Breath Mints / Battle Scars
XLVI
February 23rd, 1999
If she knows anything about war, it's the way it peels back skin. Exposes nerve endings. Those months she spent running, fighting — they've had a measured affect on her instincts. She's seen it, taking her reaction time from ten, maybe fifteen seconds to nearly zero. Which is why she should've already drawn her wand.
But she forgets that Pansy has seen war too.
And in that millisecond it takes Hermione to assess the situation, Pansy pins the guard to the bars behind him, dark rowan of her wand jabbing into the fleshy wrinkles of his throat.
"Where is he?" she hisses, voice like a knife's edge.
Hermione doesn't move to stop her. Not yet.
The bars are still rattling from the impact, and the guard's beady eyes have popped wide. But an uneasy, nervous smile splits his face as his eyes shift between Pansy's. "You think you can threaten me, girly? I know all about you. I know you're not allowed to use that wand."
Pansy digs the wand so deeply into his throat, it looks like a new eye socket, and his gagging noise is loud — foul.
"I will bleed and gut you right here, you filthy Squib. Try me."
Still, Hermione has no thoughts of intervening. It's only when the guard gives a wheezing chuckle and Pansy rears back, all manner of curses on her lips, that she steps forward and stays her hand.
"Don't. Don't. We may need him."
"Granger — " she growls, furious gaze still trained on the guard, but Hermione speaks quickly.
"Let me. I can — I know what to do, let me."
Pansy's look of doubt is vastly overshadowed by the stark fear in her eyes. It's a look that says she doesn't have time to second guess. Doesn't have time to revert back to old ways, old prejudices. Gryffindor this or Gryffindor that. And when she steps away from the guard, leaving him spluttering, Hermione feels that she's trusting her not to be gentle.
She won't be.
"Legilimens," she snaps the moment her wand is out, and the dizzying rush of being pulled into memory reminds her how long it's been since she practiced.
The world passes by in faded wisps of grey for long, drowsy moments as the magic settles, faint figures racing across her vision until time slows around the moment in question. The one she's searching for.
The guard is still at his post, only in different clothes — and he's not alone. Hermione grows tight and tense at the sight of Dawlish in his Auror robes, hunched as he passes a folded scrap of parchment to the guard.
"Tonight," he says, voice an echo. "You know where to leave him. When the trial suspension expires, you'll alert the Wizengamot that the Nott boy has escaped."
The guard strokes his dirty chin. "I'm supposed to send reports of prisoner status upstairs every morning. You would be asking me to lie on official forms—"
"For which you will be compensated," grunts Dawlish.
The pause that follows is excruciating. The guard's lip curls slowly into a grin. "Say I do, then. What about the girl?"
Dawlish's hooded eyes narrow a fraction, the way they did when he met her gaze during the trials. "What about her?"
"Well, what if she comes poking about? Barely gone a day without having to open one cell or another for that bint." The guard picks his teeth. "What do I do with her?"
Dawlish seems to consider it for a moment. Then, "Tell her the truth."
Not seconds later, Dawlish is turning on his heel, and her spell collapses on itself. Those grey wisps fly past and force her back into her own form. She stumbles forward, dizzy, not realizing at first that it's Pansy's hand that steadies her.
"What is it? What did you see?" Pansy demands instantly, but as soon as Hermione finds her footing, she's lurching forward and seizing the guard by the neck of his robes.
"Tell me," she snaps, jabbing her wand into the hollow of his throat. "The truth. Tell me what Dawlish wanted you to say."
The guard mutters to himself and shifts in her grip, face drawn in tight with disdain. She gives him a rough shake, digging the wand tip in.
"Do you know I once kept a woman in a jar for a year?" she hisses, doing her best to channel all of her fury into her eyes. "Trapped as a cockroach. I could do worse to you."
His expression cracks — fumbles.
"Tell me!"
"He's gone!" he hisses, baring his stained teeth. "Taken. Soon they all will be."
"All?" Hermione echoes hoarsely, just as Pansy cuts in.
"Taken where?"
And now the guard's grimace warps into a smile. "Famous ones like you," he says, gasping against the press of her wand, "you all think you're invincible. Think just by opening your mouth you'll get whatever you want 'cause you're so much better than the rest of us. But the world doesn't work like that. Not even for Harry Potter's little friends. Everything you did, you did for nothing."
Hermione shakes him again, forcing him to finish.
He wheezes a laugh. "By now, I expect they're all gone, and by tomorrow they'll be dead. Every one you thought you saved with your simpering tales, your silly lies."
