Released: 13
Not Released: 0

Mad: 2
Not Mad: 6
Undecided: 4

A/N: Doing my best to crank these out with finals and all, please bare with me.

A/N to Naomi : Dude...my birthday is the twenty-third too! And are you from Iowa? – 'cuz that'd just be too weird.

--

--

"I'm worried..." Lily whispered, keeping her eyes on McGonagall.

James looked up from the spellbook he'd hidden in his lap to read. "Who isn't?" he whispered back, uselessly swatting at a rampant clump of black hair only to have it fall back out of place again.

She shook her head. The quill in her hand tip-tapped! in thoughtful metronome. "I mean Remus."

Checking to see that McGonagall was busy with another student, James shifted the heavy volume from his lap to Harry's empty chair and focused his curious attention on his girlfriend. "We all know he fancied Hermione, but..." he began, brow furrowed.

Lily shook her head again. "That's not what I meant. The full moon is in three days. How much worse will his transformation be if he doesn't get some sleep?"

James was solemnly silent. Then, sighing deeply, he rubbed his eyes and it was almost a gesture of defeat. "A lot worse." Lily's look was filled with a softened 'told-you-so'. "But how do we get him to stop?"

"Mr. Lupin!"

The future Mr. and Mrs. Potter whirled around in their seats to find McGonagall, who had made her way to the back of the classroom, standing menacingly over a distant Remus who was just then pulling his nose out of his own spellbook. Sirius looked noncommittally at the situation then morosely looked in the opposite direction – finding more interest in the display of half-transfigured pet models.

"While you may consider yourself an expert, Mr. Lupin," she barked crisply. "I assure you that if your lack of attention persists you'll learn firsthand a few new tricks."

The classroom snickered.

Thoughtfully marking his current page with his quill, the boy whom his friends had had to literally drag to class, softly closed the book with a tiny poof of dust. In silence he pushed back his chair, grabbed his bag, and walked out of the room.

"I was hoping you had an idea..." Lily sighed halfheartedly and turned back to the front as McGonagall, raising her voice, brought the classroom back under order.

The rest of the period was spent silently taking notes.

--

Locked up tight but holdin' the key
Clock keeps tickin' like it's laughin' at me
I wonder
What spell I'm under

Death sat cross-legged in the middle of her cell, where it was always night, and lifted up the bundle in her lap. Looking furtively left and right, she cautiously unwrapped the item and lifted it up to her perpetually wide-pupiled eyes. They narrowed in suspicion as they took in the impossible before her. Wary of some sort of trickery, Death pressed the object to her hand for a crude measurement.

The stick of chalk was as long as her thumb.

--

Oceans apart day after day
And I slowly go insane
I hear your voice on the line
But it doesn't stop the pain

Remus let the portrait door swing shut behind him, ignoring the Fat Lady's prying questions; "shouldn't you be in class?". Hollow gray eyes swept over the dusty common room with its cheery fire burning in the hearth as slow, calculated steps moved him across it.

The silence was broken by a feral howl.

He kicked violently at the end table, knocking it over, and flung his bag across the room to the tune of shattering inkwells and scattering papers. Panting heavily, he sank into the couch and laid his head in his hands.

--

Days go by in a pulseless haze
Who's that person that's wearin' my face
Denyin'
What he's hidin'

Death ran her finger along the chalk, ever so gently. Unwilling to believe the obvious mirage, she crawled on the balls of her feet to the last section of clean wall. A long, thick line of white powder followed every stroke of her hand, and the knees went out from under her. Joyful tears rolled down her dirty face with the chalk clutched to her breast.

"What you blubbering about?" Scarecrow demanded harshly from the shadows of his own cell.

She ignored him, too wrapped up in the euphoria of her chalk's mysterious re-growth. Still taking care not to wake Blabber, Death pressed herself against the corner where the poor substitutes for her best friends smiled blithely back.

She whispered nonsensical words, too soft for any other prisoner to hear – too excited to remember the order of things.

"I can do it...help can." She rubbed her cheek against Harry's, smudging the line of his face. "Fix me let...help you. Please, please..." The tears were back; desperate, like they too often were in this stone prison.

She pressed a hand against Ron's chest to steady herself, but she was already sliding down the wall. "No, please, please," she begged in a breathless whisper. "Let help – me can, please..."

