It has occurred to me that I probably ought to put a disclaimer in here. Here it is: We all know I'm not JK Rowling, and if you haven't figured out by now what "fan fiction" is, you shouldn't be on this website. Happy reading!

… … … … …

Chapter 1:

Escape from England

… … … … …

Hermione stepped outside and shut the cabin door behind her. She closed her eyes against the bright sunlight of late morning, breathing in the rich, earthy scent of the Canadian woods. As she did, she felt the tension in her shoulders ease slightly. It felt good, for just a little while, to not have to worry. She'd been doing that a lot recently.

And she had good reason to worry. Less than three weeks ago, the man who was possibly the world's most powerful wizard had been murdered in an attack upon Hermione's school, which had thrown her world into chaos. That Hermione's parents had chosen to leave England (in an attempt to escape the hostilities which were quickly spreading from the wizarding world into that of the Muggles) was doing nothing for her nerves. Though at least here – in the middle of nowhere, almost half a world away from England – she could relax a bit and try not to think about it.

That was the worst part. No matter how hard Hermione tried to forget everything, she simply couldn't stop thinking about it. She woke up every morning, wondering how many more people had been killed in England since she went to sleep; every night, she went to bed hoping against hope that Harry and Ron, the two people who were dearer to her than anything in the world, were still alive. During breakfast every day Hermione would scour the Daily Prophet for any sign that things were improving in the struggle against the Dark Lord's forces.

And every day, they weren't.

Hermione walked across the cabin porch and sank onto the rocking chair there, taking her book out and opening it to the bookmarked page. She'd been doing a lot of reading recently, even more than usual; when she read, she didn't often think about anything else. She'd chosen, this summer, to read some of the Muggle authors whose work she hadn't touched before. John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany was turning out to be more interesting than she'd thought, but every time Tabitha Wheelwright's death was mentioned, Hermione felt slightly sick to her stomach.

Hermione glanced down to the opened page, but, for perhaps the first time in her life, found herself uninterested in it. She didn't particularly want to read about dealing with death anymore. Instead she put her book away and stood up again, then took the stairs down to the road and started down it. Maybe what she needed was a walk, if she could manage to think about something other than current events. She could go down to the deer stand, where she knew she could be alone, and maybe she could try again to sort things out inside her head.

It was so sunny and bright, and the sky was such a vivid shade of blue, that Hermione almost felt guilty about being so despondent. She walked along with her head down so she didn't have to pay as much attention to her surroundings. The sun was behind her, throwing her shadow out a short distance in front of her feet. She watched the stones of the gravel road go by and tried not to think of anything else for a while.

When the road curved around to the left, Hermione turned off into the woods, following a footpath through the trees. As she plodded along, she found herself humming a tune by the Weird Sisters, her favorite wizarding band. It had a slightly depressing melody, and usually wasn't one of Hermione's favorite songs. Hermione shook her head and looked up at the sky, visible between the fluttering leaves.

Will it ever end?

… … … … …

Draco took a deep breath to recover from the strange feeling of being pushed through a straw, and opened his eyes. He was slightly surprised to discover that it was light where he had emerged. Not only that, it seemed to be well into the morning. Where am I? He wondered. He hadn't been as specific as he ought to have been when he Apparated – focusing on ending up somewhere in the middle of nowhere, maybe in Canada or the United States – and as such didn't know where he'd appeared.

He took a good look around, stretching a bit as he did so. He was stiff from having crouched for so long in the darkness with Snape, hiding in the safe spot and waiting to be summoned to the Dark Lord's side. Here, at least, he had some room to move around – he'd Apparated into a clearing in the middle of the forest. Draco shuddered to himself, amazed at his good luck – twenty feet in any direction and he could have ended up stuck inside a tree.

He shook his head and looked around again. He felt entirely lost, not even sure which way was north. With any luck, he'd be able to Apparate back to civilization – but until he got word from Snape that it was safe to return to England, he'd have to stay out here. The middle of nowhere was as good as anyplace else when trying to be inconspicuous, and at least he didn't have to worry too much about the area's inhabitants; maybe just cabin-owners or park rangers, depending on where he was.

This last problem seemed to be the most pressing. Without the knowledge of his location, he had no hope of finding anything to eat, though he supposed he could pull ideas out of the sorts of books he used to read as a child and eat berries and roots from the forest if he had to. If he could find such things, and if they weren't poisonous. Draco frowned to himself. He was starting to think he'd gotten himself into greater trouble than he'd previously imagined.

