A tingle spread from his fingertips to his wrist before climbing up to the top of his arm. The sensation wasn't unusual, so he ignored it and kept on burning the pile of paper that was stacked up on the floor besides him. He was crouched near an old marble chimney and had brought his sleeves up to his elbows. He held his wand in front of him, levitating the burning ball of paper in mid-air and gave a little whip of his wrist so as to keep the cold magical fire going.

Suddenly the tingling feeling intensified and his whole right arm seemed to burst into flames from the inside.

Shit!

He got up and instantly disapparated. He'd concentrated on the feeling in his arm only, trusting the spell to bring him where he needed to go, so when he apparated, he had no idea where he was. But he didn't care. He disregarded the mountains around him and his eyes fell upon the lake in front of him. Strong ripples were still disturbing the water, causing it to splash over his feet. A worried look crept over his face and he whipped out his wand.

"Homenium Revelio" he said in a cold voice.

The waters rippled and suddenly, he knew where she was. With a groan he pulled off his black robes and dived straight into the freezing water. Every inch of his body screamed in protest as he opened his eyes and forced his way deeper. His muscles seemed to freeze and every movement was painful, but there she was. He could see her. Grab her. The water around them seemed to claw at them, but he quickly pointed his wand towards the surface and they instantly shot towards the sky. They pierced the surface just as he felt her twitch.

The wizard pulled her ashore and quickly ran his hand over her body, checking her vital signs. She wasn't breathing.

"Anapneo" He whispered calmly, although his heart was still beating at an insane rate after his short swim in the lake.

The girl suddenly took a huge breath of air and the wizard dove backwards before pulling his cloak back over his face. Luckily, she'd only had a natural reaction following the spell and remained in her limbo state for at least a little longer. The man growled at his own reaction, and then whispered a full body-binding spell to be on the safe side. A rare smirk appeared on his face. Yes, it was the middle of the war; a simple body-binding spell was definitely going to make him feel safer.

The smirk disappeared instantly as he looked at her, noticing the strange angle at which lay her right arm. Something had gone terribly wrong during her apparition. He slowly pulled her sleeve up to her shoulder and his stomach kicked. She'd splinched herself. Badly. The whole of her arm was warped as if her entire skin had just been pulled off in one go.

Resisting the urge to vomit, he got up, muttered several protection charms around her immobilized body and conjured a warm wind to dry off his clothes. He quickly checked that he looked impeccable and disapparated.

He apparated in the middle of a fight. The two Death Eaters suddenly turned to him as he appeared in his own office and turned their anger on him.

"Where were you?" hissed the first. "Are you a blood traitor? Is that it?"

"Calm down Muller" he hissed back. "What is the reason of you insulting me when you know full well that I am higher in ranks than you are?

The man quivered in fear when he recognized the threat, but the second did not:

"They've broken into the ministry" he said in a steady, menacing voice. "The Potter boy and his friends. They attacked Umbridge and stole a necklace from her. Nothing more but they slipped from our fingers again, which you can understand sets a few of us on nerves. You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?"

Their superior looked at them as a snicker slowly crept over his face, and when he spoke, they both took a step back.

"Muller, Jugson," he said in a playful cold as ice voice, "we wouldn't want you to go making dangerous assumptions now, would we?"

They both took a second step back, as fear slowly crept into their eyes.

"After all, I'm sure the Dark Lord would… kindly oblige when you both ask him where I was instead of looking for those who you. let. escape. again. Now… why are you in my office?"

A second passed in silence, but Death Eaters are not people who linger on feelings of any kind.

"We need Veritaserum."

He arched an eyebrow in surprise.

"We don't have time to torture them." explained Jugson with a disappointed shrug.

Death Eaters were indeed men of few words. Their Potions specialist slowly walked past them towards his walk-in closet. The walls were completely occupied by shelves of potions, and unsurprisingly, nearly all of them were meant for making curses more effective on their victims; Voldemort did not carry the belief of needing to save his followers when they were injured, thus these were nearly all meant for torture.

He handed the small green vial to Jugson and watched them leave. When he was sure they'd gone, he went back into the potion's closet and rummaged through the vials. Soon, he had what he was looking for and disapparated again.

"Still sleeping Granger?" He said disappointedly when he reappeared next to the lake.

She didn't seemed to have moved at all, and remembering the doubts the two Death Eaters had had about him, he just wanted to get her out of the bare landscape and then go back to headquarters so that no one would doubt him anymore, although since that night on the Hogwarts' astronomy tower, none of them had dared to lift a finger against him. He looked up and scanned his surroundings.

