Thanks to everyone who left a review! You're all awesome 3


Chapter Two: Not Bloody Likely


Augusta, Maine

By the time Sam gets out into the parking lot, the woman is already long gone.

Sam passes it off as just another Hunter, happy to help the Winchesters and leave them be- he's aware of the Winchester reputation. Dean is more wary; the women they tend to run into on hunting jobs like to carry a second agenda with them, and Dean's not particularly keen on discovering what Hood's is.

Burning the Redcap does however work; though it's more because the excess heat dries the blood on his so called cap than because of any damage the fire does to it. He makes a note to remember that handy tip for next time.


Murfreesboro, Tennessee

After spending the final death throes of her childhood on the run, Hermione Granger had picked up enough skills to know how to make herself unmemorable. It was an important knack to have acquired when travelling through North America unchaperoned, she'd found. A young, single woman who had a preference for spending a night or two in a bar had a tendency to be hit on.

A lot. And there was always that one guy who wouldn't take no for an answer.

She hated those ones.

Fortunately, diners generally didn't have such problem, and it was all too easy to sit in her booth, munching on whatever special they professed to making the best of and reading her latest book. She'd been lucky too today; walked into the dinky little eatery with the 50 years out of date décor just as a couple were vacating the corner booth.

She loved corner booths. They were perfect for the passive observer- no one behind and everyone in front, all within eyesight. It was a defendable position too- easy to pick out an oncoming threat and hard to be taken by surprise. Not that such notions held much importance for her anymore; not since she'd ended up as Queen of the Nobodies. But it was a comforting feeling nonetheless.

She strides through the diner, eyes glancing to the side, smug in her victory of the corner seat. She sends a vacant smile to the waitress and the blonde shoots her a harried smile and a tight nod of her head back. She makes sure to keep her gaze straight ahead in the homeward stretch for the table, avoiding any glances from casual observers.

Passive victory of the corner booth tastes sweet on her tongue. She slides across, the side of her arm rests against the wall. She pulls from the pocket of her jacket her recently acquired Murfreesboro history book (pamphlet, really. It was of the typical self-published make that didn't quite merit being called a book, but was too large to be called a pamphlet), bought from the local information centre. She'd taken to purchasing information/history books of all the towns and cities she'd come across, pencilling in their front covers the dates of her arrivals and departures and circling the places she's been to in their margins. A scholarly witch's equivalent of scrapbooking, she liked to think.

The waitress comes over just as she sets the book to the side and picks up the unpleasantly sticky menu that's laminated surface crackles like thunder as she opens it. She doesn't bother looking at its words.

"Hi." Harried says unnecessarily. Her nametag reads 'Evelyn'.

"Hello." The waitress's eyes narrow slightly at the accent- Hermione had never bothered to get rid of it (nostalgia still ran deep in her veins)- but says nothing.

"What would you like?"

"I'll have the special." The chalk sign outside said it was lasagne. It made a pleasant change from burgers and pancakes and food fried in oil for longer than necessary.

Evelyn nods, "Fries or salad?"

She frowns only slightly at the question. She'd thought the norm for lasagne was both, "The salad. But no dressing, thanks. Just a slice of lemon, if it's possible." The answer is scribbled down and Hermione casts the unread menu back down on the table.

"Any drinks or sides with that?"

She smiles, hand already straying back to her book, "Coffee; black. No sugar." The waitress smiles again, relief at the brief exchange clear on her face and returns to her spot behind the counter. She can hear the stuttering groan of the coffee machine start up as she opens a bookmarked page.

"Hey," says the man seated in the booth ahead. She glances up momentarily from her book, long enough to catch sight of a tall man walking towards the speaker and looks back down. His voice sounds vaguely familiar, in the way most short greetings can seem familiar without further speech.

"Hey," comes the reply, equally verbose. A pause, and the sound of denim sliding across faux-leather seating, "I think I've found it."

It's taken some time, but Hermione has learnt the art of keeping mum when hearing something interesting or surprising.

Interesting, like a mellow voice that she's certain she heard only a fortnight ago, in the corner of a run down pub in Augusta. Surprising, in that said voice had no right in being here.

"I've found something too." Dean's voice, spoken with what can only be called a smirk saturating its gravelly tones is the clincher. She stares unseeing at a black and white picture on page 42, fully aware that her fingers are clenching at the cover.

Fifteen days.

