For once, the sound of the key in the lock did not wake her and Hermione came awake when the guard's boot connected solidly with her ribs.
"Get up, you."
"Sir!" a familiar accented voice said sharply.
She gasped and got to her hands and knees, trying to force air back into her lungs through pain that felt like it was growing.
"If you do that again," Zabini told the guard in a hard, angry voice, "I'll have your job."
"Now listen here, you . . ."
"Yes, what exactly were you going to call me?" Zabini asked, his dark eyes gleaming. The look on his face and the antagonistic stance fairly shouted 'just give me a fucking reason'.
"Nothin'," the guard mumbled.
Hermione coughed and glared up at him through the curtain of her hair.
Zabini crouched on his heels beside her and helped her to her feet. "Are you alright?"
"People keep asking me that," she said, "when the answer quite obviously is no."
"And still you have your sense of humor, I see."
"That wasn't a joke, Zabini."
The guard came forward with the manacles and Zabini practically snarled at him. "I hardly think we will need those right now," he said.
"It's regulations," the guard insisted.
"How is she supposed to get dressed with those things on her arms?"
"I take 'em off, she gets dressed, I put 'em back on," the guard said.
The unspoken implication being that he would stand there and watch her do it. Only because she might try something, of course.
Zabini wasn't buying it, not for one goddamn minute. "I don't think so."
"I can't just let her loose to—"
Zabini stood in front of Hermione so she couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to. The tone of his voice said it all. "Sir, this is Azkaban Fortress. Its security is tighter than a vestal virgin. I hardly think that even Miss Granger, unarmed, and without her wand, in her current state of malnourishment and near dehydration, is going to instigate a prison break."
Hermione felt like cheering. Score one for Zabini. That's one Zabini/ zilch for the creepy ugly Dungeon Master.
"Rules is rules," the guard said stubbornly.
Zabini had had enough. "Listen you inbred little half-wit," he snapped, and she couldn't help but notice that even silly little insults sounded downright sexy coming out of his mouth, "I'm taking her out of here without those things on. She's going to take a shower, without you bloody well watching. And then she's going to put the clothes on that I brought for her, also without you watching. And then, I'm taking her out of here, and you are welcome to accompany her, but if you touch her or so much as utter a single syllable, I will have a report drawn up immediately, and you will lose your job. Is this all clear to you?"
The guard blinked in surprise between her, tiny and quite content to hide behind Zabini for the time being, thank you very much, and Zabini, who towered over him like a dark colossus.
Zabini snapped his fingers in front of the guard's face to get his attention. "We have a hearing in less than an hour. I don't think you want to know what I will do to you if you make me late."
The guard swallowed audibly. Then nodded and preceded them out of her cell and down the hall.
Outside of the shower room, as the guard was fiddling with his keys to find the right one, Zabini gave her a little canvas bag with clothes and some toiletries in it. She took them gratefully and gave him a smile that she hoped looked more sincere than it felt.
As the guard was fitting the key into the lock she remembered and said, keeping her voice low, "I need to talk to you about something."
"Later," he said and nudged her toward the shower room.
She looked at it with acute longing. "It's rather important."
"Hurry it up," the guard said irritably.
Zabini glared at him. "I'm afraid it will have to wait, Miss Granger. Now, you really must—"
"It's about Draco Malfoy," she said and watched his face go completely blank. "He . . . he asked me to tell you that he's in here. He wants me to say that . . . he needs your help. He—"
"Look Missy," the guard interrupted, "you gonna take your shower, or not. I don't got time for this nonsense."
Hermione glared at him—it occurred to her that he sounded very much like an American. All rude and gruff without any real wit about him—but she clutched her bag and went into the shower. She sent Zabini one last pleading look over her shoulder, but his expression was unreadable.
In the canvas bag she found soap, nice soap that smelled like roses and was probably very expensive. There was also shampoo, and—thank God—conditioner, and a brush and comb for her hair. There was also a little toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste, and she inwardly blessed Zabini as a god among men.
