A/N: Thanks for the reviews, VampyrKFM, Silidons (a late entry!) and Kyra4. To be honest, wasn't expecting reviews so quickly, but it's all good. Thanks:)
As before, all related names, places, etc. are owned primarily by J.K Rowling, and owned and copyrighted by Warner Bros.
FoundRon Weasley was enjoying a restful night's sleep, dreaming about soaring high into the sky above the castle upon a Firebolt, not dissimilar to the one belonging to his friend Harry Potter, who was asleep in the bed opposite.
Suddenly, the broomstick started to shake violently. Ron tried vainly to stay on, but this proved impossible as he tumbled to his doom. A horrified female voice whose owner had witnessed Ron's struggle squealed: "Ron!"
Ron awoke before he hit the ground, but the alarmed girly voice continued. "Ron! Ron! Wake up!"
He realised Lavender Brown was standing over him, shaking him awake, willing him to get out of bed. "What the…" Ron groaned. "Whazzgoinon?"
"Shut up…" moaned a stirring Neville Longbottom, pulling a pillow over his head. "Go 'way."
Eventually Ron sat up and switched on his bedside table. "Lavender…" he groaned, squinting at her, bleary-eyed.
"Ron!" Lavender squealed. "It's Hermione!"
At the sound of Hermione's name, Harry, who had been woken anyway by Lavender's dramatic entrance into the dorm room, sat up. "What's wrong?" he asked, concerned about his friend, but voice still thick with sleep.
"Hermione…" Lavender whispered. "She's still not back from the library, and it's two o'clock…"
"Have you checked the common room?" said Ron, as Harry slipped on his glasses and threw off his covers.
"Yes… and she's not there," Lavender said, on the verge of tears.
"Okay," said Harry calmly, as he stood up and walked shakily to his trunk. He knew exactly what to do, even though he was not sure where Hermione might be. "If you wait in the common room for us, we'll get ready, then we'll have a look on this for her, okay?" He had fished out the Marauder's Map from his trunk, and held up the apparently blank folded parchment up to show Lavender.
"Thank you, Harry," wept Lavender, as she slunk out of the room.
"It's not like Hermione to be out after hours," Ron mentioned, as he and Harry threw on some clothes. "Well, not on her own, at any rate."
"Wonder what's up," said Harry, slipping on a jacket (in case they had to go outside), grabbing his Invisibility Cloak. Following Ron to the Common Room, he saw that Lavender was waiting with her equally anxious friend, Parvati Patil, another concerned roommate of Hermione's.
"Let's see here," said Harry, unfolding the parchment, and tapping it with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good…"
A detailed map of Hogwarts revealed itself as always, and the four perused it. "All the people within the castle and the grounds are marked by labelled dots," Harry explained for Lavender's and Parvati's benefit. "We have to find a dot with Hermione's name by it."
Lavender and Parvati nodded they had understood.
"Nothing in the Library," Ron noticed. "Hang on, thee's something moving by the Astronomy Tower… oh, no, it's just Mrs Norris."
"Look here!" Lavender gasped urgently, rapping another moving dot. "Over here… by the troll tapestry."
"Let's have a look," Harry noticed the spot. "Oh… that's Trelawny, probably hiding some grog in the Room of Requirement…"
"Again," Ron snorted. "What a pisshead! I don't know why Dumbledore doesn't just…"
"Ron!" reprimanded Lavender, offended by his disparaging comments on her favourite teacher.
"There's Snape, out on the balcony on the second floor," Parvati observed, pointing. "Probably smoking a wizard bong…"
Had the mission been different, Ron and Harry probably would have erupted into fits of laughter. Their concern for Hermione however, was more important, and the boys were also becoming very worried they hadn't come across her presence yet.
"Hmm. No Hermione," Ron sighed. "Where could she be?" Surely she hasn't gone home for any reason
"Nah," replied Harry. "She would have told us about… hang on!" Harry had noticed a stationary dot, on the third floor corridor. "Here she is, in the forbidden corridor."
Parvati and Lavender gasped. "W-what is she doing there?" Lavender stammered in horror.
"Probably using a short cut," Ron said guiltily, knowing that Hermione only knew about the short cut because of himself and Harry.
"Why isn't she moving?" Parvati wondered aloud. "Has she been Petrified?" she volunteered, remembering the Basilisk incident in their second year. "Is that why she isn't moving?"
"Probably overdid it in the Library," Ron suggested, "and fell asleep on the way back."
Harry shook his head, knowing it wasn't Hermione's style to fall asleep at inappropriate times and places. That was more up to him, he thought, remembering his disastrous History of Magic OWL. "Whatever happened to her," he said, draping himself in his Invisibility Cloak "I'm going to find her. Come on, Ron!"
"We're coming as well!" Parvati said, highly affronted by Harry's desire to play the hero, as usual. "We're worried about Hermione, too!"
Ron sighed. "All right," he said, begrudgingly holding up a corner of the Cloak. "Come on, then!"
Just about concealed under Harry's Cloak, the four reached the third floor corridor with some trepidation.
"This is scary," Lavender whined. "I… I can smell blood."
"Don't be ridiculous," Ron snapped Lavender. "It's only scary when you come across Filch… I hope he hasn't got to Hermione first."
"What if," Parvati suggested, "You-Know-Who has her?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on!" he said. "If Voldemort was here, you'd know about it… I'd be…"
Before he could explain the horrific symptoms Voldemort's presence gave him, the light on his wand caught a torn bag surrounded by ripped up pieces of ink-stained parchment. "My God…" he croaked, suddenly almost as scared as Parvati and Lavender claimed to be. "That looks like…"
A squeaking moan came from nearby. Lavender screamed and clung to Ron, whilst Parvati cowered behind her.
