A/N: Thank you for all the reviews! I love hearing your input about the chapters.

I also want to warn you before you go on. There is a scene of rape, but I don't believe I made it very graphic, but even so, just be careful if you feel uncomfortable of that kind of thing.

EDITED / ADDED 1 sentence near the bottom. FYI.

Chapter Six: Alone

. . . .

Hermione woke up the next morning, aching all over. She forced herself out of bed and showered before putting on her uniform and knee socks, knowing that she had to go to classes. She dried her hair and put it up before Hermione grabbed her bag and walked out of the dormitory, walking quickly to her first class.

"Today we will be discussing the importance of wand inventing in the 10th century…"

Hermione entered the room and sat in a seat at the back of the class so she wasn't the center of attention as Professor Binns lectured. As she looked around, she was disheartened to see that Ron Weasley was sitting a few rows in front of her. She felt a tightness in her chest and mentally willed the class to end early, but knew that it wouldn't. She pretended to take notes but all she could focus on was the fact that her near rapist was in the same room as her. This thought embedded in her head and before she knew it, Hermione was having difficulty breathing, feeling her heart pounding rapidly against her ribcage.

She stood up suddenly, grabbed her bag and hurried out of the room and ran upstairs to the library. She knew it would be emotionally and physically impossible if she had to talk to Ron, let alone watch the back of his head throughout the entire class; it was just too much right now.

"Is there something I can help you with, dear?"

Hermione looked up and saw the librarian, Madam Pince, looking back at her curiously. She must have unconsciously run inside like the devil was chasing her. She contemplated her question and almost felt hope, but not too much longer, had felt it disappear as quickly as it had come.

"N-No… no, I-I'm sorry…"

Madam Pince gave her an almost disappointed look and then returned to her bookkeeping. Hermione took a deep breath and started timidly walking deeper into the giant library as she searched for a private room she could have all to herself to forget about the monster that used to be her friend.

It took about ten minutes but she had finally found a small room that was surrounded in books and even had its own door. She grabbed a book entitled Moste Potente Potions, and then sat down at the table and started searching through it. She knew that she couldn't just ask for an anesthetic potion since it was made to only be used once in a while, but she was thinking about using it whenever she wanted, to help her feel numbness instead of this neverending fear. Flipping through the pages, she read about droughts that helped vampirism to make it manageable, and potions that cured acne blemishes. Finally, she found the page she was looking for and quietly ripped it out before putting it into her bag. Hermione left the library reluctantly to go find the ingredients when she saw Draco running over to her in the corridor.

"Hermione, you should be in History of Magic still. What are you doing?"

She sighed and shook her head. "None of your business. I didn't feel well so I left," she said coldly in a tone that surprised her.

Draco zeroed in on her, walking closer now, examining her face. "What did he do? Obviously he hurt you again."

"It doesn't matter what he did to me! It's done and over with. Why don't you just leave me alone?" Hermione started to storm away from him but heard him hurrying to catch up.

"I can't because I care about you! What's the matter with you, Hermione? Where did all this confidence come from? Where's the shy, timid girl from a few days ago?"

Hermione kept walking fast, not really knowing where she was heading but hoping that Draco would eventually go in a different direction from her. "She's dead! Leave me alone, Draco."

Draco suddenly reached out and grabbed her bag before taking it from her. She knew it had been an attempt to stop her and it successfully had.

"Give it back! God, are we back in our first year?"

He held it high so she couldn't get it, even though she continued to grab it but to no avail. She groaned in frustration and then kicked his shin in anger. He let out a yell of pain but was still holding her bag strings tightly in his hand, but now Hermione had started grabbing the bag with her hands.

"Stop it! It's just a bag! Why do you want it so badly?"

"It has my shit in it, Draco! Give it back to me!" Hermione yelled, never having felt so angry at him before now. If there had ever been a time that she wanted Harry with her, it was now.

"I'll give it back if you'll tell me what Ron did to you!"

Hermione glared at him, feeling hatred swell up inside her. "No! I am not going to talk about this in public!" Hermione dived for the bag again.

Draco lifted it higher. "I want to know!" Draco began to open the bag now, feeling curious why she wanted her bag back so bad. He knew that it couldn't just be her books she wanted.

When she saw him begin to open it, she finally started panic now and felt tears prickle her chestnut eyes. "Wait! Stop it! I'll tell you!"

Draco stopped now and looked at her with a sideways look, becoming suspicious. He threw her bag back to her and waited, starting to become impatient. "Alright, tell me."

