In a dark, unused room sat a girl. She was hugging herself, trying to keep warm in the dank corner she had sought shelter in. So far her efforts were proving futile.

The girl's name was Hermione Granger, and she was being held against her will, simply because her parents were muggles. She had been here, as far as she could tell, for about 2 days. There was no way to be sure because the room was in a perpetual state of darkness, punctuated only by the coming and going of her captors through the room's single door, every few hours, to beat her.

Hermione shivered, trying to keep the warmth flowing through her body. 'For what reason?' she thought to herself. 'At least if I'm numb I won't feel it when they hit me'. She shivered again, trying to steer herself away from such thoughts. Instead she thought back to the day she had been captured, and the events that followed:

Flashback

Hermione sat on the park bench, breathing in the fresh air. It had been days since she had been outside, having already started studying for her upcoming NEWTs during her seventh and final year at Hogwarts. She took a deep breath and smiled slightly to herself, thinking of the way the Order was progressing in the fight against Voldemort. The war in itself was nothing to smile about, but any break the order got was occasion for celebration.

"Lovely day, isn't it?" said a cold and, very unfortunately, familiar voice.

Hermione whipped around, her eyes focusing on a man in his late forties, with sleek, almost colorless, light blond hair. There was no need to question the man's identity. He was currently fixing her with a stare she didn't like one bit, and she resolved to get away as soon as possible. Lucius Malfoy wasn't a man renowned for his afternoon chats.

"Mr. Malfoy, what a surprise! Now if you'll excuse me, I have studying to do, so I'll just be--"

"I'm afraid not, my dear," Malfoy cut her off. "You see," he continued, with a smirk on his thin lips, "my master has requested your presence, and he's not the type to take 'no' for an answer."

Hermione reached for her wand, but a muttered disarming spell from Malfoy had it in his hand before she could even open her mouth to curse him. He laughed.

"You see," he said again, "the Dark Lord has heard of your contributions to your pathetic cause," he spat out, "and has decided that he couldn't afford to keep you—ahem, shall we say—at large." Hermione couldn't believe her ears. "I have come to retrieve you and make sure you don't do anything else to foil our plans."

Hermione began to slowly shake her head, willing herself to wake from this terrible nightmare. 'This couldn't be happening,' she thought. 'Not to me.'

As much as she hated to admit it, she really could not believe that this was happening to her: this was the sort of tragic thing you read about in the back of the Daily Prophet over a heaping plate of eggs, then forgot about seconds later as you finish your meal and start your day. This didn't happen to real people. It was so much easier to think of the war that way: unimaginable things happening to unimaginable, faceless people miles away. Something about it happening to her made Hermione realize how real everything was. It was not a welcome epiphany.

Sometime during Hermione's internal discovery, Malfoy had advanced on her. She blinked in surprise; she had not noticed him coming toward her. 'Please let someone come,' she thought desperately as Malfoy raised his wand, knowing full well that nobody would, that Malfoy had probably taken care of that, and that if anybody did it would be a muggle and would be of no help to her.

As if in slow motion, Hermione heard the words coming from Malfoy's mouth, and everything went black.

She awoke later in the dank room, surprised to be alive. Not so surprising was the sense of dread of what was to come, suspecting that the only reason she was still alive was because they wanted to torture her, and then kill her.

'Wow, I love it when I think cheerful thoughts' she thought sarcastically.

And so the hours passed, with "visitors" every so often. That part wasn't as bad as one might think. What really got to her was the wait. The not knowing how long she was to be left alive, and why she was still alive in the first place. So she waited.

Present

Hermione shivered yet again, and immediately cursed herself for doing so. All this shivering was annoying her.

"Great," she muttered out loud, "Now I'm losing my mind. Maybe that's what they wanted? For me to go hopelessly insane, then throw me back to Order to feed bullshit plans to them. Maybe--"

She never got to finish her thought because just then the door opened, and instead of another "visitor", as she had come to call them, a body was thrown in. It groaned.

Hermione moved closer to see if she could help in any way, not that it was likely, but company was always good when you were lying on a cold floor bleeding to death.

At that moment, the body had decided to turn over, and his face came to rest in what little light there was in the room, revealing his identity. Hermione gasped.

"Professor Snape?"

A/N: There it is! My first "serious" story. Review if you like, review if you don't, with any comments or suggestions. Constructive criticism welcome. I thinkthis thing might be going in the HG/SS direction, but I'm not sure. I'm rather fond of that pairing: it's the whole "hot for teacher" thing. Ugh, need a pudding reload...

Another side note: according to JKR, Hermione's almost a year older than her peers. Because her birthday's in September, she was still ten, but almosteleven,when the letters were sent out for the year before her. You have to be at least 11 to get the letter, so she was almost 12 when she started at Hogwarts. She turned 12eighteen days into school. In my story, I'm adding her use of the Time Turner to her age, so I've made her about 18 years old when she starts her seventh year.