Despite the position she was in Hermione had a good night's rest. Talking to Günter had restored some sort of hope in her that everything would be alright. Besides, no matter how dark and grim things were looking, she couldn't forget the things that Draco had told her. There was a loophole everywhere you looked and all Hermione had to do was look hard enough.
So, she slept peacefully, and in the morning Hermione had a crick in her neck. The uncomfortable pillow that came with the even more uncomfortable cot had fallen to the floor as she slept during the night and her neck had been in an awful position. She sat up, groaned, and placed a hand where the pain was. She knew the perfect spell to help ease the pain away, but there was no point in dwelling on it with her wand having been seized when she was arrested.
Sighing, Hermione set her hand back on the cot, tilted her head and squeezed her eyes tight. While in that position, she heard the locks on her cell door being tinkered with. It was with too much hope she thought it'd be her friends or even Günter paying her another visit, but she knew that it would be Christian. An Auror had informed her of his pending visit which was the only reason she had gotten up that morning at all.
Christian shut the door behind him after instructing two Aurors to make sure they stood proper guard. He faced Hermione with a confused look on his face and motioned to her posture.
"What's up with you?"
Hermione snapped her eyes open. "Do you really care?"
"Should I really answer that?" Christian crossed his arms and leaned against the wall of the cell. "If I answer yes, you won't believe me. If I answer no, you'll think I'm insincere."
"I already think you're insincere. Might as well answer no and stay in line with my perceptions of you."
Normally Christian would smile or chuckle at a snide comment coming from her, but today he did neither. He only stared at her, glanced at the cot, and then resettled his eyes back on her. "I'll be surprised to know if you got any sleep on that thing. The ones at Azkaban feel even harder. But if you did, congrats to you… It means that when the time comes for it you'll make the transition to Azkaban pretty well."
Though what Christian was insinuating was that this was an open and shut case and Hermione would be sentenced, that's not what she was concentrating on. She raised a brow at him and mimicked his posture by standing and folding her arms.
"How would you know what the beds at Azkaban are like? Aurors are only told how they are. We're not allowed to step foot in an Azkaban cell."
Christian smiled and nodded to her to continue. "Go on. You're a smart woman. Put the pieces together."
"…When were you a prisoner there?"
"When I was seventeen… 'Spent two years there. And while I was there I realized that I'd have much more fun arresting people rather than being arrested. Three months after being released I was admitted into the Auror training program."
Hermione's ears perked up. She huffed and shook her head in disappointment. "You've got to be kidding. People with a criminal history aren't allowed to become Aurors."
"Depends on what you did."
"What did you do?"
"Not telling,"
Hermione rolled her eyes. Christian shrugged his shoulders and uncrossed his arms. He took the liberty to sit on Hermione's cot and seemed to deliberately avoid her gaze as if he knew how many imaginary daggers she was throwing at him.
"We've digressed." Christian said calmly. "I came here to talk about you, not me. I know that Ron came to see you yesterday. And I'm sure that he told you, though he wasn't supposed to, that we're not making you a deal and that we spoke to Günter."
Hermione didn't answer. She didn't want to get Ron into trouble and Christian could see that. He cleared his throat and continued. "Günter said and did something that's helped us quite a bit."
"What did he say?"
"He told us that you were Mr. Vaughn's escort at the party where I first met you."
Hermione scoffed. "That's your incriminating evidence? Come on, Christian, that can't do anything to me."
"No, but the fact that Günter told us outright that Vaughn is Malfoy, should do the trick."
"And the evidence to back that up is what?"
Christian's growing smirk turned into a smile with a show of white teeth. He got up from the cot and faced her. "What do you know of Imprinting, Hermione?"
Hermione tried not to let her face fall. She kept telling herself to hold her confidence and to do that she took a deep breath and continued to hold his gaze. "It's a fingerprint… A magical fingerprint that a wizard leaves on everything that he touches."
"And why is it frowned upon for usage in an investigation?"
"The amount of times something or someone is touched by a person is practically uncountable. You never know whose Imprint you're getting."
"Unless, of course, you have a sample of the Imprint you want." Christian was grinning like a madman and Hermione, though she tried, couldn't help her face from growing pale. "Malfoy was careful. He made sure never to touch Günter. But he slipped once, and Günter gave us each article of clothing he was wearing all the times that he saw Malfoy. We're doing the Imprint Test now. It'll show, Hermione. And then you'll have some questions to answer."
Hermione hated to say it, but Christian had won. When the Imprint Test was done, the evidence would be clear. No matter the disguise, an Imprint was an Imprint. It couldn't be changed. Normally Aurors didn't have samples to match with, but with Draco being such an elusive catch, Harry had ordered that an Imprint be taken of him and put on record.
Laughing, Hermione shook her head. "Who'd think Harry would end up giving everything they needed to send me to Azkaban."
If he had known what the future held, Harry wouldn't have done it. Hermione knew that at this moment he had his eyes on this case and knew the steps that Christian had taken to get his evidence against her. Did Harry believe that Hermione had let Draco go? If no, did he believe that she had no idea that the man she had "met" on her sabbatical was really Draco?
