Challenges: MelodyPond77's Long Haul Competition (week 1) on HPFC; Screaming Faeries' Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' Harry Potter Chapter Competition on HPFC.

Prompts: 17. Hyperion: Write about Hermione Granger.

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 1 - The Boy Who Lived: write about the start of something.

Word count: 3,259

"I'm not admitting anything until I know how you know who I am."

She had sighed at the time, but judging by her expression, this wasn't a surprising development. For an instant, Draco dreaded the doom that was predictability. He was sure he'd never really known her, not in reality. And, as she opened her mouth to speak, he knew he couldn't expect to.

"My name is Hermione, not that you really seem to care to know. You certainly didn't ask. Since you didn't, I can generalise: it's derived from the masculine name Hermes, the most well known thing to use the boys' name being the Messenger of the Greek Gods. Of course, since Greeks apparently suffered from severe misogyny - just read Homer, you'll see what I mean - they used his status to create the meaning, and all derivatives thereof. Messenger. Imaginative, I know. And its' use is wonderfully ironic, if you happen to know everything about me. You really don't need to worry about that right now.

"I left my parents' house one day - don't look at me like that. Yes, I'm a runaway, but I won't be reported, not like you must have been. I ran, but not from your specific constraints - about a month ago now, at the start of autumn. Let's not discuss the implications of such a drastic change, particularly not one synchronous with the inception of the season that happens to be entirely associated with transformations, typically at the precipice of death, or leading to events indicative of such a final climax.

"Anyway, all symbolism aside, I left my parents residence at the start of autumn, before the rains got quite as heavy as they are now. I didn't exactly have anywhere to go at the time, as I was, at the time, an unknown entity, at least in the neighbourhood I grew up in. I was anonymous; people had no clue as to what I would look like. Most of them had, and still have, no idea that I exist - or existed at all. I knew that, and I used it to my advantage. I gave the last name 'Puckle' when I had to , even going so far as to approach a register in order to attain some acceptable form of identification. I needed it to guarantee any means of living, particularly as I'm nearly eighteen now. I can't claim to be a minor forever, not when I'm staying far away from what I left.

"I was looking for work, and though I lack any qualifications, the first place I approached was willing to hire me. The owner must have felt sorry for me at the time, or maybe her cats took to me, and that made up her mind. I know I must have looked quite the poor excuse for a human being, half dead of starvation and exhaustion, practically living on hope. So I've assumed it was pity that got me a part-time job at the pet shop I went to. The important thing was that I could support myself.

"About a week and a half ago, I was feeding the animals, and someone came into the store. I must've been rather distracted, because next thing I knew, Mrs Figg, my boss, moved away from the counter to talk with the man. I moved back to the counter as soon as I realised, since the till had to be minded constantly. Bad neighbourhood. Of course they blamed magical people. Anyway, she kissed the man when I looked over, a man who pretty much looked like a taller version of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. After that, they began to chat.

"It wasn't much at first, nothing worth describing in detail. Weather, how the shop was doing, were any bad eggs giving Mrs Figg trouble. The conversation turned to his work while I was debating practicing some math. "Any huge breakthroughs at the correctional institution?" He had chuckled and turned to one of the catch, a long-hair gray tabby he cooed to for a good minute before speaking.

"'They caught that insufferable child, Draco Malfoy.'

"Now, Mrs Figg didn't really seem impressed to me, but what she did must have seemed like a kind of front to, for, him. I don't know how she could care so much what he thought she thought, since it was obvious to me, someone who doesn't really interact with people, that she was at least a little disgusted over him. I wasn't surprised though, when I saw his face, that he could believe a lie about caring. No one would have cared about him before, not if he never smiled.

"Later, when I asked her, she gave his name. Warden at the Institution, she said. I knew that meant he kept an eye on magical people, the ones who had been incarcerated indefinitely, or definitely, it's not like the system is particularly selective. All the books on the 'downfall' of wizards and witches say what that means. So-called abnormal people locked away for fear that they will somehow kill others.

"Then, of course, I was curious. If you knew me at all, you'd know that to be the perfect adjective to describe me. I found out about libraries, and I spend all my free time at the London Library now, reading anything I find on the subject. I started to read everything, all the examples. In 1813, Catherin Gardner killed fourteen normal children. History books cite that so often, but did you know that's not even half the story? For one, Catherin had only just turned eleven; she should have been entering a proper, formal magical education, according to the sparse research I've read, as well as traditional magical practice. It wasn't her fault that the warehouse she unintentionally ignited was stocked with gunpowder when the spark she created caught fire. It wasn't even her fault that the spark formed to start with. And did you know that over a dozen more people died in that blaze? There were wizards living in that building, but almost none of the books mention that at all. Welcome to human history, and all that.

"Anyway, I was closing up the shop, which basically means draping cloths over the cages of birds, ferrets, mice, and such. The bell hanging over the door chimed, so I looked up to ask the customer to leave, since we were closed. It was a woman, a pale, quite tall woman with pink hair the first time I looked, but brown with magenta streaks the second time I tried to make out the colour in the half-light. She had wide blue eyes and she hid something in her pocket as she looked at me. "I'm here to see the back room," she said, like it meant something. Of course I was confused; I crossed my arms.

