Hermione was back in that state of utter nothingness. She tried to run, tried to crawl, tried to tear the liminal space with her teeth, but she was floating, weightless. She gave up trying to find a way out.

But it didn't last long.

She opened her eyes.

She was back in her bedroom.

At first, she thought she might have imagined everything that happened in the last three days, that she was dreaming all this time. But then she remembered.

She had a seizure. She remembered something from the time that was erased from her memory.

Hermione looked around. Her body ached. Ron was by her bed.

"What time is it?" Hermione asked. She needed to know – time to her was more important than space. Space was tangible, predictable, pregnable. It was time that seemed to slip through her fingers.

"You've been out for two hours. Gave James a fright," Ron said with a frown on his face.

"I'm sorry."

"He's okay now. Ginny calmed him down."

Harry came in, the door to her bedroom creaking so loud it made her flinch.

"Did you remember something?" he demanded immediately.

Hermione knew she had remembered, but what was it exactly?

"I'm… not… sure…" she muttered.

"Think," Harry said.

She thought. She thought and she thought.

Harry sat down on the other side of her bed, watching her intently. "If you don't want Ron to be here, he can leave."

"No, no, it's fine, it's just… I'm trying to remember…"

Ron took her hand, giving Harry a reproachful look that Harry had even entertained the idea of kicking him out of here.

"I saw… him… The Phantom…" Hermione said. Harry nodded for her to go on. "I remembered… I think it was the time he kidnapped me… I was running away from a battlefield to get his attention and he followed me there… At first it seemed like he was going to drown me, but then we were someplace else—"

"What place? Did you recognize it?" Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head. "I didn't. I couldn't even fully visualize the place. I think he did something to my memory of it, he erased the exact details… It was all a blur, all but him…"

"Go on."

"Oh, and he had a dragon… He rode it… So, he must be a dragon trainer? You need a special education for that, right?"

Ron and Harry exchanged a look. "We know about the dragon," Ron said. "He's been attacking us on airstrike ever since."

Hermione's lower lip quivered. "Oh." As always, she was of no use.

"What else?" Harry pushed her onwards.

The memories came flooding back. His teeth, his bruising touch, the slur he called her. Hermione wanted it gone. She didn't want to even think of what had happened to her, but to remember it all over was living hell. She wanted to pretend she couldn't recall. She wanted back to that blessed state of oblivion. The worst part of it all was that she knew she would eventually start remembering everything – one traumatizing moment would turn into millions until she relived every single thing the Phantom did to her.

She put her head into the pillow, wishing to disappear.

"I remember…" she choked out. "I remember—how he—raped me—I remember… he took me to that place and the first thing he did—he raped me…"

Her voice broke at the last word. She looked away from Ron and Harry, closing her eyes, but her own words still echoed in her ears – raped…

It was one thing to hear others say it happened, another to relive it once more…

She felt someone's warm hand on the top of her head – Ron's. Hermione saw enmity on his face.

"How did he do it?" he asked.

Hermione didn't want to get into the details, she felt sick just by stating the fact.

"What does it matter how?" she gritted through her teeth. "He did it, isn't that enough?"

"It is enough," Harry said with a deep frown. "But I need you to tell me exactly how it occurred, bit by bit."

Hermione felt her mouth twist downwards. "I already told you I didn't see his face. There was nothing that could tell you who he is."

Harry almost mirrored her pained expression. "I don't want to make you go through it again. But I need to. It's important that you tell me everything, Hermione."

She waited. Waited for him to change his mind. Waited for him to spare her.

And then she told them what she saw. Bit by bit, avoiding either of her friends' eyes. Told them about the frozen lake, about the dragon, about the sharp teeth of the Phantom and his blurred face. She talked and talked until she lost her voice and the words that came out of her became detached from what she had actually experienced. She was looking outside the window, at the walls, at the ceiling the whole time she spoke. She felt Ron's clammy hand hold hers. She wanted him to let go but he held on to her, and she didn't have it in her heart to ask him.

She realized she'd told everything when her voice went quiet.

"Is that all?" Harry asked.

She nodded. It was foggy outside.

She felt Harry's hand on her shoulder which made her look into his green eyes. They were calming. "That's okay. I'm certain as time goes on, you'll remember more. And if you do, you tell me first thing, okay?"

Hermione nodded.

"Was James very scared?" she asked.

Something passed Harry's features; it was an expression she wasn't used to, it made him look so much older.

He managed to smile sadly.

"He was a little frightened, but he's okay now, Ginny dealt with that."

Hermione hummed something.

Harry left. Ron stayed. He gave Hermione some potion for the pain. It tasted sour but she drank it and soon she felt nothing. She asked Ron to read for her. An indeterminable time later she fell asleep.

