Author Note: Heya. Didn't do this last chapter, so decided to get it outta the way now. First off, I don't own either H.P. or S.P.N. (Figured y'all know that, but there it is for what it's worth). Second off: Warnings! Yay! Sam and Dean are unrelated in this story, but there are gonna be mentions of slash, so if that bothers you, here's your chance to back out. Other than that, Dean, Sam, and I all swear a decent amount, though I'm tryna tone that down for this fic. I'm a tasteless American and apologize if I butcher British culture (dying to go to England but have never been as of yet). I don't plan to have anything graphic in either the violence or sex department, but there will probably be some of both (meaning nongraphic violence and sex). If I face-palm later and realize I forgot something, I'll include more warnings in future chapters.

Sorry for the long note, and on to the story!

CHAPTER 1: ONE WET WEDNESDAY

In her living quarters deep in the castle, Hermione couldn't hear the soft fuzz of raindrops on stone, but she could feel it in the dampness of the walls, smell it in the earthiness of the floors, and she was taking the excuse to huddle up in her comfiest armchair with a thick ceramic mug of tea, a quilt, and her latest batch of essays to correct. She let Blondie and Joni Mitchell take turns on the radio and huffed at Harvey's deplorable grammar. All in all, it was a very normal, fairly comfortable Wednesday, but that was until somebody took it upon himself to crack her door down.

Alright, he didn't really crack it down, but in the midst of the soft, imagined rain noises and Joni's slow voice, it sure sounded like that. A quick succession of cringe-worthy raps against the thick oak boards, the rattling protests of the nails, and then a voice calling: "Hermione! Oy, Hermione! It's me!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. The voice did strike a few chords of familiarity, but how in the name of Merlin's beard was she supposed to know who "me" was without a bit more than that?

Still, she called back an, "I'm coming! Don't dent the wood," and kicked her blanket to the floor.

In woolen socks and sweats, she padded across the various mismatched rugs she'd laid down four years ago when she'd first moved in and tugged the heavy panel open a foot. Her eyes and mouth widened as she spotted the redheaded face grinning a bit sheepishly down at her, and she heaved the door open the rest of the way.

"Ron," she said, tilting her head with a smile that was both amused and bemused, "What are you doing here?"

Ron's grin slanted towards the sheepish side as he took Hermione's unspoken invitation to come inside. "Er… I was, uh… kicked out of my flat," he admitted with a shrug of his thin, rain-dampened shoulders. He was pretending to survey the room, peering at Hermione through his peripheral vision to try and gauge her reaction.

"And you need a place to stay," Hermione concluded. She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that it?"

Ron shrugged again and smiled again, at the deep crimson of the rug this time. "That's about the size of it. I was hoping I could, you know, hole up here for a week or two until I can find a new job, new place."

"Well, strictly speaking that's against the rules," she started, smiling at Ron's corresponding shuffle, "but God knows you and Harry beat down my rule-abiding side years ago, and it's been months since we talked."

Ron glanced up from the carpet as his shoulders pulled out of their slouch, and, after a second's hesitation, he said, "So I can stay?"

"Three weeks," Hermione told him with a sternly upheld finger, "You can stay for three weeks and after that I'm sending you to the pound, job or not."

The grin wormed its way back across Ron's firestorm of freckles. "You're the man, Hermione," he said, clapping her on the back as he stepped to the door once again, "I'll go get my stuff."

"Woman," Hermione corrected with a fond scowl at the closing door. How could Ron of all people forget that?

…

Outside in the fog-fucked world of rain, Dean glared at the gothic monstrosity rising from the grass, mud, and mist, scowled deeply at the Latin inscription carved over the entryway. Seriously, who did these people think they were? Was wearing robes half the time and waving little sticks of wood not enough for them? They had to live in a goddamn castle, too? Not like he had anything against your common witch, but he'd never been a big fan of all the whimsical shit surrounding the magical world… and being in England only made it that much worse, that much more old-fashioned and aristocratic. Give him exhaust fumes and barbeque any day; here it was just… too wet.

