Breaking Hermione

Skulduggery

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

James Baldwin

Hermione

I blinked, slowly regaining control of myself enough to come back into the world.

Why did I even come back at all?

It felt far better to dissociate and drift off in a partially conscious slumber rather than to come back to my life where I was splayed out across the wooden floor like an abandoned toy. Beside me lay my wand in two pieces, placed deliberately on the ground beside me by Tom just to humiliate me further. I felt defeated. The pain Tom had just put me through lashed at my mind, the replays of abuse and trauma were constant reminders to me of my own failure. Tom had attacked me. He had left me lying alone imprisoned and bleeding in the magically fortified room in Ravenclaw Tower. If I had been more organised about my plan, would I even be in this situation? My emotions were a mess. I didn't want to think, because I didn't want to feel anything.

If I could shut down my mind, I would. At the first chance I got, I'd do it.

Should I just give in, and go back to the present day?

"You're not going to give up." I told myself, my own voice hoarse and hardly recognisable even to my own ears. "Get up."

It was as if I couldn't move. At first I was afraid Tom had paralyzed me with a full Body-Bind curse until I discovered I had movement in my legs. I could move my toes. My legs. Again, it seemed as if I was weighed down by only the weight within my mind as thoughts began flashing through my head like torrential rain. One after the other they came, and then suddenly one more harrowing than the rest.

Tom was NOT the type of person to miss any small detail. He knew what he was doing to me, emotionally and mentally. And he enjoyed it.

He knew what power he held over me, and he chose to exploit it every time. I wondered how he felt having so much power over me... If he even really knew the extent of the damage he had done.

It wouldn't help his God complex if he really knew how broken I was.

Nothing had been making sense for the past few months. I knew he had spread rumours about me, lies so elaborate they were designed to not be dismantled. The proof was in the School. People assumed the worst of me, always opting for the offence instead of the defence. I had noticed it was a gradual process, as if they had been conditioned to become that way. All of my friends had forsaken me out of fear they will get the same treatment as me. I was truly isolated. All I had left was Tom Riddle, who would be back any second. After all, It wasn't like him to leave me here unattended so I knew I didn't have long. Even if he wasn't here, I knew I was being watched some way, somehow. He was highly resourceful and cunning, and with his playing hand concealed there was no way to ever know what he was doing.

That was the thing about Tom Riddle, he was very underhanded and devious. These games began as emotional abuse often resulting in me receiving full blame for things that were not my fault. Small things like that left me without a doubt that he would one day attempt to get away with larger scale things. Sadly for me, it was mostly me being the one in the way of all of this. Now, with my life on the line, I was being stupid and throwing myself recklessly in harms way every chance I got.

I looked around the room warily, as if expecting my worst fear to materialize like a Boggart, assuming the form of that horrifying man who stooped to any and all measures to destroy me.