Author's Note: As I won't be able to update for a week or two, I figured I'd give you guys this chapter already. Hope you enjoy, and remember that every review lifts my day!

Chapter 4

I did not leave my flat for the next four days. I cast ward after ward, transfigured locks and bolts to the door, and sent an owl to St-Mungo's telling them I had fallen ill and would need some time off.

There was no way to know if someone had seen me, most likely not, and even if? Was I really convinced that some conspiracy was going on at at St-Mungo's and someone was was controlling an entire Wing of the hospital and obliviating those who they couldn't trust to keep the secret?

Yes, yes I was.

Ginny came by on the fourth day, having finally managed to get a babysitter for the kids. I had owled her as well as soon as I had come home, but a sick Lilly had kept her home. A squeal of pain at my front door indicated her arrival.

"Sorry," I said as I opened the door and dropped the other hexes and booby traps I had placed, "Forgot to remove those one."

"Blimey Hermione, what happened? You look horrible!"

I blinked owlishly at her, having gotten very little rest the past few nights. When sleep had claimed me, it had been filled with nightmares of the war and my parents. Their lifeless eyes after I'd cast the spell, my tears as I spun a new story for them, a new life. I hated the memory.

"Not here," I said and closed, bolted and recursed the door.

Dragging my friend to my bed, she clicked her tongue and commented on the poor state of the place, "You promised," she said as she waved her wand at a couple of open bag of crisps.

"Irrelevant," I answered before casting a silencing charm around us.

"Hermione, you're beginning to scare me. What happened?"

I sat down, Ginny took a spot next to me after getting rid of some crumbs from the cookies I'd eaten earlier. From a secret drawer I had transfigured and warded, I pulled out the Japanese phone. Before turning it on, I recounted to my friend the events of the night.

She listened silently, frowning in disbelief a few times, but never accusing me of making it up. When I came to the point of having taken pictures, her eyes lit up and she looked down at my hands expectantly.

"It was Tuckett, that trainee Healer," I said, unlocking the phone and pulling up the pictures. They were dark, but the pale face of the young man was clearly visible in front of the closed doors leading into the West Wing. His companion was impossible to identity, the second man had had his back turned to me. The most I could see was that he was tall and had dark short haired.

Ginny took the phone in my hand and tapped the picture, it zoomed in on Tuckett's face, "I know this guy, he's no healer in training. He works for Harry! Hermione, he's a full fledged Auror."

I nodded, my suspicions confirmed, "I figured as much, there is someone in there Ginny. Someone who shouldn't be alive."

She gaped at me, "You don't think it's you-know-who...no, they burnt him. They wouldn't keep him at St-Mungo's."

"The Ministry took Voldemort's body, no one saw him after that. What if he survived a second time? What if he can't be killed?"

Ginny threw the phone on my lap, "Don't be absurd. St-Mungo's is the last place they'd keep the crazy bastard. It has to be someone else, or something else. They wouldn't put the patients in danger like that."

I wasn't so sure, "Whoever it is, Hannah seemed to know them. And if this apprentice healer is really an Auror, then Harry has to know about it too. McGonagall obviously knows as well...Ginny this is weird."

"Downright creepy if you ask me. We should talk to Harry."

"I don't know if that's a good idea, no one seems to be supposed to know about this. What if they…" I trailed off, worrying at my lip.

"What? What if they obliviate us? Hermione don't be batty, Harry's not going to point his wand as his best friend and wife."

I knew she was right, but it felt risky anyways. Hell, it felt risky to leave my flat.

"Come on, we're going to the Ministry," Ginny said and took my hand, forcefully pulling me off the couch, "Bring that phone with you."

I tried to argue with her, but she would have none of it. Not even my unwashed hair was enough to derail her plan, instead she waved her hand about and I felt a tingle of magic wrapping around my body.

"What was that?"

"Cleaning spell, vital with babies I tell you. You look fine now, let's go."

It was nippy outside, November had brought early frost and I wouldn't have beenn surprised if snow would soon follow. Ginny marched as if she was about to go to war all over again, and not once did she let go of my hand.

We entered the dusty floo shop, took our powder, and soon arrived at the main hall of the Ministry of Magic.

The place had not changed much since the last time I had been here, and with the familiarity of it came the memories. The battle and then the nostalgia of having worked here every day of my life for a decade, and then quitting. I felt shame.

