Challenges: Screaming Faeries' Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' Harry Potter Chapter Competition on HPFC; butterflygirly99's Prompts Mania Challenge on HPFC; MelodyPond77's Long Haul Competition on HPFC.

Prompts: 52. Pandora: write about childish curiosity.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter 9 - A Place to Hide: write about running, write about being found. (Bonus prompt: ridicule).

Hard: Songs 19: Run Boy Run by Woodkid / Colors 2: scarlet, 20: amber / Dialogue 19: "Why can't you just trust me?" / Random 2: tired, 12: jagged.

Word count: 3,425

"How the Hell did you do that, any of that? Hermione, what was all that?"

"Can this maybe wait until we're more than six feet from the door and you're not wearing a bright amber – orange – whatever – jumpsuit?"

"No."

This caused her to pause, her bushy hair - she'd returned to looking like herself, for what it was worth - sticking to her sweaty forehead. He wasn't sure when she'd gone through enough effort to cause that particular reaction, they'd barely been running for five minutes and yet she was gasping like an asthmatic. "There's an apartment building about a block from here," she informed him in a tone that was both brisk and breathless. "Red brick. Maybe you can wait until we get there?"

"No, Granger. I want answers."

"Why can't you just trust me?"

"How can I be sure you're actually trustworthy?"

She met his gaze with the patience of a woman far more experienced than she actually was, a spark in her chocolate eye that dared him to defy her. "Why are you so sure that I'm not?"

"Zabini?"

"Malfoy. Nice of you to show up."

The Italian frustration was sitting on the kitchen counter, a book open in his lap and his wand clasped loosely in his fingers. A trail of sparks flowed from its' tip like a leaky faucet: it wasn't Blaise's wand, not like how Draco's was really his. They didn't quite match. After all, wands were hard to come by unless you had the exact right connections. Draco's only existed because of his contact with certain convenient sympathisers since he'd run away from the muggles who had owned his family for generations.

"He was arrested for murder," Hermione said to break the silence that fell over them. "Blaise was, I mean. He killed a muggle who raped his mother."

"You don't have to tell him."

"Yes, I do, actually. I can't have you two hanging around trying to skin each other alive. You're much more use to everyone if you're actually trying to be somewhat civil to one another, and besides, if you two start fighting with each other, then our chances of getting out of any of this alive are cut drastically. Can you see the logic in that? Jabbing wands at each others' throats is just going to make a scene and bother the muggles."

"Oh, lovely. Are you going to tell him all my secrets now?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow at the blond wizard, gesturing for him to take a seat on the floor or counter as she leaned against the one wall across from Blaise. "I don't know all your secrets, Draco. It's not really my priority right now."

Her apartment was tiny and narrow; the area where she stood was a gap between the counter and front door intended to be an alcove for a refrigerator - something she didn't own. Draco could see a scarlet sleeping bag on the floor in a corner of the room. Though there were several powerpoints around the room, only one was in use, and that was a lamp beside her sleeping area. He couldn't see anywhere him or Zabini would rest, except perhaps on the floor. Then again, that would probably be softer than the facilities' cots. At least her apartment had some version of carpeting, even if it looked like it had been half consumed by moths. One book lay beside the sleeping bag, one was in Zabini's hands, and aside from the canvas bag Hermione had set on the counter, the room was otherwise bare. She seemed to literally have less than Draco had when he fled with the clothes on his back, a wad of stolen currency and a few items of jewellery that were family heirlooms his mother sometimes wore: lockets, three rings too small to fit on her fingers, and a pair of pearl earrings.

Though he didn't know whether or not Narcissa had ever reported the items stolen, he thought he knew enough to consider himself somehow superior to this stranger who had waltzed out of his dreams and into his life with some kind of hero complex. Hermione seemed to be intent on saving him. And, for the moment, this was enough to grant her some of his rare exhibitions of patience.

"Hermione," he hissed, his tone a rather obvious warning. "You swore you'd tell."

"I actually didn't make any such oath, but I will answer some questions, I suppose. You want to know how I learned that spell? I didn't. I made it up based on some books I found."

"Books on what? Wishes and unicorns?"

