Sorry about last week's cliffhanger – I can promise there won't be one every week. This is mostly a filler chapter, but it was necessary to give some background to this world I think.

I hope you enjoy this!

Word count: 2444

Chapter 3: some answers

"You must be Hermione," Remus has just said. "We've been looking for you." The words echo in Hermione's mind, becoming more ominous every time.

Her blood freezes in her veins as she jerks back. "I have no idea what you're talking about. You must be mistaken," she says, drawing on her panic to appear as offended as she can, her mind racing as she tries to figure out a way out of this mess. "If you'll excuse me," she says, getting up and mentally cursing herself for ever thinking that doing this could lead anywhere good.

She knows this place, luckily, knows this people, too. If she asks for help, they'll give it to her—they'll trust her over these strangers, she thinks. Well, she hopes. After all, it would only take a few words—the revelation that she's one of those elusive soulmates people that the general population seems to half fear, half revere, for example—and they'd probably hand her right over.

"Sit down," Daphne hisses, right as Luna asks, "Where are you going?" She sounds so saddened and confused by the idea of Hermione leaving that Hermione freezes, halfway up in her seat.

Remus blinks, taking in the scene before him, and chuckles a little, self-deprecating. "Sorry about this, I realize now how that must have sounded," he says, handing Hermione back her card. "I should have said that we've been waiting for you to make contact with us."

"Hoping, he means," Daphne interrupts, picking at her nails disinterestedly. "We've been hoping you'd find us."

"Yes, Daphne's right," Remus sighs. "I'm a friend of your brother—he warned us the moment he knew your mark had come in, said he'd try to help you. When we didn't hear back from him, we assumed the worse, but we've still kept on the lookout for either him or you, or ideally, both."

Hermione sits back down, stunned. "You know Harry?"

Remus smiles fondly. "I do, yes. I was the one who gave him this card." He points at the card Hermione still hasn't put away. "See those symbols?"

Hermione nods numbly. "I've been wondering what they were, yes," she says.

"That's because they're in code," he replies smugly. "Each card has a specific set of symbols that we know how to read, and it tells us who the card belongs to—it also helps identify pretenders," he adds, sending Daphne a look Hermione can't quite decipher.

"This code's my creation," Luna interrupts brightly. "I made the symbols myself. Nice, aren't they?"

Again, Hermione can only nod. Thankfully, she's saved from having to talk through the haze that has settled over her mind by a redhead waitress Hermione has only seen around a couple times.

The woman—almost a girl still—looks surprised to see Hermione there and she frowns, something like concern flashing in her eyes.

"Hermione? Is that you?" she asks. "Are you alright? I thought you wanted to take your evening off today—you can't tell me coming to this sorry joint is your idea of a night off, can you?"

Hermione forces a laugh, struggling to remember the name of the girl. Was it a J-something name? Jenny, maybe? No, not Jenny—Ginny. "I'm perfectly fine, Ginny," Hermione replies. "My new… friends wanted to see where I work, I guess, and I know this place nice enough for this kind of meeting."

Around the table, Luna keeps smiling sunnily at everyone as Daphne seems content to keep a watchful eye out on their surroundings. She's tenser than she was before, and interesting contrast to Remus, who seems perfectly at ease as he smiles at Ginny.

It is the kind of smile a teacher makes, or a librarian maybe—the kind of authority figures Hermione grew up trusting instinctively.

Ginny still eyes their little group dubiously, but what she sees seems to reassure her—even if she can't honestly believe that Hermione is friends with these people—because she nods to herself and takes out her notepad. "So, what can I get you tonight?"

They order an assortment of cheese and cold meat to go with their drinks. Hermione doesn't really have a say in what they're eating, though the choice is fine by her, and she orders a tomato juice because it's her favorite as well as the only thing she remembers is on the menu at the top of her head. And she doesn't think now is the time for alcohol.

Remus gets a beer and Luna somehow manages to weasel a non-alcoholic fruit cocktail that is not on the menu out of their waitress, while Daphne asks for a gin and tonic. Clearly, not all of her companions agree with Hermione's decision to stay sober for this conversation.

