Since when is Classroom Eleven locked? Harry wondered. Maybe Crookshanks had the wrong room? But Crookshanks was scratching madly at the door, uttering little mews of frustration.

Abruptly Harry had a horrible thought. This is where Hermione is supposed to have detention…with Malfoy! How could he have forgotten?

Harry told himself not to let his imagination run away with him. Ron was there. Nothing was happening. How could it, when teachers were everywhere to keep an eye on things?

But they weren't, Harry remembered. They were all in a top-secret meeting which all the students knew to be about Voldemort. They had been in the meeting since dinner and weren't due to be out for another five or ten minutes…why was this door locked? Why couldn't he hear anything through it?

"All right, Crookshanks," Harry said. "Something is going on in there. Move." He nudged Crookshanks with his foot, and succeeded in getting the ginger cat to back up a couple paces. Raising his wand, he took a deep breath and shouted "Alohomora!" Nothing happened for a split second. Then there was a clicking noise, and the door swung silently open.

The scene that greeted him took his breath away.

Ron sat in a chair in the middle of a sparkling clean room. No, he wasn't sitting. He was held there by an appalling quantity of thin black ropes, wrapping his torso to the chair back, his wrists and lower arms to the chair sides, and his calves to the chair legs. He was white and shaking and his head was drooping as if he were asleep, until Harry saw that his eyes were squeezed shut.

But it wasn't Ron who held Harry's attention. It was the grotesque, monstrous, terrible happening on the desk at the front of the room. Malfoy stood at the side with an enraptured look on his face. He was holding the legs of a shuddering, dead-eyed Hermione and thrusting into her with horrible violence and wild abandon.

For a moment he was too shocked to do anything. Then Crookshanks snapped him out of his reverie by emitting an almighty yowl and rushing forward, claws out, to attack Malfoy.

Malfoy looked up as Crookshanks launched himself into the air, but Harry was too quick for the both of them. "STUPEFY!" he cried, and Malfoy fell backwards senseless. Crookshanks paid no heed to this new turn of events and landed on Malfoy, clawing and hissing furiously.

Harry dashed over to Ron and Conjured a pocket knife, with which he cut the bonds that held Ron's wrists. "Harry…" Ron said weakly. "How did you know to come here?"

"Crookshanks…I'll explain later, Ron. You can cut the rest of the ropes yourself?" Without waiting for an answer, he rushed over to Hermione. Her wrists were taped to the desk so that she couldn't get up, and when Malfoy had fallen away from her, she had curled up and was now shivering on the desk. She looked so small and broken that it made him want to cry. When he gently touched her wrist with the intention of removing the tape, she flinched violently and whispered, not looking at him, "No, no, don't hurt him, I'll be good, no, please…." She trailed off into silence.

"Hermione," Harry said softly, "It's me, Harry. I'm not going to hurt you." He wanted to kill Malfoy for what he had done. Hermione had never been this frail before.

"Harry?" Hermione whispered, looking up at him. Hope flickered in her eyes.

Harry nodded. "I'm going to get this tape off of you, all right?"

"Okay," she murmured, then, "How did you find me?"

"Crookshanks went berserk," Harry said as he peeled off the tape. "He led me here."

Hermione smiled; a small, tremulous smile, but a smile. Harry found her robes and helped her into them gently, then looked around to see where Ron was. He was still bound to his chair, trying to cut through his bonds, but he seemed to be having trouble. "Just a minute," Harry said quickly before hastening to Ron. "Ron—" he started, then broke off. He hadn't noticed because he was so preoccupied, but Ron's wrists were slippery with blood. He had tried to break through the ropes so hard that it broke through his skin. Quickly stooping down to cut Ron's ankle bonds, it became apparent that no effort had been spared here, either.

When Harry cut the last of Ron's ropes for him, Ron staggered to his feet, saw Malfoy (still being mauled by Crookshanks on the floor), let out a carnivorous growl, and set off to get him. He got three steps before his knees gave way. Harry moved hurriedly to catch him. "That bastard!" Ron snarled. "He's hurt her…I couldn't get free from these ropes, but now that I am free, I'm going to kill him!"

"Ron," Harry reasoned, "You're in no state to kill anyone." Oh, how he wanted to break Malfoy's neck. But there was no use in landing himself in prison, not when Hermione would need them both. "Let the law take care of him."

Ron looked at Harry disbelievingly. "You just want to let the idiots at the Ministry take him? Askaban doesn't even have dementors anymore, it'll be no fit punishment for the likes of him. I'll kill him, and I don't care what happens to me because of it!"

"Ron?" said a small voice eight inches beneath him. Ron broke off and looked down at Hermione, and his entire demeanor changed to one of pain. Hermione reached out a trembling hand to touch his bleeding wrist. "Ron, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scream, really I didn't, I tried to be quiet like he asked, but…" A single tear trickled down her cheek. "I'm so sorry I made him hurt you."

Ron reached for her, and she stumbled back and fell. Looking at his hand, Ron's face darkened with alarming rapidity, and he tried again to set off for Malfoy. Such a weakened state was he in, however, that even the light grip Harry had on him was enough to withstand his best efforts.

Harry decided that what they both needed now was to go to the hospital wing, and fast. Ron was bleeding, and Harry thought that if he understood Hermione correctly, Malfoy had hurt Ron in some other way as well. As for Hermione….Who knew what all this had done to her body? I can't carry both of them, and Malfoy, but I'm not sure how well any of them can walk to the hospital wing. The hospital wing was on the third floor and Ron couldn't even manage three steps. Hermione's knees were trembling violently.

"Right," he said as normally as he could. "I don't think any of you can make it to the hospital wing, so…" With a wave of his wand he levitated Malfoy—shaking off a still-going-strong Crookshanks in the process—the way Sirius had levitated Snape in their third year. Turning to Ron, he asked permission without words. Ron scowled but nodded reluctantly, and soon he was in the air alongside Malfoy. He turned to Hermione.

"Please," she said, "I can walk." He nodded—he would have given her anything she asked for at that moment--and they started out of Classroom Eleven. However, Hermione only made it a little way into the hall before her knees made her lose her balance. Harry nearly dropped Ron and Malfoy when he caught her. The hallway was, at the moment, empty but for them.

"Hermione," Harry said again, "I don't think you can walk up two flights of stairs right now."

Her eyes darted across the hallway, and she seemed to be steeling herself to be levitated, so he was thrown off guard when she said, "I can levitate these two, you know."

"Oh, no, you don't have to. Don't worry about it—"

"But you can't levitate all three of us."

"Well, no, but how are you going to levitate them when you're being levitated yourself?"

She hesitated before muttering, quickly and not looking at him, "You could carry me."

Bemusedly, he realized she had not yet pulled away from him. "…Sure, I could….But, 'Mione, do you really want me to?"

"I don't mind," she said, and blushed. "I trust you." She looked up again and gave him another tremulous smile. She stiffened a little, then visibly forced herself to relax and put her arms around his neck.

He had once dreamed of doing this with Cho Chang, though in a very different setting, and he swept Hermione off her feet only a little awkwardly; she took his wand and pointed it steadily at Ron and Malfoy.

It was a long way to the hospital wing, but they would make it. Together, they would make it.