her knowing what had to be done. The blackouts were coming closer and closer together. Her research said that she was near the end. It would probably only be a few weeks and she would no longer inhabit her own body. She was ready, prepared, but the idea of doing it terrified her.
Hermione banished the tears behind her wall of occulemency and went back to her current distraction. Her wand was now a yellow painted octagonal stick capped with a gummy pink tip. She was actually rather proud of herself for disguising it as a pencil. Now, she could swish and flick as much as she wanted and nobody questioned it in the least. Father Timothy was reading about some man living among graves on the Syrian side of the Sea of Galilee while she resumed her morning challenge against the dusty blue book. This morning, she silently chanted two dozen new spell variants to coax it open, but it still wouldn't budge. Worse, most of the other girls had them open.
"Demon possessed"
The priest's words smashed straight through Hermione's focus. A rock slammed into the pit of her stomach but turned to hope when he recounted the account of The Lord casting the legion of demons out of a possessed man. Her whole body was shaking as she approached. She couldn't hear anything over the hiss of the ancients cursing in her ears. Her knees sagged and she grasped the tails of his robes, begging, pleading, and the world went black.
Her eyes flickered. Chains and electric blue fire poured out of her wand. She hauled her magic back and swung countercurses through the room along with shields for the girls cowering behind smashed chairs and tables. The tiny pistol slid into her hand and everyone backed away with their hands up. She clicked the hammer back, screwed it into the meat behind her chin, but the world went black.
Her eyes flickered. She was clawed into the ceiling, roaring like a dragon while blasting hexes and curses down into the crowd. Her ears were ringing as the world spun around her. She instantly shifted gears. Counter curses and healing spells spun out of her wand and blanketed the hurt people below. A silvery flash caught her eye. The gun's grip poked out of a fold in the carpeting halfway across the room. She reached out and Accio'ed. Hermione snatched the chrome flash as it whipped across the room, shoved it into her neck, and jerked the trigger, but it simply clicked. She was healing girls and nuns as fast as she could while fishing a jammed bullet out the action. A fresh bullet slipped in, the hammer cocked back. The pistol barrel kissed her temple and the stiff trigger crunched back under her fingers.
Her eyes flickered. Her nails were slashing and raking as the hazy room spiraled in a screeching din. She was spitting and screaming in a dozen different languages. Iridescent bats and ravens flashed back and forth out of a swirling cloud of purple lightning, biting and clawing at innocents. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. People's mouths moved, but only buzzing static answered. She found the wand and poured spells to save them from the evil flowing out of the black depths of her soul. The gun tore out of a terrified nun's hands, flipped across the room, and smacked into her own, but it wouldn't fire. Accios brought fresh ammunition bouncing across the crowd. The stiff magazine fumbled in her hands as she clawed a bullet in. She jerked the slide back and screamed at all of them, "Why won't you kill me?"
Her head twisted and her hands cramped. Terror rushed over her. She was fighting as hard as she could against the ancients, but they sent her up the wall. She was now a spectator in her own body. She was cursing the priest in twenty different languages as her head twisted around backwards, but he pointed at the floor in front of him. "Down! I command you in the name of The Lord."
It was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard. Did he have any idea of just how many people she murdered or the power of their magic. They were hungry for blood after being denied for too long. He was just a stupid muggle. His blood was just as good as any.
Her entire body twisted backwards, tearing her joints to pieces, and she scrabbled back down the wall like a spider, whipping hexes at him and spitting curses as she went. The priest didn't flinch so much as an eyebrow as the orange and white magic whirled around him and splattered across the floor.
Was he really this stupid? She was screaming for him to get away or to kill her, but no words came out besides the spew of vile filth.
