A/N: This is the last chapter folks! It's been fun writing this and thankyou to anyone who has read this! You're all wonderful!

The days dragged on endlessly, torturously, relentlessly. Years afterward, as Hermione struggled to remember exactly what had happened in those ensuing months, she found it difficult to separate reality from the delusions of her shattered mind. But during that time, she had held onto one thing, the one thing that had got her through her time as a captive – her friends. Despite the dark fact that she practically renounced them, she still held onto the strong belief that they would never abandon her.

And they never did.

Her two best friends stood as a symbol of her life in the outside world. A life that she hoped still existed. She had no idea how the war was going, whether the Order were winning or even surviving or not. With no news of the outside world or even of Voldemort's operations, she never found out exactly what in Schott's Scrolls turned out to be of interest. However, she understood that it was in their plan to break her and use her as a spy, or even worse, as an assassin. And that Draco's cruelness towards her was just a game.

But still she hoped that this would all soon end. A small beacon that nothing that was put to her, managed to extinguish.

Draco Malfoy, as accomplished and skilled as he was at deceiving and manipulating others, could not understand or at the very least, underestimated the strength of friendship. Never having the privilege of such a wondrous thing deprived him of its power. And so his greatest downfall at attempting to break Hermione Granger was the two boys that he had loathed so much at school. For Ron Weasley and Harry Potter had everything that he didn't and he envied them; shunning any personal relations and preferring the power that the Dark Lord offered him.

Using a myriad of wizarding spells didn't work on Hermione. She would cry, sob and scream, but not once did she succumb under their will. She would not let herself be brainwashed. Managing even to resist the Imperius Curse, she never broke. When that failed, more medieval methods of forced programming were used, such as the Cruciatus Curse and some Muggle forms of torture. But Hermione held on. She knew her friends would come for her one day and that if she were to die here, at least she would not betray them.

Every monotonous day worked to slowly deprive Hermione's senses of external stimuli as she was kept in her dark cell. Those times were punctured of intervals of pain and misery. And monstrously, just as Hermione managed to snatch a few moment of sleep, someone would come barging in, usually drunk and overpower her. These times would end with her shivering and shaking with disgust and all dignity gone.

But the day finally came.

Hermione realised that that day was conspicuous as she wasn't disturbed for a good twelve hours. Half starved and almost mad, Hermione scrabbled to her door and pressed her ear against it, hoping against hope. Then she heard it. Panicked yells, faint at first, a great many floors above her head. Then the sounds became louder and louder. She heard explosions. She pressed her ear harder against the door, listening greedily. An hour or so had past and still Hermione sat against the door on the dirty, cold floor, listening to the battle that was raging upstairs. Suddenly, an explosion sounded nearby and Hermione's heart nearly failed her from excitement.

She was found.

She began yelling and screaming, banging on her door with her scratched and bloody fists.

I'm in here! Please help me! Get me outta here! I'm here!

She was pretty sure she had said it out loud and that she hadn't imagined it in her head. It had been a long time since she had had any confirmation otherwise.

It appeared that her pleas were heard when she heard a voice directly on the other side of her door ordering her to stand back. The door was blasted off its hinges and there stood in the settling dust, the two people that she had thought about the most. She almost couldn't believe her eyes and ran into their arms, fearing that this was just another enchantment in order to break her mind. But it was real. She could feel their bodies pressed against theirs and their astonished voices. They thought she was dead, they said. This was a miracle, the other said. They hugged her harder and Hermione held onto them as tightly as she could, not wanting to let them go. She feared that if she did, they would disappear in a puff of cruel smoke and she would wake up grasping for non-existent figures in the dark. But soon reality came back to her. They had to get her out of here quickly, so they led her up the stairs and the scene that assaulted Hermione's eyes was almost too much to bear. After months of not seeing anything or anybody other than her cell and her captors, even the mere colours of the outside world overstimulated her starved eyes.

They hurried her past the fallen bodies, the caved in walls and the swirling dust. Hermione could only manage to stay conscious as her two rescuers held one arm each and fired jinxes and curses rapidly at any that came into their way. Everything was too real, too much, too loud for Hermione and she squinted her eyes and tried to block out the sounds. It was then that when they were attacked, she was the last to react. Feeling herself thrown roughly on the ground and told to stay behind them, Hermione was confused, but soon heard and saw the enemy in front of them. Pushing herself up, she crept against the corner and hid behind a heinous marble statue. She watched as her friends struggled to fend off the Death Eaters, as they were horribly outnumbered. Hermione felt more vulnerable than ever as she sat in the middle of a battle without a wand.

But as if her unsaid prayers were answered, a wand clanked near her, rolling towards where she had hidden. She looked at it for a moment, confused as to where it could have come from. Then she looked towards where the fight was taking place and saw that one of the Death Eaters had been disarmed. Seizing her opportunity quickly, Hermione lunged for it and Stunned the witch who stumbled towards her for the wand. She joined her friends in the battle, ferociously Stunning those who had put her through hell all those months without much regard for herself. Her two friends were busy against the others when she beheld a familiar figure in the midst. Yelling a charm, Hermione unmasked that person to find someone whom she had dearly loved to face with a wand for many months. It was Draco. Time seemed to slow down. He saw her with her wand pointed towards him. She slowly walked over to him. As he opened his mouth to curse her with a horrible smirk, Hermione got in there first and cursed him. She watched him fall, not yet dead, with little emotion in her eyes. Hermione had been waiting and nearly fantasizing madly about this opportunity for many months. Along with the thought of seeing her friends again, the idea of taking revenge upon the bastard who had broken her heart, her soul, her everything, kept her sane. There was no way she was going to stand back and let others do the job for her. A fierce anger was burning through her, yet she remained as calm and as cold as ice. She was going to do this. She was going to kill him. There wasn't any time or moment to think about what was right or wrong. Hermione needed a resolution to this. Even afterwards, as Hermione recounted the events, she felt little guilt over the matter. There was no conflict.

She slowly walked over to him, wanting him to know what she was going to do. She wanted to see the fear in his eyes as his life was about to end. She saw his pale face on the ground, wincing in pain, but still managing to look superior to the person above him who had a wand pointed towards his heart.

"Now you're not really going to – "

"Avada Kedavra!"

She gave his lifeless body a brief glimpse before getting back into the fray and helping out her friends.

This was the end. She never looked back at him. Hermione faced forward and fought the battle that was ahead of her.

A/N: What do you think? When I first started to write this, I had the whole story pretty much planned out and always promised myself that it would end here. So this is it. Thank you all for reading!!