Ron removed a newspaper off of the bed in the small, one-roomed apartment and glanced gloomily at the front page. Percy was still causing trouble in the Department of Improper Use of Magic, it looked like. A lot of trouble, this time. Ron sighed to himself, his shoulders heaving as he dropped the paper onto the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. Ron couldn't help his depression – it came with the boredom. Harry Potter, yes, the Great Boy Who Lived, had gone on a three-month espionage mission, meaning that Ron could not contact him for three months. And it had been two years since Hermione...
"Ron! Open the window!"
Ron rubbed his hands through his hair at the sound of the screechy voice that belonged to the tenant below his apartment and sighed a second time. With an effort that shook his tired legs, he stood and shoved the window open to peer downwards. Cici Petrunich glared up at him. "Yes, Cici?" he asked tiredly, not really in a mood to deal with over-noisy witch neighbors.
"You were playing that awful music last night, weren't you?" Cici accused, pointing her finger upward at him. Ron fought the urge to grimace. Cici was not an overly attractive witch at all. Her face was rather bony, and she always glared with snake-green eyes. Her blonde hair was rather stringy and she seemed to be all angles. Ron knew for a fact that her spiky elbows were quite sharp. Today, she was wearing a cow-skin print vest and a bright green shirt and headband.
"No, Cici. Ask Joe." And before Cici could say anymore, Ron pulled the window shut and flopped onto his bed, muttering about cursed neighbors.
An insistent pecking on the window brought Ron's head up not more than twenty seconds. "Please, tell me that she hasn't found a way to knock on my window…" Ron groaned to himself, but relaxed when he saw that it was only Bill's owl, Mercury. The owl, despite its odd name, was a very dark brown and he landed on Ron's ledge, cocking his head to the side. Ron once again climbed off of the bed, walked calmly to the window, and offered his arm to Mercury, who hooted gratefully.
The letter from Bill was rolled up and sealed with an official looking seal, something that nearly made Ron blink. As soon as he had grasped the tube, Mercury took off into the late afternoon sky, disappearing quickly from sight. With curious fingers, Ron pulled the tube off of the message and scanned through the contents.
Ron,
Just wanted to write and tell you that Bailey was born yesterday. Maria might have to be in the hospital for a few days so would it be okay that you watch Timmy? Gringotts is being merciless, so I have to leave for a trip for a few days. And Maria can't watch a four-year-old and an infant at the same time. So, would you mind terribly?
Bill
Ron glanced at the calendar on his wall and grimaced. He'd insisted upon a three day break from his job due to his exhaustion and he'd expected to spend that three days sleeping. But Timmy, red-headed and freckled like a typical Weasley, was a quiet child. At least, around Ron he was. Bill laughingly told Ron that Timmy admired his tall uncle, but was terribly afraid of upsetting him. A small half-smile crossing his face, Ron picked up the parchment and scrawled, "Sure, I'll be glad to watch him. Just let me get a little shut-eye first and then I'll come pick him up." He signed his name with a flourish, tied the note to Mercury's leg, and fell asleep before the owl could get out the window.
* * *
She raised her head when the news came, but gave no expression to the man giving the news. "You're to be moved, witch," he sneered, hand raised to slap her across the face. "So get up and walk." He pushed the white door open all of the way and jerked his hand for her to come.
Silently, she stood, looking coolly over his handsome features as she clasped her handcuffed hands together. Her feet made no noise on the sliced linoleum. "You've kept me in the dark for a long time," she observed just as coolly as she felt the muzzle of his gun tap into the small of her back. "Three days, I counted."
"And what if I did?" he growled, pushing harder into her back. "You, Granger, are a hostage. You never should have tried to tamper with my project."
She rolled her eyes. "If I had known you were going to do this, I would never have slept with you, Jack."
"CUT!"
"Jack" holstered the gun, sighing. "What'd I do now?" he said in a whiny, exhausted voice. He ran a hand through his blond hair and looked irately at the writer standing next to the director, somehow sensing that she was in charge of the uncalled for interruption.
"Granger", actually a girl named Celeste Riswan, stood up completely (she'd been hunched slightly when the gun dug into her) and gave the director a snotty look. "What is it now?" she whined.
"Doc here says you forgot 'I warned you. I warned you not to mess with it or bad things would happen to you. But you still pursued. And I don't want to have to do this…'," the director read off from the note that "Doc", the writer had given him. "Then you, Celeste say, 'If I knew you were going to do this, I would never have slept with you'. Okay? Good! Now get it right!"
* * *
"Bloody Doc, always making us stop a perfectly good scene," Celeste whined to her boyfriend, a tall black-haired man that went by the name of Clyde. They were on their way to eat out at a fancy restaurant in L. A., where Celeste wouldn't get pasted by reporters and paparazzi all night. Clyde was behind the wheel of his Saturn, barely saying a word. In the background, "Everything is Wonderful Now" by Everclear played from Clyde's radio. "You're barely talking tonight. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Clyde replied, shifting gears as he spoke. "Got a lot on my mind, that's all. I'll try not to spoil your night." He tapped the steering wheel with the fingers of his left hand as he watched a truck several hundred feet ahead swerve crazily between lanes. Eyes narrowing, he sped the Saturn up.
