Hermione ran as fast as her legs could take her— which, clad in those uncomfortable low-heeled atrocities her mother called shoes, was proving an almost-impossible task. She could hear the voices of her mother and her lady's maid, Norma, gaining in volume: they were getting closer. She had to make a decision, and fast— in hindsight, the decision she should have made from the very start of her wild run.
She shook off the shoes, abandoning them in the middle of the gravel path that connected the main house to the outer boundary of the village, and continued running, feeling considerably lighter having cast off those dastardly heels. Now, if only I could do the same with this corset! she thought, starting to wheeze as the horrible device constrained her ribs. She did have to hand it to it, however— all that running and heaving and panting and moving and the corset hadn't shifted one single inch. That was resilience she could admire, even if said resilience was currently making her breathing more jagged than was probably safe. Her hair came down in thick curtains around her face. Her mother had tried to tame it, slathering it in pastes and pomades in an attempt to straighten it, but the characteristic frizz that usually dominated Hermione's head was struggling to break free and making sure she knew it.
"She can't run for long," she heard her mother's voice rise from somewhere behind her (she couldn't waste seconds of her spree in turning to look). She zipped around a willow tree, hoping the thick foliage would help her conceal her change in course, running from her mother's voice like a deer from the crack of a hunter's footsteps on the forest floor. As she continued running parallel to the house's east wall, hoping to have lost them, she nonetheless had to admit that her mother was right. She couldn't run for long. Though getting rid of the shoes had given her more of it, her time was running out, and if that dreadful corset had anything to do with it she had only minutes left before she collapsed with exhaustion.
She needed to find a place to hide, and fast.
She doubled around a corner, sticking as close to the wall of the house as possible. As she came up toward the south wall —the broader, back part of the house—, she spotted a group of people running across the North Lawn, and her heart caught in her throat: it appeared the search party had grown. Now it wasn't only Norma chasing after her, but her mother had somehow enlisted Pierrot, the gardener, and Jack, the stable boy, in what was quickly becoming a wild goose chase. Hermione observed them: scuttling across the grass on stocky little legs, her fur-clad mother trailing a few steps behind —too dignified to run, but trying to glide as quickly as she could while still staying a distance from the service—, the sight should have been hysterical were it not for the stakes being so high.
The good news was, they were almost on the other side of the house from her, and judging by the direction of their search, they all thought she had run off toward the village. Good. That would buy her time. But the need to find a hiding place was growing direr by the second.
She slid along the cool stone wall, trying to stay as quiet as she could. The rustle of her stuffy dress against the gravel, however, was making it near impossible. Hermione felt another pang of contempt toward her mother: didn't she know petticoats and draped fabrics were out of style? Not that Hermione was particularly fashion-forward, or anything, but one of the sleeker, less spacious dresses Edwardian ladies now preferred would have made it much easier to run.
She winced as she stepped over a branch, which her tulle underskirt crackled loudly against. "This choux pastry of a dress is going to get me killed," she huffed, hoping the sound had been inconsequential. But she had no such luck: the 'choux pastry' had, indeed, put her in greater danger.
Roused by the faint sound of friction between the branch and the petticoat, one of Pierrot's assistants had looked toward Hermione. His eyes widened, and without a word to her, he turned robotically toward the North Lawn and brought his hands up to his mouth, undoubtedly to call for his boss and the rest of his searching colleagues.
Swearing under her breath, Hermione abandoned all discretion: she broke out into a full-on sprint toward the other end of the south wall. As she neared the other end, she heard voices grow louder. No doubt, her wily mother had split the party and sent one half along the west wall and another along its east counterpart to trap Hermione on either side of the south wall. She was cornered, and it was all over—
The glint of the sun along a glass surface made her turn her head, coming from one of the windows of the woodshed nestled between a group of trees, just a few feet away from the house and the gravel rectangle that immediately surrounded it. She was saved. The voices grew louder and louder, but Hermione didn't bother looking back to check where they were coming from as she crossed the few steps of grass that separated her stand on the gravel from the small woodshed. Right as a shadow began to creep from the corner of the west wall, Hermione reached the shed, flung the door open, and ran into the woodshed, making sure to close the door behind her without slamming it, careful not to attract any attention to where she had slipped in.
She flattened against the log walls, holding her breath as she heard Norma, Pierrot, Jack, and whoever else her mother had strung along thunder by. "She's not here, my lady," Hermione heard a male voice, and she could almost picture her mother sourly pursing her lips as she assumed the news. Hermione stayed there, pressed flat against the wooden wall next to the door, holding her breath, until she heard the footsteps definitively vanish with distance. Only then did she finally release her breath and allow her shoulders to lose some of their tension, slumping downward with evident relief.