"Actually, no, it was a tome on wandlore and happened to contain a brief guide to simplistic spell casting. I could quite easily explain to you how it works, but now is hardly the time. Essentially, you visualise your intent, aim your wand and cast. The incantation I gave you is a Latin word that means vanish. It seemed appropriate."

"Why do you even know Latin?"

"Ah, my parents were considerably obliging, given the circumstances they were under. They'd have let me learn how to run a meth lab if I asked, just so long as I didn't actually do anything to get noticed. When I asked to learn Latin, they were thrilled. They thought I was behaving normally, or accepting my lot in life, something to that effect, at least."

"Okay. You learned spell casting - that I get. The wand - did you take it from the stash?"

"There were a surprising amount of wands in Filch's office, yes. Initially I wondered if perhaps more people were in the prison than I expected, but then I realised no, of course not. It was just that they never got around to disposing of the weapons of those who died before our time." She let that hang in the air, cutting a painful silence into the reality they each stood for. Zabini cut the quiet short this time, apparently unable to bear the quiet. This didn't particularly surprise Draco, who had decided when they first met that the other wizard spoke far too much and thought far too little.

"How did you know to get me out? Did Malfoy get a message to you after that little visit you paid? How'd that work, by the way, did you bribe someone?"

"You think the muggles can be bribed? No. I have connections, that's all." She was picturing the soul-scarring image of Mrs Figg and Filch kissing in the pet store, and shuddered accordingly, though the two wizards looked at her as though she was somehow insane. "I wanted to get you out. I think everyone in those cells deserves to be freed. And besides, based on my idea to get Malfoy out, since he's newer and must therefore be observed more keenly by the guards, I needed to do some reading and also some hair from his cellmate. Originally I was planning on taking some from a guard, but I wasn't looking forward to my chances without ending up being noticed more."

"Hermione. You were the first ever visitor to a victim in those cells. You were noticed, like it or not."

"You're a cynic, and no, I wasn't. There's no paper record of me going in. There never could have been; visitors have been banned in those facilities since the mid-1870s. Before then, they were allowed, just uncommon - if a magical person entered, they were arrested, so they got called victims instead. Muggles just didn't desire the publicity."

"'Desire the publicity'? Do you hear yourself right now?"

"Of course I hear myself. They were afraid of public ridicule -"

"Ridicule? Ridicule? People were tortured in those places for years! Do you not understand that?"

"The government forced society into a state such that any deviations from the prescribed socially and legally accepted normative behaviours would result in harsh social, criminal, financial, reformative and even oppressive punishments. Of course the muggles are going to fear change after being faced with barbaric encouragements for centuries. These things don't change overnight, Draco, they never will. And if they do, then it's not a reform worth acknowledging."

"Hair?" Both eyes went to Blaise, who hadn't moved from his perch on the bench. The wizard was not phased by the brunt of the glares, furious with him for interrupting what could have been a devastating argument. "Puckle, Hermione, whatever. You said something about needing hair. Why?"

"Oh, that was for the Polyjuice Potion."

"The what now?"

"Polyjuice Potion. It's a recipe that seems to date back to the seventeenth century, and allowed people, usually wizards or witches, to assume the form of whomevers' hair happened to be added to the potion. I found it in something called Moste Potente Potions, which I found in - um."

"Um? How wonderfully specific."

"Oh, hush up, I just don't want to get them in trouble if one of you says something to the wrong person."

Draco's eyebrows shot up, but he wasn't angered. He simply figured that she must have been referring to Zabini, and for that, he didn't blame her at all. As far as he was concerned, the other wizard deserved to be judged purely on appearance and attitude. "Yeah, right. Like that's ever going to happen. They'll never believe a thing we tell them, Hermione."

"They might," she snapped. "I can't take that risk. I'm not willing to put the person who helped me in danger based on an assumption. You can't ask me to, Draco, regardless of your status in your group."

"Revolution. It's a revolution."

"Whatever you want to call it, Zabini."

"I'm calling it what it is, whether you two like it or not. By the way, that reminds me. Why does this signature have a G in it?"

"What're you talking about? Let me see that."

