A/N – Welcome to part 2 of Shattered Trust. As the subtitle indicates, this part of the story focuses on the time Draco and Hermione are separated. This is also where Draco's darkness begins to show itself. Updates will be every Wednesday, and this part has 12 chapters.

Hermione Granger's head was pounding as she groggily opened her eyes. The second the dim light from the room penetrated her vision, she quickly closed them again. Lying with her eyes closed, she tried to clear her head before gingerly trying again. This time the light didn't hurt her eyes and Hermione was able to sit up. Blinking slowly, Hermione looked around the small room she was in, trying to decide what had happened to her and where she was.

The last thing Hermione could remember was being in Hogsmeade. She remembered spending the morning with Harry and Ron, helping with the rebuilding work alongside Remus and Tonks. She remembered the boys going to grab some lunch, and then Tonks receiving a message saying they were needed back with the Order. Hermione clearly remembered Tonks convincing her to let her apparate them back up the castle, but after that there was nothing. She had no recollection of what had happened after her and Tonks dissapparated from Hogsmeade.

Hermione wasn't sure if it was both her and Tonks that were ambushed and taken, or it was Tonks herself who had taken her. But why would Tonks kidnap her? Hermione shook her head at the bizarre notion. Whatever had happened, Tonks was also a victim, of that she was sure.

Looking around at the small room, Hermione thought it didn't look like somewhere you would normally hold a prisoner. The room itself was actually quite comfortable, and reminded Hermione of the sort of guest room you might find in someone's home. There was a double bed, which she was still lying in, and a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a dressing table all made from the same light wood. The walls were painted light purple and a cream carpet covered the floor, with a deep purple rug standing beside the bed. However, appearances could be deceiving and no matter how nice the room was, she was still being held against her will. Now all she had to do was find out who had her.

Swinging her legs off the bed, Hermione looked down at herself and found she was dressed differently than she had been on Saturday. The jeans she was wearing was a slightly darker shade and she was now wearing a lightweight lilac sweater, instead of a green top. Looking around, Hermione found her boots and a pair of brand new trainers in the corner of the room. Getting up she grabbed her boots and pulled them on, before exploring the rest of her room. The wardrobe and the single chest of drawers all held clothes in her size, and even her style. She even found her jeans and green top among the clothes, although they both looked as though they'd been freshly washed. And on top of the dressing table was all the toiletries and cosmetics she might need, once again all things she used and liked.

The presence of clothes and toiletries was worrying, it meant whoever had her had been prepared and wasn't planning on letting her go any-time soon. It was also unnerving that the clothes and other stuff they'd bought were all things she would buy herself. Clearly whoever had her had done their homework on her and they had known what sort of clothes and other bits to buy.

However, what was more worrying was the fact Hermione couldn't find her wand. She'd searched the entire room, and couldn't find it. She'd even tried summoning it with wandless magic, and still nothing happened. Hermione couldn't decide if the second failure to find her wand was due to the fact it wasn't wherever she was, or there was some sort of wards and spells preventing her from doing magic. Her wandless magic was easily strong enough to summon her wand under normal circumstances. In fact her wandless magic was pretty strong all round, and while she usually used a wand when she was performing magic it was more out of habit then absolute necessity.

Deciding to see just what she could do without her wand, Hermione tried a bit of wandless magic. She soon found she could do simple things, like summoning the pillow from the bed, but she couldn't do anything major. At one point Hermione had tried blasting open the window, but nothing happened. She was confident there were wards around her, but they seemed focused on stopping any magic that might prove useful if she tried to escape.

After spending nearly twenty minutes working out what sort of magic she could and couldn't do, Hermione wandered over to have a look out the window. Directly down below the window was a peaceful looking garden, and beyond the garden was a beach and a dark expanse of blue sea. Hermione had no idea if the house she was being held was on an island, or was just near the coast, but hopefully she could find out as she was looking for a way out of her prison.

With the room thoroughly searched and her magic limitations known to her, Hermione made her way over to the door. She wasn't sure if it would even open, but it had to be worth a shot. Much to Hermione's surprise the door opened immediately, it hadn't even been locked and just swung open when Hermione turned the handle. Hermione wasn't sure if the fact the door was unlocked, was even more suspicious and she vowed to proceed with caution.

Tiptoeing from the room, Hermione found three more doors on a small landing. A set of stairs started just a few meters away from the room she'd just exited and a peer down them showed they lead to the ground floor. Deciding to explore upstairs first, Hermione cautiously pushed open the first door. The first room she entered was a bathroom, with the cabinet over the sink stocked with the essentials that weren't sitting on the dressing table in the room she'd woken up in. The next two rooms were bedrooms, but unlike the room she was in there were no clothes or anything indicating there was someone else in the house with her.

Not finding any answers upstairs, Hermione slowly began to make her way down the stairs. The stairs ended in a small hallway, and Hermione immediately tried to open the front door. Unlike the other doors she tried upstairs, the front door remained firmly shut and no amount of wandless magic could budge it. Leaving the front door, Hermione turned to the side and found an open door. The door led into a comfortable looking living room, although again there was no sign of anyone living there. The room contained a sofa, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, a few end tables, one of which held a radio, and a bookshelf stuffed with books. Even though the room held everything to make it habitable, it had an unused feeling about it. Everything was in its perfect place, with nothing looking as though it had been used.

Crossing through the room without searching it completely, Hermione exited through a second doorway and found herself in a cosy country style kitchen. The kitchen did look slightly more habitable, with food visible in the cupboards that held no doors. Hermione however paid very little attention to the kitchen itself, her focus was on the open back door. Just as she was about to cross over to the door a shadow appeared in the doorway and Sirius entered the house, carrying a paper.

