1,491A/N: *Explodes from deep underground*
*cackles maniacally*
*spits out a few worms*
*holds up new chapter triumphantly*
*does a little happy dance*
"THE DRAC IS BACK, Y'ALL!"
*Flails and flings the chapter before burrowing away*
xx-Kitten
Jailbird Blues
By Kittenshift17
Chapter 9
The storm raged late into the night and well into the next day, though Hermione couldn't have said for certain whether she was really aware of the time passing. She remembered waking occasionally, naked and alone in her bed, her body shivering uncontrollably. She remembered the violent cracks of lightning flashing bright and wild even from behind her closed eyes, and she remembered the screams of terror torn from the throats of the wizards around her. When the storm finally broke and she could think clearly again, she realized that a good many of the screams must have been her own, because her throat was aching and sore.
When, finally, the storm had passed and the prison stopped swaying in the wild winds and shaking and trembling beneath their feet as the violent sea crashed and smashed against the island housing it, the calm seemed almost unrecognizable. Hermione came back to herself slowly, blinking against the glow of the sun glinting off the ocean and winking through the bars of their cells. Distantly, she was aware that much within the prison was wet, though most of her bedding seemed to have escaped the downpour.
Some of her fellow prisoners weren't so lucky and when she turned her head, Hermione spied Rowle across the way, shivering on his drenched cot, his blankets wet and heavy with seawater and rain that the wild winds had whipped in through his window. Darting a look to the right, Hermione tried to spot George in his cell without having to move, having discovered that her body was aching and trembling as though she'd run a marathon throughout the long night.
She couldn't see him over the walls and bars that separated their cells. She couldn't see anyone, except for Rowle. Even he had his back mostly turned to her, his large frame shivering beneath his wet bedding but not seeming to stir yet with wakefulness. Sitting up gingerly, Hermione clutched her own bedding to her chest, hiding her nudity as best she could for as long as she could manage.
For the first time, it seemed, since she'd been dragged to her cell, Dolohov wasn't pacing the bars that separated them, watching her every move. No sound came from Lestrange on the other side of her narrow space, either, and when Hermione stretched up and tried to spot him, she noticed that he too had his back to her, secluded under his blankets which he'd gone so far as to pull over his head. He'd put his pillow over his head, too. Hermione wondered if it had been out of fear, or just an attempt to block out the screams and shouting and crying coming from his fellow inmates.
Taking advantage of the situation while she still could, Hermione hurried to search for some clean clothes to put on, wincing when she found her things from before her shower folded neatly but drenched where they'd been placed on the floor by the end of her cot. Fortunately, regarding underwear, she at least had been given a spare set. Hermione hissed when she put her bare feet on the cold stone floor, wincing and withdrawing it before gritting her teeth and dragging the sheet off the bed with her to protect her modesty should any of her fellow prisoners awaken before she could dress.
Quickly, she shimmied into clean knickers and hurried to dress in her remaining prison-issue clothing. They were damp, but she had nothing else, and the bedsheets were getting wet the longer she dragged them around. While she still had some privacy, Hermione quickly emptied her bladder, grateful that there was a toilet inside her cell, even it is was tiny, and if it meant that both Dolohov and Lestrange would be able to spy on her while she peed if they were so inclined.
When she was done, she quickly tidied her cell, picking up things that had fallen on the floor in the wind and straightening others. Merlin, she was going to get bored in this place, Hermione realized quickly when she began to pace across the cold stone floor. She wasn't used to having any kind of free time that she didn't immediately fill with one hobby or another, be it reading for pleasure, reading for the sake of expanding her knowledge of the world, knitting, singing, dancing, playing the piano, and tinkering around trying to teach herself how to paint, she had a myriad of activities she'd always enjoyed doing for the simple pleasure of keeping busy and without something – anything – to distract her in here, she was liable to begin counting the bricks just for something to do.
No wonder Lestrange was usually such a chatterbox. The silence was unbearable, leaving her alone with her thoughts and really letting it set in that there was no easy way out of this place for her. She could get pregnant, or she could rot. Despite her exhaustion, Hermione began practicing her wandless magic for want of distraction.
It was hard to make the magic flow free of her fingertips without a wand to channel it through. She started small, trying for a drying spell for her clothing and the rest of her cell. When she got the hang of it, Hermione looked around, wanting to practice it all the more.
Focusing on Rowle across the corridor where he'd begun grumbling and huffing as he shifted on his cot, trying to get comfortable despite being all wet, Hermione tried it out on him, too. Wiggling her fingers and whispering the incantation, she focused on his blanket, watching it rapidly begin to steam as it heated and began to dry out. He jerked upright, eyes blazing, looking around for the cause, but Hermione ignored him.