It isn't until Ginny's gone that Hermione figures out her next question.

"How do you know Harry anyway?"

Remus' fingers, which has been resting flat on the table, tighten into a fist. "I knew his parents," he says, and from the pain in his voice and the shadows in his eyes Hermione knows she's not getting anything more out of him.

Not today, anyway.

She desperately wants to ask more though, but she hasn't missed the way Remus said that he hadn't heard from Harry since he helped Hermione escape getting caught, and that's more important to her than Remus' relationship to people that are long dead.

"What…" She pauses, swallowing hard. "What do you think happened to him?"

Her three companions share a dark look. "We don't know," Remus admits.

"But we haven't found him yet," Luna adds, smiling encouragingly. "That could be a good thing."

"Potter is good at hiding things," Daphne concurs semi-reluctantly.

"A little too good," Hermione mumbles quietly—to think that her brother has apparently lead some kind of double life all these years without telling her, when she thought she knew everything there was to know about him? Well, it stings.

She can't help but wonder what makes this—whatever this is—so much more important than every other secret Harry's told her. After all, he told her about what happened to his parents, or what he knew of it, and about what the government truly did to people with soulmates.

Harry hadn't even told her parents that. Not that Hermione can blame him—she's fairly sure her parents would never have believed him. The official story was that James and Lily Potter had been killed in a tragic accident, and that witnessing that accident had had Harry traumatized enough that he had needed to be institutionalized for several months before he ended up at the Grangers.

Hermione had never quite been able to parse out why her parents had been chosen to adopt him, but they had been interested in adopting a child for years—ever since it had been revealed that they couldn't have another child biologically without risking Hermione's mother's life.

Oh, Hermione knows her parents had believed that the place Harry had been in—that supposed institution—hadn't been as safe for him as it had been supposed to; but there was a big difference between believing Harry's doctors had abused their positions, which had resulted in the boy needing to be placed elsewhere—preferably with people who knew some medicine as well— and believing that everything was some kind of conspiracy made by the government to hide their own activities on soulmates.

For a while, Hermione hadn't been sure what to believe either, but she had chosen to believe Harry. His pain was real to him, and to her, and it would have been hard to fake, no matter what adults might have thought.

Considering what happened to her two months ago, Hermione's really glad to have made that choice. She wouldn't be here now if she hadn't believed Harry's story all those years ago—Hermione has a feeling Harry would have run away a long time ago if not for her, inoperable chip in his neck or not.

Ginny comes back with their drinks and food, and the sharp sound the glass makes as it hits the table drags her out of her thoughts in time to hear Remus' next sentence.

"He kept secrets to keep you safe, mostly," he says apologetically.

"Well, maybe I didn't want to be 'kept safe'," Hermione spits, wrapping her fingers around her glass with a strong grip. She can feel the cold sink into her skin, her hands growing a little stiff. If she concentrates, she can even imagine that it sinks all the way to her racing heart and mind and slows them down a little bit.

Daphne snorts. "Trust me, you're going to wish you could have been 'kept safe' by the time we're done eating."

For the first time, Luna's smile isn't cheerful. In fact, she hides a grimace as she sucks on the yellow straw stuck in her cocktail. Hermione has to hide a shiver.

Still, she forges on. "And what would I need to be 'kept safe' from, exactly?" she asks, tone as dry as she can make it. "And for that matter, none of you have explained who you are and what you do yet."

Daphne picks at a piece of a cheese Hermione doesn't recognize. "If you haven't realized you're in danger by now, then you clearly aren't half as clever as we were told you were," she snorts.

Before Hermione can get offended, Remus snaps, "Daphne!"

"Sorry," Daphne replies, rolling her eyes a little. She doesn't sound very sorry to Hermione, but Hermione will take what she can get. "I'm right, though," Daphne adds.

"Right or not, this is neither the time nor the place," Remus retorts.