"'We're closed. Come back tomorrow.'

"'Is Arabella not here?'

"'No, Mrs Figg is here somewhere, she's just -'

"'I'll take it from here, Miss Puckle. Tonks, how is everything?'

"I watched 'Tonks' and Mrs Figg walk away from me, into the backroom, just as the former had asked. She actually said, 'They've got Draco, Arabella, locked up in that hell-hole.'

"'I know. Argus was here today, bragging.'

"'I'm glad you think it's funny," the stranger snapped when Mrs Figg chuckled slightly, "How do you even maintain a relationship with that - that traitor?'

"'He's not a traitor, Tonks. He just likes disciple. Besides, I'm just doing what I have to for the cause.'

"Tonks, who I was beginning to think was at least a little insane, or at least worth wondering about, snarled and muttered something that must have bothered Mrs Figg, since the next noise I heard was slapping. They stepped into the back room; I didn't follow.

"Mrs Figg reappeared, alone, a few minutes later, to shut the shop. I asked her where the other woman went, and did this have something to do with the back room and Draco Malfoy. She looked at me as though she'd dreaded this moment.

"Then she sat me down for a cup of tea, and she told me everything. She explained the injustice of the Institution, because she didn't know I'd already done the research. She went over what Argus did, what the Institution equated to, practically a prison but less humane, why she was seeing someone she obviously considered unethical.

"And she explained who you are, Draco, and why you're important. Not that she really knew why you were apprehended. She figured you killed someone or acted out, not got caught teaching children. At least this will be news when I tell her. And that, Draco Malfoy, is how I know who you are. Now tell me about the Rebellion."

Draco might have remembered his dreams more fondly than he did his reality. As he lay awake that night, mulling over the gaze of the bushy-haired young woman, Hermione 'Puckle', and the half-truths he had forced her to say, he was wondering over why he had felt obliged to run away and claim this rebellion under his own name.

He knew the story Narcissa had told him over and over throughout his childhood. It was about their muggle owners and ther secrets, though he still didn't quite know why she'd told it. Maybe it was meant to instill a sense of hope: Look, Draco, you might be a wizard who is constantly treated like filth, but there's no way you'd be as much of a failure as Tom Riddle, junior!

She probably never meant for her stories to inspire rebellion, but of course they had. Junior's story was too pathetic to trigger any other reaction in a sympathetic young mind.

Tom Riddle, Senior, had been quite attractive in his youth, so the story went. Neat dark hair, keen black eyes, and skin so pale he was practically the colour of paper. At the time he caught the attention of Merope Gaunt, betrothed to another muggle, a woman who was never named in the story. He was wealthy, charismatic and clever, and, on top of everything, normal, with the arrogance to draw attention to it; in other words, he was the most desirable man in Little Hangleton.

The Riddle's owned the Gaunt family, including Merope, who suited her name frighteningly well. Thin, dead hair and heavy shadows beneath her kind blue eyes, her skin closer to gray than white. Even worse, she was a witch, even if she was practically a perfectly acceptable Squib. She had a history of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of the men in her family: her father and brother, both with the rare gift of being able to communicate with snakes, to speak parseltongue. They were the worst kind of wizards. They were the kind who considered themselves supreme. Delusional, all of them.

Merope used potions to work her magic, always had. She could whip up a poison or a charm in almost no time at all. So, when she set her sights on Tom Riddle, she was under no illusions. She knew he would not fall for her, ugly, peak-willed witch that she was. She made a potion to charm him, a brew intended to mimic the experience of absolute, obsessive love. When ordered to make him a cup of tea, she added an extra ingredient, and put him under her spell.

It was a whirlwind romance, one every person who knew either of them opposed. No one wanted to offend Tom, though, and aside from her abusive family, no one even knew her name. Eventually, a heavily pregnant Merope became too confident, and in 1926, she ceased dosing him with the potion she'd manufactured.

The illusion broke; he fell out of love with her the next day.

She died in childbirth, depressed and lonely. She lived just long enough for the Riddles' resident nurse to vow to watch over the babe, named Tom Riddle Junior. Then she wasted away.

The household went on like nothing had happened, except with one child added to the serving stagg. Understandably, he was shunned by the muggles. The magical staff, unpaid as they were and with the threat of being Institutionalised hanging over their heads, cut him off completely. Tom Riddle Junior blamed the muggles; he began to plot. He wanted a revolution.

The year was 1981. A street in London was lined with gore, a river of blood twisting and etching a deeper grove into the gutters. Rain warped the reality the witnesses would remember for decades to come, thinning the rivers. Red dyes the stone a faint shade of pink, a shade to be scrubbed away by enslaved wizards and witches and children.

The river veered off to the side, towards the middle of the unmarked road. This was its' origin, a road marked with the dead and dying. Black cloaks blended into the darkness, nothing but scraps of fabric left to be weighed down by a liquid assault. Those who looked on would recall this night with horror and absolute dread, especially magical people. Good, the muggles would tell them as the arrests and executions continued. These are your kind, people like you. Take a look at what happens when you fight this regime. Watch the Death Eaters burn.

