Thank you to my all-star beta readers who caught all kinds of things before I posted this! Poppunkpadfoot, facingthenorthwind, Unwritten Curse and Aya Diefair, you are awesome!
Chapter 1: The Victim
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry …
The words ran through her like a senseless mantra.
Hermione struggled to manage the strap of the purse as she one-handedly attempted to pull out her wallet. Her hand hung limply at her side, stiff and gnarled with black streaks running up her forearm where the curse had hit, darkening her veins. She couldn't feel her fingers. She couldn't hold a wand. Her hand had become a useless appendage, and it had destroyed her magic.
As a witch, she used to carry around an expanding wallet that easily slipped into her pocket, but now she had to do it the Muggle way. Grappling with a large bag that was supposed to be slung across her shoulder, she reached in to find the credit card to pay for her taxi. All of these movements, sitting in the back of the yellow cab, hefting around a large handbag, and fiddling with the flaps of the wallet, were foreign to her. Forgetting how to do all of it was probably the wrong way to put it, since she hadn't exactly learned how to do any of this in the first place.
Being an adult was hard. Being an adult in the exact opposite way in which she'd dreamed, where all the training and hardship and loss and sacrifice had been for the good of everyone around her… everyone except for herself… was heartbreaking.
A year ago, she could handle anything and change things on a whim. Bra strap too tight? Hemline too low? Breath needed freshening? All the little issues of life could be charmed away with a thought. The purse was supposed to be her focus of transition into her new life. Instead of the wizard's pouch and the long, flowing robes with jeans and a blouse underneath, she was stuck in fussy Muggle-looking office attire and two inch pumps.
The taxi driver's icy stare through the rear view mirror let her know that she was taking too long. He tapped on the gas a few times, revving the engine. As she leaned forward with the purse in her lap, the charge card slipped and fell on her right side, sliding between the seat and the floor.
She cursed and twisted her body around so she could pick it up with her left hand - straining against the seatbelt. She couldn't feel around for it with the gnarled fingers of her right hand – firstly, there was no control, secondly, all five digits were numb.
The taxi driver was looking at her like she was an idiot. Hermione fixed her gaze on the seat, ignoring the inferior feelings that swelled up inside of her. Her brain wasn't broken. Her magic was. Struggling and grunting, she finally grasped the edge of the card with the fingers of her good hand and lifted it triumphantly into the air.
"Here it is!" she said in an exaggerated, chirpy tone while handing it over to the driver, who sighed heavily and swiped it against his machine.
The machine chirped back, and Hermione retrieved her card, stuffed it into the open bag – not in her wallet because that would take too long – and began the next task: exiting the vehicle.
She struggled once more with the taxi door, claiming a small victory when the latch popped open and she got out of the car on her own.
The taxi driver grumbled, "You could have asked for help instead of wasting my time," but she was paying for his time, so she didn't really see how it mattered.
Physically, it wasn't really a big deal. She had improved over the last six weeks, managing to undo buttons and write with her off-hand. But the point was, as a witch, she shouldn't have to use a microwave to heat up her water, or carry around a large, hefty bag that made her shoulders ache at the end of the day… or even take a taxi to Merlin-knew-where, because she was no longer capable of apparition.
Her therapist's words kept bouncing around inside her head. "Embrace who you are. Set aside your expectation and just do what you can. Know that it's enough."
How was she supposed to forget about everything she used to be capable of and pretend that this was the way she was supposed to be, forever?
Young Hermione Granger hadn't been born with magic. She'd been an ordinary girl born to ordinary, intelligent parents who lived in an ordinary, wonderless world. They had taught her a lot of things: work hard, study hard, and be excellent at whatever she did.
Teenaged Hermione Granger had been granted an unusual gift – the ability to wield magic and attend the most prestigious Wizarding School in England. She applied herself studiously and had been called the "brightest witch of her age". When darkness threatened to conquer them, she and her friends had used their magic to thwart it. In a war meant to enslave the weak and put ultimate power into the hands of a tyrant, they had saved both the Wizarding and the Muggle worlds.