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief at this point and grabbed his arm before dragging him into an empty classroom and closing the door. She held onto her bag and sat down before looking up at Draco.

"He jumped me and he hit me. He threw me against a toilet and… he took my pants off," Hermione bit her lip and looked down, not wanting to think about this all over again and hating Draco for making her replay all this again. "He… grabbed my legs and… I kept fighting and trying to hit him. Ginny came in, and saved me. She casted Sectumsempra on him and hurt him pretty badly."

Draco stared at her, his face difficult to read. He looked angry, upset, worried, and furious all at once. He eyed her bag curiously. "What's in there that you didn't want me to see?"

"It's none of your fucking business, Draco."

He ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the large desk that a professor would sit at in the front of the class. "It is my business. I want to protect you, Hermione. Is that why you're acting this way, because of what Ron almost did?"

"It's what he tried to do that made me this way! I don't need you to ride up on your white horse and save me. I don't need… you."

"Oh yes, that's obvious. He almost raped you and if it wasn't for Ginny being lucky, he would have done it! In case you've missed it though, he didn't rape you, so why the hell are you being this way?"

"I'm sick of everything! I'm sick of everyone thinking that they have to protect me. Whatever happens, happens and it'll be no one's fault except my own! No one can watch over me every second of every day! Why can't you and Harry just leave me alone?"

"Because if you like it or not, we care about you! We care about what happens to you! I don't understand why you don't care what happens to yourself. You used to," Draco replied, still occasionally eying her bag.

"I don't want you to care about me. You're caring about me too much, Draco. And I love that now you're telling me that you care so much about me when you were yelling a few days ago how you weren't going to care what happens to me. You're pathetic."

"I'm pathetic? You're the one hiding things from me. There was a time when you actually liked me, if not loved me. You were shy and quiet, but you were nice. You told me everything you were feeling. I miss that."

Hermione stood up with her bag and took a deep breath before letting it out, feeling emotionally drained. "You're just like every other guy. You're nothing special. You're just as much of an asshole as Harry or even Ron is. You can't talk like you're different. You can't talk about us, like… we were a couple, because we weren't. You were a friend when I needed one, but that was all you were to me."

Draco took two steps forward and grabbed the bag out of Hermione's hands too quickly and then started going through it when he saw it, the piece of paper she had torn from the library book. He took it out and started to silently read it before he looked at her in disbelief.

"Oh, so… I'm the pathetic one. Alright, I admit that sometimes I can be pathetic, but… you take the cake, Hermione. You're the one who is apparently deciding to brew a potion to… get you high."

She shook her head now. "I'm not. I don't plan to use it to get high. I plan to use it for something else."

Draco threw the paper at her, disappointment in his eyes, and then threw her bag at her feet. "Yeah, you're using it to forget about all of us so you can have a few moments of ignorance. God forbid you have to actually deal with everything that's going on."

Hermione grabbed the paper as it fell and shoved it back into her bag and started to head towards the classroom door again and then turned on her heel. "God forbid that you actually give a shit about what I do! God forbid that you can't actually act differently from Harry and from Ron!"

Draco followed her out and then grabbed her arm and turned her back around so she was forced to look into his stormy gray eyes. "It's not going to ease your pain, Hermione. You want to feel better about what he almost did? Talk to someone. Potions are just going to make you feel worse."

She searched his face, her chest tightening with sadness and anger and was about to say something but he let go of her and then started walking away. She stood there for a few moments before she started to walk out of the castle and start towards Hogsmeade to find her ingredients.

OoOoOo

After she had gotten all her ingredients that it required, she hurried back to the castle and walked up to the abandoned Prefect's bathroom that she remembered brewing a Polyjuice Potion in her second year with Ron and Harry, before things had got bad between them. She brewed the anesthetic potion, stirring it every five minutes.

Hermione sat there on her knees, half expecting Ron to burst through that door and actually start raping her. She couldn't wait until this potion was done, and was just grateful that it wouldn't take a month like the Polyjuice Potion did. She stirred it again and then when she saw the steam coming off of it, she put the potion into several vials and then began to clean up. It would have been just her look if all of the guys came through the door, abusing her, obsessing over protecting her while the first abused her, and the third trying to stop the both of them while reminding Hermione how stubborn she was being.

She set aside a vial and then took a small sip before she corked it and set it in her bag with the other vials. It wasn't long before she soon felt the effects almost instantly. Hermione closed her eyes and lay down on her side, feeling a numb, tingling all over her body and felt like she was almost floating. She stayed there for what felt like several hours but when the effects subsided and she looked at the time, it had only been half an hour. She brought her things up to her common room and to her regret, saw Ginny already there, getting into her pajamas.

