DISCLAIMER: I'm only gonna say this one time: I don't own anything that you recognize from JKR's books. No exceptions.
To the Moon and Back—Chapter 1: Prologue
"Hermione, run!"
"No way, Harry, I'm not leaving you!"
"Ron and I can handle it; you need to get yourself OUT," Harry bellowed, straining to keep the jet of light flowing from his wand that Hermione knew was keeping the door from bursting open.
"Please, Hermione, run as far away as you can and hide somewhere, anywhere. We'll find you by owl when this is over, please go," Ron half-pleaded to Hermione. Hermione was torn. She couldn't leave, but she knew that the two of them would never let her stay with them.
"I can't—" she started, eyes filling with tears, but Harry cut her off. Ron was helping him now, straining to keep the door shut, but a bellowing from the other side told them that it wouldn't hold out for much longer.
"You can, and you will," he said firmly. "Please, Hermione, do this for us. Please." There was a look of pleading and fright in his emerald eyes that she knew she would remember for long after the night was over. She had no choice. Tears began to fall from her eyes as she dashed forward, throwing her arms around both boys in one last, comforting embrace.
She would have like to have said something to them, to offer words of solace and comfort, to inspire bravery or strength or anything, but she couldn't speak. With one last tearful glance at her best friends, sweaty-faced and about to undertake the most dangerous challenge that the three of them had ever surmounted—but to do it without her—she turned on her heel and ran.
Hermione ran furiously, blood pounding in her ears, unable to hear the shouts of horror and pain issuing from the room that now seemed far, far away. She flew out of the back door and through the hedges and brambles that marked the end of the backyard of number 12, Grimmauld Place, kicking and fighting her way through. Her heart was pounding now, her chest and side aching, but she couldn't stop running, couldn't stop the tears that were running down her cheeks and fluttering away with the wind.
She ran for what seemed like hours. Dazed, confused, and terrified for the safety of her two best friends, she suddenly became aware that she was on a mountainside, tripping over rocks that jutted out of the ground but recovering her steps every time. Looking around, her eyes clouded, she saw a crack in the rock wall. She slipped through it and whispered, "Lumos"
It was a tiny, dark and dry cave that would do well to hide her until—she swallowed, hard. Harry and Ron had promised to come and fetch her, to find her and bring her back. She curled up in a ball in the far corner and cried, her very bones wracked with grief, drifting in and out of sleep so that she knew not if it was day or night. Waiting.
Waiting.
But they never came back.
And so she knew that she had to leave the horrors of her life behind.
Okay, that was a painfully short chapter for me to write (and believe me, I hate short chapters), but it was quite necessary to introduce the background of the story. The second chapter will be up shortly!
In the meantime…
Please review! Tell me what you think of it so far.
Thanks!
Callista Rose