Harry moved his wand light over to the left of the corridor, and saw something else. Hermione lay there, eyes closed but still alive, completely naked, bleeding from the face, her torso shiny and bruised, a badly swollen leg and unspeakable purple welts on her thighs. Harry rushed forward and shielded Hermione's nakedness with his jacket, kneeling beside her.
"Hermione!" squealed Lavender. "What happened to you?"
Hermione's eyes flitted open. "Labender," she snuffled, her voice muffled by her smashed nose and dislocated jaw. "Wok are you gooin' eyar?"
Parvati wept upon looking at the wretched girl. "What happened?"
"Dayco Mawboy," Hermione struggles to get the name out. "Cabb. Doyle… I bon't…" Tears fell from her puffy eyes. "wanna kawk 'bout id…"
"What?" asked Harry, hardly able to decipher Hermione's words, inhibited by her injuries. He pointed his wand at her nose. She flinched a little, the memory of what Malfoy had done to her with his wand at the forefront of her mind.
"Episkey," Harry incanted, fixing Hermione's nose, allowing her to breathe more easily. Ron, who had relinquished Lavender's grip, appeared behind Harry, and cleared her face of blood, ink and tears with a "Scourgify" spell.
"Fank you, guysh," Hermione croaked, feeling a little stronger, which allowed her to reach up and pull some of the shards of crystal glass from her cheek with her left hand. She still found it hard to speak through a broken jaw.
"Why are you naked?" Parvati asked, although she was reluctant to hear the answer. "It was…" Hermione said, through hot, salty tears. It hurt to talk, move… it even hurt to cry. "Dwaco Mawfoy and his fwendsh… g-g-g…" She dissolved into more painful tears that stung her scratched cheek. No, she thought. I just can't tell them… I can't deal with the shame…
"Oh… Hermione…" Lavender said, coming closer. Not really understanding, but trying her best to make things better, she reached out to hug her injured friend, but Hermione pushed her away with her relatively unhurt left arm, as forcefully as she could. Ron managed to stop Lavender falling upon the hard stone floor.
"No!" Hermione exclaimed through her sobs. "Bwoken wibsh… 'urtsh sho bad…"
Harry thought quickly. "Parvati," he asked, "go and fetch Hermione some fresh clothes. Underwear, everything." He paused. "Ron, Lavender, you go with her. The attacker may still be around. I'll stay with Hermione." He cupped Hermione's chin gently in her hand.
More memories of what Malfoy had done came back to Hermione, and she tried to turn her head to escape Harry's touch.
"Sorry, Hermione," Harry said gently, mistaking her reaction as physical pain. "Let's try and fix your jaw. This might hurt a little." He carefully repositioned the dislocated jaw.
Hermione didn't care about the pain. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had inflicted enough of it on her to last several lifetimes; another moment's agony would be nothing.
Harry repeated his Episkey spell on Hermione's jaw – Hermione wincing all the while. It fixed perfectly, though her jaw was still aching.
"Thanks, Harry," Hermione croaked.
"What happened?" Harry had to ask. Now that Hermione could articulate her words properly, she would be more likely to speak up.
Cowering under Harry's jacket, Hermione told Harry how she had been trying to get back from the library, when Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had set upon her, raping her in humiliating and painful ways, and torturing her for their spiteful amusement. She explained how her body had been brutally beaten by those bastards. "Please," she finished through her tears, "don't tell anyone else…"
Harry was almost crying himself after hearing about Hermione's sickening ordeal. "I'll deal with them," he whispered back to her. "I don't care about Voldemort; if I have to kill anybody it'll be Malfoy…" He stopped, noticing that Parvati, Lavender and Ron returning with some freshly laundered garments for Hermione.
"We'll sort her out," Lavender said kindly to Harry, handing him back his jacket, now a little sweaty and bloodstained.
"We'll take her to the hospital wing," Parvati continued. "Try not to worry about her, boys, and go back to bed."
"Er… thanks," Ron said, even though he knew he would not get back to sleep, he couldn't even use the time to catch up on his work; he would be too worried about his friend to concentrate properly on essays.
It was even worse for Harry. Of all his existing problems, the fact that Snape was now teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, the new Potions teacher, Slughorn was practically stalking him, the prophecy he had heard at the end of the last school year, and of course the prospect of having to go back to the Dursley household in June, knowing what Hermione had endured was the worst.
When the pair reached the Gryffindor common room, clambering through the portrait hole, Ron wandered over to his favourite chair by the fire. "I can't sleep, Harry," he sighed. "I'm just gonna hang around here and see where the mood takes me. You?"
Harry yawned. "I think I'll go back to bed," he sighed. See you later, Ron!"
"Sure," Ron acknowledged, as Harry headed back up the stairs.
Harry slumped upon his four-poster, not bothering to take his sneakers off, and closed the curtains around him. He just lay there in the darkness, trying not to think of morning, when he knew that Malfoy would be down there, leering at Hermione, and boasting about how she'd finally put out for him, having harboured a non-existent crush for nearly six years, how humiliated poor Hermione would be as the Slytherin table would give her knowing looks she would despise. And having to be with him in lessons, that would be so agonising for her
Most of all, Harry would worry about what he would do to Malfoy the next time they met. He wouldn't need an Unforgivable Killing curse, he would wrap his hands tightly around Malfoy's neck, squeeze as hard as he could, and have the pleasure of watching him die.
He shook his head. He would get even with Malfoy by any means possible, even if it meant his expulsion from Hogwarts. He would even risk going to Azkaban to avenge Hermione.
Finally, Harry drifted off as the light of dawn began to creep in through his curtains.