Chapter 1: Persephone

Disclaimer: Not mine.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. – Charles Bukowski

Chapter 1: Persephone

Hermione woke up scuttling away from a Cruciatus Curse.

She clenched her teeth, came up against something hard, and threw up her hands. The pain would be teeth rattling, deep in her bones, in her flesh; it would feel as if she were being flayed alive, as if her organs were being pulled out with rusty hooks, as if being held down into a vat of acid. She would scream and beg and writhe until she gave up every last bit of her dignity, and still, the pain would not –

There was no pain.

Slowly, Hermione lowered her hands, noticing at last that it was quiet and that she was alone. She must have been having a bad dream. The nightmare images of a howling monster and something slithering through the darkness were already slipping away, but she was still shaking from the terrors of her dreamscape as she huddled against a head board in a graceless jumble of limbs.

Hermione unfolded herself and crawled to the edge of the bed where she sat trembling, confused as to where she was and how she had gotten there. The room was small and unfamiliar, big enough for the bed, a wardrobe and a dresser covered with bits of parchment and an empty ink well. Dust motes danced in a thin shaft of afternoon sunlight that fell through a gap in the tatty curtains, spilled across the faded duvet and climbed up the yellowed, peeling wallpaper of the opposite wall.

In the distance, she could hear cars on a motorway.

She stood and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, which were, she noticed with some concern, dirty and torn at the knee. She felt the most distant twinges of panic as she dug desperately through her memories, trying to recall some event that would reasonably explain her whereabouts, but all she came up with was being in the Quality Quidditch Supplies and leaning past Ginny to look out the big front window –

Nothing else came. Hermione pushed back the panic that wanted to surface and decided it would do her no good to get worked up. It was entirely possible that something bad had happened, but that it was over now, and this was an Order safe house and that Mad-Eye Moody or Professor Lupin or Molly Weasley were down stairs waiting for her to wake up.

Yes. Good. That would do.

The next issue at hand was thirst. She was thirsty. Very, very thirsty.

A door to her left was cracked open. Since no one had come barging in to hex her – or to offer her a glass of water, for that matter – she sidled towards the door and pushed it open with the tips of her fingers, hoping that it was a bathroom with a working faucet. The dim sunlight outlined a sink and large bathtub. She tried the wall just inside the door for a light switch – a Muggle habit that she had never been able to break – and when she found none, whispered a tentative, "Lumos."

Candles ignited along the back of the sink.

She took a cautious moment to decide that the bathroom was wizard space; although it was small, the white tiles were clean and bright, and the claw footed tub had a multi-headed bronze faucet like those at Hogwarts, all of which was at complete odds with the dilapidated bedroom in which she had just woken. One last glance told her that there was a bottle of Muggle shampoo on the floor near the tub and a towel tossed over the edge to dry, and then she went right for the sink.

She dipped her face under the water. It tasted wonderful. She wasn't quite sure she had ever been this thirsty before and stayed under the faucet until her back began to ache from the awkward position. She drew away and wiped her mouth with the cuff of her jumper, feeling somewhat ridiculous that she couldn't at least have used her cupped hand. She looked up, smiling at herself and feeling a little silly, but when she saw herself in the mirror, the smile fell from her face.

Her hair was a tangled, frizzy mess, her eyes shadowed as if she had been violently ill, but it was the long bruises along her jaw that caught her attention – four on the left, one on the right where someone had held her very, very roughly.

She touched them gently with trembling fingers, and with sudden clarity, she remembered: she was leaning past Ginny to see Death Eaters in the street, wizards and witches running ahead of them in a screaming, mindless mass; Ginny tugging on her arm, urging her towards the back of the shop where there was a fireplace; watching Ginny disappear into the flames shouting out for the twins' joke shop, but being unable to follow because someone had grabbed a fist-full of her hair; a Side-Along Apparition and then falling to her knees and looking up and up and up and seeing him, his red eyes boring down into her and the huge snake slithering around the perimeter of the room, eyeing her hungrily...