"Princess?" he asked in a low voice, eyes narrowed on her as she continued focusing on his cell, drying his clothing and his thin mattress before drying the rest of his cell, too.
"What are you doing?" he asked when she grew bored of his cell and instead peered into Lestrange's next door.
His gear got the same treatment, and he pulled his pillow from over his head to peer around blearily at the inundation of warmth.
"Thanks, pet," Lestrange muttered, blinking at her in confusion when she didn't bother greeting him.
"Granger, what are you playing at?" Rowle wanted to know, rising to his feet and dealing with his bladder behind the small privacy wall in his cell when Hermione cautiously approached Dolohov's cell and peered inside it.
She blinked to find him peering back at her from his cot when she pressed her face against the bars. All of his belongings were dry, and Hermione got the feeling that he could do wandless magic, too. She flinched back when their eyes met, startled.
"You live then, pchelka?" he muttered, his accent thick and his dark eyes curious. Hermione noted that his voice was a little bit hoarse, suggesting that just as she had done, a portion of his night had been spent mindlessly screaming in utter terror. Idly, she wondered if there was anything the guards or the healers would be able to do to help all of them treat their PTSD in this wretched aftermath of the war.
She rather doubted it.
Madame Pomfrey would surely try if Hermione told her about it. She made a mental note to mention it to the woman during her next check-up, though she'd already forgotten just when that time might be.
"Much to my horror," Hermione muttered in response to the Russian's assertion, pulling away and looking toward the guard station. It was empty, she noticed with some curiosity. Maybe the guards had grown tired of listening to their screams? Maybe they had so much faith in the structure that housed their world's most dangerous criminals that they didn't see the point in standing guard. Maybe they'd been sent home before the storm, lest the building topple and they be caught in the rubble.
"There are no guards," she observed quietly.
"Never is when it storms," Rabastan piped up from his cot without bothering to affirm her assertion. "They get sent home when they're as bad as it was last night. Figure they don't want to risk their precious Aurors should the sea finally reclaim this godforsaken place."
Hermione frowned at the echo of her half-baked ideas.
"What about us?" she asked.
"They don't care about us," Rowle grumbled. "If we die, it's no skin off their nose."
"They'd be out of a job if we all died," Hermione disagreed.
"Plenty of other things Aurors could be doing with their time. It's why they used to have the Dementors minding this place," Rabastan told her, sitting up slowly before he rose to his feet and stretched his hands high above his head.
Hermione's cheeks darkened when she noted that he was stark naked and not at all bashful about it.
"I wonder if they know we could get out during one of those storms?" Hermione observed, an idea already beginning to blossom in the back of her mind.
"How you going to get out, Princess?" Rowle sneered from across the way, similarly naked and idly scratching his chest with his junk hanging out for all to see if they looked. "No one here was in any fit state to even think about escape last night. Could've opened the doors to all these cells and not one of us would've made a break for it. Not when we were all too busy screaming and reliving things we'd just as soon forget."
Hermione turned her eyes back to him, keeping them on his face when all they wanted to do was skid down the powerful frame he sported.
"Do you suppose memory charms would help?" she queried. "Can't have nightmares about things you don't remember, can you?"
"Yes, you can," Neville spoke up from a few cells down. "Trust me. The screaming gets worse when the horrors still live in your mind, and you don't know how or why or where they came from."
Hermione's heart clenched at the thought, realizing that if anyone here would know, it would be Neville. She didn't like to imagine what it must've been like for him to ever witness Alice and Frank screaming in terror while they had no idea who they were or why they had to suffer that way.
"Right," she muttered, frowning without taking her eyes off Rowle.
He didn't smile at her cockily as he'd done yesterday. He didn't offer her sneering words or chilling promises. He just stared her back, making her think she wasn't the only one suffering today and wishing things could've been different.
"How wretched that so much of what makes us scream is the things we've all done to each other," she observed coolly, and Rowle's mouth twisted unhappily before he turned away from her, walking to the small window of his cell and looking out of the sea.
"Never imagined we'd all end up here, suffering together, did we?" Seamus said gruffly and Hermione nodded, looking down the row to where he leaned against the bars of his cell, looking her way.
Slipping between the bars of her cell, Hermione hurried along the row to Kingsley's cell where she found him shivering under wet blankets, as Rowle had been.
"Hermione?" Kingsley asked when his things dried quickly underneath her magic.
"Morning, Kings," Hermione greeted him softly, offering him her arm through the bars and sighing softly at the touch when he took her hand and interlocked their fingers.
