Disclaimer: No money made, no disrespect intended. Thanks.

Author's note: Thank you all, Angelic Bladez, Nynaeve80 and Clooless! I never thought anyone else would go for this ship, so the reviews made my day ; )

Summary: "If we were alive today, we would never have met."

When the Order Of The Phoenix learn of Voldemort's latest plan to use the Veil to experiment with immortality, they embark on a mission to destroy it once and for all. Hermione Granger is nineteen, and in charge of finding the spell that will succeed in this task. But when the mission goes wrong and Hermione is pulled in, who can she possibly turn to for help now she's….well..dead?

Two

Shadow and Flame

'Never fear shadows... that always means there is a light shining somewhere.'

The mysterious man pulled Hermione with him, and she felt , rather than saw the creatures launch themselves hungrily after the two of them, whispering ever louder as they came.

The two of them raced across the wet grass. Hermione was holding on blindly to his hand as they ran, him half leading, half pulling her as she stumbled over potholes, slipping and sliding on the slimy ground. The shoes she wore were canvas, small and flat; designed for quiet steps over the Ministry's polished floor and wholly inappropriate for this purpose as the grip on them seemed non existent and the fabric yielded easily to the damp and the cold, leaving her feet like two icy stumps. She followed the heavy thud of his own long leather boots, until they reached a small copse of taller trees that she seemed to have missed in daylight.

"Stay here a moment." the man said, looking distracted. "They'll find us in a few minutes, and then they'll wish they hadn't."

"Those things?" Hermione managed to choke out. He nodded once, businesslike and curt.

"They hunt by tracking the essence of your soul. And in a moment, they'll track us to here."

Hermione didn't dare speak again as he took hold of a larger branch and lit it with the smaller torch, helping the spark expertly with two flints he took from a pocket.

"Fire. They hate it." he offered by way of explanation, as he blew on it urgently to raise the flame. As he did so, she caught sight of an old sword in a battered brown leather scabbard, slung heavily from his waist underneath the cloak.

A few minutes later and the fire had caught. Hermione realised her fingernails were digging into her palms with nerves in case it wouldn't catch properly, but it did, to her utter relief.

She heard the whispering noise, a sucking and rattling as the creatures caught up with them at last, the noise louder than ever now. They appeared, sliding above the ground it seemed, through the trees, their wicked eyes slits the same colour as the fire her rescuer held. She shivered and cowered behind him, terribly afraid.

The man waited, seeming to choose his moment with utmost care. Finally, he drew back his arm just as they were almost upon them, flinging the torch straight into the seething dark mass.

The whispering at once changed to an unearthly shriek as the ground in front of the black shapes exploded with the fire. Sparks rushed towards the creatures like a red-hot shower of heat and light.

It reminded Hermione of Harry's recount of his last journey with the doomed Headmaster, the cave teeming with vicious Inferi, but these were not corpses.

At least…they did not look like corpses. There was no smell of burning flesh as the fire hit them, they just seemed to disintegrate…like they had never been solid in the first place.

Disappeared in a puff of smoke…

The fire went out as abruptly as the tall black-haired stranger had started it, leaving no sign that the nightmare creatures had ever been present.

-

The sky had visibly lightened. Hermione stared dumbly at where the smoky creatures had disintegrated.

"Have they…..gone?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"For now."

The man walked over to her, standing before her and putting one hand under her chin to turn her face towards him, eyes narrowed and curious. Hermione flinched, and looked back at him.

It was then she noticed that he wasn't even really a man. As she stared up into the pale eyes, shadowed incongruously by heavy brows as black as the fine straight hair that hung tied in a piece of old velvet ribbon, Hermione realised that he really did look no older than about twenty, not really any older than herself, Harry and Ron. Just a boy, really.

He looked keenly at her, taking in her now very dirty and torn clothing, and wrinkled up his nose.

"Where did you come from, then?" he asked finally."Or rather….when did you come from? That't usually the better question, I've found. What did you do?"

Hermione tried hard to make sense of this peculiar comment, most especially seeing as he seemed to be waiting for her to give him a perfectly reasonable answer. She didn't really like to look stupid, especially in front of an admittedly very attractive saviour, but she couldn't help but stare a little while she stood in front of him, considering her answer.

"Do?" she asked, eventually. " I hardly think I did anything. I must have hit my head..and I woke up. And then I was here."

The man (boy…Hermione inwardly corrected herself ), smiled and looked away as if amused at some private joke.

