Provocation

/ˌprävəˈkāSH(ə)n/

:action or speech that makes someone annoyed or angry, especially deliberately

"This is a slippery slope, Hermione."

Hermione looked over at Harry, who sat comfortably nestled into the corner of her couch. His legs were crossed in a pretzel shape, a tumblr of Firewhisky held loosely in his hand, balanced on his knee. A journal lay open over his calves, and as he flipped through her notes he tutted, here and there, at the information she had been tracking for over a year.

"He isn't killing in cold blood." Hermione leaned forward, setting her wine glass on the coffee table that sat in front of the couch before scooting closer to her best friend.

"Yeah, I can see that, but—"

"But? Harry, these are Death Eaters," she reminded him, a point he'd been keen on making for months now. "Regardless of if they've been convicted or not, they've been in hiding, and we remember what happened the last time the Wizarding World thought we were safe because all the Dark wizards had just disappeared overnight…?"

"Yeah," Harry deadpanned, "pretty sure I, of all people, know the consequences of that."

Hermione winced, swiping her wine off the coffee table to settle back into the cushions of the sofa behind her.

"Sorry."

Harry waved off the apology, draining his Firewhisky. "Except, it's not just Death Eaters that went into hiding."

Hermione blinked, straightening up slightly. "Who?"

Harry pushed a hand through his hair, "I shouldn't tell you."

"But, you're going to."

He let out a sad, defeated laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, I am." He peeked over the rim of his glasses at her before shoving them up his face slightly to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Augustus Rookwood."

Hermione stared at him for a beat, trying to understand exactly why this was devastating news. "Okay," she said slowly, elongating the word. "Rookwood was a Death Eater. Harry, you know he was awful. You polyjuiced—"

"Here's the thing though, 'Mione, I don't know. Because he wasn't marked and he claimed to have been Imperiused."

Hermione snorted, indignantly. "Imperiused my arse. He loved the power he had there. Everyone feared him and—"

"Hermione, I know." Harry sighed, leaning forward to place the journal, along with his tumbler, onto the coffee table. "I know. But, we can't prove it. And he worked for The Ministry."

"Umbridge worked for the Ministry, too. Surely, you won't try to tell me her claims of Imperius were true simply because she was part of the Wizengamot?"

Harry gave her a pointed look, his jaw working slightly in irritation. "Obviously I don't think Umbridge was innocent."

Hermione held his irritated stare for a moment before slumping back against the cushions again, tucking her feet beneath her. "Sorry. I know you don't think that."

"Look, I don't know what you're doing and frankly—I'm not sure I want to know. But, he killed—"

"Apprehended."

Harry glared at her again before continuing, "—Rookwood and now I've got the Head Auror's breathing down my neck to get more serious about this case. If he's willing to take out people within the Ministry, he needs to understand that his ability to remain in the shadows won't last forever."

"I don't know what you want me to do about it," Hermione said.

"Who is next on his list?"

"I don't know."

"Do you actually not know or are you telling me that to cover Remus' arse?"

"Harry, you've just looked over my notes. I don't know the order he goes in. He won't let me help track or make sense of any of it!"

"That's because he's smart," Harry grumbled. He groaned, letting his head fall onto the back of the couch as he rubbed his eyes, shoving his glasses up his forehead in the process. "What are we missing?"

"You're the Auror," Hermione pointed out.

"Yeah. Don't remind me," Harry muttered. "I really don't want to be one right now. A serial homicide case that is taking on high profile Dark wizards and it happens to be a past Hogwarts professor who also mentored me? Yeah. It's fucking brilliant."

Hermione stifled a laugh, "It could always be worse."

Harry lolled his head to the side and looked at her with narrowed eyes, "How?"

She shrugged, "It could be Voldemort."

"You're lucky I love you."

Hermione chuckled and stood from the couch, scooping Harry's tumbler and her own wine glass off the coffee table. "I know. Another?"

