Disclaimer: Nope, none of HP is mine.

just to put you in context, this chapter takes place just after the (latest) big screaming fight between Draco and Hermione. Go back and re-read it if you're confused. Hey, go back and read it anway, cuz I am damn proud of that fight.

Hannah heard Hermione's steps vanish down the hall, and she waited. For good measure, she waited for another few seconds.

Then she let out her breath.

Well.

Then, when she'd recovered from what she'd just heard, she realized just how stiff her legs were.

"Oh, Christ," she muttered, straightening up slowly, and groaning as her thighs tried to figure out how they were supposed to work. The sound of her voice echoed in the staircase, but she wasn't too worried. After the way Hermione and Malfoy had been snarling at each other, anyone who'd be drawn to investigate one little mutter had probably fled from the scene of the big bloody row.

It was funny. She'd spent so much time wondering what had happened. Speculating, formulating… and now that she actually had a more concrete idea…

All she felt was sick.

She certainly wasn't ready to go back to bed. What if she ran into someone while rambling around the fortress? Well, running into Hermione in their wing seemed like a much more horrible prospect. Hannah wasn't a field agent, not really. She could usually keep what she knew off her face, but not minutes after she'd heard it. And not when the exchange had been so… uh… heated.

Now she really felt sick. Time to start moving, before she threw up.

Hannah turned, and started down the stairs, retracing her steps. After splitting up with Hermione, she'd led her pursuers on a mad dash down as many staircases as she could find. Once she'd recovered from her panic enough to realize that this probably wasn't a strategy to depend on, since she'd eventually run out of stairs, she'd ducked behind a half-open door after whipping around a corner, and waiting for them to pass her.

What actually happened was that she unwittingly discovered one of the castle's charming and surprising shortcuts. The room she'd dashed into didn't have a floor. She hadn't screamed, because one minute she was opening the door and the next she was falling, so there wasn't any time, but that was really the only bright side.

Apparently, someone had fallen down this hole before, because there were mattresses at the bottom of the hole. The only problem was that the mattresses were ancient. Hannah ached all over. Still, she wasn't broken in anyplace serious. Her wrist could use some further treatment, but she didn't anticipate having to lift any weights in the meantime.

She'd hobbled out of the pit, and found herself a floor above where she'd been when she'd fallen. She remembered taking a course on Nordic Wizards in school. Now she remembered that they were mostly tricky bastards with foul senses of humor. As was evidenced in their architecture. She'd made her way up the first set of stairs she came too, and discovered a row, mid-snarl. It didn't take a genius to figure out who were the ones snarling.

"Great timing," Hannah sighed, trying to work the aches out of her shoulders with her fingers as she walked. "I almost want to just shut them up in a room together so they can just get all that energy out of the way." Hermione could pick better circumstances to rehash old—

"I'd imagine that'd be explosive."

Hannah whirled without thinking, her wand flying up to point at Blaise Zabini's face.

They stared at each other.

Finally, Hannah sighed and lowered her wand, though she kept her eyes on Zabini carefully. He hadn't raised his own wand, after all. He had his hands in his pockets, as a matter of fact. But still. "You know, you're going to have an accident if you keep doing that showing-up-from-nowhere trick. Don't people around here get edgy about it?"

"I save it up for special occasions." Blaise said blankly, raising an eyebrow at her.

"You look a little less frazzled," Hannah observed, "You've maybe stopped with the coffee?"

"Doubled the caffeine concentration. Why else do you think I'd be walking around at this hour?"

They paused, appraising each other. Then they each gave the other tiny, almost identical smiles. Blaise started walking down the hall, and Hannah fell in step beside him.

"So why are you up and about? You haven't started with the coffee, have you?"

"No, no, I try not to get enslaved to breakfast drinks. I just had a bad dream. Wanted to walk it off." The lie came easily to her. She'd used it a lot to explain sneaking around. Well, she had a lot of bad dreams, so it wasn't strictly a lie. She just hadn't happened to have had a bad dream that night. Lies are all about context, after all.

"Ah," Blaise said, sounding a little wistful under his usual deadpan tone. "I wish I could remember what it was like to dream." Then he mumbled something under his breath that sounded like "Damn brewer never works right."

Hannah smiled a little.

"So I suppose you heard that fight, then." She said lightly.

"Oh, yes." He said, just as easily.

"Something else, hmm?"

"Hmm. I don't suppose you know any more about it?"

"What?" Hannah asked, abandoning her carefree approach to this and staring at Blaise. "You mean you don't know anything either?"

"No! I work for him, I'm not his confidante." Blaise looked faintly disgusted at the very idea.

"You're friends, though."

"Well, yes. I suppose. But there are things you don't talk about. Even with friends."

Hannah had to give him that one.

There was a short pause after this. What do you say, Hannah wondered, to someone in a situation like this? Blaise broke the silence again.

"So what are you two trying to achieve here, anyway?" His tone was very casual. He was very good, Hannah noted. Secretary? Yeah, that was likely.

"Has it even occurred to you that our intentions are completely aboveboard? You're the ones who invited us here without explanation."

"We explained clearly in the letter—"

"Oh yes, and that was so convincing, we instantly were sure of your sincerity. But it should be fairly obvious what we're doing here. It's what you all want with us that's a little more suspicious."

Blaise pondered this for a little while. "You know," He said "I think we've all spent so much time dealing with secrets and covert societies that we can't handle things any other way. Not just us. Back in London, your government isn't quite out in the open either. We're none of us able to work like that any more. Look, are you hungry? I'm starving, and I need something to absorb the caffeine."

Hannah shrugged. She was probably as safe with him as she was in any other part of the castle. Which was not safe at all. At least it was a consistant sort of danger.

Blaise continued. "But to return to my original point. Sending Hermione Granger? Tell me there wasn't some sort of plan behind that."

Hannah sighed. "Well, if there was, I don't know about it. She doesn't know about it. It would be quite brilliant, though. The look on his face…" she laughed a little, before realizing that this probably wasn't the most sensitive reaction.

Blaise scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully. "If there was one wrench that could undo Draco Malfoy, it would probably be her. If your people knew that, then I'd say there's nothing that could stand in your way."

"And if they didn't?"

"Then I'd say they're unbelievably lucky."

Hannah let it go. She kept walking, and Blaise lapsed into silence. They kept walking down the kitchens, where they had an excellent meal (apparently the keep's cook didn't sleep either), then parted for bed. Well, Hannah for bed. Blaise to wander the halls a little while longer, until the caffeine wore off.

Hannah'd been thinking the whole time. About the Rebels, about Hermione and Draco, about the Order, and about the Epic Struggle. But even with an excellent meal to fuel her and her muscles mostly uncramped, she hadn't gotten anywhere. All her thoughts circled back in on each other, refusing to connect or form any sort of pattern. Tired and frustrated, she went back to her room with a headache.

It was one of her last nights in the fortress of the King's Rebels, but she was too tired to really enjoy it. Even if she had known what was coming, she was so sick of it all that she would've gone straight to bed anyway.

A/N: I'm really sorry to be so MIA for so long. But in case you didn't know, I'm in my senior year in high school, which is a lot more stressful than movies and tv make it out to be. But now that the hellish first semester is over, I hope to be updating a lot more frequently! Sorry for the loong hiatus.

Not much happens in this chapter. But I've got two more for you which have much more action in them! It's my present to you for being gone so long. Heh.