It's funny how life sometimes seems predetermined.

Like, you will grow up first crawling, then walking, then running. You'll learn to write at school, then go to high school, then maybe university too, if you work hard enough. Most of the time you even meet someone, start talking, slowly fall in love and possibly get married.

It's all a combination of steps and processes that are laid out for you to follow, because otherwise, how else will you know what to do next? Would you not just get lost in this massive expanse of knowledge and wonder that makes up the world, and feel so small against the tides that are pulling you in every direction that you just don't make choices? You don't do anything because how will you know that it is what you're supposed to do?

Maybe that is why everything feels predetermined.

It had felt that way for a long time for Hermione. She couldn't quite pinpoint exactly when it stopped feeling like that though – when they first ran into the snatchers? Or was it lying on Malfoy's drawing room floor, covered in her own blood?

No, even that felt predetermined. She was the weak link, after all. The Mudblood who would surely crack and talk under pressure, with the boys kept away to make her panic - feel alone, feel helpless. She hadn't cracked, even when it came to screaming her throat to shreds and clawing marks into the wooden flaw with her fingernails. Still, although she couldn't pinpoint when everything stopped feeling predetermined, she knew she would not leave Malfoy Manor both alive and sane again with the disappearance of Harry and Ron with Dobby.

They had of course gone all out Gryffindor in an attempt to rescue her from the insane torture of Bellatrix Lestrange, but it hadn't worked. A stray curse here, a fallen bookshelf there, and Ron was lying on the ground and bleeding from his head while Harry had lost his glasses from being sideswiped and blown into a table.

Maybe that was where life was no longer predetermined.

Despair crept into her head after that, a sticky, viscous feeling that dragged her down and made her stay there. In fact, it didn't happen over a great amount of time – not after the four days without eating, or the week where various Death Eaters would come in at any time of the day to try new curses on her only to heal her enough to survive, and it definitely wasn't after she talked to Malfoy.

"I never liked you, you know." She had croaked, feeling him prod his wand against a festering wound on her side. He had ignored her for a great amount of time before muttering,

"I know."

"Why stay a Death Eater?" He had stood up abruptly, festering wound now clean, and a piece of bread pushed under her hand.

"I don't know."

No, it wasn't after that.

The despair had appeared immediately after Dobby had disapparated, cutting off Harry's cry of "No, Dob-!"

She had lain there, immediately consumed by the knowledge that her fate had been sealed and, no matter how hard she tried, there would be no changing it. It was predetermined, after all.

She had no idea how long she had been in Malfoy Manor, presuming that she had been kept there and not moved to another hideout whilst unconscious. In her pretty little dungeon cell, which held nothing but herself and a few dreary looking shackles pinned to one wall, she was suspended in consistent greyness – no light, no dark, daytime, night time, rain, hail or shine. It was all the same, and unfortunately that meant no concept of time passing. Any time she wasn't experiencing pain or unconscious, she would spend sleeping.

Time goes faster when you're sleeping. You don't feel so hungry when you're asleep.

And so, the injuries started piling up. Of course, after any incredibly malicious beatings she was healed, but Hermione was still aware that both her legs had been broken at least three times, her left Femur once, all of the larger bones of her left hand had been pulled out after her finger nails had been ripped off, and she had been crucioed enough times now that both her shoulders dislocated quite easily due to being shackled to the wall during these particularly festive playtimes. She knew her eyesight would be poor now too, for however long she would live.

"Don't look at me Mudblood!" A voice had screamed at her from behind a mask. It was a woman, which had surprised Hermione, every other person to enter her cell so far had been a man, using the breaks between their torturous ways to touch her in places no person had ever touched her before.

"I mean it, you fucking piece of scum!" More pain had come then, but not where she was expecting. This Death Eater had been increasing and decreasing her body temperatures to extremes, without a slow transition in between them. More so, for no certain amount of time, she felt like her body was shutting down to withdraw from the cold and then suddenly it was if the entire room was on fire. That was what she had been expecting. She had not been expecting the dungeon cell to be pitched into complete darkness, her eyes to feel like they were melting in their sockets. She had no control over them either – Hermione knew her eyes were open, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't feel them move to 'look' to the left, or right, or any which way she wanted. Even closing her eyelids became difficult, although they remained drooped and dilapidated.

