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Chapter Four

"Someone's having a rough day."

Harry's voice snapped Hermione awake. Though . . . putting her head down on the bar of the Leaky Cauldron after that many shots of Fire Whiskey was probably not the best idea she'd ever had. Sitting up miserably, she turned her head to blink bleary, dark-ringed eyes at her best friend.

He winced. "Rough week?"

The witch closed her eyes and sighed. "I told you I had that meeting today with Kingsley to discuss the barbaric methods that bloody Prisoner Oversight Division had implemented?"

"You can't tell me he supported them?'

She furrowed her brow, waving dismissively at him. "No, no o' course not, maybe that's 'cause Kings isn't a ruddy monster like those fools. He's launching a full investigation into their methods and procedures; probably replace the current division staff with more suitably-minded individuals."

Harry took a seat on the stool next to hers and waved old Tom over to pour him a pint of ale. "Sounds like proper procedure, doesn't it? You wanted this madness with these rehabilitation trials stopped."

Hermione nodded, not arguing when Tom offered to refill her shot glass, though Harry visibly gritted his teeth at the thought of her imbibing yet more alcohol. "It is, and I did."

"So what's the problem?"

"There was just something . . . ." She moved her hand in a rotating gesture as she searched through her hazy mind for how to explain clearly. "Dissatisfying about dealing with it all in so calm a manner, you know? I mean, we're not children anymore, Harry, we've no excuse to go tearing into an establishment like the Ministry of Magic, hollering bloody murder about injustices."

"But that's what you wanted to do?"

"Of course that's what I wanted to do!" Sighing once more, she paused to knock back her waiting shot. By now her throat was a bit numb, she didn't even flinch at the burn of the whiskey, causing Harry to eye her a bit warily. "I knew from the moment I learned what was going on that I couldn't . . . and I won't lie, I did feel a strange sense of joy at how angry Kingsley got about the program when I told him, but it just . . . wasn't the same."

"Sucks being a grownup, don't it?"

"It certainly does!" She pursed her lips, turning her attention to her empty glass. Arching a brow, she tacked on, "Legal access to copious amounts of alcohol helps, though."

Harry downed the rest of his pint and then slapped some money on the bar. "Think that's my cue to get you home."

"But why?"

"Because you're not this pissed just because your vehement rage resulting in a lengthy investigation was underwhelming. Something else is bothering with you, Hermione" he said as he pulled her to her feet and tugged her arm around his shoulders. "You're going to tell me while we get you some fresh air."

Hermione curled her lip, but allowed him to half-drag her out of the pub and into the crisp night air of London.

After they'd walked for a bit, enough that she seemed reasonably calmer and wasn't stumbling along beside him, he asked, "Okay, so what's really bugging you?"

She let her shoulders slump under the weight of his arm as they walked. "It's, um, it's Greyback, actually."

Harry's brow furrowed behind his glasses. "What about him?"

"I . . . I don't know. That's sort of the problem." She distractedly kicked a pebble out of her path, secretly relieved when the unplanned maneuver didn't send her drunk arse stumbling off to one side. "I spent all this time in fear of him. Dreading a day he might get free, not knowing what he might do if we crossed paths. And now . . . I don't even know what I think now. But when I found out they managed to get him out of that cave-in alive, I felt relief. Just last week, I'd have thought I'd be ready to throw a bloody party if he died, but there I was, so relieved that I thought my knees would buckle."

He pulled her close, dropping a kiss atop her head. "I'm not going to try and gloss over what he said or did during the War, and far be it from me to play Devil's Advocate for someone like him, but I will say those are times of heightened emotions. And during such a time of heightened emotions, you saw him at his worst. All you came to expect from him was his worst. In this ridiculous trial program, or whatever it was, he proved he's not the monster you believed without even knowing he had something to prove. He could've escaped, instead he risked his life to save yours." He shrugged. "Realizing there's something in him worth saving, after all, how could the way you feel about him not change?"

After a moment of quiet, during which Hermione appeared as pensive as she could possibly muster given her inebriated state, Harry frowned. "Wait . . . ."

"Hmm?" Her lips pursing and her brows drawing upward made for an adorably innocent and clueless expression.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Just how close did you two get while you were trapped together?"

She opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again. Close? Her and Fenrir? As in . . . their . . . their bodies touching as he'd carried her through that portion of the corridor as though she weighed nothing at all?

. . . The feeling of his body curved around hers, of the sensation of his muscles pressing against her limbs with each motion.

When he set her back on her feet, she stood immobilized for several heartbeats. She could not even seem to unlink her hands from behind his neck.

As he straightened to his full height from letting her down, her continued hold on him pulled her up against him . . . .

Even recalling it now, she had to draw in a shaky breath. She forced herself to focus, hoping the warmth she could feel flaring in her cheeks could be blamed on her level of intoxication.

Mirroring his look, she shook her head. "Shut up, Harry."

The next morning . . . or afternoon, actually, found Hermione being rather unpleasantly awoken by a sharp tapping at her bedroom window. The tapping served to intensify the pounding in her skull as she pushed her hair out of her face and pulled herself—slowly—to sit up.

Looking toward the window, she saw the unmistakable outline of an owl silhouetted against the curtain. Why couldn't the bloody bird have just sent the post through the slot in her front door? What could be so urgent that the creature was insistent she retrieve whatever it was from it, directly?

She sighed, painfully climbing to her feet and crossing the room. Pulling back the curtain, a move she instantly regretted as she tossed her free hand over her face to shield her eyes from the wash of afternoon sunlight, the witch opened the window.

"Well?" she asked the owl, knowing later she'd feel bad for being testy with the creature for simply doing its job.

The owl dropped a scroll on the inside of the window sill, but did not depart until she took it.

For a moment, she simply eyed the bird as it flew off. Wincing at the continued pounding in her head, she closed the window and dropped the curtain back down into place.

The witch crossed the house to the retrieve a pain relieving potion from her kitchen—other people kept such things in the bathroom, she kept hers right by her coffee. Downing a bit of the potion, she set to preparing a pot of coffee.

Settling at the kitchen table as she waited for the potion to take effect, and letting the wonderful smell of freshly brewing coffee fill her lungs, she snapped the wax seal holding the scroll shut.

Clearing her throat, she started to read the missive aloud.

"Miss Granger,

At your soonest convenience, your presence is required at . . . ."

Her brows shot up as she read on in silence. "Oh," she said upon finishing. She stared, unblinking, at the words before her. "That's what's so urgent."

"We're sorry to call you back here after the, um, unfortunate circumstances of your last visit," the warden said in a tone that managed to be both sympathetic and reassuring. "But . . . it's, well, you'll have to come see for yourself."

She certainly found him more tolerable when he was groveling than when he was playing Yes Man to that awful Ministry division. "Your letter said he was—"

The warden was visibly beside himself, wringing his hands as he led her through the prison, a pair of heavily-armed guards following silently behind them. She could only guess he had since learned of her close friendship with Minister Shacklebolt, and hoped he would be spared from whatever punishments were in store for everyone who'd contributed to that madness a few days back; after all, unlike those deplorable division members who'd made these decisions in the first place, this poor sod had simply been doing his job.

"We made him aware of the incident's true circumstances when he came to, and he . . . well, he did not take the news well."

Hermione paused midstride. "You said as much in your letter, yes. But now that you've reiterated only that without giving me anything more to go on, I dread to ask, how 'not well,' exactly?"

He winced. "In hindsight, perhaps we should've waited until he was back behind bars before we explained the situation."

Her brows shot up and she thought her knees might buckle. "What? You told him this while he was in the infirmary? Did he hurt anyone?"

"No, no." The warden swept his arm out ahead of her and started guiding her down the corridor, once more. "His . . . expressions of anger, shall we say, seem to have been limited to items and property."

"I suppose that's some relief, then."

"Says you, you're not the one who'll have to send the bill for his destructive tear to the Ministry."

Hermione rolled her eyes at his statement, speaking through lightly clenched teeth. "Can you blame him? I'm still not certain what you think I can do."

"Well." He halted before the dingy and aged double doors of Azkaban's infirmary. "He asked about you, and though we insisted you were all right—"

"He refused to believe you?" she wagered, her tone sour.

The warden nodded. "He refused to believe us."

"And, again, I ask: Can you blame him?"

