Hi, thanks for taking a gander.
Chapter warning: Anyone who is squicked by vague sexual abuse, please do not read this chapter. This story is a psychological rebuild of a character, and therefore it is necessary to have the background.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never was. If it was mine I would've kept a certain-snarky-someone away from the drooling public. So J.K.R. must not love controlling, pessimistic, and handsome.
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Hermione Granger sat on the window sill in her safe room, hoping against all hope that Death Eaters would come and kill her. She had realized a long time ago that demons existed in the Muggle world and the magical world. Demons for lack of a better word were described to her as people so vile, people so detestable that humanity denied its presence in their creation. There were many examples of demons, but only two that she had been in contact with and two that she could say with all certainty were undeniable in their position. Voldemort was one of them. Her father was the other.
Her father went from the perfect, for lack of a better example, soccer dad to the foulest demon that she had ever seen. Voldemort would actually be preferable because at least he would eventually end her existence. No, with her father she just had to endure it and live with it. Live everyday like nothing was amiss, talk and laugh with her friends when expected. It had started when her mother got sick enough to have warranted two weeks in the hospital on Hermione's summer vacation. Her father had come in the first night her mother was there. He was reeking of alcohol, and he used her. Used her in the most vile way a parent can use their child, for sex.
First it was inconsequential-it may not sound like it, but it was compared to what it progressed into later.
It began when he pressed his hands where they did not belong, then he pressed his mouth to where it did not belong and finally he pressed himself onto her and took her virginity when she was thirteen years old.
She was twelve when the abuse started, now she was seventeen and it was still going on. It killed her to know that she was nineteen by wizard standards, but she couldn't say anything about that. Hell, it was killing her little by little anyway, why not add that?
For five years this had gone on behind her mothers back. However, only now, after her parents procured a divorce and her father granted custody on a technicality, it was bound to escalate. Before, it was once a day when it could've been hidden, and god, she had dreaded that when it came. Now however, there were no time limitations and the medications he was taking made it last longer. Therefore she couldn't pretend it didn't happen as thoroughly as before.
She hoped beyond rationality that Harry would focus on her father as opposed to Voldemort. Because she knew in her heart of hearts, that she hated the bastard, but, he was her father and she loved him, too. She had started to believe her father´s reprimands, that this was all she was good for, that she would never amount to anything. She had always been a 'know-it-all' but she had thrown herself into her studies with renewed fervor after the abuse had started, the only rebel movement she had in her to complete.
She would be able to get away this year but, what would it matter, if this was all she was good for anyway.
It was just better to get things out of it. Everything she wanted that she actually got she would basically run a tab for. The point came when she hated herself enough to spend time in her generic living room rather than her bedroom because everything there was bought with 'favors'. Pictures were thrown out, dark curtains were bought, and now she had her own fortress. In her fathers mind every time he let her go out was a favor so daytrips to the burrow were few and far between also.
He was over an hour late, and some irritating part of her was wondering if he had gotten into an accident. The roads were slippery. The part that harbored this particular thought was not sad, not filled with dread, but gleeful.
She was pulled from her reverie when a black Saab 9-3 se turbo came up the driveway irritatingly unscathed. She watched her father get out of the car with a bag from the local market.
"Hermione!" He yelled as she grudgingly ripped herself away from the window.
"Yes, Dad?" God, how she dreaded it, but she had to separate the man into two different parts. Her father and her 'customer'.
"Put the groceries away and start dinner while I take a shower." He yelled up to her, growing coming close to her room. She tensed, then relaxed as he kept going past her door. She put away the groceries, almost throwing away the ground beef because it lay next to a package of condoms. It was a bulk pack of a hundred and now while he was safely holed up in the upstairs bathroom, she allowed herself to heave into the trashcan. Nothing came, nothing ever did. It wouldn't leave her, just clung to her ribs until her breath was scarce, instilled itself in her heart until she didn't have to publicly feel, and stuck to her emotions guaranteeing she would break, even if there was no one around to witness it, every single night.
Slipping into the living room was a routine for her, he would come, get her anyway and she didn't want him in her room. She didn't allow anyone in her room, not her true room. She had gone far enough to convert her bedroom into a sitting room, and her closet now served as a bedroom. Sometimes not even herself. Nothing could tarnish the safe haven of the large closet. She had set up a twin bed with only three photographs. Harry, Ron, and surprisingly enough. Severus Snape. God how she loathed everyone during summer, but had a sort of grudging respect for those three.
