Prologue: How Hermione was Kidnapped
Hermione lay awake in the Gryffindor's girls' dormitory. As usual, she had come to bed late last night since she had spent so much time studying and doing extensively researched papers.
She was always the last one to bed because of her nearly obsessive-compulsive studying. If she had been any other Gryffindor student doing anything other than studying and working, a prefect would have been telling her off for it and sending her to bed.
But since she was a fellow bookworm, workaholic, and know-it-all (like most prefects were), they let her stay up late often into the wee hours of the morning to read and work.
More than once she had stayed up so long that she had fallen asleep over her books only to awaken a few hours later to find her warm face plastered to the page of a book.
Tonight, however, was one of those rare nights when she managed to finish her homework before three in the morning. When she finished her homework, she put it all away neatly into her book bag, put her book bag under her bed, then changed clothes in the dark of the Gryffindor girls' dormitory. Since even the dark didn't provide much privacy in the dormitory, Hermione got dressed while sitting on her canopy, four-post bed with the curtains drawn around it. She could never be sure that there weren't eyes watching her in the dark.
After her usual before bed ritual, she then settled into her comfortable, warm bed and fell fast asleep. Usually. But tonight, for some reason, she was unable to sleep. Perhaps it was just because of how unusually early she was going to bed that she wasn't quite ready to sleep.
She just lay in her bed, staring blankly at the crimson curtains drawn around her bed. She watched shadows from the flickering flames of the fire dancing in the Gryffindor girls' dormitory. The only noise in the room came from the merrily crackling fire…and from some girl's snoring coming from a bed nearby. Other than that, the room was quiet and peaceful.
A few minutes had gone by, and Hermione was drifting off into a stupor, her eyelids getting heavy as she was about to drift off to sleep.
Whoosh.
Her dark eyes flickered open slightly. It sounded as if the fire in the hearth had suddenly flared up, as if someone had thrown in an extra log. Thinking that it was nothing more than that, she turned over and started to go back to sleep when she noticed the low, crackling, hissing sound, like a badly tuned radio.
Again, she turned back around, squinting at the gap in the curtains around the bed. She saw nothing but the shadows of the flames dancing on the wall.
Sshhh…Sshhh…Sshhhh….
Hermione blinked her eyes and rubbed them. She waited a few seconds longer, holding her breath.
Sshhh…Sshhh…Ssshhhh…
She heard it again. The sound, the sound like the soft hiss of a robe over the wooden floor as its wearer dragged his or her feet slowly and laboriously as he (or she) walked, like each step took a great amount of effort. Either that, or someone was trying to walk across the floor with painstaking stealth and was failing miserably.
Sshhh…Ssshhh…Ssshhhh…
Finally, she slowly, slowly, pushed herself up on her elbows, then got to her knees and crawled slowly to the edge of her bed. The mattress creaked slightly under her as she did so. She parted the curtains and cautiously peered out into the dark of the dormitory.
She only saw the fire in the fireplace, the girls' beds, and a big, worn-out armchair pushed in the corner of the dormitory. It was how the girls' dormitory usually looked. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Whump!
Hermione jumped. Actually, she was bounced. Her heart started racing wildly. Something had landed on her bed. She whirled around-
Her blood turned to ice water as she felt the sharp prick of a wand tip against the back of her neck. Her attacker's arm was wrapped around her neck to stop her from moving.
A voice, silky with malevolence, hissed in her ear. It was a voice as cold and hard as ice.
"Move or scream, and I'll kill you."