Chapter 2

I clutched my throat brokenly as Ron, Harry, and Ginny crowded around my bed. Ginny was able to smuggle the boys up into the girls dorms, and we were alone in the room.

"What is going on?" Ginny asked seriously, taking a seat at the edge of my bed and cocking her eyebrow up at my silence. Normally I would be ranting and raving by now.

I wrote on a stray piece of parchment, 'A group of Slytherin's cursed me with 'vocalus fortis'' I wrote quickly, holding it up for them to read.

They all read it, and glanced around in confusion.

"'Vocalus Fortis... Hermione, I have never heard of anything like that spell" Ginny said with a frown, as she is quite adept at charms. I shook my head at her and continued to write frantically, my hand smearing the ink as my emotions began to overwhelm me.

'It is a spell created by someone unknown, and I am unable to tell you who cursed me, as they cast a second spell to ensure their safety' I wrote with a furious expression; I wanting to shout out, or write, that Draco and his hooligans had put me in this state.

"Hermione, wait, why can't you talk to us again?" Ron asked confusedly, and I huffed in frustration.

"The world is cruel, the world is wicked" I sang out in annoyance, blushing when they all stared at me as if I had a hippogriff growing out of my head. I remembered many songs from the Disney movies I watched as a little girl, and I felt particularly connected to the Hunchback of Notre Dame at this moment; silenced, beaten, and hopeless.

Tears began to well up in my eyes against my biding, and Harry immediately came over to wrap me in his arms. I cried, silently of course, as I tried to find the words -or lyrics- to describe my sorrow.

"I ask for nothing, I can get by... But I know so many less lucky than I" I sang softly, while looking into Harry's green eyes sadly. I cannot help him in this state, and he understands, nodding kindly and smiling in assurance.

"Well, you can still write down notes that you find to help us, like you did for the Basilisk. You aren't alone in this" He reminded me with his trademark grin, and I nodded in agreement, bitting my lower lip.

"All I want is freedom, a world with no more night" I whispered in my high soprano, and Ginny, Ron, and Harry all stared at me in amazed silence, until finally Ron broke it is his usual blundering way.

"'Moine, your voice is really pretty" he mumbled with a blush, but Harry and Ginny nodded in unison. I flushed and looked away, embarrassed at their attentions.

I turned back to my parchment and wrote, "we need to go and tell Professor McGonagall" and we all left the bedchambers to find a solution to my mortifying curse.

We hurried down the corridors to the Head of Gryffidor's office, and we burst inside as soon as she called out for us to "enter." Ginny, Harry, and Ron explained my silence in a panicked jumbling of words, but the professor understood and frowned in contemplation for a moment.

"I am sorry Ms. Granger, but I have never heard of this curse" the Scottish professor told us in her usual stern voice, with only a sad tilt to her mouth letting you know she is troubled by the events, "I will inform the staff of your... interesting predicament" she went on, "but, unfortunately, that is all I can do for now... Good day." She dismissed us with a wave of her boney hand, and the four of us left feeling more McGonagall does not know the curse, how am I ever to be free? I tried to yell, but nothing came out of my mouth, and I rubbed my face tiredly, feeling lower than ever.

Harry, Ginny, and Ron looked at me pityingly, and I cringed in response.

"Goodbye for now" I sang the Avril Lavigne lyrics I recalled from many years ago, and I fled down the corridor, ignoring their shouts to come back. I ran as fast as I cold up the moving staircases, past the portraits, until I reached the 7th floor east corridor.

I need a place to go. I need a place to hide, please. Please.

Suddenly an ornately designed door appeared and I sighed- silently- in relief. As I entered, I did not see the black silhouette rounding the corner and following my footsteps into the Room of Requirement.

I stood in the room, which had not transformed my usual piano, but rather a large widow that shown out against the beautiful landscape of Hogwarts. I stood in the center of the room, staring out over the grounds, and tears began to streak down my face from frustration.

How could I have enabled Malfoy to curse me? What use am I to anyone in the war effort now?

I did not hear the door open and close through my distress, nor did I notice the room itself provide a chair for the dangerous man who had entered the room.

And, thus, I began to sing.

Songs: "Out There," "God Help the Outcasts," and "All I Ask of You." I do not own any of these songs or lyrics.