Disclaimer: [Disclaimer claiming I don't own Harry Potter while making a joke of some sort]

A/N: New chapter! I really don't know what else to say, other than...read it. Enjoy it.

AND REVIEW IT.

I mean...and review it..?

:]

It'd only been a week ago. Ever since the war started and posters with her own face on it were circling around the country, Hermione had needed a way to escape everything. And she found that escape in Polyjuice Potion. The way that everything involving herself and Draco Malfoy collided had been caused by a huge mistake on her part. A huge mistake that almost cost her her life.

Hermione had seen the woman walking towards her and decided right then and there that that's who she wanted to be for the night. Blonde, sleek, fit. The woman had on a fire engine red blazer and smart skirt ending at her knees. If Hermione hadn't have been doing this for months, she would've felt some sense of thrill or guilt following the woman. But she didn't. As soon as the two crossed paths, Hermione turned on her heel, waited for a bit, and followed behind.

The woman, conveniently, took a turn into an alleyway between two tall brick buildings. Hermione had followed her almost halfway down the narrow space before the woman noticed the sound of footsteps behind her. When her blonde head turned around, red mouth slightly open, Hermione said, "Stupefy"- and before the woman could fall face first onto the pavement, she shouted "Windguardium Leviosa!". She laid her to rest on a pile of garbage bags.

Hermione did everything quite speedily after months of practice. She plucked a sliver of downy blonde hair, drew the bottle of Polyjuice Potion from her jacket pocket, and dropped the hair into the concoction. It bubbled over, and Hermione downed it like a shot of whisky.

"Okay," she breathed, features turning paler and narrower. She waved her wand back and forth, performing a memory charm on the woman. Then she walked to the end of the alleyway and placed another charm over it- one very similar to the charm protecting Hogwarts. If anyone felt like walking down it, they'd suddenly remember they needed to be somewhere else. Therefore, the beautiful stranger who's body she'd just stolen for the night wouldn't be taken advantage of by some creep in this seedy neighborhood.

Everything had been covered, and for the first time in a few weeks, Hermione felt free.

To make a long story short, she'd gotten drunk. Very drunk. She'd never been to a Muggle bar before, but other than the drinks, not much was very different. There were still the cat calls, slightly more than usual since she'd inhabited this new body. There was still the noisy air that she usually hated about bars, but tonight she didn't mind it. For a few hours she was a different person, and this different person didn't feel the same way about things that Hermione Granger did. This woman enjoyed being hit on by strange men. She enjoyed the free drinks a seductive wink earned her. This woman actually enjoyed being drunk.

After awhile she lost track of time. She wasn't sure when she started referring to herself as Hermione instead of the name she'd made up. She also didn't notice her hair was changing until the guy she was engaged with started gaping at her.

"Yer..."

He gulped, blinking stupidly.

"Yer hair."

She was drunk, but not drunk enough to forget that that was very, very bad. The feeling of dread came to her slowly, delayed by the amount of alcohol in her system, and she stumbled off the bar stool, running for the door. By the time she was outside, leaning against the side of the building, she was Hermione Granger again. Bushy-haired, dark-eyed. Shorter. Suddenly she hated the dizzy feeling in her head. She despised the amount of fake phone numbers she'd given out. And she really hated the fact that she'd been stupid enough to forget she had a time limit. Thank God she'd made it out when she did...thank God she hadn't done something really stupid.

That's when she noticed the man in the black suit standing a few feet away, his long shadow stretching to her shoes. There was something faintly familiar about his face, but she couldn't place it. Maybe if she was sober. Either way, drunk or not, she knew he was ugly, and that the hard look on his face unnerved her.

"What?" She didn't even mean to acknowledge him, but all the alcohol hadn't left her one ounce of self control.

He didn't respond. He just stayed there, looking at her with dead eyes.

"Well, okay," she mumbled, turning on her heel and beginning down the sidewalk. She wanted to get back to Grimmauld Place as soon as possible, but with the man staring at her she'd have to make a detour down the street and around the corner. She was about one block away from the bar when she heard his footsteps behind her, his long shadow now nipping at her heels. Hermione stopped, clutching the wand she'd shoved down her jeans, and turned to face him.

He spoke before she had the chance to. "Hermione Granger, is it?"

Her wand was in the air, but she seemed to be moving in slow motion. Her jumbled mind couldn't even think of what curse she ought to use. By the time she settled on one, he'd disarmed her, and her wand was flying towards the middle of the street.