He commanded her silent and her mouth clamped shut against her pleading. She had to do somrthing to break free. He was a good man! He truly cared about the girls and their babies. Horror rippled as her body twisted into a kneeling pose at his feet. They were playing possum. It had to be a ruse, just like when the Death Eaters played their so called surrender. Her neck crackle-popped until her head was facing straight up at him. They were playing some sort of sick game, Begging and pleading. Offering him riches and pleasures and power. They promised him promotions and honor within the church. He could be a bishop and then a cardinal if he would take the rest of the girls as payment this one, but his face was set like flint.
His lips barely moved, but the words thundered, shaking the floor beneath her feet. "Come out of her and be banished!"
It was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. How was that supposed to do anything?
A thousand voices were screaming. Her entire body was boiling with creeping things slithering and twisting inside her guts. Her jaws wrenched open and a translucent green mist rippled out of her mouth. Plasma fingers waved through the haze and clawed into her face. The bony ghost tore her throat to pieces as it fought against the invisible forces dragging it out. One after another, the ancients disgorged like giant ticks and leeches and scurried away from her body like rats off a sinking ship. Howling things, dead things, snakes and dragons, mummified things, and they screamed and cried. And they cursed her with promises of ten thousand years of torture. They would tear her baby and drink its blood. Harry and Ron and Luna and Ginny and the girls and the nuns, every person she cared about in the entire world would pay for her insolence, but she was choking as they fought against the forces ripping them out.
She couldn't let this ancient evil loose on the poor girls! The tiny gun was at her fingertips as she focused with all her might. Her first finger twitched and then curled. The second joined it. She had exactly one chance to trap the evil within her body and bind it into her grave.
The barrel sizzled against her throat as everyone backed away. Her fingers locked into the trigger, and she pulled, but her slick hands burned like fire as it twisted and slipped in her grip. The priest grabbed it and pulled it away, but she wrenched it back. Why didn't he understand the necessity? This had to be done.
His hand wrapped over her hand. His mouth moved, No!, but she twisted it toward her eye and jerked the trigger. The gun bucked, snatching her hair and roaring into her ears. Darkness swirled and blanketed the tilting world as she cursed her own weakness and lack of preparation.
Her eyes flickered open. Her hands were stiff and heavy. Her legs were full of mud. Weariness soaked through her bones as numbness crept up her fingers and toes. People were scurrying around, giving and taking orders, but nobody said a single word to her. The poor girls needed help, so she pushed off the floor and started tending to them. The nuns didn't say a thing as she poured healing magic into one girl, then another. She was working on the ones they were ignoring when a baby's cry snatched her attention. Nuns huddled around Officer Griffin as paramedics rushed him out through shattered doors.
Her heart broke at the sight of a dead girl lying in a pool of crimson. The girl's mangled neck ripped knots into her guts. Tears ran down her face as her sobs broke through the depths of her chest. Why had she been spared when innocents were murdered by her own hand? She had begged for death, and yet it mocked her.
She inched closer, now that everybody was ignoring the body. She didn't remember that one, but girls came and went so quickly. It was impossible to tell with the girl's face was covered by a mat of blood soaked hair. Her heart broke when she saw the little silver gun laying on the floor. The one that should have killed her.
A bloody kitchen knife laid beside the now hollow belly. Officer Griffin had to saw the baby out of that poor girl. She was the monster here. She was the one responsible for all this. Her soul should be the one damned. Why were the police officers ignoring her and talking with others.
Hermione fisted the priest's robes and shook. She was screaming and cursing whatever gods would allow travesty like this to exist, but he didn't even respond. His bandaged hand smeared the tears across his face and he stared down. He pulled away as if she wasn't even there and wiped the hair away from the girl's waxy face.
The tiles and bricks rumbled and rippled. His robe shifted, revealing her own gray face, staring, wide eyed and open mouthed, unmoving as the old man wept.
Her hands shot down to her belly but only found a gaping hole. A thousand emotions raged all at once. Fear, pain, hurt, and joy. She had succeed. Her baby was alive and on the way to the hospital while a bored coroner scratched notes on a preprinted form. The woman looked at her watch and scrawled a signature on the paperwork.