"Hey, where were you today? I was looking for you but couldn't find you anywhere…"

Hermione kept her eyes down, feeling the side effects of the potion only now as it had worn off, depression. She shrugged and started to put on her own night clothes. "I was around."

Ginny grabbed her hair from under her shirt and set it on the back of her shirt. "Are you feeling alright? You're looking a bit peaky."

"I'm fine, Ginny! I'm just tired," Hermione snapped unintentionally, crawling under the covers of her bed, already missing the potion.

Ginny must have heard the irritation in her voice because she became quiet and pretended to sleep. Hermione didn't like how the potion made her act, but she did like how it worked so quickly, and for those minutes made her forget about everything. It worked just like Muggle drugs worked.

The next morning, she stayed in bed and had no desire to really do anything, especially to go to classes. Hermione didn't awake until around four in the afternoon and was amazed that she still felt tired afterwards.

"Hermione, I can't believe you're still bed. You better be deathly ill and already dead!" Ginny shouted playfully, ripping the covers off of her and revealing her still bruised legs.

"Go away…" she answered feebly reaching for a blanket that was at the foot of her bed.

Ginny grabbed that from her too and threw it out of reach before grabbing Hermione's hands and gently pulling her out of bed and onto her feet. "Now that you've missed all your classes, at least come down for dinner."

Hermione pushed her away, grabbed her sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt and dragged herself into the bathroom, deciding to take a shower before she did go down to the Great Hall to eat, but found herself without an appetite. She washed the grime out of her long hair and her body before she stepped out, drying herself off and putting on her lazy clothes. She put on socks and shoes that she could slip in and out of and walked out of the bathroom about an hour later, thankful to not see Ginny lingering around still.

She hid her bag so no one could go searching through it in an attempt to find out what was happening with Hermione and then headed downstairs to the Hall. She hadn't had the energy to dry her hair so she just left it damp and brushed it. Hermione sat at the table but made sure she wouldn't be near Ginny, Harry, or Ron, who were also eating. She stared at all the food and sleepily grabbed a mug and filled it with hot coffee to try and wake herself up. Staring across the room, she noticed Draco taking a drink of pumpkin juice and glanced up at her to meet her eyes, but then instantly looked back down at his plate.

"Hermione?"

She sighed and looked up to see Seamus standing over her. "What?"

He was looked sort of anxious and she glanced over at Harry and Ginny who gave him pressing looks. When this happened, Hermione instantly knew that it had been their idea to pry her.

"Umm… how are you feeling?"

"I'm feeling great, Seamus. I'm just tired."

He stood there awkwardly now, half smiling and for a moment, Hermione almost felt sorry for him. She knew that he wouldn't have come over if it hadn't been for Harry and Ginny. Ron couldn't have cared less either way.

"Great. Erm… you missed History of Magic, and Potions… and Divination… I-I took some notes for you…"

Hermione took a sip of her coffee and looked up at Seamus who was handing her several pages of parchment with his small, scratchy writing on it that she could only assume were the notes he took for each class. "Thank you, but… I don't care. Keep the notes. And tell those two to keep their noses out of my business."

He searched her eyes for several seconds and then nodded weakly before returning to his friends. She felt alone, but she also knew that part of this was because of her own doing. This loneliness was making her feel worse though and it made her feel like she just didn't care about anything, including herself.

Hermione looked across the Hall and didn't see Draco. He must have gotten sick of her being there already. She felt trapped within herself and she felt like no one cared. Figuring that no one would miss her, she finished her coffee and headed out of the Great Hall, heading back up to her dormitory to go back to sleep. She walked amongst the empty corridors that lead to Gryffindor Tower and suddenly felt a powerful force hit her and take her down like a lion would take down a zebra. She instantly felt a heaviness in her head and a long wave of confusion and dizziness as she hit the floor hard. She felt fingernails tearing into her skin and pulling down her underwear and pants simultaneously but felt hands grab at her wrists so she couldn't stop the first pair of hands. She struggled and felt pain throughout her entire body as nails continued digging into her own flesh.

"Hold her still, damnit! I'm almost there!"

"I'm trying! Just fucking do it already, Ron!"

The second voice made her struggle harder and she tried kicking but the body on top of her was heavy with muscle and teared into her unmercifully, thrust after agonizing thrust. As she struggled, she felt hands on her throat and soon blacked out totally, falling into a perpetual state of darkness.