Author's Notes

Hi everyone and welcome to chapter 3!

Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments (ao3), and the follows and reviews (ffn) we are both so excited to be sharing this story now that it's all rewritten. (If you are reading this in ffn, the wonderful champagneandliterature is my co-author on this story, but she doesn't have a fanfiction account so we are only posting it on my account until she is ready.)

I think this chapter is pretty safe as far as content warnings go, there is nothing triggering here as far as either of us are aware.

Beyond the Sea

Chapter 3. Revelations. (Hermione.)

Hermione felt amazed that something as simple as showering could leave her feeling so exhausted. She was so weak that she had to lean heavily on Ginny for support as she staggered back to bed, and within moments of settling down, her heavy eyelids closed and she drifted back into a deep sleep.

She awoke with a start a full three hours later when Ginny returned to check on her. Since she was feeling a little better, she struggled into a sitting position to let Ginny assess the state of her disheveled hair. Ginny frowned as she lifted the heavily matted mess, but she refused just to cut it off, arguing that the beautiful curls would take years to grow back and may never look the same if they took such drastic action. Instead, she worked almost a whole bottle of Sleekeazy's hair potion into the mats, then began to very gently tease them apart with a tail comb.

Hermione closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of being clean and of being cared for. She must have dozed off again in the slightly awkward position because the next thing she knew, Pansy was waking her with another tray of potions, and Ginny was still working on her hair.

"My my, that's a job, and a half, isn't it?" Pansy asked, setting the tray down with a smile.

Ginny grinned. "It is taking a while, but she's slept through most of it, and I'm finding it weirdly relaxing. Do you fancy helping?"

Pansy conjured another comb and sat down on the bed at Hermione's other side. She picked up a section of hair, frowned at the mess it was in, then started to carefully untangle it. Hermione blinked at the surreal situation then struggled into a position that gave them both better access. Pansy was surprisingly gentle as she teased out the knots and Hermione sighed with pleasure, her hair was starting to feel vastly better already.

Hermione took her next dose of healing potions as instructed, drank most of a glass of water then started to eat the apple and blueberry muffin that Pansy had brought alongside the medicines. She chewed slowly, savouring the flavours and half listening to Ginny and Pansy's easy chatter, half listening to the relaxing sound of the sea in the background. As the gentle summer breeze fluttered the curtains, Hermione felt utterly at ease for the first time in what felt like years.

"I think that will do," Pansy said, almost a full hour later when the last strands of hair were finally sleek and tangle-free. "We've achieved the impossible. We've finally tamed it."

Pansy's giggle was gentle, though, and as she vanished a massive ball of loose hair, Hermione managed to smile in return. "Thank you."

"What about it Hermione, I know you're very weak, but do you fancy getting up to have a look around?" Pansy asked. Hermione nodded in reply, although she couldn't help feeling slightly panicked at the thought of leaving the bedroom that had so quickly become her sanctuary. "It's quiet here in the house at the moment, Blaise is downstairs, Ron's in the garden, but Theo and Draco are at work, and Harry's out too, so if you want to see the rest of the house without too many people around, now's a good time."

Hermione nodded again, carefully sitting up, then accepting Pansy's help to get out of bed. She still felt incredibly frail, and her weakness forced her to lean heavily on Ginny again as she crossed the room then paused in the doorway to catch her breath. Ginny put a gentle hand on her arm, "It's alright 'Mione. If you can't do it today, there's always tomorrow."

"No, I'll get there today," Hermione insisted stubbornly, and after another deep breath, she stepped carefully out into the whitewashed hall. She followed the other girls slowly down the steep stairs and waited at the bottom to recover before continuing on, wincing with pain at every step she took.

Finally, she made it into a bright, breezy lounge. Blaise Zabini was lying on a sofa reading. He looked up, smiled, then swung his long legs into a sitting position as Pansy and Ginny helped Hermione into the room.