In the middle of the cloaks, one still fluttered feebly, its' owner the only one still conscious. He lifted his hand, a pale, wrinkled thing, and removed the hood and, with it, the silver mask. He used to be handsome, obviously, and remnants of this were still apparent in his features: strong jaw, straight nose, wisps of lush hair. The old man stiffly climbed upright, to his knees amongst his allies. There was a thin scar on his left cheek, almost slicing through his almost-black eyes. His expression is one of both desperation and mania, and his ambition was obvious. His name was Tom Marvolo Riddle. He was the leader of the Death Eaters, a force of hundreds that lay sprawled across London at the time, decimated.

Tom was the last one left, the figurehead of the rebellion. And he was surrounded at that point in time, as he slowly climbed to his feet. There was a huge group of muggles, at least fifty of those guards, all in the black they continued to wear in 2014. Every single one of them had their gun trained on Tom Marvolo Riddle, a man armed with a stick, his wand, the only thing that marked him as something other than normal.

"Drop your weapon!"

Tom didn't flinch when the issue was ordered. "You'll kill me anyway," he snapped, and raised the wand.

Gunfire sliced through the cold, wet night, the guns flashing like tiny bursts of lightning. The assault was so loud, that later no one would recall hearing his body hit the ground. Over fifty years of planning, three years of open warfare, for nothing.

The last revolutionary was dead.

The reality of his entire situation became abruptly very obvious to Draco, who supposed that he'd asked for as much when he had leant back against the bars. A sharp tap against his spine was enough for that. He shot to his feet, already back against the opposite wall before it occurred to him that a guard would have simply tasered him without warning. That left one person it could be: the only person to put in an appearance as a visitor to a prisoner at any point in the history of any Institutions' existence.

"Who the hell are you, frizz?"

Draco whipped around, shaking his head quickly. The last thing he needed was Zabini-the-murderer getting involved in the whole affair that he'd constructed with the girls' help. She seemed to sense this already, or at least knew better, as she barely spared the half-Italian wizard a glance. "I have them."

That caught him off guard. He'd already suspected that she wasn't quite normal, but breaking into the Wardens' office was beyond abnormal. He told himself he wouldn't have asked, because it would have ruined the ploy, but in all honesty he only stopped because she waved him off.

"He thinks I'm someone else. Are you certain I should pass it on to you now?"

"There are guards watching, still."

"They aren't seeing anything," she said cryptically. He blinked uncomprehendingly back at her before he approached the bars again, heart racing. If she'd gotten it right somehow, if by some fluke it really was what he'd asked for...

He employed the utmost care in stretching his hand towards her as subtly as possible, pressing his pale, spindly fingertips against the bars. She glanced aside, then pressed three thin pieces of wood into his hand.

He let out the breath he hadn't entirely noticed he'd been holding, ignoring his lungs relief as he did so. These were his saviours, the things that would grant him a reprieve from constant stress, at least temporarily, over this particular item. There were still the dreams, of course, which were becoming gradually more convincing, and Zabini's incessant gossip, and of course the rest of the plan he'd devised. He placed far too much value in this object, he knew, but it was worth far more than anything else.

Hermione patted her hair gently, as though trying to soften the bushiness of it out of nervousness or secrecy. For the first time while faced with her, he wondered if she was really as trustworthy as she seemed. Then whatever part of his mind was always aware of a dream when it occurred took over for an instant, giving her a rare smile - the expression he wore constantly in their little clearing. He couldn't decide whether surprise was an appropriate reaction when she leaned closer to the bars, pressing her forehead against the cool metal.

"There's a man a few cells away," she murmured, his surprise increasing, "huge ears, dark hair, middle aged. He's muttering to himself right now, and he was before. He keeps saying 'for the best' and 'protect Alice', 'protect Neville'."

"Are you trying to convince me to stay?" His heart sank to somewhere beneath his feet. Did I always want support, or is this just because she looks like her?

She shook her head. "Are you certain you want to leave here alone?"

I'm hardly leaving alone, he thought. "You'll be there."

Behind him, Zabini snorted, obviously amused by the comment. Draco stifled a groan, then nodded to his 'visitor'. "Four days. You asked for this, remember that."

Her brown eyes flicked back to Draco, away from the immaturity of the Italian, and she nodded quickly before she left. The blonde deliberated slowly before he turned to face his smirking cellmate who, as far as he was concerned, didn't deserve what it would cost to keep him silent.

"That's a wand," the other wizard said, smirking. "Three wands. Where did you get three wands, Malfoy?"

"Don't have to explain myself to the likes of you."

"I'll just make an announcement to the guard, then, that your girlfriend armed you, shall I? Broke the law. She'll get locked up here with you. Bet you'd like that."

"She's not my girl - oh, fine. What do you want, Zabini? What is it that will make you shut up?"

Zabini's smirk died, for the first time wearing an expression expressing absolute seriousness. His words wouldn't surprise anyone. "I want out."

Well, obviously. We all do.

And we'll get it.