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Chapter Fourteen

Day 73

My teeth always hurt just before a storm.

Merlin, he's even louder now. Sounds like there's three of

Hermione dropped the quill as she heard shouting. Snape wasn't alone. Hermione's breath came short as she stood quietly and moved as close to the door as she could, pressed against the bars, straining to hear.

"It's absolutely preposterous!" came Snape's level voice.

Mumble followed, and then Hermione clearly heard Snape's disbelieving snort, a shout, then one deafening crack of Disapparition, the loudness signalling that it had been a Side-Along, and that one member...at least...had not been prepared. Wherever Snape was, Hermione knew that being Splinched was the least of his worries.

This was it. Her lifeline was gone, and if Voldemort saw through their ruse of sexual abuse, Hermione had only a few days to live.

I don't know whether to save my food or eat as much as I can before it goes bad. On the one hand, I want to make sure I have enough to last. On the other, nothing would be more horrifying than to cast Repleo just to have a plate full of mouldy food come back.

I'm so scared.

When Hermione woke up the next day, she drank as much as possible to stave off hunger and ate sparingly. It would be better to eat mouldy cheese and stale crackers then starve. The longer she stayed alive, the better her chances were. Snape could come back, after all. Or someone else might come.

Anything could happen, really.

I dreamt last night that he was tortured. I imagine it's happened to him many times over the course of his espionage. I didn't want to be morbid, but I can't help but wonder how long I would last until I broke and crumbled under the pain. I might have a high tolerance, but everyone has limits.

My mind is going horrible places. I want to sleep but I've never felt so vulnerable.

On the third day without Snape, Hermione began to doubt his return. She had to escape. Harry wasn't coming, though not for lack of trying, she was sure. He and Ron and Ginny and everyone must be sick with worry over her by now. She only hoped that they weren't putting themselves in danger looking for her.

At least the milk hadn't gone bad yet. Hermione drank cup after cup of tea. It helped fool her stomach, at least.

The bars were solid.

The mirror couldn't even be shattered, not that she'd know what to do with the shards if she'd been able to. Death by self-exsanguination seemed just as, if not more painful than starvation. She owed it to everyone to hold out until the end.

The stone walls yielded nothing except scrapes, bruises and numb fingertips from exploring every inch.

I can't believe he let himself get caught. Some master fucking spy. Didn't he realise this might happen? Didn't he, in all his grand scheming, stop to think for a second that I might get trapped in here? He didn't give me a way out!

Snape killed me over two months ago; it's just taken me this long to die.

On the fourth day, Hermione destroyed the room.

Not the brightest move, seeing as how she almost fainted from exertion. But at least she felt better mentally.

Not that there was much to destroy. Her loose-leaf papers were torn and shredded, her quills snapped, even her teacup had fallen victim to her rage, and she regretted nothing more than that. She tried tapping the shards and catching tea with her hands, but it didn't work. The spell was broken.

The desk hadn't gone down easily, but she'd launched drawers at it from atop the bed, and eventually the wood splintered enough for her break it in half by tipping it hard onto the stone floor again and again.

Hermione was dooming the dresser to a similar fate, throwing chunks of desk and drawer at it, when she noticed something peculiar.

Watching carefully, Hermione threw a piece of desk a certain way and watched it fall inside the open face of the bureau. But it didn't just fall inside.

It disappeared.

Hermione blinked. She stood quickly and knelt before the gaping front of the dresser. She picked up a pair of knickers and tossed them inside. They, too, vanished from sight.

Where on Earth were they going?

But then Hermione realised it didn't matter where they were going; they were going somewhere. And that meant... there was a way out.

Fingertips tingling with excitement, Hermione picked up a mostly intact drawer and began to break apart the dividers between the drawers so there was enough space for her to crawl through.

She spared one last look for her destroyed room. Her eyes landed on her battered copy of Jane Eyre. It was one of Snape's favourites. He had tried to take it back, but even though she didn't much like the heroine or the 'hero,' she'd refused to return it, saying she wanted to read it again until she understood why Snape liked it so much. In truth, she had no plans to read it again, but it smelled of him. Fingers trembling, Hermione tucked the book into the back of her jeans, fell to her knees, and entered the dresser.

Once inside, she didn't disappear like the clothing had. She had no idea what she was doing wrong. There wasn't much room in the dresser, nowhere for her to go. In frustration, Hermione fell against the back of the dresser, and had to scramble when she seemed to physically shift, like the room around her had moved, but she stayed in the same place. Hermione glanced behind her and gasped. Her cell was gone, replaced with a wall that looked just like the back of the dresser. Turning, Hermione cried out in surprise. What had once been the back of the dresser was now the front... only it didn't lead into her own room. She bolted out of the piece of furniture.

She was standing in front of the bureau in an entirely different room. Snape's room. She remembered it from her search for the potions when Snape had been hurt. It was just as Spartan as she remembered, looking unlived in...painfully so.

The fucking dresser.

Hermione wanted to scream in frustration and at the sheer ease of the whole thing. The dresser was like the Vanishing Cabinets Draco had used to let the Death Eaters infiltrate the school. Only Snape had used it for laundry. If she hadn't pulled her drawers out on her side, she was sure they'd be sitting properly in their cubbies, filled with her gifted clothing. That was how they always came out clean...Snape washed them for her!

Hermione wanted to cry. She wanted to sneak into Snape's bed and curl up in his sheets. She'd fall asleep there and when she would awaken, he'd be pushing the hair from her face and tenderly pressing his lips against her forehead.

But that wasn't how things worked in Hermione's world anymore.