" I see. Got a wand?"

"No."

The boy paused. " Don't tell me you're a Muggle…I didn't think they could come here..."

Hermione suddenly felt rather indignant at his haughty tone.

"You haven't a wand either, I presume? Because if I had mine, instead of a torch, I would have used a Living Fire charm on those, those……things." she said, indignantly. "You'd have learned that charm in the seventh year at school, assuming you went to one, and if you actually listened, then you would also know that it was created in 1865 by Liberine Bircher, genius and pyromaniac. I don't believe Muggle schools teach such things." she finished, mimicking his haughty tone a little in her annoyance.

The boy gave a low whistle, raising one dark, well-defined eyebrow.

"Very good. I like it. But you are here, on your own, and I'm assuming that you have no idea how you got here? So that's not really going to help you every much, is it?"

" I just need to find a 'phone. Or some way of getting word to my friends. They'll come and get me."

The boy chuckled. "'Phone?" he said, as if Hermione had just made a highly amusing joke. "I think you're going to be disappointed, you know. Who are you, anyway? What's your name?"

"Hermione Granger. Who are you?"

The boy waved the question away.

"Nobody." he said, firmly. " I'm nobody. I learnt that…." he looked around at the rapidly lightening sky…"a while ago…somewhere else. And-" he added, turning back to look at her again. "I don't think your friends will come for you. And now, I have to go. Don't sleep outside again, either, please. You're lucky I was passing. One more moment and they would have had you. But you learn fast. At least, you should."

He adjusted his belt and the old sword that hung from it, and replaced the flint in his cloak. Then, taking one last peculiar glance at her, he gave a small bow and walked quickly away through the trees, shaking his head as if communing silently with himself, before turning a corner out of sight..

Hermione stood, speechless, as the boy disappeared as quickly as he had come. She looked around nervously, in case the creatures had come back, but the daylight had dawned upon this strange countryside as quickly as night had fallen the day before, and she had a feeling that they were the sort of thing that only came out at night.

-

Although Hermione felt stupid running after a boy, especially one whose name she didn't even know, she found the notion of being left again, without any explanation of his enigmatic comments, unbearable.

I don't think your friends will come for you…

Hermione didn't know what he meant, and she squashed down the shapeless fear that kept threatening to break, spilling panic like blood. Blood, staining her logic with wretched impossibilities and making things even more difficult to make sense of. She knew there must be a rational explanation, there almost always was, and this boy seemed to have at least an idea about this place.

However, to her disappointment, by the time she reached the place where he had vanished, between two silver birch trees, there was no sign of him at all, not even the echo of footfalls to suggest in which direction he had gone.

Hermione looked down and saw that she was standing on a rough dirt track with three forks. She chose the right hand one, and quickened her pace down it, all the while searching the vegetation up ahead for the long black cloak of her rescuer, but soon the track was too thorny and overgrown to allow her to go any further. She had no choice but to turn back, so turn back she did, arriving again at the three forks.

This time, she took the left, which was much wider, and she was able to run fast enough to make up for her mistake.

Perhaps he lived here, anyway, she thought, and kept her eyes out for any sign of smoke or a cottage. But there were none, and that path ended in a clearing and a pond whose waters were pale silver and shone like mercury, but instead of being a beautiful sight, it gave off a foul smell like something gone rotten, and quite the most unpleasant feeling of foreboding Hermione had ever known.

Hermione didn't like the look of the silver pond at all, and worried about going nearer, after all, who knew what it was? She turned back once more, retracing her steps, or so she thought, but she never managed to find the fork in the path, or even the path at all.

Though mentally exhausted, she was pleasantly surprised to find that physically she seemed to manage perfectly well, even after running so far. She pushed through the trees beginning to wish that she had something to cut down the branches blocking her way , for though it at first appeared that this was just a small knot of wood, it was now obvious that it went back quite a long way.

Hermione wondered what was on the other side of it, but she also knew that she'd need to find a safe place to spend the night, if she didn't want the shadowy creatures to come slinking through the trees, amber eyes aflame…looking…

She wondered if she would ever see the black-haired boy again as she trudged on through the twisted trunks of trees with yellowed leaves. She looked down at her feet: the shoes had dried off somewhat, even in the damp atmosphere, and now the dirt was caked upon them, staining the canvas with grime. She could feel the dust and dirt between her toes, and her feet ached a little: the shoes had very little padding, and she felt that she had been walking almost solidly for two days. She wasn't hungry, but she wondered what she was going to do when she needed to eat. A brief glance at the vegetation on the floor of the woods told her there was nothing. And even if by some miracle one of the bushes had been able to bear fruit, she thought, it was doubtful it would even be edible. Even the atmosphere in this place reeked of something sour…something gone bad.

