Disclaimer: I am now the proud owner of 'Themen neu' my German textbook, but that's all… I still don't own Severus…er, I mean Harry Potter, yeah, that's what I mean…
A/N: I appreciate all the reviews, and I changed the anonymous thing, you guys will have to help with all the technical stuff. Anyway, the first few chapters are a little short as I'm experimenting a bit. I promise to get into more psychological stuff and of course bring in Snape! It'll just take a little time. On with the show…
She sat in the head girl compartment on the Hogwarts Express. Hermione had managed to avoid Harry, Ron, and Ginny all summer. She didn't want to deal with anyone. Being at school before nightfall was going to prove difficult enough. At least at school she could escape their questions and troubled glances, on the train she would have to endure them. Hermione slowly slipped into a brief sleep. It was that period between asleep and awake where everything is real yet nothing is as unreal. She thought back to how she had gotten into this whole mess.
Things had really gotten bad in her fifth year. Being able to visit Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley whenever she wanted at first seemed ideal, but she would begin to dread these encounters in less than one year. During school, she had been safe from him. It had started with the little things, a put-down here, a snarl there, but nothing serious, nothing she couldn't handle… she thought. But it slowly became more, he began to control her. It was too much for her to take. But she agreed with him, she did need to lose weight and she was particularly unattractive. His insults quickly became more aggressive and physical in the summer between her fifth and sixth years. He became angry with her for the least little thing. At first, she didn't feel she deserved her punishment but slowly she came to realize that he was right, he was always right. He was, after all, the first man to ever love her, to want her; her own father couldn't even do that for her. She accepted his actions because she needed to feel accepted by someone. Her friends loved her and cared about her, but not in the way that a woman needs to feel from a man yet Viktor did that for her, and for that, she stayed and endured, trying to change to meet the demands he placed upon her. Her trips to Hogsmeade had always been safe; he didn't dare do it in public, until that day in May.
"He's never done anything I haven't asked for. He's waiting for me to be ready before we make love," she shuddered at the thought of it. "Things will get better," she promised herself time and again, adjusting for whatever he foresaw as her latest shortcoming. She had compensated but still he persisted. She just didn't know what was left for her to change. It was easy at school to be so engrossed in her work that she didn't have time to explain to her friends what it was that was troubling her. Then, the summer before her last year arrived in such a timely fashion.
It was quite possibly the worst summer of her life. She had stayed at The Leaky Cauldron at her father's request. Her father was traveling with his newest girlfriend and her mother had been gone for as long as she could remember. This seemed ideal at first until Viktor took it upon himself to frequent her residence. The violence continued perceived as just reaction to her most current misdeed. Viktor became more forceful with her over the summer and literally beat her to unconsciousness at some point. She awoke in her own room, in her own robes. She thought no more about it. He would apologize each and every time as she would almost have the nerve to sever their tie. She believed him every time. It was her fault and he wouldn't do it again. Those empty lies haunted her unconscious as the train jolted to a stop at Hogwarts.
