When Hermione was a little girl, she had a snowglobe collection.

Whenever she traveled she would get one to take home. Something about them drew her in. A whole world inside a little globe. She would try to find the most unique ones she could, the most detailed. She had a special shelf dedicated to her many snow globes. Eventually, she had two special shelves. Every once in a while she would walk over to her shelf and pick one up. She would hold it in her hands and look at it, the calm before the storm.

Then she would shake it.

She loved to watch as the snow whooshed around the globe before finally settling down. She wondered what it would feel like to live inside a snowglobe. She was only a young girl at the time, still afraid of the dark and such things piqued her curiosity.

She was a very curious child.

Hermione no longer wondered about snowglobes.

And yet, meeting Draco Malfoy was like being picked up and shaken by an over-eager child.

She was going about her day the usual way, sleeping through it only to be wakened by voices. They seemed eager today and her head pounded as she tried to drown them out with her own bitter thoughts. She was interrupted by a sudden light as a tray of food was shoved through the slat in the door. She was plunged into darkness once more.

"Hungry, hungry, hungry"

Hermione closed her eyes and counted to twenty.

"You can't ignore me, love"

Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP. "SHUT UP," Hermione breathed out, then paused, momentarily shocked by her own voice. She sounded brittle, but also older. She remembered hearing her voice before and she had sounded younger, less burdened. When was that? She spent a few seconds trying to place the fragmented memory before giving up and crawling towards the food.

She ate as she always did, hesitantly, and then took the spoon and put it with the rest. She kept them beside her in what she considered "her corner". It was the left-back corner of her cell, where she slept and spent most of her days. She took a minute to count her spoons. She had 13. Hermione knew that the guards knew she collected them because every once in a while one of them would come in and take them. She used to try to hide them with her body, but one time one of the guards noticed she was hiding them and shoved her across the room so hard she hit her head. She woke up a couple of hours later, her head sticky.

After that, she stopped hiding them.

Hermione before might have done something to stop them. Fight or scream or anything-something. But Hermione now was not a fighter. She didn't think she was capable of screaming, not anymore. She didn't have it in her to fight. She knew she was physically weak, although she did her best to exercise whenever her mind got too overwhelming. Which was quite often.

She was thinking about who she used to be when the door suddenly swung open. Hermione cringed away at the light.

"Hermione?" Hermione froze. That was her name. She was sure of it.

A blond man came into her cell and Hermione backed as far into her corner as possible.

"Oh thank Merlin, Hermione. Come on, come with me." The man frowned when Hermione didn't react.

"Hermione?" The man took a step closer to her and Hermione shrank back.

"Hermione, I'm here to get you out."

"Who are you?" Hermione whispered. She did not know this man but he was looking at her like he knew her.

The man crouched down in front of her.

"It's Draco. You don't remember me?" Hermione shook her head. "At all?" Hermione shook her head again.

The man looked as if she had struck him before his face smoothed over only to be replaced by an expression of urgency, "You have nothing to fear from me, I'm here to get you out of here. Don't you want to leave?"

Hermione glanced around. She did want to leave. But could she trust this man? Her brain went into panic mode as she considered her options. She could stay, and continue to live in this hell, most likely die here. Or she could leave with a stranger whom she did not know. Maybe Hermione from before knew him? Did she trust him? Could Hermione now trust him? Did trust matter if it meant freedom? No, she supposed, it didn't. She didn't really have a choice. She would go with him.

"Leaving are you, love?" Hermione closed her eyes. Would the voices follow her?

"Hermione?" The man sounded desperate.

She nodded and he exhaled. She opened her eyes to a hand. She looked from the hand up to the man's eyes. They appeared ice grey and shadowed. She wondered briefly what color they would be in the light.

She took his hand and he pulled her up.