The upcoming week was a murky madness. Pieces of her fractured memory kept coming back each day, each worse than the other. She tried to keep them away, she wanted to stay in that blessed state of not knowing because emptiness was better than the pain those memories inflicted. She had headaches constantly, and her seizures became more frequent. When Padma came to see her, she apologized that she hadn't come sooner.

"I have a lot of patients, more and more each week. Lots of healers are killed on the battlefield and the numbers of injured keep growing," Padma said while doing diagnostic charms on Hermione. "Ron said you had three seizures this week."

"Yes," Hermione said.

"Did you notice any patterns of what could be causing them?" she asked. "Some particular sensations or visions right before the seizure takes over?"

"I usually have a bad taste in my mouth. And I always end up remembering something during the seizure. I just see something completely ordinary, get the taste of blood in my mouth and then it begins. I can't control it. I fall, and Ron is usually there to catch me."

Padma was listening to her with a frown. "Well, it's good you're remembering. Any helpful memories?"

Hermione shook her head. "It's all very blurry. Mostly just… the torture that… that he put me through. Not much else. Harry asks me. Interrogates me after every seizure, but… I don't see anything that could help him. I don't see the face, I don't hear the name, the voice is unrecognizable."

Padma gave her a sympathetic smile. "I'm sure it will come back eventually. The trauma you endured was horrible, it will leave its' trail. But if we're lucky, we can use it to our advantage."

Hermione shivered uncontrollably. Each memory she got back made her feel emptier and more alone. She told the truth; it was mostly the torture she remembered. The never ending Cruciatus curses, her writhing on the floor, screaming and crying from pain while the Phantom just stared from above with his wand pointed at her. She craved the tears now, craved the ability to let it out. It seemed that she was a bottle filled with lava, and that molten lava could someday emerge and devastate her completely. But not now. Not when she needed.

She wanted this pain to mean something. She wanted it to be worth something. She wanted to mean something, anything. But she was all alone. And she never was.

"Your bruises are healing nicely, that's a good sign," Padma pointed out, dragging Hermione out of her black sea of thoughts.

"Yeah. I really thought they wouldn't heal. I spent seven months in a coma and the bruises stayed, now they're healing. Isn't that weird?"

Padma gave her a strange look. "That's how magic works." She said it as if it was the simplest of things. Explaining how magic works wasn't what Hermione needed to know – she knew it better than either of them. But that sense of inferiority, the sense that those who were born into magical families, who were surrounded by magic, witches, and wizards since they were babies were somehow better than her was gnawing at her insides ever since she was a child. She knew how magic worked. And if she said it's weird, it was.

Hermione shrugged. "I don't really care that much about the bruises. What about the seizures? And the pain? Do you have anything for that?"

"Are you taking the potions for the pain?" Padma asked.

"Yes, every day."

"Then there's not much else I can give you. We'll just need to wait until it passes."

"So that's it?" Hermione asked, irritated. She was so tired from the pain, she was so tired of being confused, she was exhausted from not knowing and feeling like she was taking up space in other people's lives. Everything and everybody aggravated her; but most of all she infuriated herself. She was weak, she was pathetic. And it hurt.

Padma sighed. "I'm sorry. I wish there was something more I could do. But the healing charms don't work very well on you and the potions are the best we've got. Just have a little more patience."

She didn't have patience. She didn't have the time left.

Hermione had a dark, unbidden feeling she was going to die.

But she put on her clothes back on while Parvati gathered her supplies. "Thank you," she said quietly.

"Make sure you drink that potion," Padma instructed.

She did drink the yellow potion because Harry brought it to her bedroom every day and didn't leave until she emptied the bottle. Then he would disappear for the entire day and would come back either very late or in the middle of the night when everybody was fast asleep. Except Hermione. The more she remembered, the less she slept. Most of it was pretending.

"Where is Harry gone to every day?" she asked Ron one morning when he helped her get down to have breakfast.

Ginny's eyes shot to her brother, waiting for what he was going to say. Ron looked up at Hermione.

"There's a war still going on and there are battles left to fight, Mione," he said slowly and carefully as if he were speaking to a child.

"Is he fighting the Phantom?"

Ron, feeling Ginny's eyes on him, glanced at her, then back at Hermione. "Yes, he's fighting the Phantom. Luckily, his ranks are getting smaller and with every victory we're getting closer to beating him."

"How are you planning to beat him if he has a dragon?" Hermione asked.

Ron's expression faltered. Exasperation and helplessness almost shone through the curated neutral emotion he always gave her. He didn't want to worry her. He wanted her to believe they were winning. But Hermione found it hard to believe.

"Yes, he has a dragon," Ron answered calmly. "That is an obstacle we're trying to overcome. And eventually we will. That dragon will be dead, and the Phantom will be brought to justice."

Justice was an abstraction that meant nothing to Hermione. There was no justice that could be brought upon someone who did what the Phantom had done to her.

"What about our ranks?" she asked, looking now at both Ginny and Ron. "Who's still fighting on our side?"

"There's plenty of the Order," Ron said.

