Chapter Four

Promises, Broken and Kept

She managed to get into the green wardrobe, the doors closed behind her, right as the door to the room itself flew open. Hermione turned, moving carefully so as to not cause any creaking sounds, and peeked through the impossibly narrow sliver of light between the wardrobe's doors.

Jefferson kept his back to the room's new occupant, his fists braced on his worktable and his frame hunched.

Hermione angled her head, trying to get a better look at the Queen of Hearts as the woman—creature? She wasn't certain how to classify the monarch, actually—approached. A heavy veil obscured the face, red lace to match her voluminous gown, and a vaguely annoyed looking man in a hearts suit getup trotted obediently along at her side.

"There you are." It was the man accompanying the Queen who spoke.

His shoulders moving with the heaving of a loud sigh, Jefferson turned. A soured expression gracing his features, he bowed—a reluctant movement, but one he deliberately directed toward the ruler, only, completely shutting her little henchman out of the respectful, if grudging, gesture—before he leaned his hips back against the table and folded his arms across his chest. "Where else would I be?"

The Queen waved her hand and her companion leaned near for her to whisper his ear. Hermione found it strange that the Queen hadn't been shy about screaming so loud her voice had echoed through the entirety of the castle just a few minutes ago when now she wouldn't even speak above a whisper. Then again, this was Wonderland, and Hermione had no idea how things worked here.

Maybe the Queen couldn't speak in anything other than screams and whispers. Her spine stiffened. She wasn't certain why, but there was something mildly terrifying in that thought. Perhaps because it only emphasized the inhumanness of some of this world's denizens.

"The forest brings words. It tells our Queen there was a strangely dressed man and woman outside the castle tonight."

Hermione winced, even from here, she could see the way Jefferson's eyes widened incrementally at that.

"And you think the man was me?" he asked, covering his shock by, well, by pretending it was a shock of another sort—no longer the shock of being accused of something impossible, but the shock of realizing he might be speaking to a couple of idiots. Not that he'd ever dare speak that thought aloud in the Queen's presence. "How would I've gotten out? The doors don't answer to me, remember? Besides, if I could get out of here, no way in hell would I have come back."

The suit fellow looked to his queen for instruction. Once again, she waved and he leaned close to listen to another whisper.

The man smirked, nodding. "The Queen concedes that you have a point. She also reminds the Hatter that he has yet to make good on his promise."

Jefferson's features shut down, pure wrath welling in his eyes, alone. "What promise?" he said in a whisper, the words slipping out in a hiss. "I told you from the beginning that I couldn't—"

"Of course, Her Majesty would always be happy to remind you what will happen—in a more permanent fashion—should you be unable to deliver." The man drew a finger across his own throat.

Hermione felt her heart squeeze at the way that rage faded, replaced instantly and effortlessly with fear, sadness, self-pity.

Swallowing hard, Jefferson nodded, his eyes drifting closed in defeat. "I haven't forgotten. I'm trying. Would Her Majesty please accept that?" he asked her companion, knowing better than to address his plea to the woman directly, as he'd already tested her patience enough for one night.

The Queen again whispered to her companion. He nodded, turning a cold gaze on poor Jefferson. "Accepted. For now, but Her Majesty grows weary of waiting."

Without a word of parting, they took their leave. Jefferson reluctantly put on another show of bowing respectfully for the Queen's exit, in case either of them deigned to look back.

Once the door was close behind them, he all but collapsed back against his worktable. He exhaled a trembling breath, giving a shake of his head. "I can't last much longer like this. I can't . . . ."

Hermione burst out of the wardrobe and ran over to him. "Jefferson? Jefferson!" She gently clamped her hands on his upper arms—he seemed completely disoriented. "Come on. Snap out of it, please!"

He crossed his arms, resting his fingers over hers. Closing his eyes, he nodded. "I'm here, I am. I . . . it's just too much." Opening his eyes, he met her gaze. "If I stay here much longer, I am going to go mad."

She nodded in return, the misery in those already familiar blue depths in danger of breaking her, she thought. "No, no. We're going to leave here, you and me, together, yeah?"

Jefferson reached out, impulsive, and hugged her close to him. He didn't even care that her untamed mane got in his face a bit. The simple feel of her in his arms forced a sigh from him. She was real. She was real and she was here and she had magic.

But he knew if they were caught, then a fate no different from the one he'd been promised awaited her. "This is your chance, you know," he whispered, her wild hair tickling his chin as he spoke. "You can still leave."

Hermione could feel a fine tremor quaking through him. He was so terribly afraid—he really thought she was going to abandon him to this place, to these people. That she'd break the promise to help him get back to his child out of fear for herself.

She returned his embrace for a moment before pulling back enough to lift her gaze, meeting his. "I'll let the fact that we've only just met keep me from being insulted that you think I'm the sort of person who turns her back on someone who needs help."

