Thunder crackled through the night, as the storm which had been happening around Hogwarts for days now raged on. As a bolt of lightning flashed by the dormitory window, Hermione was surprised to find that even the rain-fearing Lavender Brown did not wake from her slumber. No, Hermione thought she could safely assume that she was the only person awake in the castle on that stormy Tuesday night. There were very few witches or wizards left who were excited at the prospect of facing the waking world anymore. After all, no one ever dies in their own dreams.
Hermione stared out the window for a moment, and for only a moment, she heard the storm outside ease. A peircing silence ran through the Gryffindor Tower for those few seconds. Though peaceful, Hermione found it unnerving. In the back of her mind, she thought she could hear shackles rattling. That had been a favorite detour for her sleeping imagination, during the worst of her nightmares. Suddenly, Hermione felt compulsed to leave her dorm, as soon as possible. A strange combination of fright and curiosity over the noise she thought she had heard compelled her like nothing she had felt before.
Three hours remained before students would be allowed to leave their Common Rooms for breakfast in the Great Hall. Hermione knew that Headmaster McGonagall would be very unhappy if her Head Girl were discovered out of bed at 3 in the morning, but that insatiable longing for knowledge that had gotten Hermione her position as Head Girl in the first place also drove her to make the descision not to waste her alone time. Casting a quick and skillful Disallusionment Charm over herself, the young witch made her way down the girls' staircase and through the portrait hole.
She was walking, as could be guessed, to the Library. After trips through many corriders and secret-passages, however, something managed to distract her from her path. The tip of Hermione's wand barely illuminated a silvery object to the right of a staircase. Picking it up on a sleep-deprived impulse, she found it to be her own cat's nametag. On the little circle the name "Crookshanks" was neatly inscribed. But why, Hermione wondered, had Crookshanks lost his nametag after seven years of its being safely around his neck? And how, for that matter, had he gotten out of the Gryffindor Common Room without human assistance?
A little further down the staircase, Hermione discovered the red collar that her bandy-legged cat usually wore, cast away but looking tattered, as if the cat had gone to great lengths to somehow claw it off his neck. It was only as she tore her eyes from the strangely mangled collar that Hermione noticed that she had found herself in the school dungeons, where she had once gone for potions classes with Professor Snape.
Immediately heightening her sense of hearing, as the dark dungeon was illuminated by neither moonlight nor torches, Hermione began to notice small sounds that were not appropriate for this sort of setting. The low hooting of an owl, or the ticking sound of tiny claws across the floor. Driven again by curiosity, along with the disregard for rules and common sense that her years with Harry and Ron had wrought in her, Hermione followed the almost inpercievable noises through another series of corridors, until she was brought at last to a steel door. At the bottom of the door, a huge range of animals, including the now-unidentified Crookshanks, pawed and clawed and hissed at the closed door, attempting in vain to make it open. For a witch, however, the task was much easier.
Alohomora.
Hermione did not even need to say the spell aloud, and the door unlocked. Opening it very slightly, a horrible smell of decay hit her. The animals entered without hesitation, but Hermione stopped, creating a small, harmless fire in the palm of her hand to bring a dim light to the blackness. She thought she could hear someone taking in difficult, rasping breaths from the already thick dungeon air. She slowly moved forward.
There, lying on the ground, Hermione spotted something in the shape of a body. For a moment, the thought entered her mind that this was certainly too pale to be a human body--too deathly white to be living flesh. Her mind made the connection quickly enough, though, that this was the source of the difficult breathing. She could see the figure heaving for oxygen. And it was no suprise, for this person appeared undernourished to the highest degree at which one can maintain life. Bones jutted out from each limb, and on closer inspection, the light revealed large stab-like wounds in what remained of the flesh. Dried blood covered the cement floor around it, forcing Hermione to struggle to maintain her already-fragile composure.
The figure coiled itself tighter as she approached. Now, Hermione saw only a mass of blackness, with no hint of humanity left. She moved cautiously, her wand extended, hoping that she wasn't too late to help this man--if there was, indeed, a man somewhere in that sickly body and raggedy pile of clothing.
Just as she knelt down to touch him, a wave of dizziness hit her, and for the second time that night Hermione crashed to the floor. Her last thought, as she passed out, was that it felt as if she had just been spinning in circles with Ron and Harry...She thought she could see Ron's red hair flash past her eyes again...With that, for the first time in a week, Hermione Granger fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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