Chapter One.

"Get away from me!" Hermione screamed as she was running up the grand staircase of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Tears streamed down her face, soaking into her hair and robes. She didn't care. All she wanted was to get as far away as she could from the boy who desperately followed after her.

"Hermione, wait!" Draco Malfoy shouted, stumbling up the stairs after her. His face burned bright red from the physical exertion, and his breathing was heavy, not only because he was running, but also out of fear. "Please, just let me explain!"

As Hermione was about to reach the portrait blocking Gryffindor commons, she stopped short. After a beat, she turned and faced him. In an instant, her wand was drawn, trained on his throat. The look in her eyes was deadly. "Explain what, exactly, Draco? You have betrayed me."

He reached out to try to comfort her, but she shoved his hand away. "Don't touch me! Don't even look at me! I gave you everything, Draco Malfoy. You were my life. You're just like the rest of them. PIGGLE PUFF!" she shouted at the fat lady, who moved at an alarming speed in order to avoid being torn off the wall. The girl turned to leave, but was stopped by a hand grabbing hers. Draco pulled her toward him and into a kiss. It was soft and sad. He pulled away and looked her face over, pleading with his eyes.

"Hermione…" he said gently, tears forming in the perfectly blue eyes she had fallen for. "You know that I would never want to hurt you this way… I love you."

"Too late, Malfoy.."

And with that, she turned and left.

"We've got another one, Master," a wizard in a black hood said, dragging a young woman by the back of her robes. Her hands were bound together behind her back, and she was sobbing uncontrollably. "SHUT UP!" The man shouted. He pointed his wand at her and whispered something. Immediately, the girl screamed in agony. Her face contorted into an unimaginable look of pain and suffering, and he let her fall, her head making a sickening cracking noise on the marble floor. She struggled to remain conscious as darkness closed in on her, surrounding her and diminishing her once-indominable spirit.

"Name's Granger. Gryffindor house, muggle-born... Top of her class in all subjects. In close relation with the Potter boy," the man relayed to a person Hermione could not see. "Harry..." she sobbed. "Harry, I'm so sorry..."

"I said be quiet, you worthless wretch!" the hooded wizard boomed, striking her across the face. She felt a semi-healed wound tear open, more of her blood spilling onto the well-polished floor.

She felt a hand rest on her soft brown curls. Her first instinct was fear, and she struggled through her pain to get away. She screamed, although sound no longer escaped her. She kicked, trying to get away, and felt something strike her, hard, in the side. Her body tried to gasp, but her lungs would not draw breath. She began to feel dizzy, and the line between reality and fiction was beginning to blur. As she drifted away into the dark, she heard a man's voice, raspy and weak as though he was dying of thirst. A nearly-inaudible sound that sent a horrible chill through her dying senses.

"She lives."