She turned to attend to whatever she could do when the earth under her feet rippled and heaved. Blue carpet twisted and tore. Chairs bounced and clattered. She turned to run but the carpet under her feet snagged her shoes, dragging her towards the hole eating the center of the chapel. The floor came up hard. Her magical chains swirled and wrapped, but tore and split just as quickly.
The floor poured into a giant hole, spilling her into the church basement. Her hands caught a beam as green and orange and white creeping things bounced over her head, but it split as the earth sucked her down. She careened past sewer piping and electrical wires. Her wrist clanked a water line, but her fingers wouldn't close. Brown dirt rumbled down the hole through the bedrock, plunging her into black caverns full of water. She was sucking for air, but her lungs were full of liquid. She thrashed, but couldn't swim against the swirling vortex of mud, logs, and bricks being swept under. Layer by layer, she crashed and smashed until she splattered into a burning world like a pile of greasy vomit.
A hoard of ancients gnashed their teeth and launched, biting and kicking and clawing, but they scurried and slimed away as her shoes and clothes melted against her skin and burst into flame. Black tipped flames flared, searing her skin. Wind whipped, flaying the skin off her hands and arms. The ground was fire against her face. Her skin was peeling off as the bones of her fingers impotently flapped to put it out. Her ligaments knotted and melted into ash leaving balls of muscle clumped against her bones. Pain roared as her right eyeball popped. She curled into a ball, and whimpered, "Please. Just save my baby.
Her jaws creaked and crackled. Bones popped and split and spit fire as the marrow burned, and the pain roared as seconds turned into days and weeks of agony, shambling across the burnt world looking for others while her remains bleached, waiting for the death that never came.
Her memories drifted back.
Thick streamers of her own blood spilled from her wrist and splashed the rim as it drizzled into the chalice, mixing with the herbs and the wine. Next was the old woman's, the woman everyone called her aunt. The dull chanting resonated in her skull, but stars drifted through her vision. The only light visible in the black night was the orange flicker of the candles. The points of the pentegram under her feet blurred as each the hooded figure fell out of focus, one by one. Her forearms throbbed and her wrists burned. Hermione's body swayed as fires roaring around them blinked and faded into glittering blobs. The night was late and she was tired. So very tired. The world floated sideways into black.
The little girl gasped and shot straight up. Her whole body throbbed as her hands clawed her chest. She tugged at the pain. A shiny metal can with a bright silver plunger was stuck in the bone. Hands pushed hers away from the soreness. The sweet old woman's face came into focus. A curled hand brushed through her hair and down her forehead. "Shhh. We almost lost you there."
She was alive and awake, ready to run and jump, but she froze instead. A young woman with brown curly hair stood a few steps behind the old woman. Her feigned relaxation betrayed awareness, but most striking were her eyes. They were flat black holes from edge to edge with only Hermione's sallow reflection shining back out of the endless pit. The blanket caught the syringe and sent an electric jolt which took her breath away. The old woman's hand laid back on her and the world stilled. Suddenly, she felt perfect and went back to chitter chattering. The woman with the black eyes was named Kelly, and she was a Grimm. Hermione knew what blood transfusions were, she had received dozens of them. Shots too, but this one was bigger than usual. She told them she wasn't afraid, but winced and cried when they pulled the huge needle back out.
Her father was shaking. His eyes were hollow and red. Her mother's face was puffy, like she had been crying. She rushed in and crushed Hermione in a hug. For the first time, she noticed the sunbeams sparkling through the air and burning bright white patches into the dark room.
What would they think of me now?
Weeks passed before she met another person. The man was carrying his head while crying out a woman's name.
He snarled at her, "You! You did this to me!"
He leaped and kicked, knocking her over and smashing her ribs with rocks, but she wrestled his head away and threw it. The skull bounced and rolled down the dusty, orange hill while his body scrabbled after it. It hopped over a rock and disappeared into a crevasse, but the body mindlessly followed and careened off the cliff.