"I didn't know I was expecting company," a voice suddenly came from the far end of the woodshed, and all the tension she had lost rushed immediately back into her body. On high alert, Hermione was too stunned to speak, but the owner of the voice stepped closer, coming from behind the rack in the middle of the shed where a few stray logs were stored. He took a look at her face and let out a long, impressed whistle. "Much less that that company be the lady of the house."
Well aware that his eyes were boring into her, Hermione defiantly returned the favor, piercing him through with a stare as she examined him as thoroughly as he seemed to be doing her. Tall and limber, but well-built, the man must be around her age. His pale skin was spattered with freckles, which matched his bright orange hair almost exactly in color (even in the reddish wash the grubby woodshed windows gave the whole scene). His nose was long and he wore a smirk naturally, and as her brown eyes met his icy blue ones, he tilted his head off to one side cockily.
"I'm not the lady of the house," was all she managed to say. "Not if my mother has anything to do with it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That she's dying to marry me off," Hermione grumbled. She didn't know why she was venting to a stranger, much less one of 'the service' her mother would have fired for 'not have shown her due respect'— which was taken to mean he hadn't sunk into a reverence the moment Hermione ventured even the tip of her toe into the shed, and what's more, had actually cracked fun at her being there.
"Isn't it a little soon?" the man said, crossing his arms over his chest loosely, not in a gesture of self-consciousness and concealment but rather one of comfortable interest. "Especially considering you must be, what, twenty, and every 'acceptable prospect' Lady Granger has in mind is probably double your age at the very youngest?"
Hermione couldn't help but laugh a little, before reining her tongue back in. She had never before met this man, whoever he may be, and though she abhorred her mother's draconian stance toward the servants of the house and the deference she expected from them, she couldn't help but be a little taken aback by how insolently this man was speaking about his employers.
"Excuse me, but who are you?" she blurted, a little rudely.
The man's loose smile tautened into a smirk. "Before I let you in on that, I think I deserve to know what you're doing in my shed. You seemed to be in quite a tizzy when you barged in without knocking, interrupting my work."
Hermione looked toward the corner of the shed, where an axe sat buried halfway through a thick log. It was evident he had been chopping wood before she came in. She stiffened. "There is no reason I should tell you the answer."
"Understandable," the man countered, "but by those same lines, there is no reason I should tell you my name."
"I could force you."
"That would be very much like your mother. And as I hear it, I believe that is something you would despise."
He had a point. To force 'the service' to do her bidding was her mother's favorite pastime. Hermione would be no better than her then, and her most steadfast resolve was to never become her mother. Which meant that, if she really did want to know the answer, she'd have to play by his rules. She sighed.
"I was running from my mother, predictably. We are to receive visitors tomorrow, 'eligible bachelors' (which, in my mother's language, means she has invited them as marriage prospects), and she had had me locked in my bedroom since eleven in the morning trying on dresses for tomorrow's dinner. Five hours were quite enough for me, so as soon as the seamstress left the door slightly ajar when she was coming in, I saw my chance and I escaped." The corset dug into her ribcage, reminding her painfully of her mad race. "Too bad the opportunity came when I was wearing the ugliest dress in all of England."
"Look at it on the bright side," the man offered. "At least the thing is ruined now, which means you won't be able to wear it."
Hermione looked down: the vapidly blue choux-pastry dress whose noisy ruffles had propelled her into the woodshed in the first place was torn and drooping in places, the entirety of the hem dripping with mud. The man was right: if this whole odyssey had a silver lining, it definitely was that that horrible thing was no longer a wardrobe option.
"Why is she so eager to marry you off, if I may ask?" the man continued as Hermione examined the now-tattered dress. "Shouldn't she be keeping you close, what with the whole lineage and inheritance thing?"
"You mistake me for my brother," Hermione chuckled dryly. "Orlando's the heir, the future Earl of Rosebury. Lineage skips over women, no matter if they're the eldest. So as soon as my little brother was born, my mother might as well have thrown me overboard. With a male Granger to carry the line, a daughter is just an additional expense. She can't wait for a day it's another man that pays for my frocks, and not my father."
"Like it's her money to spend," the man commented offhandedly, and Hermione was surprised to find a fierce agreement. It was her father's money, after all, not her mother's— so why was it the old lady that made her feel like such a financial burden, as if it were a personal offense to herself?
"Satisfied? I even answered the additional question about the inheritance," Hermione said. "Now will you tell me what you're called?"
"Oh, gladly. I'm Ron, Ronald Weasley. I'm the handyman for the estate," the man said, extending a hand out to her. A little gingerly, she shook it: it was slick with sweat, and she could feel the roughness of a few calluses against her contrastingly smooth skin.
"Enchantée," Hermione said sardonically in over-pompous French, attempting to confer to their woodhouse meeting the same quality with which a sociable soirée might be infused.
"And you are?"
