Disclaimer: I know it's not fair to make fun of a mentally challenged person, but you would have to be a complete retard to think that I would take credit for the fabulous J.K.'s writing. If you do think that I've committed plagiarism, then you are slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter. And that's the cold hard truth.

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."

M. Scott Peck

Chapter Two:

Mother and I stayed at the hotel for four days, finally getting ready to leave that Saturday night. We had spent the entire time there shopping, buying everything from clothes to jewellery, perfume to makeup. Mum had finally talked me into getting some makeup, not a lot, but more than I wanted. And I wore it only because I didn't want to hurt Mum's feelings.

Mum had become very strange during that vacation. Normally Mum was soft-spoken and subdued, twenty years of dentistry will do that to you, but while we were there, some strange wild thing took over my mom. Mum did everything as if the Grim Reaper was chasing after her, trying to get me to do as much with her as was possible. And while we did all of our activities, she kept giving me advice on all sorts of things, like childbirth, marriage and sex. It was rather embarrassing at times, but it was as if she would explode if she didn't get everything out. By the end of the week, I was ready to get back home, where I was certain that she would stop talking to me about all of those things.

After one last dinner at the hotel, we packed up all of our new belongings, piled them into the car, and headed back home. We started out talking about silly nothings, but as we got closer to home, she became quiet, and seemed preoccupied. A look of sadness shone out of her eyes when we pulled up into the driveway. I started to get out of the car, but Mum still sat in the drivers seat, staring off into space, white-knuckling the steering wheel. I finally decided to ask what was wrong.

"Are you alright? You seem unhappy," I asked. She turned to look at me, and the way she looked at me caused a trickle of fear to run through my body. Her eyes seemed vacant, and were swimming in tears. She looked at me as if she was never going to see me again, and that terrified me.

"It's nothing, honey. It's the week before my period, and I always get depressed," she said, smiling to reassure me. I didn't quite believe her, but it seemed reasonable, so we got out of the car, grabbed our bags, and headed into the house.

It was rather late, around 12:00 am, and was very dark in the house. We started dragging our bags upstairs, and I had reached the top when I felt someone run up behind me and tickle my ribs. I screamed out in fright.

"Dad! Don't do that!" when I saw who it was. He started laughing, and I hit him on the shoulder.

"That wasn't funny!" I shrieked at him. He just laughed harder. I shook my head, my heart still pounding, and went into my room. I threw my bags on the floor, very angry with Dad. I knew that he didn't really know what made me so upset, but for a moment I wildly thought that it was a Death Eater attacking. Highly irrational, I know, but Voldemort probably knew by now that I was a friend of Harry, and I was terrified that they would try to get at what I knew about him. I knew that if they did they would have an easier chance to kill Harry, and to take over.

It was not an easy thing for even a person with a strong constitution to imagine just what would happen if Voldemort was to take over, yet every night I sat there, imagining the horrors the would ensue.

"You've got to stop this!" I snapped at myself. But the thoughts continued, and I became more and more depressed. I sat down on my bed, clutching my hair and shaking my head to rid myself of the thoughts. But I couldn't help but see the piles of dead bodies being piled up in ditches, the thousands of muggles and muggle-borns being sacrificed in sadistic ritualistic ceremonies. I could hear the screaming, smell the rotting flesh of dead people, hear the maniacal laugh of Voldemort as he found pleasure in reducing his enemies into poor begging lunatics. Cities would be destroyed; there would be nowhere to hide.

Again, I tried to shake those thoughts from my mind. But as it did no good, I decided to read. I had a strange sense of foreboding, like something bad was going to happen, and whenever I felt like something was wrong, I would read a book to calm my nerves. Pulling out my much-used copy of Hogwarts, A History, I flipped to a particular section that I liked. I started skimming over the pages, but after only ten minutes my eyes started to close sleepily, against my wishes. It was not to soon that I fell asleep.

~*~*~

"Well done, Ha--," Hermione started to say, but the Death Eater behind her cast a spell at her back, and she fell over with a small, "oh!" As she passed into unconsciousness, she heard her name be called out, and all went black.

Though unconscious on the outside, Hermione was very much aware of her own body, and had a blurry sense of what was happening on the outside. She was also aware that she was in pain, a strange, twisting sort of pain that felt like acid had been splashed on her. Inside her mind she screamed, long and loud, yet no one heard. Thoughts filled her head, thoughts unlike any she had before. She saw what would happen if Voldemort were to come back, and it terrified her. Scene after scene of horrific terror passed through her mind, and she could not block it. Hermione wanted out of her body.

As she saw those images, she felt a pull on her, and the compulsion to leave her burning body intensified. Voices called to her, calling her to them, and she had no choice but to listen to them. She felt herself rise, and suddenly the visions were gone, the pain disappeared. She looked down at her body, and saw Neville pick her up and sling her over his shoulder. He and Harry turned to run, and she soon lost sight of them.

"Why are they taking my body," I somehow said to myself, though I had no lips that I could think of. Everything was sort of fuzzy, and mismatched. Whatever particles she had been reduced to caused her body to shift, and a times the thing she felt was her leg was right next to her mouth, and all was rather confusing. She was aware of the people below her, fighting for some reason, but she couldn't remember what the reason was. It was probably something bad. Some of the figures below her were shining a brilliant white colour, almost a blinding white, but some of the others, though, were different. They were covered with a slimy, black looking substance that tried countless times to invade the white light, but could not. I saw red eyes, staring at me, and I decided to go away.