"Coming with me then?"

She turned to run, but he was on her in seconds, huge arms wrapped around her waist and lifting her off of the ground. "Get off me!" She struggled, writhing in his grasp. "Get off me!"

Then he Apparated, and she was traveling along with him, to where she did not know. Until she opened her eyes.

Malfoy Manor.

Merlin...

By now the fear had sobered her up, and she stared at the huge stone fortress, stunned to silence. This was happening. She weakly squirmed in the giant man's grasp again, repeating that line to herself.

This is really happening.

He let go of her, and she fell forward, palms slamming into the cold, dead ground. She hadn't imagined the Malfoy's would let their yard turn into such a yellow wasteland, but then again they had more important things to deal with, now didn't they? A bitter wind blew past her, blowing the hair from her face and chilling her to the bone. She erupted into a fit of trembling, half from the cold and half from the fear.

"Get up," he grunted, walking a few steps ahead and pulling open the huge, black-iron gate. The rusty hinges screamed and, paired with the whistling wind, Hermione felt like she was in a horror novel. She stayed immobile, hands and knees on the ground. "Get up," he said again, voice booming.

She ran through her options quickly and came to the conclusion that there were only two. She could do as the man said- follow him into the manor, and either be tortured to madness or murdered in cold blood (or both). Or she could turn around, race through the hillside, and hope civilization wasn't too far away. That didn't seem likely though. There was a dreamy quality to the surroundings, like she was in the middle of nowhere, and trees seemed to stretch on and on past the lawn before her. The odds that she could escape this man were slim- even slimmer if he had the time to call for help- but they were at least odds. If she followed him, the results were certain. So she took a deep breath of biting autumn air, paused for one fraction of a second, and began running in the opposite direction of the manor.

"Hey!"

She'd only made it about twenty feet before she fell forward, an invisible rope wrapping around her ankles and crushing them against one another. Hermione cried out in pain and fought against it, despite knowing it wouldn't do her any good. She began to cry, tears worming down her cold cheeks, as the man's hand scooped underneath her stomach and lifted her into the air.

This is it, she thought, tears falling off the curve of her chin and landing in the dead grass. She thought of Ron and Harry, waiting by the fire at Grimmauld Place. She thought of her parents on vacation, completely oblivious to her existence. They'd never remember her now. They'd never known they'd made a child together once twenty years ago and that she'd died a violent and brutal death.

In this position, tucked into the man's side like a briefcase, she could only see his feet. She heard the sound of a door knocker coming down three times. Then a door opening. Light splayed across his black loafers.

"Oooh! What have you brought us today, love?"

Hermione knew that voice. Her insides turned to ice, and she closed her eyes.

Draco heard them, maybe only thirty feet away from where he was now, launching curse after curse at the closed door Granger had just disappeared behind. They knew it was no good- Draco knew that they knew that there was no getting through that forcefield- but they tried anyway, throwing everything they had at the stone wall. His aunt's voice floated down and reached him in his spot in the closet. High pitched and frantic.

"Look!"

He remembered the giant window facing the open field beside the door, and he figured the group of them had spotted Potter, Weasley, and Granger. This didn't seem particularly important to him until he realized what that meant, apparently at the exact same time Bellatrix did.

"Where's our little Draco?"

He wormed deeper into the corner of the small closet, long legs drawn into his chest.

"What...ya don't think he made it?" Some snarling voice asked. Draco guessed Fenrir, and scooted back even further.

"What?"

There was no question who that voice belonged to. Weak, trembling. Completely unsure of itself. That was his father, alright.

"Did I stutter, Lucius? Your filthy traitor son isn't standing with Potter and his wee friends! You don't think..." Draco could hear the obvious note of glee in her voice. "You don' think he's still here, do you? Oh my."

Draco pressed his hands into his face, certain now that he only had a few minutes of life left.

"Ooooh Dracoooooo?" She cackled out a few notes of laughter. "Come out and play with your Auntie Bellaaaa!"

Another Author's Note: So I feel like for every story I put out, I add some pathetic author's note begging for reviews. Sooo, here it is! But really though, if you like my story, let me know! I update based on the amount of people interested in it, because really, if no one's reading...what's the point of posting it? So PLZZZ I say again, with 3 z's so you know I'm super srs, review if you want more chapters. Because I actually wrote most of the chapters in advance. Actually almost done with the fic. So yeah.

Review!