She brushed her teeth first, using the water from the shower. She used almost all of the toothpaste, savoring the clean taste of mint and the smoothness of her un-fuzzed teeth before she put them both away and grabbed the soap.
She scrubbed her skin all over with the soap, working it into her muscles and skin until there was nothing left but a tiny little shard, which she let disappear down the drain. Curiously, she ran her hands down her sides and felt her ribs. They weren't poking out like the ribcage of a starving African aborigine yet, but they were close to it. Another day or two of hard bread and water and the rare little sliver of jerked beef and they would be straining at her skin.
Hermione washed her tangled, oily hair three times with the shampoo, digging ruthlessly into her scalp until it almost hurt, then worked conditioner into it until she could get some of the worse tangles out with just her fingers. It would have been nice to have a detangling potion mixed in with the shampoo or conditioner, but magic of any kind was expressly forbidden to any of the prisoners of Azkaban. How did they know you weren't going to use a detangling potion to poison yourself, or make a daring escape? She snorted. But she had lived a perfectly ordinary muggle existence until her eleventh birthday, so she made due without it.
When she was done, when her hair felt clean and every inch of her skin felt tender and oversensitive, she turned off the water and dried herself with one of the towels by the door.
"Are you almost finished in there, Miss Granger?" Zabini asked through the door.
"Yes. I'll be out in a few minutes," she called back to him. She had almost forgotten about Zabini.
She pulled the clothes out of the bag and smiled with appreciation. She really shouldn't have been surprised, she supposed, considering that it was Zabini who had brought them for her. He had impeccable taste.
She put on the plain grey silk slacks and the creamy yellow blouse and looked down at herself. She really wished she had a mirror, but for most prisoners in Azkaban, their physical appearance was pretty low on their list of priorities. The slacks were a little big, so the waistline rested quite low on her hips. Conversely, the blouse was a bit tight across her chest.
Zabini must think I'm a fat woman with small breasts, she thought, though she didn't really believe that was the case. He had probably gotten her sizes from someone; maybe Harry or her mother—God she hoped it wasn't her mother—and when she was at Hogwarts, these clothes likely would have fit her just right. However, she'd filled out a little up top since then, and developed atrocious eating habits—like forgetting to eat at all—and you just didn't talk about those kinds of things with your parents and your best friend (if said friend were a man).
"Miss Granger, we are going to be late," Zabini said through the door.
"Oh." She huffed out a breath and attacked the tangles in her hair with the comb. She had used enough conditioner—almost all of the tiny little bottle—that the comb was soon parting the strands without catching. She shook her head to tease it out just a little, put on the slate grey robes Zabini had provided, threw the comb and the rest of the toiletries back in the bag, and knocked on the door to be let out.
It gave her a little thrill to see the stunned look on Zabini's face when she walked out of the shower room and handed the bag back to him. She was feeling clean, she smelled nice, she looked good—or at least half-way normal—and the best part was, she wasn't in cuffs. She was feeling positively cheerful, all things considered.
"I could really use a hair dryer, Zabini," she said. "Do you think you could maybe—?"
"I—They take my wand before I'm aloud back here, Miss Granger," he said, and he looked really sorry.
"Oh," she said. "Oh well. I guess it doesn't—what are you doing?"
The guard snapped the cuffs in place and grinned. "Regulations," he said.
She gave him her coolest glare—the one reserved for singularly stupid persons and annoying bugs just before she swatted them—and had the satisfaction of watching him flinch just a little. She had a feeling that he had just been rudely reminded of exactly who it was he was leering at. Being a war hero occasionally did have its perks, and scaring people with only a look was one of her favorites.
"My 'pologies Miss Hermione," he said quickly. "But them are the rules, and I have to follow 'em."
Zabini gave her a look somewhere between irritation—at the guard—and amusement—at her—and said, "We are going to be late, Miss Granger."
"Fine," she said. "Let's go then. The sooner we get there, to sooner I can get these thrice damned things off of me."
"Yes, I hope you are right," he said as they began walking down the hall behind the guard.
"Me too, Zabini," she said. "You have no idea."