Yo yo! Back for Chapter two! And very very VERY good news! I now have a fantastic beta that is super smart and a great writer. So, the extra help is nice and maybe this story will be better because of it.

So, give a warm thank you to the darling Scarlet Dewdrops!

Okay. I'm done fangirling. Sorry. But remember, I still look for ideas Reviewers! Thank you! On with the story! ENJOY!

Chapter 2

The air. The crisp, fresh air. She was intoxicated by it. This was the first time in months that she had been allowed out of those straps. She was getting better. Well, not really. She just knew how to function better. Dr. Talmer really was a great doctor. There were a few things she had done in his sessions that made everything feel more sane. More safe.

She was tired of the jumbled mess. Over the past weeks, she had slowly but surely organized some of her scattered pieces. She began to know more and more about herself. The doctor helped. He gave her techniques to focus and calm down. How to connect certain thoughts to others.

Her name was Hermione Granger and she had two best friends. Harry and Ronald. They were both dead. And she buried Harry. Her name was also Mudblood and she had a Mistress that she hated. Hated with every fiber of her being. She hated her so much, that she killed her. But every time she remembered killing her, the memory was locked away. It made her upset. Hermione was an animal in that memory. A savage. Less than human.

Hermione. The name suited her. For so long she thought her name was that horrid slur. She was told that the carved word on her arm was her identification. It made her so livid. She remembered so much that she didn't want to and the memories made her a different type of insane. She was angry. So angry. Now that the ever-present threat of endless torture was out of the way she would see the fears that had once made her quiver and lash out in heated rage instead.

She heard Mistress once when she was trying to sleep. In the darkness, that crazed cackle filled the air. It kept saying, "Time to go back Muddy." And when that happened, she would go into a panic. She wouldn't be taken. She would never be taken.

Spending that much time with a crazed woman like that, you pick up a few things whether you want to or not. Dr. Talmer was worried about her when she began singing to herself. Little chants that made even the craziest feel sane. She sometimes danced around and sang those tiny songs. She really never noticed. She never dwelled on it. Hermione didn't want another reason to hate herself.

She looked out into the garden with a soft smile. Her injuries were mostly healed. Well, the ones she got on her entrance into this place. The injuries from her stay with her Mistress would never leave. She once stared at them with sadness and pity. But now, she just didn't care.

She remembered getting checked out by the nurses after her drop in. One of them nearly cried. The lashing marks on her back would never heal. The slanders carved into her skin would never fade. The branding wouldn't leave either. Her nose was even a bit crooked from being broken so many times.

But the ones that hurt the most were from herself. She remembered sitting in her dark cell. The floor was made of mud, which over time had become a disgusting clumped mess as her blood soaked into it. Bellatrix had given her to her husband most nights. Sometimes, her Mistress rented her out to the male Death Eaters. But Rodolphus, she believed his name was. He would sit on a pristine stool in her cell and stare at her. He would then hand her a knife and tell her to turn it to herself. And she would. Sometimes she would get artsy and carve runes in her hands. She still couldn't piece together how she knew what they were. But every time she remembered, she knew what they were. Runes. Something she learned from…...from what? It frustrated her so much not to know. But getting frustrated over it would only make it worse. Talmer told her that.

"Time to come in, Hermione." She looked towards her doctor and nodded. He rushed to help her up and she waved him away. He shook his head with a small grin, "You're too stubborn for your own good." She shrugged.

"It's a Gryffindor thing."

He questioned, "Gryffindor?" She quickly reached her hand up into the air and grabbed that word then threw it in with the other weird words she hadn't put together yet.

She informed him quite matter-of-factly, "I put it in the puzzle pile." He nodded and they continued. The doctor helped her get organized with puzzles. He thought it was a great way for her to get her thoughts back together. They had made an actual puzzle together. Plain white pieces that she'd write memories on and stuck them on a timeline. Other times they would take a break to sit down and complete a real puzzle. Hermione loved the ones with otters on them. Talmer just figured it was her favorite animal.

"Time for lunch. I have a group session to go to. You'll be fine?" She once again waved the man away and he left her with a pat on the head. She got her lunch and sat down at her table. Her table. The one right by the window that looked out to the garden. The food sucked, but she's had worse. Try nothing for a month or so. Everything tastes like gold after that. Well, maybe except this slop.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up and her eyes swiveled around to catch one of the other patients staring at her. She stared back. Neither looked away until he began to shake. She had to hold in her smirk. She had stared down hell. One man wouldn't break her.

He suddenly stood up and ran out of the room. Hm. Weak. Hermione continued eating and began to think quietly. Working on her seemingly endless puzzle. She was different. Her timeline started out sort of happy. Flashes of smiles and friendship passed through her mind. But it wasn't always happy. She was bombarded with images of her hair being dipped in ink and falling down the stairs from someone pushing her. Mean names like "Buck tooth beaver" and "Bushy haired know it all." The words made her chest tighten, but then she threw it away with determination. Words were words. She didn't care.

