She wanted to get out, no needed to get out. The walls were closing in on her and the roof was falling. Faster and faster. It was trying to suffocate her, and it was succeeding.
Why she had matched him drink for drink was beyond her. At that point it had seemed like she had something to prove, now she was just suffering. She really didn't know what she was trying to prove, but regardless of her reasoning she had done it. He was double her weight, obviously she wouldn't fare as well as he would. Whatever the case, here she was and she'd have to deal with her stupidity later.
The problem that stood before the young couple at the moment was that Hermione wanted out of the confines that the house had to offer. Ron felt horrible that he couldn't simply step out the door with her and walk her down to the park, for fear of being spotted. Even if they were in a muggle neighbourhood. It was ironic when you though about it, Grimmauld Place, the House of Black was in a notoriously muggle residential area. Who would have ever thought that that would be where a family of known muggle haters would choose to live. It just showed how things had been before the first rise of Voldemort.
Without any warning Hermione started to skip towards the door. She had it in her mind that she was going outside and nobody was going to stop her. Ron knew that with the state she was in, it wasn't safe for her to be wandering around alone. Hermione had missed the last briefing but there had been word that some mysterious disturbances had been occurring in the South.
With that nagging in the back of his mind, Ron jumped up and followed Hermione down the corridor that lead from the kitchen to the front door. Everything was quiet. Nobody was around to go out with her. By now he was getting pretty desperate. He had no other choice.
"Hold on a minute, we'll go for a walk. I just want to grab my cloak. Can you wait for two minutes while I run upstairs?" he was stalling, hoping he would come across somebody on the upper floors. He knew Malfoy was in the house, but he wasn't that desperate. Yet! Then again, Malfoy had been the instigator of this mess in the first place.
He received a brief nod in response, but he didn't really know if she had registered what he had said exactly. Not wasting anymore time he bolted up the stairs. Like he had feared, nobody was around.
"Harry," he called as he pounded on his friends door. When nobody came he called again. He had a feeling he was in there though, "I need help. Hermione," if that didn't get his raven-haired friend moving he didn't know what would.
Like he had expected or at least hoped the door flew open. Ron tried to ignore the fact that his baby sister was lounging back on Harry's bed. It was better for everyone's relationships if he did such.
"What's going on?" she called over from her position, "did I hear something about Hermione?"
"Yeah, come on Harry, I need your help," Ron turned to run back down to Hermione but stopped suddenly when he heard.
"I'll come too," Ginny cried as she jumped off the bed.
"No!" Ron shouted, more harshly than he had actually intended, "I'll explain later."
That wasn't good enough for Ginny who had had enough of being excluded. It took for Harry to wave her off for her to finally admit defeat. Without Hermione there, she had little hope of overpowering her overprotective brother and boyfriend. One would be bad enough at the best of times.
Ron had a plan and it would not work if Ginny was tagging along.
At the bottom of the stairs he realized she was gone. Sure enough they saw her halfway down the block, stumbling along when they exited the front door. It was obvious now to Harry what had caused Ron to be so frantic. With a shared glance they communicated their plan and then took off after her down the road.
She didn't notice the two new bodies that had managed to sneak up behind her. That was scary in itself. Anyone muggle or wizard alike could have seriously harmed her. That's when Ron knew for sure he had made the right decision.
She wasn't walking quickly, more like meandering, making it easy enough for the two men to make up the distance between them. It took for them to place a hand on her shoulder for her to realize she had company. To their satisfaction she wasn't as helpless as they had first thought. She whirled around and had her wand out and pointing at them before the two men could even reach for their pockets. It just went to show how their adolescent years had made defence ingrained into their reflexes. Only when she saw who the men were did she lower her wand.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, a smile spreading wide across her face, "I was just walking to the park. Are you going to join me?"
Without waiting for either of them to reply, she turned and set off down the road once more. Harry looked over at Ron who shrugged before they too started walking down the road.
Across the street, down the narrow lane that wound between two houses, and out in onto the next street and into a whole different world they walked. The street, consisted of old, run down row-houses. No trees, no grass, just concrete and bricks. It was a cold and unfriendly place, but it was where the park was.