"What are you doing?" Celeste squealed, gripping the dashboard as Clyde still sped up. She thought she heard him mutter, "Bloody American Drivers. Need to learn the right sides of the road, they do!"
"Clyde?" she asked again, eyeing him as though they had not being an item for nearly a month. "Clyde? Are you feeling all right…?"
"Not now. I'm busy," came the short answer. Clyde focused like a madman on the swerving truck, blue eyes narrowed.
Celeste gasped as she saw the driver of the truck. "That's Doc!" she gasped, pointing.
Clyde gave her a slightly curious look and sped up so that he was practically on the tail of the truck. After a second, he jerked the steering wheel so that he was right next to the truck. "GIVE UP, HERMIONE! I CAUGHT YOU!" he shouted out his window. The truck sped up, rocketing off as though somebody wanted to get away in a hurry. Eyes narrowed in challenge, Clyde did the same.
Celeste stared at him as though he were crazy. "That's not a Hermione!" she snapped, confused. "That's Doc!"
"Dr. Granger herself," Clyde muttered. "Very clever of her to use her own last name in her script. Kept the media off of her. Very elusive tactics. Took me a year to find her, as it was. Now I need to know why she's running."
Celeste looked at Clyde as though she didn't know him. "Honey? Are you feeling okay?" she reached up to feel his forehead, but he pushed her hand away. The truck took Exit 42, Clyde right on her tail.
"There's a turn up here somewhere," Clyde muttered. He leaned forward and pulled at the dashboard. A flat black box about the size of Clyde's hand appeared suddenly, making Celeste jump. "Don't worry about this all. After it, you won't remember a thing."
He jumped the car over the green lawn along the side of the turn. "You're right!" Celeste yapped, clutching the edge of her seat harder. "After it, I won't remember a thing! I'll be DEAD!" The car flew over rocks and bumps, Clyde driving like a madman. Ahead of them, the truck was still kicking up dust.
"Ah, there it is!"
"CLYDE!"
Celeste watched in terror as the truck with Doc in the driver's seat suddenly shot off the road, hurtling over the scraggly bushes that ran the full length along the side of the road. The truck bounced as it landed and aimed straight towards the large cement wall that supported the bridge and collided head on with the wall. A loud explosion rocked the night…
* * *
Harry rubbed at the corners of the mask of Clyde's face he wore with one hand while he retrieved his wand from its hidden holster. The mask shriveled away from his face, disappearing as he picked up the mail from the Ministry, sighing as he came to Percy Weasley's newest plea for promotion and Hercules-type acts for the Ministry. "Jani!" he called to his partner in business, dropping those on the table unread. "Jani, are you here?"
"Where else would I be?" came the snippy answer as Jani entered the small kitchen of the watch house, her hands both gathered about her right ear as she struggled to push a final earring in. Unlike conservatively dressed Harry, she was wearing an ultra-tight pair of pants with a very brilliantly orange top, her hair a very interesting shade of blue and about seven piercings in each ear. (A/N: This is NOT going to be a Mary Sue. I'm too smart for that! She's just an ultimately cool character that will contrast Harry amazingly)
"Very funny. Now, what's the update on Granger's Apparating? Did the tracking device work at all?" Harry asked, setting the black box he'd kept with him on the table for Jani to observe.
"I honestly don't believe you call her 'Granger' so flippantly! She was your best friend for how many years? Eight?" Jani asked mildly, picking up the box and rubbing it between her hands. She didn't wait for him to answer as she walked from the room, watching the box with a narrowed eye. "Potter, I tell you to keep these things in good condition. It's scratched! What's up with that?"
"Celeste fought me when I tried to put a memory charm on her," Harry replied, unbuttoning the collar of the muggle shirt he wore. "So I put the charm on her and put her in the hospital." He picked up the mail and glanced through it again and then opened the letter from Percy.
"You didn't actually hurt her, did you?" Jani's voice was slightly muffled from the door between them, but it grew clearer as she came into the room and tossed him a slightly concerned look.
"'Course not. Sent a memory spell team in after me to the doctors. Far as they know, both Clyde and Celeste got into a terrible accident when Clyde's car and another truck, abandoned by the driver who has mysteriously disappeared, crashed into a wall," Harry replied, skimming over the letter. "Going out tonight?"
"Of course," Jani said, her attention still on the black box, which she was attempting to pry open with a screwdriver. "Rick's picking me up at 8 and we're gonna go Night Clubbing. It IS America, you know."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't trust that Rick fellow, though. But whatever. Are you done, yet?"
"Yep," Jani replied, sighing in satisfaction as the black box suddenly popped into halves. "Perfect." She pulled a slip of paper out of the middle of the two halves and handed it to Harry. As the black box with its matching orange counterpart was a thought collector that collected some random words from the public mind of the person being chased, helping along investigations greatly, the paper inside was very valuable. "This answer your questions?"