The flavor of his magic washed across her senses, reminding her of warm beaches and Hermione wished she could be on one now. What she wouldn't give to be seven years old again and romping on the beach with her mother and father, skipping stones and laughing.
"You alright, love?" Kingsley wanted to know.
Hermione sighed, nodding slowly.
"Rough night," she admitted.
"For some," he agreed, and it occurred to her that as an Auror, he'd probably been trained how not to be as affected as the rest of them by the horrors of the war.
"Did you sleep?" she asked.
Kingsley's mouth twisted sadly.
"Only a little," he admitted.
"Get some rest, Kings," Hermione suggested gently. "I think we'll all be needing it today."
When she turned around, her eyes scanned over Malfoy's cell critically, noting that it was mostly dry, but its occupant was nowhere to be found.
"Malfoy?" Hermione asked, frowning.
He wasn't in there.
Her brow furrowing, Hermione pressed herself between the bars, looking for any sign of him. She almost missed it when a glimmer of movement came from under the little shelf of his cot.
"Malfoy?" Hermione asked with concern, crouching and peering at the blond wizard.
Malfoy seemed not to hear her, his body curled into the tightest ball she'd ever seen from a grown man, his face buried against his knees while he trembled under the cot.
"Blimey, Malfoy."
"He doesn't handle them well," Lestrange said, appearing through the bars of Draco's cell and staring down at her. "The Dark Lord and Bella did a number on the lad."
Hermione nodded, frowning heavily while she carefully reached under the shelf to touch the boy.
Malfoy screamed.
Hermione flinched back, landing hard on her bum and blinking in surprise.
"Best to just leave him be until he comes out on his own, love," Lestrange coached. "He'll keep doing that if you keep touching him."
"But he's terrified."
Lestrange shrugged.
"Touching him will only make it worse," he advised. "Believe me…. The things he's seen… the last thing he wants is an unfamiliar hand touching him."
Hermione supposed he might have a point, though she couldn't resist reaching for him again, pushing warmth and magic into her hand and using it to assuage some of his fears with a Calming Charm, ineffective for more than a few minutes though they tended to be. Malfoy screamed again, though the sound trailed off when she took her hand away as the spell took effect. Hermione rose back to her feet, intent on leaving Malfoy alone as had been suggested but before she could take two steps, an icy hand shot out to wrap around her ankle.
"Granger?" Malfoy asked in a muffled voice.
Hermione turned back, crouching down once more. Malfoy's grey eyes peeked at her from beneath the bed in between his knees.
"Is it over?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
Hermione nodded.
"The sun is shining," she told him softly.
Malfoy gulped, looking past her fearfully to the small patch of sunlight making its way past the bars on his window.
Carefully, and very slowly, he peeled himself from his protective ball and slid out from under the bed while Hermione crouched, watching him.
"Need a hand?" she suggested when he sat awkwardly on the floor.
He still trembled violently, looking like the effects of the spell was wearing off fast, but Hermione offered her hand to him just the same. He eyed the appendage as though it were a live snake, looking like he'd rather chew off his own hand than touch hers, but he gulped and forced himself to take it. Carefully, Hermione pulled him back to his feet and he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, looking shellshocked and like he wanted to crawl right back under the bed and stay there.
"You alright?" she asked quietly, carefully lowering herself down to sit on the cot beside him, her back to Lestrange for the time being, though the wizard took advantage of her closeness and reached through the bars, carding his fingers through her short curls curiously.
"I hate it here," Malfoy confessed in a whisper.
"You and me, both," Hermione nodded.
"I hate it when he cackles," he admitted, staring across the cell at the wall. "He sounds like her when he cackles like that."
Hermione looked over her shoulder at Lestrange, realizing who Draco must be talking about. Rabastan furrowed his brow back at her as though to ask why she was looking at him like that. Maybe he didn't remember the terrible way he'd cackled throughout the night while the storm raged out of control?
"You're back there on the floor of the Manor when I hear that cackle," Malfoy went in on a low voice, and Hermione closed her eyes, remembering all too clearly the hours he spoke of while she'd writhed on that floor beneath Bellatrix Lestrange's wand.
"Perhaps, if I have the presence of mind when the next storm hits, I can silence his cackles," Hermione offered quietly.
"I felt so helpless when you were on that floor," Malfoy whispered hoarsely, his eyes still staring straight ahead but unseeing, as though Hermione still writhed under Bella's wand.
Hermione didn't say anything. She didn't know what she could say. For the longest time after that night, she had resented that he had done nothing to help her while she cried and begged and screamed on that floor, and it had warred with the memory that had he not lied when they'd arrived, they'd all have been under Bella's wand until Voldemort could be summoned.
