December 26th

Beyond the first few minutes after midnight, Hermione's Christmas was rather uneventful. As soon as she left Malfoy Manor behind, she returned to Hogsmeade. It was dangerous to go back to the place that had proven to be so unfriendly to her, but she had few options. There was simply no way she would put Augustus and Rosalind in danger and Fenrir's cottage had already been compromised. She had to assume that Rodolphus wouldn't immediately go looking for her in a place that might seem too obvious. Hiding in a Muggle hotel would be considered a more likely place than the home of her husband's best friend.

No one was at the Rowle house when she carefully knocked on the back door. She wasn't aware of their plans for the holiday. With it being the first Christmas without Hannah who truly was the heart of their family, she could only imagine that wherever they were, they were struggling. While possible that the older girls stayed at Hogwarts, she wasn't sure where Alice was living. She knew that tensions had been high between Thorfinn and his father-in-law, especially where his daughters were concerned. Perhaps the girls were with their grandfather while their father hid himself at the bottom of a bottle. Hermione was worried about her old friend.

She took advantage of the silent house. Placing extra wards around Daisy's bedroom that would hopefully alert her to the presence of another person if one stopped by, she first took as long a hot shower as she dared. Washing the dirt and grime from the Malfoy Manor's cellar off made her feel like a new woman. And the added benefit of the warmth of the hot water proved to her that she was still alive. Once she was clean and dressed warmly in proper clothes just in case she had to run at a moment's notice, she laid on top of the girl's made bed with one of her own blankets covering her body. Within moments, she was asleep.

Staying in Thorfinn's empty house turned out to be the best decision for the moment. If Rodolphus was even aware after being unceremoniously tossed into the snow that his prisoner was no longer in Malfoy Manor, he hadn't yet considered the possibility that Hermione was in Hogsmeade. Christmas Day passed with no incidents. No one came home or blasted the doors off the hinges. It gave her the opportunity to rest her exhausted body and consider her next moves.

Just a little after nine in the morning on Boxing Day, she heard the first sounds of life in the house. Carefully packing her blanket into her beaded bag just in case she had to run, Hermione prepared to open the door to find an enemy waiting. Rodolphus was in the process of losing his mind, but he was still an intelligent man. Eventually he would run out of options to look for her beyond the obvious. And with Draco able to potentially steal one of her possessions from her bag without her realizing, she knew he could be tracking her too. Before she could open the door to Daisy's bedroom to check for herself who was outside in the corridor, the door was blasted inwards, knocking Hermione off her feet.

"Princess? Are you all right?"

Relieved that it was just the master of the house returned home, she allowed Thorfinn to help her up off the floor. He seemed a little sheepish about almost injuring her, but she could never blame him. Not after all they'd gone through. When he pulled her into a tight hug to prove he was glad to see her, she felt her eyes burn. Had they finally moved past everything that happened after Hannah's death? She desperately hoped so. Especially with her mind clear from the lack of potions and the memory charms, she missed her friend.

"The girls and I spent Christmas at their grandfather's. I was just stopping in here for a few minutes to shower and shave. Thought you might be an intruder."

"Technically, I suppose I was, but I didn't know where else to go."

Unwilling to share where she'd been and terrified to ask after her husband, she tried to change the subject. If there was bad news about Antonin considering how she left things in the Resistance's village, she no longer felt prepared to hear the terrible truth. As Thorfinn led her to the kitchen with promises of hot tea and something for breakfast, she referred back to a statement he'd made.

"You said you were with Hannah's father? But I thought he was on Rodolphus' side?"

Thorfinn smirked. She knew she wasn't wrong. Mr. Abbott had been at the top of the list that Draco smuggled to her a lifetime earlier. As one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families, the Abbotts were promised a seat on the soon-to-be reformed Wizengamot. Considering Hannah's father had never warmed up to the idea of his only daughter marrying a Death Eater, especially after her own mother was murdered back in their sixth year, it wasn't difficult to deduce that the man would be firmly against whatever side Thorfinn aligned himself with.

"He doesn't like me, but he knows how much I love his daughter and his granddaughters. He wanted a better world for them too. He's been helping us."

The wizard reached into the pocket of his robes to pull out his silver mirror. Considering the fact that he didn't immediately offer his condolences to Hermione when he found her, she hoped that meant that there had been a positive outcome for Antonin following her kidnapping. She'd been too afraid to discover otherwise. With a cheeky grin, he flipped the mirror open.

"And I think there's someone desperate to find you. He's been driving himself mad."

"But others can hear you."

He winked.

"Oh, I'm aware. Don't you worry."

Thorfinn cleared his throat and called out Antonin's name.

"Mate, Emmy sent Ollie's Christmas gift home with me. I'm just going to send it up to the castle, but is there something I should know about? Emmy can hardly say his name without blushing."