Throughout her screaming she had felt her body temperature slowly begin to settle, and a piece of cloth swish past her. Clothing? The Death Eater wouldn't get this close, surely.

No, the Death Eater had left. Only releasing Hermione from her shackles after the cell door had once again closed. Hermione had fallen in a heap on the floor, layering more dirt onto any piece of skin that had been covered in sweat. Slowly raising her head, Hermione lifted her right hand to her face and closed both her eyes; there was no point in keeping them open if she could no longer see.

Groaning, she pushed up to a kneeling position, feeling every sore muscle, every crack in a joint and cut in her skin. Leaning back she had felt the wall behind her, where she had just been strung up, and an idea lit her brain alight.

If she couldn't count the days she was in here for, she would count the tortures. Swiveling around, she groped the wall to find one of the shackles that dangled a little lower than the others, using her fingers to memorise it's surface and edges, looking for something that would be sharp enough to leave a mark on the wall.

Thinking back to her broken legs, her dislocated shoulders and everything right up to losing her eye sight just now, she had began to scratch at the wall.

Thirty eight. For crushing both her knee caps. She screamed.

Seventy one. For vanishing her teeth and replacing them with shards of glass for three days. Screaming seemed pointless

Ninety two. For forcing a vile potion down her throat which made her feel like she was drowning for hours on end. Screaming was impossible.

Ninety nine. Lashings. Muggle, brutal, unforgiving lashings. Screaming was possible. Until fingers wrapped themselves around her neck so hard that she could hardly breathe let alone make any noise. The lashings continued.

Quite ironic that they had come for her before she reached one hundred – Hermione had been looking forward to rounding off her tortures with a nice even number and be able to say that, although she lived in fear, pain and hunger, she remained relatively sane.

The noise had woken her up, and while it had happened before what with the constant work of a dark and twisted madman going on around her, Hermione hardly felt the need to take notice. Except for the fact that it was yet again a woman's voice this time calling her name.

"Hermione!" A shudder ran through the foundations of the building as the door to the dungeons was blown apart. Footsteps sounded nearby, but more than one pair – had they finally found her?

"She's in there, right!" A gruff voice snarled, panting just outside her door. No. No one had come for her, that was Antonin Dolohov, just one of the many sick men she had been forced to encounter in her time here. "Now you let her go!"

"I don't think I will, thank you. She's been most helpful to our endeavors." Hermione pressed herself up against the markings she had made on the far wall as she heard a figure slump to the floor, unable to squash herself into the corner because of her wrist still chained to one of the shackles hanging up. She laughed quietly, not believing that it was Dolohov that had been the one to string her up in the first place.

"Open it." Hermione heard a voice say, before a murmur swung the door open in front of her. She kept still, she kept quiet, she had no idea who this person was or what they wanted. Footsteps rushed towards her.

"Hermione, come on. We've only got a little time left before their reinforcements come." Hermione could feel the breath of the other woman blowing against her face, but she couldn't reply. "Hermione, can you walk?"

She felt a hand try and pull her unshackled arm around a set of shoulders to help lift her up, but even if she wasn't chained to the wall, she could sense the hesitation to be touched by the other person. This was a ploy! Just another head game, to crush her when she realised that no one was really here to save her. She shuddered and withdrew her arm, folding herself back against the wall.

"What is it? Are you in pain?"

"Of course she's in pain, you dolt." Another woman spoke; this must have been the one being held captive. "Are you even looking at her? I can guarantee she's not looking at you. Her eyesight is completely fucked."

"She can't see? Since when?" The voice sounded worried. They were trying really hard this time to make it seem real.

"Since Pansy decided to have some fun, but couldn't cope with it all and went overboard." Ah, Pansy. And here Hermione was, thinking that their hate-hate relationship would never get any worse.

