"I'm coming with you," Harry insisted as Hermione continued packing files into her expanding bag.
"I'll be quicker on my own," she insisted, already sick of the argument. The moment she opened the door from her room that morning, Harry had accosted her about the plans for finding a new safe house, mainly how he would be accompanying her wherever it was she went. "It'll be far more effective. While I go scout a new safe house, you can pack."
He caught her by the elbow, halting her packing. "I'm worried you won't be back, so I'm coming with you."
The bag landed hard against the table with a resounding thud. She would regret her carelessness later when sorting all the books and papers again, but at that second, she was infuriated.
"I do not need a babysitter," she grit out with barely controlled disdain.
"Not saying you do, but how about someone to have your back?" Harry countered as he attempted to push a mug of coffee into her now empty hands. Instead of taking the peace offering, she crossed her arms, sending him a clear message that bribery would not help him this time.
"I'm going to downtown London, not wartime Iraq, Harry."
"I want to go too," Ron piped in as he inhaled another strip of bacon. Hermione bit her tongue to keep from screaming. She hadn't honestly thought Ron would still be in the flat the next morning after learning the truth about the New Order. "Never been in London 'cept for Kings Station."
"This isn't a fucking field trip," she shouted, stunning them both into silence. At Hogwarts and even during the Horcrux hunt, curses of the non-magical variety almost never parted from Hermione's mouth. Harry could count the times she had even mildly cursed on a single hand. The stunned silence gave her the ability to storm off to her room to collect her clothes.
Harry finally snapped out of it and called after her. "Hermio-"
"Who shoved a wand up your arse and gave it a twist?" she clipped out as she summoned the forgotten bag to her in the hall. "I'm perfectly capable of handling myself in Muggle London. I'd dare say far more qualified than either of you. Trust me, I've faced worse."
"Maybe I'm afraid to let you out of my sight!" Harry caught her elbow and spun her towards him. "Maybe I'm afraid you'll take off again and tell no one, because it's not like you've got a history of that or anything," he shouted, eyes boring into her with a rage he hadn't felt in years. The emotionless way she continued to stare at him only magnified that anger.
"When will you see that might be the best option for you?" she asked as cooly as McGonagall asking an exam question.
"And you really can't see why I won't let you go without me?"
Taking a breath, she counted to ten changing directions to logic rather than anger. Clearly, the anger was getting nowhere. "You really think it's a good idea for you and Ron to be seen with me right now? It's the whole reason we're leaving-"
"We'll glamour ourselves. Completely different and only with your approval." She opened her mouth to protest, but he barreled onward before she could speak. "Look, I'm not letting you go by yourself with no backup. That's what started all of this. And do you really fancy leaving Ron alone in the middle of a Muggle apartment complex?"
"Well, I really don't fancy dragging Ronald's arse all over Muggle London either, but as I recall, you gave me no choice last night." The stare-down continued, neither willing to give their position. But the internal clock in her head ticked away, reminding her of the impending deadline she intended to hit. If that meant bending slightly to a compromise so be it. London would at least be far less likely a site of an ambush as Diagon Alley was. "Merlin's arse, will it shut you the fuck up?"
The swearing still took him by surprise, but he suppressed a wince at her words. Something shifted since the Burrow making her colder and harsher than before. It was something he knew needed to be addressed soon before she snapped completely.
"Yeah," he said, a bit winded at the idea he might actually convince her.
"Fine, come," she huffed, securing the waist and leg strap of her bag. "But don't you dare slow me down. I leave in an hour. And Ronald is your responsibility. I'm not sitting him. Pack everything. We won't be back."
Closed in the privacy of her room, Hermione considered dropping her wards and making a run for it. Neither Harry nor Ron were skilled enough to track her through the busy streets of London. She could be on her own again in a matter of minutes, something she thought would be preferable to the current situation. The control she held over Ron was tenuous at best and the emotions Harry stirred in her were even less controlled. The facade cracked more by the day, breaking down like foam in an acid bath. Even considering running instead of just running was proof of the power he wielded over her. It was just too tempting to have someone to trust again.