"We can't change the past, Malfoy," Hermione told him quietly, taking his hand and interlacing their fingers, giving the appendage a gentle squeeze.
He didn't say anything in return and he didn't squeeze back when she gave his hand another squeeze either.
"Usually sits like that for hours after one of the storms," Lestrange told her seriously. "You're wasting your time in there with him, Granger."
Hermione turned to look over her shoulder at him once more when he ran both hands through her hair again, taking full advantage of how close she was sitting to the wall separating the two cells.
"And I suppose you can think of better ways for me to be spending my time, Lestrange?"
He gave a low chuckle.
"Think I've made those ideas more than clear since you arrived, pet," he said, grinning into her face. "But maybe not today."
Hermione raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged his shoulders, looking away from her. She released Malfoy and turned to look at Lestrange in question.
"Malfoy's not the only one who suffers after a storm like that," Kingsley said from behind her when Lestrange wouldn't meet her eyes and went so far as to withdraw his hands back into his own cell before he turned and walked to the window, clearly unwilling to talk about it.
Turning back to the corridor, Hermione slipped back through the bars of the cell she'd entered.
"Most of them are somewhat catatonic after a storm," Kingsley explained to her quietly. "It affects us all in different ways, as I'm sure you know."
"Mostly I'm just sore and tired," Hermione admitted. "And my throat hurts."
"Yes, you screamed all night," Kingsley said quietly. "I expect you spent much of it tense and trembling after Proudfoot carried you back to your cell, too."
Hermione nodded slowly.
"So they'll all be pretty much useless for the day, then?" she confirmed, looking down the corridor.
"Except Dolohov," Kingsley nodded. "He never seems to pay the storms any mind at all."
"What about you?"
"I was trained for much of what we experienced, Hermione," Kingsley reminded her gently. "It does not eat at me the way it eats at you."
"You're also not in here for murder," Hermione pointed out.
"Aurors are rarely charged with murder," he smiled sadly. "It is always self-defense when you have an Auror's badge. Even if you abuse it."
"You never abused yours," Hermione told him. "They were wrong to convict you as they did."
Kingsley chuckled bitterly, shaking his head as Hermione helped herself to his cell, squeezing between the bars to invade the space when he gave her arm a small tug of invitation.
"They weren't wrong, Hermione," he disagreed. "I am guilty of all that I was charged with. I used my power as an Auror to protect Dumbledore; to protect Sirius on Dumbledore's orders; to mislead those under my charge and my superiors into searching for wanted fugitives – yourself and Harry included – in all the wrong places. I betrayed the oaths I swore to uphold when I accepted the badge, and I have to pay for those crimes."
"All is supposed to be fair in love and war," Hermione replied.
"Crimes of war are still called such for a reason, my dear," Kingsley told her, inviting Hermione to sit on his cot beside him and curling his arm around her shoulders in gentle comfort when she accepted the invitation.
"I'm still going to get us out of here," Hermione told him.
"Those of you who have been given life sentences," he nodded in agreement. "If I must spend ten years here to serve my sentence, I will do so."
"You could appeal," Hermione told him. "I'm sure of it. You were acting on Dumbledore's orders."
"But not the Ministry's."
"The Ministry was under Voldemort's control," Hermione reminded him. "It would be more criminal to blindly follow, rather than to see the truth and act for what is good and what is right."
"To those of us with strong convictions and stronger morality," Kingsley nodded. "But in the eyes of the law, we were a rebel force who evaded and undermined the movements of the government."
"We got the job done," Hermione argued.
"It is often true that those who are too weak to fight will attempt to make up for their cowardice when the dust begins to settle and try to claw back some semblance of power or control."
"Well, hopefully with Umbridge out of the way, the dust will settle with a bit more understanding and gratitude and empathy," Hermione replied grouchily. "Hopefully with that wretched hag gone, they'll appeal all of our cases and reassess all of us for release."
Kingsley gave her a light squeeze, his arm heavy and warm around her shoulders.
"I wouldn't hold your breath, Hermione," he told her quietly. "Umbridge wasn't the only one in those courtrooms, and they still voted to convict."
"Well, I never said they'd appeal my sentence," Hermione rolled her eyes. "Not after performing blood magic in front of them. But surely they can appeal yours?"
"My crimes are in many ways worse than yours, my dear," he shook his head. "I swore an oath, and I broke it."
"Maybe, but you did it for a good reason, and you didn't murder anyone."
"I killed plenty during the final battle."
"If that were true, you'd have been convicted of murder."
"The badge makes it all self-defense."
"Which it was," Hermione pointed out. "As were all of mine – until Umbridge."