The question completely stunned Hermione. "You don't know my name? But then how did you know I was, in your words, 'the lady of the house'?"
"Because everybody knows who you are," Ron explained. "Sure, I have seen you on your walks or peering out the library window or getting into the car, but to me you have always been 'Young Lady Granger' or 'Mistress Granger'. You forget I'm not an in-house servant— I'm part of the grounds staff. I have never had the opportunity to hear your parents call you by your name inside the house. So, unless your first name is 'Lady' or 'Mistress', I may know what you are, but not who."
Hermione felt vaguely ashamed that her title preceded her among the staff that did not work inside the manor. He was right— to him, she had no reason to be anything else than her position, but it still made her feel awfully haughty that she had yet to have a name attached to her face. It felt odd to have to introduce herself, to not be known before she ever really knew anyone. "It's Hermione."
"From A Winter's Tale?"
She was surprised. Few people would connect the reference, but she would have never expected it from a handyman. "Yes, from A Winter's Tale. It seems my parents had a penchant for Shakespearean names."
"Of course, Master Orlando," Ron expertly pointed out. "As You Like It."
Hermione was fascinated. "How do you know so much Shakespeare?"
"A bit classist, innit?"
"Uh— sorry, I mean—"
"I'm teasing. I know you I'm not exactly the type of chap you'd expect to be well-versed in literature. You want the truth?"
"Of course."
"But you won't tell."
"Of course not."
"Promise."
"Promise."
Ron let out air from his nostrils and tousled his own hair. "The truth is, I sneak into your dad's library, inside the manor, when I haven't much to do and I know nobody's in there. I borrow books (don't worry, I put them all back), and I've found I have quite the soft spot for good ol' Willy S." He looked right at her with a piercing gaze. "You promised you wouldn't tell."
"And I won't," Hermione said in earnest. "I wouldn't have told anyway, considering that you've taken the time to do your research on my name, albeit unwittingly."
"Fantastic," Ron exhaled with evident relief. "I thought nobody would mind if I took books, to be honest, considering the rich only ever seem to use them as decoration."
"Excuse me?" Hermione said, straightening her spine to gain whatever few millimeters she could against his height and staring him down.
Ron mimicked her, straightening his back and returning the defiant look. "Well, aren't I right? Don't rich people just have libraries to brag? Nobody actually reads the books, they just sit pretty on the shelves so all the guests can take note of how cultured the family is, but nobody ever reads them, isn't that right?"
"I read," Hermione said indignantly. She took this as a personal offense: her refuge in a house where she was expected to sit like a doll and look pretty was the library, and to have the hours she had devoted to paging through its tomes negated by a handyman with an overinflated ego was a crushing blow.
"Oh, yeah? Prove it," Ron challenged her, the smirk returning to dance along the corners of his thin lips. "Recommend a book to me."
Hermione was disarmed. Sure, she was a voracious reader, but it was something so personal to her, so secret (her mother had more than once expressed disapproval for the hours she spent among the bookshelves, so to do so often seemed like hiding), that to be compelled to share a bit of what she read with someone felt like sharing a bit of herself.
To try to conceal that, she fired back a witty retort like the ones she knew to expect from him by now: "I will, if I somehow manage to get back inside that house without getting caught and skinned alive by my mother and her cronies. They're probably still patrolling the grounds."
Ron's smirk curled into a mischievous smile. "I can help with that."
"How? She must have probably enlisted the whole groundskeeping staff by now, not to mention a few of the maids and the hall boys. There is no way to make it safely back into the house without any of them seeing me."
"There is," Ron said, the smile unwavering.
Hermione's interest was piqued. "How?"
"Follow me," Ron beckoned, opening the door to the woodshed and gesturing her out.
He led her through the thicket behind the woodshed, in a slow pace so as to not call too much attention and to keep the dress's loud rustles under control, away from the North Lawn and toward the circlet of cottages that were a short distance away from the south wall of Rosebury House. A small gravel path, like the one surrounding the house and leading to and away from it, linked the house to the cottage circlet, signaling clearly that they were a part of the estate. Walking the path would have put them in plain sight, but Ron wove his way through the edge of the forest that was a backdrop both to the house and to the cottages, and that would take them to the back of the circlet without being seen.
Hermione trod carefully: she had no shoes and only a pair of white stockings (which were now full of holes from the gravel, dusty from the woodshed, and increasingly dirty from the forest soil) to prevent her stepping on anything that might render her unable to walk. And then she would go down, and the corset and the petticoat wouldn't let her get back up, and Ron would either have to call for help or help her up noisily, which would both make too much noise and then all discretion would be abandoned, and then she would get an even worse walloping from her mother for delving into the forest with the service— No, she'd better not think about any of that, but just concentrate on her step and on staying silent.