"Be that as it may, I knew the only way to calm him down would be to see you, unharmed, with his own eyes."

Swallowing hard, Hermione nodded. Just last week—just last week!—she'd have been terrified of the thought of walking through those double doors to place herself in the same room as an unrestrained Fenrir Greyback. Now, she was equally unsettled by that thought, but in a very different way and for a very different reason.

Regardless of her . . . fears, Fenrir had saved her life more than once in a matter of hours that day. She at least owed him this much.

Bloody hell, when had she stopped thinking of him simply as Greyback?

The warden pushed open the doors. "Do you require the guards to accompany you?"

"No." She knew he wouldn't hurt her, though she thought it best to alert the werewolf to her presence before anyone set foot in there. "F—Fenrir?"

After a moment, she heard him call out in a questioning tone, "Skönhet?"

The witch forced herself to step through the doors. Her eyes widened immediately as she took in the wrecked infirmary. Hospital beds had been overturned, medicine cabinets smashed against walls, bits of shattered wood that might've been chairs or tables at some point . . . the scene was an impressive bit of chaos, actually.

She supposed it was a comfort, however, that if there had been people in here at the time, it meant that he'd deliberately avoided harming them when he was making this mess. And there'd she been, not even able to shout bloody murder in the Ministry because she was 'an adult who couldn't handle her problems that way.' Almost seemed he'd vented anger for the both of them.

There was a strange comfort in that.

Giving herself a shake, she turned her attention to scanning the room. She nearly missed him. Hunched against a back wall, he was all but hidden in the shadows.

She forced a small smile as she stepped toward him, her movements cautious. "They were telling the truth, see? I'm okay. I . . . I didn't know what was going on. I wouldn't have had any part of something like that."

Fenrir watched her, unblinking, as he straightened up. "I know you had nothing to do with it."

Her brow furrowing, she moved closer, still, trying to get a good look at him. "Will you come over here so I can see you?"

There was a pause, and then an almost child-like defensiveness in his voice as he said, "I'm a bit of a mess."

"I should say so," she tried for a laugh, but the sound fell flat. "You did sort of have a tunnel collapse in on you."

He snickered. A sigh rumbling out of him, Fenrir nodded and stepped into the light.

Hermione was not prepared for the sight of him. Still clad in only that pair of trousers—that now looked much worse for wear—she could see his arms and torso were covered in bruises and cuts, one eye was nearly swollen shut and there was a gash across his jaw.

The gasp that tore out of her only made him laugh again, but it was a mirthless sound this time. "Don't . . . don't do that," he said, his voice so impossibly low she nearly didn't hear him. "Might make someone think you actually cared what happens to me."

His words struck her like a physical blow. She winced, feeling the weight of their meaning . . . . He'd let this happen to him while ensuring her safety. He'd thought . . . no. He'd accepted that she might not care for him at all even as he'd knowingly risked his life trying to save hers.

God, why was there the bothersome mild sting of tears gathering in her eyes?

Maybe Harry was right. Something in their shared experience had changed her feelings toward Fenrir Greyback. How else was she to explain that his thinking she didn't care what became of him actually hurt her heart?

She shook her head, but as she opened her mouth to respond, the warden broke into their bizarrely strained moment.

"If Mr. Greyback is calmed, now, we should really get him back to his cell."

"No."

Hermione could feel both the warden and Fenrir blinking rapidly at her, as though they each struggled to understand that single word.

"I beg your pardon?" the warden asked, a bewildered chuckle coloring his words. "Miss Granger? I don't know what you mean by that. If you'll just come back out here, the guards will then escort the prisoner back to—"

The words that tumbled from her lips then had both men's gazes riveted on her in shock. Indeed, even the witch's own face showed that she was just as surprised by what she'd said as they were. Hell, if that pair of guards had been in eye-line, they'd probably be gaping at her, too.

"What?" The warden's voice was pitched high with disbelief.

Fenrir echoed the word, his amber eyes wide as he stared at the petite, wild-haired woman before him.

Did I really just say that? Yet, as she stared right back at Fenrir, as she once more let her gaze rove over his wounded form, she found she could not bring herself to retract what she'd just said.

Instead, she cleared her throat and nodded, repeating herself in a calm, clear voice. "I want him released into my custody."