Harry, because he was an orphan, an only child. He had the best of both worlds in her opinion. No parents to be scared of and a guaranteed future.. Ron, because he went absolutely invisible compared to his large family. Professor Snape was particularly the most precariously balanced one. He was rotten and mean, but he spied for Voldemort. He had a woe is me´ air about him, but wanted none of it. He went through things worse and similar to the things she had to write down as everyday life four years ago.
Her father entered the living room after finishing his plate. "Are you ready?" he asked standing in the doorway.
"I guess." She said while trudging up the steps.
It was only at the very end of the summer that things got worse. She was cleaning out her closet in the afternoon when HE was gone from work and came across a small navy calendar. It had what she owed him to date. The last was a high number that made Hermione gasp once again.
Her father came home that night at the usual time and once again asked her for one of the things she owed him. She grit her teeth and withstood the pressure. He had taken pain medicine which would keep him going for over an hour. She was lying on the bed with her father on top of her trying not to cry one moment. She heard a floorboard protest as someone heavily walked on the floor outside the room. When she tried to push the demon off of her he almost snarled, and went back to his business. Hermione had lost the battle with her tears long ago and was now lying limp, letting them drip down her face. She had finally learned to tune out everything, and this was her just releasing herself from the blinding agony and debilitating rage. She had finally been able to detach herself from her emotions when she saw two feet and a long black travelers cloak enter her view.
She only had a moment to hope "Please. No, anyone but him.…"
Then her hopes were shattered.
As the man started speaking, her father turned his head. "Miss Granger, I'm going to assume…" He cut himself off when he recognized her father. She heard more than saw the man move, then her fathers weight was thrown off of her.
She scrambled quickly, lifting the sheet to cover her naked lower half.
Be careful what you wish for,
When the man who had rescued her, approached her, she expected to feel happiness or hopefulness, but all that she felt was an increasing feeling of dread, and she let it pull her down. She saw him kneel down, but she made no move to recognize it, instead she turned her head towards her father.
He was currently slumped down against a wall, his eyes frozen in horror. She knew the spell, a simple petrifying spell. His chestnut hair in disarray, and blood was slowly slipping down the left corner of his laugh lined mouth. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned back to her savior in time to see him send a patronus charm. She saw his mouth move, but heard no sound, he had obviously sent it to alert other people, and that brought a reaction. She wrapped the sheet around herself and bolted. She prayed to get to her safe room before the man got to her, before his message was received and people started showing up. The pitying looks upon their faces would be too much, she would break, she was sure she would.
She ran, ran only to be captured by her savior. She struggled, fought with all her might against the body which held her like a room with no doors. Until she finally gave up, stopped fighting, and just sobbed. She clung to the sheets just as tight as she held to the now unresponsive person who, a moment ago, was struggling to keep her put. She heard footsteps like a herd and she turned her head in horror. The Headmaster had come, followed closely by McGonagal, then her two best friends, some of the Weasley clan, then Lupin. She cursed herself, she should've listened, should've talked to the one person who wouldn't have given her the look which now resided upon the secondary rescue parties faces. The one who'd saved her, Professor Snape.
Only the headmaster was close enough to look into the bedroom she had run from. He was the only one close enough to see her attacker. He looked into the room only to hiss to Arthur. "Take the children downstairs."
That of course provoked responses. Hermione could hear the protests but couldn't make them out, they all had come at once.
"Take them downstairs. Now! Do what you must, but they are not to come up here." Dumbledore said in a way that left no refusal possible, and Arthur immediately brought all the children downstairs.
She could make out Ron, Harry, Ginny, Fred and George all being pushed down the staircase despite their now muttered protests.
She had stopped crying, although she didn't know when, but was still clutching her professor and the sheet just the same.
Lupin and Molly stepped up at the same time and both looked into the bedroom. Lupin growled, but Molly looked at her with a more sorrowful expression than before. She turned her head towards the stiff potions master. Breathing in his spicy sent and feeling him tense again, was enough to bring her back to herself, and she let go of him only to run to her room. She heard Professor Snape attempt to catch her again, but this time Dumbledore stopped him. She slammed through her room into the closet. She broke mirrors, turned off the lights and drew curtains. Then she was safe. She let a small sad smile grace her lips as the pitch black enveloped her. She always managed to smile when the pain came. It reminded her she was among the living.