She remembered the stinging sensation during the battle and the way that she ignored it until they had run out of things to fight against. She also remembered the way her arm ached for weeks afterwards, and how people kept telling her to give it time, to let it heal on its own. For a year, she took pain potions to mask the discomfort, and then she started losing feeling in her fingertips. By the time the Mediwitches had started taking her injury seriously, Hermione had lost the ability to use her wand. Whatever the curse had been, it had crippled her wand hand and stripped her of her abilities until finally, she had become practically useless at magic. Compared to what she had been, what she should have become by now, she was a mere shadow of her abilities.
When the Mediwitches' promises to find a cure ran dry, the curse continued to eat away at her, until all she had left was a small spark enough to warm her morning coffee – and sometimes, not even that.
People who 'helped',or thought they were helping, wove in and out of her days, picking her up when she fell and providing for her when she couldn't provide for herself.
Hermione straightened her entirely impractical Muggle business outfit in the red glow of the taxi's disappearing tail lights.
"I got out of the taxi on my own," she muttered to herself, and then promptly dropped her purse and had to stoop to pick it up, wobbling on her heels on the uneven pavement. She made a face to no one in particular, just to make herself feel better.
Hermione stared at the metal warehouse door in front of her, searching for a sign of the physical address, hoping that the taxi driver hadn't just dumped her out here randomly just to get rid of her. She steeled herself against the niggling doubt that this was the wrong place at the wrong time. Knowing what she did about the marginalized magical communities within the wizarding world, this was exactly the sort of place they would choose – somewhere to hide themselves among the Muggles – somewhere the Ministry of Magic wouldn't think to look because of the extreme lack of anything magical about the place.
Ahh… there was the address – a small metal plaque that read "Warehouse #3".
Hermione might have lost her magic from the curse, but she could still feel it in the air around her when it was present. There was a distinct lack of it where she stood, which meant that, either her therapist had written the address down wrong, or these people were so scared that they had to exist completely outside of their natural habitat.
"Get over your loss by helping those who are worse off than yourself."
All the 'less than's' and 'should haves' crowded her mind, and she had to steel herself to shake them away. Her therapist insisted that helping those less fortunate than herself would keep the dark thoughts away. These people needed something that Hermione could give them.
Right now, she had a job to do. Which she was very good at. Stellar. An expert liaison between the Ministry of Magic and other entities who deserved representation, magic or no.
Maybe her condition made her even better at it than she'd been before. Empathy was a great tool, and she used it well. It was one of the only things she had left.
But as she stood in this alley with broken lamplights and threatening shadows, Hermione had to wonder if she'd ended up in the right place, or if her life had taken a swift turn and dumped her out alone on a deserted road to nowhere.
She knocked on the warehouse door resolutely. "Hello? Is anyone in there?"
The metal door slid open. Hermione stepped inside, wishing that she could light her wand… wishing that she'd brought her wand, or even a torch to ward off the darkness. Even though it was a useless piece of wood to her now, she could at the very least appear dangerous holding it.
A lithe figure stepped out of the darkness, holding a lone candle. Her face was hidden behind long tresses of hair hanging below her shoulders.
"You're just in time," the thin woman said.
Relieved, Hermione nodded. "My name—"
"We know who you are," the woman said. Then she smiled, and Hermione saw a flash of pointed white.
The woman had fangs.
In her short but very impressive two year (barring some recovery time in St. Mungo's) career in the Ministry of Magic, Hermione had bargained for werewolf rights, freed house elves, and petitioned for goblins to own wands. But vampires were an entirely different matter. This was going to be difficult.
She ventured further into the warehouse, fully aware of the ominous shadows around her, thinking that maybe her ex, a newly minted Auror, had been right about not coming alone. But it was too late for that. She had to make the best of the situation as it stood.
"Everyone deserves a chance for equal representation." That was her platform, and she was going to stand by it. "If I would have known who you were, I would have prepared better documentation for you."
The woman's smile didn't change. "If you knew who we were," she said carefully, "you wouldn't have come."
A loud 'bang' made her jump. Someone had closed the warehouse door. Someone else had come up from behind her. She jerked her arm away from something that brushed her arm. Suddenly, there were hands, everywhere.
"Wait! Let me go!"
Hermione felt a sharp sting on the back of her neck. Her tight Muggle skirt did nothing to help her balance, and she fell to the ground.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the thin woman said above Hermione's screams, "dinner is served."