Happy birthday Jade! I hope you like this chapter!
At everyone else: thank you for your support, it means a lot to me – try not to hate me too much for that ending, and see you next week!
Word count: 2618
Chapter 2: on the road
Two months later, England
It had never seemed quite this hard, in her books, to stay on the run for weeks on end. Hermione feels betrayed - she had known they were fiction, and they had been mostly Harry's and her father's kind of books anyway, but still. Books weren't supposed to lie that much.
Leaving London behind had been the first natural step of this journey, the first thought on her mind, but it hasn't been an easy one.
She'll come back one day, or at least she hopes she'll be able to, but for now, it's probably better if she gets as far away as possible from the city in which the government is searching for her. She even might have to leave the country, at this point, and the thought is as daunting as it is frightening.
She misses her family - her parents, even if she hadn't lived with them in years, but most of all Harry, who had moved away with her because as he had told everyone, "Hermione would get so lost in her books without anyone to remind her to take a break once in awhile that she'd starve herself to death".
At least her parents are safe. She clings to that thought like a lifeline: whatever happened to Harry, at least her (their) parents weren't involved. They're not soulmates, so they won't be harmed or taken into some facility to never see the light of day again, the way Harry had told her these things sometimes went. They'll probably get questioned still, but considering that apart from a bi-weekly phone-call they haven't really been in contact for the last few months, Hermione is rather sure they wouldn't have anything to tell even if they wanted to.
Still, living on the streets is tough. What food Harry had packed for her ran out quickly, and Hermione is thankful for the fact that her birthday is in September, because she's not sure how she'd have handled the freezing snows of winter or the boiling heat they've had at the height of summer in addition to being on the run.
Food, water, and shelter. She repeats those words like a mantra as she keeps moving forward, leaving behind London and the streets she knows. Food, water and shelter.
Water is the easiest to get, by far, though it gets harder the further away from the cities she gets. Shelter, too, she can handle, even if she's learned to sleep with one eye open, heart quivering with fear and adrenaline at every shadow she sees.
The streets aren't kind to women on their own. She's been taught this all her life, and Hermione has no intention to become a statistic. She's managed to escape the government so far - the Soulmate Researching Department of it, anyway, or whatever they call themselves these days; she's not going to be undone by street thugs.
So far, she's managed to stay safe, though she doesn't think she's ever been that filthy in her entire life - not even when she and Harry and been caught in a storm during their last summer in France and had ended up covered in mud, their hair matted with earth and sticks by the time they had found their way back to their hotel.
Just another thing she should have guessed about this running away thing, she guesses.
Like stealing. She'd never thought she'd have to resort to stealing - would never have guessed she'd illegally acquire anything in her life that wasn't a pen she'd forgotten to give back (if that even counted as theft). And yet, her food had run out alarmingly fast, and her money would have run out even faster if she had used it to buy food all the time, so she'd had to… compromise, much as she hated it.
Even today, she keeps a record of everywhere she's taken something she shouldn't have. One day, fate willing, she'll pay all of it back.
It hasn't been all bad, of course. She's met people, kind people, out there on the streets, that she would never have met otherwise.
She's also learned that, contrary to what so many people told her during her education, none of what she's read has been forgotten. It's kind of crazy, in fact, the random things she remembers when they're about to become useful.
That's how she learned to pick locks - she'd read a few books about it not long after Harry had come to stay with them (or rather Harry had read them, borrowing them from the Library and later looking articles on the subject on the internet, and Hermione had followed in his footsteps because the idea had interested her then), and though she'd never really practiced it since she'd had to force open her secret diary lock when she had been thirteen, it seems that she still remembered enough of those researches to open almost any lock after a few fumbling tries.
She looks at her soulmark every morning, wiping away the grime and remnants of makeup there with some wet cloth. It darkens a little more every time, but it seems reluctant to actually shift into anything legible. It's shy, Hermione surprises herself into thinking more than once, tracing the mark that had brought her so much trouble fondly.
She hopes that whoever is at the end of it is safe - or as safe as they can be, considering the circumstances.
She wonders if not knowing the name of her soulmate makes her safer or not - at least this way, if her pursuers catch up with her, she can't betray what she doesn't know, but Hermione rather thinks that it would be a comfort, to know the name of the person the universe thinks she destined to be with, and honestly? Hermione could use some comfort these days.
When she reaches the docks, she's unsure of what to do next. She's chasing rumors now, whispers she's heard on the streets about captains willing to offer questionable characters a place on their ship in exchange for work.
Hermione's pretty sure this would be easier if she were a man instead of a woman, if she had the muscles to carry heavy loads bulging visibly on her arms like so many men she sees, but she's not useless. She can work - year after year of carrying heavy tomes has gifted her with more strength than most people would think, but her best asset is still her mind.
Surely someone, somewhere out there, will need that, and then she'll be able to leave. To go where, she doesn't know, but she still has time to figure it out, since no ships seem to be interested in hiring her. Yet.
So in the meantime, she works as a waitress. It's not something she's done since she was eighteen and found that she hated it and would much rather spend her summers working in a library, but it's work, and it keeps her busy and able to listen in on most customers.
It takes her a while to see it, but once she does, her eyes keep getting drawn back to it.
There's a table, you see, at the far off corner of the tavern she works in. Most evenings, it's filled with the usual drunkards playing cards and hoping to win some money off their friends, but once a week, it's something else. Something different - and to Hermione, these days, different means interesting or dangerous.
Now she just needs to figure out which it is here.
So she observes that table and its players carefully, making sure to always be there on the night where it's different and to be the one who serves it.
It isn't until the third week, just as she was despairing to ever find any clue as to what they were doing - though by now she's realized that it wasn't anything nefarious (or at the very least nothing she would define as such) - that she finally does begin to figure it out.
