A/N

Hello! This is my first fanfiction. There's no Draco/Hermione interaction to begin with but it does come eventually, I promise! Please review and let me know what I can improve.

Chapter 1.

A faint rustling caused her to hold up her wand, immediately alert.

'Lumos,' she whispered.

Nothing moved, from what she could see in the wandlight. She carried on walking, keeping her wand aloft. Feeling slightly worried, she quickened her pace and walked hurriedly towards the shop. Just a few more metres to go. Why hadn't she remembered to buy Crookshanks' medicine earlier? Coming to this side of Diagon Alley at this time of night wasn't something she particularly loved doing.

The bell tinkled softly as she entered Magical Menagerie, alerting the old shopkeeper to her presence. He smiled as she came into the dim light, recognising his regular customer. Then he frowned.

'Why are you out so late, dear? This place can be dangerous at this time of night, especially for you.'

'I know,' she sighed. 'But I've run out of medicine for Crookshanks. I really need some more.'

'Let me just summon some of that, then. Three vials?'

At her nod, he waved his wand, causing three vials to come zooming out of the shelves behind him, and onto the counter.

'That'll be two galleons and six sickles, please.'

After paying the appropriate amount, and placing the vials in one of the many pockets of her robe, she headed towards the door.

'Be careful!'

'I will!' she called back over her shoulder as she stepped into the cold night air.

Time to disapparate home. She began to turn on the spot, before someone grabbed her around her waist and clamped a hand down on her mouth. Her wand was taken from her pocket. Shit. She bit the hand, making the person, a man by the sound of it, grunt in pain. He didn't remove his hand though, only clamped down harder.

She was dragged unceremoniously into an alleyway, struggling the whole time. Who was holding her? What did they want?

'Well well, what do we have here?'

She could make out a faint silhouette of a person in front of her. And the voice. She knew that voice. But she couldn't put a finger on it. Who was it?

'Don't recognise me yet? Lumos.'

A light shone straight into her eyes, making her squint. Then it was moved away, illuminating the face before her. Oh Merlin. She knew this man.

She couldn't say anything due to the hand on her mouth. The man seemed to notice this.

'Goyle, take your hand off her mouth now. There's no one around to hear her scream.'

'Nott,' she spat as soon as her mouth was free.

'Ah, she recognises me.'

'I swear to Merlin, if you don't let me go right now-'

'You'll do what? We have your wand. You're currently being restrained. What exactly do you plan to do?'

She didn't reply, instead choosing to bring her leg up behind her, kicking Goyle where it hurt, eliciting a yowl of pain from him. He let her go and she started to run, only to be caught by the dark haired man in front of her. He chuckled darkly, wedging her legs between his so that she was unable to move them. She gritted her teeth in pain; the arms around her ribcage weren't exactly gentle.

'Why're you doing this, Nott?'

'I thought it was fairly obvious. I wanted to catch a certain mudblood.' He said it so casually, without a care in the world.

'Oh please,' Hermione kept her voice confident, trying to think of ways to escape.'I think it's high time we get over childish prejudice. The war is over, Nott. Voldemort is dead.'

'The Dark Lord may be dead, Mudblood, but that doesn't change the fact that you're still a mudblood. He may be dead, but his army carries on. And anyway, my father needs to be avenged.'

'You'd think you would have realised by now, blood doesn't affect magical abilities. You'd think a war would have put that into your thick brain.'

'My mind is made up. There's no one around here to catch me like you caught my father.' His voice chilled her to the bone.

'Our blood is the same Nott. You clinging onto stupid ideas isn't helping anyone.'

'Well, you're certainly right there. It's not helping you in any way, is it? Crucio!'

He let her fall to the ground as she writhed in pain. Her insides were on fire, and there were thousands of knives trying to stab their way into her. Suddenly the pain stopped, and she looked up to see Nott smirking at her.

'Had enough, Mudblood?' She didn't respond, just glared at him.

'My, haven't we learnt our lesson yet? Still challenging a pureblood, when you should be begging at our feet? How did you even have the nerve to go around capturing people like my father, Granger? Crucio!'

Pain exploded through her body, limb by limb. The curse that was being held for five minutes felt to Hermione like five long, excruciating hours.

'Let's see how long mudbloods take to die. Goyle, you counting? Crucio!'

The minutes stretched on endlessly. He used hundreds of different curses on her, different variations of the cruciatus curse.

Please, God. Don't let me die like this, she prayed as yet another curse hit her, causing her to curl into foetal position and grab at her own arms, dragging her nails across her skin in pain. Please.

He carried on mercilessly, until hours later, her breathing was hardly noticeable. Her pulse was reduced to a faint fluttering. One last swift kick at her ribs, one last laugh, before they disapparated.

They left her in the alley, thinking her dead.

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Hermione woke up an hour later on the cold floor of Knockturn Alley. Her cloak was ripped, her arms were covered in blood from self-inflicted wounds. She dragged herself up off the floor, shivering violently. It was still dark, she couldn't see much, and she knew she had to get out of this place. Gathering the last of her energy, she turned on the spot and apparated to her apartment, letting out a silent scream of pain as she was pressed through the metaphorical rubber tube.

A/N

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