A/N: Hello to all! Happy almost new year! 2022 already; how time flies.
I am so excited to bring y'all CHAPTER 2 of this AU, which is not very long, but sets us up for some good stuff next time.
Thank you thank you to cheesyficwriter and accio_broom, who are absolute godsends.
Please leave a review if you like it! They fuel my motivation :D
With a small pop, Ron and Hermione materialised on a small cobblestone road nestled between rows of terraced houses.
"Oh no," Hermione whispered, shivering. "We shouldn't have apparated, Ron. I-"
She was cut off by the appearance of a burly man in mud-brown robes, who rounded the corner with urgency and strode along the narrow alley. His voice, deep and angry, barked out, "have you got her?"
"Come again?"
Surprised by the authority and sharpness of this response, Hermione snapped her gaze towards Ron. His eyes glinted as he stepped his formidable frame between her and the oncoming wizard. She wished her hands weren't still fastened behind her back.
The man drew his wand, his heavy brow furrowing as he growled, "have you got the deserter?"
Maintaining his hold on her bindings, Ron's wand appeared in the fingertips of his other hand as though summoned. He held it loosely at his side, his nonchalant stance more intimidating to Hermione than the overbearing stature of his opponent.
"Yeah, I've got her."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the man demanded. "Hand her over."
Ron didn't move. "Standard protocol is to bring her to the holding cells."
"You did your bit, mate. I'll take it from here. Don't be daft."
Ron barked a laugh and tilted his head to the side. "I assume you know who I am?"
There was a long moment where the two men stared at each other, Ron with a casual smile and the burly man with a noticeable scowl. Finally, he nodded, grunting, "Weasley."
"Then what you really should be asking yourself, mate." Ron twirled his wand around his fingers with dexterous speed. "Is who, in this scenario, is the one being fucking daft?"
The man's eyes flicked to Ron's wand as he tightened his grip on his own.
"Oh come on, let's not do this," Ron urged. "You can get her from the holding cells in three days per the proper protocol."
Grunting, the man jerked his head and turned on his heel. "I'll be waiting," he called, not breaking stride.
Ron remained in his relaxed but alert posture until the man's cloak disappeared around the corner.
"I'm not sure how much time we have, so." He turned towards Hermione and reached around her back, tapping her handcuffs with his wand. She caught a whiff of his familiar, faintly minty scent, a wave of nostalgia rolling over her.
The cuffs popped open on her left hand and he pulled her still secure right hand out in front of her, fastening his own wrist to the other side. She was trying to figure how being handcuffed to each other could possibly lend itself to speed, but then he tapped again with his wand and the handcuffs disappeared completely, replaced by a thick black ring of ink encircling her wrist, set into her skin like a tattoo.
A matching one appeared on his wrist as well, his existing tattoos jumping out of the way to accommodate it.
Wait, what?
"Are you familiar with magical handcuffs?" Ron asked, commanding her attention.
"Oh, yes," she responded, temper spiking as she tore her eyes away from the designs on his forearm. "I get arrested all the time. Are these the newest model?"
"As infuriating as ever."
"I don't really see how you're in a position to be infuriated, as I'm the one who's been taken from her home with no explanation."
His eyes flashed dangerously, filling her with satisfaction. Something about angering him calmed her, like her defiance made her feel less helpless.
Ron closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling a deep breath. "The magical handcuffs will limit you so that you cannot be more than ten metres away from me at any given time."
"What happens if I am?" She frowned, rubbing at her wrist. She couldn't feel any raised ridges or scarring.
"You'll freeze." He shrugged. "You'll freeze in place, regardless of what's happening around you, until I get close enough to you again."
Hermione didn't like the sound of that. It meant she would be completely helpless to protect herself in any event where she might be outside the range of the handcuffs. "What if another Unspeakable shows up and I need to duel? Isn't that dangerous?"
"Extremely. I don't recommend it. Now c'mon."
He stalked away, leaving her with no option but to follow. They turned onto a larger road, obviously in a residential part of whatever town he'd brought her to. The street was lined with parked cars and thin trees that grew in small plots patterned in the pavement. Colourful leaves littered the ground, shifting in the gentle, though cold, breeze that funnelled between the red-brick buildings.
Shivering, annoyed with both Ron's harsh attitude towards her and the lack of information about her arrest, Hermione rushed to match his stride. She clenched her fists as he ignored her, and resolved to regain some control, the only way she knew how.
Intellectually.
"He traced your apparition, you know."
She'd expected him to be shocked or confused. She'd hoped that he'd pause, maybe even stop altogether, demanding answers. She didn't expect his stoic two-word response as he marched ahead, not even bothering to glance her way.
"I know."
She stutter-stepped, surprised, and jogged to meet his pace again.