Memories suddenly tore through Hermione's mind…. Her body bumped helplessly against Blaise's leg as he spun. The red light of a shield spell flashed behind her eyelids. She could hear laughter, then there was more spinning. Two identical jets of green light split the dark night…. she gasped, faltering as Ginny, Pansy, and Blaise all looked at her in concern. She took another deep breath, trying to push the memory away so that she could calm down. "Are you alright?" Blaise jumped up from the sofa to help, but Hermione hesitated again as the sound of his deep voice caused her flashback to return…. "I'm sorry for this, Avada Kedavra…."

Hermione swayed on the spot as Ginny put a reassuring hand on the small of her back. "'Mione?" Ginny asked, but Hermione missed the rest of the movement going on around her as her vision and hearing faded to black. She swayed weakly once more, then became dimly aware of strong arms scooping her up and carrying her to the sofa.

When she returned to reality, Pansy was sitting on the seat beside her, taking her pulse with one hand and holding her wand to her head with the other while she whispered healing and calming spells. "Are you alright?" Blaise asked again, stepping back to let Ginny crouch down in his place.

"Oh, Gods!" Hermione reeled backward, flopping into the back of the sofa as whatever spells Pansy was using started to work. "I'm okay. I'm okay now anyway…. Thank you. Sorry, I just had a little…. moment." She forced herself to breathe slowly as she looked up at Blaise, who was still hovering uncertainly above her. He was hugely tall and strong. She felt tiny in comparison. No wonder he could carry her so easily.

"I think we may have tried this a bit too early," Pansy said, finally releasing her wand from Hermione's temple. "No more walking around for you for a couple of days. Blaise will carry you back upstairs in a bit."

"No, I can do it. Honestly, I'm okay-"

"Shut up, Granger," Pansy said kindly, "you almost blacked out two minutes ago. Healers orders, no more walking around."

Hermione huffed, but since her head was still spinning, she didn't dare argue too much. "I need to thank you, Blaise," she said instead. "My memory is rather hazy, but apparently, you rescued me two days ago?"

Blaise nodded. "I did. Well, myself and Theo did. I can't take all of the credit for it. I did bring you here, though, and I'm sorry for the unfortunate events that occurred after we landed. It seems we had a couple of unseen followers when I apparated us here."

"That's…. um, okay." ….A body falling to the floor, whirling, pleading, another jet of green light, that oh so casual voice…. "What happened to them?"

"Their dead bodies were dumped unceremoniously at the Dark Lord's feet by Draco and Theo. We had a good night, we took out four more Death Eaters, I've been given a week off because Draco passed your blood on my robes off as mine, Pansy gets time off too, apparently she needs to nurse me, and Draco gets greater control over who he picks to go on future raids. All in all, it was a highly successful evening."

"Blaise!" Ginny exclaimed, "you could at least try to soften some of that a little!"

Hermione bit her lip but said nothing for a moment. Blaise's definition of success seemed to vary wildly from her own. "Well, thank you very much for bringing me here. I'm still rather confused about it all, but from what I do recall, you protected me from another Crucio as well, so I appreciate what you did."

"No problem." His chocolate brown eyes were soft as he smiled somewhat sheepishly at Ginny. "Sorry to be so frank, I'm used to talking freely here, and I'm guessing you wouldn't want me to sugar coat things, Hermione? Are you sure you're okay? You still look rather pale."

"I, uh. Yes….. I do feel rather weak still."

"It's going to take you a while to recover fully," Pansy said. "You were barely alive when the boys brought you here. I was concerned that we'd got to you too late."

"Why did you rescue me?" Hermione burst out, unable to keep her burning curiosity in any longer. "Why are we here? I mean, I'm hugely grateful, of course, and I sort of understand what Harry, Ron, and Ginny have all told me, but what I don't understand is why? Why did you pick me up, Blaise? If it was just a question of you happening to find me, then why didn't you just take me to the headquarters if that was the instruction? Why are Harry and Ron here? And you Gin? Why are you all together? It just doesn't make any sense!"