Before she could consciously decide, the decision was made for her as Harry knocked against the door to announce that they both were packed, glamoured, and ready for inspection. Another steady evaluation of the room, another reminder of what she was fighting so desperately for, and Hermione marched to the living room with all the bravado of the trained soldier she was.
The disguises, she had to admit, were sufficient. While retaining their usual body shape, both men changed their hair to a blonde similar to her own glamour with the same plain hazel eyes she used. The hair and eye color were enough to change their appearance without causing too much strain on their magic. Once her glamour was reinstated, the three of them could pass for siblings. A new trio. Three siblings strolling through London on a slow Monday morning. It wasn't a bad cover.
"Right," she breathed, adjusting the belt to her bag tighter. Wordlessly, she shifted back into her own glamour, relishing the way it washed over her like a comfortable second skin. Like a shield. "We'll Apparate from here. After that, it's Muggle travel, preferably by foot."
With no further preamble, she took each of the boys by the wrists and vanished from the flat to reappear at the private Apparition point behind a bakery her parents always visited while at Piccadilly Circus. It was little known to non-Muggleborn witches and wizards and even less explored by Muggles. The sweet smell of pastries washed over her in a moment of pure self-indulgence before she moved to the street.
"What's this? Where are we?" Ron asked, clearly having smelled the wonderful aroma of the bakery.
"London," she offered unhelpfully, brushing imagined dust from her shoulder. "I need a wifi source."
"What's a wifi?" Ron asked. Luckily, Harry took over explaining as simply as he could before Hermione snapped.
The cafe she'd searched the week prior on Harry's computer wasn't far from Piccadilly Circus. Just a few blocks, but that didn't stop Ron's grumbling from having to walk through crowded streets instead of simply Apparating. As he asked again how much further, Hermione yanked a door open much harder than necessary and stormed into the warm shop. The rows of whirling towers and brightly colored monitors finally sent Ron into a fascinated silence.
Spotting a computer still logged in with time remaining, Hermione slid into the seat. The countdown read nine minutes remaining, plenty of time to pull the information she would need. She set to work immediately pulling up multiple tabs and checking for a printer. Ron stood just over her shoulder and watched the movements on the screen as she searched available apartments in the area. It was unlike anything he had seen before. Question after question poured from him, each of which went unanswered.
As his hand kept moving closer to the glowing button on the front of the tower, Hermione stopped it with the sting of a loud smack. He recoiled his hand to nurse it and she sent a glare towards Harry on her right that clearly said "handle him" before turning back, fingers flying over the keys once more.
"Come on, Ron," Harry said sympathetically as he reached for his mate's arm, directing him towards a pastry counter at the back. "Why don't we get something to eat?"
With quiet at last, Hermione set to work. Locating vacant apartments and houses was much easier with the internet. Endless hours searching the local papers for estate sales was simply a waste if she could find an internet source.
As she sent another page to print, a cup of coffee entered her line of vision followed by a plate of scones. She chanced a questioning look up at him.
"Noticed you didn't eat this morning before we left," he offered.
She merely hummed in response but did take a long pull of the coffee before sending another page to print. "Grab those, would you?" she asked around a mouthful of scone.
Finishing the scone and draining the last of her coffee, Hermione abruptly stood and moved towards the door, the boys rushing to catch up. Wordlessly, she held a hand toward Harry, and after a moment of confusion, he handed the papers to her. Almost immediately, three of them were tossed into a trash can they passed.
"So what are we doing now?" Ron huffed as he nearly knocked into another pedestrian.
"Told you, finding a new-"
A loud pop filled the air, much louder than Apparition. Habitually, Hermione's hand flew to her back, reaching for the gun holstered there. But years of seeker training had schooled Harry's reflexes. His hand closed around her wrist before hers could wrap around the grip. The blaze in her eyes was frightening, but Harry held his ground.
"It's just a car," he insisted, keeping his hold on her. "That's all. We're clear. Don't draw attention to us." The crowd of pedestrians parted around them, but no one stopped. No one was watching them, not even glancing at them. As her eyes met his, he slowly pulled her hand away from her back. "We're good. Trust me." He ran a thumb over her pulse point before releasing her.
