Time passes slowly when the only thing you’ve got to study is the surface of a barren stone wall. Not that Hermione complained “ this was a place as safe as any, and far more comfortable than most places she’d been forced to stay at during the last few years. Food was plentiful, she had time to rest. Her strength had returned, and so had her figure, her ribs no longer showed when she was undressed.
Minny came several times a day “ to make the bed, bring in food, pick up and drop off laundry. She wasn’t very talkative, although polite to Hermione’s efforts. Somehow she seemed to understand Hermione’s need to talk to someone, even if she didn’t always answer back. Eventually Hermione gave up her attempts, settling for short conversations where she could commend Minny for all the hard work she did. Minny seemed happy at that. She brought her more food than before, made the dishes she had liked more often. Hermione figured she probably wasn’t used to praise. She couldn’t really imagine Zabini ever really noticing the house-elf’s presence.
He came down to the dungeon to see her from time to time. Short visits once or twice a week to check if she was alright, asking if Minny provided her with what she needed. Hermione answered that she did, not mentioning her growing boredom in fear that he would punish Minny for something she could hardly control. Zabini seemed satisfied, nodding, once even mentioning that she looked ‘healthier’. Judging from where he had looked when he made the comment, Hermione didn’t think he had thought about her health. Not that she cared. Anything to break the routine of nothingness was a welcome distraction.
She tried to keep occupied. Tried to think of ways to exercise her mind. She’d counted the stones in the wall in front of the bed three times before she went on to counting the stones in the other three walls, the ceiling and the floor. There were 953 stones in the wall. 957 if you counted four small pebbles stuck in between the larger blocks of stone. She had lost count of how many times she counted them “ the activity something she did almost every day just to pass time.
Hermione was in the middle of counting when the door suddenly appeared in the wall and Zabini walked into the room, disrupting her at stone number 548. Wondering what he wanted today, she looked up from her position on the bed, watching quietly as his eyes travelled from the wall to the finger she used to point at the stones she counted. She realised it was still pointing and quickly retracted her hand.
“You didn’t eat properly today,” Zabini said, ignoring her hand. “Are you sick?”
“No,” Hermione responded almost automatically, by now used to his questions.
“Then why didn’t you eat?” he replied.
“I wasn’t hungry,” Hermione answered, forcing herself not to sigh out loud. Zabini’s constant control of her health was unnerving and made her feel more like a prisoner than someone in hiding.
“Nonsense! There is something wrong. You haven’t even got properly dressed!” Zabini replied annoyed, looking at her nightgown. “Now tell me what it is at once. I cannot have you becoming sick. You’ll be useless to me if you get sick or die. I don’t like taking risks for nothing.”
Hermione sighed. “If you must know I happen to have cramps today,” she answered, feeling more than a little bit irritated with not even being allowed such information to be held private.
“What kind of cramps? Do you need a healer?”
“No! I need a wand to cast a spell that makes them go away,” she said plainly, knowing he wouldn’t give one to her.
“If you’re sick a spell won’t help,” he said coldly. “Now tell me what’s causing them.”
“You really want to know?” Hermione said, not even bothering to hide her frustration anymore. It was bad enough having these ruddy cramps; she did not feel like discussing them with Zabini or anyone else for that matter. “Well in that case it is the kind of cramps I get once a month. The kind of cramps I’ve been having once a month since I was fourteen. The kind most women have once a mo“”
”I think I get the picture,” Zabini interrupted her, suddenly looking rather uncomfortable. “I’m guessing Minny has been informed and is providing you with “ well whatever it is that women use when “ well,” he said, too uncomfortable to even finish his sentence. Hermione would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so aggravating.
“I have been here for nearly two months, Zabini,” she answered tiredly. “And that is a yes, just in case you didn’t understand,” she added.
Zabini snorted, looked at her for a while and left. Frowning, Hermione wished she hadn’t been so rude. He was a human being after all, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Even if that somone wasn’t a nice someone. With a sigh she started to count the stones again. Maybe it would be more interesting if she started from the bottom this time? she thought as she lifted her hand, trying to ignore the pain in her abdomen.
***
Something was out of place when she woke up the next morning. In the dark of the room she couldn’t see what it was, but she had been in this place long enough to feel when something was out of ordinary. Fumbling with the matches by the bedside table, she managed to light the candle and lifted it to shine around in the room. It didn’t take long to realise what had changed.
On the small wooden table in the corner of the room, lay a book, a quill and a bottle of ink. Swallowing hard Hermione closed her eyes, almost expecting it to be a figment of her imagination that would disappear the moment she opened her eyes again. It didn’t. Biting her lip, Hermione approached the table with caution. What if it was only a cruel joke? What if it would wither into nothingness if she touched it? But then what if it didn’t?
