Hysteria

A/N: My eternal gratitude to Softobsidian74 for alpha reading and feedback and to robs55 for the brilliant beta!

In a few days, my family and I will be moving to a country 6000 kilometres away. I am very, very sorry, but I don’t know how quickly I will have internet set up or how much time I will have during our first days over there. Updates will probably be on hold for a little while but not too long.

On a happier note: Draco is back! Well, in the second part of this chapter. For the first part, all warnings still apply!

Thank you to everybody, who read and reviewed! I have been asked not to answer reviews within the chapters. Please see review responses here:

http://lady-of-clunn.livejournal.com / 80413.html

Just take out spaces :)


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Detrimentum


Hermione had overheard de Belleme speaking of making her a study case in a book he was writing.

He had been very pleased about the success of his sensory deprivation treatment.

Her analytical brain had reviewed each and every session with de Belleme. He had gone from the standard treatment quickly to more costly therapy. Much more costly.

Malfoy had said that he thought she was a straightforward, yet interesting case due to her heritage.

De Belleme was writing a book.

Hermione wanted to laugh and scream and thrash and bite and scratch and maybe, maybe stop breathing until everything went dark because now, now she could clearly see that she had no chance whatsoever.

The bastard was writing a bloody book.

He was going through all the possible treatments in order to record her reaction to them.

After hydrotherapy and The Treatment Room, there was little left.

Cruciology, using a spell that would send shocks through her body akin to Muggle electro shocks.

Fortunately the wizarding world had never adopted the practice of some Muggle doctors to perform lobotomies or clitoridectomies.

The mere thought of having her forehead drilled open, something shoved inside and then her frontal brain scrambled to mush made her want to scream in terror. Not that she could.

Thinking about losing the last thing that was still mostly her own, her ability to think, while being bound to a hospital bed filled her with helpless rage and fear.

After The Room, it had taken her nearly three days to find her way back into the reality of the dingy ward.

Now, the duvet was no longer enough to make her feel safe enough to go to sleep at night. It no longer shielded her against all that was bad and dark.

As a child, a friend had stayed over one night and dared her to go to sleep while letting her arm hang over the edge of the bed, down to the ground.

As soon as she had slipped her arm from underneath the duvet, the feeling of... something... underneath the bed had assaulted her fingers, sending nervous tingles from her fingertips into her hand.

She had been sure that everything would be alright, that she would be safe, if she could just take her arm back to the warm safety underneath her cover.

Sleep had evaded her for hours that night.

Now, once again, Hermione felt as exposed as her arm back then. Her bed in the middle of the ward awarded her no shelter.

She longed for the freedom of the straightjacket. She wanted to be able to get up and huddle in a corner as the woman from the bed next to her did some of the nights.

The keeper had been back every night, but she was unable to process what he told her. He had seen the condition she was in and had patiently massaged feeling back into her arms and legs.

Hermione had been hyper sensitive to gentle and even faint touches, but the firm massage of the keeper had finally overcome that and made her feel that she was still there.

He was back again and smiled a wide smile that made dimples appear in his fleshy cheeks.

“You are better tonight.”

He smoothed her hair away from her forehead and sat down on a chair near the head of the bed.

Her hair had become so matted after so many days—how many days?—in bed without her wide-toothed comb and so many futile, impatient attempts of the nurses to disentangle the knotted locks with magic, that there was now talk of cutting her hair very short; even shaving her head.

The keeper pulled out a comb from his pocket and carefully separated one thin strand of hair from the tangles.

The comb was a man’s comb and not very well-suited for her kind of hair, but he worked patiently and gently from the tips, slowly, slowly up to the root.

When one strand was silky and smooth to the touch, he would place it on her shoulder and separate the next strand for him to work on.

The pale light of dawn was already creeping into the dark greys of the ward at night, when he was finally able to run the comb through her hair without meeting any knots or tangles.

He gathered half of her hair to each side of her head and began to braid them with concentration written all over his large face.

“My aunt taught me to braid hair. She always wanted her hair braided before she went to bed, because it would get so tangled at night otherwise.”

He secured the ends of the braids with short lengths of cotton gauze.

“I have all the papers now, Hermione.”

He stood from his chair as noises announced the hospital waking for the day.

“Today I will go to make an appointment, so I can submit my application for a marriage contract.”

He bent down and brushed the lightest of kisses against her cheek.

“Soon I can take you home.”


***


The following day, the girl in the bed next to Hermione’s had been taken away.

When she was told that she would be released, she had stood and clutched her little satchel that she always had prepared and peered around the healer and nurses, searching the ward.

“Daddy?”

The healer did not look up from the parchmentwork on his clip board.

“Your father has signed a contract for you. You will go home with your husband today. Congratulations.”

A middle-aged wizard stepped forward. He was clad in expensive, midnight blue robes and was carrying a cane not unlike the one Hermione had noticed on Lucius Malfoy whenever she had seen the wizard.

The man placed the handle of his cane underneath the girl’s chin and made her look up at him.

For several heartbeats, the wizard looked at his newly acquired wife as if he was considering the worth of a costly purchase.

Obviously satisfied with the goods, he turned to the healer.

“Where do I sign?”

The healer pointed to a place on the parchment that was topmost on the clip board and handed a quill to the girl’s husband.

The wizard then took the girl’s arm without further acknowledging her and steered her out of the ward.

At the door the girl turned, her braids making her look younger than ever.

“Daddy?”

She was jolted through the door and out of the ward, but Hermione could hear another, louder ‘Daddy’ before the door closed behind them.