Hermione cut off the water immediately and stood stock still, waiting for some sound to tell her that she had been heard. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her finger tips. The last thing she remembered with any clarity was being hit with one of many Cruciatus Curses by Bellatrix Lestrange. She had no idea if that mad harpy was still around to curse her, or worse, Voldemort himself, or – and here she had to stop that line of thinking, or she would never get out of there for panicking.

She waited another moment, and when there was only the sound of motorway in the distance and the thick afternoon silence, she took a deep breath and crept back out into the bedroom.

She needed her shoes. She wasn't sure where they were, if they were here, wherever here was, at all. She peeked under the bed, then in the wardrobe in which hung several white shirts and heavy black robes. Her trainers were placed neatly on the bottom of the wardrobe, and as she sat on the bed, slipping them on, her eyes fell on the robes again.

Her stomach twisted.

No.

Just no.

She took another deep breath to calm herself before her imagination had her sliced into tiny bits for a dark potion and decided the best way to go about things was to just get out of there as soon as possible. She looked around for her wand but didn't see it. She pulled the sheets and the duvet off the bed, hoping that it had gotten lost in the folds, but nothing fell out of them but a few pound coins she had had in her pockets.

This complicated things. She might have had a chance with her wand, but without, things looked much more desperate. She didn't remember the Death Eaters taking it from her, but she didn't have it when she was dropped in front of Voldemort; she knew this because he had laughed at her and called her a foolish Mudblood when she tried to pull it out in self-defense. Maybe it was lost or broken or even sitting on a shelf somewhere as a Death Eater souvenir, but wand or no wand, Hermione wasn't just going to wait around to be tortured by another Death Eater, and she certainly wasn't going to just sit there and wait to be rescued. The logical part of her mind told her that was more likely to get her killed than not, but she was at her limit and there was no way – no way – that she was going to be a captive of that murderous traitor, Snape.

Hermione squared her shoulders and opened the bedroom door into a dim corridor. The stairs lay between her and a second door further down the hall, probably another bedroom, and she waited yet again for sounds that never came. She tiptoed towards the stairs, cringing as every little creak of the floorboards seemed to echo through the house. With every step she expected Snape to appear out of thin air as he always had at Hogwarts, this time bearing a curse rather than detention, but a snarling Potions master never materialized, and the only sound was Hermione's hiss of frustration when she saw that a closed door awaited her at the bottom of the stairs.

Hermione dithered on the top step, clenching her hands and biting her lip. She had no idea what awaited her down there, whether it was Snape, Bellatrix Lestrange, or a giant, ravenous snake, but she couldn't just stay here and wait to be tortured or killed or worse, whatever worse might be. She had to tell Harry that Voldemort knew about their mission to find the other Horcruxes, and Harry wouldn't know, not if Hermione didn't get out of this house and away from Snape, and she had to do it right now.

Hermione sucked up her courage and just went; she barged down the stairs and gave the door a firm shove when she couldn't find a doorknob. The door swung open ponderously as if weighted down and hit the wall behind it with a dull thump.

Hermione found herself in a claustrophobic sitting room lined with overburdened bookshelves. The lighting there was dim as well; slivers of sunlight snuck in around the shoddy curtains and dappled the bald rug with bright splotches of light. A battered sofa and arm chair huddled together around a rickety table, and there, amongst it all was the front door, like a beacon of salvation and freedom, the way out and away from the perfidious murderer who could be lurking somewhere in this house.

Two more strides and she gripped the doorknob with the same joy a starving man feels when he sees a magnificent feast before him.

And was knocked hard onto her bottom by a Shocking Hex.

"Don't hurt yourself, Miss Granger."

Hermione's head whipped around at the sound of the voice. It was Snape, too thin and strangely human in his shirtsleeves and trousers, on the far side of the room with his wand at his side.

The panic that she had been holding at bay by sheer determination and willpower surged within her. She scrambled to her feet and backed away until she hit the door and still pressed backwards as if she could fall through the wood like a phantom. "Stay – stay away from me," she stuttered. The rational part of her mind told her that it was a stupid thing to say, but her panic had reduced her to bad Muggle movie lines, and besides, this man was a murderer. If he could kill Professor Dumbledore, nothing would stop him from killing her.