At last, after what seemed like an ages-long prowl, she and Ron came up behind the first cabin in the circlet, right by the path that led to Rosebury House. Ron ventured out of the foliage first, surveying to see if anyone was out there that might give them away. Seeing none, he beckoned to Hermione again and led her around the back of the house to shove her in through the door before anyone saw them.
As Ron watched to make sure the coast was still clear, Hermione let her gaze wander around the cottage. It was a stout, stony building, identical to its sisters in the circlet, one of the cabins used to house the service that did not work inside the manor, was married, or for any other reason could not sleep in the servants' quarters. Ron, however, gave her no time to look around, unceremoniously shoving her toward the farthest corner of the cottage, where a small trapdoor was cut into the wooden floorboards.
Ron squatted and pulled on the trapdoor, with yawned open with the squeak of its hinges. "Through here," he signaled, gesturing to the trapdoor.
Hermione was skeptical. "You're going to get me back into the house underground?"
"Your choice: trust the tunnel, or brave the patrol outside," Ron said, the bottom half of his body already in the trapdoor.
Hermione weighed her options. "Fine," she caved, approaching the trapdoor's entrance gingerly. "But I don't know how we're going to get this hellish skirt through there."
Ron guided her feet toward the first of the stone steps that led from the trapdoor to the floor of the passageway, helping her down as they both crushed the skirt to fit it through. At last, when Hermione was stepping on the cold stone floor, her skirt all crumpled, Ron reached upward and closed the trapdoor.
They were immediately submerged in pitch-black dark. "Ron?" Hermione called, trying not to let her fright show through. The more time she spent down here, in this cold, drafty chute, the worse this idea seemed, however unattractive the alternative of facing her mother out there may be. "Ron, are you there?"
She heard rustling bounce off a corner nearby, and she swiveled toward the source of the sound, expecting to (but hoping she wouldn't) encounter a bat, or a swarm of cockroaches, or perhaps a much more threatening critter. She prepared for the worst— and then relaxed, although somewhat confused, when a light began dancing off the stone walls.
"It was just me," Ron said, an oil lamp swinging from his grasp. "I keep a lamp down here. I just had to find it."
"Thank the Lord you did," Hermione mumbled as they set off down the tunnel.
As they walked, Hermione tried to gauge where they were going: were they headed toward Rosebury House? How long was the walk? Or would he be leading her somewhere more secluded, maybe to kidnap her, maybe to kill her— after all, a handyman stood to gain with having the Earl's daughter well within his clutches, didn't he? And that he did: Hermione had trusted Ron and placed herself entirely in his hands. Even if she tried to bolt now, she wouldn't know where to go. Her best bet was to just keep walking, despite her being completely oblivious as to what their destination might be, exactly.
Luckily, her fears were unfounded. As they came to the end of the passageway, another set of stony steps appeared, leading up to a square around whose edges light filtered through into the tunnel. The corresponding trapdoor.
"Right that way," Ron said, and Hermione climbed a few of the steps to reach out and push the trapdoor open.
When her head popped out of it, she was surprised to see the very lobby of Rosebury Hall. In the hundreds of outcomes her paranoid mind had raised through, it was embarrassing to admit that her actual house being the destination, despite that being the whole root of the plan, had never crossed her mind. "Where are we?" she asked Ron, trying to make sense of how they had ended up here.
"It's a corner of the secondary stairwell," Ron said, his head popping up beside hers. Hermione let her gaze sweep the space, and she did begin to recognize the secondary staircase that the service (and herself, sometimes, when hiding from her mother) used to move up and down the house without cluttering the grand stairwell. "It's poorly-lit and secluded. Perfect place for a secret passage, don't you think?"
Hermione looked at him, stunned. He met her gaze with a boyish grin and glinting eyes. "How do you know about this?"
"How do you think I get into the library? Through the front door?" Ron snorted.
Trying to make sense of it all, Hermione crawled out of the trapdoor. The main hall was deserted, the scullery maids and hall boys presumably out helping her mother hunt her down; besides, within the confines of the second stairwell, she and Ron definitely would not be seen.
On Rosebury House floor again, Hermione rose to her feet and brushed her dress off (to no avail, considering no Victorian gown, however out-of-date, was designed to withstand as much hustle and grime as Hermione had put this one through). She looked back at Ron, who still peered at her from the trapdoor. "Thank you," she said soberly.
He cocked an eyebrow up at her as his only response. "Your hair's all frizzy," was all he said, pointing it out matter-of-factly.
Hermione brought her hands up to her head and was pleased to find the natural tangle of her hair again, finally having broken through the subjugation all those hair products had subjected it to. "Good. That means it's getting back to its natural state."
Without another word, Ron's head ducked below the surface and the trapdoor was swift to close behind him, restoring Rosebury House to the normality Hermione was used to and leaving her —tattered, dirty, and messy, but free— all alone in the center of the main hall.