AN: I don't know why this is taking me so long to upload, haha. Thank you everyone for reading! ~


Part 3.

As she walks along her strip of land, Hermione realizes that she is in danger. There is a fine tremble she feels through her feet that has travelled to almost the top of her head. She is trying to run (but what from what?) when a particularly violent shake jerks her out of the dream. She peers groggily up into Eliza's annoyed face.

"Hermione."

She tries to curl up at that tone; Hermione realizes again that she has fallen asleep amongst her notes and large sprawling maps. Every movement brings to her ears a rustle of paper loud enough it takes the sleep with it.

Eliza shakes her again. "Hermione, go home. Now."

She grimaces. She could probably count on one hand how many times Eliza has spoken directly to her. One of them had been the time when Argus Tuft, one of the Aurors leading a hunt for a pack of Dementors, had sent a distress call that cut off before they could finish transcribing it. It could only mean two things: Argus had forgotten what he was going to say, or that he had been killed. Hermione thinks that her sleeping habits are a comparatively smaller concern.

She opens her mouth to assure her that she is fine, only to have no sound come out. Her mind begins slipping into a blank panic, but then sees the tip of Eliza's wand poking out from beneath her robes. She tries to giving the woman a reproachful look, but finds herself instead being dragged to her feet and pushed out the door.

Only when Hermione finds that she has very little physical strength to halt the other woman's steps does she finally realize how poorly she had been looking after herself.

Eliza drags her on a long journey. The maze of corridors that lead from the department to the outside has been a reason that Hermione had not stumbled upon the Logistics group sooner. They were as paranoid as those who had been Unspeakables, the corridors were proof. Direction was one thing, but some doors only opened if you took three steps towards it from an angle, and some hallways only appeared in your vision if you turned on the spot. It was extravagant, but very effective. No one bothered to disrupt them in person, most used charms to communicate instead.

Just as she begins to protest for the fifth time, Eliza spins her to a stop. Hermione blinks owlishly at Ron and Harry, standing almost miraculously before her. Their identical shocked expressions make her frown.

"Not good to see me?" she tries to joke.

They both ignore her. Ron rushes forwards instead, taking her from Eliza's grip while Harry's look of shock slowly rearranges itself into one of anger. Hermione feels herself retreating at that look, mellowing. She had hardly seen either of them after they had left the quiet of the safehouse. Newspaper clippings that waved at her did not count.

"Hermione," Harry begins.

"I know," she grumbles before he tears into her. "Take me home."

Eliza nods at a look Ron had shot her, before stepping back to allow the two to take her elbows and Apparate her to her living room. Home nowadays was a tiny little apartment that had been left to her by a distant aunt, with a grand total of three rooms, including the combined bathroom-laundry room. It was sufficient for one person, but not really made for anything more. Hermione shakes their hands off and tries to stalk to her bedroom, but does not quite manage the attitude when she stumbles.

"Hermione…"

She scowls at the wall. Ignoring Ron's outstretched arms, using her own for support instead, Hermione feels her way to the door. Sometime during the Apparition her eyelids had begun to droop; now, with her bedroom ten feet away, it was a struggle to see through them. There is a quiet shuffle as Ron comes to her side again, and this time wordlessly helps her to bed. He takes her shoes off, and her outer cloak, before letting her slide between the covers.

"B'Ron," she mumbles.

"Bye, Hermione," he replies softly. "Sleep well, will ya?"

Ron leaves the room when he receives no reply. Harry looks up when he returns, a question in his eyes. His wand is out, and with a wave he Vanishes the last of the old fruit mummifying in the decorative bowl.

Ron shakes his head when he sees him. "She went straight to sleep. I think she was unconscious before her head hit the pillow."

Harry frowns. "Well… there's not much we can do right now. Maybe check in on her in a few hours, and ask again if she'd let a Healer take a look at her."

"She didn't even read those memos I sent her about it," Ron reminds him. "I'm pretty sure she won't be happy talking about it face to face."

"This isn't up to her anymore," Harry replies, grim. "She can't use work as an excuse either."

Ron nods absentmindedly. "You know Tully? Will Tully? He's one of the other Heads of that place. Even he remembers Hermione. She's the girl with panda eyes. You know something major has happened if even Tully notices."

"The entire Logistics Department here has a very strange feeling about them," Harry muses. "All of them have fairly infamous quirks. I remember I didn't understand what your dad said at first, when he heard that Hermione was going to become part of that team."