He shot the wrought-iron gateway the finger, hoisted his duffel higher on his shoulder, and trudged through the squelching grass towards the rock prison that awaited him higher on the slope. It stared over his head from a thousand indifferent windows, rejecting his hatred, and that only pissed Dean off all the more. He didn't belong here and the goddamn castle knew it, but it wasn't like misery in marriage was anything new, and Dean had to go in even if the fucking thing was gonna send ten tons of rock crashing down on his head as soon as he set the first foot inside.

Then again, since when exactly had Dean's life been a joy ride? Ha…Since never. Fuckin' A, man, but what can a guy do? So in he went.

The door shut behind him of its own accord, making Dean mutter a few meaningless (but still fairly impolite) phrases under his breath. He was supposed to go talk to this tool named Percy Weasley who was apparently some sort of somebody in the school's bureaucracy, but Dean'd be damned if anyone he'd talked to so far had heard of the guy. The address on the sheet he'd snatched from the printer back at JFK before sprinting to his departure gate (no surprise, he'd been cutting his timing tighter than a leotard) listed the dude's office as room 38 on the fourth floor, but when Dean showed up, this turned out to be a bathroom. At least, it was labeled "Lady's Lounge" in flaking lavender letters, so Dean assumed that's what it was.

With a glower at the door, he dumped his duffel against the wall and wrestled his cell phone out of a very wet and very resistant jacket pocket.

Except there was no reception… of course.

Fucking magical bastards.

Dean was psyching himself up to go knock at room 36 and demand some answers (or at least some Advil to get rid of the massive headache this whole thing was giving him), when the door to the Lady's Lounge whipped open and smooshed him flat against the corridor wall.

"Oh, shit!" the bastard who'd done it said, "Sorry."

Immediately, the door was dragged back so that Dean could breathe again, and the guy who'd come through it and caused this whole mess in the first place repeated his apology as fingers of pink crawled up his cheeks. "Sorry."

Dean rubbed at his recently-crushed torso and shot the dude a good-natured frown. At least, it was good-natured until he realized the fucker had a solid three inches on him, at which point it became the tiniest bit resentful. Dean didn't like feeling short. He was six foot one, and guys who were six foot one and as amazingly manly as Dean were not supposed to be made to feel short. Still, he kept the smile in his voice as he said, "It's cool, man. It's what I deserve for lurking behind bathroom doors."

The corner of the tall guy's mouth crinkled up. "True that," he said with an amused crease forming across the bridge of his nose, "And you were kinda lurking, weren't you."

"That's me. First class lurker," Dean acknowledged, pushing off the smooth stone of the wall as he realized that he might have found a guide dog of sorts. "Actually, though, I'm looking for this administrative dude… uh…" He consulted his crumpled reference sheet. "Percy Weasley."

"Oh yeah," the tall guy nodded, and he hooked a thumb back over his shoulder, "Just talked to him. He's in there."

"What? The women's bathroom?" Dean's eyebrows made a run up his forehead and then came crimping back down as something crossed his mind. "On that note," he pressed, "the fuck were you doing in the women's bathroom?"

"I'm flat chested," the guy said, stone-faced.

"Dude," Dean snorted, "You're, like, seven feet tall; even my blind aunt wouldn't buy that."

The guy's mouth crooked up again, and he didn't bother to push the matter. "That's his office," he explained, "Nobody got around to re-labeling the door's all."

"Huh," Dean said. "Weird."

The tall kid snorted. "Don't you mean 'charming?'"

"Nope. Don't really think I do."

Another smile and a little jog of his eyebrows in acknowledgment, and the guy was stepping away down the corridor, slinging his backpack up to settle between his shoulders. Against his height and breadth, the scruffy bag looked like it should belong to a six-year-old girl, like it was a toy, and the thought made Dean's lips quirk up in a totally ridiculous way.

"Thanks, buddy," he hollered after the retreating form.

"Sure thing," the guy called back, and then he was gone through some passage Dean couldn't see.

