You Breathe Differently Down Here
Spinifex

1 - Everything's Over but the Screaming

She sat in the darkness, staring unseeingly into the dying embers of the fireplace. The evening sun had long since faded, and had she been looking through the windows, she would have seen the Pleiades sparkling obscenely brightly.

She started at the hammering on her door. "Hermione! Hermione!"

Hermione sighed, mentally debating the merits of opening the door to a very angry Harry Potter. Perhaps if she ignored him for long enough, he would go away. "Hermione! I know you're in there! OPEN UP!"

A second voice joined the first. "HERMIONE! OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR THIS INSTANT!"

She padded to the door and unlatched it to find a very angry Ron Weasley jabbing his wand at the keyhole. "Alohomora wouldn't have worked, Ron," she observed with detachment. "I've warded it."

The men pushed their way past Hermione into the shadowy room. "Rather funereal, that," muttered Harry as he set himself to lighting the wall sconces. Hermione was surprised to see that Ron's face had become so red that his freckles had entirely disappeared. He was shaking with rage.

He could not restrain himself for long. "Exactly what the hell did you think you were doing out there today?" he shouted. "We agreed. You had orders - orders! - to find out what was happening at that meeting and to WAIT. FOR. US." Flecks of foam formed at the corners of Ron's mouth. With effort, he lowered his voice. "Notice that I said WAIT. I didn't say 'show yourself.' I didn't say, 'play the hero.' I said to WAIT for us to help you."

"Ron, I..."

"Don't interrupt me! You're the patron saint of hopeless causes; do you know that? When you went charging off half-cocked, you endangered us all. If we'd gotten there half a tick later - if your aim had been the slightest bit off - you would be dead, and probably we would as well."

A somewhat calmer Harry cut in. "He's right, Hermione. And now Voldemort knows your animal form, so he'll be on his guard. We won't be able to spy on any future meetings."

"Because of you," spat Ron.

"Did you expect me to let him die?"

"Snape agreed that destroying Voldemort came first," Harry offered.

Hermione paused. "They weren't going to kill him immediately, you understand. You-know-who needed information from him, but perhaps more importantly, he needed to make Severus an example to the others."

"Snape knew the risks." There was a dreadful finality in Ron's tone.

Silence stretched between the three. Hermione broke it first. "I want to show you something." She turned away from Ron and Harry, unbuttoning her robes, and let them slide in a heavy pile to the floor. Behind her, she heard Harry's rapid intake of breath, and knew what he saw.

Myriad silvery scars criss-crossed her back and her legs. Hair-thin, they joined and diverged in a network too complicated to follow. They looped across her spine, disappearing into her hairline and underarms and following the curves of her ribs and the planes of her scapulae. On her good days, Hermione thought that it looked as if someone had wrapped her in spiderwebs; on her far more frequent bad days, she felt as if she were wearing an ill-fitting and tatterdemalion skin over her own.

Hermione turned to display the tangle of cicatrices on her chest and arms. Ron had paled and Harry looked as if he were about to be sick.

"It took the better part of an hour, I imagine. The cuts went quite deep," Hermione said conversationally. "The medi-witches who treated me after the kidnap told me that they could see my bones every time I moved."

Ron gaped. Harry whispered, "What was it?"

"Mostly Crucio."

"Mostly?"

"There may have been other curses, but as I was a bit indisposed at the time, I couldn't say for certain." she snapped. The men recoiled.

She ran a finger over her scarred forearm and looked directly at Ron. "This is what you expected me to ignore, Ron."

Ron opened and closed his mouth soundlessly; Hermione thought unkindly that their Glorious Leader looked rather like a fish. She bit out, "Forgive me if I couldn't sit by like a good girl, and wait for you to come to his rescue. Or not."

Ron had the grace to drop his gaze. "Right, then. You seem to have had it all in hand this time. We'll have to work out another way to infiltrate the Death Eaters. Harry and I will meet with Mum and Dumbledore tonight to discuss our options. It's likely that you won't be able to travel freely for a while." He turned on his heel and walked out.

Harry followed. As he reached the doorway, he carefully looked anywhere but at Hermione. "Hermione..." The words came in a rush. "I didn't realise... Dumbledore believes he'll pull through. They've put him in the downstairs parlour, if you'd care to see him." He pulled the door gently shut behind him.