Summary: Running from the agony of unrequited love, Hermione flees Hogwarts during the middle of her 6th year. She thought that disappearing would make him go away, but a ghost of her past comes to haunt her.
"Leaving"
"I don't love you, Hermione," Severus said in a cold, harsh tone.
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Severus, not love her?
She couldn't even bear to hear any more of the words that tumbled from those lips, those lips that had brought her so much passion just a night before, for fear that the words they spilt might bring even more pain, or worse, might try to apologize.
And yet, each silken, silent syllable that those lips caressed promptly delivered a dagger of sweet, piercing agony to her already mangled-beyond-repair heart.
He was saying her name now. She could read his lips.
His expression was guilty.
He opened his mouth, no doubt, ready to apologize, and survival instincts kicked in.
Terrified, misled, betrayed, perplexed, wounded, and in despair, Hermione Granger fled the scene.
As she sat up against a tree in the present, the bark uncomfortably scratching her back, hiding inside the Forbidden Forest, the panorama replayed in her mind over and over again – that moment of her worst despair flashing before her tear-filled eyes a thousand times.
Stretching out on the cold, cold ground, she sobbed into the Earth in a very animalistic way of grieving, and longed for a refuge from pain in the midst of yearning for her unrequited love.
She ran straight to Gryffindor Tower, trying desperately to outrun the pounding footsteps behind her that came from his boots as he called her name, coaxing her to come back, to wait.
Her legs carried her swiftly, and tiny dancer's feet flew over the ground, the tips of her toes barely skimming the surface, yet launching her forward like a bottle rocket.
He called again, this time more distant.
She quickly panted the password when she arrived at the portrait, and the Fat Lady let her in immediately.
There was no one in the common room, which was both good and bad. Good, because no one saw her come in. Bad, because that meant all of her roommates were in bed and she might accidentally wake them while packing – or worse, what if they were still awake enough to ask questions?
It was with that thought that she turned on her heel and ran back out into the corridor and straight through the double doors, leaving everything she had behind her and heading off with just her wand and a broken heart.
And here she lay, in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, at 5 A.M., sobbing her heart out to the Earth, and praying to a higher being that, somehow, someday, she would be able to escape.