Author's Note: Thank you to Nynaeve, to Gueneviere and to PinkTribeChick for reviewing again. :) Also, to DeltaGammaLiv, poor clare, hey-meredith, Purgurl, and eleganteros. Patience, guys! If I came to the romance too fast, you'd get bored with it, and then where would I be? We're getting there, I promise…

Sorry about the double perspective in this chapter, let's see if it works.

I also have a challenge for you all:

Menolly Mark's RemusxHermione Fanfiction Challenge:

Write a Remus/Hermione one-shot from someone else's point of view; Ron's, perhaps, or Harry's, maybe Tonks, or Mad Eye Moody. Whomever you like. Make sure to explain how they feel about it, how they came to understand that something was going on between them, and where they think that it is going to go.

Then, go to http:// Menolly.mark . googlepages .com / home

Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you will find my email. Submit the fic to me, and I will link it on my webpage, and reference it in this fic.

Just something to do if you're bored. : - )

Enjoy!

Chapter Five: Vulnerability

Hermione waited until Lupin had gone up to bed, before dropping her façade of complacency. Inwardly she was seething with worry, with determination, and with resentment for being kept here like a child, while others stood around her parents' house and just watched. As if, she thought bitterly, that was really going to do any good. They needed guards, not spectators, and the Order of the Phoenix was too strained, too stretched out over multiple tasks to give enough of their genuine attention to the Grangers' concerns. She had recognized the signs in Kingsley' manner, and understood better than they seemed to want her to that nothing was quite right at home.

She was done with being obedient and grateful, she decided. She had tried that. It was now time to take some definite action, whether or not anyone else seemed to think that she had the right to or not. She didn't yet know how she was going to get out of the house, as she wasn't familiar with the charm to open up the fireplace upstairs again. Instead, she would start by figuring out exactly what the extent was of the trouble with her family. When she knew how bad it was, then she'd know how much time she had to figure out what to do next.

With that purpose firmly in mind, Hermione climbed the stairs towards Lupin's bedroom. Not unexpectedly, they creaked as she ascended, and she pointed her wand at them, hissing, "Silencio," and hoping Lupin hadn't heard them. She couldn't' be sure that he was actually asleep, although she knew he'd gone up to bed several hours earlier.

He was asleep, she discovered upon entering the room. His long legs folded up beneath the brand new set of bedclothes Hermione had made for him, Lupin slept like a man dead, not snoring, not moving, his bare chest rising and falling ever so gently with his breath. She stood for several minutes just watching him, frowning as she remarked for the second time just how thin and battle-weary he looked, even in these moments of peace. He had a very gentle face, but it was so drawn, and so pale, like it never got a chance to see any sun.

Before she realized what she was doing, Hermione had stepped up to the edge of his bed, and was reaching down to tuck a corner of the coverlet back around his spare frame. He still didn't move, and she remembered the very first day she'd seen him, when she, Ron, and Harry had traveled in his compartment on the Hogwarts Express. They'd wondered briefly if he was dead, then, and she now could see why. The man was out like a light.

All the better, thought Hermione, moving away from the bed and over towards the mirror. Hopefully, he wouldn't wake up during her conversation with Kingsley.

As she passed by the bed, Hermione's eyes searched through the darkness of the room for the one thing that she'd need to make the mirror work for her. Lupin had told her that the mirror would only respond to the signature of an Order member's wand. Lupin's wand would be around here somewhere, as he'd no doubt want to have it near him in case of an emergency. She just had to find it.

Fortunately for Hermione, Lupin didn't own a lot of furniture, and there were only so many places that the wand could be. She looked underneath the bed, and in the drawers of the makeshift bureau that he kept at the other end of the room. Finally, she found the wand sitting right next to Lupin's hand, on the table between his bed and mirror. She picked it up, and almost immediately felt dirty. She was taking another man's wand, a man who'd been kind to her, and who'd pulled her out of harm's way at risk to his own life. It was wrong to take another wizard's wand, it was a personal violation.

Stifling those thoughts, Hermione took a deep breath, and closed the distance between herself and the mirror. Raising the wand, she tapped the surface of the mirror, just as Lupin had the day before, and murmured, very softly, "Kingsley Shacklebolt."

Lupin awoke with a start in the middle of the night. He was positive that he could hear voices in his room. Before his eyes had adjusted sufficiently to the darkness, he was reaching instinctively towards the bedside table for his wand, groping around on top of it, his fingers searching, when he realized, with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, that his wand wasn't there anymore.

"But I don't understand," came a very loud whisper from somewhere in front of him. Lupin squinted into the space before him, trying to see clearly. "How can you be sure that they're not inside the house right now? Isn't there anything someone can do about it? Shouldn't we be-!"

"Hermione," murmured Lupin, as realization dawned. "What are you doing?"

Hermione spun around, alarmed, her face white. She was clutching the side of Lupin's two-way mirror with one hand, while in the other, she held his wand. It was all too obvious what had happened, and Hermione seemed to realize it. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out, and she dropped the wand involuntarily, letting it lie where it fell on the floor.

Lupin got slowly to his feet, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and crossed to the mirror. "Some things," he said, very quietly, forcing himself to keep his voice casual, "it is all right to borrow. Chess boards are one thing, Hermione. A wizard's wand is something entirely different."

"I needed to know," she whispered fiercely. "I needed to know the truth. No one was going to tell me the truth if I didn't do something!" Her lip was trembling, but she met Lupin's gaze with a resolution that impressed him, even in his anger.

Lupin shook his head, looked away from her, and turned his attention to the face in the mirror. "Kingsley?"

