16-Augest-1998

"You are lying, filthy Mudblood, and I know it! You have been inside my vault at Gringotts! Tell the truth, tell the truth!"

"It's a fake! I've never been-"

The blow Bellatrix dealt Hermione cause her to fly off her feet and fall to the floor.

"Perhaps a little incentive?" Bellatrix clicked her fingers and a moment later Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy dragged her parents in to the Room.

"MUM! DAD! LEAVE THEM ALONE! THEY DIDN'T DO-"

"Crucio!"

"NO!" Hermione watched in horror as her parents writhed on the ground in sheer agony. Before Bellatrix lifted the spell and asked her again.

"What else did you take!"

"N-nothing!"

"Crucio!"

"STOP PLEASE STOP! IT'S A FAKE! A FAKE!"

"LIES!"

An ominous smile crept up Bellatrix's face. "You have two chances to get it right. What else did you take?"

"Nothi-"

"Avada Kedavra!"

The spell hit her father straight in the chest and her mother fell out of Lucius grasp to shake her husband in a fruitless attempt to wake him.

"One more. Where did you get the sword?"

Hermione couldn't answer, shocked silent at seeing her father murdered right beforher and her mother cry over hiss lifeless body.

"No?"

"Avada Kedavra!"

"MUM!" Hermione scremed, being jolted back to reality. She tried to run to her parents but Bellatrix grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back.

"Get him." Bellatrix said with all too much glee in her voice.

"If you will not talk to save the life of your filthy parents perhaps the life of your blood-trator boyfriend?"

Hermione febbly shook her head, this wasn't happining.

"Get off me!"

"RON!"

"HERMIONE!"

Bellatrix sauntered over to where Ron and just been thrown on to the ground pulling him to his feet by his hair.

"He is a very handsome boy; maybe I will keep him as a pet." Bellatrix said running a finger down his cheek.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

"Is he a good lover?" She crooned her nose grazing his jaw as her hand caressed his chest then his abdomen before it stopped to play with his belt buckle. "He looks as if he would be."

"GET OFF ME YOU BITCH!"

Bellatrix flicked her wand and Ron went rigid.

"Tell me what you took from my Vault!"

Hermione looked horrified between Ron and her dead parents. She would kill him with out a second thought.

"This is a waste of time Bella, she won't talk." Narsissa stated in an almost board tone.

"What else did you take!" She yelled.

Bellatrix withdrew a knife and with a quick flick of her wrist slashed the front of Ron jumper open running the knife down his chest. "What else did you take?" She said in an eerily calm voice.

Hermione shook her head from her spot in the floor not knowing what to say or do. Her cleverness had failed her, had failed her parents, and was now going to fail Ron.

"DON'T TELL HER ANYTHING!"

Ron screamed as Bellatrix slashed a deep cut across Ron the chest.

"WE WERE NEVER IN YOUR VAULT! I SWEAR! LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

"LIES!" Another slash and Ron had a bloody X mark on his torso. "YOU HAVE THE SWORD!"

"IT"S A FAKE! LET HIE GO, PLEASE! LET HIM GO!" she sobbed uncontrollably into her hands.

"This is getting us no where, Bella," came Lucius' drawling voice.

"Pick her up. I want the mudblood to see."

Two sets of arms dragged her to her feet while a pair of hands kept her head facing Ron. Bella walked around Ron examining him tracing the slashed she made on his torso with her fingers. Smearing the blood between her fingers as if testing the consistency. "Pity. Such a waste of a pure blood line." And with those words Bellatrix Lestrange ran her knife along Ron throat, releasing the spell allowing Ron to fall to his knees, hand srabling at the wound in his neck.

"RON!" Hermione began to run to Ron but stop as she felt her will leave her.

"He was a blood traitor anyway." Blatrix said befor jaming the knife straight in to Ron's heart.

"Take them in to the hall." Hermione tried to fight it. "Take them now!" She jolted as then commanding voice of Bellatrix resounded in her skull. One by one she dragged the bodies of her parents and Ron in to the hall.

"In here."

Hermione's nearly vomited at the sight behind the door Bellatrix just opened. In the center of very small room was a pile of bodies. She recognized them all. Lupin, Tonks, Mad-eye, Sirius, Colin Creevy, Snape even Dumbledore. Dobby's body hanging by the neck from a chandelier above.

"On the top."

With bile rising Hermione added three more bodies. The spell broke with the slamming of the door and Hermione turned her back on the pile and began to pound on the door pleading in vain to be let out.