She knew he was trying. He was trying so desperately to help, to calm her. Throughout the last month, it was all he had tried to do. A curt nod was the only response he received before she started down the road again, looking for the first flat on her list. After a block, she felt the boys finally catch up to her, flanking her on each side.
"What is that thing anyways?" Ron finally asked, poking a finger to the grip that remained exposed. "The metal thing on your back. It's the same thing you pulled out at the Burrow, right?"
She yanked her shirt down violently to cover the gun. The means by which she had obtained the weapon were less than legal in the Muggle authority's eye, and the last thing she wanted to spend her day doing was explaining to a Bobbie how she got it.
"It's a gun, Ronald," she huffed under her breath. "A Muggle weapon."
"But what does it do?"
Her nails dug against her palm as she resisted the urge to hit him with a silencing charm. The middle of a Muggle street in London was not the place for him to press her on this, not with so many people able to overhear, and his inability to "read the room" was beginning to infuriate her.
"Can't be terribly dangerous, right?" he continued with a chuckle. "I mean it is Muggle after all."
The way he said the word rubbed both her and Harry the wrong way as if a Muggle device couldn't possibly be an issue. Harry attempted to tell Ron to knock it off, but Hermione had already led them into a quiet alley and cast wards around them. Without warning, she pressed Ron up against the wall, pushing the gun against his temple.
"Once I pull this trigger, a solid piece of metal called a bullet starts down the barrel. That bullet will travel at 762 meters per second. In short, if I pulled the trigger right now, the metal would be ripping through your brain before you could even hear the sound. You'd be dead in seconds. Possibly minutes at best. You tell me how dangerous that is."
Without breaking eye contact, she discharged the weapon at a garbage container six meters from them. A loud pop and the smell of singed gunpowder filled the air followed by the high pitch ting of metal connecting with metal. Ron covered his ears and eyed the mangled hole, horrified. Hermione favored hollow points for a reason: they were highly effective at yielding the most damage per bullet.
"Don't touch my gun again, Ronald," she retorted with a cold glare. Perhaps it wasn't the most delicate way to handle the situation, but it certainly was effective judging by the sheer terror in Ron's eyes. With a wave of her hand, the wards dropped, and she marched back out of the alley as if she hadn't just held a loaded gun to her friend's head.
Neither Harry nor Ron moved as they watched her retreating form. Harry had never seen a gun work in person before, the closest being watching them on TV. He knew they were loud and violent, but watching the way it recoiled in Hermione's hand and seeing the hole in the thick metal was jarring. The look on Ron's face revealed he wasn't faring much better. With a final look at the trash can, Harry sprinted back down the alleyway after her.
"Was that really necessary?" he shouted to her back as she continued forward.
"He asked what it was."
"You could have killed him!"
She scoffed and shook her head. "Please. I never even had my finger on the trigger."
"Hey!" His fingers closed around her arm, yanking her to face him. "Take it easy on him, Hermione. He isn't Muggle-born like us. He doesn't know what a gun is. Did he handle it well? No, but it's Ron. He's always sticking his foot in his mouth, and you didn't handle it any better yourself."
She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and stepped away from him. "What I did was educate him. And now the last thing he'll do is play with my gun. I got my point across." Not an ounce of remorse. Not a single doubt about what she had done. As she moved away again, he gripped her arms again.
"Why are you so cross with him?"
This time she stepped into him, coming nearly nose to nose if she were a few inches taller. Her voice was low and dangerous as she practically growled, "He needed to learn. And if the only way to get my point across is to shove a gun in his face, it's better than him playing with it later and accidentally shooting off his foot. Or worse. We're not kids anymore, Harry. This isn't a game. There's no time for training wheels."
When she pulled away again, he let her take a few steps away before calling back, "Let me guess, academy tactics?"
The statement pulled her to a halt. Harry wondered whether he hit a sore spot or signed his own death warrant until she turned towards him again with an honest to Merlin smirk. This time, he took a step back, nearly running into Ron as he did.
"Best way to beat them is to learn like them." She met Ron's eye over Harry's shoulder, face dropping into a cold glare again."Least I didn't put a round a centimeter from his ear."
Ron gulped and covered his ears with his hands as if he feared she might try it now. The three of them stood at an impasse - Hermione refusing to budge from her argument, Ron with his ears still covered, and Harry looking between the both of them wondering how things turned so drastically.
