Chapter III: Hell is Other People

(Jean Paul Sartre – No Exit)

The rest of her day at the surgery passes without incident. The constant flow of babies weakens after lunch, and Hermione spends the next hew hours disinfecting surfaces and typing out the ever-present appointment notes.

She gets to go home at five p.m. With a curt goodbye to Madam Pomfrey, she hitches her bag up higher on her shoulder and exits the building.

The morning's vicious sunlight has mellowed into a cooler, but still blinding, yellow haze. Hermione is walking directly into it; she squints and shades her eyes with her hand.

"Ow!"

She wasn't paying enough attention to where she was stepping. Her feet tangle themselves up. She goes down heavily, breaking her fall with her palms and knees, hissing as they're scraped raw by the pavement. Pain shoots up her arms and calves.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

"Are you alright?"

She staggers to her feet. Another boy, the third of the day, is standing before her. How odd. She doesn't think she's spoken to as many boys in her entire life as she has today. Unlike the demon boys, this one looks refreshingly normal: he's of medium height, with a compact body and untidy mop of black hair. She has the odd sensation of falling as she looks into his brilliant green eyes, shielded by a pair of glasses, but then she blinks and she's herself again.

"Yes, thank you," she says with a perfunctory smile. This is London; stranger interaction is to be avoided at all costs. She's already turning to go.

"No, you aren't," the boy says accusingly. "Look at your hands!"

She does. Blood is dripping down her wrists. Odd. She hadn't thought she'd hurt herself that badly.

"Come on in and let me put a plaster on that," he insists.

"In?" she repeats, frowning. Surely he doesn't expect her to enter the house of a male she's just met.

In response, he jerks his head at the nearest building. Hermione gazes up at the unassuming red brickwork of the Church of Hogwarts, nestled in between a Sainsbury's and a fish-and-chip shop.

"Only in there," he says. "We've plenty of first-aid things."

She'd turn him down, but the blood is annoying. And it's only a church, it's not like it's his house. She finally nods and follows him through the door.

Inside, the church looks… remarkably churchlike. The entire building is a single room, with padded wooden chairs laid out in pews and a low table at the front with a candle burning on it. There are no crosses, religious imagery, or people. From the ceiling hangs a tattered banner on which is printed a Latin motto: draco dormiens numquam titillandus. Hermione knows Latin, of course, she got an A* in it at GCSE and it's one of the five A-levels she's studying now. She translates it easily inside her head – never tickle a sleeping dragon. She's amused by the coincidence of encountering another 'draco' again so soon, and the aptness of the warning to her own life.

On one whitewashed wall Hermione can see a portrait of an old, whitehaired man with a long beard and clear blue eyes; at first she wonders if that's supposed to be one of the Apostles, but the name inscribed under the frame reads Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Must be the church founder. His eyes seem to track her movements across the room.

"Take a seat," the boy says, indicating the pews. "I'll be right back with the plaster."

She does. There was a staircase right at the back of the church which she didn't initially notice. The boy disappears up it, reappearing moments later with a little tan plaster held between his fingers.

"So, I'm Harry Potter," he offers as he holds out the plaster.

"Hermione Granger," she says, taking it. Their fingers overlap momentarily. The touch makes the tiny hairs on her arms stand upright: she pulls away instantly. As she does so her gaze falls on a flash of colour at the side of his pale, skinny wrist. She sees the curl of a letter around the jut of his wrist-bone.

"You have a tattoo?" she asks, her interest caught. "What does it say?" She's never been able to resist reading whatever comes to hand.

To her surprise, a light flush works its way up his cheeks. "Oh, it's pretty silly," he says with a rueful smile. But he turns his arm anyway so that she can see. Circling his wrist like a handcuff is a quotation in inky Gothic letters: Hell is other people.

"It's from –"

"Sartre, I know," she says. "His play No Exit. A little bit of a strange tattoo for a boy who spends his time in a church, isn't it?"

He laughs, seemingly unoffended. "I guess you could say it's sort of a family motto," he says. "My parents used to say it a lot. Aren't you going to put that plaster on?"

She realises she was just holding it. "Sorry. Thanks for the plaster," she says briefly. Her blood has traced tiny rivulets down the insides of her arms. She puts the plaster across the worst graze on her right palm, which bore the brunt of stopping her fall.

"Well, I'd better be going," she says. "Goodbye, Harry."

"See you, Hermione," he says, watching her leave.

She'd better research the beliefs of Hogwarts Church in more depth, Hermione thinks as she turns down her street. Seems like an interesting place with an interesting take on the afterlife.

She swings her gate open and then stops dead.

"Crookshanks?"

There's a dark, squashed lump on the doorstep which seems to be her cat. But it can't possibly be her cat. Because it's missing its head.