And it had been extremely lucky that they had both been in the building the time Eliza had called for them, Harry thought to himself. Then he stops with his hand on the door handle. Though when you take into account what the woman was capable of, it was probably the result of her exquisite planning, instead of luck. Though he rarely frequented the Logistics halls (in truth, he was a little scared of the place), even Harry had heard of the strange things the Department heads were capable of.

"This isn't normal," Ron mutters. His eyes lock on Hermione's bedroom door, and Harry turns to follow his gaze. "We both felt better after staying at the safehouse, is she reacting so badly? If anything I would say she's getting worse. Did you hear what Tully had to say about her? I thought he had been exaggerating. Without his warning I would've hexed that thing Eliza was carrying. The only thing that I think hadn't changed was her hair."

Harry shakes his head tiredly. "Maybe it's about time we asked her about her dreams." It couldn't be a spell, she couldn't be sick. It couldn't be. She's in Logistics, for Merlin's sake. Maybe they aren't the best healers or duellers there, but they know how to be. They know everything. Diagnostics is not the problem."

"Well, clearly not talking about her problems aren't doing her much good. We'll give her a few days to get her strength back, then we'll talk about it to her when she next comes in."

.

The smell; it sticks to you so bad.

Her arm rises and slides a slow finger under her nose. It's just a light tang, a passing odor, yet still acrid enough to make her lip curl back. The grimace is a familiar expression to her face, but its suppression came equally naturally.

She flips her palm over. For one moment, the back of her hand appears dark, soaking. She sees it so clearly that her eyes see the afterimage left behind. A torn, wrecked, bloody appendage superimposed on top of a healthy one. She closes her eyes and tells herself it isn't real.

It isn't real.

Breathe, clear.

.

She tries to remember when the dreams started. They were normal, she had reasoned. Guilt, if ignored consciously, had the most annoying way of resurfacing subconsciously. In fact, she remembers thinking that it was so normal that she did not even notice when she became trapped in the days and nights of horror. She worked in it, but soon she dreamt in it too.

It hadn't been when Libon began giving her a firmer position in the department. Inside a month, Hermione had begun working closely with Matthew (it was also around this time that she had begun calling him Matt), and he had begun handing a few of the projects over to her command completely. The cocktail of adrenalin and excitement with a dash of fear went straight to her head every time she was handed a folder containing rough details of the next raid, the effects of which kept her floating on cloud nine until she followed a backup team to the site she had set the plan for.

She had been holed up in the Logistics offices for so long that the reality of war had faded from her mind. When people came back bleeding and tired, they were still alive, still trying to smile, telling tales of heroism or tragic lasts. Her subconscious quietly spun these events into almost fairy-like tales that made them easier to digest.

When she first stepped through the little shop, nestled between trees and mountains, she didn't understand what she was seeing. For a hysterical moment, something in the back of her mind giggled Black magic black shop black, charrrrred people!

The magic residue made her pulse jump, and the smell rotted her stomach. There had been broken bits of furniture and other items on the floor, and some lumps that looked a little too like body parts. She remembered taking only one step into that shop, a step straight into something soft and squished under her feet, oozing around her feet. She hadn't had enough time to turn around, so she had just thrown up on her shoes instead.

.

"Malfoy, kindly leave. Silently would be nice, but it really is just the removal of your presence that is crucial."

He sneers at her. "Wow, Granger, I had a bet going with a Davies that being Potter's bitch would make you into a uppity little puke. Looks like I should collect."

"Would this be before or after Davies is gets the Kiss or his eyes cut out by one of your pals? Because I hear Voldemort is currently no longer in business."

To her surprise, Malfoy blanches. It's a reaction she did not expect from him, and her mean determination wavers. She looks dispassionately at the wall, but strains for the sound of any movement that would tell her Malfoy is moving from his spot.

Hermione sighs. She had been walking along what she recognized as the Muggle neighbourhood around the Burrow, revelling in the quiet and total lack of people when Malfoy came strolling around the corner. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw him, but there was no way she would let that fear show. Don't give the Big Bad Death Eater more of you to manipulate.

The strange thing is that the Malfoy in her dreams had yet to threaten her, curse her, or really, harm her in any way. There had been the initial duel, but after that it had just been the endless stream of insults. Hermione fancied thinking that this couldn't be the real Malfoy. He was too… nice.

"I thought that you were just too poor to afford a wig, but now I see that you actually like keeping that animal on your head. Can I pat it, or will it swallow me whole?"

Nice is the wrong word. She didn't respond to his jibes, keeping her eyes on the wall.