"Bugger!" Pansy abruptly stood up from the sofa and left the room, only to return a moment later with a handful of galleons which she passed to Ginny.

"Ta!" Ginny held her hand out to Blaise, her eyebrows raised in a silent challenge. He rolled his eyes, grinned, reached into his pocket, then passed over some more money. Hermione didn't miss how he and Ginny both carefully avoided touching each other during the exchange. "Thanks, 'Mione, I won that bet, you see!" Ginny explained, pocketing the coins with a giggle. "We were betting on how long it would take for you to explode with questions. I said it would be less than half a day after you woke up properly. Even Harry said it would be a full day!"

Hermione huffed in annoyance, but lack of energy and her overwhelming need for answers stopped her from saying any more. "Alright, alright!" Ginny said. "You explain everything, Blaise. You'll do a better job than myself, Harry, and Ron have done so far."

Blaise dipped his head as he settled forwards on the sofa. "Do you remember the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione?" He asked, and she nodded slowly in reply. That fateful night would be forever etched into her memory, no matter how hard she tried to forget it. "Well, when Harry tried and failed to kill the Dark Lord, what was left of your side apparated rather hastily away, which left quite a few of us in a bit of a pickle."

Blaise lifted his hands up to the ceiling, arched his back, and stretched like a cat. Hermione observed his face, he was undoubtedly extremely handsome, but more importantly, he also looked sincere given the current situation. He rubbed a hand over his closely cropped hair as he sighed. "We never wanted Harry to fail. Believe it or not, we had rather a lot of misguided faith in him ending this infernal war. However, it wasn't to be at that time. We returned to the Dark Lord's side because our lives depended on us doing so, but we didn't want to be there. So, we formed a resistance movement. We elected Draco as the leader. Theo and I were also founding members, and then Pansy joined. We formed a plan, and we moved up through the Death Eater ranks, getting promoted as quickly as we possibly could every step of the way."

Blaise paused and pulled a face as if he found the whole thing highly distasteful. "We succeeded in the first part of our plan. We fooled him, and we all hold pretty high up, powerful positions now. We want to bring him down, though. We work from the inside to thin his ranks, sabotage his plans, and generally screw him over. When snatchers captured you, Harry, and Ron again, it was the opportunity we had been waiting for. Our number one priority was to keep Harry safe because no matter what went wrong on the night of the battle, that prophecy still holds true. Harry is the only one who can forever vanquish the Dark Lord. So, Draco got him and Ron away first while passing it off as the actions of a different rogue group. That particular group of alleged traitors were all murdered by the Dark Lord, ourselves, and a few others for their apparent treason. It was a nice neat little double-cross that got rid of half a dozen more Death Eaters. Then we hit the problem."

Blaise sighed, sipping from a glass of water on the coffee table. "Fenrir Greyback had been promised you as a reward. That's why you were held separately from Harry and Ron. Greyback wasn't going to let you out of his sight, especially since you'd evaded him a previous time he'd captured you. He took you away from the Manor against the Dark Lord's wishes, and we lost sight of you."

Blaise sighed deeply as he looked Hermione in the eyes, his chocolate gaze boring into her honey brown eyes. "That was the snag we hadn't foreseen. We were counting on Greyback's obedience, and that was where we let you down, and I'm truly sorry for that. We had no idea where he'd taken you. He disappeared with you into the night, and we've been looking for you ever since."

Blaise finished speaking and looked at Hermione sympathetically as Ginny took her hand, trying to offer her some support. "Unfortunately, that's as much as I can tell you. Of our side of the story anyway," Blaise said. "I'm hoping you'll be able to tell us what happened to you when you're feeling a little better. All I do know is that Greyback wasn't successful in keeping hold of you, which is probably why you're still alive. Yet another separate group took you from him to use as a bargaining tool. The Death Eaters are full of these rebel factions. It's hard keeping track of them all. That's my main job, by the way. Anyhow. You were missing, presumed dead, but we didn't believe the group who held you would kill you, so we never gave up looking for you."