Hermione sighed when lunch was over and wanted to go back to her garden. But it was time for another session with Talmer. She wasn't allowed in group session. Something about scaring the other patients. She shrugged and headed back to her room. Talmer insisted they meet in a familiar and safe place.

As she was walking down the hall, she heard a noise. Something like a munching? No, no. Sucking? What the hell did it even matter? Her brain was screaming to ignore it, but everything else in her made her body turn to look into a patient's room. A dark figure bent over a man. He wasn't breathing and she spotted dried blood at his wrists. She didn't even think before slamming into the room. The door somehow unlocked before her. She would have to look back on that.

The monster stared straight at her and she was greeted with a hideous face that resembled a dead and rotting corpse. It was like she went into auto mode. She ran up to the creature to throw a punch, but it caught her arm and slammed her against the wall. Her head swam as she realized most of her drugs made her weak. Damn it!

With spotty vision, she watched the beast run out of the room. She stumbled after it, but fell to the ground with a crash. One of the nurses spotted her from around the corner and yelled, "Oh my gosh!" Hermione gripped onto the nurse as she helped her up.

"Monster" she rasped out.

"What?"

"Monster!" Her shaky finger pointed to the open patient room and the nurse called in backup. Talmer had rushed as quickly as he could and watched as orderlies dragged Hermione away. "There was a monster! You need to get it! Get the monster!" Talmer rushed through and saw the bloody body in the room. He looked to his struggling patient. Did she…..did she kill him thinking he was a monster? He killed that thought and ran after Hermione. No. She was doing better. The puzzle was being completed. He knew she couldn't hurt someone innocent.

"Release my patient!" The two burly men stopped and looked towards him.

"She's dangerous, Jon."

His eyes sharpened. "That is up for me to decide. Now release my patient." They did so hesitantly and Jon caught the dizzy girl. "Come on. We'll get this all sorted out." He noticed the blood in the back of her head as she winced.

"Let's get that all fixed up. You can tell me everything later." She nodded and they continued on walking.

Later that day, Hermione could be seen sitting up in her bed with a bandage wrapped around her head. Talmer had given her an Ice pack for the pain. "Now, you know I hate to push, but could you tell me about what happened?" She didn't look away from him. She had to face this head on.

"I saw a monster kill him." Jon paused and put down his clipboard.

"Hermione, I need you to tell me how you know this was real and wasn't something your mind made up."

"Because I wasn't afraid of it." He tilted his head. "I see floating ghosts draped in black. I hear a snake's hiss and see flashes huge golden eyes. Spiders always seem so much scarier than they should. But I have never seen this. And it didn't scare me, because it hasn't terrorized me." He nodded slowly.

"So, your reasoning is that, it isn't from the puzzle."

She snapped her fingers with a smile. "I should have put it that way! Yeah. It doesn't fit into my scary puzzle of death and sadness."

He chuckled. "I thought we agreed on a more positive outlook?"

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. My memory puzzle."

He smiled. "There we go." Hermione sat back contently as everything began to settle. She was having a hard time with this new development, but she would get better. Talmer promised she would.

Her dinner was brought to her and then the night started. It was hard sleeping when all the screaming night terrors of the other patients started. She didn't sleep much anyways though.

But right as her mind began to drift, there was a noise behind her. Sort of like flapping or a huge gust of air. She didn't want to turn around. She didn't want to even acknowledge that she heard something. "I know you aren't sleeping." She closed her eyes in frustration.

"I don't want to know what you are." She could hear footsteps approach her. Her eyes were looking at the legs of a man. He was obviously wearing a business suit with some sort of coat over it. Her curiosity broke her when she saw two feathery wings almost touching the floor. Her gaze glanced up to see the face of the man within her room. Crystal blue eyes that looked through her curiously. He honestly looked like a businessman with the suit and trench coat. It was just the backwards tie and the stubble on his otherwise clean shaven face that made him seem a bit more….improper.

"My name is Castiel and I am an angel of the Lord." Hermione sat up slowly and reached her hand out to him. He didn't move as she gripped his tie and tugged it a few times.

Then she poked his hand a few times just for good measure. "You're real." She said it as a statement, but it came out as a cross between disbelief and awe.

He nodded, looking a bit confused. "Why wouldn't I be?" She shrugged and sat back on her bed.

"I see things. I know they aren't real, but sometimes I'm fooled." She rubbed her tired eyes and yawned. "I've never met an angel or even really had much of a religion so I don't understand how this could be a hallucination. But, from my experiment ten seconds ago, you seem to be as real as the monster in this hospital."

Castiel looked even more confused. "I came to-."