"Hermione, it's Cho." Cho? Why was it only her to come and save her? "Nearly the entire Order are upstairs right now, trying to take out as many as they can while I get you. Ginny was meant to come too, but she was… busy. I'm going to try and help you to see, ok?" Hermione felt a wand tip prod against her skin under her left eye and stiffened, before a murmur brought a flash before Hermione's eyes. She blew out a long held breath as her eyes felt like they were draining – in fact, tears were streaming down her cheeks as she blinked and Cho's face swam into view. Hermione furrowed her brows, they managed to screw up Cho's face this time too, just like last time they had tried to trick her. Lifting a hand up to her own face to trace an imitation of the gashes on Cho's cheek, Hermione wondered how much she had changed whilst being imprisoned. Then again, she was lucky to be alive rather than feeling morose about if she looked horrible.

"I can thank Fenrir for that." Cho's voice came again. "Got me before I found Astoria just now."

Her mouth screwed down into a grimace, catching Hermione's hand again to put over her shoulder and lift her up, until being caught by the other shackle on her left wrist.

"Astoria, can't you do something about that? We're on a bit of a tight time schedule, you know." Cho said tightly.

"I –I'm not sure I can. Only the person who strung her up can undo it."

"You said it was Dolohov! He's dead! Why has it not come undone automatically?"

Astoria lifted her wand and Hermione shrunk into herself instinctively as she sent a cutting hex at the bolts holding the chain to the wall.

"That's the best I can do."

"Good enough for me. Let's go Hermione." Cho ordered, her face becoming determined as she turned towards the door, holding Hermione tightly around her waist. "Astoria, you're coming too. Don't forget what you have to do to Hermione."

Do to her? What did she mean? Hermione started wriggling out of Cho's arms in a fury, landing on the ground and crawling back to the wall. They had only tortured her in here, she didn't want to be tortured anywhere else! Not in front of people or laughed at while she was partially naked and writhing on the floor in pain.

"They did this to her once. Made her think she was being rescued to try and break her."

"Fuck." Cho swore, untying her jacket to reach into a pocket. "Hermione, can you hold onto this for me? To keep it safe when we escape?" She drew out Dumbledore's Deluminator, which elicited a gasp from the girl. Hermione reached forward and touched it, absently remembering seeing Ron's hands grasped around it at one point. Seeing this as a positive reaction, Cho reached down and helped Hermione up, yet again, while she was fixated on the Deluminator.

"Ok, outside in the hall we can Apparate out, but the dungeons are on lockdown full time so no one can escape." Hermione briefly heard Astoria telling Cho, as they shuffled towards the stairs and climbed them slowly.

"As soon as we open the door and step out, we're Apparating. Ok?" Cho said to Hermione, and then turned to Astoria. "All of us."

Astoria nodded, reaching forward to tug the door open.

It was absolute bedlam. Cho hadn't been joking when she said nearly the entirety of the Order had shown up to fight, as there were spells flying everywhere. Bodies from both sides were strewn around haphazardly, along with pieces of broken furniture and chunks of stone from the walls. A chandelier was lying on the ground off in the distance. What caught Hermione's eye, however, was the shock of red hair before her. Ginny noticed her stepping out of the doorway and turned, smiling, just as a stray curse flew over Anthony Goldstein and into the side of Ginny's head, as effective as a bullet. Hermione tried to throw herself forward before being snatched back by the collar by Cho.

"We have to leave. We have to go now." She whispered frantically into Hermione's ear. Ginny was as good as dead. She had gone, she had already left. Wasn't it meant to end that way for her? To never leave Malfoy Manor both alive and sane? It hardly seemed fair – they had been fighting for their lives for so long, and Hermione hadn't even seen Ginny for so long, only for her to die now. For Hermione to watch her die, just because she was happy to see her again. It was all her fault. This was not predetermined, this was cruel, and because of her mistakes and Voldemort's evil scheming, Ginny had died far too soon.

So, as Cho held onto Hermione and Astoria to Apparate back to wherever she came from, all Hermione could think about was destroying Voldemort before he could destroy so many lives.

She clicked the Deluminator open as they were whisked away into nothing.

AN: I'm back! I struggled a little with this chapter... Initially, I only had the idea for how the girls appeared in the Great Hall and a little of the story behind it, and now that it is past the start of the story I'm stressing.

In other words, I'm making this up as I go! So if anyone has any ideas, I would gladly take them on board and be appreciative!

So please leave me a review! xxxx