Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters except for the obvious ones (Lea, Kaya, Adi…) and no songs are mine. Uncle Snape is Slytherin Girls and I have Permission to use it

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Previously:

"You know what? I'm gone. I can't take living in this hell anymore than the rest of us. Look at me okay. For gods sake, look at me. Look at what's happened to me. I'm not me anymore. I'm not Hermione Granger. What don't you understand? I don't want to talk; I don't want to go back to my old self. I lived like that for too long. As much as I hate the way I am now, I don't want to change. I like being able to hide all emotions, I like being able to tell someone to go away without speaking. All I want to change is my past. That past that made me this way. I wish I had never come here or made any of the friends I did. I wish I could change it all, and just not have any pain in my life. But that'll never happen. I screwed myself over though. Malfoy, I've been blaming you for so long. I've been blaming you for ruining my life, when it was me who ruined my life."

All the sentences that she strung together made absolutely no sense, to Draco or Snape. It was all things that contradicted each other. But somehow Draco got the point. He got the point that she wanted out, out of this life. That she wanted to start over. In a different place, not here where the memories all lie.

But he couldn't let that happen. Hermione turned to leave, but felt a hand on her shoulder. She breathed in deeply, she wanted to go. She wanted to leave this country, this world that she lived in behind. But she turned around, meeting grey eyes.

"Please don't leave" Draco almost pleaded.

"Why?" came Hermione's icy answer before heading out the door.

"Because I still love you" Draco said quietly.

Hermione froze in her tracks, then turned around and….

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Hermione froze in her tracks, turned around and slapped him. She couldn't believe his nerve. So long had he claimed to hate her. Wasn't him that had told her that she had to stay away from him, that they couldn't have any contact with each other because it would basically be the end to them all.

He had been the one to end it and now he expected her to just accept him back into her life as more than a co-worker.

"Malfoy, go to hell" she spat at him.

Draco stood there, stunned. He hadn't known what to expect but that certainly hadn't been it. He hadn't expected her to have such an angry reaction but when you thought about it, how else would you expect her to react.

"How dare you," she continued, "After all these years, all of the sudden you decide its okay to love me again? No, I don't think so. You had no right telling me that. No right. You made the decision to leave me, but that doesn't mean you can make the decision to get back together with me. No, that's not your decision to make.

"And to top it all off, I just descended back down to a stupid mud blood bitch again. I'm not stupid, and I'm sure as hell not a mud blood, but I will give you that I can be a bitch, it's in my nature. And don't tell me you lost your temper because I know that you can keep it in check to an amazing degree. Where do you think I learned it? Sure as hell wasn't Harry and Ron. I've lost my temper very few times over the last five years, and you want to know something. I was around you each time"

Draco watched Hermione reach up to her neck and unclasp her chain. She held it in her hand for a moment, every fibre of her being against what she was about to do.

"Hold out your hand" she instructed Draco.

Draco did as told. He looked up and met her eyes. They were chocolate brown again. A tear formed and rolled down her cheek.

Hermione moved her hands forward. She grasped his hand with one and placed the chain in it with the other. She wrapped his hand around it. She felt like what was left of her heart had just been ripped out. She looked at him one last time, before turning and leaving.

Draco watched Hermione walk away from him again. The only difference was that this time she had cried. It had only been a single tear, but it had meant the world to him. It had washed away all doubt that he held in his heart about her not loving him.

He opened his hand and looked at the chain. He couldn't believe that she had done it. She had taken it off. She had taken off the symbol of the greatest friendship that any of them had ever had. He looked at the charm that hung beside it. The snake wrapped around the lion. A symbol of their love for each other.

A sudden angry ran though him. He didn't know how he had allowed this to happen. Frustration, hate and disgust coursed through his veins. He chucked the chain at the wall.

All of the sudden, four people experienced a blinding pain right at the same time. A pain like none other. It started at their hearts and spread throughout their entire being. It affected everything, mind, body and most of all, soul.

Justin, Ginny, Blaise and Padma all knew exactly what had caused it. Someone had taken off their chain. Someone had removed the link that they shared. But that's not all that caused it. No, that was only half of it.

The other half was the pain that Draco felt right in that moment. It was the greatest pain that he had ever experienced. Though none of them knew it, those necklaces had made it so that when one felt a pain that great, the others would feel it.

Hermione even felt his pain, but doubled. She was dealing with her own pain in those moments, and for many more to come. She couldn't believe what she had just done. She had known of the bond those chains had created because, though she would never admit, she had felt every beating that the boys had received since seventh year. She just didn't know why she was the only one to feel it. Why Ginny and Padma had never felt it she didn't know.

Hermione ran through the halls, just wanting to be free. To get out. She ran out the front doors and out past Hagrid's cabin into the forest, though she had no idea where she was headed.

She ran and ran, not caring where her legs carried her. Suddenly she ran into something. No, someone. She looked up, to see the face of a complete stranger. Yet, she had seen him before, if that made sense.

"Are you okay?" the stranger asked her.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine"

"Are you sure? You look like you've been crying. Here," he reached into his pocket and handed her a tissue.

"Thanks," Hermione said wiping away tears that she didn't even realize had fallen.

"Any time. By the way, I'm Andrieos," he reached out his hand.

"Hermione," she introduced herself.

"Nice to meet you Hermione. Well I have to go, but you ever need anyone call me okay?" He took out a pen and scribbled his number on her hand.

Not once throughout all this did it strike her as weird that someone was in the middle of the forbidden forest, where nothing was accessible unless you were willing to chance ending up somewhere dangerous. After all, it was near impossible to apparate accurately.

But none of this ever occurred to her. No, all that was on her mind was the kindness of the stranger, Draco and the pain that she was having trouble covering.

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"Did you see her?"

"Yes"

"Will she work?"

"Yes. She was hurt badly by someone. She's turning away from all she was taught now"

"Good, good. The time has come. We shall have her and the rest of them will follow. They won't let their sister fall to us"

An evil laugh echoed off the walls. There was a great evil brewing but who it involved only few knew.