"You know?" She laughed, halfway between hysterical and derisive. "You know, but you still apparated us here?" She surveyed the sleepy, clearly Muggle town. "Where is here, anyway?"
He turned a corner down a narrow alley, Hermione hot on his heels.
"Amersham."
"Amersham?" The streets around them were becoming more populated, the frequency of the shops bringing with them denser crowds of people. Hermione lowered her voice. "What on earth is in Amersham?"
"A big holding cell where we keep criminals."
"Oh." Her heart sank. She wanted desperately to read his face, to try to ascertain information from his historically quite expressive features, but he'd put his sunglasses back on.
She'd have to goad him into talking, then.
"And is it common practice to bring people here after you arrest them?"
"Yeah, for a case like this one, sure."
"What exactly is a case like this one?"
Ron stopped walking without warning and opened the door of an Enterprise car rental agency, the door tinkling merrily. He gestured for her to enter as he answered. "An arrest they want to keep secret, or that requires more investigation before a trial."
She gulped.
Unable to ask him more in the presence of so many other people, she wordlessly walked through the door. He followed, and after a brief wait, they were able to speak to someone. Hermione had halfway anticipated that Ron would struggle in renting a Muggle car, but he asked for a sedan with promises of returning it in three days, even throwing a disarming grin at the giggling representative, who blushed and brushed her hands against his for just a little too long when Ron handed the Muggle cash over. Hermione shouldn't have been astonished, she supposed, when he took the keys, thanked the woman politely, and walked towards the back exit as though this were a perfectly normal thing he'd done thousands of times.
A lot had changed, it seemed.
She followed him into the car park behind the store, the reality of her situation hitting her with renewed desperation. Ron unlocked the car and opened the passenger door, waiting for her to climb in. She dug in her metaphorical heels, feeling the panic mount in her chest like an overinflated balloon.
"If you think I'm just going to get in quietly so you can drive me to a detainment centre," Hermione hissed, glaring at him, "then you can shove it in your-"
Ron snorted. "Just get in the fucking car, love."
Oh, he was going to drive the Muggle car, was he? Fine with her. She'd love to see him fail. He could pretend he knew about Muggles all he wanted, but she knew Ron Weasley, and actually driving a car was another thing entirely.
If she only had her wand, she'd show him exactly what she thought of his-
"Any day, Hermione."
Fuming, she settled into the passenger seat, trying her best to shoot lasers through his back with her eyes as he shut the door and walked around to the driver's side.
In no time at all, they were heading north on the M1. The fact that Ron was driving the car without even a moment of hesitation was eliciting many confusing and opposing emotions in Hermione, emotions she pushed aside to dwell on another time.
They left Amersham behind, the buildings in her window devolving to the varied greens and yellow hues of the countryside.
"How far out of town is this holding cell?"
"About twenty miles back."
She looked at him in shock, her mind whirling into overdrive. She needed to focus, and approach the circumstances more logically.
She should have realised he wouldn't need to drive her to a magical holding cell, would he? He wouldn't care if their apparition was being tracked if all he was doing was dropping her off at jail.
Why did he apparate to Amersham then, if he had no intention of taking her to the holding cell? That Unspeakable had found them so quickly, but Ron hadn't been surprised to see him…unless…
Hermione stared at his profile, the words slipping from her in a comprehending whisper. "You wanted them to know we were here."
His grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles were white.
"That's why you apparated," she continued. "You know they can trace apparition now, and you wanted the Department of Mysteries to know that you'd brought me here."
Ron didn't answer, but Hermione couldn't stop the flow of words, the revelation spilling out of her.
"You bought us time. By letting the Ministry know that we're in Amersham, the Aurors and Unspeakables will stop looking for me, and now the latter knows they can't get to me for another three days. I imagine the former will assume I'm in processing or something until the Department of Mysteries comes knocking again? It's genius."
Ron sat in silence for so long that Hermione wasn't sure he was going to answer. Just when she was about to give up expecting one, his raspy voice broke its stony silence.
"Yes."
Hermione's emotions buoyed the other way, swinging from panic and desperation to confusion with a glimmer of hope. She was still magically handcuffed to and sharing a car with a very grumpy Auror, but at least he didn't seem to be inclined to bring her into custody.
Not yet, anyway.
Something else was bothering her though, aside from the mystery of why she'd been arrested to begin with.
"How did you know about the ability to track apparition?"
He took his time, flipping on the indicator to switch lanes and passing another car before answering.
"I was informed of the new spells as part of my job. How do you know about it?"
"Well…I developed it."
"You-" Ron shook his head, chancing a glance in her direction. "Are you serious? That technology is so invasive."
"It's based on the same theory behind the Trace," she answered, somewhat avoiding his accusation.