There's a call sign. It had been hard to notice at first, because from one week to the next the people sitting at the table are never the same - a pink-haired woman next to a grumpy grey-haired man, sitting in front of a black guy with the best dreadlocks Hermione's ever seen are there the first week, but the second there's a scarred guy with eyes the color of amber drinking with two men who look to be about Hermione's age looking at him eagerly - but there's a call sign.
Just before they all start to order drinks or food and start playing, they all pass a card to the person sitting on their right. It's a gesture so smooth it has to have been rehearsed, and it happens so fast it is very, very easy to miss.
In fact, Hermione only catches it because she is not only looking for something of the sort, but also because she recognizes the cards.
They're shaped like business cards, with black characters embossed on thick white paper. Hermione's spent enough time in the last few weeks retracing those characters to recognize them when she sees them, and her fingers itch for her own card.
Alas, it isn't there - it's stuffed in her bag safely, because it's the last thing Harry gave her besides an opportunity to escape and she can't bear to lose or damage it, not when it had obviously been important enough that he'd delay her departure to give it to her.
But she has a lead now - a proper one. Harry had said that she'd know what to do with that card when she would need it, and she doesn't think there could come a time where she'd need it more than she does now.
As she muses on this, her name rings out in the kitchens and so Hermione steers away from that table and its curious occupants, empty glasses of beer balanced precariously on her tray.
"Coming!" she shouts back, sending one last curious glance toward the table that might contain a clue as to what she's supposed to do next.
She's kept too busy for the rest of the night to do much snooping around, but she keeps an eye out on that mysterious table anyway, straining her ears in the hope that she might hear something useful. Much as she expects, though, that doesn't happen.
She spends the next week in a state of nervous excitement, insides jittery and palms constantly sweating. She can't wait for this week to end and yet she's terrified of what will happen when it does - what if this isn't what she hopes it will be? What if the card doesn't help her and whoever will be sitting at that table decide she's not worth their time and call her hunters on her?
She doesn't even know what scares her the most: that this might not work, or that it might.
But honestly, Hermione is tired of being scared. She's tired of hiding and running like a rat, constantly sleeping with one eye open because relaxing too much might mean she won't recognize where she wakes up. If this meeting can help her with that, then she has to take this chance.
Which is how, when the day comes, Hermione switches to a lunch shift instead of the evening one she usually prefers. At seven pm that night, she puts on her cloak, grabs the bag she doesn't want to leave behind for this, and closes the door of the piece-of-shit one-room apartment she's been renting by the week. The white card Harry gave her is carefully tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, and Hermione feels ready.
When she enters the tavern, it feels different than it usually does - like maybe the atmosphere is more charged with something.
It almost feels like the world is waiting on something to happen, like it's holding its breath.
She's the first there at that table, and she sits facing the door. Even so, she somehow misses the others entering.
She recognizes only one of them, the first man. He's the one who's face is scarred. White, jagged stretches of paler skin dot his face in a painful-looking mimicry of a tiger's stripes, but his eyes are steady and kind. He sits right across from Hermione, and moments later a blonde woman Hermione's never seen joins them.
This new woman would look entirely unassuming if it weren't for her rather eccentric makeup: red eyeshadow and eyelashes extensions shaped like colorful feathers. When she sits, she smiles dreamily at Hermione, before kissing the man's cheek like they're old friends. He lets her, but he has the look of a man who simply knows it's better not to resist.
The third person to join them is another woman. She also doesn't seem like the sort of person you'd expect in these parts, and just being in the same room as her makes Hermione feel awfully inadequate, and it has her very aware that her hair is a mess - and not an artful one.
She sits right in front of the blonde woman, sending her a quick and thin smile, before nodding once at the man. Neither the women nor the man look at Hermione until they've passed their cards around, Hermione handing hers shakily to the woman on her right, and by virtue of their seating arrangement, receiving a pristine looking card from the latest arrival.
And just like that, a tenseness Hermione hadn't even realized had settled over the table melts away.
"So, are you new to this then?" the last woman asks, slipping her card back into her sleeve.
Hermione stares at her blankly. "I guess?" she ventures. "I'm afraid I have to admit that I don't know what this is."
Her other neighbor laughs, a clear sound that rings brightly in the darkened atmosphere of the tavern. "You shouldn't worry about Daphne," she says. "She's always like this. I'm Luna, by the way," she adds, introducing herself before gesturing at the man, "and this is Remus."
"I'm Hermione. So, what is this exactly then?"
Daphne's eyes narrow. "She's new, and she doesn't even know what she's doing" she hisses coldly, ignoring Hermione completely. "How do you know we can trust her?
Luna's eyes twinkle with mirth as she hands in Hermione's card to Remus while looking straight into Daphne's icy eyes. Hermione, who's shamefully aware that the once pristine card has now been stained with substances even Hermione doesn't know the origins of, is the only one who sees how Remus' eyes widen, lips parting almost imperceptibly as he trails his fingers over the symbols there.
"Where did you get this?" he asks, and the two other woman turn to him as well. His voice is steady and calm, and only his hands, showing white knuckles, betray that he is anything but. Hermione has the feeling that he has better like her answer, or she won't like what happens next.
Hermione squares off her shoulders and leans forward, elbows resting on the table. "My brother gave it to me," she states, in a tone that leaves no room for discussion.
Remus hums quietly for a few tense moments, eyes roaming over her face. Hermione doesn't move an inch, eyes narrowing as she dares them to refuse her.
And then Remus smiles, shoulders visibly unwinding. He looks like a different man like this - a kinder one.
"You must be Hermione," he says. "We've been looking for you."