It was only after that, as Dean huffed into the Lady's Lounge (which, yes, was actually the relegated office space of a seriously snappy and flustered Percy Weasley), that Dean realized the guy who'd slammed the door into him had had an American accent. Huh… Maybe he wasn't quite as far from home as he'd thought.

Dean decided to find that idea comforting.

…

Harry'd done himself up in a glamour spell, but he still chose to wait until the only light was that diffused through mist by moon-shine and torch-fire before he sped across the grounds into the castle. Once within the embrace of wood, iron, and stone, his sneakers became the traitors, leaving telltale trails of mud down the hallways, and he had to flick his wand in a constant tic in order to erase all the evidence without slowing down. Not only was there the usual buzz of fame to dodge, but this time going incognito was actually a necessity. Bloody fucking nuisance, but a definite necessity.

With the castle mostly asleep, and Harry's spell-work to deter the few roaming night-owls, he made it to his destination in less than ten minutes. The torches here were out, and it was almost as dark as under the cover of the Forbidden Forest, but that hadn't bothered Harry in years; he'd enhanced his night vision for the trip, and the door's scabbed wood was as clear in the blackness as a slide under a microscope. Placing his wand against the handle, he recited the spell in his head, and then lowered it back to his side.

It was only a minute later that the door creaked open, just an inch, and a shadowed brown eye peered through.

"Harry?" a familiar voice inquired, edging on a yawn.

Hermione's confusion flummoxed him for a split second before he remembered the glamour spell, and a smile split his face in relief.

"Yeah, it's me. Hey, Hermione."

"Nice beard," she mumbled, eyelids already sinking downwards again, "Did you and Ron plan this?"

"Plan what?" Harry asked quietly as he darted a look to either side, and then, without waiting for a reply, added, "Can we talk about this inside?"

Hermione's only response was to yawn and step back from the door so that Harry could push it the rest of the way open and slip through.

"Plan showing up together," she finished, smiling at Harry now that he'd dropped the glamour and she could make out the familiar shadows his glasses painted across his cheek bones.

"Ron's here?" Harry asked. He tucked his wand into his robes and tossed his traveling cloak onto the nearest chair. "Since when?"

"I'll take that as a no," Hermione murmured as she attempted to get a good read on Harry's health. He'd seemed bonier the last few times they'd chatted, not that he hadn't always been bony, but she thought that it had become something more. Unfortunately, the warm glow of her wand tip wasn't bright enough to make a detailed study, and she didn't want to really light up the room for fear of waking Ron, so, giving up and answering Harry's question instead, she said, "He's been here since early afternoon."

"Hmm," Harry mumbled. He'd taken a chair and Hermione could make out the nervous up and down jarring of his right knee.

She sighed. Why couldn't men ever simply come out and say things? "What's wrong, Harry?"

"What? Oh, nothing."

She sighed again and rubbed the dream-fog from her eyes. "Don't be a moron. You didn't come here in the middle of the night to putter about in my kitchen, and if you did then I'm going to hex you so badly you walk funny for a week, so spit it out."

Harry managed a small smile at that. Hermione, by some mysterious power of her own, was always able to make him feel like the same clueless freshman he'd been when he'd first stepped onto the Hogwarts grounds fourteen years ago. "It's work," he said at last. "It's… not good, and I need… a place…" He let the words fade out and looked up at her hopefully. She was smart. She knew what he wanted.

Another sigh puffed out of the semi-darkness. "You need a place to stay. To hide," Hermione stated with resignation. There was only the tiniest of pauses before this was followed by, "Yes, alright. Though I honestly can't believe you and Ron didn't plan this." Harry could hear the soft scrub of skin on skin as she rubbed her eyes again. "Are you two trying to get me sacked?" she went on in an only infinitesimally accusatory voice, "Because you know this isn't allowed, right?"

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled with his eyes on the tabletop. He was, but that didn't mean he was going to reconsider taking her up on her offer. It wasn't like any time before; he needed a place to hide, and he knew Hermione could give him that. It's why he'd come.

Hermione sighed into the seat next to him and then reached out to give him a quick hug. "You're an idiot," she said, "but I'm glad you're here."

Harry smiled for real then. He was glad, too.