He let out a grunt of approval and Hermione stepped over to the kitchen, thinking to herself that Voldemort actually might not be worse. At least, with Voldemort, she felt like they knew what to expect. They knew death and destruction were a give in for all involved. They weren't trying to reconcile the idea of someone who had been so morally sound with the actions of murdering over a dozen people in a random Welsh forest.

And, she certainly didn't have to worry about trying to make sense of the confusing bit of fire that lit low in her belly every time she was around him.

Hermione shifted her weight from foot to foot as she stood outside the dilapidated cabin in Yorkshire. It was finally beginning to warm into early summer, the spring air hanging heavier as humidity began to settle with the heat of early June. The sun was hot against the back of her neck, her skin dampening with tiny beads of sweat as her knuckles rapped against the peeling-painted door.

She could hear him inside, moving around a flurry of old papers and broken quills. The squealing of his chair as he stood from the table was followed by the thumping of his footsteps before he wrenched the door open.

"What are you doing here?"

He was unshaven. Bloodshot eyes glossy from the cheap muggle whisky he drank more often than Hermione thought was strictly necessary. He had a cigarette hanging from between his lips and gave it a long drag, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth as he looked down at her.

"I haven't come to see you in a while," Hermione began. "I wanted to check in and…"

She trailed off. His eyes traced her face for a moment and she held her breath. There was something so piercing about the intensity of that gaze. Before she was able to mention that she had brought him some information she had been able to persuade Harry into giving her, he slammed the door shut in her face.

Hermione huffed.

Again, her knuckles knocked against the door.

"Go away."

"You know just as well as I do that I can get into this cabin if I want to," Hermione stated. "So, I'd kindly request you just save me the hassle of a bombarda and open the door."

A beat later, the door flung open, slamming against the wall behind it. Hermione let a small smirk of success grace her lips before stepping over the threshold and closing the door with more care than Remus had just shown it.

"What do you want?"

"It's not about what I want," Hermione said, eyeing the mass of accumulated muggle newspapers that now occupied one of the kitchen chairs. "It's about what I have for you."

He puffed his cigarette again before stepping over to the table to stub it out in an ashtray. "What you have for me," he repeated.

"Yep."

"I told you not to get involved."

"You also told me that I don't know how to leave anything alone, and clearly you were right in that aspect."

"Get to the point," he growled.

Hermione tutted, "I'm trying to help you, Remus."

"I told you I don't want or need your fucking help."

"Are you absolutely certain of that?" She asked, raising her eyebrows. "Because, a bag full of Augustus Rookwood showed up last week and I do believe he worked at the Ministry. Which means this has just shifted from flying under the radar to a high profile case."

Remus stopped in his tracks, his back rigid.

"Oh, that's caught your attention, has it?" Hermione practically sang, "Thought it might."

"What do you know?" He spat, his back still turned to her.

Hermione pulled one of the chairs out from the table, making a face at the layer of ash and toast crumbs that covered the surface. With a flick of her wand, the table (and Remus' overflowing ashtray) was cleared. Another flick and the kettle filled with water and began to heat.

"You've paid no attention to what anyone else has done outside of the Death Eaters you're hunting down, have you?" She asked.

Remus glared at her for a moment before slowly sinking into the chair across from her. "Say what you mean."

"Harry is Junior Sergeant of the Auror Department in the DMLE, did you know?"

"I knew he was an Auror."

"Yes, but did you realize he was high ranked?" Hermione asked, tilting her head to the side to observe his reaction. He blinked twice and she sighed, "I didn't think so."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Everything," she said, simply. "You killed a Ministry official—"

"I killed a Death Eater."

"Doesn't matter," Hermione cut back in. "According to Harry, Rookwood wasn't marked. Which means he claimed he was Imperiused and continued to work at the Ministry."

"Rookwood may not have been marked, but he was as bad as any of them."

"I'm not denying that he was abhorrent. But, you were careless. You overlooked a detail that—"

"I overlooked nothing," Remus hissed. "Augustus Rookwood shot off the blasting curse that killed Fred Weasley."