"It will take years before they might consider an appeal or parole, Hermione," he told her tiredly. "And even if they allow it…. I can be an Auror no longer. They will not reinstate me as one. For the rest of my life, I will be an ex-Auror, dishonorably discharged."
"For the rest of your life you will be a hero of war and a member of the Order of the Phoenix," Hermione corrected him. "Someone who stood up for what was right. Someone who fought for our freedom. Someone who protected muggleborns from the purge the Death Eaters tried to rain down upon us. Because of your actions, we survived long enough to bring that evil bastard down, do you hear me. You did that. You helped keep us safe while we did what we had to do."
Kingsley smiled sadly before drawing her closer and pressing a kiss to the middle of her forehead.
"I'm so sorry they brought you here, Hermione," he whispered into her hair. "You deserve better than a fate like this."
"We all do," Hermione scoffed.
"None of us here will suffer quite as you will."
Hermione sighed, laying her head on his shoulder, knowing he had a point.
"I'll survive, Kings," she promised him. "I always do."
"You don't have Harry and Ron with you anymore, love," he disagreed in a whisper, his voice thick with grief.
"I don't," Hermione agreed softly, her heart constricting with grief at the reminder that Harry would never come to her rescue again. "But I have you. I have George. I've got Neville and Seamus. I have Madame Pomfrey doing everything she can to keep me safe. I'll survive this. I always survive. I can survive this too."
"No matter the bargain you made with the guards, they will turn on you eventually, Hermione," he warned her quietly. "They will use you. Entwhistle and Savage will use you as surely as these Death Eaters want to."
"I know," Hermione whispered. "But if they use me enough, I'll fall pregnant, and then Madame Pomfrey can get me out of here."
"There's no guarantee," he told her.
"As soon as I'm out of Azkaban and back in St. Mungo's, I'll run, Kings," Hermione promised him. "I'll find a way to get you guys out."
"You heard what they said they would do to you if it looks like you'll escape," Kingsley replied, nodding toward the likes Lestrange where he stood with his back to them, still staring out the window.
"Then I'll just have to convince them that I will bust them out of here too," Hermione shrugged her shoulders.
"They will force themselves on you if you try to avoid sleeping with them, Hermione," he warned her gently.
"I know," she nodded. "The bargain I made with Entwhistle is that he will keep them from hurting me if I agree to play nice with them. Except for Carrow. He's too stupid."
"Carrow?" Kingsley asked. "Hermione, surely you know that the likes of Dolohov and Lestrange are far worse."
"Worse, but less stupid than Carrow," Hermione reminded him. "Probably not quite as inbred."
He snorted in spite of the seriousness of their discussion.
"You may have a point," he allowed. "You will really… sleep with them?"
Hermione nodded, sighing heavily.
"And with you, if you'd like," she offered quietly. "People do have needs, after all, yourself included."
"Hermione," he asked, looking mildly horrified. "I cannot ask you to… I can make do…"
He was shaking his head and looking like he didn't want to be an imposition, evidently embarrassed at the offer and at the idea of shagging her. Hermione didn't blame him. He was a good decade or two older than her, and she supposed he probably thought of her in a doting uncle sort of way, given their association with the Order.
"It's fine, Kings," Hermione chuckled. "I've had a crush on you since the first time I saw you. It's certainly not an imposition."
He looked even more embarrassed and like he didn't know what to say.
"Well, that's very kind of you," he offered awkwardly. "But I am much older than you, Hermione…."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Better you than those freaks," Hermione jerked her thumb toward the Death Eaters. "The only way I'm getting out of here is with a baby in my belly, Kings, and I'd much rather your kid than Dolohov's, you know?"
Kingsley seemed to choke on the horrified breath he gasped, and Hermione tried to keep from laughing out loud, though she failed rather impressively.
"Think on it," she patted his chest gently. "I'm certainly not going to force you."
Right at that moment, the groaning sound that preluded the appearance of the elevator filled their cells and Hermione's heart turned over.
"Shit," she muttered, jumping to her feet and squeezing herself back through the bars. "I better get back."
Kingsley nodded, though he didn't say anything as Hermione hurried back down the corridor and back into her own cell. As she paced the length of it back and forth, warily watching the elevator door to confirm she hadn't been caught wandering. The rest of the inmates were quiet, Hermione noticed, which was quite the change from the bickering they'd been doing since her arrival. Maybe the storms really had taken it out of all of them. Other than sore muscles and a scratchy throat, Hermione herself didn't feel that drained, but then, she didn't suppose she had some of the horrors the others carried with them after the war.
