(A/N: Sorry about the short chapters ^^...school is my excuse ^^ Sorry! Nerwen Faelvirin: Yeah, sorry about that, I will try my best to make them longer... Fallenangel: YAY! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR REVIEWING! Lol sry about that, Ginny was walking when suddenly everything just changed, she panicked and started running until she came to this wall of grapevines and she just sat down next to it ^^;;)

Disclaimer: I do not own the things you recognize, J. K. Rowling does...and no money is being made, so please don't sue ^^

Chapter 3 The Rescue

Amber sunlight burst through the open doors, flooding the neat room. The whitewashed walls blushed with it and it formed a halo around a head of curly brown hair.

Hermione Granger raised her head, her eyes half open and groaned sleepily before letting her head fall back onto her pillow. Her eyes fluttered until she pushed herself up from the bed. The light blinding her eyes, she groped around for her dressing gown like a blind woman. Finally, after a momentary search, she swung on the light cloth and walked through the open French doors onto a small, cluttered balcony.

Looking upward, a handsome young man down in a shady street caught sight of an angelic vision. The morning sunlight lit up a prettily feminine figure on a high balcony. A halo even shined around her head. He half expected her to have wings. A small breeze lifted her brown hair and pale dressing robe. At that moment, a choir began to chant in the church not too far down the quiet street completing the aestheticism above him.

After a moment, in which the young man continued to stare skyward, Hermione turned and moved back into the house. The young man waited to see if she would come back out, but then he noticed that a large barn owl glided into the room after her.

"Well, well, well...a witch."

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Hermione turned around with her money just as the owl swooped into her room, landing silently on her tousled bed. After paying the bird and watching it depart, Hermione opened the Daily Prophet and quietly scanned the, by now, very familiar layout.

FIRST WIZARD DEAD IN SECOND WAR

There it was. In black and white. The wizarding world's worst fears were confirmed. Voldemort was back.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

The day was sunny, and the wind was balmy; not a cloud marred the sky. Hermione drank in the multitude of colors coming from every direction. The noise of the market shaded by colorful canopies dully roared around her. A fresh, green smell filled the air as she walked between the numerous stalls consulting the list that her aunt had given her.

"Okay...I've gotten the lettuce and carrots and the cantaloupe.... Tomatoes...where are the tomatoes?"

At that moment somebody stumbled into her, making her lose one of her bags. A cantaloupe burst open spraying the ground with juice. A callous hand closed around Hermione's now free upper arm and held her firmly in a vice-like grip. Her mouth opened in surprise as cold metal threateningly pressed against her side and her body stiffened as someone breathed harshly into her ear.

"Ne pas parler. Vous allez marcher par-dessus le fruit et la promenade jusqu'à ce que vous atteignez la fin du marché. Alors, vous marcherez dans l'allée derrière ce bâtiment blanc là-bas. Maintenant aller!" *

The man firmly steered Hermione away from the annoyed shouts and into an alley, her mind frantically trying to figure out what he had said to her. After hurriedly walking deeper into the rather smelly alley the man suddenly stopped and jerked Hermione around to face him.

His probably-once light eyes, shrunken into his dark, haggard face, roamed over her restrained body as he continued to hold his knife to her side. A year ago this man wouldn't have even looked at her in the first place. But now, Hermione knew that she had, indeed, become a woman. She had filled out quite nicely and she now deeply regretted borrowing her cousin's rather revealing clothes.

At that moment, somebody walked up to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her gently away from the knife at her side.

"Oh! Merci si beaucoup de, monsieur, pour trouver ma soeur! J'étais si m'est inquiété quand elle a erré de!" **

Startled, her captor let go of her and ran off down the alley. When he was gone she turned to face her rescuer.

He was almost a full head taller than her. He was thin and his sweat stained wife-beater revealed a tightly muscular stomach. He was breathing rapidly; 'Perhaps,' Hermione thought, 'he had been running....' His chest was nice and compact and one of his defined arms was still on her shoulder. His light green eyes, now looking her up and down, made a sharp contrast with his dark skin. He had an almost perfect complexion; only a little stubble from a lack of shaving showed on his face. His slightly prominent cheekbones framed his almost aristocratic nose. He stepped back from her and grinned.

"Well, you don't look like you're from around here. What's your name?"

Hermione stood silent for a moment, taken aback by the casualty of his voice. The sudden switch of situation was making her quite dizzy. "Erm...Hermione."

"That's quite an unusual name," he mused. "And where are you from?" He began to walk back down the alley and motioned for her to follow him.

"Britain. Listen, thanks for saving me back there—"

"Don't worry about it. It was nothing," he said dismissively. He continued to lead her back to the market. Hermione wondered, for the first time, how he knew that she didn't speak French.

"So, where are you staying?"

"With my cousins," Hermione answered after a slight pause. She knew that it would be quite imprudent of her to not be discreet with strangers; especially after what happened in the market. Apparently he picked up on it and let it rest.

"I think I've seen you before," he stated after a while.

"Maybe, but I've certainly never seen you before," Hermione returned, a blush sweeping up her neck. 'I most certainly would have remembered if I had,' she thought.

They continued to walk in silence as the sun began to set lighting the whole city on fire. They continued to walk and Hermione noticed that they were slowly heading toward her aunt's house.

"Here is where I leave you," he said suddenly, stopping at the end of her aunt's street. "I trust you'll be able to find your way."

As he turned and began to move quickly down another street Hermione called after him, "But you never told me your name!"

He slowed down to a stop and slowly turned to face her. He stood like that for a moment, framed by amber sunlight. "Eric."

And, with that, he turned and began to run.

(A/N: Hey guys! I'm REALLY REALLY sorry for taking this long. The AP exams are coming up, so I'm being bogged down with those classes and we just had the UIL competition in band (we won Sweepstakes). Once the AP exams are over I'll most definitely be able to write more often. ^^;)

*This means: "Do not speak. You are going to step over the fruit and walk until you reach the end of the market. Then, you will walk into the alley behind that white building over there. Now go!"

** This means: "Oh! Thank you so much, sir, for finding my sister! I was so worried when she wandered off!"