"Hermione..." she heard someone breathe.
Looking up sharply from her manacles, she saw a head poking through the dividing curtain. She squinted and stared. It was Hannah Abbott.
A low gasp of horror escaped Hermione's lips.
Hannah only had one eye.
Her right eye was staring at Hermione, but her left eye was gone. There was a black, gaping hole in her head as though it had been plucked out.
Hannah's hand immediately darted up and covered the left side of her face.
"Sorry. It's always awful for people the first time they see it."
"What—happened?" Hermione forced the words out.
She didn't know of any curse that removed eyes in such a manner. There were plenty of blinding hexes, but none with such grotesque results.
"Umbridge—she popped it out with the tip of her wand when—when I tried to escape. She made the healers keep it like this. For effect." Hannah turned her head slightly away to conceal her face further.
"She got into trouble for it though." Hannah lowered her face so that she was gazing at the floor. Her voice sounded as if she was somehow dead. "She normally cuts off fingers now. If you're disrespectful. If you try to get away. If you look at her wrong. Parvati and Angelina, they hardly have any fingers left."
Hannah looked hard at Hermione with her remaining eye.
"Let your Gryffindor die, Hermione. Don't try to be brave. Don't try to be clever. Just keep your head down. People have been trying to get out for months. Anyone who gets caught gets maimed. Anyone—who gets out—it took too many tries before we realised—the manacles we've all got—," Hannah raised her own copper encased wrist, "they've got a trace in them. If you get past the wards, they send the High Reeve and hang the corpse in the Great Hall so that we all have to watch it decay."
Hermione felt as though she'd been struck violently in the chest. Her fingers spasmed against the fabric of the blanket covering her. She could barely breathe. "Who?"
"Ginny. She was the first body they brought back. We all thought maybe you had actually gotten out. Because you disappeared. We didn't realise they'd just put you somewhere else..."
Hannah's voice trailed off, and she stared at Hermione. "You don't even know why they brought you out, do you?"
Hermione shook her head.
"The guards talk a lot. After the war, we all expected the Dark Lord would start enslaving the Muggles. But—it turns out his ranks were more exhausted than we realised. Apparently being immortal makes him patient. He decided that repopulating the ranks of pure-blood wizards should be first on his agenda. He personally paired off all the pure-bloods. Made them all get married with orders to start reproducing."
Hannah's face was twisted with disdain as she recited this information.
Hermione's eyebrows furrowed with surprise. A repopulation effort? The war had dragged on with high casualties given the size of the wizarding population, but Hermione hadn't thought Voldemort would notice, much less care. Arranged marriages weren't exactly uncommon among pure-bloods—but having them mandated seemed extreme. She wondered how his followers had felt.
"There were—barely any babies. Pure-blood fertility rates have been dropping for years. There were a few pregnancies that set everyone abuzz. Most ended up squib and got terminated before the end. Or miscarried. Well,"—Hannah's voice grew bitter—"apparently facing the extinction of the European wizarding world has opened the Dark Lord's mind somewhat in regard to blood purity. Magic is might, you know. He's decided to start a breeding program with all these half-blood and Muggle-born prisoners he happens to have on hand. Just us girls, since it's a fate worse than death to have a Muggle-born male touch a pure-blood female. We're all to be made to produce babies until our uteruses give out."
Hannah looked as sick as Hermione was beginning to feel.
"So that's why they finally let you out," said Hannah, gesturing helplessly. "They're using school and medical records to decide which of us are eligible. That healer you were speaking to—she's the head of the whole thing. Apparently she specializes in magical genetics. We're her lab rats. They're checking everyone's fertility."
Hannah was crying now. Hermione stared at her, feeling faint with shock. It couldn't be true. It was all just too horribly dystopian. Some nightmare she was dreaming up inside her cell.
"We—have to get out," Hermione said in as steady a voice as she could manage.
Hannah shook her head.
"We can't. Didn't you hear me earlier? Unless you can chop off your hands, you'll never be able to leave with those manacles. They don't even keep the trace here. Angelina lost her pointer finger to find that out. The Dark Lord keeps it personally. That's why whenever anyone gets away, it's always the High Reeve who goes after them. "
Hannah looked quickly around, tilting her head to get a slightly better view of the floor beyond the privacy curtains.
Hermione followed Hannah's gaze. There was nothing there.
"Who? Who is the High Reeve?" Hermione asked. She didn't remember that title.
