Chapter 50: Chapter 50:
The next few minutes felt like they went on for hours. Her younger version screamed and thrashed and cried on the floor as Bellatrix hacked at her arm with a blade. Hermione swore her scar burned to life, that she felt each tear and rip of the dagger as Bellatrix drove it into her skin again and again and again.
"I was crying out for you," Hermione found herself admitting. She wasn't sure why.
The Demon Mask beside her was deadly silent. He was working to keep his eyes vacant and empty, but Hermione noticed them flickering. She'd shaken his control when she'd trapped him here, and now he was struggling to build his walls back around himself.
"I was trying to ask for your help." Hermione forced the words past the lump in her throat, if only to drown out her younger versions wails. "I was screaming for you to save me, to help me, to just do something."
There was a shuffling sound. Hermione knew from memory that Bellatrix had pulled herself to her feet. The Cruciatus curses would start any second...
"But I couldn't get the words out," Hermione continued quietly. Her hands balled into fists, and her nails cut into her palm as Bellatrix threw the first unforgivable curse into her shivering body. "And you just put your head in your hands and ... turned away."
Another red curse coloured the hallway. Another violent scream echoed off the walls.
"What exactly did you hope to gain here Granger?" Malfoy growled through clenched teeth. "Was this some exercise in control to show you had some power over me?! Well, you don't. And you're -"
Hermione stepped closer, turning her back on the gruesome scene to stare up at the Death Eater. "I thought you needed to be reminded of the consequences of your actions."
Malfoy pinched his eyes closed. She could faintly hear the sound of him grinding his teeth together but her doppelgängers screams were too loud to be certain.
"All this is your fault," she continued, unsympathetic to his discomfort. "You set everything in motion when you killed Dumbledore."
Malfoy's eyes snapped back open. "Oh for Salazar's sake, this again? I didn't kill the old bastard! Snape was the one who cast the killing curse-"
"No, you killed him! You may not have fired the bullet, but the gun was in your hand-"
"Snape killed him-"
"Just because you lowered your wand, doesn't erase the fact that it's your fault he's dead! You let the Death Eaters into the castle!" Hermione screamed, accentuating every 'you' she spat by shoving his chest, so hard he fell back a step each time. "You cornered Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower! You disarmed him! Snape wouldn't have killed him if you didn't set it up perfectly!"
Malfoy clenched his jaw, nostrils flaring indignantly.
"You are the reason Snape cast the curse! You are the reason Dumbledore is dead! And you are the reason thousands of people have lost their lives!"
Her doubles screams rose in pitch but the Malfoy in front of her stayed silent, just as speechless as he had been when she'd cried for his help the first time this memory had played out.
Hermione raised her hands to push him again, intending to send him careening into the wall behind him, but she misjudged his height.
Her hands unexpectedly landed on his neck, and when her palms touched his exposed skin, she felt a crack. A strange tingling sensation swept up her arm, her blood hummed like she'd received an electric shock, and then the drawing-room and her screams were gone.
The room quickly turned in on itself. The furniture bent and twisted out of shape, there was a bright flash of light, and then floor vanished beneath her.
Hermione landed in the middle of a stone path with a painful thud. The fall knocked the breath out of her lungs, and an all too familiar dizzying pressure formed around her skull. God, she hated Legillimency.
She got to her feet, and pressed the heel of her hand against her temple to try and relieve the ache there.
She was in the middle of a street, in what looked like a city. There were high buildings on either side of the road, all with floor-length windows on each level that stretched high into the sky, and pieces of shattered glass covered the floor, littering the pavement with a layer of frozen shards.
It was dark out. She guessed the early hours in the morning due to the biting cold and the way her breath fogged with each exhale, but there were no stars out. No moon to stare at to try and judge the time.
At first glance, she didn't recognise the city.
Malfoy was nowhere to be seen. She waited one minute. Then two. The longer he failed to materialise, the more uneasy Hermione became.
Something was off.
She started to walk down the cobbled streets, but she didn't recognise any of the buildings she passed. She followed the path down a row of shops with broken windows and the farther she walked, the more confident she became that she hadn't been here before.
Hermione stopped when she came to a sign with burnt edges, the words 'Nottingham Square' and an arrow pointing to the left etched into the metal. It confirmed what her instincts had been screaming since she'd materialised here.
She'd never been to Nottingham.
And she wasn't in her memories. She was in Malfoy's.
How was that possible?
She didn't have magic, she hadn't so much as felt the faint thump of it in her veins in months. She'd tried everything from simple unlocking charms to warming jinxes but nothing had worked - Malfoy had made sure of it. The anti-magic potion he drugged her with daily snuffed it out of her. So how the fuck was she here?
Could she have developed a tolerance for the potion over time? Had her body naturally got used to the dosage, and weakened its desired effects? Hermione had never read of anything like that happening before, but then again, she doubted there had been much research on the topic. It could be possible... Couldn't it?
A noise to the far-right startled her. Hermione whirled around, expecting to find Malfoy standing there with murder in his eyes -
But she was still alone, and she intended to make full use of that wonderful advantage.