Since English is not my main language, I do tend to languish over grammatical errors. Also, while I do have a friend who is kind of beta reading, I fear his judgment is not impartial. So if anyone would I'd like to have a beta reader to correct and to advice.

Here are the skeleton beginnings of my story.
- The Innocent Night
AU. As the events of her third year draw to a close, a battered Hermione Granger has to deal with reconciliation with betraying friends, the constrictive pressures of her newfound fame, that has brought with it attacks on her self. In a world rapidly deteriorating into darkness, she finds herself an unwilling epicenter.

- Unlikely it will become Harry/Hermione but yes, as a partner or not, Hermione will play a very big, if not very important part for a good while to come.

Here's a bit, without the italics.


Prologue


‘Lucius,’
The raspy voice clawed through the silence. With steps echoing steadily in the dark chamber, Lucius Malfoy walked towards the hunched figure. Around it, the air reeked and swirled with a brand of magic that had intoxicated him those many years ago. When he was comfortably in its vocal range, he bowed and asked, ‘Master?’
‘The Diary, Lucius.’
A man stepped regally into the pale halo of light that surrounded the master’s throne. His face was encased in the shadows of a cloak, but Lucius could well imagine the storm blue eyes staring down with disdain at his hunched self. Master’s most trusted servant.
Refusing to abide by Crouch’s game, Lucius looked directly into his master’s eyes. ‘The old fool came into its possession, my lord.’
For a moment, a precarious moment in which Lucius realized what exactly he had done, there was silence. Then, with a grunt master’s body convulsed as the air was harshly expelled from his lungs.
‘Legilimens!’
Staring as he was, straight into master’s eyes, Lucius could do precious little to soften the blow of his master’s mind against his occlumency walls. A loud roar filled the expanse of his consciousness and it seemed as if the world was booming. ‘Failure does not bode well with me, Lucius.’
Lucius struggled to remain upright as the presence cruelly retreated, leaving in its wake walls smoldering and raw with magic. ‘M-my lord, forgive…’ for my blatant stupidity.
‘Enough!’
Crouch’s jaw snapped shut. With a deft step, he left the podium upon which master’s throne was placed. ‘My lord grows weary by you’re games, little snake.’
He is the definition of madness, Crouch, thought Lucius. The cloak has been pulled back and pools around his shoulders. Wisps of hair escape from the thick tendrils that fall along his face, and with the distortion of his eyes, narrowed by magic into sinister slits, he is almost as disconcerting as master’s pitiful form.
The eyes glared into Lucius but the mouth bore fleetingly into a full-toothed smirk. ‘Hints of betrayal have reached our eyes, talks of… forbidden conversations…Tell us, Lucius, how did the Diary escape your grasp?’
The silence tick tocked away as Lucius cautiously began. ‘My grasp of the diary extended as far as it remained in my hands. The moment I engineered it into Weasley’s daughter’s piles, it grew outside my control.’
Apparently, his answer did not please the master and Crouch began again. ‘And you could sense no mean to manipulate the possession?’
‘I know not magic that would…’
‘Fool!’ Crouch roared. ‘Don’t presume to tell me Lucius, that you with all your arrogance could not drive into despair a mere schoolchild.’
What?
‘Despair,’ continued Crouch, ‘despair that would ensure the diary’s usage. Tsk Tsk, most moronic of you old friend. One might even suppose you didn’t want…’
Lucius stood still with shock. Such an avenue of action had not even dawned in his mind. ‘My Lord, I am your…’
‘Silence Lucius,’ master croaked, his voice waxing and waning unpredictably with his words. ‘Your incompetence has lost us a precious chance.’
‘Master, I was not aware of—’
‘Then keep your eyes open and mouth shut.’
Clamping his mouth to ward off any retort, Lucius composed himself. It had been almost thirteen years since he’d had to bow before any man, and for the life of him he could not recall the old submissive ways. Waiting for the quiet to pass, Lucius stared up at his master. The unnatural stillness screamed a swift retribution; one that he was sure was coming. That he had not forgotten. Failure did not bode well with master, and failures tended to be scared of every twitch. Lucius could feel his ire rising. All because of a stupid mudblood!
Mark my words, Hermione Granger, you will suffer for this.