She was going to die, and Harry wouldn't know that she had told Voldemort about the Horcruxes until it was too late, and then Harry would be dead and the whole wizarding world with him, and it would all be because she couldn't keep Voldemort out of her head, and she had told him everything –

"Calm down, Miss Granger," Snape snapped at her, taking a few steps forward. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Hermione cringed away from him, lost her footing and went down so hard that she felt a jarring shiver of pain all through her back.

"For Merlin's sake," she heard Snape hiss, then the sound of rustling cloth. "There. I've put away my wand."

When she looked up, Snape was a few steps away from her, lines of loathing and irritation etched into his face. Hermione peered up at him, waiting for something painful to happen.

"Panicking," he snarled, "will not do you any good, Miss Granger. Now get up and come sit on the sofa."

Hermione didn't move.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Do I need to cast an Imperius Curse on you?"

Hermione shook her head, remembering the awful pleasure of the Imperius from fourth year, just floating in mindless bliss, waiting for the next command.

She pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the unpleasant ache in her back. When she didn't move any further, Snape pointed at the sofa. "Now sit."

Trembling, she kept her eyes on him as she circled around the armchair and sat on the edge of the threadbare sofa. It creaked under her weight, and an ancient spring poked her bottom, but she was too terrified to find a more comfortable position. He eyed her irritably for a moment. "Don't you dare move," he said, disappearing through a second hidden door.

Hermione could hear him banging around in what must be the kitchen. She had long enough to catch her breath and find some sort of self-control before he swooped in again, a glass of amber liquid in hand.

"Drink this," he said, offering the glass. Hermione looked between Snape and the glass, thinking that he was mad if he thought she would ever drink anything he handed her.

Snape scowled. "It's whiskey. A Muggle brand. It is the only sedative I can give you that won't make you sleep for another twenty four hours or react badly with the Incendium."

"The what?" Hermione said. The name raised a hazy memory, something she had read somewhere she was sure, but it wasn't strong enough to grasp. Whatever it was, it didn't sound pleasant.

Snape's eyes narrowed, and he all but slammed the glass down on the table beside her. Whiskey splashed over the rim, sloshed across the table and dripped onto the carpet. Hermione shied away from his sudden burst of fury.

"Pay close attention, Miss Granger," he snarled as if she had asked him if werewolves were dangerous on nights of the full moon, "because I will only explain this once. The Dark Lord has seen fit to reward me for my actions last spring, and Bellatrix Lestrange convinced him that you would be an appropriate reward, no doubt as an insidious and multifaceted form of revenge for usurping her place with the Dark Lord. She also convinced him that giving you the Incendium Draught would be adequate insurance that you would not escape, or if you did, that you would not live long enough to benefit from it."

Hermione stared at him. A reward? How could she possibly be a reward? Unless...

Her horror must have shown on her face, because Snape sneered at her. "Yes, I see you've come to the correct conclusion and that we are of the same opinion on the matter."

"What...what does it do?"

"Oh," Snape smirked. The cruel smile he gave her was little more than a snarl full of crooked teeth. "Something you haven't filed away in your overactive brain? Then look it up. Here." He pulled a book from a shelf and practically threw it in her lap. Hermione saw that it was Moste Potente Potions. "I'm sure you are familiar with that title. Read up on the Vacuum Draught while you are at it. You were doused with that, too. I would make you write an essay, except you would turn in twice what I ask, and I refuse to grade another of your longwinded essays ever again. So, let's say an oral report, with specific reference to how the Incendium and Vacuum will interact, due by tomorrow afternoon."

Hermione was incredulous. "You're giving me an assignment?" she asked.

His eyes narrowed again in that dangerous way. "Did I stutter?"

Hermione was quick to shake her head, lest he explode at her again. "No, sir," she murmured, staring at the cover of the book in her lap. She wondered which way his mood would swing next and was vaguely surprised to hear him say, "Are you hungry?"

Hermione nodded more eagerly than she intended. She was hungry. Ravenous, in fact. The last meal she had eaten had been a breakfast at the Burrow the day she had gone to Diagon Alley with Harry and the Weasleys. And that was yesterday? Two days ago? Last week?