When Hermione said she was going to the park, she didn't mean a place with manicured lawns, fountains and gardens. No, it was a cement pad with an old wooden jungle gym with rotting planks, and a rusted out set of swings. She wandered over to one of the swings and sat down. As she slowly began swinging back and forth, the horrible screech of un-oiled hinges groaned in protest. With nothing else to do, Harry sat down on the other vacant swing and Ron leaned up against the painted peeled support beam. Nobody spoke. They simply swung back and forth. The two men watching their companion whose eyes flitted around the playgrounds perimeter.
The area was deserted, all the children of the neighbourhood where off learning arithmetic and grammar in primary school, and it wasn't really an area where adults went out for an afternoon stroll. Therefore when a group of people rounded the corner and made a beeline for the park, Harry new they weren't the members of a walking group. Nor where they a play-group coming to play on the monkey bars. Harry jumped off of his swing and Ron jumped into action as well. Nobody else was around, they'd risk apparating. It was too apparent that their approaching visitors where of magic themselves, and that's what worried the duo. They were wearing cloaks. No innocent wizard wore a cloak out in the muggle world. Even Hermione in the state she had been in was smart enough to take hers off before leaving Grimmauld Place. It was obvious that these wizards didn't care what they did.
Harry was the closest to Hermione and so he reached out to grab her so they could get out of there. Before they could apparate, a jet of light shot between them and crashed into the withered apparatus behind them. The trios wands were drawn and they were right back into a world that was out to get them. Hermione was by now fully aware of the situation and was doing everything she could to get them safely out of there. It showed her true skill as a witch that she could hit her target with the most perfectly executed curse even when she couldn't walk properly.
They didn't know who the their attackers were, nor were they going to stop firing curses long enough to find out. Really each of them could have just apparated themselves out of there, but nobody wanted to leave Hermione to apparate by herself. With that in mind they kept firing, trying to take down the cloaked figures who outnumbered them two to one, or at least hold them off until they could all get close enough to apparate together.
They were covering each others backs as the figures encircled them. As Hermione stepped back she felt herself collide into another body. A quick look out of the corner of her eye gave her all the information she needed, flaming red hair. Harry backed into her seconds later and she grabbed them and apparated away.
With a clunk they landed in a pile on the first landing of Grimmauld Place.
"Is everyone okay, sorry I overshot?" Hermione questioned, the worry in her voice was evident. She knew that she probably shouldn't have apparated, but at that time she had felt like it was best for everyone if they got out of the park as quick as possible. Now that they were out, she hoped that nobody was splinched.
"Why didn't we just get out of there when we first saw them approaching?" Ron moaned. Somehow he had been the lucky one to end up on the bottom of the pile.
Harry who was teetering in the middle of the Golden Trio Sandwich groaned, "because we both though Hermione was in no state to do exactly what she just did."
"Hey, stop groaning, you're not on the bottom here."
"Oof, sorry guys," Hermione rolled over, releasing her friends.
Before any of them could stand up they heard footsteps running at them from both directions. Down the upstairs corridor and from the kitchen. The ones coming down the corridor almost fell down the stairs as they rounded the corner and tripped over the pile of bodies.
"What's going on?" a voice called from the bottom of the stairs as a body started flying, but luckily crashed into the wall and stopped it from tumbling down the entire staircase.
"Why are you lying on the landing?"
"Who taught you guy's to apparate?"
"Same person as you," of course the last question had been uttered by the snide Slytherin, and Ron was in no position to be forgiving, "If you hadn't of screwed up this morning so grandly, we wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place."
"Me, what does this situation have to with me? Maybe the impact damaged the few brain cells you have remaining."
"Coming from you that's special. If I recall correctly, you were the one to trip over us and fly straight into the wall. I hope that impact wiped that smirk permanently off your face."
"Boys, enough," an angry voice chided them, "this is not some immature dorm party. Need I remind you that you are adult and in this house you will act as adults. Am I understood?"