"Two days ago, we finally found you. By a happy coincidence, I was leading that particular raid. I told Theo to stay behind with me when the raid ended, and we searched the building because something didn't feel quite right. Theo called me back when he'd found you. You were unconscious, and I thought we were alone. I picked you up, but alas, we had company. In our haste to pull you to safety, we'd neglected to check for other human presence, and two Death Eaters were hiding under disillusionment spells to keep an eye on us. Happily, they cannot inform others of what they saw now as they both died. You know this. You bore witness to the events. Draco told the Dark Lord a believable story, and the Dark Lord acted as we predicted. That really is the end of what I can tell you so far, I'm afraid."

Hermione just listened in raptured silence. It was an awful lot to take in. "Now that we have you safely here, part one of our plan is complete. We need to decide what to do now and how to proceed next. All I can promise you right now is that you are safe. Maybe not conventionally so, but this house is probably the most secure in the country, and absolutely nobody will challenge any of us, you have my word on that. You can finally relax and heal now, I'm only sorry we didn't find you sooner."

Once Blaise had carried her back upstairs, Hermione had allowed herself a few more hours of sleep, taken the next round of healing potions that Pansy brought, and then struggled back downstairs, much to Pansy's disapproval. She was now sitting at the kitchen table, half-heartedly reading one of her favorite books while Pansy began to cook dinner behind her.

Hermione had told Pansy that she wanted to start moving around so that she could start to regain her strength, but after so long in captivity, she just didn't want to be alone any longer.

She looked up, freezing in momentary terror as an all too familiar fizzing noise filled the kitchen. Two seconds later, twin swirls of odorless black smoke appeared in the peaceful room. She sucked in an alarmed breath as two tall, masked, robed Death Eaters appeared right in front of her eyes.

She dropped her head in relief as Draco and another man Hermione recognized as Theodore Nott took off their masks. "Evening!" Theo grinned as Pansy swatted his mask out of the way.

"Can you not do that for effect? Seriously Theo, Poor Granger nearly died on the spot!"

"Sorry." Theo flashed Hermione a dashing smile, then took off his traveling cloak. "You're up and about now then?" She nodded, her eyes widening in horror as Draco started to wash his hands at the sink. Whatever he was washing off was running a ruddy red color under the hot water, and Hermione felt nauseous as she recognized it to be blood.

When Draco was finished at the sink, Theo dried his hands, poured himself a large shot of firewhisky from a nearby bottle, and downed it in one large gulp. "Remember me?" he asked, taking Draco's position at the sink as Hermione nodded apprehensively. Theo shook his hands dry, wiped them on his robes then waved his wand, sending their traveling cloaks and masks to a neat row of hooks on the wall. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit better, thank you."

"What's up, petal bum?" Pansy asked as Draco refused to turn away from the window he was staring through. He looked distressed, his head was bowed, and his eyes were closed as he leaned against the counter for support.

"We had to deal with the fallout from Hermione's rescue today," Theo said with a grimace when Draco didn't reply. "It wasn't pretty, and as usual, Draco copped the worst of the jobs. He had to find out who had information."

"Oh." Pansy pressed herself against Draco's back, slipped her arms around his waist, and hugged him tightly. "Let me guess. With the Cruciatus?"

Draco said nothing as Pansy released him. He just nodded and poured another shot of firewhisky, downed it, passed Theo the bottle, then left the room without a word. "Of course," Theo said, swigging directly from the bottle, "Draco, myself, and Bella. Then when nothing was forthcoming, we were tasked with three more murders, one each, and they weren't allowed to be neat, painless ones, of course."

"Oh," Pansy said again as Ron appeared in the doorway, looking questioningly at Draco's abrupt departure. Silently Pansy shook her head. Ron nodded, obviously understanding her silent communication.

"What did you all have to do?" Hermione asked the question despite not really wanting to know the answer.

