Hermione glared in what she believed to be the general direction of her captors and tried to hide her fear. This wasn’t supposed to be happening to her. She wasn’t supposed to be the damsel in distress. She wasn’t supposed to just be snatched away from her friends like this. She wasn’t supposed to be caught by them.

And it was really all her own fault.

She shouldn’t have wandered off on her own. She knew this; she had known it even as she did it. She just felt so confined; never able to just leave, never able to go for a walk on her own, never able to just have a moment of privacy. It had been this way for much longer than she cared to remember and she’d felt so sick of it all. She had just wanted to go for a walk; it was hardly something worth dying for.

Yet, now she might.

“On your knees, Mudblood,” someone growled in her ear and she received a kick to the back of her knees that made her legs buckle.

She didn’t know where she was. They had taken her wand, bound her and Disapparated with her to the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. There, they had used a Conjunctivitis Curse on her, making her vision darken completely, before they hauled off with her. All she knew, all she could feel, was that after some time of walking they had now entered a building.

They were Death Eaters, of course. She hadn’t known them on sight, but she knew enough to know what they were. They had looked at her with such hatred and disgust that she was quite frankly stunned to still be alive. If they knew who she was there was little to be had in the way of hope. Damn her, why had she been so reckless today?

She tamped down a feeling of panic. Whatever happened, it couldn’t be good, she knew that, but there was no point in panicking prematurely. She would endure what she had to and she would die before betraying Harry. She would –

“Why does it not look at me?” someone hissed and Hermione’s blood ran cold at the tone. She felt the curse being lifted and her vision returning. She blinked a few times. “Excellent,” the voice said, and Hermione looked up, unable to stifle a gasp.

There was Voldemort himself, smiling at her, seemingly pleased with her reaction.

Hermione looked around her. The room she was in was large and luxurious but oddly lacking in furniture. The only chair in the room was Voldemort’s impressive throne-like chair in front of which she was currently kneeling. She glanced at her captors and they were holding themselves in subservient poses, staring at the floor.

“You’re probably wondering why you’re here, Mudblood,” Voldemort said in what was probably his most pleasant tone. He stopped expectantly and Hermione realized that he was actually waiting for her to respond.

“It had crossed my mind,” she weakly said. What was she supposed to say? There was a room full of people, eyeing her, looking like they just needed an excuse to kill her.

He smiled again. It was as if this was all some sort of play and he was the puppeteer. “I would like you to help me,” he said. “Doing so would please me immensely and perhaps it could prompt me to be… more understanding of your predicament.”

His gaze was steady and she knew what he was doing. Without a second thought she put up the walls that most people in the Order had been taught to erect these days. Occlumency had become necessary for their continued survival; even Harry had finally managed to learn some.

“That’s… nice,” she replied as if nothing had occurred.

She broke the eye contact as soon as it wouldn’t be suspicious to do so, and sized up the room and the few black-robed figures looming about in the shadows that she could see from her position. There was no way out for her. She would be Avada Kedavra’d at least twelve times before she even reached the door.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes at her and then suddenly seemed to make a decision, calling out, “Draco!”

Hermione’s eyes widened. Surely, the rumors weren’t true. Surely, Draco Malfoy hadn’t taken his father’s place at the—

“Yes, my Lord?” a smooth voice said as an unmistakable blond man stepped forward. Hermione felt a pang of sadness. Draco had never been nice as a boy, but she didn’t think he had been truly evil, either, and she’d always felt that there’d been hope for him.

She supposed that sometimes hope wasn’t enough.

“You know what to do,” Voldemort said. “She’s yours.”

Hermione’s eyes widened and she considered whether now was a good time to panic. If Draco was indeed one of Voldemort’s trusted followers now, then she could possibly look forward to many hours of pain as he got his retaliation for every petty little slight that he perceived to have received from her and her friends over the years.

Draco bowed slightly at the serpentine Dark Lord and nodded at Hermione’s captors, who then dragged her to her feet and carted her off.

“What do you think?” Voldemort asked after she was gone. “Will she be amenable?”

Draco considered. “She’s stubborn and loyal to a fault, but I can do it.”

Voldemort nodded. “See that you do.”