"What is he talking about?" Pansy bleats, and all the hard edges of her tone have melted away, replaced by panic. By fear.
Hermione's own fear manifests itself differently. It closes up her lungs like a vise, and for a long moment she's not sure she can speak at all. But she tightens her grip on the guard and grinds out, "Where?"
And she's never been more tempted to use an Unforgivable in her life than when he laughs again. Cackles, more like.
"They didn't tell me. I only know they took the rest straight from the castle. Figured out a way." His grin is vicious. "All I had to do was knock the Nott boy unconscious."
What happens next happens so fast she barely registers it, too caught up in his words. One moment, the guard is in her hold and the next he's on the ground. Crumpled like a wilted weed on the stone floor, writhing and curling into himself.
"Crucio," Pansy hisses again, voice once more cold and detached as another scarlet flash explodes from her wand. The guard's scream is loud and mangled, and Hermione can only gape down at him — and then to her side, at Pansy.
There is true hatred in her eyes, in that moment. Hermione thought she'd seen it before, but she's never seen Pansy hate like this. No hesitation. No remorse. No intention whatsoever to stop.
And Hermione knows without a shadow of a doubt, if she hadn't pulled her away — "Now — now! We have to go, now!" — Pansy would've gladly tortured the man to death.
Somewhere along the streets of Hogsmeade that morning, an elderly wizard gripes about, telling everyone who crosses his path that he was knocked to the ground and stepped on by "Hermione Bloody Granger, can you believe it? Not even a 'beg your pardon!'"
In the end, it's only half true. Hermione knocked him down, but it was Pansy who stepped on him — and not a soul in that village could've known why they were running. At best, they might've seen the desperate panic on their faces, but they couldn't have known what it is to run like lives depend on it.
And they do. Right now, they do.
Hermione can taste blood in the back of throat from sprinting at this rate, and they've only just reached the archway past the greenhouses. Nothing but their staggered breathing and uneven footfalls disturb the otherwise quiet Hogwarts morning. Classes won't start for an hour.
Classes couldn't matter less.
"What's the quickest way to the Dungeons?" Hermione gasps out. Pansy would know better.
"Through here!"
They cut across a side corridor and down a curved flight of stairs, shadows darting through the torchlight. These may be the first words they've exchanged since Disapparating from the Ministry — nothing needed discussing. She's never felt more certain she and Pansy are on the same page.
"In a hurry this morning, are we?" muses someone near the start of the Dungeons corridor, and Hermione vaguely puts together that it's Slughorn, a mild humor in his voice. How could he know? How could he see that her hands are shaking? That her heart is in her throat?
When they reach Slytherin's disguised entrance and Hermione blurts out, "Acta non verba," Pansy barely bats an eyelash. There's no side glance. No question in her eyes. And the two of them seem to collectively hold their breath in the moment before they pass through the wall.
Hermione almost trips — her foot catches on the crumpled form of a First Year. She's curled into a ball right beside the entrance, crying and threading her fingers into her hair.
And just beyond her lies the Slytherin common room, in shambles.
The walls are stained with black splotches from hexes gone astray. Side tables and chairs have been upended, lamps shattered. Papers are scattered about, and lost wands litter the floor. The tears in the dark curtains have the glow of the Black Lake casting eerie, jagged shadows over everything.
"They made me," the girl on the floor whimpers.
Pansy, to her credit, is much quicker to drop to the girl's side than Hermione.
"They made me," she sniffles again, frightened eyes flashing between the two of them. "They forced me to give them the password."
"Are you hurt?" Hermione manages at last.
"Where did they take them?" asks Pansy in the same moment.
The girl blinks tears at them for a few long seconds, then hiccups, "Out the — out the way they came."
"All of them?"
The girl shakes her head and weeps some more. "I don't know. I don't know."
Hermione's on her feet in an instant, racing across the common room, glass crunching under her feet. She finds more First and Second Years scattered about, huddled together in corners or hidden behind sofas. They glance at her with too much hope in their faces, but she has no eyes for them. Only for the winding stairs to the boys' dormitory.
She calls out his name more than once, voice echoing back in the emptiness, because she refuses to acknowledge what she knows.
The dormitory is worse than the common room.
Feathers have exploded across the floor, pillows shredded. Most of the ebony four-posters are cracked or lopsided in some way.
And the one she runs to — the one that matters most — is torn and disheveled and empty, so empty.
Her knees want to give out. She wants to fall to the floor at the foot of the bed — curl into herself and weep uselessly. Nothing would feel better in this moment. But it's the flash of purple that stops her.
