Authors Note: Well, here's another chapter for all of you who read the beginning of this story a long time ago. I can assure you, it is going to get dark and not so grand. There are probably going to be some sensitive issue's popping up for some people. Still, I hope you like. Feel free to send me a message if you wish, don't be a stranger - Bee x


Hermione ran as fast as she could, not even considering giving into the burning in her calves and the pain in her chest. They were following swiftly behind her, yelling hexes and she ducked whenever she felt one whizzing past her. She had been clipped by a slicing hex on her left arm and it had cut rather deep. She had been unable to stop and stem the bleeding; instead she had ran as fast as her feet could take her. They had lost the battle but Hermione didn't feel they had lost the war, they could not have. Harry was still alive, she would have known if he had been killed, even though they had been separated in the woods.

"STUPIFY!" Hermione screamed, throwing her spell behind her back. She hoped that it hit one of her pursuers. Even if she could only bring down one of them, she would settle for that. She had not even considered who could be chasing her down with a vengeance, for all she knew Bellatrix Lestrange herself could be hot on Hermione's heels. The woman was batshit insane, and Hermione would rather face Lucius Malfoy than Bellatrix. A jet of green light narrowly avoided her and Hermione stumbled to the ground as she tripped over a tree root in fright. Clearly the Death Eaters were getting serious now. Hermione would not be able to outrun them; she knew that as well as she knew her own name. This left Hermione with only two other options. Either she could stand her ground and try to fight them all, which was the noble but stupid thing to do, or she could take the illegal portkey in her pocket. She had created it herself with Ron's wand, which he had let her borrow although it was against convention, and it was keyed to take her and only her to a safe location she remembered in the Pennines from when her and her parents had once been on holiday. It was a small cave and Hermione had been working on it for quite some time, to try and make it liveable. It had been a contingency plan in case it had all gone wrong. Now it seemed it would be her only hope and salvaition.

Hermione removed the muggle receipt from Tesco's supermarket from her pocket and felt the familiar pull behind her navel before the woodland scene disappeared around her. She screwed her eyes shut as the pain from the open wound in her arm spiked. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself standing in the cave, and thankfully she was the only human being there. Crookshanks was prowling around and as soon as he caught sight of his mistress he shot over and wound his body around and in between her legs. Taking a deep breath and releasing a hollow laugh, Hermione bent down slightly and scratched the back of Crookshank's ears with her right hand. She made her way over to the small table she had set up and placed her wand on the wooden surface. She took hold of a bottle of Solution of Dittany and, gritting her teeth together, she unscrewed the cork and applied a few drops to the wound on her arm. She hissed through her clenched teeth and her face was contorted in pain as the Dittany did its work.

"We lost this one Crooks." Hermione said, addressing her cat unabashedly. There was nobody else to hear her, and there certainly wasn't anyone else to talk to. Crookshanks had never just been a cat to Hermione. The fact that he was part Kneazle and the events in her third year concerning Sirius Black, rest his soul, had only cemented the idea in her head that he was more than what he seemed. Crookshanks was a highly intelligent animal, and he had never left her, even though cat's were well known to do that.

Apart from Crookshanks, Hermione was now on her own. Considering the outcome of their last engagement with Voldemort and his Death Eaters, she could not even afford to use her magic. Hermione was no fool, and she never really had been. She was more than aware that now that they had Wizarding Britain in their grasp, they could trace her magical signature. It was why she had used Ron's wand to make the portkey. They would never trace his signature, not anymore. They would be searching for her signature. Perhaps they would eventually figure out what she had done, in which case she would be long gone. She had an early warning alarm system alerting her if any wizard or witch crossed the perimeter she had set of 15 miles. Nobody would be able to portkey or apparate in, and so they would have to manually cross the boundary. As soon as they did so, Hermione would know and she would have left by the time they arrived, having moved onto her other safe area. It was a plan that she had spent many hours thinking over. There were holes in the plan, a few here or there, but they were only to identify specific individuals. Also, if anybody was already in the perimeter, then her system would not pick them up. She highly doubted that any Death Eater or ally of a Death Eater would be inside her perimeter. Even though the odds were unlikely, she had still taken precautionary measures by cloaking the cave she was currently standing in. There was an invisibility spell, a magical dampening field, and layers upon layers of anti-detection charms and other protective enchantments. Hermione was not going to take the risk.

