Hermione wrote feverishly, her quill moving almost faster than her thoughts. She poured her memories onto the pages—memories she wished she could forget but knew she had to preserve. She wrote about Bellatrix, her maniacal laughter as she grabbed Hermione's arm and carved "Mudblood" into her skin with sadistic precision. The pain had been unbearable, but worse still was the humiliation, the searing reminder of what she was in the eyes of her captors.
She described the cell in vivid detail—the cold that seeped into her bones, the stench of rotting flesh and bodily fluids that was always there, lingering like a curse. The damp, suffocating air made it impossible to breathe easily, and the darkness was a constant presence, only occasionally broken by the flickering of a dim torch outside the cell.
But as she described the prison's horrors, her quill hesitated when her thoughts drifted to him—Draco Malfoy. She hadn't intended to write about him, but her mind couldn't help but linger on the boy in the cell beside her.
The boy with the sharp eyes and the sharper tongue. The boy who bore his own scars.
She wrote about the cuts on his arms—fresh, deep wounds that crisscrossed his skin. She wrote about how he had been tortured, how he had endured the Cruciatus Curse until he had gone temporarily blind, writhing in agony as his body was ripped apart from the inside. Yet somehow, in the midst of their shared suffering, he had still managed to show her something unexpected: small acts of kindness.
He had given her washcloths soaked in healing potions, barely saying a word, he had shared his soup with her, giving her half of his portion without being asked, it was the best thing she had tasted since being here, and though he never admitted it, she knew he must have been just as hungry as she was. And every time she had to bathe in the center of the cell—no privacy, no dignity—he always looked the other way.
They were small gestures, perhaps barely noticeable under normal circumstances, but in that cell, in the depths of that unimaginable cruelty, they meant everything to Hermione. Some might say it was nothing more than basic decency, the bare minimum of humanity. But she knew better. She understood how hard it must have been for Malfoy, trapped with someone he'd been taught to despise, someone whose very existence he had once mocked and ridiculed.
And yet, here they were, forced to coexist. Two prisoners. Two victims.
Malfoy wasn't the villain of this story, not in her eyes—not anymore. He was just another casualty of the same war that had brought them both to this forsaken place. She wasn't ready to forgive him for everything, but in this journal, in this recounting of her thoughts and feelings, Draco wouldn't be cast as the monster.
He was a survivor, just like her. A boy born into the wrong side of the war, caught in a nightmare he couldn't escape.
She would write the truth as she saw it. And in this truth, Draco Malfoy would not be the villain—he would simply be another victim.