Fifteen days since she'd gone out on a limb and left the brothers a note on how to kill a creature she's quite sure they were only talking in code about, in a completely unrelated part of America. And now Dean and Sam were sitting in the booth directly in front of her, within eavesdropping distance once again. Hell, Dean must have seen her walk straight past him to get the corner seat. Heard her order and everything. The coincidence was of the magnitude of unnerving, bordering on uncanny.

But… there was no plausible reason for them to cross paths twice- not here, not so soon after their last 'encounter'. Her idea of planning for the road involved closing her eyes and pointing randomly at her map. Random selection at its most satisfying, and almost impossible to track. And she'd done her very best at hiding her tracks after Augusta, because in hindsight those men had spoken like Hit-men, and she'd helped them! She'd cleared out of Maine as soon as she could. She'd crossed off the chances of coming across them again as impossible. You were supposed to get lost in America; the people you met you were supposed to never find again. Those were the rules and this pair of boys had gone and broken them. To hear them even in the same diner beggared belief. They shouldn't- couldn't- be here. It was too convenient; too coincidental to be left up to chance alone.

But maybe she was looking too much into it. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

A very big, fat, unnerving and unlikely coincidence.

"Oh?" says Sam, easy and sanguine and utterly ignorant of her growing panic, "What?"

There's the creak of leather and the hum of softly spoken words, too quiet for her to hear and suddenly she can feel the weight of eyes on her. She fights the urge to stiffen at the attention. Would they recognise her? She'd been sure they'd never properly seen her face but maybe she was wrong. Maybe they'd asked for her description at the bar.

Casually, as though Sam's gaze went unnoticed, she pulls her pencil from her hair and writes a note in her book. She looks the perfect picture of an innocent tourist, or student, content in their own work. She's glad her hand doesn't shake as she leans over the book to scribble nonsensically on its pages. She couldn't hold a clear thought right now if she tried.

A quiet snort from Sam, "Dude, Jailbait." Comes his not so muted reply.

What?

"British." Dean hums, as if that makes all the difference. And it does, but not in the way he was thinking. If she weren't striving for nonchalance she would have sat back and laughed. Or thrown something at him in outrage. Because what, was Sam fucking blind? Jailbait? She may have considerably youthful features- given she was turning 29 this year- but she did not look like some preppy teenager busting out of fucking high school. She looked 23, at least. If it wouldn't have drawn attention to herself, she would have punched him.

"Huh," Sam replies, not really that curious, "She's not-"

"No."

"Right." He clears his throat awkwardly, "Well-" He cuts himself off as the waitress approaches Hermione, coffee balanced in one hand, her meal in the other.

Deliberately, making sure she doesn't come off as a threat to Sam- who's gone back to staring at her- Hermione lifts her head, smiling widely at Evelyn and determined to ignore the men sitting in front of her. The waitress smiles in response, "Lasagne and salad, no dressing. Black coffee, no sugar." The plate settles on the table with a loud tink, and her coffee slides over to her, "Anything else today?"

Hermione's eyes flick down to her lasagne and her mouth waters. It looks gloriously homemade. She sends the woman another smile, "No, thank you."

"Great." Evelyn hums, "Enjoy." She slides over to Sam and Dean at the dismissal, pulling out her notepad. She doesn't miss the suddenly flirtatious lilt to her voice as she asks them for their orders.

Sam stumbles through his order, eyes flicking back to Hermione more than once. She can feel his eyes on her forehead as she tucks into her meal, intent on ignoring them whilst they have nothing important to say. Dean's order- which has no business sounding so deep and gravelly- is calm and collected and smooth as butter. She can hear the smirk dripping off his voice. Apparently it didn't matter that the woman looked to be in her forties; evidently any attention of the female spectrum was good attention.

Sam clears his throat again as the waitress leaves, "Right. Well it's definitely a spirit. Get this; five years ago, Ivy Walters was killed by her husband. Thrown headfirst off the bridge on Medical Center Parkway. Died of massive blunt trauma to the head when she hit the rocks."

"Like the other jumpers."

"Yeah. Anyway, apparently her husband had thought he'd caught her cheating, so he killed her to get back at her. Turns out though, she'd been meeting with her estranged brother and he'd misinterpreted the situation. He killed himself with his shotgun when he realised."

"How's she doing it then? The other jumpers have all the markings of suicides."

A pause, and Hermione chews thoughtfully on her meal. If this was coded speak- and surely it was, because if not then they were legitimately talking about ghosts and she would have to reassess the collective hallucination theory- it was far more sophisticated than she'd originally thought.

