THC/The Houses Competition
House:Gryffindor
Category: Drabble
Class: Potions
Prompt(s): [Genre] Suspense
Word Count: 667
Warnings: Major character death
Summary: Hermione's life takes a turn for the worse when she ends up captured by Bellatrix.
Title: The Five Senses
It smelled like dusk in autumn, like bonfire smoke and broken childhood dreams and the rich scent of early morning dew collecting heavily on fallen crops. Hermione could smell the rotten fruits and vegetables, the maggots that wiggled their way into the cracks and crevices. The aroma burned the back of her throat with every struggling breath she managed to take in, her lungs begging for mercy that they would never receive.
It would have struck Hermione as funny, if she were capable of having such thoughts. At the moment, Hermione couldn't feel anything. There was nothing: no humor, happiness, sadness; not even the feeling of being terrified. There was only darkness, a pit of emptiness that left her feeling cold.
It hadn't been like that in the beginning. When the first Crucio slipped past Bellatrix's lips in a whisper of pure ecstasy, Hermione hadn't smelled anything at all. It had all been pain. The feeling of acid being dripped onto raw skin, burning her from the inside out until she was nothing but a skeleton with deformed strips of meat draped over the bones. The damp air chafed against her body as if she was being dragged on a road made of the highest grain of sandpaper that money could buy. The stone floor cut into her back like red hot razor blades as Bellatix Lestrange worked her wand as Van Gogh would work a paintbrush, manipulating each nerve in her body with each arc of her wand, each letter intoned with precision and care, a true artist at work.
Sound had been the next thing that Hermione became focused on. As Hermione became accustomed to the pain that her body was going through, her own voice, her screams of agony, sounded foreign to her ears as if it wasn't her crying out in pain anymore. Bellatrix's words dulled into a distant hum in the background, something you wouldn't hear unless you were listening for it. It was nothing but white noise to Hermione now. Words had no more meaning to them as Bellatix kept questioning her, questions she no longer expected an answer to. As Hermione thought she couldn't fall into the darkness any further, she did. Everything faded further into the distance as the throbbing of her blood pounded in her ears like a drum.
Taste came next, the taste of thick flavourful blood coated her tongue like a sticky toffee pudding. Bile and acid seared against the back of her raw throat like a hot iron to a sheep's skin. Was she still screaming? Hermione didn't even know anymore. With each gasp, she choked on something that tasted a lot like death, the damp bitterness of graveyard dirt, the sharp sting of failure and the cold bite of the beyond. Hermione was grateful when her vision went white. The chandelier above leaving colorful-changing dots that blended into the darkness.
It was only scent that reminded after that and whatever part of Hermione's brain was still working clung to it like a lifeline, afraid that if she let go, she would never return.
Hermione was sure she should have smelled the copper scent of spilled blood, bodily fluids, perhaps even vomit, but she didn't. Instead, she smelled the sweet October air, the freshly fallen leaves on the ground. A roasting turkey as her mum cooked thanksgiving dinner. She could smell bubblegum ice cream, when her dad would take her out for Sundays. Hermione smiled. She could no longer feel the violent shakes of her body or hear the venmoness laughter of the insane Death Eater. She felt at peace. She could feel herself being wrapped in her parents' embrace and she never wanted to leave their comfort that she almost forgot.
Hermione forgot then, what had happened to her. She didn't know where she was or who she even was but she didn't care. She felt safe and warm. She opened her eyes to see a bright light and she knew she was home.