"You're up," Sirius greeted with a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"How am I feeling?" Hermione repeated, slightly dumbstruck at coming face to face with Harry's godfather. Just how did Sirius fit into her being kidnapped? "I'm feeling bloody confused, that's how I'm feeling."

"Why don't you sit down and I can explain everything," Sirius suggested as he threw his paper onto the table and walked over to fill the kettle. "I'll make us some tea."

"I don't want tea, I want answers," Hermione demanded forcefully. "What am I doing here?"

"We did it for your own protection, Hermione," Sirius sighed, turning around to face the angry young witch. "We're protecting you from Voldemort."

"Not this again," Hermione cried, slumping into a seat as things started to make sense. Tonks hadn't been a victim like her, she'd been the one to snatch her on behest of the Order. Now all Hermione had to do was convince the Order that they were overreacting. "I don't need protection, Sirius. I appreciate the fact you're worried about me, but this isn't necessary. I want to go back to school."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Sirius said apologetically. "Dumbledore has warded the house, so you can't leave the premises. You can go into the back garden, but you'll not be able to pass across the boundary line."

"Oh my god, you've kidnapped me," Hermione gasped, horrified at the lengths Dumbledore and the Order had gone to. Even when she'd found out the Order were behind what had happened, she still hadn't realised how far they'd gone to keep her out of Voldemort's clutches.

"We're protecting you," Sirius corrected as he turned back and set about making some tea.

"I don't need protecting," Hermione repeated under her breath.

She knew there was no point arguing with Sirius, as he was just a pawn in the plan. The ringleader was Dumbledore, it was him she needed to speak to and talk some sense into. No doubt no-one else could even release her from the cottage but Dumbledore, so she was wasting her time in trying to convince Sirius to let her go. What she needed to do was find out when Dumbledore was coming so she could speak to him personally.

"So if you lot are supposedly protecting me, does that mean you're stuck here looking after me?" Hermione questioned, doing her best to keep the anger from her voice as she spoke to Sirius. After all, he wasn't the one who had come up with this ridiculous plan to kidnap her.

"I'm here for the time being, but a few others will be taking their turns as well," Sirius replied as he placed two steaming cups of tea onto the kitchen table.

"And what about Dumbledore?" Hermione asked. "When will I see him?"

"He's a very busy man," Sirius answered quickly as he picked up his cup again and turned towards the cupboards. "I'll bet you're starving, I'll make dinner."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at Sirius's back, unimpressed with his failure to answer her question. Judging from the shifty way he was acting, Dumbledore had no intention of coming to see her. Clearly the Headmaster was leaving her in the hands of other Order members, and wouldn't be gracing her with his presence. That meant she would have to find her own way out of the cottage.

While Sirius set about making something to eat, Hermione pulled the paper towards her as she got thinking about how to escape. Plans for escaping quickly got put on the back burner, as Hermione gaped at the front page of The Daily Prophet. Not only was the day, Tuesday, meaning she'd been unconscious for three days, but the headline in the paper was about her. 'Head Girl at Hogwarts tragically dies,' read the headline. In total disbelief, Hermione skimmed the article detailing how she was apparently found injured in the forest on Saturday and died early on Sunday morning following complications from her severe injuries.

"What the hell is this?" she exploded, throwing the paper onto the table. "You've faked my death."

"Damn, I didn't mean for you to see that," Sirius muttered.

"Then you shouldn't have left it lying around," Hermione retorted sharply. Suddenly not taking her anger out on Sirius wasn't important, especially since he was in on what had turned out to be an even more horrific plan than what she'd thought. "What have you lot done, Sirius?"

"We're protecting you," Sirius said. Hermione thought he was beginning to sound like a stuck record, just repeating the same phrase over and over again, and she had to wonder if it was her he was trying to convince or himself. "If Voldemort thinks you're dead, he won't come after you."

"You can't pretend I'm dead, that's crazy," Hermione shouted. "And what about my parents, and friends? Do they know I'm not really dead?"

"Harry and Ron know, they were in on the plan," Sirius admitted, deciding now wasn't the right time to mention that Harry had actually been the one to come up with the plan. "But no-one else does. Dumbledore, Tonks, Remus, Molly and Arthur are the only other people who know you're alive."

"You've let my parents think I'm dead," Hermione whispered on the verge of tears as the implications of what the Order had done began to really sink in.

She hated to think what her parents were going through, not to mention what Draco thought. Thinking of her boyfriend and the hell he must be going through, combined with thoughts of her grieving parents, proved too much for Hermione and she began to cry. The three people she loved more than anything would be going through unbelievable torture, all because the Order had foolishly decided to listen to Voldemort when he'd issued a ridiculous threat.

"It's for the best Hermione," Sirius said quietly, not sure how to deal with the crying teenager. "We can speak to your parents when this is all over and make sure they understand."

"How could you possibly make them understand?" Hermione sobbed. "You can't even make me understand. I hate the lot of you, you're all monsters. I will find a way to escape and I'll make sure everyone knows what heartless creatures you all are."

Pushing herself away from the table, Hermione stood up and fled the kitchen. Making her way back to the room she'd awakened in, she threw herself on the bed and dissolved into even more tears. She couldn't believe the Order had done this to her, and the people she loved, and she vowed to find a way out of the mess she was in. She would get back to her parents and Draco, and when she did she was having nothing more to do with the Order or anyone who'd had anything to do with faking her death.