She replaced the bottle of Dittany on the table and nestled herself down on the cave floor, using one of the table legs to support her back. She leant backwards and sighed heavily, shutting her eyes and trying not to cry. Now that the adrenaline was no longer being released and running through her system, she could feel all the anger, the hurt, the loneliness, worry and sheer emotional anguish. They had lost so much. She had managed to get herself to safety, but she did not know if any of the others had been able to. All she could do was hide away in her cave, like a coward, and wait to hear any whisper of news from anyone. She knew in her heart of hearts that, despite the odds, she could not be the only one who had made it away safe. She could not confront the idea that she would be forever alone in a world that was going to become a very cruel and unforgiving place very quickly. The darkness and shadow had descended upon Hermione's world, and she did not know if the light would be able to pierce through it. She could only hope, and play the waiting game.


Severus Snape stood, hands folded behind his back, looking out at the night sky. London was burning, as it had many times before in the past. The Dark Lord and the other Death Eaters had taken control, once and for all it may have seemed to some. The first item on the Dark Lord's agenda appeared to be burning London City to the ground, in order to rebuild from there. Screams of those in pain, the dying and the anguished cries of those discovering loved one's dead, tore through the night and Severus could only watch the scene with morbid fascination. If ever he had wanted any confirmation that he had made a disastrous mistake in his youth by joining the Death Eaters, he had it here and now. There was a difference between a desire to strike back at the world and all who had done him wrong, to rebel against a system, and to bring it to its knees then destroy it in favour of a dictatorship. Even after all the years of surrounding the insane and the sadistic, he had still not been able to understand why they would want to do such a thing, beyond the insatiable call towards power and wealth. Then again, the powerful and rich only wanted to become more powerful and rich did they not?

Severus could no longer bear to watch the scene unfolding before him. If all went according to his plan, then the Dark Lord and the Death Eater's would be convinced that the traitor Severus Snape had been killed in one of the fires. He wanted to live, for reasons of atonement and redemption he assumed and to honour a promise that he had made years before. If they discovered that he was in fact alive and not burned to naught but ash, they would hunt him down and destroy him in the worst way possible. Severus had a duty and he wanted to live a reasonably painless existence. In the space of a single day, the world had become a land of extreme's and desolation, where misery soaked into the soul of every creature alive. In such a time and place, Severus would have to follow the mood and would have to take extreme action of his own.

He glanced down at the arm with the Dark Mark tattoo, a malevolent stain upon his sallow skin. He sighed once more and rubbed his forearm with his other hand. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and this next space of time, however long it would last for, could turn out to be the darkest days that had been seen in the country since wizards and witches began practising magic. The resistance would still be alive, of that he had no doubt. Harry Potter would still be alive. Even from where he was sequestered, Severus would have heard of the Ultimate Victory if Potter had been killed. As for the other members of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army, Severus had no idea what fate had befallen them. Despite his personal dislike towards the vast majority of them, even Severus hoped that they had not met a grisly end, and that they had survived to fight another day, as had he.

One last look at the sky, as pitch as tar with the black smoke rising from the burning buildings, and Severus turned his back upon the hellish sight as he faded into the shadows enveloping the Tower of London. It had been the safest place he could find, for not even the Dark Lord would wish to destroy a place with such a violent history written in the blood of hundreds. At dawn the next day, Severus would leave and head to Dover, focused upon the shores across the Channel. France would be his hiding place, after all, who would think to look for a greasy haired ex spy in France?