"Me don't forget..." Death shook her head – swish! swish! against the stone wall. She was still human, still intelligent. She forced herself to remember the way words went.

"Forget..." Her face crumbled. "No! No forget...don't."

She was crying still, but now the bitter saline tears were continued out of frustration. Remember, remember! "Don't m-me f-forget..."

She floundered her fingertips across the mold, broken nails catching in the cracks. Even with eyes too long kept in the dark to see in much else, the tears made it longer until she found Harry's hand. She ground her palm against the concrete until it hurt, trying, as if it were really her best friend's hand, to curl her fingers around his.

"Don't...for-forget...me..."

--

Wherever you go
Whatever you do
I will be right here waiting for you

"Hermione..." Remus slid his hands through his hair and finally hung them over his knees. "I've looked everywhere."

His eyes fixed on empty space; the window seat where she was fond of curling up in. There was a long, low hiss like the air being let out of a balloon and Remus looked at the window seat with more interest.

"Hermione?"

There was, quite obviously, no reply from the girl hundreds of miles away and Remus shook his shaggy head with a sinking feeling of foolishness. He must have needed as much sleep as Lily said if he'd begun hearing things.

"We can't get you out." It was more of an admission to himself than a continuance of his one-sided conversation with the window seat, but there was still the repetition of the low hissing sound gone unheard. "And I...I don't know what terrible things they're doing to you..."

A hand passed over his face as he tried to regain his composure. The images in his mind of a perfect Hermione, laughing as Sirius and James bewitched the mop to chase adoringly after filch, smiling as she perused the bookshelves in Hogsmeade, turned painfully dark. He could taste the blood in the back of his throat and smell the rank odor of rot as female screams echoed in a tiny black hole – he couldn't see her, but he could taste, and smell, and hear everything.

His eyes snapped open with a loud gasp from his white lips, and the hand that ran down his face this time was trembling with emotion. "You don't deserve this," he choked and had to stop to gather himself together.

When that was completed as best he could, he fell back against the couch and let his head fall back as well. Almost lazily he let his face fall towards the window and he regarded it with a morbid half-smile. "I look a right sight...talking to a bloody seat," his smile faltered. "James'd never let me hear the end of it..."

He struggled to keep the sudden thought of James, the mop, and Hermione from turning painful again. The fire popped and sizzled with an odd, prolonged sound. After he could no longer stand his eyes to be closed, he opened them, and, for that half-second before they adjusted, he swore he saw her sitting on the window seat, long legs dangling over the edge and the questioning tilt to her head.

"Why..." Remus asked quietly to the now empty seat, as if it were the simplest question in the world. "Why did you have to play the martyr?"

--

I can't go on like this
I won't let myself miss the rest of my life

Death's cheeks burned with tears, and she let them run their course without complaint. Then the burn began to spread and she realized it was arcing up her legs from her toes and curling around her hips like a tiny questing flame. A gasp was coaxed from her lips as the discomfort turned to pleasure and her head lolled on her shoulders.

One of the others might have said her name, but she couldn't be sure – she was falling into wondrous heat. It made her body tight and her skin tingle as the warmth spread from her limbs straight into her center. Her heart picked up its staccato tempo with an exponential fervor that had her breast trembling with each thundering beat.

Heavy-lidded with lips curved upwards in ecstasy, Death was in undiluted bliss when a hand grabbed her shoulder. Head rolling back carelessly, she was jarred abruptly out of her transcendent bliss by a pair of dark emerald eyes glinting in the torchlight.

--

I took for granted, all the times
That I though would last somehow
I hear the laughter, I taste the tears
But I can't get near you now
.

Remus looked up, startled, as the door to Hermione's bedroom swung open and a gaunt Harry emerged from the stairwells shadow like some horror-story 'creature of the night'. The look on his pale face painfully reminded Remus that thoughts you spoke aloud tended to get overheard.

Their mutual silence was disturbed by yet another door opening – this time the common room portrait. The Gryffindors were returning from their classes.

Harry moved to go back into Hermione's room, but Ron's sudden appearance in the doorway stopped him. Actually, he turned right into the lanky redhead.

Sssss...

The hiss had returned, snake-like and nearby. "Did you hear that?" He asked Harry, but of course there was nothing to be heard over the dim roar of several dozen relaxing Gryffindors.

Harry, predictably, shook his head and coupled it with an odd look.