When the Aurors arrived, they did so with a fleet of house elves in tow carrying trays of food, which were distributed quietly amongst the group. Hermione's eyebrows rose when Madame Pomfrey swept into the cellblock in Proudfoot's wake and she noted that the woman was carrying her medicine bag, ready to administer potions as needs be to all the prisoners after a rough night.
Her own breakfast subsisted of much the same as she'd been given the day before, minus the mushrooms, and she noted the rota of potions she was to continue taking. If she kept eating as much as she was being given, Hermione feared she soon wouldn't fit through the bars to come and go as she liked. Then again, it wasn't as though she couldn't use the nutrition, given the sorry state of her once womanly figure.
No one wanted to shag a skeleton, or so her mother used to tell her when she didn't consume what the woman deemed to be enough for a growing girl. Hermione's heart ached to know that she would never hear her mother say those words to her ever again and she consumed her breakfast quietly while she waited for Madame Pomfrey to see her.
"My dear girl," the matron said when she reached her, Proudfoot unlocking her cell and letting the healer insider. "How are you holding up?"
Hermione shrugged her shoulders. "Could be worse," she admitted.
"Oh, darling," Madame Pomfrey said. "Let me take a look at you. That was some storm, or so I hear."
Hermione nodded.
"Don't remember much of it, to be honest," she confessed.
"The PTSD is impacting your short-term memory when triggered, then," she nodded. "That's very common. How are you otherwise?"
Hermione told the woman of her ailments and complaints, which seemed minor in comparison to Malfoy's dissociation and the apparent effects the storm had on some of the others.
"I managed to get a hold of these for you too, dear," Madame Pomfrey said after giving her a Calming Draught, a muscle relaxant, and a lozenge.
She produced three thick tomes from her bag and handed them over to Hermione.
"Oh, thank Merlin," Hermione exclaimed. "I thought I was going to die of boredom in here."
Madame Pomfrey laughed.
"Young Mr. Weasley was very specific about the books he insisted on sending to you, so I do hope they'll keep you entertained," she smiled gently. "And how are you otherwise? Are your potions helping?"
"Fighting fit," Hermione shrugged her shoulders since other than the effects of the storm and the resultant aches and pains, she felt fine and was getting enough to eat for the first time in what felt like years.
"Much too skinny and still a bit peaky, if you ask me," Madame Pomfrey corrected her. "But you're on the mend. We'll have you back to normal in no time, won't we?"
"Better than normal, I should think," Hermione nodded her head.
"Excellent," the woman smiled, getting the message loud and clear about Hermione's plan to fall pregnant as soon as was humanly possible. "The sooner the better, love."
Madame Pomfrey gave her a long hug, holding her snugly and making Hermione's eye prickle at how maternal it felt. When she could cure no more hurts for Hermione, she moved over to Rowle's cell and proceeded to treat him for some burns he'd evidently given himself throughout the night, in addition to the onset of minor flu after the soaking he'd received during the storm. Given the way he slumped on his cot when she was done, Hermione suspected he might also have been given something to make him sleep, noting when she peered into Lestrange's cells that he must have been administered the same dose because he was out like a light now that his breakfast was eaten, snoring softly and even drooling a little bit.
Hermione shook her head, turning her attention to Dolohov as Madame Pomfrey was allowed into his cell and kept under the close eye of Auror Proudfoot, who didn't leave Pomfrey's side and who kept his wand trained on the Death Eater the entire time while the witch performed diagnostic charms.
Other than some early-onset arthritis in his right wrist and his left knee, he had no ailments, physical or psychological – unless you counted basic sociopathy – and Hermione watched curiously as Madame Pomfrey handed him a sedative and a pain-reliever for arthritis.
"How are you treating the effects of my curse on the witch?" Dolohov asked, his accent thick as he held off on consuming the sedative to ask his question.
"That is no concern of yours, Madame Pomfrey scowled.
"You must take her off those things that would help prevent her suffering, no?" he asked. "So how will you treat the results?"
Madame Pomfrey looked over at Hermione, raising her eyebrows.
"Everyone knows what Fertility Potion looks like, Madame Pomfrey," Hermione shrugged her shoulders. "They all know the plan."
The medi-witch frowned to hear that given her suggestion to keep it secret, if possible, before turning back to Dolohov.
"The only thing we can do is treat the pain when it comes," she said archly.
"It will not help," he told her matter-of-factly.
Hermione recalled from firsthand experience that he was right. The potions she'd been given the last time she'd suffered the harrowing effects of a period since he'd cursed her had taken the edge off to keep her from insanity, but they'd done little more than that. Hermione wasn't so sure they would help at all anymore, given how long it had been and how the scar still pained her so frequently. It had grown worse since she'd been held captive under Bella's curses, and Hermione had a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she would not only not be able to fall pregnant, but that she would needlessly suffer every month for the remainder of her stay in Azkaban until she gave up on the notion of using pregnancy as her ticket out of there.