Taking a deep breath, Hermione reached out and grabbed the book. It was still there. It was still real. It was an actual book! She hadn’t held one for longer than she could remember. She’d hardly seen one for more than six months. And now there was a book in her room. A book she could touch and hold and smell as much as she liked. Smell! She had almost forgotten the smell of a book. The glue of the bindings, the intoxicating scent of the paper “ tenderly Hermione raised the book to her nose and inhaled. Merlin, she had missed this!
Trembling, Hermione sat down in the chair placed the book in front of her. Slowly she ran her hand over the surface of the cover before she opened it to the first blank page “ just waiting to be written upon. She wished she could hold her hand steady as she reached for the quill and ink, once again closing her eyes and inhaling as the scent of the ink reached her nostrils. Dipping the quill into the ink with an almost religious reverence, she steadied her hand as she put the quill to the first page of the book.
She stopped herself almost the same instant as her hand started moving the quill, leaving a single blue line on the paper. She wanted to write. Oh Merlin how she wanted to write! She wanted to write about it all “ about the war, about the battles, the losses, the running, the traitors, Ron. Most of all she wanted to write about Ron. She wanted to write to Ron. As if he wasn’t dead but just a letter away. Yet she couldn’t. What if she wasn’t just writing for herself? What if Zabini would read what she wrote? He’d said he wasn’t interested in anything she could tell him, but what if he would read what she wrote for his sheer amusement? She wouldn’t put it past him. Actually, she doubted very much that he would even think of it as wrong. And if he did read what she wrote, and she were to write something he did find useful “ would he then use it, even against her? Thinking about the way he had ruthlessly deceived Nott, someone he claimed to care about, she didn’t think he would hesitate for a second to use anything she might write against her.
Putting the quill down, she got up from the chair, wringing her hands together to stop them from reaching out and grabbing the quill again. She ached to touch the book, her mind ached to be used, her hands ached to write “ but she would not give in. She would not give him anything to use against her, or against anyone else. Still, the more she tried to concentrate on other things - breakfast, taking a bath, reorganising the trunk “ her mind kept returning to the book and quill. Time and time again, her eyes darted to where they lay on the table. Time and time again, Hermione forced herself not to think about it, not to succumb to the temptation. Curling up on the bed, as far away from the table and book as she could get, she started to count the stones in the walls again. She counted the stones in the walls, in the ceiling, in the floor “ she divided the numbers with each other, multiplied them with each other, tried every method of calculation she could think of to keep her mind of the book “ yet not one of them worked and the book seemed to be the only thing she could actually think of.
With a sigh, Hermione gave up trying to focus on the latest calculation she had tried. Looking over at the book, she frowned. Maybe she didn’t have to write anything important in it. If she didn’t then Zabini wouldn’t be able to use it against her. Just to hold the quill, listen to it scraping against the paper, seeing the words appear at her hand, using her mind “ actually using it “ it all seemed such a blessing. She could write nonsense. She could write words without meaning. Who said it actually had to make sense?
Getting up she once more approached the book, looking at the deep green cover as she sat down in front of it. Her hand picked up the quill almost of its own volition, yet when she put the tip of the quill to the parchment she had no clue as to what to write. How could she possibly write without writing anything important? How would she be able to hold back all the things she wanted to say just to write utter nonsense instead? Yet she knew she had to. She couldn’t risk giving Zabini any information he could use. He might think Voldemort was going to lose the war, but who was to say he wanted it that way? Who was to say that he wouldn’t take the opportunity to change the odds in favour of Voldemort if he had the chance? Even if he didn’t want Voldemort to win, would he care if he delayed his downfall? As long as he had his insurance “ her “ would he care if the war lasted another year or two? She couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t “ no wouldn’t “ give him the opportunity to change the odds of the war. They were bad enough as they were. Closing her eyes she tried to think about what to write. When she knew, it was with a bitter laugh she finally started to move the quill.
During the following months Hermione did little more than write. When she ate, the book was next to her plate. When she was lying in bed, the book was on her pillow. She sat on the floor, on the chair, on the bed and on the trunk “ everywhere she could think of, the book in her lap or in front of her. She wrote down every calculation she had made about the stones in the room. She recited the twelve uses of dragon blood and noted down the recipe for at least twenty different advanced potions. She wrote down meaningless fairytales from her childhood. Stories where princesses were pretty and kind, where witches were mean and evil “ where the princess always got her prince and where they lived happily ever after. She’d stopped believing in fairytales. She’d stopped believing in a happy ending. Yet she needed to write something and the stories were easy to remember even if it felt like they were written only to torment her with their lies of the perfect ending that never happened in real life.
She tried to figure out if Zabini was reading what she wrote or not, especially at first. It would have been easy to arrange, had she been able to use magic “ but without it she resorted to methods learnt through detective stories and watching Bond-films with her father as a young girl. Easily detected if you knew about them, of course, but she hoped that Zabini wouldn’t since he was raised away from everything Muggle. Surely he’d never stoop low enough to even look for them, would he?