For lack of any better plans, Draco headed into the forest, making his way between the trees and around bushes. Any direction was better than none at all…

An indeterminate amount of time later, Draco was thoroughly sick of walking through the woods. Already his school robes and uniform were snagged and torn; he'd turned his ankle a few times and it was beginning to throb. Draco stopped, leaning against the rough bark of a tree, and started to rethink his plans. Obviously, randomly striking out through the woods had been a bad idea; he now had even less of an idea of his location than he had had before, yet he had no idea how to get where he was trying to go or what he'd find when he arrived. Draco buried his hands in his face and thought.

The wind picked up a bit, rustling the leaves above him. It was a soothing sound, and for a few seconds Draco interrupted his inner debate to listen to it. The forest was really much quieter than any place he had ever been before; at Hogwarts, and even at the Malfoy estates, there always seemed to be some background noise cluttering up his ears.

The silence was short-lived, however; a few seconds after Draco started concentrating on the quietness, a soft drone entered on the edge of his consciousness and picked up volume as through whatever was causing it was coming steadily closer. Draco peered through the trees to his left and saw, in the far distance, a tiny patch of white moving through the trees. Draco watched it go by, trying to figure out what in Merlin's name it was, until it was out of sight and the noise had died away. It had sounded something like those funny Muggle contraptions – motters, or motors, or whatever they were called – the things that Muggles put inside their cars to make them go without magic.

Draco shook his head and looked around, mentally going back to the question of which direction he should go. Then he stopped and looked back in the direction which the Muggle vehicle had passed. Muggle cars had to drive on roads, just like wizarding cars and carriages did… It was a safe guess that the car had been driving on one such, and that if Draco were to find it and follow it, he'd be able to find someplace he could find food or shelter. Thinking that at least this was a reasonably decent plan, Draco turned and started toward the road.

As he walked, Draco noticed another sort of clearing off to one side, and some sort of structure built on the edge of it. He paused, glancing toward the road, then decided that he wasn't on any sort of schedule and he could afford to satiate his curiosity. Keeping the direction of the road in mind, he started for the clearing.

The structure he'd seen was one of those things used for hunting deer – a deer stand, or something – he wasn't at all familiar with the pastime of hunting. It was a tall platform, perhaps ten or twenty feet off the ground, with a roof to keep the sun and rain off of whoever was up there. Draco didn't have any idea whom the structure might belong to, but it didn't seem to get much use, and it would be nice to have some place to come back to and spend the night. He set his foot on the first rung of the ladder and pulled himself up to the platform.

Well, aside from the roof, it wasn't much…but it did have a nice view.

Draco had just settled himself on the platform to rest for a few minutes when he heard a sound in the woods nearby, like something cracking – or Apparating. He jerked himself to his feet and whipped out his wand before he even knew what was going on. He listened. Yes, there was definitely something – or someone – moving out there. Trying desperately to keep himself from panicking, Draco managed to grab at the roof and swing himself up so that he was perched on the flat surface. Draco flattened himself down so he wouldn't be seen, keeping his eyes open, and his wand at the ready. Please, don't let it be Him. He can't have found me already…can he?

… … … … …

Hermione turned to look as the car went by, sending up a cloud of dust as it passed. She coughed a bit as she inhaled a bit of the dust, and waved her hand to clear the air in front of her face. She didn't recognize the car, but it might have been the family with the cabin down the road. They owned most of the surrounding area, including the cabin the Grangers were staying in, and had rented the cabin to them for the summer. Hermione shrugged and headed farther into the woods, keeping her eyes on the ground to ensure that she wouldn't trip over anything.

She focused on the damp brown leaves under her feet, trying to get her mind off the subject of cars now - especially that car that Harry and Ron had flown to Hogwarts in their second year. Had they really only been twelve years old then? Surely it couldn't have been that long ago. That was even before…before…

Hermione looked up resolutely and saw the sturdy frame of the deer stand through the trees ahead. She quickened her pace, wanting to reach her destination now as soon as possible, and kept her eyes fixed on the structure ahead. However, there had been a reason she was watching the ground – as she realized when she ungracefully tripped over a branch lying across the path, landing face first in the decaying leaves and breaking the branch in the process with a resounding crack.

Slowly Hermione picked herself up, brushing bits of leaves off her clothes and picking them out of her hair. She rubbed her ankle, which was a little sore from its contact with the branch, and started off down the path again, keeping her eyes on her feet until she was safely at the foot of the deer stand. She grabbed a hold of the ladder and climbed up to the platform.

Once up, she turned and sat on the edge of the platform with her feet dangling above the ground, staring out at the trees. That was the nice thing about Canada…It was so empty of people. Hermione sighed and watched the leaves catching the sunlight as they shifted in the breeze, and allowed her thoughts to drift.

There was a soft thump behind her. In her haze, Hermione barely noticed it, and didn't bother to turn and see what had caused it. She found out anyway a few seconds later, when she heard, just behind her, a cold voice say:

"If you move, I'll kill you."