Hermione would find out soon. Some hours had passed and her cell door was being opened. She looked up to find Harry's and Ron's disappointed eyes staring at her. That meant that the test was done. But there was a loophole though. No, Hermione didn't want to lie to her friends any more than she already had, but she didn't want to lose their friendship either. She would plead with them. She would tell them that she had no idea that it was really Draco.
"You believe me, don't you?" Hermione asked softly. Harry's eyes were casted towards the ground. Ron was staring at the cell door. Silence ensued until he turned around and placed his eyes on her.
"Are you sleeping with him?" Ron asked suddenly, and Hermione's eyes widened in shock.
"What? No! Of course not. How could you ask me that?"
Ron shrugged his shoulders in irritation. "Dunno, figured that if you did one impossible thing, you might as well be doing the other." He sighed and sucked his teeth. "They did an Imprint Test on you too, Hermione."
"What? With what sample..? They have nothing to match that with."
"Christian got it from Günter." Ron informed her. "You touched his clothes when he came down here to talk to you last night."
Hermione was outraged, but most of all shocked. And here she was thinking that Günter was someone that she could trust. Obviously she was wrong and turned an angry face towards Ron and Harry. "How could you let them do that? How could you let Christian trick me like that!"
"We didn't know." Harry said quickly. "We only found out today-"
"And with that Imprint they found Malfoy's on you; some of it dated back to when you were supposed to be on your sabbatical in Australia."
"I told you that I met him while I was travelling-"
"You told Christian that you met him in Italy. The Imprint doesn't go back that far and all that does it make you out to be a liar and all the more possible that you let him go."
Hermione looked away from Ron. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't look at either one of them.
"What I can't understand, is why you'd put your whole career on the line for Malfoy!" Harry said exasperatedly. Hermione frowned and played with her fingers out of extreme guilt. "Answer me, 'Mione. Why would you do it?"
"There's no proof that I let Malfoy go." Hermione said firmly. "And there's still no proof that I knew who Darius really was. But I can answer your question either way. If I had done it…it'd be because I had to. You have no idea what it was like in there." Harry's and Ron's gazes softened considerably at that for they knew what the "there" was. Hermione sighed and continued. "You watched it, yes, but you don't know what I felt. After a while there wasn't such a thing as Auror and prisoner. There were no rules there-"
"There're rules here, Hermione!"
"But that's not what I felt when I got back, Ron! I was lenient on Thorn, fine, but when I looked at Malfoy…to go through what we did and to go back to Azkaban didn't seem fair."
Without meaning to she had done it. Hermione had subtly admitted that she had let Draco escape all those months ago. Harry's and Ron's faces at how it had subconsciously come out were looks of regret as was hers.
"That wasn't your call." Harry said grimly. "You know that. And now you have to tell us where he is."
Hermione moved her hands up and down her arms. She knew this question was coming, and she knew that they wouldn't like the answer. "I don't know."
Ron stared at her enraged. "You don't know? You've been to the bastard's house dozens of times!"
"But he's never told me where he lives." Hermione found herself smiling, basking in the glory of how smart Draco had been. But of course that wouldn't stop Harry from asking her how she had been getting there. She lost her smile then and became hesitant.
"Tell him, Hermione."
She looked up to a new voice and saw Christian. Sighing, she knew that he would know how she had been getting there and back. There was no point in hiding anymore and decided to come clean right then.
"Malfoy always sent me a portkey."
Christian nodded and then smiled. "That a girl,"
That same night Hermione was bound by the hands, and with two Aurors at her side and Christian in the front she was taken straight to Azkaban. In the holding cells she was charged with many things. The failure to comply in an investigation and withholding evidence was still upheld. She was newly charged with harboring a fugitive and lying to an investigator. Out of those four charges Hermione knew which ones would stick, which would not, and which would be difficult to prove.
The one that would stick and carry the longest sentence, harboring a fugitive, Hermione thought on a lot. She couldn't imagine living out weeks, months, years feeling how she felt right then: cold and alone. The cot felt worse than the one in the Ministry holding cells and the sheet that was given to wrap around her body did nothing as far as warmth went.
All Hermione wanted now was for the trial to start. At least then she could get out of there; even if it was just for an hour. But that wouldn't happen for a while. Yes, Aurors had proof that Darius Vaughn really was Draco Malfoy, but they had no way to find him. The only way to get to Draco's condo would be by portkey.
"And it won't come for a month." Hermione whispered to herself, watching breath clouds escape from her mouth. And despite all the noise about her arrest the portkey would still come for her.
There had been no photos taken when Hermione was brought from the Ministry to Azkaban. And the first set of photographs shot of her when she had been first arrested and brought to the Ministry had never gone public. Christian had made sure of that as well as making everyone in the Ministry to sign a magical oath to keep them from talking about it. He wanted to make sure that Draco didn't get alerted to the situation in any way.
And he won't… Hermione thought bitterly and closed her eyes as though that would somehow keep out the cold.
Author's note: Okay, so things just keep on getting worse... Who'd think we'd ever see our golden girl behind Azkaban bars? And speaking of Azkaban, we have Christian's nonchalant confession. And that's all I'm going to say about that :)
On another note, I'm going to be posting a new story called "Destined" either Tuesday or Wednesday. All I can say about the plot without giving the whole story away is that Draco's family history comes back to torment the heck out of him. Feel free to check it out when it's up!
-WP