Still what if he was? Or what if he didn’t have to? There was nothing to say that the book in itself wasn’t linked to another book somehow. That everything she wrote in this book could be read from another one. She couldn’t trust the signs that indicated that Zabini didn’t give her book any thought at all, and so she kept writing nonsense until “ one day “ the pages ran out and there was no more space to write on.
Staring at the scribbled page in front of her Hermione, felt the panic grow. In the joy of writing she’d never thought about rationing or saving. She had never thought she’d be here for so long. That she would actually have time to finish writing in the book before it was time to run again. That she one day find herself sitting, staring at the filled pages of the book, knowing that tomorrow would bring the same kind of emptiness and nothingness that every day had done before she got the book. Her days would once more be filled with counting stones.
Desperately she tried to find an empty page. Turning the pages, one by one, backwards and forwards, she prayed to find a forgotten page. A page stuck beside two other pages and thereby nearly invisible. A page with only a small amount of text written on it, so that she could write below the text already there.
There wasn’t one.
Amongst all the pages in the book “ there wasn’t a single one she hadn’t written on. Not a single one with space left for her to write on now. Growing more frantic, she searched the book again. And once she had “ again. Over and over she flipped the pages of the book, until the panic started to fade and realisation truly hit “ she wouldn’t be writing anymore. She’d wasted an entire book on writing nonsense! She’d had the book for months and all she had written down was old meaningless fairytales. She hadn’t written anything about Ron. Or about the war. Or about where she was and why. She had wasted the entire book on nothingness “ and now there was no more book to write in.
Clutching the book in her arms, she started to rock back and forth on the bed, a whimper escaping her lips. She had wasted it all. She’d had the chance, but she’d wasted it. Just as everything had been wasted over the last few years. Her hopes. Her dreams. Every plan she’d ever had for the future “ dead. They were dead and wasted, and now she was sitting with a wasted book in her arms, clutching it so hard it hurt, but what did that matter when everything else hurt as well. There were no happy endings. Ron was dead and so was everyone else she loved, and what did it matter that she was alive “ what was the point of living when everything worth living for was gone?
She hadn’t cried. Since Ron died, she hadn’t cried. Not once had she allowed herself to fully mourn what she’d lost, too scared of what dams it might open. Now she was crying over a book. A silly book with nothing but nonsense in it. Only she wasn’t, because she was crying about Ron, about the future they would never have, about the family they would never get to start. She was crying about the world that was lost when they lost the battle. She was crying for her parents not knowing where she was or if she was alive. She cried for Harry, for Neville, for Charlie and the twins, for Tonks and Moody and Arthur, for everyone that lost their life in this damned war that seemed never to end.
She didn’t hear when Zabini entered the room, and was hardly aware of him speaking to her. Somewhere in the back of her mind behind all the tears she could here his voice asking if she was hurt. How could she explain that she was hurt beyond any repair? That no healer he offered to bring would ever be able to heal her heart? She couldn’t and so she didn’t answer. Nor did she think she could have answered had she tried, her voice no longer in her control. With his presence a deep wail that she didn’t think belonged to her, but that she knew didn’t belong to him filled the room.
He moved quickly, walking over to the bed, sitting down next to her. She felt his hand on her shoulder, shaking her, trying to move her to get a look at her. Repeatedly he asked her if she was injured or sick.
“Damn it! I need you to be healthy! Now tell me where it hurts,” he swore, still trying to move her from the foetal position she had curled up in.
His hand was warm on her shoulder. It was human. It wasn’t there because he cared. He wasn’t there because he cared. He was there because she was his insurance, an investment that he needed to take care of. But he was human, and he was there and she didn’t care anymore because it had been too long since anyone had touched her, and she needed the human contact, even if it wasn’t one out of care.
Wrapping her arm around him she cried into his lap. She still cradled the book, and it probably pressed hard into his thigh, but she didn’t care because he was human and he was there, and Ron was dead and Harry was dead and she might as well be for all the good she did in here.
He didn’t touch her anymore. His hands had fallen to his sides, his body had gone rigid and she could feel his discomfort just as she could feel his eyes burning through her skin. She imagined the look of distaste on his face at the thought of his insurance policy suddenly behaving irrationally. She didn’t care, he was the closest thing to someone who cared “ and he might be tense and uncomfortable, but he didn’t push her away. He didn’t move away. He just sat there, stiff and without moving, letting her cry into his lap, a lap that was warm even if his heart wasn’t, and right now that would have to be enough. He was there, and he was human, and Ron was dead and her heart was bleeding “ so who cared about Zabini anyway? It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. It was all dead anyway.