"Do angels just look like humans?"

He paused before answering, "This is only a vessel. My true form is more than any human can handle."

She nodded with an approving look. "Impressive. What's a vessel? Like a ghost possession?" Her eyes widened and she shot up from the bed. She gripped his jacket and looked into those blue eyes with anger. "Is there an innocent person within? Are you participating in the enslavement of a human being?" He looked around the room. He seemed to be frustrated.

"An angel can not take a human as a vessel without their consent. I haven't enslaved anyone." She released him and plopped back down in her bed.

"Thank goodness. I would have to kill you if you were."

His eyes sparked with amusement. "You? Kill an angel."

Her face deepened into a grimace. "I wouldn't hesitate. Even if you had a knife in your hand right now while I was powerless. I would kill you for that human life to be free."

He walked closer to her. "Would you consider helping two other humans that need help?"

Now she was listening. "What do you mean?"

He began to pace around the bed slowly. "I mean, that I need your assistance."

"Why is an all powerful angel concerned with a headache like me?"

"Because of the tremendous amount of magic you carry."

Her heart stopped. "Magic?" That singular word bounced off every memory. It wanted to fit. The memories grasped at that sparkling word, but it never stuck.

"You didn't know?"

She scratched her head in confusion. Everything was still bouncing around her head, but she needed to get focused. "Well, my brains are a bit scrambled to be honest. I'm still working out my puzzle. But to be fair, I don't think the likes of me would have magic."

He sat on the bed and looked at her intently, "I believe that you would be a valuable asset to have."

She crossed her arms and looked straight forward. "I'm not valuable. I'm a useless broken puzzle."

He paused and then reached out to touch her head. "Let's see if I can put you back together." As soon as his fingers touched her skin, she was jolted into a world she had forgotten. A world of magic and danger and familiarity. She had loving parents and two amazing friends. She could begin to feel her whole world coming back together. So light and cheerful. She was beginning to feel whole again.

But not before the dark hit. The Golden eyes she saw in the mirrors now have a body. The basilisk she faced. The dark ghosts now have a name. Dementors. The spiders she feared were bigger than anything in reality. More memories smashed through her protective walls and it caused her to scream in a panic.

The hated professor becoming her mentor. The war getting serious. Dumbledore confronting her on her secret studies of the dark arts. She became an expert. He wanted her to fight fire with fire.

Then all the death. She watched her family die. Her mentor, her friend, her teachers, her life. She was on the run. Running, hiding, assisting the others that were pursued. But, she wasn't good enough. She was caught. She was tortured. She was a pet. She was just a Mudblood pet.

Every night she prayed to Death. Prayed that all her suffering would come to an end. But, her prayers became more like conversations. She never had anyone to speak to. So, she would speak to Death. Her talks to the non-existent persona became her anchor. The thought of her Gryffindor courage, her friends, her pride. It all became obsolete. But Death? Death was reliable. Always there. Always constant.

As soon as her escape began to come to her, the reeling memories stopped. She had seen everything. The puzzle coming together and cracking into bits. It was killing her.

When she could finally see past her memories, she found herself to be pinned to the cold hospital ground by the angel she had just meet. "You were hurting yourself." She could feel her face stinging in pain and decided what he was saying was true. He released her hands slowly and got up from his position. "I take it what you remember wasn't very pleasant."

He looked back down to her and realised that she hadn't moved. The scratches on her cheek were healing faster than they should have. But he noticed something else. She was crying. He didn't know what to do.

"I don't want to remember." She slowly sat up from her position and held her knees to her chest. "I wish I would have just burned the puzzle." He slowly approached her as her eyes came up to his. "I shouldn't be alive."

"But you are."

"I don't want to be."

He held out his hands to her. "I can give you a purpose, if you would like one." She hesitantly took his hands. She felt secure. Safe.

"I don't think I can do what you ask."

He slightly smiled to her as she was helped up. "I doubt that. You care for humanity. You are powerful. You can do this if you want. But I will not force you."

She wiped her tears away and set her face in determination. "I've got nothing to lose. I'll do whatever it is you need. As long as it's within reason."

He nodded and told her honestly, "Understood."

But before he could leave again, she gripped him tight in a hug. She needed it. She just needed someone. Anyone to give her comfort. To tell her that she was never going back to her hell. "Promise me I'll never go back. Promise you'll never allow it."

He awkwardly hugged her back and told her in his monotonous gruff voice, "I promise." And then he disappeared from her arms with a flap of those huge wings. She slowly sat back down on her bed and let all the new information run its course. New things were popping up here and there. She needed to put it all out. Organize it.

She shot up from bed for the last time and went over to her timeline. She grabbed the box of crayons she was allowed to have and began her new timeline. She would finally complete the impossible puzzle, but she was almost positive she didn't want to.