Chapter 1 – Escape From Home

The girl, small for her age, sat on her bed, in the middle of the room, in silence. The only sound to be heard was the continuous muffled tune emanating from the headphones covering her ears. Her eyes were dry, as she had only stopped crying less than an hour ago. Now her once thick black lines of eyeliner were now smudged due to those recent tears. Her head was bopping to the heavy beat of rock and metal music streaming from her IPod and her thick black hair was moulded into a spikey mass using hair gel and spray that morning.

A voice called up the stairs, but she did not hear.

The voice called again but this time from the top of the stairs and this time he sounded angry. But the girl in her room still didn't hear.

The young lady looked up when she saw movement in her peripheral vision. The door handle was moving but she smiled when she remembered the lock she had fitted on the inside of the door.

The man on the other side of the door got angrier every time he tried to open the door. As his frustrations mounted, the man came up with a new plan of attack.

The girl's happiness soon turned to fear as she saw how much the door was flexing due the sheer amount of force her father was putting into smashing the door down. She was soon cowering away from the door, in the corner of the room, her hands over her headphones as if forcing the music through her ears to calm her down. Her eyes were screwed shut presumably to convince herself that her dad was not forcing his way into her room.

Five minutes later, she reopened her eyes assuming all to be safe but flinched when she saw her father standing less than a meter away from her, red faced, breathing heavily and an evil glint in his eye. Her bedroom door was now standing open, hanging off one of the three hinges and the cheap metal lock was twisted and broken.

"Father…" She started fearfully, but screamed when he tugged her headphones off her and they caught on her earring, ripping her earlobe.

"Why didn't you come when I called?" He asked in an eerily calm voice.

The teenage girl just whimpered, unable to answer, thanks to pain pulsing from the left side of her head.

"ANSWER ME!" The man yelled at his daughter, punctuating the end of his sentence with a hard yet fast slap to the left side of Hermione's face, right on top of her now steadily bleeding ear.

"You are never going back to that circus you freaks' call a school, mark my words, never again." He screamed at the defenceless girl, his eyes bulging in rage, as he stormed out of her room, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

He left Hermione Granger crying in the corner of her bedroom, clutching her sixth year letter from her beloved school, thinking of a way to escape from her prison, the next day, to catch the scarlet red Hogwarts express to take her to her only home.


Hermione woke up. The alarm she had set signalled it to be midnight. Silently she dressed in the dark, she put on a pair of black skinny jeans, a black blouse with a purple lace corset on top and a pair of black leather converses. Hermione applied her makeup using a small torch to see, before packing it and her hair gunk into an already packed bag. Then performed a glamour charm to hide the red hand mark on her face.

Then Hermione peered out of her room and heard two different sets of heavy snoring emanating from her parents room. Apparently the sleeping tablets she had crushed into their food that evening had worked wonders. Hermione then returned to her room and opened her window wide enough for her slim body to slip through. She walked across the wide ledge until she was above lush green grass instead of the hard cold concrete her father had put over half of the garden. Hermione chucked her bag to the floor, then shortly followed it, rolling so that the shock didn't break her bones.

Using wandless magic, that Hermione had mastered the year before, she unlocked the shed that housed the magical life her father had locked away from her.

Once shrinking her trunk down to a more manageable size she slipped it into her bag on her shoulder before Apparating to the Sleepy Cauldron.


"Your mission is simple, kill Dumbledore and give us Death Eaters access to Hogwarts," Lucius Malfoy hissed at his son, imitating his great lord, Voldemort, "If you don't succeed, you will be killed, but it's no skin off of my nose."

Draco nodded dutifully, "Yes Father."

Outside Draco was as calm and cool as he normally was, but inside he was going berserk. It was well known that Dumbledore was the best head teacher Hogwarts had ever seen and he was the only person Voldemort was scared of in the world.

"You may go now." Lucius exclaimed dismissing his son, with a tumbler of Firewhiskey to his lips and his head tilled in satisfaction.

Draco left his father's study quickly and returned to his room to brood. A knock on his door startled Draco out of his reverie. Narcissa Malfoy stuck her tear-stained face around the door.

"Are you alright Darling?" She said sniffling, wiping the tears away from her eyes.

Draco didn't answer. He just stared at his emerald green carpeted floor, and then shuffled across his bed to create room for his mother.

"Your father told me of the mission given to you by our Lord, Voldemort," She said carefully, before wailing the rest of her sentence, "Oh Draco, you do not have to go through with this..."

His bedroom door slammed open, revealing a fuming Lucius Malfoy.

"Woman, I told you to wait for me in your chamber and not to interfere with things you have no understanding of and aren't your business." Draco's father seethed, grabbing his wife's hair and dragging her towards the door, "I will teach you to not disobey me."

The fear in his mother's eyes kicked Draco into action, "Leave my mother alone!" He bellowed at his father.

Lucius Malfoy stopped his movements, "Don't challenge me boy, this is nothing of your concern."

"Yes it is. If you are to hurt my own mother, then yes it is my business." Draco replied defiantly, standing his ground.

Lucius' eyes turned to slits, "Crucio." He yelled, whipping his wand out of its sheath and pointed it towards his only son and heir.