Hannah looked up. "I don't know. None of us have ever seen him without his mask. Everyone talks about him. He's the Dark Lord's right hand. Voldemort doesn't go out much, so the High Reeve appears instead. They held public executions a few weeks ago—more than twenty people. He killed every single one with the Killing Curse. He didn't take breaks. He just went straight down the line. No one has even seen the Dark Lord cast that many in a row."
"That—shouldn't be possible," Hermione said, shaking her head doubtfully.
Hannah leaned forward and lowered her voice. "I know. But I've seen the bodies after he catches the runners. He always catches them. McGonagall, Moody, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Professor Sprout, Madam Pomfrey, Flitwick, Oliver Wood; those are the ones you'd know. There have been more. Loads more. The Order members were the ones who tried hardest to get away. They all came back corpses. It's always the Killing Curse."
Hannah hesitated and stared intently at Hermione. "Don't do something stupid, Hermione. I'm not telling you all this so you'll try to escape. I'm trying to warn you. It's hell. You need to be prepared for that because—if you aren't—you're going to walk out there and get maimed, and it won't even mean anything."
Hannah seemed about to say something else, but footsteps sounded beyond the curtains. An expression of terror rippled across her face, and the dividing curtain fell as she retreated.
The curtain on the other side of Hermione snapped open, and the healer from earlier reappeared, looking harried.
"The Dark Lord wants to watch your examination himself," the healer said, reaching out and grabbing Hermione's arm forcefully.
Hermione tried instinctively to get away. She jerked her arm out of the healer's grip and dropped off the other side of the bed in order to create distance.
"Oh, you stupid little witch." The healer sighed, and gestured to someone standing out of Hermione's vision. "Stun her and bring her."
Two guards appeared from behind the curtain and shot two successive stunners at Hermione. The first she dodged, but the second nicked her shoulder. She dropped like a stone.
When she re-awoke, she was strapped down on a table in a dark hall. Her arms and legs were restrained, still twitching from torture. More straps went over her forehead and chin, holding her head in place. There was a small wizard standing on one side of her. Voldemort himself was standing on the other.
The small wizard was speaking in a thin, trembling voice, gesturing up at a projection of Hermione's brain.
"It—it's unlike anything I've ever seen b-before. Normally magical m-m-memory loss occurs q-q-quite generally across the brain when it is s-s-self generated. A p-person can't even tell you their name. But this is t-targeted. Like obliviation spells. A dissociative fugue, or in this case m-many of them. Almost like self-obliviation. Her magic has hidden specific memories inside what I can only describe as almost a c-c-calcification of magical layers. It probably could never have happened without the specific cir-circumstances of her imprisonment. This t-t-took time. Her brain has been slowly shoring up a line of d-defense over the course of months. Almost like a clam making a pearl, she's been slowly burying them under layer after layer. You c-can tell some have been more extensively protected than others based on how brightly they g-g-glow."
Voldemort's eyes were narrowed. "Could these memories be recovered with legilimency?"
The small wizard looked more nervous. Faint droplets of perspiration had collected on his upper lip.
"It's—it's unlikely. This is like an individual occlumency wall of exceptional strength around each specific memory. It's—it's p-possible if the legilimens is sufficiently p-p-powerful."
"I like to think I am," Voldemort said, looking down into Hermione's eyes. She squeezed them shut instantly, but it was too late.
She thought—she might have known occlumency before. With her magic mostly stolen away, she had no ability to create a wall around her mind. Voldemort shot in like an arrow, burying himself deeply among her memories and then sifting slowly through them. It was as though her mind were being crushed under his.
Her childhood. Hogwarts. He wasn't concerned with her locked memories of her parents. After fifth year, when everything grew hazy, his interest sharpened. He examined her memories of healing. All those bodies. All those injuries. So many people. The closer he got to the end of the war, the more memories were locked. He tried driving into them. He tried stabbing his way through the magic with sheer force. None of them would give away to his violent, insistent attacks.
It was breaking her. The force was mind-numbingly painful, and somehow the pain continued to increase until it felt impossible that she wasn't dying from it. Hermione was writhing as she sought to get away—to escape the invasion. Screaming surrounded her and just kept going on, and on, and on.
Finally Voldemort withdrew from her mind. Furious. She slowly became aware that the screams had been hers. By then, they had been reduced to tiny mewling wails of pain past shredded vocal chords. Guttural sobs that kept choking out as her chest kept spasming from pain, and she struggled to breathe.
