Ok, ok, don't shoot me, but I've abandoned The Eighth Horcrux for now. It's just that I like the idea so much and I don't want to ruin it with my inexperience writing fanfics, so I'm going to experiment with this for now, maybe some oneshots before I go back to it. But don't expect an update on that one any time soon.
Maybe I'm just ADD. But I was really really inspired the other day so I'm just going to take this and run with it, so enjoy! I know this chapter's short, but it's really just a teaser anyway to see what people think of the idea. So, feedback would be great, please and thank you =]
Hermione continued to stare at the entrance to the apothecary.
Now that she was finally there, taking in the dingy shop with narrowed, apprehensive eyes, she wasn't quite sure she wanted to be. In fact, she could readily think of ten other places she'd rather be standing in front of.
A small trap door with a snarling, three-headed dog came to mind.
She twisted a ringlet of honey-brown hair around her finger, pulled it straight and let it bounce back to its original form, absentmindedly... nervous habit. She counted the cobblestones leading up to the rough wooden door, anything to keep her standing in the middle of Knockturn Alley just a little longer.
Who had convinced her to take an internship at the Ministry anyway? It certainly hadn't been her own decision. For once she had been able to recognize how mentally destructive that workload would be to her, alongside studying for her N.E.W.T.s, and dealing with the constant threat of Voldemort that was multiplied tenfold in being associated with Harry and the Order.
Naturally she might have turned to other means of coping.
She sighed listlessly. She looked interview-ready now, in the stylish dragonhide ankle-boots that Tonks had loaned her, in her black stockings and figure-flattering tweed shift that ended mid-thigh, in her most expensive woven cloak whose lapel had a silver Ministry pin stuck neatly into the seam.
But she hardly felt interview-ready. Stress had always been a part of her life, yes. Stress meant you were taking responsibility. Stress kept your mind active, stress forced excellence. But this unbridled pressure she felt was crippling her.
Her only visible way out had not been immoral. It wasn't an addiction, at first.
She turned her attention back to the looming storefront. The door was slightly off its hinges, she observed, and the single shop window was cracked in the upper left-hand corner. A thin film of grime on the outside of the glass blurred the silhouette of whatever was being displayed.
Stop it, Hermione. You've come this far. You've gotten through three months, what's one more day?
Three long, excruciating, tense months…
She felt the familiar heat as it crept up her cheeks, worked behind her eyes, built pressure. Her throat constricted.
Stop it. STOP IT!
She blinked up towards the sky, inhaled sharply. The threat of tears subsided after a moment of contemplating the heavy, gray clouds. A decision was made and she stepped forward, raking her nails through her curls in one last desperate gesture. With her lips pursed involuntarily, she closed the distance between her and the wooden apothecary door. It was just a Peace Draught. One little Peace Draught and she could compose herself, she knew.
Powdered moonstone. Powdered moonstone. Powdered moonstone.
She grabbed the rusting handle and pulled.
PING.
A barrage of smells met her first, familiar and unfamiliar, sour and sweet. A leathery, kind of old-fashioned living room smell gave her the distinct impression that there bookshelves and armchairs and everything might be coated with dust, but her eyes swept the deceptively stark entryway.
It was eerily silent, save for the hum of a bubbling green tank in the corner. Brainlike things had settled comfortably on the bottom of it; a thick, green, algae swirled about and nearly completely obscured their forms.
Gillyweed.
Her heels made entirely too much noise on the rotten floorboards, squeaking, creaking, clacking as she hesitantly crossed the foyer. Now she knew why she never wore them, and was fairly certain she would never allow herself to be bullied into it again.
"Hello?"
No answer came as she moved through rows of shelves, some completely empty and others teeming with beakers, vials, and assortments of odd-shaped containers in a haphazard cluster. She approached the sorry excuse for a reception desk and placed her gloved fingertips on the edge of it, a plank mounted on two boards with a cloth thrown over. The wall behind the desk contained an open archway that led into a hall with several rooms off of it, but the hall was dark.
Hermione frowned. The shopkeeper was a shady, skittish little man who would never entrust the safety of his goods to the whims of wandering Knockturn Alley dwellers, and she hardly believed that he would willingly have left the place open in his absence. She opened her mouth to call out to him once more but was immediately silenced by a muffled crash that sounded from one of the back rooms. She reached for her wand only to realize it was already in her hand, had been for some time, according to the thin film of sweat on its handle.
A flash of bright light suddenly filtered through the cracks around one of the closed doors, piercing the empty darkness beyond it for a moment.
A bright GREEN light, gone as quickly as it had come.
Her breath hitched and she made some very split-second decisions, ones that did not include getting the hell out of there, because running in those damn shoes would be the death of her if nothing else was. Instead she backed away slowly from the desk, wand aimed at the offending door. In her state of self-preserving wariness, Apparition hardly crossed her mind.
Apparently, neither did backing into a shelf. Said shelf promptly shuddered at the contact but didn't fall; however it didn't stop the shower of glass containers that Hermione watched, horrified, as they shattered to pieces on the floorboards with a sickening crash. The smell of whatever had been in them was putrid and heavy, and she stumbled away from the fumes, her features still frozen in horror and her eyes still glued to the mess before her.
Hermione hardly had time to contemplate the broken vials.
"If you were smart, you'd probably start running now," whispered a gleefully malicious voice in her ear.
She sucked a sharp breath in through her teeth and whipped around, in an instant had her wand leveled at the chest of the offender.
His wand mirrored hers. She met his eyes in a tense staredown.
Striking grey. Hardened and cold.
She noticed his gaze fall to her Ministry pin, a small sneer quirking the corners of his full lips… lips that were framed in black stubble, stubble that framed a strong, chiseled jaw. Wild black curls hung to the base of his neck and brushed his broad, thick shoulders. It was then that she realized he was looking down at her, even in her dragonhide heels.
She never felt the wand slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor. She didn't feel the tears begin to pool in the corners of her eyes. She only felt her heart stop, because she was looking straight into the eyes of someone she knew to be dead.
Her voice was weak and barely audible, a strained whisper. "Sirius?"
He had been grinning cruelly at her tears, ridiculing her weakness. But as that name left her lips, his grin vanished and he narrowed his eyes at her. His jaw twitched, his fist clenched around his wand and trembled, knuckles turning white. Hermione stood in a daze, wandless, completely at his mercy but completely uncaring. The tears were falling freely now, dripping from her chin to leave clear pearls on the surface of her cloak, even as she registered that she couldn't possibly be standing in front of the very Sirius Black whose death she had witnessed herself.
She struggled to regain her composure at the sound of his quavering voice. His jaw clenched and unclenched as he spoke, wand hand shaking violently now. "Who… who the fuck are you?"
Hermione, though still in shock, pulled back her shoulders in an attempt to appear taller (to no avail; she was at least an inch shorter than him still) and looked him squarely in the eye. Her vision focused and unfocused, still blurred by tears, but she could still see him searching her own hazel irises as if he expected to find the answer to his question there.
"I believe," she said, her voice sounding a bit stronger than she had thought it would, "that I should ask you the same question."