"Hermione, it's time to wake up Hermione."
The words seemed to come from so very far away and Hermione struggled to understand what they meant.
"Just follow my voice Hermione. It's time to wake up."
The voice came again and it seemed so pleasantly soft and warm she tried to reach out to it and embrace its comfort. It was like keeping water in a sieve though and whenever she almost had it it seemed to slither out of her grasp. At last she got a hand on it and felt warmth spread throughout her body only to snap awake in an instant and feel ice flow through her veins.
Thick darkness blanketed the room save a single flickering light in front of her. A harsh rattling accompanied even the smallest of her movements and she tried to lift her arm only to wince as the cool steel began to rub her delicate skin. Her other limbs were likewise encumbered and already beginning to chafe and turn raw.
"I'm glad to see you're awake at last, Hermione." The warm soothing voice that had called out to her came again from near the flickering light and suddenly excruciatingly bright lights suddenly flashed on. She reflexively tried to cover her eyes only to wince as the chains caught her action.
"You may feel a slight wooziness in addition to your sudden sensitivity to light. It is an unfortunate side effect of the sedative I'm afraid." She tried to open her eyes but closed them immediately at the light's harsh glare. Thinking was impossible, it was like trying to wade through syrup.
"It should fade momentarily I tried to find one with the mildest side effects possible." The voice was right, her thoughts were beginning to come back to her and the light was no longer quite as painful. She still kept her eyes closed though.
"Who are you?" She croaked out, the voice was so soft and warm, so very familiar but she just could not place it in her dazed state.
"Surely you remember your best friend." The voice teased slightly and suddenly her mind cleared and her thinking returned.
"You're not Harry. Harry would never do something like this." She spoke with absolute confidence sure it wasn't her most beloved friend.
"How can you be so certain of that though?" The voice remained even and though it sounded like Harry it spoke with a tone she had never heard from the bespectacled boy.
"Harry is good, the destroyer of Voldemort, leader of the light he would never do it." She remained firm in her convictions and nodded to herself even with her eyes still closed.
"Perhaps I can do something to convince you then. What was it that Mad-eye always did? He would ask a question that only the other party would know the answer to if I remember correctly. How about I give you a piece of information that Harry would know that you are certain he would never have told another living soul." The pain from the light had left at this point but Hermione kept her eyes resolutely shut.
"Let's see now what would convince you of my identity." He pondered aloud. "How about if I told you what you told me that night so long ago one week prior to the second task in the Triwizard tournament."
The ice in her veins grew ever colder at his words. There was something she had told him that night that she knew he would never tell anyone.
"You could have just picked that date. It would be a reasonable choice since I dragged him from the library in full view of everyone."
"How about if I told you that it was because you had a confession to get off your chest. One that if you kept it inside even a moment longer would burst. You came to me confused and ashamed to tell me that you thought you had feelings for Ginny. Feelings that went far beyond the normal friendship or even of siblings. You came to me full of these feelings you thought were wrong and asked what was wrong with you."
That was something she was certain Harry never would have told another soul.
"Do you remember what I told you in response. 'Feelings are never truly wrong because they can never be truly right, they simply are. And the only right things to do..." He trailed off and Hermione slowly opened her eyes to whisper the rest.
"is to follow how you feel." The face staring back at her was the face of her closest and oldest friend. She couldn't even claim polyjuice as no one would have known that. "Harry where are we, what are we doing here, what-." Harry cut her off with a wave of his hand and simply smiled at her as she took a moment to realize she had been silenced wandlessly.
"You should know better Hermione. If you ask too many questions you'll never get the answers you're truly after. To answer your first question we are currently one quarter of a kilometer southwest of Little Hangleton in a small house that belongs to a serial killer. Or belonged to a serial killer I suppose would be the appropriate word choice. I don't think he'll be owning anything ever again." He kept his smile even as he spoke of having killing someone.
"As for what we are doing here. Well that is a bit harder to answer really, but the short answer is that we are here to make the world a better place." She moved her mouth to speak but no sounds came out. "I'm afraid I'll have to leave the spell on for a little while longer. We are on a bit of a time table you see and if you try and debate everything I say it would simply take too long."