His face fell, lower lip quivering a moment before he spoke. "I'm sorry, I know what you said. I just . . . I don't suppose I've met many people like you. Where I'm from, the kind people are always the ones who don't have any power. The ones who have it are cruel, selfish; they let it turn them into monsters. You? You have power. That you'd still be selfless with it . . . ." He let his words trail off, uncertain exactly how to finish that sentiment in a fitting way.

"Well, in my world, there are also people with power who are cruel and selfish, but that's not the ideal, by far. Where I'm from, everyone always hopes those with power will use it for good. Use it to make things better." She smiled gently, feeling tears clog her throat of a second as she held his gaze. Oh, just looking at him made her want to rend this world to pieces for what its so-called Queen was doing to him. "I believe in hope, and I can't imagine something better than reuniting a parent and child."

He laughed, but it was a sad sound, the tears she'd nearly choked on reflecting in his eyes. His lids fluttered downward as he said, "Everything you say makes me question how any of this could really be happening."

In her mind's eye, Hermione could very easily see herself launching forward. She could very easily see herself picking up where they'd left off before the queen's intrusion and kissing him. She could imagine the feel of his lips pressed to hers, of his hand sinking into her hair to cradle the back of her head.

Forcing a gulp down her throat, she gave herself a shake. Plenty of time for pleasant imaginings—or pleasant realities—when they were out of here.

"How does this work?"

He blinked a few times, clearly thrown by her non-sequitur question. "What?"

Breathing out a quiet laugh, she extracted herself from his arms, putting a little space between them so they could both think. "You want me to put magic into a hat or something?"

Jefferson simply observed her for a moment before uttering a laugh of his own and nodding. "The thing is, I'm not entirely certain how it works, myself. I created the first hat, the one I no longer have access to, with some enchanted fabric sewn into the lining, and it simply . . . worked. I had no real control over it, the hat had its own rules once it started working."

"Sounds a bit like a portkey." She was oblivious to his responding bewildered expression as she went on, waving one hand about as she talked. "Not entirely, just a bit. I mean, a portkey is an item that's spelled to bring anyone who touches it to a predetermined place. But this is there and back, limited by the number of people traveling. That's interesting."

He watched as she broke into a flurry of motion. Taking some paper and a piece of charcoal from his worktable, she settled on the floor. He circled her as she began jotting down what looked like numerical equations, though there was much in there which was not math that he didn't understand for the life of him.

"What are you doing?"

"Calculations," she answered without looking up from her work. "It occurs to me that simply putting magic in the hat might not be enough, especially since my magic might be different than whatever sort of magic is in your world. So, if I can tweak the requisite parameters for creating a portkey and instead create something meant for traveling to and from—"

"Tweak?" he echoed the odd word, his brows drawing upward.

"Mm-hmm. Oh, wait." She did look up, then, her hand stilling against the paper. "The Queen promised to let you go once you've created a working hat for her, but what's to stop her from breaking her promise? She throws around death threats sort of flippantly, seems to enjoy reminding you you're only kept alive for this. What's to stop her from simply killing you once you give her what she wants?"

He dropped his gaze to the floor, shaking his head. "It's not as though that possibility hasn't occurred to me, but hope—that very thing you just said you believe in—is the only thing that keeps me going here." His features crumbled in a heartbroken expression. "If I lose hope that I'll get back to Grace, I might as well just let them kill me now."

Hermione sniffled, nodding. She couldn't let his emotions affect her, at least not right now. She had to focus.

"All right, then," she said, returning her attention to her equations. "Two hats, then."

"Two?" Jefferson's brow arched.

"Mm-hmm. One for the Queen, as she has ordered, so she can't go on a tear that you didn't keep some ruddy promise you never made in the first place—" Okay, so perhaps she was a bit more annoyed by that than she'd let on, but she simply despised when people twisted up events simply to make themselves sound right—"and one for you and me."

He held up his hands, rather certain she had misunderstood this entire thing. "Wait. We go, the hat stays behind. They'd follow us. Even if she has her own, she might decide that because she didn't let me go, I'm still her prisoner."

Hermione grinned up at him—she knew it wouldn't comfort him any that it was the sort of grin people in her world would compare to the Cheshire cat. "That's why ours will only have one trip in it to start with. We go through and then it's nothing. They'll think we've disappeared, or used the hat you made for her before."

Jefferson felt his heart lighten, so much it threatened his breathing a moment. Hope. He said he'd had it, but . . . it hadn't been real before now, not truly. He had hope again. Swallowing hard, he blinked back a sudden wash of relieved, joyful tears.

"And done! I know how to make this work, now."

He smiled, crossing the room to retrieve more materials. "Then I guess it's time to make some new hats."