A/N: Happy to say, the bug has bit again. Here's some new content. Expect more in the next few weeks.
Hermione handed the man at the door her ticket, and he beamed and gave her a brochure. Professor Daniel Tseng, Quantum Fluids, it read. 19 July 1997, University of St. Andrews. It was a day she should have been sharing with her parents. Instead, she was here in Scotland, thinking of them, and they were in Australia, without a clue that she existed. She had always been interested in science, something nurtured by her parents since childhood. As a little girl, she'd been amazed by it, how men in white coats could turn a moldy piece of bread into medicine. After learning about magic, she found herself trying to reconcile the two.
Her dad had bought the tickets on a whim, a few months before. At the time, Hermione had been excited - her parents never failed to offer unique perspectives on the science behind magic. After all, while Hermione was being trained to approach questions from a magical theory perspective, her parents remained grounded firmly in science: the laws of physics, and so on.
She forced herself back into the present. The last day had been spent crying, and it wouldn't do for the pattern to continue, not in the middle of a St. Andrews at least. She let her mind wander as her eyes did. The crowd was largely in its mid- to late-twenties, and she assumed it was made up of a blend of doctoral candidates and older undergrads, with only a few outliers such as herself.
The most eye-catching outlier was a tall, thin boy about her age. He was also alone, his posture betraying his discomfort. She caught his eye and looked away quickly, her face heating up and her heart fluttering. He was quite pretty, his high cheekbones and lithe frame reminding her of the male half-Veelas she had met during her fourth year. He was decidedly Muggle, though, with his dark coloring, not to mention the pager on his belt. She could tell herself that he was no good for her, but she knew that really, she would be no good for him.
Hermione found herself, not the first time, wishing that she could be a normal girl, or at least a Muggle girl. She wanted to pine after a cute swotty boy, and she wanted her mum there to tease her for it. If wishes were Galleons, she supposed she'd have all of Gringotts. She needed to focus on the search and battle ahead. Her mother would remember someday that she had a daughter, Hermione would ensure that.
But this wasn't the time to focus on that. Hermione shook herself out of it. The head of the physics department was walking onstage, to polite applause. She clapped gently, not taking her eyes off the presenters again until the lecture was over. The tickets hadn't been cheap, and she was determined to get her parents' money's worth - for all three of them.
After the lecture, Hermione joined the queue to speak to Dr. Tseng. She had several questions about the partial charges - this would be such a good topic for a Transfiguration thesis in a few years - but almost forgot them altogether when she realized that she was standing behind the waifish boy from before. She met his eyes again and gave an awkward smile and a nod; he returned each with his own. This time he broke the eye contact, his cheeks tinged pink while he looked anywhere but at her.
Several minutes later, Hermione was listening very closely as the boy asked his question and Dr. Tseng answered with enthusiasm. It was a very technical question - Hermione knew what a superfluid was, but the boy made a jump to "fermions" that the professor could follow but she could not. She resolved to try to find it in the literature later.
The boy and the professor spoke for another short moment, and then the boy shook his hand, thanking him profusely. It was strange that he should look most at ease speaking to a professor so many years his senior. Hermione put on a smile and stepped forward to the professor, hand outreached -
The room shook.
The door exploded inward, throwing the lingering group in the room against the far wall or onto their backs. The other lingering attendees had been too close to the door, Hermione realized sickly, and their chests were no longer moving. Dr. Tseng and the boy were still conscious, having been on the luckier side of the room, with her.
"A bomb?" the boy murmured in wonder. He grimaced as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, his weight still mostly on his back against the concrete floor.
Hermione knew better than to hope it was a bomb.
She sat up slowly, not wanting to exacerbate any injuries. She slipped a hand to the back of her right leg and down into her combat boot, wrapped her fingers around her wand, and tried not to panic. She knew it wasn't working. The chances were so low of her being caught in a random attack. She was being targeted, and because of it, these Muggles were in danger. Some of them were probably already dead, and others were going to get hurt because of her. Unless she could help them.
She looked up, forming an exit strategy, and suddenly there was another flash of light, this one sickly green.
A man in a mask was holding out his hand, wand outreached, and Dr. Tseng was dead on the floor. She counted herself very lucky that he was distracted as she stunned him. She pulled herself to her feet and dragged herself over to him, then grimaced as she kicked the wand out of his stiff hand. Thinking better of it, she picked it up off the floor and stashed it in the beaded purse she had taken to carrying everywhere.
She followed her first instinct, which was to alert the Order. Hermione cast the Patronus spell, focusing all of her being on a memory of her mother in a bookstore, and was relieved when her familiar otter appeared. "I'm in the physics building lower lecture hall at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. I have incapacitated a Death Eater." Her eyes slid over to the man on the floor, then back to the silvery animal before her. "I don't know if there is backup on the way for him. I can only assume that I was targeted. At least four Muggles are dead."
She sent the Patronus to Kingsley Shacklebolt, the first and most authoritative Order member she thought of in this post-Dumbledore world. After a moment's thought, she cast another and sent the same message to Remus.
As she tried to think of who next to summon, Hermione noticed the Muggle boy shaking in front of her, his jaw dropped and his brown eyes wide and afraid. They would have to wipe his memory. She cringed at the thought - a mind was a fragile thing, and his was clearly something special. And, yes, she could admit to herself, she was wrought with guilt over what she had done to her own parents. She had wept only the night before, imagining trying to replace their memories and finding them shells of their former selves, irreparable, forever lost. At least Neville's parents weren't his own fault.
