Secrets and Masks

27. Theatre of the damned

TW; graphic descriptions of violence, torture and disfigurement

5th May

"Please, just let me go!"

Oh God, how was he still alive?

"I swear, I've told you everything I know!"

He'd lost so much blood, he should have died ages ago.

"You have to believe me!"

She just wanted him to die -

"They don't tell me much! I'm nothing! I'm just a soldier!"

This was so cruel. He didn't deserve this-

"I have a wife at home! A son waiting for me!"

She should just slit his throat. Stab him in the heart. Let him go peacefully! He didn't need to be in any more pain-

"They need me! Please, let me go! I won't tell anyone!"

Death was more merciful than ... this.

"I'm begging you!"

God, she couldn't look - this was ....

"Hermione, please ... Please, don't kill me."

She winced at the way his voice trembled. Her eyes locked on his, her fingers twitched around the knife in her hand, but it didn't stop her from driving it into his torso. Again.

The hostage - Oliver Myers - jerked in the chair he was bound to. He threw his head back, howling in pain. Despite the derelict state of the abandoned theatre that hosted their interrogation, despite the way the walls were crumbling and the cracks that ran along the stage, the acoustics were undamaged. They carried the sound of his screams perfectly each time, magnifying it, echoing the pain.

Hermione's eyes burned, tears slipped down her cheeks as Myer's blood pooled around her hand. She tried to pull back, retract the blade, stop his pain, but she couldn't, she had no control. The Demon Hex was still pulling the reigns tight, commanding her violence.

She caught her reflection in the splintered mirror off stage, and it made her want to scream herself. She looked like a monster, an image torn straight from a nightmare. Eyes black and lifeless, blood streaking down her face and robes as she drove the knife into Myers' helpless body. Again and again and again.

And there was nothing she could do. Was powerless to end his suffering. A murderous slave in her own skin.

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! she shrieked internally, searching for anything she could try and use to claw back control of her own body. She looked, but as always, there was nothing. There was no weak link in the Hexes armour. No vulnerable point she hadn't yet discovered.

She couldn't reach the strings that controlled her, so instead, she was left to watch as some other entity took control and made her do things she'd never dream of doing, not even in her most vile nightmares. Could do nothing but scream and cry and bear witness as she was transformed into the villain of this performance, the monster in this theatre of the damned.

Hermione had come to realise that the Demon Hex was more of a beast itself than a curse. A predator shrouded in magic, that cast strings over her limbs and used her as a puppet to incite its dark will and feed its murderous appetite. It manipulated her instincts. Made her angry, heightening the bloodlust so her dark curses would be more lethal.

It made her slaughter everyone, butcher anyone in her path, just so it could gorge itself on the corpses she left behind.

While she was under the Hex, all that mattered to her body was the hunt, the kill. The beast took everything else, stripped Hermione of everything that made her her, and left her with nothing but a hunger for screams and dark magic crackling at the edge of her wand.