Stolen Innocence

Hermione ran blindly out of the alley. The blood poured down her face, causing her eyes to sting. Her brain had ceased to work, refusing to acknowledge what had just happened. She kept running, she didn't care where she was going or what was happening around her. All she cared about was getting away from that evil place.

She let out a startled yelp as she ran around the corner and right into something. Looking up she saw that it wasn't a something she had ran into, but a someone. She gasped, seeing who it was, she grabbed her hood and pulled it over her head, covering her bloodied face.

'Miss. Granger?' asked a cool, silky voice. Her blood ran cold as she struggled to stand up, only managing to make it onto her knees. Now she had stopped running she was starting to feel the full extent of her injuries. Her head was spinning, her arm was throbbing and the pain between her legs was unbearable.

'Professor Snape, I'm fine' she said quietly, and despite her best efforts her voice still shook. He looked down intently at her. She felt his eyes boring through her hood and made another desperate attempt to pull it tighter. That's when he saw it. As her hand darted out towards her hood, it caught the moonlight, glistening a crimson red. He gasped and crouched down beside her, on closer inspection he could see that the pavement around her was littered with drops of blood.

Hermione whimpered and used both shaking hands to pull the hood down as low as possible and hold it there. Without anything holding it together, her robe fluttered open. What Snape saw caused his eyes to fill with tears and emotion. Her top was ripped in several places, her bra strap had been snapped. Looking down he saw what he guessed had once been a skirt, in tatters around her waist. Blood and bruises covered most of her body.

Snape leant forwards, hands outstretched. Hermione backed against the wall and clenched her eyes shut, his hands grabbed her robes and gently pulled them around her. He carefully slipped one arm behind her back and the other one under her knees. She struggled as he stood up but soon saw that her efforts were futile. She simply leant against him, crying into the front of his robes. Looking down, Severus's heart filled with sorrow, seeing this poor lonely angel broken and crying in his arms. Glancing around, he clutched her closer, then disapparated with a deafening crack.