"I think… I think she's possessing them. Jumping into jealous husbands driving over the bridge, and throws herself off the bridge still wearing their meat-suits."

"That's one hell of a grudge."

"Tell me about it."

"So… you up for a little digging tonight Sammy?"

Digging up what?

"Yeah… about that…" Sam sounds tentative, like he knows his next words won't be good news, "She was cremated."

"Are you- are you fucking kidding me?!" In her peripheral vision Sam shakes his head and Dean groans in vexation, "It's never that easy, is it."

Sam sucks at his teeth in reply. Hermione imagines he's grimacing too, but she doesn't want to look up and draw attention to herself.

"Great… so was there anything of hers left over? Trinkets, mirrors, paintings… dolls?"

"I didn't get a chance to go looking yet."

"Any family that we could ask about?"

"They never had any children. Her brother lives in France, both sets of parents dead long before. I found out the story from the librarian; she'd been a family friend."

Dean moans into his hands, "Awesome."

"I was thinking we could check out the bridge."

"Better than nothing. We should probably talk to the-" He cuts himself off as Evelyn comes back with their meals. Hermione can smell the red meat from here and Dean moans in delight, "Now that is what I call a burger."

The waitress laughs as she moves away.

They're quiet for a moment as they tuck into their meals; Hermione continues eating slowly and carefully, though the lasagne is mostly cold now. She could have performed a mild heating charm on it, but the threat of it being less than inconspicuous stays her hand. Whatever code they were talking in, it was dangerous, and they were dangerous, and the last thing she wanted to do was place herself in their spotlight. She rather like the anonymity she'd garnered for herself in this world. It was peaceful and relaxed, and the closest thing she had to stress was the approaching of deadlines for the demon of an editor she'd managed to acquire a few years ago.

"You were saying?" Sam finally asks, unable to hide the curiosity from his tone.

"Mm- right." Dean sounds like he's still got food in his mouth as he speaks, and Hermione only just manages to stop herself from scrunching her nose up in disgust, "I think we should go to the coroner's office, check out the records… see if there was anything missing."

"Okay. Today or tonight?"

Should there be a difference?

"Tonight. We've already established ourselves as family. Best not to push it with the credentials."

Were they planning on breaking in? Hit-men or not, these brothers were very obviously criminals. Disturbingly attractive criminals with odd fixations, but criminals nonetheless.

That said, it seemed like they were trying to find a link between the recent string of suicides in Murfreesboro- which she knew were real; she'd heard about the most recent one from a pack of gossiping women who'd been walking in front of her the other day. Hermione was having a hard time deciding if they were using the name Ivy Walters as a cover-up for some deeper conspiracy involving the eerily similar suicides, or if they legitimately thought they had to stop these men from being possessed by an angry spirit.

Which did not exist.

Surely.

Surely- surely- she would have come across some authentic evidence for that by now. It wasn't as if she hadn't looked when she'd first turned up, but she'd long ago resigned herself to this plain, predictable and utterly ordinary world.

She's still stuck on thoughts she should have come to terms with years ago, her hand almost unconsciously scribbling questions down on her book, when someone slides into her booth uninvited.

She jumps violently, left hand dropping her fork in fright. It clatters loudly onto her almost empty plate. She stare wide-eyed into the murky green gaze of Dean. He smiles at her, leaning forward over the bench-top and she moves back in response.

"Let me guess," he drawls with the confident, self-assured manner of a man who's aware of his own attractiveness, motioning to the pencil still poised over paper covered in notes, "You're a travel writer?"

Was he… was he hitting on her? After everything he'd just talked about with his brother, he was going to turn around and start flirting with her as if nothing ever happened.

Talk about compartmentalisation.

She licks at uncomfortably dry lips, but her smirk of amusement is nothing if not genuine. This man had guts. That, or they did this so often he was desensitised. It was difficult to tell.

"Close, but no cigar." She says before the pause can extend into the realms of awkwardness.

Dean's head tilts, and his grin grows wider, "You're a tourist though."

"Yes." She doesn't mention that he is too; to say that would be to admit she'd been listening to their conversation.

"You have the looks of a writer." His eyes flicker back down to her book, but not before making the inevitable rendezvous with the slight view of cleavage her v-neck sweater offered. She ignores it; he was a man, and honestly didn't expect any different.

"And I suppose you'd know what all writers look like?" He laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. She glances back at Sam; he's staring again, but there's an apologetic look on his face that tells her this happens often.

