Thanks to everyone who's read/followed/favourited/reviewed the story so far - I hope you enjoy this chapter. Sorry it's quite short and a bit of a filler but we're getting to the juicy bits soon! As always, please leave your thoughts!

- HermionesPolyjuice xo

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing :((

Chapter 3

Three days passed, and Hermione found herself restarting the potion at least twice every day, something going wrong at a different point each time. It was frustrating her. Potions had always been one of her best subjects and right now she just couldn't seem to get it to work. She knew it was a complicated potion, but she figured that she wouldn't have had to restart seven times in three days. It also didn't help that she was experiencing a weakness in her right arm and a pain that would cause her to suddenly fall unconscious for a few hours every now and again and miss a critical step in the potion. Whilst she was frustrated, she wasn't particularly worried. The books had told her that it often took three to four months until the pain from the bite completely subsided, and she knew her bite was a lot worse than most people's, so was expecting the pain to last for a while. It just didn't help that she felt so alone. She couldn't bring herself to contact anyone and bring shame to them all, but, right now, more than ever before she needed someone to talk to.

Hermione let out a sigh as she sat back onto her heels, watching the potion bubble into a silvery grey. It almost seemed that the bubbles were dancing about the surface, and it quickly put her into a trance. It didn't take long until she found herself falling into a deep sleep filled with dreams and happy memories from both her muggle childhood and from her seven years at Hogwarts. It was the first time in years that her sleep hadn't been plagued with nightmares, tears, and screams.

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During those three days, Harry had shut himself away from everyone else. He was mentally kicking himself at what had happened. It was entirely his fault that Hermione wasn't here. Rather than try and protect everyone, he had dragged them all through hell during the battle. He hadn't even thought about them, just himself. Just the fact that he was too scared to face Voldemort by himself. And now he was even more scared than he had been then. He was terrified for Hermione. He was afraid that he had lost his best friend, but he was also frustrated at the fact that he wasn't able to do anything. He had no idea what to do. The owl he had sent came back with the letter still attached. He had sent out patronuses, which were never returned. He had visited St Mungo's a number of times to double-check she wasn't there, and also wandered the streets of Diagon Alley. He had even returned back to Hogwarts but ended up returning less than 10 minutes later not being able to control his emotions. He had even considered putting something in The Daily Prophet, but he knew they would have had a field day if they found out one of the Golden Trio was missing. Whatever had happened to Hermione, Harry was beginning to think that she needed time and the last thing she would want would be piles of witches and wizards chasing after her. He felt he had exhausted his efforts and now he couldn't think of anything else he could do to find his best friend.

There was a knock on the door, which caused Harry to snap out of his distant thoughts. He looked over and saw Ginny walk in. She didn't say anything as she walked over to sit down on the camp bed next to him, and slowly leant her head on his shoulder. Harry wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and they sat there in silence until Ginny asked the question Harry had been asking himself the past three days.

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know. I've done everything I can think of that won't draw attention to myself. I want to find her; I need to find her. But the last thing I want to do is go to the ministry and ask for help. If anyone outside of us lot find out it will be chaos and I almost think that she may have purposely distanced herself and just wants time. I don't think we've even told the Order yet, so going to the ministry just won't work," Harry said, trying to convince himself that it would be the wrong thing to do more than anything,

"Are you sure we shouldn't? I mean I agree with you that it may not be ideal, but don't you think it would be silly not to do whatever it takes to find her? We don't know what's wrong with her. She may be really badly hurt and just not able to apparate or anything. We just don't know, so surely it would make sense to try whatever we can to find her," Ginny said.

"I know, Gin. I know that. I'm just not sure I would like myself if The Daily Prophet found out," Harry muttered quietly.

"Would it really be that bad a thing if they did find out? I mean that way everyone would be able to help. And people would help. Everyone in the wizarding world would want to find Hermione so surely thousands of eyes would be better than what 20 eyes?"

"I guess."

"You could just start with telling Kingsley and some Aurors to begin with if you're that opposed to getting it put into The Daily Prophet. But, Harry, they're going to find out at some point, whether it's tomorrow or next week or whenever. They will find out."

"Yeah, OK. I'll go see Kingsley on Monday and see what he can do then." Ginny pressed a kiss to his temple before standing up and getting ready to leave Ron's room.

"Mum also told me to tell you dinner will be ready in like 20 minutes." And then Harry heard the door click leaving him to mull over the plan. A part of him was glad that Ginny had managed to persuade him to at least go to Kingsley about Hermione's disappearance. Another part of him was worried and still didn't think it was the best thing, whilst another part just simply wanted to find her and he would do whatever it took to make sure she was safe.

Letting out a sigh, he stood up and slowly trudged downstairs to the kitchen not really wanting the company of the rather rowdy Weasleys he could hear from upstairs. When he entered the kitchen he was surprised to see everyone already sitting at the table. Casting a quick look he noticed that three seats were empty rather than the usual one.

'Where's Charlie?" he asked sitting down in between Fred and Ron.

"He had to go back to Romania, something about a hatching or something," Ron shrugged reaching for the bowl of mashed potato now that everyone was sitting at the table.