He fell to the floor, screaming in agony, writhing as his body felt like he was being burnt alive from the inside and his flesh was being torn off. He couldn't breathe. He had screamed his voice raw. His once strong voice had been reduced to mere whimpers as his body struggled to fight overwhelming pain. Tears ran down his face in streams as he convulsed on the floor. It was the worst pain he had ever endured, it was pure torture and that alone made Draco know that he would never inflict this suffering on anyone. Draco had retreated so far into his mind that he didn't realise that the curse had been lifted, until he felt a warm hand against his clammy face.

"Draco...Baby...Please get up...Baby, you're scaring me." Narcissa whispered into his ear.

He moved, starting to get up, but all of the pain inflicted on him seemed to have amassed in his chest and stomach, and preventing him from getting up.

"Thank Merlin, you are ok...I thought you were dead..." His mother began to ramble, tears flowing freely down her pale cheeks.

Draco just groaned, as much as he loved his mother now was not the time for mindless chatter, as it was adding to his already horrific headache.

He lay on the ground for another ten minutes as he regained his strength, ignoring the babble being spouted by his only loving parent.

"I need to go and see Lucius." Draco exclaimed pushing himself off of the floor.

He stumbled, and almost fell, his muscles had seized up.

"No...You can't...He will kill you...Draco please." Narcissa whimpered, afraid to lose the only thing she loved in the whole world.

"Mother I will be fine, I assure you." He replied softly.

Draco then kissed his mother on the forehead before limping towards his father's study, wand in hand.

Draco entered Lucius' study without knocking, meaning certain death.

"How dare you enter here without my permission..."His father screamed before being interrupted.

"How dare I? How dare you more like, how the hell can you justify torturing your own flesh and blood. I always looked up to you, I always thought that one day I would be like you, but I grew up. Now I realise that you are sick in the head, no wonder you feel as though wiping some deformed hypocrites arse is the way forward for the Malfoy family. You are truly sick if, one, you think that raping your wife is a civilised way of getting sex and, two, you actually get pleasure from it. You can't deny it father, I saw you. I saw you Lucius, when I was little. Why do you think I couldn't even look at you for weeks," Draco was shouting at his father, but he calmed down for the last sentence, to minimise the reaction for his whole rant, "If you want to be a Death Eater that's fine, but don't be an arse about it."

Lucius actually seemed to listen to Draco and think over it. Draco started to let his guard down believing himself to be in the clear.

"It seems I have been too soft on you and your mother." Lucius started.

"Yeah...Hang on...What?" Draco exclaimed confused, tensing immediately.

Lucius continued as if nothing had happened.

"Your mother spent...too much time...with you as a child. She has...influenced you. You are not...as a Malfoy should, you are too soft...and...you don't know your place, Boy," He explained slowly as if to a small child, pausing ever so often, "Crucio!...A little pain will harden you up, Draco, to become a real Malfoy."

This time Draco didn't scream, he bit his lip, forcing no sound to escape. Blood trickled into his mouth and down his chin, as his body writhed in agony of its own accord.

"No!" A voice screamed and ran towards Draco, who was now lying on the floor, and cradled his head.

The Cruciatus curse lifted off of Draco for the second time in his life and Lucius laughed.

"I have come up with a better punishment for both of your disobedience. Imperio."

Draco's control over his body was nonexistent and his eyes had gone cloudy. He felt liek a spectator in his own body.

Draco's body got up off of the floor, not taking notice of the mantra he was chanting in his head, "Don't let him win", and shoved his mother away from him. His mind looked on in horror as he pointed his wand at his own mother.

"Crucio." Draco heard his lips whisper.

He was screaming and crying in his head, just as much as Draco's mother was, right in front of him. Draco noticed a single tear rolling down his exteriors face.

But Lucius Malfoy laughed on, pleased with himself for coming up with the perfect mental torture. He sustained the curse for a full half an hour.

When the curse lifted Narcissa's body was still convulsing. Draco was scared. Lucius was still in control of his body, with no signs of letting up. There was a pleasured spark in his eyes.

Draco's body walked around his mothers quaking form until he was in her eye line. His wand arm lifted slowly. Draco was screaming a continuous stream of 'No's' in his head.

"Draco, I love y..." Narcissa said quietly, before being interrupted.

"Avada Kedrava." His voice said, just before control over his own body had been re-administered.

"No." Draco whispered, seeing the light leave his only loving parent's eyes.

"No? Oh but yes Boy. You have just killed your own mother," Lucius said with fake sympathy, smiling as he went, "You have made me proud Boy...so I may have put in a little bit of the effort but it is you who is going to be tortured by it in the long run."

Lucius clapped his son on the back, sending him to his knees.

"No witty response...humm...you must be tired. Go to bed, you have school tomorrow. Also if you don't do the assignment I will just have to get you to torture someone else you love." His father said almost lovingly.

Draco got up, his heart cold.

"I need to clear my head...I am going to Diagon Alley, maybe I will find something to help you gain access to Hogwarts, Sir." He said without emotion, walking out of his father's study.

"If you tell anyone about this..." Lucius started.

Draco stopped in the door way, "You will kill me, I know, Sir."

Once in his room, Draco packed all of his belongings into his trunk before shrinking it down to fit into his cloak pocket. He took one last look around his childhood sanctuary, before walking the short distance to the Floo.