She was being followed. A dark, shrouded character had been stalking behind her for a long time now, making Hermione increasingly paranoid. It was fairly late at night, meaning most people had already gone home, emptying the streets. She had nothing to defend herself with, which she internally reprimanded herself or doing. She decides to pull her phone out and 'make a call' to dissuade the stalker from approaching any further, but to her surprise, they don't react.
The brunette stays on the call as long as possible until she begins to feel as though the stranger knows she is faking a call. It chills her to the core. After Hermione ends the call, she begins to look for places to hide.
'I could try and lose them in the alley.' She thinks.
She walks down the nearest alleyway she can find and picks up her pace before turning another corner quickly. Her heart rate starts to pick up when she sees the stranger suddenly appear a few meters closer than they were before. She can hardly make out a face. The figure was wearing a hooded cloak, dressed entirely in black from head to toe.
The only thing she could make out, was the incessant click of heels as they walked further down the corridor.
She picks up her pace again and turns another corner. Then another, and another, and another.
It isn't until she loses sight of the figure that she realizes she had been so focused on getting away, that she had completely gotten lost in the labyrinth turned streets.
Hermione's breathing begins to pick up and she desperately searches for any hint of an exit from this sick game of cat and mouse.
The girl wanders through the foreboding maze, each turn she takes coming to a wall or another long, dark corridor. It's not until she is about to give up that the familiar clicking of heels close in behind her once again. The figure walking calmly as though they knew no matter what Hermione did, her fate would stay the same. This time, instead of being subtle, she runs in the other direction, throwing all caution to the wind.
The hooded figure sprints after her, faster than Hermione could have expected and she feels tears spring to her eyes as she runs as fast as she can down the alley.
'Why me? Why me?' She thinks to herself.
The panicked girl quickly turns the corner and finds a small space between the wall and a dumpster that she can squeeze into. The unrelenting click of the strangers heels taunt her and slow down as she manages to hide herself from view. She hears the unknown character turn the down the same corridor Hermione was in and time stops.
"I know you're here."
The voice takes Hermione by surprise. It's familiar, a voice she should know. Feminine, sultry, and... unthreatening, despite their current situation.
Hermione holds her breath and wills her body to stop shaking. Her heartbeat was loud enough in her ears that the strangers footsteps became muffled and nearly inaudible. Her fight or flight response takes over and adrenaline rushes through her veins in a sudden wave of energy. She bursts out of her hiding spot and only barely gets away from the pale, petite hand that reaches out for her.
They both sprint down corridor after corridor, but it quickly comes to an end when Hermione turns a tight corner a little to quick. She smashes her shoulder into the wall, the force of the impact spinning her around and making her stumble backwards.
She's given no time to regain her balance as her pursuer slams right into her, causing them both to violently fall to the ground with a sickening crack. Hermione had slammed the back of her head into the ground upon impact. Her vision began to blur as she felt a slick warmth drip down the back of her head. Despite the probable severity of her injury, the girl forces her body to move.
She only makes it halfway up when the dark figure behind her grabs her ankle, making Hermione trip and fall to the damp ground. A cold hand with sharp, black painted nails clasps over her mouth and pulls her head back, lifting her off the ground. The brunette scratches and pulls at the hand but finds her attempts- pointless. She feels a pressure on her back and a leg loops through the space between her arm and her torso, creating not only a very uncomfortable position, but one in which Hermione can't move without creating even more pain and discomfort for herself. The hand over her mouth switches to another hand with a white rag and she is greeted with the sweet chemical smell of chloroform.
Hermione's attempts at escape become more vigorous, but her body quickly weakens. Limbs become fuzzy and unresponsive after a few minutes of struggle, and she slips in and out of consciousness. The girl is quickly rendered unable to do anything but face and accept the impending terror of her fate as the chemical takes its victim. The last thing Hermione sees is the gradual drip of an oncoming rainstorm washing her blood from the pavement.
Hermione slowly comes back to consciousness and finds herself slung over the shoulder of a very tall, muscular figure. Groggily, she is able to see the outline of a large black car getting further away with the heavy steps and wide stride of the man carrying her. They meet the black marble steps of a large mansion-like building and they walk in, the sound of the heavily falling rain becoming quieter. The familiar voice greets Hermione's ears once again and she watches the petite figure of her kidnapper come into view. She seems to notice Hermione had woken up as she strides closer. She couldn't make out any features. Her vision was blurry and her senses still dulled, but it wasn't nearly enough to ignore the pounding headache and the sound of crimson droplets on the clean marble floor.
"Take her to the laboratory and restrain her to the gurney." The woman says with the wave of her hand.
She is carried through a winding set of stairs that threatens to pull her back into the depths of unconsciousness as her dizziness gets worse and worse. They reach the end and Hermione breathes a silent sigh of relief. The pressure of the strangers shoulder is removed from her stomach and she's gently placed on what feels like a hospital bed. Her body relaxes as she is set down, but her situation immediately hits her full force when she feels the cold metal of her restraints clamp tightly around her wrists and ankles.