And the most important thing right now was to save Severus Snape.

Hermione wasted about ten minutes looking for her wand, but there was no sign of it, and Snape was much too clever to leave it anywhere she'd be able to uncover it. She knew she had no hope of finding it.

Walking around Snape's house made her feel both triumphant and scared. If Snape came back, he might be furious. Then again, he might think her rather clever for having figured out the dressers. Though one look at her demolished room would detract from 'clever' and add to 'crazy.'

In the kitchen, Hermione found the only things that could be used as weapons. She tucked a small but sharp paring knife into her sock and grabbed a larger steak knife and put it in her sweater pocket. There were no shoes for her to wear, but no matter.

The lack of natural light told Hermione it was night time, and thank Merlin for that, because she could catch the Knight Bus and get to Grimmauld Place. The Order would be able to help her. And once she found Harry and Ron, they could go help Snape.

She was about to make for the door when a tapping on the window caught her attention. An owl stood on the sill, glaring impatiently, if an owl could do such a thing.

Hermione thought taking the letter could either be a very good thing or a very bad thing. As it was, she needed any help she could get, especially as she looked around and saw no front door. Snape had warned her there wouldn't be one, but she hadn't quite believed him. Maybe she'd hoped that he'd begun to trust her enough to at least leave her that much.

No matter how she tried, she couldn't get the window to open more than a few inches. Squirming her fingers out, she managed to take hold of the missive, though the bird could not have looked more disgusted with her. It didn't bother to wait for a treat, undoubtedly thinking her to uncouth to even offer.

Hermione quickly unrolled the small scroll.

Severus,

DM.

Hermione had no doubt that the formal yet stilted handwriting belonged to Draco Malfoy. What had they feared? If Narcissa Malfoy had bid Draco leave, then that meant that something might have put him in danger, for Narcissa loved her son.

A battle of some sort? At Malfoy Manor?

Pocketing the letter, Hermione immediately picked up a rickety kitchen chair and launched it at the window, expecting it to shatter. It didn't, and she had to jump back to avoid the ricocheting chair.

Fuck.

There was no way out.

Hermione wondered if she began a fire if it would burn a hole in the wall or ceiling before it devoured her, as well.

An ancient fire extinguisher by the equally ancient stove made her laugh. Oh, yes, that might protect her for all of thirty seconds. What a quaint little Muggle relic.

Wait.

Muggle.

For all its protections and charms, this was a Muggle house! Breathing deeply, Hermione tried to remember... that bathroom!

Running now, she entered the bathroom that doubled as a laundry room. She'd found it while looking for Snape's potions when he'd been sick.

With strength borne of sheer determination and pure rage at her former Potions professor, Hermione tore the dryer away from the wall.

Unfortunately, the vent was much too small for her to fit through.

Hermione ran back to the living room and laid eyes on the fireplace. There was no Floo powder, though of course Snape would have closed it to anyone but himself in the first place, but maybe...

Crawling into the hearth, she was devastated to see the chimney was much too narrow for her to shimmy up.

Hermione's heart was straining with the hope and loss of her attempted escape. There was no way out.

Before she even realised what she was doing, she found herself downstairs, standing outside the door to the room with her cell in it. The sense of safety she'd had when Snape had been in the house was gone, but so was the feeling of vulnerability though which she'd suffered ever since he'd been taken away. If someone came, she would at least have a fighting chance. Probably not against a wizard intent on killing her, but a slim chance was better than none at all.

Wandering farther into the cellar, Hermione saw a huge iron furnace, the type that would have been used to heat the entire house before baseboard heaters had been put in with the advent of electricity. There was tinder and matches, more than enough to start a fire.

Hermione trailed her finger over the matches and picked one up, flicking her ragged thumbnail against the head and watched, transfixed, as it burst and dwindled. It might not be a way out, but it could give her a chance.

With the matches in hand, Hermione turned to leave. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that a piece of the wall had been boarded up. Curious, she tried to investigate, but the boards were hammered in deeply.

But it might be a window. Though she'd thought she was too far underground for a window, but the boarded up bit of wall made no sense otherwise.

Running back up the stairs, Hermione searched the closets, finally finding the one thing she needed. Maybe the house would work with her, after all.

With the crowbar, she pried the boards off the wall, uncovering a small metal chute.

For coal.

Snape's house had a fucking coal chute.

Hermione hadn't realised she was crying until she could no longer see where to pry off the next board. She wiped her faced on her shirt and finished uncovering the hole.

Looking through, she could see it was at least two metres up and only just wide enough for her to squirm through. It was black as pitch and slippery with coal dust.

When the last bar was gone, Hermione clambered inside the hole. Her hands slid and there was nothing for her to grab onto, but she braced herself with her back and elbows and just heaved herself straight up, scrambling like an animal to get to the top.

"Please, for the love of Snape, don't let him have closed off the door on the outside," she whispered.

Hermione reached the top of the chute and pushed the door open. It wouldn't budge. Growling in frustration, Hermione began to punch the metal door...losing her temper had worked with the dresser, after all.

And apparently it was working for the coal chute door. It creaked and protested, but it gave. It had been rusted shut but not boarded up.

Squirming the rest of the way out, Hermione was finally free. Free. She'd done it. She'd escaped!

She fell onto the grass by the side of the house, rolling in it to clear off the worst of the coal dust and grime. Her hands were black, but she scrubbed them on the ground until they were only grey.

Severus Snape, she thought viciously, standing at the curb and throwing out her hand for the Knight Bus, thinking with all her might of how she needed it right now, you had better need rescuing, because I'm not fucking around anymore.