"I do not like secrets kept from me. With Potter dead there should be nothing left to conceal. What are you hiding?" Voldemort hissed. His bony fingers seized her face and turned it so that she met his eyes.
"I—don't—know—," she said. Her voice was rasping and broken, and she weakly tried to pull her jaw free from his hold.
"Call Severus! And the Warden. She shall be punished for this," Voldemort said. He viciously probed Hermione's mind until she lay limp and barely conscious on the table.
Umbridge arrived first, looking appropriately terrified.
"My Lord, my Lord," she said, dropping to the ground and crawling toward him.
" Crucio ." Voldemort cast the curse, his fury evident in his tone.
Umbridge screamed. She screamed, and screamed, and writhed on the ground. Hermione almost felt sorry for her.
After several minutes, he finally stopped.
"Did you think, Warden, that following the letter but not the spirit of my commands would spare you?"
Umbridge only whimpered.
"I knew of your dislike for the Mudblood, but I had hoped your obedience to me would be sufficient motivation for you to restrain yourself. Perhaps you need a permanent reminder."
"My Lord—"
"What is that punishment you're so fond of doling out among your charges? Knuckles, isn't it? Tell me, Warden, how many fingers will you have left if I take a knuckle for each month you spent trying to drive the Mudblood insane?"
"Noooooooo." Umbridge voice rose in a shriek. She was still shaking and spasming on the ground.
"Perhaps I should be lenient," Voldemort said, walking slowly toward her as she sniveled and grovelled at his feet. "Your work has been mostly good. Instead of sixteen, I'll halve it. Eight knuckles as a reminder I said I wanted Potter's Mudblood left fully intact."
"Pleeeease..." Umbridge was pushing herself up off the ground, sobbing.
Severus Snape swept into the room.
"What's wrong? Unable to endure consequences of your own devising?" Voldemort sneered, and waved a hand as he turned away from Umbridge. "Take her away. Drop her back at her prison when you're done."
Two Death Eaters came forward and dragged Umbridge from the room as she begged and wailed apologies.
"Severus, my faithful servant," Voldemort said, turning toward the Potion Master. "I find myself with a puzzle on my hands."
"My Lord," Snape said, folding his hands respectfully in front of him and lowering his eyes.
"You remember the Mudblood, I presume." Voldemort moved back toward Hermione, staring down at her and running a skeletal finger along his lipless mouth.
"Of course. She was an insufferable student to teach." Snape walked over to survey Hermione, who was still strapped down on the table.
"Indeed, and a good friend of Harry Potter, the boy who died," Voldemort said, caressing his wand lightly. "She was also a member of the Order as I'm sure you recall from your many years as my spy. When Potter died, she was captured, and I ordered her imprisoned but left intact in case I ever had need of her. Unfortunately, the warden at Hogwarts saw fit to dole out her own punishment for past offenses. She imprisoned the Mudblood all this time in a cell under sensory deprivation."
Snape's eyes widened slightly.
Voldemort rested a hand on Snape's shoulder. "According to the mind healers, the experience enabled the Mudblood to lock away her memories. Sealing them off from herself and from me. The identities of her parents—which is of no consequence. More vitally, a great many memories from the war, particularly near the end. This memory loss occurred after Potter died—after the war had ended. What is it that she would be hiding?" There was menace in Voldemort's low sinuous voice. He paused for a moment and then looked down at Hermione. "Perhaps as someone who knew her during that time, you would have some insight into what is missing."
"Of course, My Lord."
Hermione found Snape's cold, bottomless eyes peering down at her. She didn't have any strength left to try resisting as he sank into her consciousness.
He didn't bother with her early memories. He went directly to the war and swept through the memories quickly but thoroughly. He seemed to have specific categories he pursued. Healing. Potion brewing. Order meetings. Research. Conversations with Harry and Ron. Fighting. The final battle. Whenever Snape came upon a locked memory, he seemed to pause and consider its surroundings before trying to break into it.
His invasion was dramatically less traumatic than Voldemort's, but Hermione was still weeping and shuddering by the time he finally slowly withdrew. Her hands clenching spasmodically where they were strapped in place.
"Fascinating," he said, staring down at Hermione with a somewhat conflicted expression.
"Any insight?" Voldemort's hand tightened on Snape's shoulder, and his tone was suspicious.
Snape turned from Hermione and lowered his eyes. "To be honest, My Lord, the Mudblood and I had very little contact during later years of the war. The Order meetings I was privy to are all there. The little else I knew of her was that she was kept away from the fighting, acting as a healer and potion mistress. Those memories appear intact. I am at a loss as to what she could be hiding."