His journal remains, half hidden by tattered sheets and the goose down of a pillow. She slips it free of the mess with a trembling hand, and it falls open to a dog-eared page. This morning's entry.
February 23rd, 1999
Diary,
Let's just say there are certain things I never expected for myself in life. Strange, inconsequential little things — at least I thought — that just weren't in the cards.
Mother and Father set the precedent for what I thought would be my future. Their marriage was the sort I was most likely to have. Very little by way of affection. Hardly a touch, only when necessary. Never in my life have I seen my father kiss my mother. Never on the lips. Always just a cold kiss on the cheek, if anything at all. There's a permanent boundary between them. It's more of a contract than a marriage, really.
I can't fathom a moment in which my father would watch my mother the way I watch Granger now. I see everything detail, every twitch, every curl out of place. I watch her eyes give her away — you can see right through them. See her thoughts racing. I know those eyes. I know those hands. Those lips. Those ankles and feet.
I never expected to know someone.
More than that, I never expected anyone to know me — and certainly not to know me better.
She's infuriating in her perception. The way she peels me back and finds what she's looking for.
And fuck if I wouldn't let her threaten me to the ends of the Earth.
I —
Hermione's next breath lodges in her throat, trapped like the tears in her eyes at the splotch of ink on the page where he stopped writing.
The scribble below it is so unlike him. Such a departure from his sloping, lazy script. Thin and threadbare and written so fast it's nearly illegible.
If you love me don't come for me.
An involuntary noise forces its way out of her — not unlike a hurt animal. It takes what feels like an age to notice Pansy, hovering just behind her.
"Are we going?" she asks, voice tense.
Hermione allows herself one more moment of stillness, then lets the journal slide out of her fingers.
"Yes," she says. A croak that makes her clear her throat. "We're going."
"Please tell me you have some idea where."
She nods mutely, turning to face Pansy. "I'm sure of it."
Just as it was when they left the Ministry, they don't stop to consider. Don't stop to sort out details, even when perhaps they should. They don't stop to assist the traumatized younger students. Don't stop to ask for help or grab supplies. Hermione doesn't go near Gryffindor.
She borrows a pair of jeans from Pansy, altering them to fit so she can run, and that's the end of it.
They leave the castle, out through the side corridor that leads towards the Quidditch pitch. She paced that spot where she saw the fissure in the wards so many times that her feet find it instinctively.
Pansy sounds confused, but not quite doubtful. "Here?"
"I'm sure of it," she says again. Speaks even if Pansy doesn't fully understand, just to get the words out. "They prepared for this. Long in advance. If the trials didn't go how they planned, they'd take matters into their own hands. And they have." She swallows thickly, then swipes her wand through the air just past the ward's border. "Revelio."
The portkey makes itself known instantly, hidden in such a way she's certain they wanted it found. A stone lawn ornament in the shape of a gargoyle.
The impatience in Pansy's eyes is wild and panicked. She reaches for it instantly, no hesitation — the same way she tortured the guard — but Hermione grabs her wrist.
"Just one last thing."
She doesn't do Pansy the dishonor of asking whether she'll stay behind. She's safer here and they both know it.
But the gargoyle leads her to Theo, and she reached for it like something lost and precious. Hermione knows that feeling too well.
No, she only murmurs, "Expecto Patronum," waiting a moment for the wispy blue otter to take full form.
Pansy's brows have drawn together.
"Deliver this message," Hermione tells it. "Harry — Dawlish has taken them all. If I don't go now, they'll be killed. I am not asking you to fight — I could never ask that of you again — but please alert the Order. If they're willing to send aid, follow my Patronus to the portkey." She stops. Chokes on the word 'goodbye' and never gets it out. "Go," she says instead, and the otter swims off obediently.
Pansy is staring at her.
"Are you ready?" Hermione asks, aggressively wiping away a few tears.
"I saw what he wrote," says Pansy, voice quiet and inscrutable. "Draco. I read it over your shoulder."
Hermione's tone comes out more cold than she intended. "So?"
"He doesn't want you to go."
She bites down on the back of her tongue. Says again, "So?"
Only Pansy could ask it so bluntly. "So you don't love him?"
A bitter, incredulous laugh bursts from her chest. She sniffs angrily and slaps away one more tear, then tightens her grip on her wand and takes Pansy's wrist.
"If loving him means letting him die, then no. No — I guess I hate him."
She touches her foot to the gargoyle, and they're gone.