Title: Complicated Matters
Author: SpartanKatty

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Rating: MA
Disclaimer: JK owns all that you recognize. I own all that you do not recognize.
Summary: Hermione is left by Harry and Ron and she has to live with the family that they do not know about. She must pick sides for the benefit of everyone. Draco makes it a tad bit complicated.
Warning: Cursing, slight alternate universe, coarse language, limes, OFC, OMC, slight slash, torture

Rain was pouring down again. The rivulets hit the trees in heavy drops that made the leaves shiver relentlessly. There was a slight fog in the forest due to the humidity as well. It was November, how on earth could it be this humid. Hermione's face was plastered to her skull in drenched curls. She sneezed. Her nose was red due to the cold, clammy weather and her throat felt sore. She didn't really worry since she was a werewolf. Her blood would probably take out any virus in the next forty-two hours. Hermione licked her lips pensively. It wasn't that she was worried about herself. She looked over at the boys. Harry's arm had healed do to her healing charms, but without them the arm would have been mangled for days until the natural regeneration took place. Draco, however, had a deep gash on his cheek. When he first received the blow, his tongue could have protruded out from it. She begged to fix his wounds, but he wanted some kind of sick, twisted reminder. Ronald however was left untouched, as he was able to fend off most of the werewolves from his perch on a high-hanging tree. It was all her fault.

After, their escape from her father and the Snatchers the Dark Lord had grown infuriated at the failed attempt to destroy Harry Potter. The next month, he had sent Fenrir's werewolves out to torment the teenagers with the October full moon on their back. Hermione had turned momentarily to draw some of the others' attention towards her, but soon she looked into the green eyes of Mars. His tongue lolled out in an eerie grin. He was the one to attack Draco. He slashed at the blond's face. Harry however was mutilated by some other werewolf, who Hermione did not recognize. He was probably new, for she saw Phaedra slash the neophyte's face in after Harry's attack. Hermione knew they weren't given authority to mutilate Harry, just to capture him.

Hermione, still in wolf form, attacked Mars. She clawed and bit at his shoulder. It was only until Draco laid unconscious on the muddy grass, that he stopped and back-handed her, with a clawed semi-human paw, across the clearing. She changed back into her human form in the process. She heard a howl and knew her father was calling them back, to retreat.

She tended to her friends first and then to herself.

Hermione licked her scabbed lip. That was a horrifying experience that she never wanted to deal with again. She had never been on the opposite side of her pack in such a violent manner. Yes, she didn't want to be a part of their macabre frolicking but never once had Mars physically hurt her. She knew there was no going back. Hermione Greyback had crossed the line. She swallowed the anxiety forming in her throat and sighed.

Harry and Draco would be werewolves. They hadn't approached the subject, but all four of them knew the outcome. There was no pretending that somehow it was all some nightmare. That somehow they were still in their first year, sleeping in their four-poster beds in their dormitories. That somehow, Hermione was actually Hermione Granger.

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The weather seemed to clear up by the end of the week and finally there was some sunshine. They weren't in the Forest of Dean, but in some town in Cumbria. They had hitch-hiked across England in Muggle buses and cars. They all knew what they had to do. Get to Hogwarts. Draco told the Gryffindors everything about Severus Snape. That he was just a spy, plain and simple. Nothing would change that and whether they liked it or not, Snape was on their side. Draco knew that there was an unmonitored Apparition point in Cumbria. The exact location was Carlisle – a historical city mostly memorable for the ancient Muggle and Wizard Romans. On arriving there, the whole town was in decay – similar to the fall of Rome. It was obvious that the Death Eaters had ransacked the town. The driver who had picked them up at the side of the road had dropped them off two miles away from Carlisle. He insisted that it was haunted and that only the insane would venture there.

"It's a good thing that we are insane," Harry had said quietly from his seat in the car.

They had stayed a night in an unknown pub that ran for drifters. Wizards owned it but seeing the many wards put up, Hermione guessed that they were on the Order's side. They had pulled Harry in by his collar and hurried in the other three. It was obvious that they wanted the four teenagers with them. They didn't speak many words but they fed them. Hermione looked at Draco. His mouth was pulled into a frown and he moved his mashed potatoes around on his plate in a depression. The pub was old and decrepit. There were some leaks on the upper level when they ventured to their rooms. Much to Ronald's dismay, Hermione and Draco shared a room while the others shared the adjacent quarters.

The room was furnished with two beds and a dressing table. There was neither closet nor mirror and to Hermione's knowledge they had to go back to the ground floor to use the bathroom facilities. Hermione sat on the bed. Draco's cheek was fully healed accept for the dried blood that marred his pale skin. She cleared her throat as Draco laid down on the opposite bed. He had turned around and Hermione had the sickly feeling that he didn't love her at all. She chose to ignore that thought, and him all together. She didn't have time for Draco's depression. They had to get to Snape.

That night Hermione did not sleep. She curled in the scratchy wool sheets. She pressed her dirty finger nails against her chapped and scabbed lips. The brunette winced as she furiously pulled at the scab. She could smell her own fear. The fear that Draco had fallen out of love with her. The fear that she would probably die before the year ended. She peeled the brown scab off her bottom lip. There was a burning sensation. Her ability to see in the dark only fueled her anger. She saw the scab and she smelled the blood on her fingertips. She dug her nails into lips and hissed she went through tissue. She pulled in a horrific knowledge that there was something horribly wrong with her. She then drove her fingernails down her arms. Fresh rivulets of pain flushed through her as the blood bubbled and flowed freely. Hermione was enthralled with the feeling and utterly driven by the pain. She curled against the bed sheets and raked her fingernails up her shins. The thin layers of skin that split open caused her to cry out.