"If the Order had any remaining secrets left, I want to know them," Voldemort said, his scarlet eyes narrowing.
"Indeed," Snape said, his tone silken and demure. "Unfortunately, most of the highly informed Order members are dead now. Either during the final battle, or from torture or escape attempts. Aside from Miss Granger herself, there is likely no one else still alive carrying the information."
Voldemort stared down at Hermione. His red eyes were enraged and calculating as he ran a finger slowly along his mouth. Then he looked sharply over at the mind healer.
"Is there any way to recover these memories?" Voldemort said, his wand hanging from his fingertips with casual menace.
"Well, th-that's very difficult t-to s-s-say." The healer paled. "It's p-p-possible. Now that the circumstances causing it-have been removed. With t-t-time, th-they may restore themselves."
"What about torture? I have broken through to obliviated memories with torture in the past."
The mind healer looked green."It m-m-might work. B-b-but—there'd be no telling which ones you'd unlock. You m-m-might only get a f-few b-before she went insane."
Voldemort stared speculatively down at Hermione. "Then I want her watched. Carefully. By someone who will know the instant they begin to return. Severus, I shall leave her in your charge."
"Of—course, My Lord." Snape bowed low.
"You object?" Voldemort using his wandtip to force Snape upright. He tilted Snape's head back until their eyes met.
"Never. Your wish is my command." Snape's collected expression rippled under the scrutiny.
"Yet you have objections," Voldemort said, withdrawing his wand and turning back to stare down at Hermione.
"I am departing tomorrow for Romania," Snape said, "to investigate the rumors of insubordination we have heard about. The trip, as you noted when you assigned it to me, will be a delicate task, complex and rigorous even without the addition of a prisoner who requires careful monitoring. I—am reluctant to disappoint you in either of these matters." He placed his hand on his chest and bowed again.
Voldemort paused and seemed to be considering, resting his hands on the table beside Hermione and leaning over to study her. As he stood there, a movement on Hermione's other side caught her attention. The female healer in charge of Voldemort's breeding program had approached and was whispering a question to the mind healer.
"M-My Lord," the mind healer said, stepping hesitantly closer, "Healer Stroud has brought to my attention a p-point that m-m-may interest you."
"Yes?" Voldemort's interest appeared negligible. He did not look up toward either healer.
"Magical pregnancy, My Lord," Healer Stroud said with a proud smile. "There are a few cases on record which indicate that such pregnancies have an ability to break through magical fugues. The magic of a child is compatible but dissimilar enough to its mother's to have a corroding effect on built up magic. It's nothing conclusive, given the rarity. It's possible, however. Miss Granger has exceptional magical ability—you yourself noted this and wanted her included in the repopulation effort. If you leave her within the program, there is a chance that a pregnancy may result in unlocking her memories. But—," she hesitated slightly.
"What?" Voldemort looked up sharply at Healer Stroud, causing her to pale and flinch.
"You—you would be unable to inspect her mind during the pregnancy." Healer Stroud said, speaking quickly. "Invasive magics such as legilimency carry a high risk of miscarriage. It's often so traumatic that it can result in permanent magical infertility. You would have to wait, even if you knew the memories were returning, until the baby was born. Unless the father, who would share a familiar magical signature with the child, were the one performing the legilimency."
Voldemort stared down at Hermione thoughtfully, his fingers sliding over his chest as though he were soothing an injury.
"Severus."
"My Lord."
"The High Reeve is an exceptional legilimens, is he not?"
"Indeed, My Lord," Snape said. "His skill is likely equal to my own. You had him trained quite carefully."
"His wife has been found magically barren, has she not?"
The question was directed toward Healer Stroud.
"Yes, My Lord," she answered immediately.
"Then send the Mudblood to the High Reeve. Let him breed and monitor her."
Stroud nodded eagerly. "I can have her there in two weeks. I want to ensure her condition and have her trained."
"Two weeks. Until she is found pregnant, I want her brought in every other month so I can examine her mind personally."
"Yes, My Lord."
"Take her back to Hogwarts, then." Voldemort dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
Hermione's body was still spasming slightly as the restraints on her were spelled off. She felt as though she ought to do—something. Spit. Or refuse. Or—beg.
Anything but just lie there while Voldemort casually delegated her off for breeding.
Her body refused to cooperate. She couldn't do anything as careless hands dragged her up off the table and levitated her down a hallway.