Hermione blanched, her mouth snapping shut so hard her teeth knocked together. Remus let out a bitter laugh, his sharp eyes boring through her, pinning her to the wobbly chair.

"You spent over a year trailing me, following my moves. You didn't think to look a little further into that precious little list you kept?"

"List?" Hermione questioned, stupidly. Of course Remus would know she had kept a running tally. Meaning he would assume she would have written down the names he had been researching. The hours she spent alone in his cabin with access to the millions of notes he made, the wall covered in clippings and connections...she was a journalist. Of course Remus would know she kept notes.

"Don't play stupid. It's not a good look on you," he snapped. "Your list. You've spent so long focused on what I'm doing, you didn't think to figure out why each person was on it?"

"They're all wanted Death Eaters."

"They're all wanted Death Eaters who killed people I care about. Who murdered my friends and made sure that my life would remain as fucking miserable as it could be. Rookwood killed Fred so I killed Rookwood. It isn't advanced alchemy."

The kettle began to whistle as Remus leaned forward to pluck a cigarette from his case and light it with a swift snap of his fingers. Hermione's eyes remained trained on his lips as they wrapped around the stick of tobacco, his cheeks hollowing slightly as he took a long drag. There was something hypnotic about the way the smoke flowed from between his pursed lips. The way it danced in the air, catching the sunlight, before dissolving into nothing. The harsh smell of smoke was heady in a way that made her feel completely mad.

And, it was madness, at least, it had to be. The way she so willingly set aside the fact that the murderer she had been trailing for over a year was Remus. There was no other explanation for it. She had gone completely mental and her moral compass was clearly haywire. And goddammit, if he didn't stop looking at her like that, like she was some sort of strange enigma he was trying to solve, she was going to burst into flames.

"Kneazle got your tongue, now?" Remus asked, a sarcastic bite to his voice.

Hermione swallowed, licking her lips to wet them and she could swear on her Gringotts vault his eyes followed the motion. She shook her head, "Not quite."

He arched an eyebrow and his eyes flickered over her again, taunting her.

She stood from her chair to take the kettle off the heat and regain her composure. He was toying with her. Instead of a mug, she pulled a small tumbler from the cabinet and took it back to the table, swiping the bottle of cheap whisky from in front of Remus and pouring herself a rather large portion. Remus' eyes followed the action, an amused smirk tugging at his lips. She took a gulp of the amber liquid, nearly choking on the burn of it.

"Harry knows it's you," she said. "He knows and he's in charge of the case."

The words wiped the smirk clean off his face. "Harry knows."

Hermione nodded, though it wasn't a question. "You clearly don't care if you get caught. But, somewhere inside, you must still care about Harry?" she insisted, "You must still want the best for him, at least? If you continue what you're doing, Harry will be an accessory to your crimes. He'll lose his license to be an Auror. He'll lose his job and he'll be tried for interfering with the investigation and withholding evidence. He'll be chucked in Azkaban to rot—and so will I."

"I warned you to stay out of it," he hissed.

"And yet, here we are."

Silence fell between them, hanging heavy as the smoke that clouded the room. Hermione sipped the whisky, welcoming the pleasant burn that numbed her chest and warmed her belly. The blurring of the edges of her mind that brought hope that the lines between her and Remus would be blurred as well. His eyes remained trained on her, watching as she finished off the liquid in the glass tumbler and poured herself another.

The air felt charged. Kinetic. Buzzing with the energy of spilled secrets and challenges whispered on the end of cigarette smoke.

She felt her chin jut slightly in his direction. A subtle movement for the salient provocation that it intended. A far more arrogant display than was typical for her. But then, nothing about any of their interactions had been typical for Hermione. There was something in the way his gaze seared into her that made her want to make him feel the hunger it instilled in her, too. And judging by the way his eyes flicked back to her lips as she wet them again, collecting the stray drops of whisky, she wasn't far off.