Evil, that was the word. She had been expecting such an elite Death Eater to be more evil. It gave way to the thinking that perhaps this Malfoy really was just a figure of her dreams. Why she was dreaming of the ferrety git was beyond her, but at least… at least it was better than the alternative. Despite all that she and Ron and Harry had said about Malfoy being a coward, a no talent hack, he had managed to not only survive but also rise through Voldemort's ranks. You needed more than just courage and talent to do that. You needed to be insane babbler babbling like a little-

"Look around, Granger."

Hermione jumps. His voice suddenly is very close.

Malfoy snickers. "Turn that bushy head of yours this way. I hear that this was your doing."

She flinches and pulls her knees up to her chin, dread curling around her at the sudden turn of topic.

"Malfoy, leave."

"Touchy, are we?" She fights an urge to stare at him, the change that took a split second to take over. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him look around. "I'm rather proud. The little Mudblood sending others to do her job. Honestly Granger, since when did you become so comfortable with sacrifice?"

"SHUT UP!"

His cackles echo skywards. Hermione blinks the sudden hot prickle of tears out of her eyes and shakes her head. She bites her lip to stop the panic flowing out. She had sworn to not show Malfoy her fear, but in that same breath she had sworn to not let him see how destroyed she really was.

He had been surprisingly accurate in his attack; the whole sacrificing others for the greater good was not something she could be strong enough to do. Hidden behind her stacks of paper and diagrams Hermione knew she had purposely never stopped to think of the real lives that she was playing with when she designed teams, the homes that she mapped out to destroy. They were instead black dots on her parchment, colored tags moving through a map. She knew that her conscience had become a thin, starved voice in the back of her head, buried under layers of false security, but there was no chance in hell that she was going to go diving through those layers now. Not while a Malfoy was stalking around her head.

Hermione draws a breath. "And you, Malfoy? I guess sacrificing others for your cause is a part of the family motto. What did your fathers sacrifice to be able to keep you slimy Slytherins in Hogwarts when Harlow and Rudard were dragged to join theirs? What did your mother sacrifice to be able to forfeit the Dark Mark? We found her body, you know," she said cruelly, "We found her half buried in the dirt. You couldn't have had anything to do with that, could you?" (So low you sunk so)

Malfoy's reaction is curious; he wears an expression that could be either furious or meditative. Hermione feels a cold seep through her as his eyes meet hers. She waits for him to say anything, hardly daring to breath. When he does finally open his mouth, she flinches, gripping her wand tightly. She is in half a mind to let him hex her. She is appalled at herself.

"Did you give her a proper burial?"

She blinks. "What?"

He stares at her with an expression she can't name. There is a bitter edge to the supposed fury. Hermione knows that some of it is towards her, but his reply makes her think that not all of it is.

"Did you give her a proper burial?" he repeats, even more coldly.

She turns back to the wall, trying to control her heartbeat. She had not been there on site, she had not asked details from those who returned; she did not have an answer for him. There is no good answer for him.

"I don't know."

There is a soft exhale behind her. Hermione closes her eyes, and wishes to be pulled from the dream. The confusion boiling inside her is giving her the biggest headache.

nished?

.

She wakes up the next morning, blinking sun out of her eyes. Hermione reaches for her wand and the glow of the wards are almost blotted out by the natural light streaming through the curtains. She glances at the clock, and is unsurprised, but when she glances at her calendar, a small yelp escapes her at the magically crossed dates.

She had been asleep for over fifty hours.

Fifty hours.

She doesn't take the time to shower, but uses a cleaning charm instead. There's time to run a brush through her teeth and magically snap her hair up into a bun before spelling some clothes on and Apparating straight to her workroom. There's a familiar press of wards as they reads her magical signature, before with a small pop it lets her through.

Hermione stumbles a little as her eyes adjust to the darkness, and takes just long enough to assure herself that her space had been relatively untouched, before she turns and races into the halls. She finds herself lost twice before she runs into Kyle. The man's ginger tips seem to quiver in surprise even as he manages to catch her with one arm and his glasses with the other.

"Hermione! What are you doing here?" he admonishes. Kyle is at least ten years older than her, but he does not look it.

"Why shouldn't I be here?" she asks, irrationally defensive.

"Eliza told all of us that you were taking a few days break and wouldn't be back for a while," he shrugs. "I just thought that if you were back there would've been some kind of notice."