Blaise held out the book he'd been reading, allowing Hermione to examine the page he had found to be autographed. Draco looked on, torn between his usual apathy and mild curiosity. This person, this bushy-haired, stubborn young woman who had gracelessly slipped into his life and stolen him from high-security Hell, she was an oddity. She seemed well-read, she had more knowledge of wizarding lore than he did, even though he was the culmination of a long line of witches and wizards, while she, quite frankly, did not. She couldn't; she'd specifically said that she didn't run from the same things he had.

So what did that leave for her to run from?

He guessed she could be one of those rare magical people with muggle parents – only that didn't seem particularly likely; she was far too well-read. She was obviously seventeen years old, and she didn't look like she'd spent a day in a cell, with no indication of the frailty or malnourishment he'd seen in other prisoners – muggles couldn't have known about her, then.

She could be an escapee, getting away from a guards' attempt to take her into custody when they inevitably underestimated her, just as he had when he'd asked her to find out where the wands were stored, to get him out, and not to get caught. Then again, hiding with a well-known squib wouldn't be a very intelligent way to go about avoiding the guard, particularly not when the squib happened to be the woman dating the warden of the nearest facility.

She couldn't even be a refugee; London was nothing more than a step in the journey. Londons' aging streets weren't the best place for an illegally free witch to linger, let alone the doorstep of a prison intended to trap her kind.

Draco's head ached from the effort that accompanied each of the excuses, none of which sounded like explanations for Hermione 'Puckle' and her muggle ID. This no-nonsense witch – she had used magic, after all, to make herself look like Blaise Zabini, and to smuggle Zabini out without Draco noticing, and probably for more than that, too – didn't look like her name should be 'Puckle'. It sounded too fake, like it was trying to mock him or her or someone, anyone, catching in his mind on the unreality of the entire situation.

He knew he wanted to trust her, or at least some part of him knew that doing so would be more practical than holding her at a distance, just like each of the other acquaintances he'd captured just long enough to use. He wanted to use her, too, as she'd be invaluable in what he was trying to do. But first, he wanted to know who she was.

Then he'd move on to whatever she was hiding.

Draco couldn't get to sleep.

It wasn't that he wasn't tired. It was just that the carpeted floor, no matter how threadbare it turned out to be, was too luxurious for a body used to hard prison mattresses, cold stone and jagged floorboards. His subconscious was working him up in preparation for the challenges of the next day, so of course that kept him alert, too. He knew they would be leaving in a hurry, even though his host had never said a word: he'd seen her pack away her meagre collection of possessions. Maybe she'd been silent, but he recognised the signs. He remembered the tics and gestures from his own preparations for flight.

His mind was warping reality, twisting his perception of the shadows. All the light of London seemed to filter through Hermione's too-thin curtains; part of him wanted to block up the windows with planks and sheets of card. That would probably be quite suspicious, though, even though such décor was relatively common in the next suburb to the south, at least if he was remembering correctly.

Paper rustled in a corner, and he tightened his hand immediately around his wand, brought to the makeshift bed as his own version of a childs' safety blanket. His mind conjured monsters, dragons and werewolves sent to tear his, their, throats out.

He didn't even know enough about magic to get rid of one lowly muggle, yet he'd tried to teach teenagers what little he knew, and that was what had got him locked up in the first place, wasn't it? And now it had led to this mess. How would be possibly survive an attack from monsters in the dark? Perhaps Hermione would have a chance, but then again, she'd demonstrated no knowledge of offensive magic, just things he associated with deception. She had the skillset of a muggle spy with a few useful gadgets, not the talent of the wizards who'd slayed muggles throughout the wars. She couldn't fend off a beast.

Slowly, carefully, he eased his hand out from beneath the fabric he'd been given to ward off the chill she'd said would come with the dawn. Slowly, he ordered himself when another noise crept from his left.

A snort, a sound recognised by some section of his mind that had been drowned out by adrenaline and desperation to fight, trying to evolve a rational conclusion instead of monster. In the darkness, a woman whimpered, something that must surely have come from his host. It was a noise of abject terror, he decided, slowly sitting up. The blanket fell from his form, reducing his defence to nothing more than a too-large shirt that frayed at the ends of the sleeves.