In another split second decision - she seemed to be good at them today - she offered the sitting boy her hand. He took it immediately, and she pulled him up and to her. She felt a twinge of pity for his stomach before Apparating to the church she had sat in that morning. She had come to St. Andrews early in the morning seeking some kind of penance; she now wondered if the existence of a god at all had been a trick of the morning golden-hour light.
She turned to him, venting her frustration in her words: "You saw nothing," she said fiercely. "You will never tell anyone what you saw. There will be no paper published, there will be no academic discussion, there will be no thinly veiled fantasy literature, there will be nothing." Her chest felt heavy, and she realized she was panting.
The boy was silent for a moment. "I-"
"The people I called for help would wipe your memory of it all," she said, needing him to know exactly how important it was that he keep this to himself. "If you breathe a word of this to anyone else, anyone at all, I will hunt you down and wipe your memory yourself."
He cocked his head, oddly innocent for the grime covering him and the bruises forming. "Why haven't you done it already?" His accent was American, she noted dimly.
She bit her lip, unsure how much to share. "You're clearly very intelligent." To his credit, he didn't blush, although he did move his gaze to the stained glass behind her. "Memory wipes are difficult, and they have the potential to… negatively affect the mind. I don't want another one on my conscience," she said weakly. "But if you cause any trouble, I will not hesitate to find you, and I will do it." Even to her own ears she sounded less fierce now, more broken.
"Why did he kill Dr. Tseng?" was all he asked. His mind was clearly working at double speed, taking in the terminology she was using, trying to justify what he'd seen and how it could have happened.
"He's a terrorist," she said shortly. "Some people who can do what we can do - people who can do magic - believe in their superiority over people like you, Muggles, who can't do magic. In the worst cases, this extends to people like me, who can do magic but have parents who can't." She paused, letting him digest this much. "I'm apparently a bigger target than I expected. If I'd known that -" she choked up, but closed her eyes and swallowed the panic. "If I'd known they would kill the people around me, I never would have gone in public. I'm going to be on the run now. No one else is going to die like this."
She wasn't sure if she was promising him or herself.
"I'm going back," she said, "and unless you want your memory wiped, I'm leaving you here."
"I, I'd prefer to stay here please," he said. He looked shaken and lost, exactly as though his entire worldview had changed in a matter of minutes.
Hermione couldn't bring herself to just Apparate away. With a wave of her wand, she conjured a piece of paper and a pen, and she scribbled out from memory the phone number for Kingsley's desk in the Muggle Ministry. "This is your lifeline," she said. "One of my allies works for the Muggle government. This number connects you to him. Call it in six months or if there's an emergency. Don't call it for any other reason," she warned.
She crumpled it into one of his hands, and he closed a fist around it, holding it tight. "Is an emergency something like this?"
"Exactly like this," she confirmed. She couldn't help but ask him, "What's your name?"
"Spencer Reid," he said. There was a flicker of something unfamiliar in his eyes, and he asked, "What's yours?"
"Hermione Granger. Just - stay safe. Good luck," she told him, and her breath hitched when he nodded. In another world, she thought, this is where she would have kissed him. Instead, she nodded jerkily and said, "I've got to go." And she Apparated away, the strange feeling not leaving the pit of her belly.
Several members of the Order were already there, repairing structural damage or further binding the Death Eater on the floor. At the crack of Apparation, they'd all pulled wands on the intruder. She knew they had no proof that she was herself, knew not to take it personally.
"What did you try to buy Sirius Black for Christmas last year?" Remus demanded.
"A bedazzled muzzle." It was possibly the first time in her life she'd said those words, in that order, without even smiling. She turned to Kingsley: "What kind of tea did you bring me from your visit to China?"
Kingsley did give a small smile, and his wand lowered slightly. "You didn't get tea, you got instant coffee with the creamer and sweetener already mixed in. Where did you go after the attack?"
She had never been a good liar, but she hoped they would write off any of her nerves as having survived an encounter with a Death Eater. As far as they knew, she was the only survivor. "I was worried there would be others around the campus, perhaps specifically in this building if they knew I'd be here." Her head ducked down in faux shame. "I stunned him and took his wand, hoping that would be enough to hold him while I checked around."
"That was very unwise, Hermione," Remus said. "In times like these, you need to wait for a partner at least." She swayed uncertainly on her feet, and he noticed. "Do you want me to take you home?" She shook her head, and he seemed to remember what she had done. "Sh- do you want to go to the Burrow?" She nodded shakily, and he darted over to her, catching her as she stumbled trying to take a step. "All right, you're clearly a ball of nerves, let's get you out of here."
He Apparated away from St. Andrews, and she was dimly grateful that she had wished the boy well. Spencer Reid.
The Burrow was busy, and occasionally her mind would be taken away from Spencer Reid, but it always found its way back. He was her new favorite topic. She found herself wondering what he was doing, where he was from - where in America? - and whether he had liked Scotland. She hoped he was doing well, after the death of such a renowned person in what was clearly his field of interest.
And, of course, the pool of desire in the bottom of her belly never left either.