When he started to move, she cast her mind for something — something new. Something she hadn't already thought to death.
The lines of a poem slowly came to her.
The continuous sensation of movement inside her dragged her attention back into reality. She ground her teeth and fought for the next lines. She started over.
The pace of movement shifted, and she desperately scrabbled to recall what words came next.
Malfoy abruptly came as she tried to remember the following line. He pulled away sharply.
Hermione didn't move.
A moment later, she heard the door click once more.
Hermione tried to remember the third verse of the poem, but it floated beyond her memory's reach.
She thought — she remembered an armchair and a book of poetry. Comforting arms wrapped around a child Hermione, and a woman's hands flicking to a page. A voice she couldn't remember any longer…
Her mother—
She thought it might have been her mother who taught her the poem.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the clock.
Chapter End Notes
The incomplete poem Hermione recites to herself is “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (340) by Emily Dickinson.
That girl was gone by _knar.m_
Once upon a time... there had been a girl who fought by keerthi_draws.
The following three days passed in much the same manner. The table appeared promptly at seven thirty each evening. Hermione went and leaned over it a few minutes before eight o'clock. Malfoy entered — performed — and then left without a word.
Hermione recited poetry to herself and tried to take her mind as far away as she possibly could. Anything to not think about what was happening to her body.
She wasn't there. She was lying across a table because she was tired. She traced her fingers across the subtle grain of the wood. Perhaps it was oak. Or walnut.
As soon as she was permitted to leave the table, she would climb into bed and pray for sleep to come. She wasn't allow to wash until the following morning, and she didn't want to feel the fluid between her legs.
She tried not to think about it. Not while it happened. Not afterward. Not the next morning. She just — tried not to even think about it.
There was nothing she could do.
She tried to shove it away into a corner of her mind. Take her mind as far from her body as she could and stay there.
When she woke the morning after the fifth day, she wanted to weep, she was so relieved it was — at least temporarily — over. The dead sensation of horror that resided in her stomach felt faintly eased.
She got up and bathed. Scrubbing every inch of herself ritualistically. Then she stood with resolution before the bedroom door.
She was going to go out. She was going to get out of her room and explore at least...four. Four of the other rooms along the hall.
She was determined. She was going to examine every inch, and see if she could find any potential weapon by which to kill Malfoy.
She had envisioned his death in a multitude of creative ways during the last several days. Carried herself through with the fervent desire to watch the light fade from his eyes. She would give anything to drive a blade into his cold heart.
She was willing to settle for strangling or poisoning him.
Aside from Voldemort and Antonin Dolohov, there was no one else's death which Hermione now wished for so fervently.
Dolohov had been the lead developer in the Voldemort's curse division. The most horrific curses that had emerged over the course of the war were attributable to him. Hermione wondered if he were alive, still inventing new methods with which to kill people with agonising slowness.
Now, Dolohov and Malfoy were nearly tied. Hermione wasn't sure which of them she wanted dead more. Probably still Dolohov, she supposed. Even if the body count were equal, at least Malfoy wasn't such a sadist.
She pulled the door open and stepped out. She didn't pause to close it behind her. She didn't give herself time to freeze. She rushed down the hall into the nearest room.
When the door was shut, she dropped her head against the frame and forced herself to breathe. Slow deep breaths. Air all the way down into the bottom of her lungs and then slowly out to a count of eight.