Sssss...

Remus rubbed at his ear, trying to dislodge the odd sound.

Seeeee...

He turned around looking for the source of the sound, the noise. Around and around he turned until he'd made himself dizzy, and through the swirl of colors and faces he saw Lily and James and Sirius enter the room behind a group of chatty fifth years.

"Remus?" Sirius' voice sounded far away, like he was talking over some wind.

Luxurious black lines fazed across his vision, and large honey eyes opened over everything he saw like a transparency placed over the world around him. The hissing was growing louder. "Hermione?"

See the truth.

--

It's time to take that dare
There's still a world out there waitin' for me

Death almost couldn't tear her eyes away. At the soft pop! she rolled her head to the other side, a hand clutching to the one on her shoulder to ensure that her lack of view would not send the vision away.

She sniffed at the air, but the shadowed figure's scent was overrun by rot and refuse and the light was to his back – obscuring his face.

--

If I see you next to never
How can we say forever

The world around him darkened to a vague orange circle of firelight coming from a torch on the wall. Something was moving just outside the light, and a hot panting made the air in the small enclosure humid. He took a step closer.

His eyes were adjusting and what he'd thought to be a lump of rags stirred and a haunted face appeared, pale beneath the dirt. The creature's eyes were half-lidded and the shadow turned them into glittering black jewels beneath their lids. He took another step and saw something he couldn't understand.

Harry's upper body was coming straight out of the wall, while the lower portion remained confined to the stone in a childish chalk rendering. The very real looking Harry had his hands on the creature's shoulders and he seemed to only have eyes for it.

"Hermione?"

She tilted her head to the side.

--

When something's come and gone
What good is holdin' on?
Why waste tomorrow chasin' yesterday?

Death's grip tightened on the hand, and the heat inside her spiked to a dizzying sensation. Arms wrapped around her shoulders and she sensed Harry's head fall beside her own. He always smelled of peppermints.

And then, suddenly, and quite by magic, she could smell him; smell the sharp bite of mints that smelled far better than any cologne. She inhaled deeply, savoring the smell and the feel of his arms. She didn't want to see the new man – he wasn't Harry, he wasn't home.

And she wasn't quite sure if he'd been referring to her when he'd spoken that odd name.

--

Whatever it takes
Or how my heart breaks
I will be right here waiting for you

Remus crouched down beside her, calculating gunmetal eyes taking in the rapid rising and falling of her chest and the strange flush in her cheeks. Her head was limp upon its perch of her shoulders and the glassy sheen of her eyes served as a sign that she was no longer in the reality in which he existed.

Reaching up, he took her dirt-smudged chin lightly between his fingers and turned her face towards him. He fell back with a shout of surprise and was sent rocketing back to Hogwarts, like a spirit exorcised from its human host.

Her eyes had burned with honey flames.

--

I guess we could carry on livin' asleep
Who is the fool who could choose to just keep pretendin'

There was a sudden loss of tension from her shoulders, and through the dim haze of tingling, passionate heat, Death looked up to find her friend disappearing back into the wall. Piece by piece, he was converted back to chalk and simply lines until all that was left were his eyes. They were the last to go.

And then the blessed heat drained out of her, swirling away and down, down out of her feet. With a shuddering breath, the coldness of the cell filled her once again. She shivered and, overwhelmed, fell herself against the wall – pleasure intoxicated mind trying to dredge up the short term memories of a few moments ago.

Heavy breathing reached her ears from across the way. Scarecrow's horrified face was pressed between the bars.

"What the bloody hell did you do?!"

--

Dumbledore looked around at the students gathered in his office; though, two he suspected were there against their will. "It seems," he began. "That Hermione's powers are coming into maturity as well."

"So Hermione actually transported Remus to Azkaban?!" Lily looked disbelieving.

Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully and candy clicked! against his teeth as he shifted his lemon drop to the other cheek. "I think it's more likely that Miss Granger tapped into Mr. Lupin's power of 'Truth'. After all, 'seeing is believing' as they say."

"I was really there, then?" Remus pressed. Dumbledore nodded.

"I'm worried what her uncontrolled powers might mean," he said. "If she were to unwittingly activate them under the eyes of the guards it could mean a worse fate..."

"They wouldn't accuse her of trying to break out, would they Professor?" Lily pressed.