Hermione clears her throat pointedly. "Also—and sorry to interrupt—I am perfectly aware that I am in danger, thank you very much. They came to my house and Harry told me to run, and the last thing I heard from there were gunshots, for God's sake!" she almost shouts the last part, chest heaving as she forces herself to keep her voice down—she can't imagine this is the kind of conversation she wants overheard.

"But I also know that I've spent the last two months living on my own," she continues, a bit calmer, "and I was doing fine without your help, thank you very much. So clearly, I didn't need this so-called protection nearly as much as Harry, or you people, whoever you are, believed I did," Hermione finishes, a little breathless from her rant.

To her surprise, Luna's smile has returned during her speech, and Daphne is now smirking into her drink.

"You know what? I think I like you, Hermione," Daphne says, eyeing Hermione with a little less cold contempt now.

"Thank you?" Hermione replies, not really sure how to take that.

"You should be proud," Luna whispers into her ear playfully. "Daphne doesn't like a lot of people."

"Yeah, no kidding," Hermione whispers back, hiding a snort into a sip of her steadily emptying glass of tomato juice.

Setting her drink back down, Hermione turns her focus back on Remus—she gets the feeling he's the one who knows the most here, and more importantly, the one most likely to finally give her some answers.

"So, what do you people do?" she asks, and almost immediately all earlier levity leaves the air.

Daphne casts back her eyes around the room. After a few seconds, she exchanges a meaningful look with Luna and sends a curt nod at Remus, who sighs.

"Alright," he says. "I guess you could that we're a group interesting in making sure certain parties, who might be endangered by some other parties' actions, are kept hidden and able to hide."

"That's awfully vague," Hermione points out, opting to try out the cheese herself as she thinks about what Remus has just said. It's good.

"Remus like to be vague," Daphne replies. "He thinks it gives him a certain… charm."

"You've been spending too much time with Luna," Remus retorts, sighing, but he doesn't deny it.

This time, Luna is the one who rolls her eyes. In a fluid move, she leans against Hermione, her blond hair tickling against Hermione's bare neck. "Basically?" she starts, voice practically overflowing with mischief, "We're the Resistance."

Remus looks like he wants to bang his head against the table—or possibly stab himself with his fork—but Hermione can't help the bark of laughter that escapes her. It feels good to laugh, after so long. She'd almost forgotten how that felt.

"The 'Resistance', uh?" she repeats.

"Not here," Daphne immediately hisses.

Remus nods, and adds, "Let's eat first—we'll take you somewhere safe after that, somewhere we can really talk."

"And why should I go with you, exactly?" Hermione asks, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

Remus looks surprised at the question—the two girls do not.

"You'll come because we can answer your questions, obviously," Luna states, blinking owlishly. She sucks on her straw again, hollowing her cheeks. Her glass is empty now, and the loud noise the suction makes startles Hermione so badly she jumps a little.

"Right…" Hermione drawls, backing away a little.

"And," Remus interjects, voice louder than before, "you have my word we mean you no harm."

"I don't know you," Hermione retorts, even though the temptation to just give in and agree to follow these people is strong. But this is her life, hanging in the balance—she can't be too careful with that. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't," Daphne admits before Remus can reply. "But you trust your brother, and he clearly meant for you to run into us at some point. Don't you want to at least find out why that is?"

Hermione thinks back on her last moments with Harry. In the last couple of months, she's remembered them so many times they're basically engraved in her mind by now—she thinks that's how they've remained so clear in her mind, despite her running half on panic, half on adrenaline that night.

Harry had said she'd knew what to do with the cards when the time came. He'd trusted her to know what to do with it—and he had always told her to follow her instincts, to stop overthinking everything.

Well, it looks it that time has indeed come.

"Alright," she says, looking straight into Daphne's eyes. "I'll go with you, and you'll answer my other questions. Do we have a deal?" She moves her head, first looking straight into Luna's eyes and finally into Remus'.

"We do," Remus replies.

"Good," Hermione nods. "Let's eat, then."