New Beginnings

DISCLAIMER::: Everything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. I just love them so much I wanted to play with them a little.

Summary::: Severus gets stood up.

New Beginnings

Chapter Eleven

As Hermione and Harry approached the gates to the castle, Hermione stopped, turned, and said, "Harry, there is no reason for you to see me all the way up to the castle, only to walk back down here again to Apparate home. It's getting late, and I know Draco will be worried if he gets home to find you still out. Why don't we just say our good-byes now, and you can pop right home?"

"I don't know, Hermione... Are you sure you will be all right?" Harry asked with a trace of concern in his voice.

"I'll be fine. Once I cross the wards on the grounds, you know I will be perfectly safe," she replied. Then, hugging him, she said, "I had a wonderful afternoon. Now, off with you, I'll be fine," she repeated.

Harry hugged her back and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek before stepping away and Apparating home. Hermione watched him go, then stepped toward the castle. Just before she crossed through the gates, she heard a rustling sound and paused, listening. Hearing the rustling sound again, she turned slowly toward the bushes to her left.

Nervously pulling her wand from her robe pocket, she asked cautiously, "Who's there?"

When she didn't receive a response, she waited, straining her ears for another sound. 'I must be going crazy. Hearing strange sounds in perfectly ordinary bushes,' she thought, pocketing her wand.

Shaking her head ruefully, she turned and headed for the gates again, only to hear the noise once more. This time, she pulled her wand out and pointed it at the bushes as she slowly stepped forward, a curse ready on her lips. Just as she approached them, though, she jumped back, gasping as a small brown rabbit bounded across the path. Pulling her wand arm to her chest in shock, she chuckled at herself for being so paranoid.

Turning one more time to head home through the gates of Hogwarts, she screamed as strong arms grasped her painfully from behind. Struggling, she tried to aim her wand at her attacker, only to have it twisted out of her grasp. The last thing she heard as everything went black was a familiar voice whispering, "Stupefy!"

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Hermione slowly came to. 'Damn, my head hurts,' she thought groggily. Then, the memory of the attack came back to her. Sitting up quickly, she looked around. She couldn't see much in the dim light coming through the tiny window in the door at one end of the room. She could just make out the ratty mattress she was sitting on and a rusty bucket in one corner of the room. The walls, floor and ceiling seemed to be made of concrete, so she determined that the room she was in had been constructed using Muggle materials. Now, if only she could place that voice, and figure out how to get the hell out of this 'prison-cell' she found herself in.

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It was nearly nine o'clock, and Severus Snape had been pacing in front of the door to his quarters for the past forty-five minutes. 'What is keeping Hermione?' he thought.

He had been pleasantly surprised when she'd agreed to switch their meal from lunch to dinner. He didn't want to break the date altogether, but worried a bit whether changing it to dinner would rattle Hermione. Her note had sounded like she was fine with the new plan... but... could she have changed her mind?

As he was making yet another pass in front of his door, he heard his Floo activate, and stepped up to it to see the flames dancing about in a brilliant shade of green, with the Headmistress' head floating in the middle.

"Severus, have you seen Hermione? Her fifth year prefect has notified me that she hasn't been seen all day. Is she here with you?" Minerva inquired.

"No, Minerva, she is not here. She had agreed to have dinner with me, here, an hour ago, but never showed up." Starting to pace in front of the fire now, Severus began to run all kinds of horrible scenarios through his mind.

"You don't think something happened to her, do you?"

"I don't know, but I certainly intend to find out." With that, Severus straightened, and left his quarters. He needed to get outside the castle wards so he could Apparate. His first stop would be to the Potter-Malfoy residence, and, after that, the Ministry.

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Hermione figured it must be about eight or nine o'clock. The sun had gone down hours ago, and her stomach had been growling for the last forty-five minutes. 'I missed my dinner with Severus; he probably thinks I stood him up on purpose,' she thought.

Suddenly, a light came on outside the door and shone through the window. Jumping up, she ran over to the door to see if she could make anything out through its grimy window. She had discovered the hard way not to touch the door itself, but if she stood on tiptoes, she could just make out a dark shape moving on the other side. A small panel in the door opened, and a tray was thrust through it across the ground. The door snapped close again before Hermione could drop to her knees to try to look out.

Sitting back against the wall, she looked at the tray, her stomach growling again. 'If I wasn't so damn hungry right now, I wouldn't touch it,' she thought.

She didn't have her wand to test the food for poisons, so she had to rely on her senses of smell and taste. Most commonly used poisons were harmless in tiny amounts, only making the person sick, but not sick enough to kill them. The stronger poisons were either hard to hide in food or had a distinct scent to them.

Sniffing the food offered and determining that, if poisoned, it wasn't one with a strong smell, she took such tiny bites that it would be hard to tell if she could taste anything at all. Deciding that no poisons were tainting her meal, she ate slowly. She nibbled on what she figured was scrambled eggs and some kind of odd meat product that was in the exact shape of a can. None of it tasted very good, but she was hungry and had no idea when her next meal would be pushed through that horrid little 'cat-flap' door, so she finished every scrap.

Finishing, she placed the tray back on the floor in front of the cat-flap and moved over to the mattress to think and then try to sleep. She knew it wouldn't be easy, but she had to keep her strength up if she was going to get out of here, and the only way to do that was to rest and eat.

TBC

AN::: As always I would like to thank my fabulous betas, Allison and Piper. I would also like to thank everyone who has left a review. In the next chapter Hermione finds out a little about her captor.