The healer gestured toward the bed and instructed the nurse while exiting the ward.

“Get that stripped and changed, will you?”

Hermione watched the bed next to hers being divested of its linen and remade in a matter of minutes. In the end, a clean sheet was spread over the entire bed to protect it from being soiled before the next occupant arrived.

When would the keeper stand next to de Belleme to take her... home?


***


A larger piece of rubber was inserted into her mouth, forcing her to bite down on it.

The matron checked the position of Hermione’s head and made sure that all restraints held tight.

Cruciology.

Nearly the end of the broomstick.

Although wizardkind had not resorted to removing hysterical witches’ brains or genitals, as had been customary in the Muggle world at a time, they had not stopped at settling a disturbed womb by extracting it from the body.

This morning, de Belleme had lectured his students on the progression of her treatment.

“If she does not take well to cruciology, we will have to consider a hysterectomy.” he had said, standing directly in front of her.

One of the nurses had looked at Hermione with startled eyes and seen it, finally seen it.

The overwhelming, impotent fear.

Images flashed through Hermione’s mind, assaulting her.

A tiny hand on her breast, trustingly relaxed because there was food and warmth and mummy’s smell.

Little, bushy-haired know-it-alls that would drive her up the wall with questions.

Hermione closed her eyes and a tear trickled down her temple and into her braided hair.

Cradling the warm, tiny body of a baby in her arms; so frail, so light, so precious.

Resting her cheek on a warm, fuzzy head, nestled to her chest.

Healing a chafed knee.

Reading her favourite stories to an older child before bedtime.

Seeing the Hogwarts Express leave Kings Cross Station, an excited eleven-year-old on board. Her excited eleven-year-old.

Please don’t take them away from me.

The healer pointed his wand at her and incanted the spell that made Hermione arch off the bed instantly.

Every single muscle in her body seized up painfully, her teeth dug into the rubber thing in her mouth and her neck felt as if it would break from the strain.

De Belleme held the spell.

Stop!

He cocked his head to observe a trail of saliva run out of the corner of her mouth.

Please stop...

Just before she felt as if her body might give out under the force of the shock, he ended it.

Her back hit the mattress with a thud and she panted through her nose.

Just tell me what you want me to do so you can believe that I am getting better.

“Ereptio.”

This time, her muscles did not release when he ended the spell and in the end, the counter curse needed to be cast before her muscles would snap her bones like brittle twigs.

She kept her eyes closed when she was back in the ward. The muscles behind her eyeballs were restlessly twitching back and forth, unable to focus on her favourite crack in the ceiling above her bed.

Even the smallest of muscles were shaking and cramping uncontrollably in the after-effects of cruciology.

The raw rings around wrists and ankles chafed and rubbed against the restraints with every involuntary shudder.

She could hear the door open at the other end of the ward. Unhurried footsteps very loud in her ears echoed through the relative stillness of afternoon nap time. Many of the patients were subdued by potions to free some time in the nurse’s schedule. Hermione had not been sent to this suffocating place of forced stillness. Her tortured, no, treated brain would have shut down under the heavy sedatives.

The footsteps halted not far from her bed for several heartbeats and Hermione wondered whether that was a long or short time because even her heart was erratic, never settling into a steady beat.

A warm, gentle hand pulled her eyelid open toward her brow.

Her eye hastily moved from side to side, making it impossible to look past the hand at the face of her visitor.

“Granger?”

She knew that voice from somewhere. Trying to remember took so much effort and hurt.

“Granger, can you hear me?”

Her muscles jerked her entire body in her bed. Had he asked something or was she still receiving treatment?

The hands left her face and the footsteps moved away from her, to the foot of her bed. The telltale sound of her file being removed from the pouch fixed to the frame and then rustling parchments, sometimes rapidly flipped-through, then with longer pauses.

A soft curse and something was thrown on top of the duvet into the vee-shaped space between her legs. The steps left the ward and the silence returned.

Hermione was not sure whether those steps had ever been real, drifting in and out of dreams as she was, but after some time they returned with a new urgency and purpose in their pace.

“Granger? Granger, I need you to relax your jaw muscles.”

Careful fingers moved along her neck and jaw, massaging and stroking.

The bit was removed from in between her clenching teeth.

“Can you swallow?” A few drops of viscose potion were poured into her mouth and Hermione instinctively closed her mouth and swallowed.

“Good girl. Good, good girl.”

The voice sounded relieved.

After a few minutes, the horrible twitching and cramping of her muscles slowed, became less severe until it died down to an occasional contraction of her fingers.

“Look at me Granger.”

Hermione made the effort to open her eyes, because the voice was friendly and had praised her when she did as it said.

Draco Malfoy was leaning over her.

Hermione smiled.

Draco Malfoy dreams were the best ones.

“I am hallucinating,” she said happily, “again?”

A slight frown creased his forehead.

“You have been hallucinating?”

“They say so, so it must be true. I am not well, you see? They will make me better, they say.”

Malfoy closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, he looked inexplicably sad.

“What happened, Granger? Why are you here?”

He tucked a curl that had escaped her braids behind her ear. She leaned into the warmth of his palm and he allowed it.

“Your hands are soft and gentle.”

She smiled, ignoring his question.

“I tried to think about your hands when they hurt me.”

The hand on her cheek tensed minutely.

“They hurt you?”

She leaned into his palm.

“This hallucination is much better than the others.”

The warmth of his hand stayed with her for a few more moments and then dissipated as she slipped away into sleep. The mirage might have said something before turning fuzzy and dissolving into mist.