She didn't know if she could face the pain on her own. She didn't know if she could handle the indignity she knew would come with it when her period finally arrived. She didn't think she could stand having all of these wizards listening to her suffering, day in and day out while the bleeding persisted.
"There is nothing else that can be done," Madame Pomfrey frowned. "The curse grows worse during menstruation and other than pain relief, there is nothing I can administer to prevent the courses of nature. You will simply have to listen to her suffer and understand the full ramifications of what you did to the poor girl with your wretched cruelty, Mr. Dolohov."
Dolohov scowled, looking like he wanted to suggest any number of things that might help and like he wouldn't mind cursing the healer for her impertinence. Instead, he uncorked the potions he'd been given and gulped them both down before handing the vials back.
When his cell was secured once more, Dolohov sat back on his cot and Madame Pomfrey moved on to treat George and the others further down the cell block.
"You know of something that will help?" Hermione asked of the Russian wizard quietly when she moved over to peer down at him through the bars while he stretched out on his back upon his cot.
"Vozmozhno," he shrugged his shoulder, meeting her eyes steadily. Maybe.
"Will you tell me?" Hermione raised her eyebrows at him seriously.
"Will you use the guards to keep me from touching you?" he challenged.
Hermione narrowed her eyes.
"Will you be polite if I let you touch me?" she asked.
His mouth twitched.
"I think our definitions of the words mean different things, rybka."
"I would imagine so," Hermione sighed, leaning her face against the bars separating their cells. "Do you know why the curse would be so intricately tied to my monthly cycle? It doesn't hurt anywhere near as much when I'm not menstruating."
"Is a curse designed to destroy from within," he shrugged his shoulders. "That is what a woman's body does every month, no? Shreds itself and expels?"
"More or less," Hermione shrugged, though there was a bit more to it than all that, thank you very much.
"The curse flares because your body does what it was designed to do."
"Except it burns like hellfire," Hermione pointed out.
"That is exactly what it does," he nodded, smiling meanly.
"Is there a way to remove it?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Net podskazki," he answered bluntly. No clue. "No one else has ever survived."
Hermione sighed, closing her eyes and nodding slowly. Yeah, that's what she'd thought.
"It has gotten worse since Bella's torture," she told him quietly, her eyes remaining closed as she tried to think through what little she knew about the curse and how it had affected her.
She flinched when cold fingers touched her cheek, jerking back from the bars and finding him sitting up once more, reaching out to touch her face.
"Worse how?" he wanted to know, his dark eyes suddenly alight with curiosity.
Hermione eyed him coolly when he leaned further forward, his arm sliding between the bars to touch her once more. She thought about stepping back, her skin crawling at the thought of this wretched creature touching her. He had tried to kill her. He'd done his damnedest to kill her, in fact. The notion that she might allow him to so much as breathe the same air as her was offensive and yet, she was stuck with him and would be for the rest of her days in this wretched hellhole.
Despite the urge to scamper back from him until her back hit the bars on the far side of her cell, Hermione held perfectly still, allowing him to trace one cold thumb-pad over the apple of her left cheek. He looked intrigued, his eyes darting down to follow the path of his thumb over her skin while goose-pimples rose on Hermione's arms at the touch.
"It hurts more," she told him. "Prickles of pain. Sometimes it aches fiercely but most of the time it just prickles and tingles like the feeling when a limb falls asleep as the blood-flow returns."
"Does it burn?" he wanted to know.
Hermione nodded slowly. "Yes, but an icy sort of burn."
He nodded slowly.
"Would you show me, lisichka?"
Hermione frowned at him.
"The scar?" she asked.
"There is a scar?" he confirmed, his eyes lighting up even more, as though the very notion of having left a mark upon her body pleased him.
Hermione scowled at him.
"There is a scar," she confirmed.
She debated whether or not she should let him see it, sensing that he would very much like the thought of having marked her; that it turned him on to have marked her. On the other hand, if she showed him, he might know how to undo what he'd done, or how to ease her suffering from what he had caused.
Stepping back a little until he couldn't reach her cheek anymore, Hermione peeled up the hem of her shirt to show him the deep purple scar that slashed diagonally from her left shoulder toward her right hip, plunging into her minimal cleavage and partially hidden under her bra.
"All of it?" he asked, his eyes alight with something feverish and frightening that made her want to hex him to death.
"You just want to see my boobs," Hermione huffed, lowering her shirt.
"No," he disagreed, shaking his head and reaching further through the bars, all the way up to his shoulder.
