Then — she hesitated and swallowed nervously, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. She squeezed her eyes closed and drew a shuddering breath as she moved through her mind again, tearing down all the walls she had built over the course of the war.
Her neatly compartmentalised life. All her separated emotions and memories. Her grief and devastation over her lost relationships with Harry and Ron. Her bitter, poisonous resentment towards the Order. All the things she'd pushed away and ignored in order to stay focused, to stay on mission. The things she'd hidden away and refused to think about in an effort to stay sane while she kept working.
Colin's death. Colin. The first death. The way he screamed as his skin was sliced off his body, off his face, his eyes. Until he stopped screaming, and Hermione stood there, too devastated and guilt-stricken to look away, as he was carved away into a skeleton. Layer after layer.
All the victims from the first curse division that she'd spent months trying to heal and save. They died. Everyone died. And died. And died. They always died. She tried to save them, but in the end they always died.
Harry had died. Ron. The Weasleys.
Her life was a graveyard.
She pushed it all into the forefront of her mind.
When Voldemort came, all he would find would be the endless death toll of the war, year after year. An unheeded voice in the hospital ward. Just a healer. All the Order meetings when she'd argued for lethal spells and been dismissed and scolded. She wasn't a fighter. Just a healer. What did she know?
Sussex would look like her revenge.
She was lost in her memories when the door of the cage shrieked, and she was roughly dragged out of the cage again. Cold metal clamped around each wrist, and she was pulled towards the castle. Everyone hanging from the Astronomy Tower was dead but Remus.
There was a flash of poisonous green light. As Hermione glanced back, she saw the Killing Curse sailing through the air. Remus finally went fully limp. The last of the Marauders.
She was pulled through the hallways, only half-lucid through the jumble of trauma in her mind and the remaining physical pain from all the cruciatus. The hallways were stripped bare. There were a series of large iron doors that the guard had to pause and unbolt as he dragged her further and further into the bowels of the castle. Down into the dungeons, past the classrooms, past the wall that had concealed the Slytherin common room, through a heavy door into an unfamiliar hallway.
Umbridge was standing by a door. She gave a saccharine smile as she looked Hermione over.
“This is where we kept our problematic prisoners until transfer to Sussex. Without the wards on the castle, we can't be too careful with a prisoner saved for the Dark Lord's exclusive interrogation. I'm sure you'll do quite well here until he thinks to call for you.”
Hermione was shoved into a small room, barely illuminated by the torchlight outside the cell. Stone walls. Straw in a corner. A chamberpot in another.
She turned as the door was being swung shut, then it suddenly stopped, and Umbridge stepped through, as though she were re-considering something.
Her eyes ran up and down Hermione.
“We must obey the Dark Lord's commands, mustn't we?” she said in a musing voice as she gestured at Hermione with her wand. “Intact. That's very important. We don't want you sitting down here gibbering like a loon, chattering away to yourself like a filthy little savage. Let's keep you — very quiet.” The tip of a wand dug into the dip behind Hermione's jaw, forcing her head up.
Umbridge gave a small giggle, and her cloying, sugary breath brushed across Hermione's face.
“You'll understand soon enough.”
Then Umbridge turned and walked out the the cell. The door swung closed with a heavy thud, and in a matter of seconds even the torchlight outside the cell was gone.
Hermione was left in darkness and silence.
She felt her way carefully to the corner with the straw and curled up into a tight ball. Her muscles were burning and spasming painfully. It was freezing in the dungeons, and her clothes were thin.
She kept blinking, and peering into the darkness, hoping that if she waited long enough, eventually she'd be able to make out a faint outline.
There was nothing, nothing but darkness.
Eventually she curled her head down and returned to her occlumency.
Except — it wouldn't—
She tried again but her memories—
Moving through her mind was laborious. As though she was mentally weighted down and she could barely crawl through her mind with occlumency.
She froze with dawning horror. Her twitching fingers went to her wrists, feeling the metal locked around them as she tried to breathe calmly.