"Come." When she stood, still holding the book, he gave her a withering look that clearly told her that the swiftest way to lose her life was to go anywhere near the kitchen with his book. Hermione cautiously set it on the rickety table, too frightened of him to be offended that he had impugned on her meticulous care with books.

Snape led her down a short passage into a Muggle kitchen with toothpaste green Formica counters that were probably in style in 1955 and faded linoleum that was curling up along the walls. There was a small window over the sink, also with drawn curtains, and a door that must have lead out to the back garden.

"Sit," Snape said, pointing at a tiny kitchen table with only three chairs. Hermione obeyed, choosing the only chair that wouldn't leave her back to him. She nibbled her bottom lip and clenched her hands in her lap. She watched Snape anxiously as he moved back and forth, setting the tea to boil and slathering mustard on bread. She had never expected to see Snape doing such mundane things, especially for her and under these increasingly bizarre circumstances.

Of course, she would have never expected him to kill the headmaster either.

"What?" he snarled at her when he caught her staring at him.

Hermione dropped her eyes to her lap and mumbled an apology, noticing that there was a circlet of bruises around her wrist and four little half moon nail marks where her jumper had ridden up her arm. Right. That's where Bellatrix Lestrange had held her when she tried to feed her the other potion, the one that smelled like strawberries and rotten eggs, but Hermione had fought because the last potion seemed to have ripped out her soul...

"Miss Granger!" Hermione blinked at Snape's sharp bark. He was looking down his nose at her. "Tea?"

"Please."

A moment later Snape placed a cup of tea and a ham and mustard sandwich in front of her and sat down across from her with his own tea. Hermione was famished and wished he'd go away so she could stuff half the sandwich into her mouth like Ron after a Quidditch match; instead, she forced herself to remain in control and take one bite, even if it was slightly larger than what was entirely polite.

Hermione hated mustard, and its sour flavor permeated that first bite, followed closely by the unpleasant texture of stale bread. The combination was repulsive, but she kept chewing, eagerly taking another bite. She was so hungry that ham sandwiched between mustard and stale bread was like ambrosia from heaven. Within two minutes she had all but inhaled one half of the sandwich and was ready to devour the second half when she remembered that Snape was sitting across the table from her.

Hermione glanced at him quickly. He wasn't watching her at all, but frowning into his tea cup. He seemed perplexed and distracted and completely uninterested in Hermione's table manners.

Even so, she took a slower, more cautious bite of the sandwich. She stared at the perfect semi-circle her teeth had made in the bread as she chewed, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might have laced it with some potion, a poison or... or... it could be anything. She shouldn't have accepted anything from him. Bellatrix Lestrange had already fed her mysterious and dreadful potions, and here she was, accepting food from a traitorous, Death Eater Potions master within five minutes of deciding that she wouldn't take anything from him ever.

She felt sick and hopeless. And maybe this was what Persephone had felt like in the Underworld when she was handed the pomegranate: terrified and desperate, all but starving and lacking the willpower to refuse a small kindness like a ham and mustard sandwich, only realizing too late what it meant.

Snape's voice cut through her terrified fantasizing. "If I had poisoned it, Miss Granger, you would already be dead."

Hermione nodded slowly and forced herself to swallow.

And decided that, unlike Persephone, there was no way that she would take this lying down.

A/N:

1. Incendium = Latin for "fire," pronounced "inkendium."

2. Vacuum = Latin for "empty" or "void." In Latin, the u's are pronounced separately: "vac-u-um".

3. Hermione's flashbacks are a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So are nightmares, jumpiness, anger, anxiety, depression, and trouble sleeping. I've gotten most of my information on PTSD from the National Center for PTSD webpage.

4. In Greek Mythology, Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of grain, who is seized by Hades, the god of the underworld, and taken to be his queen. She refuses to eat while she is in the underworld, until she is one day offered a pomegranate. She eats 6 seeds and forever after is forced to spend 6 months a year in the underworld. We call those 6 months winter.

5. Thanks to Sophi for her amazing beta work!