"I think you know better than that, Miss Evans," he answered solemnly, and the weight of his words dropped her into a chair.

"It is a good coincidence however," he went on, one hand idly stroking Fawkes. "That has brought you here. I've received word from the Ministry – they will allow someone to see her today."

"Are you meaning one of us, sir?" James' disbelieving tone was drawn out as if to guarantee he hadn't heard incorrectly.

Dumbledore held up a finger. "Only one."

In a claustrophobic silence, the six looked at one another and came to a decision.

--

"Wakey, wakey monster."

Death was awoken to the jarring clang! as the guard banged on the bars of her cage. She didn't move from her corner, knowing that he would move on when his attempts to goad her were unsuccessful – as always.

Except, this time he didn't. "Y'ev got yourself a visitor."

She uncurled and looked up.

Harry's face was framed in torchlight.

She couldn't believe it. "Harry?"

He moved to step closer, but the guard's arm stopped him. "Dun get too close. She's dangerous."

Death interrupted them. "Are you real?" She spoke slowly, forcing the words out in deliberate placement and pronunciation.

"Everyone misses you, Hermione," He said quickly. His eyes squinted trying to make out her shape in the shadows.

I part my lips to speak
But the words are out of reach
I guess that really means
There's nothin' left to say

She moved forward slowly, crouched down and shuffling. Too many strange things had been happening. When she finally slinked into the light Harry gagged.

Her robes hung in strips over her shoulders and her blouse was torn across the chest and diagonally along the bottom. Her skirt was unraveling and rumpled, and her legs were completely bare – socks and shoes long discarded in the corner. Her hair was a complete mess; tangled, knotted, sticky, and full of static. In addition to all of this, she was covered from head to toe in filth.

Her honey eyes stood out starkly against the dirt background of her face and she stared at him with teary disbelief. "You came..."

Harry floundered, shocked at the utter relief in her voice that made it sound as though she hadn't really thought to see him ever again. "Of course I came – you're my best friend!"

"Strange things..." She seemed to trip over her own tongue. "Strange things here..."

Harry glanced quickly at the guard. "Yeah, I know. We're looking into it – don't worry. We're doing everything we can for you."

"Won't find a way," she told him. Her childish monosyllabic words seemed oddly partnered with such a serious message.

"Don't give up hope, Hermione," he ordered, vehemently. Her face, nearly unrecognizable beneath the bags and slime and dirt, was blank. "Remember my godfather? He got through it and so can you."

"Harry..."

The look on her haunted face was what tore the last strings of her heart. She looked resigned.

"Sleep," she said.

Harry shook his head and grabbed a hold of the bars. The guard started to stop him, but let it go when he compared Death's distance to them. "I can't sleep; not with you in a place like this."

"Date?"

"The twenty-eighth." His face was so grave – too serious for someone his age. Death looked down at her own ragged, revolting appearance and felt the discomfort of tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

I wish you all that I wish for myself
To have that ache of emptiness behind us
And not still inside us

She didn't want him seeing her like this. A half-step back into the shadows she forced herself to stop, but it was a quaking pause heightened by wide watery eyes. She had resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die here in this prison, but she didn't want her best friend – a boy who'd seen too many horrors already – to witness her decay into insanity and rot. It was a thought that made the tears start to flow.

Suddenly, she was at the bars, a brown hand tangled in Harry's shirt. She pulled him to her before the guard could act and kissed him quickly.

Electricity surged through her body at too high a voltage for it to cope with. She was flung back off the bars with a screech, and lay spasming on the stone floor as the shock subsided. The guard repocketed his wand and grabbed Harry roughly by the arm.

"That's enough for you."

Harry was escorted all the way to the main drawbridge and then thrown unceremoniously out. As he stumbled despondently into the bright midday sun the words whispered from lips that had never touched his own echoed over and over in his mind...

...a depressing record crackling "don't come back"...

---------------

A/N: Sorry H/Hr fans – they did NOT kiss...if you're confused, then go reread.

A/N2: Powers will be more explained in future chapters, if you're confused please be patient.

A/N3 to Rane2920072: Professor Lupin is already dead, as I mentioned in one of the first chapters. Lupin Lupin (the young one) is obviously still alive and kicking. The death scene was a memory of hers. Just thought I'd clear that up for ya. Old Lupin dead, Young Lupin alive