Spots dance dizzily before her eyes as she barrels towards her front door. The dark lump is lying in a pool of dark ruby blood, and she sees – she sees –

She sees Crookshanks licking himself calmly, looking up at her with inscrutable yellow eyes as she freezes in front of him. Her head is pounding with confusion. There's no blood, no battered body. A perfectly healthy and normal-looking cat is cleaning itself delicately on the welcome mat.

Hermione lets out a broken exhale. Her mind must still be playing tricks on her. She's clearly still being affected by all the things Draco and Theodore put her through this morning.

She swings Crookshanks into her arms just to reassure herself. He's a warm, solid weight, and finally the tension begins to drain out of her. Bloody hell.

Her appetite is gone, but her parents are waiting in the dining room to have dinner with her. She has no choice but to go in.

"Hello, Mummy. Daddy," she greets.

The Drs Granger are busy laying the table. Tonight's dinner is avocado sandwiches.

"Hermione, there you are," her mother says. "You're back late. I was just about to give you a ring."

She holds up her plastered hand. "A little fall, Mummy. Nothing to worry about."

"Yes, yes, you'll be perfectly fine," her father says with a cursory glance at it. He would say the same thing if a bone were sticking out of her arm; the Drs Granger don't believe in indulging hypochondria.

They begin eating. Immediately, her father opens the conversation with the expected question.

"How's your personal statement going?" he enquires. "Still stuck on how to conclude it?"

"Unfortunately, yes," she admits tonelessly. "At this point I'm almost tempted to just use some sort of quotation and leave it at that."

Her mother gasps in horror, as though she's just suggested abandoning a medical career for cabaret dancing.

"You can't possible do that!" she exclaims. "Universities hate it. It's so unoriginal!"

"I know, Mummy," Hermione sighs. "I wouldn't really, don't worry."

Her father dabs delicately at his mouth with a napkin. "That Watson-Hillier girl is going in for Classics," he says with distaste. "Of course, I told her father what a waste of time and money that would be, because she'll never find a job."

Hermione's mother sniffs. "More money than sense, those people," she says. "I'll be surprised if Clarissa makes it into Newcastle, let alone Oxford. What did she get for her GCSEs again, Hermione?"

"Four A*s and six As," she supplies emotionlessly.

"You see?" her mother says, vindicated. "If Oxford takes that they aren't the university I thought they were!"

The rest of dinner passes similarly. Hermione's parents are comfortably middle-class, but they don't have inherited wealth: her maternal great-grandparents were Welsh coal miners. As such, her parents are intensely insecure about their place in society, and they view Hermione's impending medical career as the pinnacle of the Granger family's achievements. She shudders at the thought of how they'd have reacted if she'd said she wanted to study some ridiculous arts discipline like Classics.

Her parents won't be able to rest easily until she's secured her medicine place at Cambridge. Since they won't know whether she's made it or not until next January, and it's only July right now, it's going to be a long wait.

After dinner she goes upstairs to work on her personal statement. As in most areas of her life, she's way ahead of her classmates here. The deadline for the application is the fifteenth of October, and she's already on the fifth draft of her statement. But there's one glaring omission: a concluding paragraph.

She hunches over her laptop, staring grimly at the Word document, cudgelling her brains for something witty to end with. It's no use. Everything she's coming up with feels stale and unimpressive.

Why does she want to be a doctor? She can't say it's because she wants to help people; for one, it's so clichéd universities loathe it, and for another it isn't true. But she can't say she's attracted by the prospect of an immense salary and guaranteed job with the NHS. That sort of mercenary thing wouldn't go down well.

Realistically, she's applying for medicine because her parents want her to, and because she can't think of any other subject she'd rather do. Hermione prizes all knowledge equally.

She abandons the attempt for the moment and wanders over to her bookcase. The books are sorted neatly by height, then author surname, then publisher. She considers rereading Secrets of the Darkest Arts, but she's already read it cover-to-cover twice, and it's not like there'll be any tips on how to escape a deal with the devil.

First, she doesn't want to escape it. He hasn't even granted her wish yet. Second, if Draco is to be believed, there isn't any way to escape it anyway.

She snorts. As if a demon – and the devil's own son, no less – is to be believed. He must lie like he breathes. Just as he did when he said that his father knows the future, or claimed to own a fraction of her soul. What even is a soul, anyway? How can a mere word transfer it from her ownership to his?

No, he was definitely just trying to scare her. He looked like the sort of boy who'd enjoy terrorising other people. Besides, Secrets of the Darkest Arts even warns her that demons twist truth and tell stories until up is down and white is black.

She pulls out her Oxford World Classics edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost from the shelf, complete with an agonisingly ugly illustration of God on the front cover.

Of Man's first Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the world, and all our woe…

Perfect.


AN: As promised: your daily update! Sorry it's a little shorter than usual, but I'm over halfway through the next chapter so I'm hoping to get that up tonight as well (though I make no promises). I do work hard on this so as ever, please review!

This chapter is dedicated firstly to Vane3131, and secondly to all the guest reviewers who leave comments I can't personally reply to. I love and appreciate them all!