"Sorry Professor," they all murmured meekly to McGonagall who had appeared at the bottom of the staircase and was looking up disapprovingly at them, "now would anybody like to enlighten me on why I'm looking at four bodies sprawled out on top of each other on a staircase landing?"
Hermione's head spun around. Sure enough Malfoy had joined the pile and never stood back up. Of course it didn't take him long to realize that as well. Roughly he stood up, making sure to step on Ron's outstretched fingers as he did so.
"Oww," Ron groaned.
"Sorry, didn't see them there."
This earned them another glare from McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley who had emerged from the kitchen.
"Hermione dear, is everything all right?" Mrs. Weasley enquired, but without waiting for a reply she bolted up the stairs.
"No not how I'm doing, being your favourite son and all," Ron mocked under his breath, but thankfully for his sake his mother was to preoccupied with the blood the was dripping down from Hermione's shoulder.
"Come here dear, what on earth happened to you. Did you hit something sharp when you fell?"
Mrs. Weasley pried back the sleeve of Hermione's blouse and only then did she realize that the wound was not from a tumble down the stairs. The gash ran from her collarbone to the middle of her shoulder blade and appeared singed around the outside. The worst of it was not the sheer size of the cut, but the fact that a glowing yellow pus had begun oozing out of it. There was no natural reason for that colour. The only thing that could explain it was...
"Who cursed you?" the look of realization passed over Mrs. Weasley's face, followed shortly thereafter by panic, "Is anyone else hurt? Where were you?"
What followed that was everyone jumping to their feet and taking an inventory of their body. Ten fingers and toes, just as a new mother would do. Everything was all accounted for, except for the missing skin on Hermione's shoulder.
"Come on, let's get you cleaned up in the kitchen, and don't you boys go anywhere. I want a full account of what happened," she ordered sternly.
It took awhile for Mrs. Weasley to manage to clean up Hermione. Whatever had hit her was a mystery to everyone in the room. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, and Hermione hadn't even been aware that she had been hit, so the possibility of identifying the curse based on its appearance was out of the question.
Only after a white bandage had been applied and Hermione was given a new, undamaged shirt to put on did the interrogations start. First it was why they had gone outside in the first place. Hermione was alert enough by this time for them not to have to elaborate on the finer details. Next it was why Ron had gone. That one was a bit harder to explain, but they managed. Finally the harder questions came. Who were the people? Male, female, numbers? Any identifying factors? Anything? But they had nothing.
With a sigh McGonagall pushed back her chair and began pacing around. Nobody spoke for several minutes, finally she broke the still air, "I just got out of a meeting. It appears that there has been some unrest in some muggles areas and it has been confirmed to be by wizarding means."
"Unrest, why are we just hearing about this now?" Hermione cried out, not realizing that everyone except herself and Malfoy had already been briefed that there was something going on, just not what is was, or any other details.
"This is new to me as well. Apparently it has taken us until now to relate some of these strange incidents that have been reported to the muggle police to having been done in fact by wizards."
"Who are they?"
"That is what we don't know. We know very little about them, who they are, what their goal is. So far it has just been muggles they are after. Until today at least I guess. I'm afraid we need to act fast. This is going to sweep the morning Prophet. The ministry is just releasing it. I need to find out everything I can about this group. Otherwise I fear, with the fear everyone has just experienced, this may be blown way out of proportion. Or maybe not enough. We don't know what we're dealing with here."
"So you want Malfoy and I to take a hold on our other orders and assist in the information seeking mission?" Hermione enquired only slightly hopefully. She knew what was just around the corner in their assignment and she wasn't looking forward to it.
"Of course not. Now more than ever will the people need something to look up to. This is the perfect opportunity for you two to stand up and show the world that this is not a time to panic. They have already started falling in love with you as a couple, use that to your advantage. Now, no orders are in place yet. We'll have a formal meeting tonight after supper. I want all members here. We need to get as much of a head start on this as possible. Understood?"
A series of nods confirmed and then McGonagall was gone. Leaving everyone even more confused than before.