A loud crack drew her attention upward and she saw the chandelier fall and crash over the pile. Blood immediately began pouring out of every orifice of the dead in torrents, filling the room. There was too much blood, no human body contained this much blood not even seven. It pooled around her ankles then her knees and all to quickly it flooded the room. The floating body of her friends; parents; and lover bumping in her as she kicked her legs trying to keep her head above the blood. It wouldn't stop the blood kept on rising and Hermione let out one last terrible drawn out scream before she was completely engulfed and drowning in magical blood.

Before she even she knew what she was doing Hermione had thrown the cover off of her and ran to the loo making it just in time to vomit in the toilet..

As a child Hermione didn't have many nightmares. The first truly disturbing dream she could remember having was in third year when, she believed Sirius was a crazed lunatic. It happened the night Ron awoke to find Sirius above him holding a knife. With the stress she was under with all her lesions and her best friend being hunted by a man and her other best friend seemingly attacked by him, Buckbeak, it was logical it would take its toll at some point. Eventually they stopped and Hermione's sleeping habits went back to normal. Then fourth year happened. The dreams became even darker, consisting of Cedric returning with Harry's dead body. Fifth year brought the first dreams of her own demise at the hands of Dolohov. After sixth year was when the nightmares truly began, trouble had found them in the place they thought of as safe and their great protector was killed. And this past year… This past year had been a nightmare made reality culminating in her parents' death.

Hermione wiped her mouth then lay to rest her cheek on the cool tile of the bathroom floor curling in to her self like a sleeping cat. Reality was no longer refuge from the horrors of her dreams. Both awake and asleep she was now tormented. Death would be better. Shakily she stood to wash out her mouth. She closed her eyes tight. None of this was real, she would open here eyes and she would be ling in her bed at home.

But she wasn't, she was still in the bathroom at the burrow. A sob ripped through her chest. She shouldn't have told them to stay. They would be alive right now if she would have just let them move to Australia. Seeing them once a month was better then never seeing them again.

Hermione let out one last sob before making her way back to Ron's room. Crawling back in to bed she wrapped her arms around him. He was ice cold. "Ron?" She pulled the quilt lower to see his throat had been slit while he slept.

She sat bolt upright in bed dripping in cold sweat.

"Ron?" But he wasn't there.

"RON!" she yelled running out of the room.

"RON!" where was he?

"RON!"

"Hermione! What's Wong?" Mr. Weasley met her on the stairs tying his bath robe.

"Ron's gone! I can't find him!"

"Hermione?" Harry, Ginny and Mrs. Weasley had joined them on the steps.

"Harry, Ron's gone!" She said hysterically.

"Maybe he's in the loo?"

Ginny set off down to check but Hermione knew it was no good. "I just came from there."

"You came from Ron's room dear." Mrs. Weasley said takeing her in to her arms to try and comfort her.

"No, before. I was in the.." That was a dream.

"What's going on?"

Ron had finally appeared on the stairs drenched to the bone and Hermione flung herself at him crying in to his chest.

"Where have you been!" His mother yelled. "And why are dripping wet?"

"It's raining."

"What were you doing outside in the middle of the night! If I would have known you would leave Hermione alone I would have insisted she stay with Ginny. You were supposed to take care of her!"

"I couldn't sleep." Ron whispered hanging his head.

Molly Weasley frowned at her son, he had been become very close to the Grangers these past two months and their deaths had to have hit him hard as well. "I'm sorry dear."She said walking over and hugging him. Why don't you change in to something dry and I'll make you some of my special tea to help you sleep. Ginny take Hermione to wash her face will you."

"But.." Hermione said holding tighter to Ron.

"I'll meet you in the kitchen."

But he didn't after the tea was made, served, then went cold Hermione found she was exhausted and made her way backup to bed expecting to find Ron asleep. But when she entered he was sitting on his bed staring at the wall.

"Your tea's got cold."

Ron glanced at her then went back to staring at the wall. "I didn't want any. It's not special; she just put some sleep drought in it."

"Would that help you sleep?"

"I don't want to sleep."

Hermione stood there looking at him. Ron loved her parents almost as much as she did. It was amazing how far they came in such a short period of time. And now it was all over. It was the only good thing she could see. She didn't have to go through it a lone. They could grieve and heel together.

"I know how much you loved my-"

"I'm tired." He said cutting her off climbing into the middle of his bed "I just want to go to sleep."

"But.." Hermione shook her head. This was without a doubt the worst day of her life, as much as she wanted to she just didn't have it in her to try and figure Ron out.