"All except the one about Apparating I asked a few minutes back," Harry replied, taking it.
"Well, in answer to your question – no. We didn't get a tracking device on – "
Harry, who had been looking over the paper, cut in angrily with, "Trust her to do something like this! It's a bunch of words that mean absolutely nothing! Doesn't tell me why she's running, where she's going, how she's getting there! It doesn't tell me a bloody thing!" He slammed the paper down, but Jani carefully picked it up, read over it, and set it in the expanding file labeled "Granger" as Harry stormed out of the room.
* * *
He slowly stood up, listening to the all too familiar tapping at the window. As an undercover agent for the Daily Prophet, he got all sorts of owls at odd hours in the night. But this was a bit of an odd time, considering he'd called in for a vacation. With a groan fluttering from his lips, he pulled the window open and let the owl in. Unlike the normal Prophet brown owls, this owl was entirely sleek and black. "That's odd," he muttered to himself as he untied a simple note from the leg. Its mission complete, the owl zoomed out.
The note hadn't been a sudden order from the Prophet, like he had suspected. In fact, he had to read it three times for it to sink in at all, and then he did the sinking – he sank into the mattress, mouth open in horror and note fluttering from his hand to the ground. And the burning brand of words quickly ingrained themselves into his very brain.
"Ron,
I love you dearly. Even though we have had our differences over these past years, I can still not even begin to fathom the love I feel for you. So it is not unkind words that I leave you with.
Yes, I am leaving. I cannot say where, I cannot say why. I am leaving and there's nothing you can say that can change that. By the time you get this owl, I will have disappeared. Nobody will know the name of Hermione Anne Granger anymore. It's not because of you, never because of you, but because of myself. When the time is right, I know you will find me. Please, find me.
I love you,
Hermione."
He sat there, staring at nothing, unable to comprehend a thing. All he could think of was that she was gone, that she had left him to disappear…
* * *
Okay, let's take a short Author's break. Confused yet? Well, in case you are, Hermione has gone missing. Nobody knows why, as Harry said. She's just gone missing. She and Ron may or may have not been "going out" at the time she left (I'll leave that up to you to decide). This field mission Harry has gone out on is searching for Hermione. By the way, forget Celeste and Clyde, they're over with. Got that so far? Good. Let's continue confusing you!
* * *
Surprisingly, although she had been night clubbing the night before, Jani was the first one awake of the two partners. Harry, who was a moderate morning person, dragged himself into the kitchen for a cup of black coffee at about ten after eight. "Any news overnight?" he asked as he picked up the newspaper.
"None," Jani replied, sipping her coffee as well as she glanced through the sparsely-filled 'fridge. "Except the one that said that we were supposed to go back to base. We get a week off."
"Yah, a week to get interviewed and debriefed and prodded and poked and scolded," Harry grumbled.
"Somebody's awfully grumpy this morning," Jani said with a grin.
"Why aren't YOU the one grumping? YOU went to the night clubs!" Harry retorted, grumbling into his coffee. "If you're like any other partner I had, you should be hung over."
"I don't drink," Jani replied easily, handing Harry another envelope, with a simple stamp of a goldfinch, the address to their stake out, and his name on it. "This came via muggle mail today. Your name on it. Somebody did some research to find us here."
"The handwriting is definitely Granger's. This could be our first big clue," Harry remarked, looking at Jani with a triumphant gleam to his eyes.
"I still don't know how you can merely call her 'Granger'," Jani muttered to herself, rubbing her forehead with her hands.
"She's keeping at least two steps ahead of us. We need to correct that when we get back from vacation," Harry continued. He pulled open the envelope and watched in amazement as two things fluttered out. A clipping from the Daily Prophet and a letter, it looked like. Harry picked up the clipping and read, "Scientist Dies in Mysterious Lab Fire. Arson not suspected, but it was obvious that the fire was started by unnatural means…" he trailed off and set the article down for later inspection. After clearing his throat and taking a sip of coffee, he read off the letter,
"Harry,
Good job. You and Jani Peterson have tracked me this far. You nearly had me for a moment there. But, unfortunately for you, you can't find me. I won't let you. This has to be done by somebody else. Somebody special to both of us. The article is a clipping that will help you figure out WHY I left.
Adieu,
Hermione A. Granger."
"Well, who's this third person that we need?" Jani asked.
"A friend," was all that Harry said. He stood, looking distantly out the window. He turned slowly to her and continued, "It's a close friend. Let's pack up and go home."
* * *
A/N: Well, confused yet? Don't worry, gets better!! This is only the first part! It's sort of a mystery and I hope nobody's figured out why she left, because not even I have. :-P!!!! Leave a review because those are good!!
Disclaimer: Well, whereas Jani Peterson is based off of two different people at the same time, she belongs to nobody! And Clyde hasn't shown up yet, so he's nothing to worry about! The only character I own so far is "Timmy". You'll get to meet him next time. All the rest belong to our wonderful J. K. Rowling.