Chapter 21 - Desperation (self harming trigger warning)

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Hermione wakes up with a dull pain on her left arm.
For a second it's just her and the pain, then she remembers where she is, how she got there and what happened.
The more her mind gains consciousness, waking up, the more she feels desperate.
The pain on her arm is now nothing to her, compared to the desperation and chaos she feels.
She takes a deep breath and focuses on it and for a moment she feels better, but soon her painful emotions come back.
What she feels is not something stable she can easily get distracted from, it's an "active" pain, a real torture.
It's not like the quiet pain of slowly starving to death, it's more like the pain of being locked in a dark room filled with ticking clocks and ringing alarms, not being able to turn them off and stop the deafening noise.

The takes another deep breath and her attention goes to her aching arm.
She wraps the sleeve up and looks at the signature Bellatrix carved into her skin days before.
"It was healing, why is it hurting again, now?" she wonders.
"At least it's distracting me from my mental chaos." she observes.
This is how she gets an idea she knows she would regret soon.
She picks a small branch up from the ground, breaks it in two and uses the sharpest tip to scratch the skin of the other arm.
Her breath immediately slows and all the problems seem to disappear. The only existing thing to her, now, is the harm she is doing.
"It's amazing!" she thinks.
She puts down the branch and closes her eyes.
She doesn't know what she's feeling, but at least it's something quiet.
She breathes deeply and calmly.

Then, tho, this calm turns into sense of guilt.
She looks at her arm, scratched from wrist to elbow.
"Fuck, what did I do?!" she whispers, and tears fill her eyes.
She feels so guilty and desperate... and out of control.
She looks around: "It's almost dark, night is coming and I'm alone in the forest with nothing, crying. I can't take this anymore. Someone help me, please..." she murmurs, but nobody hears her.

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