"Ah," said Kingsley Shacklebolt, looking somewhat abashed. "Good morning, Remus."

For several moments, the three of them stood there, Lupin trying to control his anger, Hermione looking terrified, and Kingsley making extremely uncomfortable coughing noises every few seconds. Finally, letting out a long, steadying breath, Lupin nodded curtly at Kingsley. "Well, go on," he said. "What's happening?"

"Well," said Kingsley, "ah, I was just telling Miss Granger here that we've…we've sighted someone, lurking around the Granger residence."

"Someone?" Lupin raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

Kingsley shook his head. "Hell if I know," he muttered. "But who would be lurking around here, if they weren't looking for us, or for Hermione? Can't imagine that it's a friendly neighbor, as they haven't made any attempt to approach the door, or pay a call."

"And where is that person now?" Lupin pressed him.

"We don't know that eeither." Kingsley made an apologetic gesture. "That's why we're tightening security. Tonks and Marville will be here this afternoon; I think three heads and three wands are probably better than one. Don't worry about it," he added, trying to sound confidant, and looking at Hermione. "We'll track him down. Probably just a scout of some sort. I'm sure it's nothing to, uh…lose sleep over."

With a polite inclination of his head, Kingsley smiled first at Lupin, then at Hermione, before his picture winked out of the mirror face, leaving Hermione staring bleakly at it, as if expecting him to return and say something else. Lupin put a firm hand on her shoulder, but she didn't move, or look at him. "It's going to be perfectly all right," he began. "Everything is under control. They know that there's someone there, and they're going to make sure that nothing goes wrong."

Hermione said nothing. She held out Lupin's wand in front of her, stiff-fingered, not looking at him, and Lupin, reaching out to accept the wand, closed his hand around hers. "Don't worry," he repeated, squeezing her hand. After a second, he realized that he was still squeezing it, and was surprised to discover that she hadn't pulled it away. Instead, she had turned her face up to his, and was gazing at him with a world of turmoil behind her brown eyes. Lupin put one arm around her shoulders, in an awkwardly paternal way.

Hermione, quite unexpectedly, threw both of her arms around his neck, and dropped her face against his bare chest. Every muscle in Lupin's body tensed, and that all too familiar shiver ran down his spine, across his shoulders, through his entire body.

"Do you mean that?" she asked, her voice still steady, but soft with worry. "Do you really think that it's nothing to worry about?"

Lupin wondered which response would make her stay pressed against him like that, and then cursed himself inwardly for having that kind of selfish thought. His instinct was to reassure her, to placate her, to tell her exactly what she wanted to hear, and yet he knew that Hermione was quite right to be alarmed.

"I think," he said gently, "that there's no good in your worrying about it. We're at war. We're in danger. You've already accepted that. The best we can do for the moment is wait, hope, and trust in our friends to take of each other, and of your family."

"Trust," muttered Hermione. "Not a lot of room for trust these days, is there?"

Lupin smiled sadly. "I remember when you used to be the one who was all in favor of inter-house communication at school, the one who used to promise Harry and Ron that we could get through things because we were all together."

"The world got uglier," replied Hermione, simply. "And I got older."

We all got older, Lupin thought.

"Now I know all about the Imperius curse, and battle hexes, Confundus spells, magical deception, all the ways that one wizard can force another person to do his bidding. I don't see any reason to trust anyone, Professor Lupin. And you don't, either."

She gave him a long, searching look. Lupin shook his head.

"You're wrong, Hermione," he said gently. "I still believe in trust. Things can go wrong, people can fall under curses like that, but we're nowhere if we can't hold out some hope in the people we love and respect."

"Then we're nowhere," whispered Hermione.

"The Imperius curse is the exception, not the rule, Hermione," Lupin insisted doggedly. "It doesn't change the fact that the people we trust-!"

"Nothing changes anything," said Hermione, much more loudly this time. "We can't trust anyone, we can't rely on anyone. No one is themselves, no one is safe, everyone's at risk." Lupin bit his lip. He could see the hysteria in her eyes, knew that she understood that she wasn't making sense, and that she didn't' care. "None of it matters," she persisted, "because nothing makes any difference anymore. We're at war, you said it yourself. All of these friendships and human bonds, they're all lies, because here, in the magical world," and there was a derisive, mocking note in the way she said that, "we have the ability to change each other's minds from the outside. There's no human integrity!"

"Hermione," started Lupin, still holding her firmly by the shoulders.

He didn't get very far. "You should know better than anyone," she hissed at him, her eyes flashing agitatedly. "Your best friends killed each other. Peter Pettigrew murdered the Potters. Then Lord Voldemort used Harry to kill Sirius Black, by getting into his mind and changing it around for his own purposes. You should know, you should understand exactly what I'm talking about, because you have-!"

"Enough." Lupin's voice was still quiet, but there was a harsh intensity in it that made Hermione stop mid-speech, her mouth open in surprise. His brain seethed with the anguish that Hermione's words had brought on him, with memories of things that he'd long ago forced himself to admit that he couldn't change. She was right, he knew, she was right about all of it, and he hated the thought, didn't want to think about how frail, how fragile and easily broken the human mind was.

"You're right," he said, just as coldly. "And I know it a lot better than you."

Hermione said nothing. Lupin dropped his hands away from her shoulders, suddenly loathe to touch her, feeling stung and vulnerable. "I'll go tomorrow to visit Kingsley and Tonks," he said. "I'll make sure that we track down the person who is lurking around your parents' house."

"Professor," murmured Hermione, reaching out towards him again. Lupin turned away from her, and strode from the bedroom, leaving her standing next to the mirror, her eyes wide, her mouth still working soundlessly at his back.