The man finishes restraining her before leaving the room, and Hermione starts to panic. Her vision slowly clears up and the details of her surroundings come into focus. Her bed was in the corner of the large room she found herself in. It was round, and there were no windows to be seen. It felt dense. Was she underground?
'Are we on an upper floor?' She asks herself, 'I could've sworn we went upstairs, not down.' Her head starts to throb aggressively and she shuts her eyes, bringing her hands up to squeeze her temples, only to find them restrained. She doesn't notice the tall, imperialistic figure walking over to the end of her bed until the pain passes and she opens her eyes again.
Pale skin, dark curly hair, heavily-lidded, piercing eyes, square jaw-
Bellatrix Black.
Bellatrix Black has kidnapped her. The woman was one of the most well known scientists in the world. Her scientific accomplishments were astounding. She changed the study of science as they knew it. Thousands of questions flew through her mind, and the woman seemed to notice.
"I know what you're thinking. I can see it." She says as she forces Hermione to sit up, rather painfully. Bellatrix admires the wound on the back of her head, which was still bleeding, and wraps gauze around her forehead.
"Can't have you bleeding out and dying on me, now can I?" She says, her voice flat. She looked and sounded emotionless, and even seemed to regard Hermione as something other than human.
'Something less than human.' She thinks, the thought sending chills down her spine.
When Bellatrix finishes wrapping her head, the restraints are let up and she pulls Hermione off of the bed. The girl lands on her feet, despite being a bit wobbly. It's then that she suddenly notices their height difference. The woman was a solid 4 or 5 inches taller than she was. Running would be a death trap all on its own.
Hermione is led over to a steel chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room, and she stops moving. Bellatrix bumps into the back of the girl and pushes her to keep going. Hermione stays put but Bellatrix pushes her forward again, rougher this time. She cowers back again, doing her best to stay away from the chair and the ideas of what could happen. At this, the woman shoves her angrily into the seat and nearly has to climb on top of her to keep her from moving as she restrains her wrists.
After she succeeds in restraining her wrists, she moves to her ankles which proves to be easier as the girls state is already weak and increasingly fatigued. Bellatrix stands a few feet away and blows a stray lock of hair out of her face.
As the woman stands back, Hermione notices her clothing. She is dressed in a high collared lab coat that buttoned up along the side, with a pair of black boots. Bellatrix turned around and began examining something at the small table behind her.
Hermione speaks up, voice pained and confused. "W-What are you doing? Why've you brought me here?"
"Nobody wanted to volunteer, so I went out and found someone."
"Volunteer for what?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
"But you- You're one of the most-"
"Renowned scientists in the field?" She interrupts, "I know. Surely you don't think i've made the advancements I have by experimenting on lab rats and monkeys. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices is the name of science."
"But why me? Me of all people? Surely you could find someone to volunteer for whatever you're trying to do!"
A this, Bellatrix turns back around, a surgical mask over the lower half of her face and her hair done up in a ponytail. "You? You're asking why I choose you? Hermione, dear," She taunts as she leans down to Hermione's level, removing her mask, "Don't tell me you're so naive that you don't remember me?"
It hits her. The memories. The details of which she never payed attention too. The odd incidents that now make too much sense.
She recalls her first presentation from months ago. She had been so excited and overwhelmed by the crowd that came to listen, she didn't notice the dark, mysterious figure in the back of the stadium.
She never payed attention to the dark figure that sat a few tables away from her when she went out to eat.
She never noticed the strange, subtle noises as she walked home each night.
Worst of all, she never noticed the strange questioning she received from a few sketchy reporters in her presentation.
So many odd incidents that she had previously chosen to brush off. So many normal days with friends that could have turned to disaster if she had just payed attention. The more she thought about the things she had pushed to the back of her mind the more disturbed she became. Bellatrix had been stalking her for months and she just never took notice. She never felt endangered.
Bellatrix had managed to worm in and out of her life without her knowledge.
The look on Hermione's face seemed to please the woman, because she pulls away with a twisted grin on her face, admiring Hermione's terror before turning back around to give her attention to the things on her table. She holds up a scalpel in her right hand, the blade glistening in Hermione's view. The girl nearly chokes.
"You've gone mad." Hermione rasps.
"Be quiet."
"You know people will realize I'm missing, right?"
"They won't."
"How-"
"Stop asking questions."
"What is there possibly left for you to discover?"
Bellatrix turns around again. "You simply don't stop thinking, do you?"
The woman hardly seemed to recognize that the species in front of her was that of a human. It made Hermione unimaginably uncomfortable as the silence dragged on for nearly too long. The womans next words held an unbelievably terrifying promise of what was to come.
"Perhaps we can fix that then."