"Good to know you still pay attention, Ron. He had to get back because one of the dragons escaped and was burning up the local village," Ginny said rolling her eyes.

"Same thing," Ron muttered though a mouthful of food. This resulted in a glare from his mother and an elbow in the ribs from his sister.

"Gred and I have decided to re-open our shop on Monday," George said quickly, trying to change the conversation before an argument could arise at the table. Despite the success of the war, everyone seemed to be quite touchy, most likely due to the disappearance of Hermione, and dinner would frequently become a quiet affair after someone stormed off because of what so said someone else had said.

"That's great, boys," Mrs. Weasley responded, but only half-heartedly. Harry couldn't tell whether it was from her general disapproval of the shop or from Ron's manners, or lack thereof.

"Have you added some new stock then?" Bill asked, jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to keep the conversation light.

"Oh yes," the twins responded, their eyes lighting up with glee.

"But we'll let you come and see them all on Monday. Who knows what the service will be like, and we're sure people seeing you lot enter, especially Boy Wonder over there, will make them come too," Fred added on a serious note, making Harry blush a little. He still hadn't got used to the fame that had come with the final defeat of Lord Voldemort. He had read a few of the letters that frequented the Burrow so often, but he knew they were mostly all the same and gave up reading them quite soon after. He did, however, cast a quick eye over all the handwriting in the hopes he would see the neat and tidy writing that belonged to Hermione, but was always left disappointed when it didn't appear.

"I do hope you've haven't gone too over board," Mrs. Weasley muttered, more to herself than to the table. The smirk that was exchanged between the twins didn't go unnoticed by everyone at the table, including the matriarch of the Weasley family. Dinner continued with a light mood, everyone laughing and enjoying themselves for the first time in a long time and it didn't take long until the Butterbeer, Elven wine, and Firewhiskey were all brought out of the cupboards and the true celebrations began. Even Harry had been able to push Hermione to the back of the mind, never truly forgetting her, for the rest of the evening as he celebrated happily with the Weasleys, who had been delighted to accept him into the family, although not officially…yet.

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"Oh for fucks sake," Hermione let out a shout as she woke one morning about a week later and saw that the potion had turned into a sooty black powder, another indication it had failed. She was growing more and more frustrated by the day, and it didn't help that the full moon was mere a six days away and she was getting more and more anxious about what was going to happen. There was only so much that the books could tell her, and she knew that it was going to be extremely painful and it wouldn't help that she wouldn't be able to take any Wolfsbane potion to stay sane during the night.

"Evanesco," she said angrily through gritted teeth clearing away the potion, or what was now powder, and cleaning out the cauldron. She set a fire underneath the cauldron and began again. She had ended up taking another trip to the apothecary, but this time visited the one in Hogsmeade to avoid raising suspicions. Fortunately, however, she had yet to reach the part of the recipe that required any of the aconite and other expensive ingredients and so only found herself needing the more inexpensive ones.

Once she was satisfied the potion wasn't going to boil over, she stood up and stretched. Deciding she needed to get moving after spending so much time sitting and lying over the past week, she picked up her beaded bag and headed across the clearing and towards the trees ready to get suitably lost in the woods for a bit of an adventure.

However, not even 10 minutes into her adventure, she came across something that she had least expected. Her heart leapt as she took in the scene in front of her. She turned around quickly and hurried back to where she had left her cauldron. Deciding that she could get away with loosing 10 minutes of work, she discarded the potion, thrust the cauldron into her bag, and put out the fire. Making sure there were no signs that she had been there, she hurried back to where she had spotted the thing she had been longing for so long. After a few minutes, she came across the hut in the woods and walked up to it. It gave off no magical vibes, and, as her sense of smell had improved so much in the last few days, she was convinced that not only was it uninhabited it hadn't been lived in for at least a year, if not longer.

Hermione hesitantly reached out and pushed on the front door, letting out a sigh of relief when it clicked open. Without looking inside, she quickly cast protective wards around the hut. Once she was satisfied, she went about busying herself by cleaning the hut, the amount of dust that had accumulated would have made Mrs. Weasley sick. Thinking of the Weasley matriarch made her eyes sting with a few tears. She had let her down; she had let everyone down. Before she got overwhelmed with emotions like she had so frequently recently, Hermione rubbed at her eyes angrily and continued to make the hut liveable. It was open-planned and was considerably larger on the inside than it looked to be from outside, which made Hermione believe it had been used by wizards and enchanted to be a bit like the tent she, Harry, and Ron had lived out of for the better part of a year. In one corner was a kitchenette that was relatively well supplied. The other corner housed a large fireplace, surrounded by well-used, comfortable looking armchairs. On the other side of the hut was a bed, a desk, and a door, which Hermione presumed led to a bathroom. It was perfect and just was she needed. She was so relieved that she no longer would need to be lying on the hard ground in the forests and felt more protected, and sheltered from the weather.

20 minutes later, she found herself curled up in a tartan armchair reading one of her favourite childhood books Eragon, the fire roaring in front of her and the potion bubbling softly on the table on her left.

(A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a review, good or bad, of your thoughts!)