A dark, hulking mass stood directly to his left, a thing that snorted and groaned and seemed largely inhuman. It looked like a wildebeest, but twisted. It stood on its' rear hooves and its' overall body was contorted, as if it attempted to pass as a deformed person. Its' chest too large, its' snout shortened grotesquely, it was the stuff of nightmares.

It reached for its' prey, the witch cowering in the corner. Her wand was nowhere in sight, but it could be tangled in the sheets, stuffed away in her bag, closed in a kitchen drawer. He hadn't seen what she'd done with it, though he knew she'd fallen asleep with a book, not a wand, in hand. She was about information, after all, not offense.

He grunted himself, the floorboards creaking beneath him as he shifted his weight, searching his mind for any spell at all. There had to be something he could use, didn't there? Hermione's books described creatures and places he'd never even heard of, not unlike the thing before him. It was African, an herbivore, but this thing obviously wasn't. He expected it to slaughter them all before he could get anywhere in the means of defending Hermione.

But she had to live. "Draco," he heard, a voice that was certainly hers. He knew it better than he knew his own, the voice of a woman he'd never dreamed would speak until a few weeks ago. Rational, careful, practical, she had to have something useful, anything useful, anything at all.

"Oi, ugly!"

The thing turned to him; he got his wish. Its' eyes were as black as coal, no light within, nothing but death and darkness in its' soul. Draco drew himself to his full height, as close as he could get without standing, drawing his wand and aiming it right at the thing, more purposely than before. "Draco, c'mon."

The thing stared at him, a fine fog cast from its' huge nostrils each time it breathed. Maybe it wasn't a wildebeest, he realised now, seeing that its' feet were not hooves, and what he'd thought of as forelegs were shaped more like overly muscular arms. The thing was still twisted, but in its' fingertips it was undeniably human, blood running over its' taut physique.

"Draco, we haven't got time for this!"

He opened his mouth, finally, but he didn't hear his own words past the blood rushing to his head. The monster, though, became something else far too quickly.

Nothing but green.

"Draco, for the love of God, get up! You can't afford to be asleep now?"

A hand over his mouth. Heavy breathing, a pain in his shoulder. Draco tensed, eyes wide open, looking around quickly for the signs of a hulking mass. All he could see were shadows and, in the shaft of moonlight drifting through the tiny window, dark eyes fixed him with a judgemental stare. But this was not hatred, nor rage; this was distaste, this was familiar.

Closer, a haze of curls filtered the rest of his former cellmate from his vision. He must have been dreaming of the wildebeest thing, he realised, wishing he'd noticed it. Never before had he missed the taste of sugar on his lips, not while asleep – but then again, his dream-self wasn't usually on the brink of complete and total annihilation.

Behind the hand, he opened his mouth to speak. His words would be muffled, he knew that, but he was mourning the loss of that spell. Green light. And the beast had stopped grunting, hadn't it? Or had he just been unable to hear it?

That was when he noticed that the witches' eyes were wide, an expression he hadn't seen before. Her lips were parted slightly, as if she were hesitating or waiting to say something. She glanced back at Zabini, nodded once, then looked back at Draco. In the poor light, she looked almost translucent, with milky skin and wide, dark eyes that glistened in the moonlight. She could have been a ghost, but then again, she couldn't. He had a feeling that Hermione Puckle would never be able to let the world pass by, unaffected by her presence. She was like him in that respect.

"Draco. Draco, focus. Are you awake enough? Can you hear me?"

He nodded once, sharply, urgently. Whatever this was about, it had to be rather huge. Why else would she have woken him when he'd been so sure he wasn't actually dreaming?

"There are guards in the building."

Silence filled the room for several beats, the sensation of his heartbeat the only sign of time passing as his own eyes widened, his lips unable to form a coherent response that wouldn't be muffled to senselessness by her small, pale hand. The expression in her eyes, he knew what it was. He associated it with orphaned children, prisoners and horror stories: Hermione so-called 'Puckle', he realised, was afraid, and she was looking at him like whatever they would do next was entirely up to him.

Well, shit.

He wondered if the wildebeest was really the most monstrous thing he'd faced so far that night.