By body, or whatever it was, floated as if filled with helium. She no longer had bad thoughts, and felt happier that she had ever been before. The voices were calling to her again, and she floated towards them. But as she got closer, she became aware of presences around her, trying to get her to go to them. They circled around her like birds of prey, prodding, grabbing at her, but she ignored them, and headed towards the voices. Fire erupted around her, and a darker sort of pull, unlike the one that called her out of the body. It was demanding, and scalding. Things popped out of the deep chasm that surrounded her, and she felt herself slowly being dragged down. Her mind flooded with fear, and she fought the tug.

Then the voices started to call to her again, louder this time, and she answered them. Her incorporeal body started floating, ignoring the tug of that deep chasm that so demanding of her. She floated, her entire mind focused on the room with the voices, the voices calling her home. Home to where there was no pain, where there was no--

~*~*~

"Aiigghhhh!" a scream sounded, snapping me out of sleep.

"Whaaa?" I murmured stupidly to no one. I looked around wildly, but my room was so dark that a few lingering images from my dream still flashed across my vision. I thought that I had heard a scream, but my mind was so fuzzy I couldn't really concentrate long enough to ponder whether it had been in my dream or not. I was about to dismiss it as part of my imagination when another inhuman screech sounded from downstairs, followed quickly by the scream that most definitely belonged to Mother. This time I knew that it wasn't part of a dream, and I felt a tremor of terror pass through my breast. Suddenly wide wake, I slowly placed my feet on the floor, and stood up slowly, hoping not to make a thumping sound on the floor. A glance at my digital clock showed me that it was only 4:32 am, much to late for my parents to be having some sort if wild kinky sex, an image I hoped I would never have to see, and it was much too early for them to be getting ready for work. When another piercing scream sounded, I became extremely scared. After grabbing my wand off of my desk, I slowly opened my door, and stepped into the hallway as cautiously as I could. I knew that whatever was going on was occurring downstairs, but there may have been someone hiding up in the hallway, and I didn't want to take my chances.

My wand arm extended far out in front of me, I quickly tiptoed to the top of the stairs, and looked around. There were obvious signs of a struggle, and I could see Daddy's glasses lying crushed on the floor. I could hear yelling now, and an unfamiliar voice screaming at someone to shut up. I heard a scream, this time issued from my father, and the inhuman shriek I had heard early came again, only this time it was so piercingly loud that my ears actually started to bleed. The strange creature's cry, a piercing 'shaweeea' tone that was like an eagles call with an undertone of a woman screaming over fingernails scraping over a blackboard.

I slowly descended the stairs, trying not to make any noise. I got a splinter halfway down, causing me to make a small cry in pain, and paused for a few moments. When I was sure that no one had heard, I started to descend again. But when the strange voice started to speak, it surprised me into stopping cold on the step. I tried to listen to what he was saying.

"Where is the girl, muggle? Give her to me, and I'll make your, and your daughter's, death, much quicker. I can stay here all day and torture you, I rather enjoy it, but the longer you wait to tell me where she is, the longer your deaths will be," the booming deep voice yelled, and I knew with a sinking heart that the Death Eaters had come for me, and that I had no way of defending myself against his power. And I was stupid enough not to really mention Voldemort to my parents, so they had no clue why all of this was happening.

"ANSWER ME MUGGLE! DO YOU THINK I WILL STAND FOR YOUR LACK OF RESPECT? CRUCIO!" the man shouted, and the cries of my parents sounded in my ears again. Again, that hair-raising screech sounded from the room, and now that I was even closer to them, I could hear that the thing was laughing. The sound crawled over my skin like a slimy film that wouldn't go away, and I could feel dripping from my nose. I brought my hand to my nose, and when I looked at my hand I saw blood. Suddenly the shrieking stopped. The creature, I don't know what it was, suddenly screamed louder, more of an alert that a laugh. Panicking, I jumped the last few steps, darted into the kitchen, and had just hid in the pantry when I heard a voice from the hallway I had just been in. "Little girl! You cannot hide. You left blood behind, and my little pet hear will scent you out. If you're going to run, do it now!" he called.

I crouched down onto the floor, hiding behind two huge bags full of flour and sugar. I stuffed myself into the corner, and listened as I heard footsteps. The steps were slow, and shook the floor with each step it took. A high whistling sound emitted from the kitchen, and I wondered wildly in my shocked state of mind if someone had forgotten to take the kettle off the stove, but soon realized that it was from whatever the "pet" was. I didn't know what it was, but I didn't need primal instinct to know that I didn't want to see what was on the other side of the door.

My heart was pumping wildly by then. I was petrified by fear, something that had never happened to me before. Wild, crazy thoughts poured through my mind, yet nothing I could do could control them. My ears were still bleeding, as were my nose, my mouth, and my eyes. My white shirt was quickly becoming red, yet I did nothing to stop the blood. I was sure that what ever was trying to find me could already smell the blood, so there was no real use to blocking the blood flow.

And sure enough, the heavy 'clunk, clunk, clunk' footsteps stopped at the door to the pantry, and a hand scratched at the doorknob. I knew then that at moment, really, truly knew, that my life was either going to end shortly, or would be seriously screwed for me in the future. And as the doorknob turned, every blasted centimetre that the knob spun, I felt my life head towards the inevitable. I was, in a sense, resigned to my fate.

But nothing prepared me for the moment when the "pet" opened the door. Never in my life had I ever seen anything more horrible. But my shock lasted only a few moments before a blinding pain washed over my body. And then all went black.