Manacled by Senlinyu

chapter 18

Hermione stared down at the square of paper she was holding in bewilderment.

She furrowed her eyebrows as she folded it in half, and then stopped, feeling at a loss.

She couldn't remember how to fold an origami crane.

She'd folded more than a thousand of them. Large and small. Day after day. She had distinct memories of folding them.

But somehow—

She couldn't remember how to do it anymore. She'd kept trying to, each morning after she read the newspaper, but somehow she couldn't figure out how to make them anymore.

She couldn't remember the order of the folds. Was it a diagonal fold first? Maybe she was supposed to fold it in half and then again? She tried both ways.

She couldn't remember. The knowledge was—gone.

She had none of her previously folded cranes to look over in order to reverse engineer the process. The elves always banished them all by the end of the day.

Hermione sighed to herself and set the paper aside.

It must have been lost during her seizure. Perhaps there had been brain damage.

The memory—the knowledge—had vanished from wherever she'd kept it. Like it had never existed. Except she knew it had. She remembered, distinctly, of being able to fold them.

No matter.

She didn't even know why she folded cranes. She couldn't remember when she'd learned it. Maybe in primary school...

She pulled on her cloak and headed outside.

The estate was dreary and muddy. Winter was giving its last gasps before spring. The windows were occasionally tinged with frost in the morning, but the days warmed and it rained in sheets for days at a time.

The rain was only coming down lightly so Hermione ventured forth.

She had gotten to the point that she could traverse most of the gardens surrounding the manor; as long as it wasn't too open. Open spaces she still couldn't handle.

When she occasionally tried to force herself past the hedges and into the open, rolling hills, she felt as though someone were dissecting her; slicing her nerves out of her body and laying them out in cold and the wind. Her mind would just fold in on itself and leave her alone in a state of stark terror.

She couldn't—couldn't manage.

She wondered if she'd ever be able to handle it. Whether she'd ever recover from the agoraphobia. The fear felt as though it had rooted itself deeply, twining inside and through her; from her brain and down her throat, wrapping around her lungs and organs like an invasive vine; waiting to strangle her to death.

On the days it wasn't pouring rain Hermione spent most of her time wandering the estate. She would return inside caked with mud and have no choice but to trail it inside and through the halls. Wizarding homes had no traditions of keeping door mats or boot-scrapers when a quick scourgify could banish most mud. Hermione muttered internal apologies to the house-elves each day.

Her days had sunk into a sort of dreaded monotony.

She woke up and had breakfast. She read the newspaper repeatedly. She had folded origami. She ate lunch. When it wasn't pouring outside she went and explored the estate for hours upon hours. If the rain was too heavy she only went out briefly and then exercised in her room until she was ready to collapse. She showered. She explored the manor. She ate dinner. Sometimes Malfoy came and performed legilimency on her. Sometimes he came and fucked her indifferently over a table. She went to bed. She woke up and repeated the routine.