They were in a U-shaped valley apparently devoid of any human life, but the landscape was too open; she'd be an easy target here. A few hundred meters from where she lay was a forest that climbed onto the mountains between which the lake had formed. That was the best option.

He looked at the girl he could at best call his patient before adjusting his robes and crouching back down. He pulled her over his shoulder and wedged her on his back before starting to walk quickly towards the cover of the trees. He hated being so vulnerable; if anyone spotted them here they'd be dead in a matter of seconds.

By the time they reached their refuge he'd changed his mind. Oh she wasn't a patient: she was a bloody burden. Nonetheless, when he found a patch of moss hidden between large and thick bushes, he put her down with the care you would have for a newborn.

That was where Hermione woke up. The last thing she'd seen was the freezing lake as she crashed into it, vaguely aware that she'd splinched herself in the process, and then nothing. Absolute silence. That's why when she regained consciousness and realized she couldn't move an inch of her body, she instantly thought that she's been paralyzed in her fall. But it didn't make sense; she should be drowning right now! And there was this strange tingling feeling in her seemingly mangled arm, backed up by a slow, warm, stronger feeling.

Wait, wait, wait! Complained her brain, struggling to understand the situation. Is someone massaging my arm with a healing potion? WHO. THE. HELL?!

Who in the world knew where she was? Or was she miraculously back at Grimmald Place? No, that couldn't be right. She could hear birds whistling in the distance. The Burrow then? No no, since the attack at Fleur and Bill's wedding the Weasley home was no longer considered safe. Then where was she, and more importantly… who was with her?

Merlin's armpits, I can't open my eyes! Who the hell is this?! Show yourself!

The massaging didn't stop and Hermione growled interiorly. It was no use screaming at someone without being able to utter a single sound, so she waited impatiently for the stupid _yet helpful_ person to stop. Oh he was stupid all right, because once she woke up he was going to get the beating of a lifetime. All she could tell by the deadly silence surrounding the _was he her rescuer or some kind of kidnapper? But then again, who heals his victim before abducting them? A sex slave maybe? Oh pull it together, she snapped at herself, there aren't any sex slaves in this world anymore! If anything he or she's got to have just saved you _ all she could tell about him was that it was definitely a 'he'. Although the person's fingers were long, agile and very gentle, they were callous and a bit rough, and the palms of those hands were too large to be a woman's.

Hermione lay there for several long, agonizing minutes during which she flipped and turned over in her head the possibility of having been abducted by some weird psychopath, or worst_ a Death Eater. But before long her mind drifted off and she pictured Harry and Ron having suddenly apparated at Sirius's old house without her, waiting for her to meet up with them, pacing up and down the main corridor. By now they were surely panicking, and before the night had fallen they would be boiling with anger, looking for a way to hunt down whoever had taken her from them. Oh yes, at Hogwarts she already knew them like the back of her hand, and fighting together in the war had only made them all closer. When you're lost in the wilderness with nothing but your two best friends, you stick to those friends like your life depends on it, because in fact, your life pretty much does depend on it.

Crap! She thought for the fifteenth time, they're going to worry like crazy! And at that moment she was quite happy that she'd been more or less turned into a rock because she could feel the tears nibbling at her eyelids and it was definitely not the right time to have a fit of choking sobs. She might as well keep torturing herself by trying to guess who the hell was helping her, and think about how she was going to blindly suffer the consequences of having apparated in the middle of nowhere, alone.

What she didn't expect though was for her limbs to suddenly snap back to life and for her eyes to open wide. The sun blinded her for a second just as the unidentified wizard disapparated with a pop, leaving her lying on the soft ground, her wand a few centimeters from her fingertips and her arm fully bandaged up.

She wanted to swear but she decided that she'd had quite enough of that for one day, thank you very much, and decided to let out a long sigh instead. She hadn't gotten a single explanation for what had happened since she'd crashed into that lake, but she'd watched him disapparate. She'd seen him. Just a glimpse, yes, but she would have recognized those billowing black robes anywhere.

They were Snape's.

HI ALL! So the day before yesterday I got my first ever review, and, I'll be honest with you, I nearly cried. Then I decided that I should be on the positive side of stuff, and then I most definetly did not get up and start running around the room singing whatever song I had in my head at the time at the top of my lungs. Okay I obviously fool no one when I say that it did not happen, but to my defense I was INCREDIBLY happy (my god I'm such a child). My father thus disowned me out of fear. Nearly. ;)

Anyhow, this chapter doesn't seem very long to me on Word although it seems okay on here, so hopefully you'll all be satisfied (fingers crossed) !