A/N This is my second attempt at a more serious Lumione. It is darker than my usual work and there are fewer laughs. There is some violence and, whilst there are no rape scenes, there is reference to sexual violence. I will provide appropriate warnings at the beginning of chapters. I don't think anything I've written is triggering, but please read the warnings and if in doubt PM me for an abridged version.

This is a Lumione story and there will be a HEA for them. I can't guarantee the same for any of the side pairings. Ginny has her own story arc and if you feel particularly strongly about who she ends up with this may not be the story for you.

I have around 40,000 words of this story roughly drafted already. It is still very much a work in progress though and I can't promise speedy updates. I will aim for once a week, but please be patient.

Huge thanks to Vitellia for her beta skills, help and encouragement.

It is her third winter in the tent and Hermione knows it will be her last. She is not one for melodrama. Despite being prone to frequent bouts of tears she is, and always has been, a realist. It would be foolish to think her circumstances anything other than dire.

The year she spent hunting Horcruxes with the boys seems like an extended holiday compared to what has followed. Back then, she had her wand. How easily she took for granted the ability to conjure heat, to keep herself clean and their encampment protected. It never occurred to her to consider how much more difficult she would find things without the adjunct of magic and if she were alone…now she is completely alone.

Gradually, the enchantments on the tent are beginning to unravel. Every morning she expects to wake up to find that her abode has reverted to the basic two man tent it outwardly resembles. When it rains she places pans beneath the leaking seams to collect the drips. Often she wakes up to find a puddle forming within the creases of her sleeping bag. She thinks if she had her wand she could repair the magic. She could do so many things if she only had her wand.

Things weren't really bad until her supply of Muggle money ran out. Before then, she travelled around the country on the discount bus network. She bought food in supermarkets and treated herself to the odd shower in railway stations. She didn't live well, but she had managed. Now, she is no longer managing. Every day she sees her resources diminish a little further. She has sold everything of value she had. She has a bag of Galleons she doesn't dare use and a pile of magical text books she has read from cover to cover more times than she likes to count.

She has considered returning to the Muggle world. She could check into a homeless centre, get a social worker and a job and try to create a life for herself in the world she chose to leave behind nine years previously. But she doesn't dare. Her parents' house is a burnt out shell. She was right to send them away. Voldemort would have found them. That's the problem with the Muggle world. People are easily found. There are too many records both paper and digital.

So she exists somewhere between the two worlds. She utilises the last vestiges of magic available to her; the enchanted tent, her extended bag, Harry's invisibility cloak and she draws her resources from the Muggle world. She doesn't like to steal, but she has no choice now if she wants to live.

And she does still want to live. Although she wants it a little less each day. When she hears the Snatchers in the woods she almost doesn't bother to run. Before fear comes relief. She will finally be caught. The endless battle against the monotony of surviving is about to come to an end. Then she comes to her senses and she runs silently through the woods away from the direction of her tent. She doesn't think they see her. They are noisy and brash. Their harsh laugher alerts every creature within a quarter mile radius to their presence. Hermione moves soundlessly through the densely packed woods. She tries to keep the watery winter sun over her left shoulder in the hope that she might retrace her footsteps at some point and make her way back to the tent. She knows she won't last a night in the open.

She stumbles over the edge of the embankment and is immediately brought to the ground. She falls in an undignified mass of arms and legs and tangled hair. At first she is not particularly afraid. She is not falling fast and she thinks the embankment will deter her pursuers both real and imagined. But the ground continues to give way beneath her and she continues to tumble downwards and she is moving faster and faster. The world is flying by in a sickening kaleidoscope of fractured images and it occurs to her that perhaps this is how she will die. Her broken body will be left in an ignominious pile at the bottom of a cliff she should have seen. Then there is a sickening thump which she belatedly realises is the sound of her head hitting a tree.

Moments later, there is pain and she clutches at her head, almost expecting to find her skull caved in by the force of the blow. She has come to rest on a mossy bank. The ground is soft beneath her aching body. She looks up through the canopy of trees to the weak sun and blinks slowly as nausea threatens to overwhelm her. She closes her eyes, determined to keep them shut until the pain in her head has gone away. She vaguely thinks that it is not advisable to fall asleep so soon after sustaining a head injury, but the slide into unconsciousness is as inevitable as her earlier fall and she is powerless to resist.

A/N Well...that was short and disappointingly lacking in Lucius. Next chapter is coming in a few minutes...you've just got time to leave me a review.