The truth was, she partially agreed. She hadn't been considering the repercussions of her research when she'd been feverishly pursuing it, but in hindsight, part of her knew that the fact that the Ministry was able to track where anyone went, without their consent…
"You have to be within a certain proximity and timeframe of the apparition to be able to track it," she said, feeling some unexplainable need to defend herself. "Magic leaves traces, which is how we can follow where an apparition leads, but the residue dilutes in a matter of a few minutes, so you'd have to be close to the origin of the charm within a small window of time to accurately track where someone has apparated to."
Ron muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "fucking scientists," and Hermione's cheeks heated. Her righteous anger dissipated like wind from sails, and she slumped in her seat.
"I wanted to help catch criminals." She blinked her eyes a few times, ignoring the burning and turning away from him to stare at the countryside zipping by. "I was thinking of y…well, I wanted Aurors to be able to track fugitives. I never dreamed that the Ministry would use it for anything else."
In the reflection of the window, she watched with some curiosity as he removed his hand from the steering wheel and reached it towards her, before recoiling and placing it on his leg, clenched in a fist.
"I know about the apparition tracing tech because I'm an Auror, Hermione. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
Relieved he'd shown even a sign of humanity, she found herself rambling. "Well, the magic is so new, and my understanding was the Ministry was going to train only the Aurors who performed the most dangerous, complex, classified missions, as opposed to the whole department. More like the special units than the…general…population…"
But she lost steam with every word she spoke, pivoting in her seat slowly as she stared at Ron with renewed horror.
She didn't have to ask. The severe purse of his lips told her everything she needed to know.
Her emotions strung out, she now fought the overwhelming weight of helplessness and fear. Ron wasn't a normal Auror, called to protect normal citizens from normal crime. He was a special units expert, which meant he was armed, highly trained, and likely operating outside of the standard confines of an Auror's jurisdiction.
One thing was for certain: she shouldn't think of him as the man she used to know.
"Why would they send someone like you to get me?" she squeaked, wringing her hands. "I'm not dangerous, or a threat."
He replaced his second hand on the steering wheel, face again unreadable.
"Why indeed."
Three hours passed in unbearable silence. Hermione kept her gaze firmly fixed out the window, folding her arms around herself. The sun had long since gone down, given the time of year, and the coolness of the silence between them seemed amplified by the absolute dark.
It was hard to fathom Ron Weasley as someone she couldn't trust. Yes, it had been over a decade since she'd last seen him, but back at Uni, he was one of- scratch that- he WAS her most reliable constant.
She'd been so young back then, so sure of herself. She cringed now thinking of it; even as a teenager she'd been overconfident in her opinions.
Hermione had decided when she started Uni that she had no intention of being in a long-term, committed relationship. She wanted to experience all the things that a typical college kid experiences: falling in love, maybe, but also one-night stands, dorm room flings, casual dating, even heartbreak. She didn't want to be one of those stereotypical girls who wasted her Uni years on one man.
So when she'd met Ron Weasley in a Distillation and Effusion potions lab during her first term, she'd had no idea how much he was going to change her life. She'd agreed to a few dates, refusing to let him label it, thinking it'd fizzle out quickly.
But it hadn't. Weeks turned into months turned into years, and even though they bickered, they'd never called it quits. Not even for a night. Not even long enough for her to do something she regretted. She'd always stayed loyal to Ron Weasley.
He tried to tell her how he felt, Merlin knows he tried, but she wouldn't let him. They weren't official, she'd said. How could he say he's in love when we're only casually dating? She'd asked.
He'd always chuckled, and clutch her hand tighter.
We can call this anything you want, Hermione. I'm yours.
He didn't need a label to have been her four-year Uni boyfriend, but it was only with the grace of age that she'd been able to recognize that fact.
In hindsight, she'd owed him a break-up conversation, or a big fight, or at least an explanation of why she'd had to leave.
But she hadn't done any of those things. She'd left him overnight. She'd packed her bags and started her new job without a second thought. At the time, she honestly thought that he understood, but she'd been so wrong.
Now this man was responsible for the fate of her future.
Hindsight's a bitch.
About thirty minutes ago, Ron had begun to veer west, and in the lights lining the highway, Hermione could make out the telltale rocky coastline and small fishing piers of the Irish Sea.
"Wales?"
Only shock could have spurred her into speech, though when the single word escaped her, reverberating through the ice-cold silence of the car, she immediately regretted it.
He grunted.
She licked her lips, turning her attention out the front windshield so she could see Ron from her peripherals. Oh well, in for a penny…
"Where are you taking me in Wales?"
They happened to be passing under a streetlight, which illuminated the inside of the rental car for a single moment. In the flash of the second, she saw the corner of his mouth nearest to her curl as he spoke a single word.
"Holyhead."