Manacled by Senlinyu

chapter 22

Hermione had no idea where that version of herself could have come from. She found it difficult to believe the person had ever existed.

Somehow that mysterious person had been swallowed up in the darkness beneath Hogwarts. Without the second-hand accounts of Voldemort, Malfoy, and Montague, she would never have even known such a person had existed. She almost would think it was some sort of deception if she didn't have so many scars she couldn't account for.

She glanced down at her left wrist, ran her finger tips over the scattered, silvery scars that mottled her sternum and collarbones, and then traced over the long, thin scar between her seventh and eighth ribs.

Healer Stroud had said the fugues in her mind weren't a dissociation or multiple personalities, but Hermione rather felt that they must be. Hermione as she knew herself to be would never have leveled half a prison and killed countless other people in order to break-in. Not even for Ginny. Hermione wouldn't have treated everyone else as collateral damage in a rescue attempt. She didn't know how fill a sky with burning dementors. She had never carried poisoned knives, much less learned how to stab anyone with them.

There was something cavernous in her ignorance, and she didn't know how to reconcile it.

She pulled on her robes, went downstairs, and wavered at the veranda door. The air was warm and smelled loamy, with faint traces of sweetness. There were huge beds of daffodils and irises that had seemingly sprung up in previous two weeks. The birds were singing.

It was as though the outside world had transformed itself while Hermione had been lying in her darkened room. Nature had dropped its shroud, and stopped mirroring the coldness and gloom of Hermione's life. The world had left her behind. It had sprung to life again, but Hermione was still trapped in a cage, cold and deathly.

She turned and walked back inside.

She didn't want to feel the stirring of spring; not on her skin or in her blood. She didn't want to think about life stirring. Not around her. Not inside her.

Topsy appeared before dinner.

"You is to get ready now," the House-elf squeaked.

It was hours earlier than Malfoy had ever come before. Hermione had no idea what that could possibly be the reason for the change. Every bit of added unpredictability only made it worse. She went cold with dread.

She went in the bathroom and bathed. As she toweled off with shaking hands, she remembered the potions Healer Stroud had sent. She'd been so nervous the night before, she'd forgotten them.

After dressing, she went and pulled one of the vials out of the bathroom cabinet. It wasn't a Draught of Peace; the color and consistency were unfamiliar. She sniffed it. The scent was tangy in her nostrils, slightly citrus and peppery. She put a drop on her fingertip and tasted it. It was warm and mildly sweet on the tongue.

She waited a minute. She felt less cold with anxiety.

She swallowed it, and it was hot sliding down her throat. As it reached her stomach, the heat seemed to bloom outward through her whole body.

Her skin tingled and grew almost achingly sensitive. Hermione froze, gasped with horror and lurched forwards, staring wide-eyed in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dilating as she studied her reflection. She pressed her hands over her mouth and stumbled back.

Stroud had given her a lust potion.

Hermione wanted to burst into tears as she tried to steady herself and will away the effects of the potion currently burning through her.