She nods. It is logical. All four of them were especially strict regarding information flow. Hermione had very rarely found herself needing to repeat herself between the four, despite having only previously briefed one or the other on a situation. She had yet to be included in this loop, but she hadn't felt excluded. It was a privilege, and her few months at the department was nothing compared to the decades in which the other four had worked together.

She is about to continue on her way, look for that elusive Eliza, or even Harry or Ron (though her hopes are slim) when she realizes that Kyle had yet to drop his grip on her arm. She looks pointedly down at his hand.

"Kyle?" He doesn't look at her. Hermione frowns. "What are you doing? Let go of me. I need to find Eliza."

"Hermione, Eliza said you shouldn't be here," he says softly.

She gives a short, sharp laugh, but her eyes widen when she sees that Kyle is not joking. "What are you talking about?"

"They say you're sick," he says cautiously. She can see that no one had expected her back, and so Kyle hadn't been told how much he should be revealing to her. "They say… they said you were going to away to get better."

Hermione finds a contempt rising within her that she never knew she held for Kyle. He had been charming in a very guy-next-door way, and always polite. Now, she saw him with damning eyes. Always do as you're told, obedient dog, stand on your own two legs you'd fall over you you you little SON OF A

"Hermione?"

His voice jerks her back. "Um, okay." Hermione squeezes her eyes shut for one second before looking up again. She can tell by Kyle's expression that she is acting a little crazier than he thought she'd be.

"Can you take me to Eliza?" she asks (hah).

She watches impatiently as he considers it, but she was certain of his answer. Kyle liked his own company; he would prefer handing her off to someone else than baby-sit her until she felt like leaving again. As she follows him down another corridor, it strikes her that she is being treated as an invalid.

They come upon Eliza just as she steps outside from behind an unmarked door. Hermione does not take this as a sign of good luck, good timing. Instead, a familiar cold spreads through her. Whatever conversation that is about to come Eliza is expecting to be short, and that didn't fit any of the topics that are swimming around in her head. Hermione straightens a little; she refuses to be cowed by the older woman.

"Hermione," Eliza greets her cordially enough. "You don't look better."

Straight to the point then. She grits her teeth. "Eliza, I've been asleep for nearly three days straight. I think if I still don't look better, maybe you should let me borrow some of your makeup."

Eliza purses her lips; Hermione feels contrite for her tone, but she can tell that any weakness would give the woman an excuse to cart her off to bed again. There was no need. I'm perfectly alright. Puhfuclee (haa).

"You look starved. See a Healer."

Frankly, Hermione didn't understand or care why Eliza felt such a need to strip down her word usage to the barest minimum. That is to say, she didn't care before. Now, it angers her in a new way.

"No, Eliza, I really don't think I need to. I need to get back to work. Can you update me? I haven't been sent the floor plans of Banett's basements." Banett is a pureblood line that is surviving by the string of the single hair on the head of the last heir. At last count the man had just passed two hundred years of age.

Eliza shook her head. "Will's taking care of it. You need a clean bill of health from a Mediwitch before you start work again."

During the conversation, Kyle flits nervously between them. The man looks as though he needed to verbalize a farewell, but the two women were borderline bickering and he did not want to come in at the wrong time and have the waves of brewing hostility aim themselves towards him. Hermione shoots him an irritable glance, but turns the brunt of it quickly back to Eliza.

"So if I subject myself to a medical examination, you will allow me to start work again?" Hermione snaps.

A vague look of surprise emerges on Eliza's face. "It is not my condition. It is Harry Potter's. Ron Weasley was also in agreement."

.

"Fine," she says angrily.

Nothing responds.

Hermione looks around her living room. It is her space, her small space; her small space that is hers.

"Fine," she repeats, this time scathing.

Talking to Harry and Ron hadn't achieved anything. She had waited for their return from god knows where (conference in France, possibly about the French wizards who had been found trading with Voldemort) before trying to appeal to her friendship with them, for the first time in her life trying to tug on her people-in-a-high-place string that would get questions about her health wiped clean.

It had backfired instead. The Healer she had conceded to examining her had said that there was nothing physically wrong about her, but there was an anomaly in her aura that they wanted to study. The Healer followed up to say that they did not think it was life threatening at the moment, but there was a possibility that it could mutate. Hermione had turned pale as soon as she heard, not out of worry for herself but because she knew that after hearing that, there was no way in any of the seven hells that Harry or Ron would let her go back to work.

After that, Harry and Ron stopped insisting that she go back to her apartment. They grabbed her instead, and basically tossed her back. It was insulting, it was condescending; it was just wrong of them to treat her like that but the matter was that due to her fussing almost everyone knew that Hermione Granger was now no longer allowed to work unless given the explicit permission from Harry, Ron, or a certified Healer.