He snagged the front of her shirt and used it to drag her closer and to drag the fabric up and out of his way so that he might see it again. His other arm snaked through the bars as well, capturing the back of her neck in an unforgiving grip that refused to let her jerk away.
"Day mne posmotret," he hissed fiercely. Let me see.
Hermione resisted only a little, scowling at him hatefully and seizing his wrist tightly when he tried to lift her shirt and her bra out of the way.
His eyes lifted to her face, full of fire and annoyance.
"Show me," he demanded his accent thickening and his command of the English language slipping in his frustration. "I can fix. Maybe."
Hermione doubted he could.
Narrowing her eyes hatefully, she released his wrist with a huff and smacked his hand away before yanking her shirt back up out of the way. She snagged her thumb in the fabric of her bra as well, exposing her sternum to his intense gaze. Dolohov drew in a slow, deep breath, his eyes transfixed upon the mark he'd left on her skin and Hermione trembled beneath the intensity of the look. Madness glinted in those dark eyes, and she remembered all too well the same manic gleam that had been in them the day he'd given her that scar.
"Hmmm," he hummed, almost a contended and satisfied sound.
Hermione held perfectly still, even when he darted a look to her eyes before dropping his gaze back to the mark while he lifted his hand, intent on touching the mark he'd made.
"Don't," she whispered, frowning.
"I can fix," he muttered in return but a chill spider-walked down Hermione's spine as the ice in his fingers brushed her skin right before he touched her.
Pain like she'd never know lanced the mark and Hermione shrieked, her head tipping back and her body beginning to convulse under the touch. Dolohov began speaking rapid-fire Russian while Proudfoot shouted from down the cellblock, but Hermione barely heard him.
Like fire and ice combining in a blistering freeze, agony laced the mark and seared beneath her flesh. Dolohov's grip on her neck was all that kept her from crumpling to the cold flood of her cell when her knees buckled from the intensity of the sensation. His voice grew louder, and Hermione suspected he uttered some terrible curse, for he pressed his palm flat against the burning mark, and pulses of even more agony coursed through her, wracking her frame more intensely than even the Cruciatus Curse had done.
Others shouted from their cells, and Proudfoot was snarling and trying to hex Dolohov into submission as he tried to unlock the dark wizard's cell, but Dolohov's magic must be more powerful than they'd imagined because the spells bounced off the cell as though from an invincible force field. A shield charm, undoubtedly, but Hermione was too lost to following such thoughts.
Using his grip on her neck, Dolohov dragged Hermione closer to the bars, his unending stream of Russian falling from his lips while the pain tore Hermione asunder and she thought for sure that this was it, this was how she would die. Before the thought could take root and fester, something hot and cold and biting practically clawed its way up her throat and Hermione's screams choked off with the intensity of it before suddenly, Dolohov's stream of curses ended as he laid his lips over hers.
Hermione had never had cause much to imagine what a Dementor's Kiss might feel like, but the way Dolohov's mouth pressed over her open one and sucked made her think it must be something like that. For while he did so, the festering thing clawing its way up her throat drew higher and higher, paralyzing her tongue and pulsing fiercely through her teeth and her gums.
It left her all in a rush to a deep groan from Dolohov as the pain in her midriff slowly lessened and the agony in her mouth seemed to transfer from her tongue to his when he swept his into her mouth. Hermione gasped raggedly, her tongue moving of its own accord against Dolohov's when he kissed her deeply, and with such ferocity his teeth knocked against hers.
Proudfoot was shouting from the corridor and bouncing off the shield the dark wizard snogging Hermione must've made, but Hermione barely noticed. He kissed her until she gathered her wits enough to jerk away and when she did, Hermione's eyes widened as she looked upon him. His lips, tongue, and throat glowed the fierce purple of the magic he'd used to make his spell and it traveled down his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. His eyes, when he opened them, danced with the purple flames of his curse as well and he released his grip on her neck as he slumped back from her heavily, falling to the mattress of his cot and breathing hard.
"What did you do?" Hermione rasped hoarsely, her own throat on fire like nothing she'd ever known and her midriff throbbing dully beneath her scar.
He only shook his head as he panted, refusing to answer her as Hermione stumbled backward from the wall of her cell to fall back on her own cot, her knees like jelly beneath her.
Proudfoot managed to breach Dolohov's cell only when the man disappeared from Hermione's view, succumbing to the effects of the magic, the sedative he'd been given, or perhaps one of the stunning spells the Auror fired at him. Hermione couldn't be sure. Her head throbbed fiercely, and her eyelids grew heavy as she too flopped limply to her side upon her cot while unconsciousness rushed up to claim her.