"One Sectumsempra, that was Draco, hence the blood he was just washing away, one Reducto, that was Bella, and I had to do a messy little head severing curse. Believe me. There's a lot more than three unforgivable curses in this world." Theo grimaced and downed another mouthful of firewhisky straight from the bottle.

"Hey, Ron," Hermione said, blinking away Theo's disturbingly casual explanation. Ron was still hovering uncertainly in the doorway. He had barely said two words to Hermione since she had arrived at the cottage, and now that her muddled brain was finally catching up with her, she was starting to think that this was a little strange. "How are you?"

"Fine," he said, coming to sit at the table, still avoiding her gaze.

"Ron, I might not have seen you for a while, but I can still tell when something's bothering you. What is it?"

Ron took a deep breath, stood up again, then turned away, busying himself by getting them both glasses of water once Theo had vacated the sink. "'Mione, I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry about what happened to you. They should have taken you, not me, with Harry. Then it would have been me that was held captive instead of you."

"Weasley, I've already told you that I should have taken her away first," Draco called from somewhere down the hall. "You were stunned and tied up. There was nothing you could have done. It's on us, not you, that we made the wrong call. We just wanted to get Potter out of there, and you happened to be with him. This is called survivor's guilt, and I've told you before that you need to stop suffering from it."

"Yes, Draco, you have said that. But it doesn't mean that it's an easy thing to do, especially now, seeing what they've done to her." Ron smiled sadly at her from under his too-long, rumpled red hair. His blue eyes were comforting, and Hermione reached across the table to squeeze his hand. "I never stopped hoping we'd find you, 'Mione, we never stopped looking for you."

"You and Harry?"

"'Course Harry and me. And Ginny. And the others too, what do you think we've been doing all this time?" Hermione sipped her water as she considered him. "'Mione, there's a war going on right now, and all of us are fighting it. My family, the remains of the order, other families too. It's just not a very coordinated resistance right now, there's no outright leader on our side, and it's all just about survival for the time being."

"It all sounds rather hopeless," Hermione said, hating the fact that the opposition movement sounded so weak.

"It's not," Ron smiled. "Actually, that's where you're wrong. There is quite a huge plan afoot. And now that we have you back, there's a chance, a good chance that it will succeed."

"It's not a chance, Ron," Theo finally sat down at the table with a grin. He passed the bottle of Firewhisky to Ron, who also took a gulp straight from the bottle, before handing it back to him. Pansy frowned and banged two glasses loudly down on the table, making Ron startle and Theo laugh. "There's more than a chance here. We will succeed. Failing again is not an option. We don't risk our arses on a daily basis for a chance, mate. Draco gets all the shitty jobs, as do I, for that matter, although they bother me less. We carry on because we know this won't be forever."

Ron grinned. "Alright, point taken, mate. What I'm trying to say, Hermione, is that we are going to rise. We are going to take control of the chaos that's left of the order. These four will publicly defect at some point, and this time we are going to win. This time the Dark Lord is going to die."

"And who do you suppose is going to stop him? Harry? After what happened before?" Hermione asked rather skeptically. Their words sounded good, if rather horrifying, but Hermione remembered what had happened the last time they had been confident of a win. She would never forget the sheer terror that had gripped them all that night, and the way they had been forced to turn and run for their lives. Hermione turned to look at Pansy, who was still standing behind her, and her eyes widened in surprise.

Pansy was watching Ron with a faraway smile on her face. She was looking at him as if he alone hung the moon and the stars in the sky, and Ron, Hermione realized as she turned back to face the table, had absolutely no idea at all.

Ron grinned. "That's exactly who's going to do it. This time we're not children playing at being adults. This time we have more to go on than Dumbledore's mad quest. This time we have the power of the dark as well as the light behind us. This time is different." He looked up, finally locking eyes with Pansy, and the heat that spread across his cheeks revealed that he had finally noticed the way she was looking at him. He held Pansy's gaze as he smiled determinedly. "This time, we'll win."