Spotting a resident entering the building she needed, Hermione quickly ducked through the door while Harry barely grabbed it before it latched. After a silent exchange, Ron stomped after them, eager to at least get out of the cold.
The interior of the building was dark and dingy. A light in the hall flickered as they pushed towards a stairwell. Faded grey paint peeled away from the walls, and every third step squeaked as they ascended to the third floor. Once they reaching it, they could hear a couple arguing behind one of the flat doors, shouting until the whole floor heard. At the end of the long hall, Hermione stopped in front of a door labeled 3E and dropped low with a lock pick in hand. In a minute and a half, the door swung open, and she shuffled them all inside.
The flat itself wasn't any kind of improvement compared to the rest of the building. Threadbare and stained carpet ran through the entire flat matching the stained and peeled paint. It was abysmal, but Hermione considered it carefully, checking the notes from her printout.
And without another word, she marched out of the flat and back on the street, tossing the paper in the garbage and continuing to another building. The day continued quietly with the trio dodging in and out of buildings, occasionally never even entering one before the page was tossed in a trash bin.
Late afternoon light cascaded over the city as Hermione picked the maintenance door on the latest complex. The available flat that interested her wasn't far, something that would be very useful for quick escapes. She picked a door labeled 1C and pressed into the flat, the boys close on her heels. It was perhaps the filthiest of them all. Stains littered the carpet and walls. One of the doors hung at an angle from the kitchen cabinets, and the smell of stale smoke hung in the air.
Quietly, Hermione passed through each of the rooms, casting a litany of detection charms as she went. After placing several wards around the flat, she took out the laptop from her bag and tested the wifi connection from the restaurant next door. Connecting to any internet was a gamble, but she needed access.
"Well, what do you think?" Harry finally asked after hours of near silence.
"Signal is strong," she mumbled, typing in a quick search of the surrounding neighborhood. Her eyes flicked to the only other listing she had found that morning. "It's the best option we've come across. I think it's a winner."
"You're kidding, right?" Ron scoffed, his shoulder landing hard against the wall. "Here? It's the worst of them all!"
"Part of its charm," she said and began casting a more thorough set of wards and alarms around the flat and building.
"We could rent rooms at the Leaky Cauldron , and they'd be nicer than this place. Plus the Cauldron's got good food!"
"The Leaky Cauldron doesn't have what I need. This does."
Finished with the wards, she unclipped the bag strapped to her thigh and began summoning items and sending them to their appropriate rooms. A bed roll floated to one of the bedrooms. A worn punching bag levitated to a corner of the living room. Food from Harry's apartment put itself away in the cupboards and refrigerator.
"Look, I may not know what Muggles do about places to live, but didn't Harry have to go through some application process or something?" Ron asked as he watched her unpack.
"To legally obtain the flat, yes. But I have no intention of paying for this place. Payment means a paper trail."
"You plan on stealing this place?" Ron asked, his voice jumping an octave.
Hermione raised an eyebrow in his direction as if to say "haven't we already covered this?" Without another word, she summoned her bag and shut herself off in the room her bed roll was sent to.
"Mate," Ron started, still staring at the closed door. "This is… insanity."
After glancing at the door himself, Harry pulled Ron into the opposite bedroom and silenced it.
"It's a lot different from the Horcrux hunt," Harry offered and leaned against the door, trying to appear casual.
"Different? This is positively mad . She's mad."
"That's a little harsh."
"What would you call it?"
"You didn't see what those people did when they found us in Diagon Alley." The dark flashes that encompassed them in the alley still swirled around in his nightmares. Dark cloaks chasing them down dark streets, flinging curse after silent curse towards them. "I don't have a clue what we're up against, but she does. I'm trusting her that whatever she's doing, it's so we're all safe."
"That's a lot of trust in someone who's been MIA for 4 years, mate."
"Not like that was her choice. Besides, we've always trusted Hermione. Why wouldn't I now?"
"Right," Ron muttered, rolling his eyes as he looked around the room. There was no furniture to be had - just a small closet and stained carpets. "Uh, where are we supposed to sleep?"