A few people stopped to look at us as we walked, either interested in our breakneck pace or recognizing us, but Ginny stopped at nothing. I wondered why she was so adamant to find out what was in that wing. It didn't involve her at all.

Then again, it didn't involve me either.

Maybe she needed a distraction too, something other than kids and family and boring daily work. Still, I felt I had blown the whole thing out of proportions, it might just be some rich sick wizard with the means to secure a whole hospital wing for his dying days.

Then why was Hannah so upset? Came that little voice inside my head which urged me on, told me my instincts were right.

We burst into Harry's office quite unannounced, with an apologetic clerk behind us.

"Harry!" the young red-haired witch cried out as she stepped in, catching her husband with his feet on his desk, his head hardly visible behind a pile of untidy paperwork.

I tried my best to convince myself that none of those papers must be important, to be treated as such, but it was a poorly formulated lie, even inside my own head.

Harry nearly fell off his chair at the disturbance, the paper he had been reading, which turned out of be a Quidditch Weekly issue, went flying up in the air, "Ginny?" he managed to croak once on his feet.

The clerk, a short frizzy haired man, squeezed in between Ginny and I, "Mr. Potter, I am terribly sorry, sir, but these witches, I tried to stop them."

"Bugger off, Baxter," Ginny snapped at him.

"It's alright Baxter, I've got this," Harry said with a heavy sigh. The mousey clerk retracted and left the room, closing the door behind him, but not before giving me a glowering flare. I turned back to my old school friend, who lifted up his palms in the air, "It's good to see you, Hermione."

I lifted a hand, "Hi, Harry, yeah. Been a while."

"Months, Hermione, it's been months."

"Yeah, well…"

"Oh later!" Ginny cut in, "Harry, what's in St-Mungo's?"

I wanted my friend to act surprised, unknowing, but Harry had never been a good actor. His eyebrows shot up, then down, he cleared his throat and began to play with the pile of untouched paperwork on his desk, "Sick people?" he offered.

"Don't play daft with me. Hermione, show him."

Harry looked up at me, his green eyes wide and worried. Was I about to bust up something innocent? Something he had to do for his work? It all felt suddenly so wrong…

"I dunno, Ginny. Maybe…"

But she had pulled out the phone, unlocked it with the security code which I'd never taught her, and shoved the picture of Ticket in Harry's face, "Hermione says he threatened to obliviate Hannah. What's in there?"

Harry let out a long sigh, and then slumped back down into his chair, hand over his eyes, "I guess it was only a matter of time before you involved yourself in this, and dragged Ginny in with you," he said.

"Don't blame Hermione for this, you're hiding something. The ministry is hiding something, we have a right to know."

"Are you asking out of the concern of our fellow citizens, or are you just trying to get your scoop and prove to the Daily Prophet that you have what it takes?" he snapped at his wife.

"Daily Prophet?" I mumbled, confused.

"Didn't she tell you? Ginny has applied to write for the Daily, but they're questioning how an ex-professional Quidditch player and mother of three can have anything to offer. Skeeter is actively working against her application."

I turned to my friend, "You were using me?"

"No! No, Hermione nothing like that, just that this is important!"

"Is it? Ginny, we don't even know anything! This is... you should have told me."

Determined not to be quieted or shamed, Ginny turned back to Harry, her hair looking very much like a halo of flames, "What are you hiding in there?"

There was a moment of silence, Harry looked at his wife, then at me, for a moment I dreaded the worse. He reached for his wand, and I for mine...was I really going to have to defend myself against my oldest friend?

But he did not attack, instead he waved his wand at the wall and a fireplace appeared. Secret entrance for the head of the Auror office, made sense. He stood up, took a pinch of floo, and stepped in, calling for St-Mungo's.

Ginny looked at me, "I'm sorry Hermione, but I have to know. This could get me a job."

"And it ends mine," I said, fully aware that once the board of directors heard of my transgressions, there was no way they'd keep the offer to work at St-Mungo's open. Even my nightly shifts would likely be deemed unnecessary.

We followed Harry and landed in the main floo network room of the hospital. From there he led the way toward the West Wing, giving every indication that he'd visited the place a hundred times.

