Beastly

Hermione Granger has just dissaparated with Harry and Ron after Yaxley caught a ride with them to Grimmauld place. she gets separated from her friends and winds up at a mysterious old house inhabited by a beast who must find someone to love him before its too late, will she grow to love him or will finding out his true identity overwhelm her growing affections?

Chapter 2

Hermione awoke in a strange bed in a strange room in the dark. it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust and even then it was difficult to decipher the time of day or night as the windows across from the bed were boarded up. she attempted to sit up and immediately lay back down as a wave of pain and nausea overtook her.

"miss must not move much, the master said so. miss will hurt her leg" said a high pitched voice to her left, it wasn't the voice she had heard before losing consciousness but that of a house elf. the little creature snapped its fingers and the room glowed with candle light, showing it to be a particularly hideous specimen. Hermione noted that the creature was rather old looking but the towel wrapped round its waist was snowy white, indicating that it was content.

the room itself was beautiful; floor length expensive looking curtains that half hid the boarded up windows, burgundy painted walls and rosewood furniture, it all screamed wealth. whoever her potential friend or captor was, he had expensive tastes, she noted also that the one mirror in the room which sat above a small dressing table, was broken, its shattered pieces crushed to powder within the frame. there were also some lighter patches on the walls of the room where once pictures might have hung depicting the owner of the house and their family.
"what's your name?" she asked, hating the tremble in her voice. "and who is your master?" she remembered that he had called her by her surname, the fact that he knew her name did not bode well.

"I'm no-one" Hermione's head shot in the direction the voice had come from. he stood at the door, his face hidden beneath his hood, though there was something familiar about him that she couldn't put her finger on. "no-one? how do you know me?" she had no idea what side this man was on or even whether she was in danger here, her only hope, it seemed, was to try to learn as much about her situation as possible.

"never mind that, you just concentrate on getting better. I'm afraid i didn't have any dittany and only a fundamental knowledge of healing spells, the best i could do was cast a protection spell against infection and stop the bleeding, the wound sill has to heal on its own."
Hermione was impressed; anti infection spells were tricky. he didn't sound much older than herself as far as she could tell. he dressed all in black, his ace hidden by the hood on his jacket. the house elf disappeared with a snap of its fingers and a loud crack and reappeared a moment later carrying a tray laden with food and laid it across Hermione's knees. looking at the array of dishes made Hermione's stomach rumble loudly making her curious as to the length of time she had lain prone in the bed "hey...no-one...how long have I been-" she stopped talking once she realised that both the mysterious stranger and the house elf were gone. so much for detective work. she chastised herself before digging in to the meal

Hermione felt sleepy after eating but couldn't let sleep take her as there was still so much she needed to know. how had she come to be here of all places? where were the boys? wee they al-right? who was the mystery man and why wouldn't he show her his face? where precisely was she and what was going to happen to her here?

for that night at least her questions were going to go unanswered. eventually she was unable to keep her eyes open any longer and was engulfed by a healing, dreamless sleep.