Antonin laughed through the mirror. At once Hermione felt heartened and the ache in her stomach that had been present since she first woke up in the cellar began to lessen.

"Not that I know of, but I'll be sure to ask him."

"I know how you Dolohovs fall desperately in love with your witches. I'm not sure I want my Emmy to be subjected to that."

There was no heat behind his words. Based on the chuckle that she heard coming from the other side of the mirror, her husband didn't believe him either. Thorfinn closed the mirror and turned back to Hermione to wink again.

Seconds later the door to the back garden opened and Antonin rushed inside. With his eyes focused solely on his wife, he crossed the space to take her into his arms. His kiss was heated enough that Thorfinn laughed and gave them privacy. Hermione didn't care. She would've done a great deal more than kiss with the other wizard still there in the room to witness it if her husband had been so inclined. Feeling his hands on her body and his lips against hers calmed her down more than anything, including her old potions, ever did. When she was no longer alone, she didn't feel afraid. Based on the manner in which he wished to prove to his wife that he was glad to see her, Antonin had been terribly afraid for days. She hated that he had to worry.

"Are you all right? Is anything hurt?"

"I should be the one asking you that, Antonin. When I left, you weren't exactly in top form."

He sighed and wrapped his arms around her back. Holding her tightly against his chest, she could feel his heart beating frantically. The poor man wasn't doing well. When this was all over, she was going to personally drag him in front of a Healer to make certain he wasn't about to keel over and die on her. What sort of cruel fate would that be if they both survived and she finally could admit to herself that she'd loved her husband all along just for him to die? She would be tempted to cross through the Veil herself just to pull him back out.

"I'm much better now that I have you back in my arms where you belong."

Hermione leaned back enough that she could kiss him softly. Some of the tension in his body began to lessen. She ran her fingers through his dark brown hair, worried that she was seeing even more silver than had been there just a short time before. While he was certainly the type of man who would only improve in his looks with more grey in his hair, she was afraid that the stress was slowly killing him. How could she make it all stop?

"I was worried about you. I thought that the villagers would hurt you once Tiberius Zeller's body was found. I know how awful it looked."

His deep, heavy sigh brought her more pain and fear. She slid her arms around his waist again to rest her cheek against his chest. The feel of his body against hers and his arms enveloping her was what they both needed to feel calm.

"Yes, I'm afraid that you will never be welcome there again. No matter how much Lee tried to assure them that you had nothing to do with his murder, most of them didn't believe him."

"Lee didn't believe I did it?"

"No, neither did Sarah. When Lizzie came running back into the house screaming that you tried to kill her, neither one of them believed that was true for a second. And then Posy admitted that she'd seen Lizzie visiting a big, fluffy dog earlier in the day. We were able to put the pieces together. Sarah was angry with herself for not recognizing that her own daughter was under the Imperius Curse, but she said that the girl had been acting strangely for months."

"Rodolphus said that Lizzie wanted to help him."

"Yes, well, we've already discovered that the bastard is a master manipulator. Maybe she thought she did. You said that you told Malfoy about her interest in Death Eaters. Rodolphus probably used that against her, planted spells in her mind. I really don't know. Sarah took the girls back to Wales to the hospital she worked at. She has a colleague who will be examining them both just to make sure there's nothing permanently wrong with either of them."

An immense sense of relief washed over Hermione at the knowledge that the Jordans didn't blame her for what happened that horrible night. Just her presence in their lives put them all in grave danger. If the roles had been reversed, she couldn't be certain that she would've allowed them into her home where her family could've been in trouble. They were much better people than she was. Perhaps there was hope, however, that she could be more like them.

"I'm worried about Ollie. Is he okay in the castle?"

Antonin tightened his hold on his wife.

"Yes, he's fine. I went up to Hogwarts yesterday on Christmas Day to check on him. Afraid I had to lie and tell him you were sick."

"Did he believe you?"

"Highly doubt it. The kid is too smart. But yes, he's all right."

They couldn't linger in Thorfinn's house for much longer. She'd already been there too long. If anyone was tracking her or watching his house, they would all find themselves in trouble. After both of the Dolohovs thanked Thorfinn for allowing Hermione to hide in his home, Antonin took his wife to another house she didn't recognize. She didn't even care where they were. The fact that there was heat and she wasn't alone was enough to satisfy her immediate needs and desires.

Only moments after entering the house, she kicked off her shoes and climbed on top of the bed. Opening her arms, she invited Antonin to lay there with her. Neither of them pushed the other to do anything other than just be still and quiet in each other's company. She'd taken those quiet moments for granted. Perhaps they both had. Long before she was ready to break the spell of the moment, Hermione turned on her side to face her husband.

"I need to tell you everything that happened. It's… you're not going to like it, Antonin."

He offered her a kiss as encouragement. It was just what she needed to recount everything that happened since she walked out of the bedroom they shared at the Jordans' home until he found her in Thorfinn's kitchen.