She heard Draco move beneath his sheets on the opposite bed. He let out a soft groan. Hermione froze; the werewolf blood coursing through his veins could not be active this early in the process. She knew by experience that newly turned werewolves could not be that healthy. They couldn't smell blood this early in the transmutation. Hermione licked her lips and tasted the blood. There was the salty, metallic taste that she knew so much about. Since she was young, she hated hunting with her siblings. But she could never deny her love for it.

There was something that she had to do.

She got up and walked quietly over to the door. Tip-toeing out the door and downstairs, Hermione ventured down the stairs to the bathroom. Closing and locking the door, she looked at herself in the mirror. The mirror was broken. Her face looked almost like that. Her face was cracked and bleeding. Her lips were sprouting gullies of blood that never seemed to stop. She had a black eye. It was not swollen but shades of blue, purple, and yellow made it horrible. Hermione stifled a sob. There was nothing left to do. She knew her objective was to get to Snape as quickly as possible but what of her family? Would they accept her after the war? Or would they exile her? She shivered and rubbed at the wounds on her arms. Her family, even though they were horrible, was the closest thing she had. Even though Harry and Ron had been there since she was eleven, her family had been there when she was born. Her father was proud that the last child he had was a girl and he knew that she would be a great witch. Too many times had she failed him, she now knew how disturbing that had been to him. She was a horrible daughter and a terrible friend. She had almost gotten Harry, Ron and Draco killed in that last battle. What kind of person did that?

There was a tentative knock at the door.

"Just a minute," she croaked. She turned on the faucet and savagely rubbed at the dried blood on her arms and legs. It splattered on the tile wooden floor as a slop of brown water. Hermione tried to cover herself with her hands as someone opened the door. His pale face looked peaky and he scratched at the brown spots of blood on his face. She was mortified. Draco's face twisted in disgust and he blanched even further.

"What are you doing?" His eyes roamed over her body. The dirty underwear hung limply from her hips and Mars' old t-shirt was almost like a bag over her ill frame. He turned away when he saw the deep furrows in her skin from the relentless scratching. Hermione turned away meekly.

"I told you I would be done in a minute," she blushed.

His face had darkened and Hermione momentarily felt ashamed. "What happened?" He stood in the doorway, momentarily stunned by the slices on her pale legs. "I heard you whimper in your sleep and then you left. I was worried."

Hermione looked at him pensively. "I just got frustrated."

"So you got frustrated and pulled at your skin? Hermione, look at your lips!" His shout scared her and she was sure people heard him in the rest of the pub.

"What?" Hermione sneered at him, "You don't want to kiss my dirty lips, just like that werewolf blood, huh? Flea infested, you stupid prick." She spat at him and roughly pushed him away while she stormed back to the room.

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The swelling had gone down – on everybody. They were all back to the usual states of mind. Ronald and his pompous, hot-headed attitude; Harry and his brooding over death; Draco and his selfish aristocratic needs and then there was Hermione. Hermione was back to be the group's know-it-all bookworm. She recited spells that she memorized and potions she learned, anything that would get them out of the predicament that was Find Severus Snape. Yet there something highly disturbing about Hermione; Harry and Draco had picked up on it the night she argued with Draco at the inn. Ronald however was a little slow at these things. She had slid into herself and became a hermit of the mind. She only ventured out to talk about food supplies, information and their trek of Scotland. Harry hadn't said anything about the recent situations and raised his eyebrow when Draco tried to talk to Hermione. She would brush him off and Ron would cackle like a baboon. Neither was very nice.

There were times when Hermione wouldn't come out of the tent for hours even after they had called Hermione to dinner. She would venture late at night to get the leftovers they left sitting in an iron pan. Why was she being so cold towards them? There wasn't any logical explanation that was until Hermione went missing. They hadn't seen her for days and it was becoming quite the predicament. She left during the night. Harry considered that she didn't want to deal with fresh werewolves on their first turn. Draco thought he did something wrong and tried to analyze every detail of their relationship. It wasn't until a week before the full moon that Ron figured he would probably be dead on the night where the light would consume the sky.

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Hermione walked up the pathway, swinging the door open when she walked into the manor. The Greyback manor looked just like it did before. Clean, cold and unfriendly.

"Hello?" Hermione shouted. There was an array of noise that came from the floors above including the drawing room to her right and the lounge to her left. The doors to the rooms next to her flew open and her mother rushed out of the room. Her mother's face was dark with fury. Her eyes were a wrathful green with the underlying tones of amber. Hermione recoiled just in time to miss her mother's smack across the face. Morgana moved to attack her again but Fenrir yanked the woman back and into the arms of Mars who looked murderous. Hermione smirked. Now was the time to prove herself. She didn't know why she had done this or what had caused this change in heart. But being with her fellow werewolves would give Harry, Ron, and Draco the time they needed to get to Hogwarts. She would simply be the distraction. Harry would figure it out eventually.

Fenrir Greyback advanced upon her. His face was dark with anger and he looked ready to kill her. "What do you want?"

His cold tone sliced right through Hermione. It was obvious that her father was upset with her …or worse. She couldn't dwell on that right now; she had to stall them. Hermione licked her dirty, healed lips. "I have decided to join your side," she stated it clearly as if this would wash away everything that she had done wrong.

Her father laughed hysterically. Soon her mother and brother, as well as everyone else joined in. Hermione started breathing heavily. Her cheeks burned and she didn't know if she could get out of this. Could she get out of this? The foyer wavered and began to spin her perspective. Her mouth welled up with saliva and one face ran through her head. Draco. But that was before she was put into a spinning frenzy of anxiety and her head hit the tile floor.

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Author's Note: Sorry for the hold up. And I'm sorry if there are any mistakes in this. I hadn't updated this story due to college work – essays on top of essays. Anyways, this is chapter six. I'll try and update this week for chapter seven.