Disclaimer: If I wrote Harry Potter, why aren't I living in a mansion?

The dim light that guided Hermione's journey was torchlight from the royal armory. Two soldiers guarded the heavy doors, from intruders, muskets by their sides. Nothing exciting had happened for a while and it looked to be another dull, sleepy night.

Suddenly, a loud cry broke the silence of the armory. Men poured in from the woods surrounding the building in great numbers. Two grabbed the soldiers' gun and rammed them into the guards' head. The now defenseless men slumped to the floor, knocked out cold. Yet another man reached into one of the unconscious men's pockets and pulled out a ring of heavy, black keys. He selected one and gingerly slid it into the door lock. His jet-black hair glinted in the moonlight as he carefully turned the key. The lock clicked and several men rushed forward to open it. The door groaned as the excited men pulled it open.

The unlawful bunch rushed in the small building and then turned to face a man with vibrant red hair.

"I don't want to see anything left in this place. Take everything and be quick about it. We don't want the trouble that we had in Jamaica, now do we?" Several men mumbled their agreement with this last statement. "All right then, after you're done, torch the place. Now move!" The group cheered and rushed off to fill the man's orders.

Only the man who had unlocked the door and the man who had instructed them hung back.

"This could be our most successful raid to date, couldn't it Potter?" asked the red haired man to his companion.

"Aye, that it could be." Potter answered. The duo smiled gleefully and began plotting their next adventure. In their concentration, they barely heard the soft gasp from behind them.

The gasp had come from Hermione, who had accidentally found the ongoing raid in her futile efforts to get home. One of the men, Potter, had stopped his lecture to his companion about the importance of surprise attacks and turned towards the woods, staring in her direction.

"I think I heard something over there." Potter whispered.

"Of course you have, it's the forest. Plenty of animals live there." His companion answered, scoffing at his mate's obvious blunder.

"I don't think so, unless an animal can gasp."

"What?!"

"I heard a gasp from over there."

"You need sleep, mate, you're imagining things."

"I'm sure I heard it."

"Of course, you did." The other man assured him, behaving as if his mate was a two year old who accidentally confused letters and numbers.

The red haired man left his mate by the edge of the woods to check his men's progress. Potter stayed behind, looking around him for the source of the noise. Hermione struggled to not move or make a sound as he scoured the area. Then she felt a tickling the back of her throat. It started gently enough, as if a person was using a feather to tickle her. The sensation became more intense until she finally coughed. Potter froze and strained his neck to see what had made the noise. He slowly crept up to Hermione's hiding place, straining for another noise of unknown origin.

Potter slowly inched closer to the hiding girl with his arms spread in front of him, as if he was blind and trying to find his way. He continued to stumble closer and closer toward her. Hermione tiptoed backward, hoping that he would not find her, until she backed into a large tree Too scared to move, she froze and shut her eyes, willing herself to disappear. The man came closer to her until he was nearly a foot away from her. She was so sure that she was caught until…

"Potter, you good-for-nothing git! Get over here and help the men carry this loot back to the ship or it will be your hide!" the red haired man yelled at him.

Potter, cursing quietly the man who had interrupted his efforts to find the person spying on them, lumbered of through the trees toward the armory.

The raid was going so successfully that the red haired man was about to call the entire thing off, just so they could quit when they where ahead. He turned to face Potter.

"Potter, this is the most successful venture that we have ever had. Now, we have enough firepower to blast even the biggest ships out of the water." He told his companion.

"I think that there's someone watching us." Potter told the man urgently.

"Don't get started on that again!" the red haired man groaned. "The only ones here are the men and the guards, who are probably now off somewhere in La-La land. If you're going to be this paranoid, go back to the ship and help the men load the loot. We don't want what happened in Singapore, now do we?"

Potter mumbled agreement with that and headed back to the ship.

The red haired man, satisfied that his work was done, turned back around to supervise the rest of the raid.

Hermione sighed in relief as she first watched the man that was so close to catching her stumble to a red haired man and then towards the harbor, where she suspected that they had docked their ship. She slowly got up, not wanting to make any noise, lest the man come back.

Turning around, she saw the path she had found the armory on. She gave it a look of displeasure and started towards it. The steps seemed to take forever. Finally, she made it back to the path. Letting her guard down, she sighed and strolled carelessly down the lane.

After traveling down her path for a short while, Hermione realized that she was being followed. She had heard a snapped branch here, a leaf rustle there, but she just assumed that it was an animal or the wind. However, deeper in the forest, these sounds became more frequently, always sounding as if it was behind her. She had whirled around, looking wildly around, to look for the noises' source.

"Hello?" Hermione yelled nervously into the surrounding forest, "Is anyone out there?"

There was no answer, but, of course, she was not expecting one. She backed up slowly until her back hit a tree, never letting her eyes on the clump of trees in front of her, where she thought the noise came from. She let out a sigh of relief as the forest fell silent around.

Suddenly, an arm shot out from behind the tree and covered her mouth.

"You try to run," a voice behind her echoed, "You die."

I know that it has been a long while since I've updated. I apologize sincerely for that. I have about half of the next chapter, but there is no telling when it will be up or if it even will be at all. I am stuck with ideas for this, and all my inspiration is shot. Not even listening to The Pirates That Don't Do Anything (Silly Songs With Larry so own me right now.) helps. I am currently obsessed with bandfiction (long story there) and therefore spend all my time reading it. I am also seriously considering a new story (I'm an idiot, I know) Any MCR fan should recognize the plotline as it follows Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, but that's just in the planning process. Thanks for bearing with me.