We arrived at the corner where I had hidden only four days ago, terrified and worried for Hannah - and kept walking. A healer was pacing the corridor, one of the guards as I'd come to call them, a trainee badge on her robes. They must have come up with the idea of apprentice as a cover so patients wouldn't come to them with questions. Nurses and full fledged Healers were approached left and right by worried family members of patients.

"Mr. Potter, sir, I'm terribly sorry, I didn't know you were visiting today," the young woman said, eyeing us dubiously.

"It's alright Jin Yang, could you open the doors please?"

The woman nodded and scrambled to unward and unlock the large white doors.

I don't know what I expected on the other side, but the sight of a boringly normal corridor, with a couple of nurses chatting merrily as they left a patient's private rooms was not it.

They turned to look at us for a moment, but said nothing, instead continuing into a neighbouring room to continue their work.

"What is this?" Ginny asked, obviously disappointed, as she peered into the first room on our right.

"Expected monsters?" Harry asked without much humour, "Well, they aren't far off."

Leaning into the room behind Ginny I saw a man lying on a white bed, a blanket pulled up to his chest. His face was disfigured on one side, his eyes closed. Both his wrists were shackled to the bed, and the single window in the room had thick metal bars across it.

"Prisoners?" I asked, "Who are they?"

"Death Eaters, most of them, victims of permanent spell damages and wounds during the final battle and arrests afterwards."

Ginny gasped and walked to the next room, where a woman lay much the same way, though her face was intact and she lay on her side, in a fetal position, "Are they all...sleeping?"

"In a coma, of various sorts," Harry explained, "Plus three of them have gotten their minds broken to pieces, they are awake, as much as it can be deemed such."

"But, why are they here? Next to normal people, why not Azkaban?" Ginny continued.

Ginny's comments made me cringe, and regret filled my heart. This was no conspiracy…

"They were," Harry said quietly, leading us further into the West Wing, where I was beginning to realize that the only secret being kept was his compassion for these people.

"I don't understand," Ginny mumbled after a while, going from room to room, witnessing the nothingness that was a comatosed body.

"Oh Harry," I said finally, "I am so sorry, if I would have known…"

He looked at me and smiled, "Yes well, you had to find out didn't you. I knew it would happen the moment I heard you'd come to St-Mungo's. I was surprised you didn't come barging in here on your first day."

"Why hide it though?" I asked.

"The Wizarding World still believes in the death penalty, you know. I wasn't even aware these people were alive until I took up the Head of Auror seat, I was shocked. Comatosed patients kept in hospital care at Azkaban. I had to see, to visit. The state of things, Hermione, the filth...you can't imagine."

"But they're Death Eaters," Ginny said, "One of them might have killed Fred, they killed Lupin, your friends!"

Harry and I looked at her, then at the still body in the room in front of which we had stepped. It was a young man, younger than us he seemed, his eyes were open but there was no movement. There were no flowers next to him, no card or memorabilia, just the staleness of a hospital room. I tried, and failed, to imagine him in Azkaban, cold and dirty, unaware of why or what was happening to him. He'd obviously made the wrong choice at some point in his life, but this was the ultimate price to pay. Not death.

"I had them all moved here four years ago, all the ones the Healers assured me had next to no chance of ever waking up. They're no danger to anyone, but the Wizarding World, the people, they'd never understand. They've changed since the war, we forced them to, but this wouldn't be accepted."

I wondered how much tax money was being pumped into the place, and realized Harry was quite right. Not only was the stigma against Death Eaters stronger than ever, but the idea that working wizards and witches willingly donated their money to see to these people's expert care and comfort...there could be riots.

Still, something didn't seem quite right, "Why was Hannah Abbot so upset about this? I'd think she, of all people, would have appreciated the help you're bringing to these patients. Whatever their past may be."

Harry sighed and pointed to a closed door at the end of the corridor. The only closed door in the hallway, "I know he'd hate the noise, and he prefered the dark…"

Ginny, her curiosity peaked again, rushed to the door. With a hand on the knob she turned to me, eyes wide, and slowly pushed it open.

I had expected a gasp, a scream, some form of loud shock. Instead the redhead simply stood, eerily still, forcing me to step up and peer over her shoulder into the gloom.

And there, in the single bed in the middle of the room, his eyes closed and chest moving ever so slightly up and down, was Professor Severus Snape.