"What do you expect me to do?" she had sulked. "Go home, sleep, think, maybe sleep some more? Sleep isn't the answer to everything. There is still so much to do." She was needed, damnit. She had work to do here.

"I know."

"No, but sleeping at St. Mungo's might," Harry said slyly.

Ron sees the look on her face, and steps in quickly. "Hermione, why don't you take some time out to spend with your parents?"

The suggestion is simple, but the brilliancy of it stuns them all into silence. At least the boys thought so; Hermione watches the hope in their eyes and turns away. It is in that moment that she finally decides to stop struggling against it. They are just worried for her… so worried. She is also intelligent enough to know by then that any more breath she spent on this argument would be wasted breath.

Her eyes graze over the light patterning of her walls. The unrest already flutters in her stomach, and she becomes anxious. Hermione doesn't quite understand the feeling; she had never had a problem with being alone before.

What Ron and Harry doesn't know is that she already knows where her parents are, and she knew that if she were to appear before them now, she wouldn't be able to leave for months, which is the time it would take for her to gently nurse their memories back to the surface. It was time she couldn't afford to spend with them, not right now. The Obliviate they were under was too strong a spell that she'd risk trying to force it off. It made her ache, but Hermione couldn't leave now.

Which brought her back to why she was so angry. She had forfeited a reunion with her parents for her job, her work. It was rich of them to be turning her away.

No, it is wrong to accuse Harry and Ron like that. She wouldn't.

She'd take a few more days off, just like they want, and get better enough to get a clean bill of health from that silly Healer. She'd move into a new place, a temporary place, possibly a motel, just in case they thought to check up on her and reprimand what they saw. It wouldn't take much. Eat a bit more, sleep a bit more. Get back into a normal, healthier routine. It wouldn't take too long. It shouldn't take too long.

It doesn't take too much effort to find a new place. She is not short for money, what with her own savings as well as the old fund her parents had provided her with.

There is a pang when she thinks about them, so very close, but she steels herself against it. She had priorities. Ending Voldemort is not the end of the war. A smart Death Eater could come along and tear into the scraps of what was left of them and really win the whole thing. They were all stupid to be letting her go now. Now is still a crucial time, now is -

It takes her a single phone call to find a motel suitable. She brings hardly anything; changes of clothes, soap, toiletries and a few books but not much else. The central room is small but it doesn't include the bathroom or small kitchen. Hermione takes her wand and casts her wards, and adds a few more to the usual mix (undetectable far away, I'm in Australia remember?) before putting her wand aside. She vows to not touch it for at least three days.

She spends her first day in the new place cleaning, tidying. She checks the content of the fridge to find a single lettuce and a few lonely potatoes. In the freezer is a single slab of meat she doesn't think is safe for eating. Hermione throws out the meat, and closes the fridge. She considers going shopping, but instead orders food. Her cooking skills are limited at best; on bad days the oiliest, most greasy take out was still the better alternative.

She does everything manually: cleans the bathroom, vacuums, wipes down the kitchen. By the end of her cleaning spree she feels grimy and sticky, so she takes a hot shower. She lets the water pound her skin until she begins to chill. She steps out and wraps her hair up, then brushes her teeth. Hermione has to sort through a few things before she finds some clean pyjamas, but dons them and turns her attention to her hair. She refuses to use a hair dryer; even before magic came into her life, she had learned that hers was not the type of hair to be used with a hair dryer. Heating and drying charms had been the next best thing, but today she had time to do otherwise. Using another towel, she rubs at her head until her arms are sore and her scalp feels like it is flaking.

Finally, she runs out of chores. Hermione turns to her bed, eyeing it as though it might swallow her in her sleep. She snorts indelicately at her own ridiculousness before climbing in. She touches her wand one last time to ensure that her wards glow yellow, and finally settles down.

I'll just have to do this myself. No one can help me, because I don't need any help.

She doesn't remember falling unconscious, but when Hermione next opens her eyes, it is to a broken street. Lamps skew at odd angles, pavement is ripped up. Dirty water pools at uneven sections of ground, and broken glass smiles at her like crooked teeth in shop windows. She touches her hand to a shard, and pulls away with blood sticking to her fingertips. Sirens wail in the distance, and rubbish huddles in the street corners.

There is the sound of feet crunching glass, and she looks up. Pale light glints off of Malfoy's blond hair, and he grins sardonically at her.

"Welcome back."