Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Sherlock, or any of the characters therein. Nor do I make any moneys from the posting of this fanfiction.

Well, here we are! What you've all been waiting for. The sequel to "Hermione Rents a Flat". I hope that you like it

WARNINGS!—Okay, I'm just going to get all the warnings out of the way right here and now. Spoilers for Sherlock Season three, Episode three. Not to worry, nothing too terrible as I didn't want to rewrite what had already been done correctly the first time. Think of it more along the lines of a highlight reel, if you will. Needless to say the story is alternative universe and I'm not pretending otherwise. Oh yes, and there's mature language and violence here too. You have been WARNED!

That being said, thanks for reading and please enjoy, not to mention review!

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Prologue

June…

Hermione sat in silence with her eyes closed and just breathed. The last thing she recalled from before she had been hit was seeing a face she had not seen in years. Then she was hit from behind and everything went black. Her head hurt from where she was hit, but otherwise it would appear she was fine. The silence in the room was dense and she could only hear a faint buzz of sporadic traffic coming from the street. This told her that they were more than likely in a residential neighborhood—not London. Her eyes opened and she looked around the room. White and sterile everywhere she looked and without a doubt she knew that wherever she was it wasn't good. There was no furniture in the room and the walls and floors were same eye hurting white that seemed to be magnified by the lighting in the room. She looked to what she was sitting on. A metal folding chair and her wrists were tied to the back frame of it. The rough hemp of the rope had already cut into her skin.

A noise of the one door of the room opening, called her attention. The thin, well-dressed man grinned at her with an almost manic light in his blue eyes.

"Jamie," she breathed.

"Oh, I go by the name Jim now," he told her, strolling over and standing in front of her. "Dear Hermione. I must say, I wasn't expecting you to even be among the living still. What was it you were having issues with?" He pretended to think this over. "Yes, it was chronic depression as well as post-traumatic stress disorder." He frowned in a clownish fashion. "Still feeling blue, are we?"

Hermione said nothing, but continued to just stare at him with her steady brown gaze that was completely unreadable.

This only managed to enrage him. He went over and backhanded her. She was thrown slightly, but she righted herself before she could fall. Hermione felt the cut on her lip and the first trickle of blood going down her chin.

"If you think your Sherlock will be coming to save you, dear sweet Hermione, think again."

She only stared at him. Knowing he wanted to make this game last all the longer, he walked over to the door only to be stopped by her low, husky laughter. He turned slowly to face her. Hermione was still sitting there with her eyes closed, but she was chuckling to herself as she did so. The laughter wasn't full of mirth, but with a deep mocking hatred he had never heard from her before. The laughter died and soon enough she was opening her eyes to him. They were hard chips of glacial amber, her face changing to that of a predator as she watched him.

When she spoke next her voice was low and hard, filled with authority and dire threat to those who dare cross her. "You were always…vain, Jamie." She rotated her neck, as she sat up all the straighter in the chair. "Vain and arrogant. Enough so that it blinded you to others whom you already put into their neat little slots in that rather messed up head of yours." She closed her eyes again and managed to pull her wrists free of the ropes. Rubbing her wrists, she looked back over to him. "Always playing your little games, thinking that you have all your ducks in a row." She stood up and was face to face with him, saying, "It makes me wonder what the puppet master your Da would think of you not accounting for a variable in your equation." She gave him a sarcastic pout, as her voice went deep with an Irish brogue. "Poor work, Jamie. But then you've never been that much of a mathematician, have you?"

He tried hitting her again only to have her grab his arm and proceed to dislocate both his shoulder and his elbow in quick order. She threw his arm at him, completely useless to the man. Lying on the ground holding his arm to his chest, he was gasping in pain. She grabbed him by his ear and pulled him over to the chair, sitting him down.

"Are you listening, Jamie?" she breathed to which he nodded. "I don't play games…"

"You can't kill me," he told her. "I have people everywhere. Watching Holmes, Watson and his wife…" He gasped in pain, as he tried to move his arm.

Hermione only leaned over and flicked his nose hard. "Do stop annoying me by saying stupid things, Jamie…"

"Jim! My name is Jim!" he roared.

"But you'll always be Jamie in my heart," she told him, her words sarcastic and taunting. "Weak…ineffectual…little…Jamie." He growled at those words. "That's what your Da meant every time he uttered your name. And everyone who heard him say as much knew it." She stood up, stepping away from him. "Yes, you had people watching us all, haven't you? But pray tell, who was watching the watchers?" His eyes went to hers and he knew that not only were these men found, but they were more than likely dead. "Let me finish what I have to say and I'll be on my way."

She stood up straight, looking him dead in the eyes. "I don't play games, Jamie. I wage war. If you send your players my way, I will send them back to you…" She leaned down and growled the last, "…in pieces." She stood up regally with her face set so unlike the victim he thought her to be, but the queen of the board able to kill one and all in her wake. "So play your games like boys do. I could tell you to not bother, but you've always been a brat needing your own way all the time."

She went over and opened the door. He had expected her to be hit with gun fire, but nothing happened.

"Did you really think I didn't know that was you at the Chelsea Theatre?" She looked over to him. "I've had your scent ever since. Please do not doubt that…" She sneered and said, in a hard sarcastic tone, "…Jim." She rotated her head again, making her neck crack. "I wish I could say that this was pleasant, but as you know I've never been a good liar."

"What about Holmes?" he demanded.

"What about him?" she asked him. "You will try to play your games, he will stop you, and the cycle begins anew." She gave a fake yawn that she covered with a delicate hand. "How tedious." Her eyes went all the harder, as she said, "And if I grow too bored with your games, who knows? I may have to put a stop to them myself. And you wouldn't want that, would you?" His eyes went narrow at her words. "So take care, Jamie. For you never know what will bring me into play." Taking the door handle into her hand, she walked out of the room and closed the door very quietly behind her—the click of it shutting as loud as a gunshot.

Jim rushed and tried to find his men, but they were gone. He searched the block, but there was nothing and no one there. Not his men, not his weapons, and no Hermione Granger in sight. He scream out indignation and fury echoed in the small neighborhood in Kent. But even as the hate for his one-time friend boiled in his mind, he knew to go near her was paramount to suicide. Madness aside, no one had yet called him stupid. And clashing with the woman he had come face to face in that room would be just that.

TBC…

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And that's the start of it all! What did you think? Review to let me know. Thanks for reading and have yourself a splendid day!