Hermione sat.
She was perched atop her bed, legs crossed in lotus-like position. Around her the fan of schoolbooks spread, new purchases from the day's shopping. The Knightbus barrelled through the post-twilight scenery with reckless abandon. Her parents had let her come by herself, this time.
It was nearing the start of the Hogwarts term, and she was sleepy. Hermione yawned as she streched, back sore from reading. She didn't see the young man duck quietly inside the door (she, after all, was a cheapskate and had gotten the less-pricey shared rooms) and drop his bags on the other bag across the room. Hermione looked at him with interest. He wore the usual black robes, though his were frayed at the end, his skin was fair and his hair a medium brown, falling strieght and slightly long. Though periwinkle-sky blue, she noted that his eyes looked almost... tired.
Of course, he's tired. That's why he's on a Knightbus, remember? Hermione chided to herself, turning back to her books.
Suddenly his quiet voice broke her fragile concentration. "Hello."
That was when the cold finger of fear ran down her back. Something... was almost, but not quite familiar. "Hello," she responded, carefully remaining calm.
She looked up at him... I might at least be friendly... and smiled. "I'm Hermione Granger." She stuck out her hand for a shake. "Who're you?"
He seemed to allow a weak smile to reflect back at her. He didn't shake her hand. "I have no name."
She blinked. "But you must have a name. Everyone has a name..."
"I used to."
The whisper matched the haunted, shaken, repentant, almost, look in his eyes.
Attention and interest snared, Hermione listened to him while he told her his story.
"I used to have a family - a father, a mother, a name. I was an only child, both my parents adored me. But then... when I was six, my mother died. No one knows why, even today. The only thing I remember of her -" he took a deep breath - "is her singing 'Scarborough Fair' for me, when I was a child."
"My father tried, as best as he could, and in most cases he succeded. I entered Hogwarts with his watchful eye as a perfect student, even with everyone fighting the dark lord left and right... and in the middle of all of the warfare, I was completely forgotten. Completely.
"It's not my father's whole fault, either, but it pushed me to do my first rash decision. From there it was another, and another, for the thrill of disobeying him.
"In the end I rebelled in the way I thought it would hurt him the most. I became a Deatheater."
Hermione could not help her muffled gasp. The man didn't seem to notice, perticularly, and continued.
"It was foolish, and foolhardy, but I proceeded anyway. And what was my father left to do? He held a position of great importance fighting the dark lord, and I was following him. What was there to do other than what he did, and keep his dignity?
"He disowned me." His voice Hermione strained to hear. "My own father disowned me."
He took another long, slow, deep breath, qualming the tears that threatened to betray him, and continued to speak. "In retrospect it was a light sentence they gave me. Only ten years in Azkaban, since I was only eighteen.
"So here I am, Hermione." The ghostly, haunted look pinned her to the spot as he looked deep into her eyes. "A man without a name."
She tried to speak, but her mouth ran dry. Finually her tounge found speech. "Who-What was your name b-before?"
The man looked at her, tired, haunted by his past, ragged by the present, torn to shreds by his guilt. "Do you truly want to know?"
"Yes. I mean no. I mean -"
"If you don't press it, so then you'll never know."
He had turned away from her as the strength of those words hit her.
"Yes," she muttered. "Yes, I do want to know."
He said his answer, and while she stared in shocked silence, rushed out of the room. In the minutes it took Hermione to realize the connotations of what he had said, he was undoubtedly gone. Into the night. As the jagged jigsaw pieces of the puzzle he had left her began to fit together, she felt the moonlighted, silvery teardrops run down her cheek.
His answer had been "Cei Dumbledore."
Hermione wished she had never known.