***

Chapter One



She felt the tremors arise from her chest and wrack her body. As hands furled and unfurled and her mouth watered, it was the loss of control that trickled from her eyes and pooled as resentment. Any struggle was futile, she knew; in fact, resistance was detrimental to the point of being stupid. Once the tremors began their merry tune, all she could do was ride the waves.
And Hermione Granger had never been content with following the tide.
Had she not been restrained she would have stomped out weeks ago, eyes like burning water. The only kind bones in St. Mungo’s were the words, and they were utterly useless anyways. They didn’t advertise it, some level of professional decorum remained, but she could see it in the mannerisms, the stares; they looked at her as a dog would to a fresh piece of meat. And that, she had long mused, was perhaps all she was to them. Posh! The Headmaster had advised her to be obliging, firm yet polite, “a society searching for reassurance” he’d called it. Her dad, of course, had been far brasher, dropping the anvil so to speak, on some poor teenage fan. “Idiots looking for a pinup” he’d snarled, his forearms tensing menacingly, chest thrown out in masculine affirmity, looking completely ridiculous in the process. The teen had scurried off and he wasn’t the only one; they needed to expel something ungainly honey. Both knew the nature of the game (protective pop), and it provided balance to the tilted kaleidoscope of the day. For nothing else had remained the same.
The first interview had highlighted it. When people looked at you, with that sheen of adulation upon their faces, you knew that normality had gone sulking off. Hands trembled when they shook hers, wishing their getwellsoons. The name Weasley glided off their lips as smoothly as a curse: Ginny Weasley. Some part of her wanted to holler at the presumptuousness of their contempt, while the other, the darker, the one that actively remembered the bloodshot eyes, the eerie silence and the screams, screams that seemed to be coming from some distant corner, but were leaking from her very own body, the begging that cried itself into one long wail; that cheered on.
Ginny, too, had visited her. It had been a short affair.

When her right hand regained some of its sanity, she groped around for comfort. A little frown immediately percolated her brow; the absence of the reassuring touch was… unusual. A fresh roll of tremors shook her things and the dark world started coming into cautious focus; the blinding light began to peel away from the edges as if it were being skinned off, and soon she could see that she was entirely alone. Flower bunches decorated the room like cockroach clusters, neither invited nor welcomed. Reassurances from people she’d rather forget about, or, in turn, people that’d rather forget her.
The room wasn’t small or big, but it sure was beautiful in an extravagant, ostentatious sort of way. They’d shifted her when the papers had started lauding her praises, The-Girl-Who- … it was ridiculous, truly, and good part was fictitious as well. At least, she didn’t remember.
The Headmaster, of course, was responsible. She was really starting to worry what he had in mind for her.
“Are you sure, honey?” Clasping her shoulders tight, Ian Granger’s eyes were staring right into her daughters. “Perhaps, maybe, you don’t remember as well as he does?”
She sighed. “No daddy. The first bit… that, part…,” her voice cracked and faltered like man wheezing his last breath. “That was… was what happened. But all that, those… things, I didn’t do then, I couldn’t have done them…”
“Never underestimate yourself dear. You can, and you will do what ever you want to. Here, or with us.”
Here eyes were bright with hesitation, “Dad-d?”
Ian sighed. “There are some things happening, hon. Political things, things that involve you. Things that I’m sure that Dumbledore, pardon, your Headmaster began. It got us worried dear, very worried.”
Ian sighed and moved away. “We’ve found a few schools willing, very willing seeing your record…”
Her voice suddenly cut him off, “A Hero!” He turned and found himself watching one his most precious sights; with eyes wide with surprise, head marred with a thoughtful frown and a little grin at her own brilliance that turned suddenly into a yawn of confusion: Hermione stuck with an epiphany.
She spoke fast and tumbled over the words. “A hero… He’s made me a hero because Harry Potter is missing and he wants people to have hope and look up to me because they will…”
Oh, how popular she had become. It boggled the mind how far these little white lies spread and how deep they permeated; suddenly everyone had opinions. Their trumped up egos trudging over newspaper articles submitted as truth and spurring up their own little versions, furnished with details that only she knew and she sure as hell hadn’t talked. Despite repeated advances.
He sighed. “I am sorry Ian, but we do need her account to gleam, perhaps, something she could have missed out on.” Headmaster’s voice was soft, clipped and yet somehow reassuring. As my father told me, it was just like a trainer with spooked prey. “I have held off the pressure for the past few weeks to ensure your recovery, Miss Granger, but the Ministry is now insistent in their requests.”
Hands around her father she borrowed into his chest. “I can understand, Mr. Dumbledore but…Albus, may I call you Albus?”
“But of course.”
“Thank you. As I was saying, Hermione still has nightmares; she has still not recovered—”
“Then would it not be the best way to recover? To come into terms with the horrible things that befell them both—”
She shot up and for a second it seemed as if her eyes were blazing. “She, Tom, Ginny, whatever... She tortured me! I was crying blood… I! Me! She, she was laughing, like, it was the funniest thing in the world.”
The Headmaster looked at her for a moment before closing his eyes. She felt a headache descend as he began. “Hermione, Ginny Weasley in not to blame for her possession. Older and far wiser wizards have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort. She is a victim, just as you are, with only different—”
“I did not use my wand and curse her to death,” she almost screamed. There was a thumping in her chest and lights were dancing in her eyes, blooming from pinpricks to loud red boils. “Or maybe even beyond it.” Her voice died in her throat as the tears spilled off her cheeks. Her father proffered comfort. “I-I’m tired. I wish to… to sleep.”
Her father’s little kiss was the last thing she remembered as oblivion violently descended.

When feeling returns to her legs, she twists and ambles off the bed. The floor is cool underneath her bare feet and her toes wiggle like worms searching for daylight.
She calls out and voice seems to echo. The clock tick-tocks into afternoon.
“Dad…?”


***











One last thing, because of age, Harry will be like a boat fighting against a river: neither will he utterly comply with it's wishes, nor will he be able to overcome it's might. so no, this will not be a Harry free from Dumbles manipulations.