"Who's still left from the Order? James told me all of your brothers except Bill are dead."

Tense silence stood like a plastic wrap. Ginny stared at her horrified and Ron had to blink himself out of shock.

"Why would James tell you that?" Ginny whispered, close to tears. Somehow Hermione always managed to make her cry.

"I asked if his uncles visit. He only talked about Bill." She turned to Ron. "Everyone else is dead?"

Ron's face turned hard as stone.

"Yes," he gritted out.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, although these days she felt little else than extreme physical pain. Her emotional capacity had shrunk into a size of a pea.

Ron peered into his plate with food like he wanted to drill a hole there.

"Why… why aren't you with Harry then? He's fighting, and you're sitting here, doing nothing," Hermione said. "The more warriors we have, the sooner we can end this war, right? Then why aren't you on the battlefield?"

She knew she was being intrusive. She knew she hit a nerve when Ron's aggravation took over – she only saw him look so angry once, and it wasn't directed at her then.

"Because I have to take care of you. Because you're hurt and you're in pain and I need to be here to make sure you get better!" he shouted.

"I'm not asking you to stay with me," Hermione said coolly.

"And the moment I'm not you get a fucking seizure in front of a child, almost scaring him to death!"

"It's not like you can stop the seizures. They keep coming whether you're here or not," Hermione said, feeling her body shake. It wasn't anger, it wasn't sadness, these were not emotions she could feel. It was mere physical pain – the most banal pain there was. That's what her existence dwindled to.

Ron stood up abruptly, his face approaching the scarlet of his hair.

"Oh, so you weren't asking me to stay with you at night because you're scared of the dark?!"

Hermione swallowed. Her fingers were twitching. She stared at her hands, at the silver ring that she couldn't take off.

"You can go fight during the day. Harry comes back at night."

That was the last straw. But not for Ron.

Ginny stood up from the table, her belly jutting out. She gawked at Hermione with fiery rage, the one she saved for the Quidditch matches only.

"I've lost most of my brothers in this war. I won't lose the remaining two I still have left," she said, her voice quivering with frenzy. Then she stormed out of the kitchen to James's room. Ron was just as surprised as Hermione.

Eventually her chest felt heavy. She was tired. She was so, so tired. She just wanted it all to end.

"I'm sorry," she told Ron quietly. "I just don't like that Harry is fighting all alone."

"He's not alone," Ron said, already cooled off and back at the table. "Yes, we've suffered great losses overtime, but now Harry has great fighters by his side, you just don't remember them. We will win. He will win."

Hermione didn't argue further. They ate the breakfast in silence. After that another dose of potions awaited Hermione. She drank them all but didn't feel any better.

Ron helped her back up to her bedroom when it got too tiring to sit up straight.

She felt like felt like a black sheep in their family. Harry, Ginny, James, and Ron have all learned to live with one another throughout the years. They had developed patterns of lifestyle that fit in between. They had their own rhythm, their routine, the way to do things. It was a sense of normalcy exuded by the four of them that Hermione felt detached from.

Ginny was the one who took care of the house and the cooking, she coordinated James's lessons and made sure that when Harry got back, he always had something warm to eat. Hermione hated that whenever they were in one room or whenever they spoke to one another Ginny ended up crying hysterically or just avoiding Hermione altogether, so increasingly Hermione began to prefer spending time in her bedroom, sometimes not managing to get downstairs for days on end.

Harry would come to check on her whenever he had free time, and he would always ask her about the new memories. Hermione felt disappointed in herself when she couldn't tell him anything new or useful, but it seemed that Harry wasn't losing hope, he was determined that one day Hermione will get to the memories that the Phantom erased from her mind. His positive attitude made her feel even more hopeless. Regardless of how much pain it caused her, Hermione tried to remember as much as she could and retell it to Harry as clearly and particularly as she endured.

She wasn't doing right by Ron either. She knew it was boring for him to read books out loud to her, that it was exhausting to be awoken by her nightmarish screams every night, that her indifference towards him and his affections was hurting him, but he still stayed with her and didn't complain.

It seemed to her that she even managed to disturb little James's childish existence, not only with the scare her first seizure gave him, but also with how he always wanted to spend time with her, but Ginny had his schedule planned to the brim, so there was no time for games – Hermione had become the boy's greatest distraction.

She didn't deserve them. She didn't deserve the second chance she was given. Lord knew she wasn't making it worth it for anyone. She couldn't fight in battlefields, she couldn't reveal the identity of the villain to end the war. She couldn't help make her grandparents' place a home. She only took her friends' time, their worry, the potions, the treatment and was irritated by them, by herself more every day. She was left to live in that eternal void that was her mind, with that boundless pain that she knew would kill her someday soon.

She wanted to be dead now. She wished the Phantom had killed her after all the torture. Because dying was better than living like this – without a purpose, without feelings, without self. She was no longer human.