"No, but there's a look in your eyes. It's familiar."

She raises an eyebrow, pointedly glancing at the leather jacket that she's still debating on nicking. He has all the looks of a jock, "A writer too?" She asks, already knowing the answer but being sure to insert enough doubt into her tone to make it believable.

He snorts, "No." She doesn't bother asking what he'd meant by the familiarity term.

He extends his hand, "Dean."

For a moment, she studies it. It's wide and callused; the hand of an honest worker. It feels cool and firm when she shakes it, and the roughened skin of his calluses catch slightly on her own, formed from years of extensive wand-use.

"Hermione."

"Huh," Dean looks momentarily stumped, "That's a cool name. Memorable."

Hermione can't help the involuntary smile in response. "Thanks." It's refreshing to have someone not remark upon the strange choice in name. Most of the time she was met with mild confusion bordering on incredulity, and a heavy amount of derision.

"Are you a local?" And just because she already knows the answer doesn't mean she can't ask it.

Dean shakes his head, "Nah, we're just visiting some family." He points behind him with his thumb, "That's my brother, Sam."

"Hello."

Sam sends her a funny sort of resigned wave in response, as though reluctantly accepting that he was going to have to watch his brother flirt with yet another woman.

"He's shy." He offers in explanation.

Somehow, she doubts that.

"So, what brings you to…" He seems to be struggling to find the name of the city they were in, "Here?" he finishes lamely.

Hermione bites back a laugh. How verbose, "Process of random selection." She admits.

"Gap year?"

"… Plural."

He smirks, "What were you studying?"

"Literature." She lies. This was beginning to feel a bit like twenty questions.

"So you are a writer."

Amongst other things, sure.

"Yes."

"Anything I'd know?" And isn't that a typical question.

She laughs softly, "I write children's books, so I'm gonna say… no."

Dean leans back, smirk still firmly in place, "So where you from, Hermione?"

"Far, far away. Nowhere you'd know."

"That's probably true."

The waitress comes over with her bill, and she's got a smile on her face that speaks of reminiscence of 'young love', which just makes Hermione want to roll her eyes. As pretty as Dean is, and as much as she'd like to run her hands up arms that she just knows are gloriously toned (so sue her, it had been a while since she'd last been laid), she can't help but listen to the voice in her head that says this man is dangerous. Walking with a frequently used gun in the back of his jeans kind of dangerous. Not to mention, there was that deal he'd made with what was probably the mafia, ensuring what could only be his death in four months and counting.

All in all, a bad man to get entangled with; even for a one night stand (though it is sorely tempting).

She pushes away the growing urge to give him her number (he is very pretty. In the roughened manly kind of way) and takes the bill as her cue to leave, packing away her book and pulling some money from her wallet.

"It's been nice to talk to you Dean," she purrs- because why the hell not- and leaves the cash on the table. The flash of green instantly catches Evelyn's eye, but she stays where she is as Hermione slides awkwardly out of her corner.

"Leaving?" Dean looks disappointed, but the sudden flash or wariness in his eyes- gone the moment she looks back- makes her want to flee.

She grimaces, trying to look reluctant, "I'm only passing though. I'm headed for Atlanta." Another lie. Ideally, she would have like to have stayed in Murfreesboro for another week or so, but Dean and Sam's appearance had blown that out of the water. At least they didn't seem to show any signs of recognition from Augusta. Not that she could be one hundred percent sure about that, but she was loathe of use legilimency on someone who wasn't her mark.

Dean seems severely put out by the 'fact'. He stands up, and she doesn't miss the once over he gives her. She smiles amusement, "It's been a pleasure."

"Yeah," he offers his hand again and she juggles her coat and handbag awkwardly to clasp it. She'd be lying is she said she didn't like that way her skin catches on his, "I'll see you around Hermione."

Not bloody likely.

She smiles sweetly as he lets go. She finds it funny how put out he is at failing to woo her, "Sure." She leaves then, pushing his slightly pout lips and the urge to pick apart his and his brother's brain to the back of her mind.

Though, if she adds more of a sway than usual to the cant of her hips… well, it was nobody's business but her own.


Dean sits back down at their table; he looks slightly shell shocked. Sam grins at his brother- it's not every day one gets to watch the ladies-man be so firmly- and politely- shut down.

"Go well, did it?" he asks coolly, leaning back and trying his hardest not to start laughing. Dean tears his eyes away from the door and Hermione's retreating figure.

"Dude," he rasps, "She was so into me."