It had never occurred to her — with her magic suppressed she'd lost her ability to use occlumency. Her mind was locked in the exact state it was in at the moment the shackles were fastened around her wrists. A sea of trauma at the forefront of her mind, and Draco hidden so far away she could barely draw up a clear memory of him.
She pressed her hands against her mouth and forced herself to breathe.
She inhaled slowly. To a count of four.
Exhale, through her mouth. To a count of six.
In and out.
Again and again.
She forced herself to think carefully. This was for the best. Voldemort would bring her in for interrogation and find a chaotic jumble of memories. If she were careful not to think about Draco, Voldemort might not be able to find him.
She wrapped her hands around her shoulders, shivering in the cold. She just — couldn't think about Draco. Not at all. She couldn't let herself.
Hold on. That was what she had to focus on. Hold on.
Her ring suddenly burned painfully.
Hermione gave a silent gasp and gripped her hand. Her ring burned again and again and again. Then the burning stopped.
Hermione twisted the ring around her finger. Draco might come for her, before Voldemort called her in for interrogation. She had to be ready.
He always came for her.
She couldn't let herself waste away.
“Hold on. Hold on, Hermione,” she mouthed the words over and over.
She didn't know if it was merely hours or a day later when her ring burned again. She was in so much pain she barely felt it. Her body was screaming from the muscle damage of the cruciatus and the cold and her hunger. She could barely move.
Regardless of whether she had her eyes opened or closed, all she could see was the dead. Harry dying before her eyes. Over and over. Ron's screams as he died. Colin. Molly and Arthur. The hospital ward. They were at the forefront of her mind, and there was nothing else to think about.
There wasn't any food. There was no water either.
She thought it had been a day, but she had no way to be sure. There was no sound outside, not even monotonous dripping. There was only endless silence and darkness.
Perhaps Umbridge intended to starve her to death.
Her ring burned again hours later, she pressed her hand against her chest. Several hours later she suddenly smelled food and half dragged herself across the floor. She found a plate with bread and some kind of meat and a large bucket of water.
Her muscles were still spasming so badly she nearly dropped the bucket while gulping down water.
After that meals appeared. Randomised. There never seemed to be any set amounts of time between them. Sometimes it felt like days. Other times it seemed like only a few hours had passed.
After what she thought had been a week, her body stopped burning and spasming. She forced herself to get up and explore every inch of the cell with her fingertips. The door was sealed with magic; there was no lock to pick even if she had anything but straw and a chamber pot. She sniffed at the air through the bars on the door in the hopes it might indicate something. The air was stale, wet, cold. Lifeless.
She had hoped that if she just checked carefully enough, she'd find a loose stone in the wall; some secret compartment hiding a nail, or a spoon, or even a bit of rope. Apparently the cell had never held any problematic prisoners for very long. There were no scratches to mark time. No loose stones. Nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
Her ring kept burning. Every time she'd give a small gasp of relief and start crying from the reassurance Draco was still alive somewhere.
Then she'd catch herself sharply. She couldn't think about it. She couldn't let herself think about Draco. If Voldemort got to her first, she couldn't have him in her mind when she couldn't occlude him. She used the barest, smaller bits of magic and pushed her memories of him further out of reach. As though she were an oyster, carefully burying each memory under the tiny layer of occlumency she could wield without activating the magic suppression.
Her ring kept burning, every day, with almost blistering intensity. The fiftieth time it burned, she set her jaw and pulled it off, hiding it carefully in the corner. Before three meals appeared she felt her way back across the cell and put it back on, terrified that if she wasn't wearing it, it would somehow disappear.
It didn't burn again after that. She didn't know if it meant Draco somehow had known she had taken it off.
Or if he'd died.
She huddled in the corner of the cell, feeling the rough texture of stones in the darkness, and tried not to think.
She recited potion recipes in her head. Transfiguration technique. Reviewed runes. Nursery rhymes. Her fingers flicked as she mimicked wand techniques, mouthing the spell inflection. She counted backwards from a thousand by subtracting prime numbers.