"I suppose I should start at the beginning really. Simply telling you that we are here to make the world a better place doesn't really mean much until you have the full story."
"It starts I suppose about one month ago when shortly after having finally done away with Voldemort and feeling like I had conquered evil once and for all I saw a newspaper. It said that the ministry was forced to allow all those people that had killed and tortured innocents under Voldemorts reign go because it was all technically legal. Further, that they were having a hard time repealing the laws at all. That those in power were loath to give them up and even three months after Voldemorts downfall it was still technically legal to torture and kill muggles. That is when I had an epiphany of sorts you see."
"I realized that Voldemort was no more the cause of evil than I was the cause of good. He was more an outlet, a force of nature, a God even."
"He was not a God, he was just a man." Hermione cried managing to fight through the spell only for Harry to reapply it with another wave.
"He was certainly mortal in the end but hardly just a man. Think about it what really makes a God. Not the all powerful monotheistic muggle kind but like those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. What makes someone a God, more so than any other one thing, is believers. To be a God you must have followers, worshippers, believers those who take whatever you say as the absolute truth, and Voldemort had them in spades."
"People believed in his power so much that for over a decade after his supposed death they refused to utter his name for fear of somehow invoking his wrath. Perhaps God is the wrong word, perhaps manifestation is a better one. Voldemort was a manifestation of the wizarding world. Their creation, molded by their hands into what he eventually became."
"I've gotten off track a bit I fear. Anyway the epiphany was that I hadn't actually conquered evil, merely a single portion of it and as I have been told so many times my job, my duty, my destiny." He spit the word out with so much vehemence the room began to shake slightly as his magic responded. He breathed deeply to calm himself before continuing. "As I was saying. My job is to destroy evil not Voldemort so I decided that I would destroy the rest of that evil. And so I sat down and thought about how best to go about it."
He sat down in a chair by the table she was bound to and folded his hands beneath his chin in thought.
"My first thought, as humanity's usually is, was to simply destroy the offenders. The problem was how to decide exactly who was bad and who was good and at what point did it tip irreversibly. So I kept thinking and thinking and eventually the thought struck me and I decided that I would simply have to change society for the better. I would pass laws to make everyone equal and abolish the evils that so permeate our world. The problem of course is that people only cared when they thought I could do something for them." He sneered hatefully and she could see the coldness in his eyes. "When I could save them from evil, rescue them from Voldemort they loved me and would do anything for me. Now that he was dead and evil gone as they saw it there was no more reason to listen, no more reason to do anything uncomfortable to them. And that is when I had my second epiphany."
He leapt to his fit and began pacing the length of the room like a caged animal and Hermione began to feel a lead weight had descended in her stomach, knowing the second epiphany wouldn't end well.
"If the only time they would listen to me was when they thought they were in danger then there was only one solution. I would have to make them think they were in danger and as a result needed me. And that is where you come in." He stopped pacing to stand over her and the lead weight felt like it had hit the bottom.
"If death eaters were to kidnap someone famous, say Harry Potter's best friend, they would feel unsafe again. They would cry out for someone to lead them, for someone to save them from evil. Someone like Harry Potter." He smiled at the thought before sighing and tenderly running a hand down her cheek. "Unfortunately for this to work out it has to be a truly heinous event, not just a simple murder." She tried to speak but the spell held fast this time and she struggled in vein ignoring the chains tearing at her wrists.
"In a few days this house will be discovered by the police and they will assume you the last victim of the serial killer. I will see your name listed in the news paper and bring it to the attention of the DMLE who will of course assume it was Death Eaters. After all we are fairly close to Riddle Manor and who else would do something so terrible. The people will cry out for me to save them and I will, even if what I have to save them from is themselves."
He began to pull on a chain she hadn't seen before and she felt her arms begin to raise in spite of her struggles and her lower body soon followed.
"I truly am sorry about this Hermione. I consider you my best and quite possibly only true friend but sometimes. Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good."