There was nothing to see….the wood, like the fields, just seemed to stretch on and on, one part looking almost identical to the next. Hours seemed to slip by, and Hermione thought once that maybe she should mark her way, like Hansel and Gretel in the childhood fairytale, but, she told herself, even if she knew the way back, what use could it be? In any case, if she didn't come upon a house or something soon, likely she would starve to death, or more likely, die of thirst. The human body could survive without food for quite some time, she recalled Snape's voice saying, as he presided over one Potions class past; but without fluids, only a day or two at most. Funny how she didn't feel the need for either. Perhaps she was still in shock?

Hermione wondered when would be a good time to find a shelter for the night. There was nowhere she could see to make camp, no cave, not any kind of hut or shack in which to hide. She wondered whether she should climb a tree and try to sleep within it's peeling branches. Approaching one, she attempted to swing herself up into it's yellow leafed 'arms', but it was not an easy task: the shoes had no grip and the long dress flapped and fluttered and wound itself around her feet maddeningly. Hermione just about managed to pull herself up onto a branch, slippery with some sort of disgustingly thick yellow fungus, and then her grip failed, and she fell backwards onto the ground. As she fell, a sharp twig caught the side of her arm and she felt a sharp momentary sting as the flesh tore.

The back of her head made contact with the hard floor of the wood first, and Hermione was surprised that she wasn't knocked out. She wasn't even dizzy. She looked down at her cut arm, and to her surprise, she wasn't even bleeding, although the cut looked to be fairly deep. More to the point, though, she had seen through the trees as she fell, and the dark blotch of oncoming darkness had already appeared in the sky. She knew she didn't have much time.

Gingerly, she got to her feet once more, taking a few slow steps just to make sure that she wasn't having some sort of delayed reaction. The falling dark was making it difficult to see, though, and despite her desperate attempts to search for cover, she began to panic.

She thought for a brief moment about shouting for the black-haired boy that had rescued her the night before, but what would she shout? She didn't know his name, and anyway, might shouting perhaps attract other, unwanted attention? She didn't want to take the risk.

Even her own footsteps were thundering in her ears now with every step she took. She began to run, hoping she'd find somewhere, anywhere, but then, without warning, she took another step and the ground gave way beneath her feet.

There wasn't time to scream.

A swamp. The name came to her before she could even begin to try and save herself. It wasn't like the Devil's Snare: relax and it would release you. This was different. The bog was so cold it took her breath away, and made her weak with fear , Hermione found she couldn't have shouted, even if she hadn't been so cold.

The slime wrapped itself around her and was slowly, steadily dragging her down. She made one last attempt to scream, but the sound died in her throat. She tried to swim, flail her arms, keep from going under, but the reverse happened. The mud and slime and stagnant waters rose up her chest, crushing her with freezing cold unseen fists.

Hermione closed her eyes, and waited for it to all end. Waited to suffocate, to drown.

The light hit her as a faint glimmer on the eyelids before she heard the shout. A figure was standing on the edge of the bog, hardly visible, but still there.

Could it be one of those creatures? What a choice of ways to go…

Then she heard the voice she'd heard before:

"Don't move!" it commanded. "I'll get you out, hang on."

But the muddy water tightened it's icy grip. It was thick, viscous, touching her chin by now. It was going to be too late….

She looked up as if by some chance hoping to see the moon and the stars for one last time, and noticed that in this place, there was no moon, and no stars. Hermione closed her eyes at the same moment as the hand closed upon her wrist.

And then she was being pulled up, wrenched up towards the surface, her throat burning, almost enough to distract her from the ringing in her ears. She opened her mouth at last, falling forward onto firm ground, and on top of whoever it was that had pulled her free. Blindly, she clutched at her rescuer, and finally, with a whimper, coughing and gasping, she opened her eyes and found herself looking into a pair of very pale grey eyes, and the very surprised expression of the boy from the night before.

-

Hermione continued to stare at him until he said, in a polite, but slightly strangled voice:

"Er...I could stay here all night like this with a pretty girl lying on top of me, even if she is covered in mud. But I think we ought to be getting out of the dark."

Next time...spending the night with a strange man? Hmm. Comments welcome.

Quoted: Jonathan Santos