Hermione gulped hard as she stood in the rain. Shivers rippled up and down her spine. What in the hell was this crazy officer doing bringing her here?

To a church of all places.

She had never once stepped foot inside one. Her kind didn't aa a rule. Everybody knew what churches did with witches? The Inquisition? Lighting the streets of London with the bodies of witches? Wurzburg, Copenhagen, North Berwick? Salem here in the United States? Was this country truly so devoid charity that they resorted to pawning off young, pregnant girls on churches?

A wide umbrella popped open over the woman's head and she sauntered over. A warm hand settled on the center of Hermione's back. The woman's gaze drifted from her face to her collar and then to the police car rolling into the inky night. Hermione nervously itched at it and her fingers came back slicked red. Worry creased the woman's face, and then sadness. "Oh dear. Do you need to get that looked at? I'll take you to the hospital."

Streamers of cold rain glistened in the streetlights as they rolled off the umbrella. She flicked her head side to side. She had no desire to spend the whole night in a hospital waiting room, outdoors, or in a jail cell. She could mend it quickly enough once she got away from this woman. "I'm ok."

It's just one night.

Officer Griffin said that because it was her choice, they couldn't legally hold her.

Her teeth chattered and her eyelids drooped. One night, and she would leave in the morning. Hermione's stomach rumbled. The woman continued. "Did you have any dinner? I can heat you up a plate of chicken parmigana. I think we've still got some garlic bread left over."

She was trying to say no, but her traitorous mouth was salivating. She hadn't ate a decent meal in four days now. One night. "Thank you. That sounds wonderful."

"Come on. Lets get out of the rain and get you into some dry clothes."

Her skin crawled as she crossed the threshold. Her entire body itched and pinged and craned towards freedom. It made no sense, but the metallic clank of the steel door locking behind her shook her worse than getting pitched into Malfoy's dungeon. The door had a simple pushbar on the inside. A sigh of relief heaved out. You can leave whenever you want. They're the ones locked out.

Tomorrow.

Once her brain stilled, the place was not what she expected. Smooth, white walls lit by fluorescent lights were dotted with display cases full of pictures. Groups of normal looking people smiled and posed under banners of cheap tissue paper letters. Others held pictures of parade floats and work groups in foreign countries. The thing that was missing was magic. The walls were silent. The asbestos tile floor didn't cry out with demands. It was more like an elementary school than the sort of place which lit their halls with the carcasses of witches.

A shiver rippled through her. Muggle blood was as good as wizard's blood.

The woman in front of her stopped and turned. "Did you need something?"

She froze. Did she hear that? "No, I'm just tired."

The woman continued on, chitter chattering as they turned corner after corner. Finally, after what must have been the two-hundredth door, they entered a wide dormitory. The woman pointed to a dented table heaped with folded clothing. "Here, sweetie. Now, do you have any clothes?"

She shook her head. Truly shit planning on her part, but apparently, that was her life. The woman motioned towards shirts and pants and under garments. She picked some and they wound their way to a bathroom containing two dozen stalls and as many sinks and showers. "I'm sure you would like to get cleaned up."

She nodded and the woman passed her a ziplock bag full of toiletries. Her whole body ached. She hadn't had a shower in three days and was itching to brush her teeth. The woman gasped when she stripped down. She hadn't thought about all the black and blue from The Battle of Hogwarts barely three days ago.

The hot shower was wonderful, though, and washed away a thick layer of stress and stink. Gray sweat pants and a tee shirt with the name of some church camp rounded out her eveningwear. Half an hour later, her neck was freshly bandaged. Next, they headed off to an older kitchen equipped with cheap wooden cabinets and stainless steel tables. The woman slid a large pan out of the refrigerator and scooped her a heap of spaghetti noodles and topped it with a chicken breast patty covered with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. The microwave oven hummed and then dinged. Her nostrils filled with the rich scent of chicken, basil, and tomato sauce.

Heidi didn't exactly sound like a churchy sort of name. She was expecting something more... I don't know... Biblical sounding. But when she tried to think of church names, she came up blank. She was busy stuffing her mouth while the woman chattered away about their charity. The woman paused. "Would you like some more?"

Of course not, I've got a whole plateful... but it was empty. Chicken and pasta, garlic bread, and salad, all gone. Where did it go? There was no possible way. Her stomach answered for her. The woman chuckled and fixed her another helping.

White sheets and beige blankets nestled her in and the humming lamps vanished.

She shot straight up half a dozen times from the padding feet of girls groaning and rubbing swollen bellies as they headed to the bathroom. Her brain itched. It was too open, too careless, and there were too many muggles to set proper wards. Her nails dug into the palm of her hand. Her arms ached from gripping her wand. Hermione rolled to the right and stared at the rows of beds. Her magic swelled and pinged, craning to sense even the tiniest disturbance, but it was too noisy and unprotected.

A doe eyed girl with pink cheeks and greasy, blonde hair stared at her over the white sheets, and eventually whispered, "My pimp said he would kill me if I ran. He said he would tell my parents what I do."

"It's ok to be afraid. Being cautious keeps us alive."

The girl nodded. "I'm Pinky, but my real name is Ellen."

"I'm 'mione."

The girl's clear blue eyes twinkled. "Minnie, like the mouse. I like that. One of the girls said they give us new names. You know, so nobody will find us."

That was an interesting twist. The girl chitter chattered on like a first year, but she lacked the innocence. It was hard to believe girls that young could be pregnant. The girl went on about how she had no other place to go. She told of giving a man blowjobs every morning so she could stay in his apartment, but he still kicked her out when her boobs got all veiny and her belly grew and she had doctors appointments.

What of herself, then? She couldn't rent an apartment and had no car. Where was she supposed to go? The prospect of performing sexual acts as rent disgusted her.

The wake up alarm shook a bleary eyed Hermione out before the dawn. A dozen older women herded them through the bathroom and off to chapel which had a book at each padded chair. A priest gave a short message that was nothing more than buzzing in her ears while she pulled and twisted at the cover of the church book. There weren't any charms or magic on it, but the cover may as well have been nailed shut. Was it some sort of decoration? The other girls simply ignored them. Then came breakfast. She wanted to gorge, but a sour burp brushed her back. Like herself, most of the girls were eating light, testing nibbles of fruit and toast. Earl gray with cream and sugar, however was welcome. After washing dishes, the other girls went off to school. She would have beat a path out the door, except Logical Brain reminded her that it was still raining... And she had exactly zero prospects for either a job or living arrangements.

They weren't forcing her to stay. The doors were open. She thought back to chapel. The priest had offered a prayer of safety for the girl that had left last night. The man genuinely surprised her, reminding her of Remus Lupin rather than Umbridge or Lucius Malfoy. Did they have people out hunting the girl down? One of them called Chica said they didn't. She had left and then came back. Life was just too hard on the streets.

One of the church women collected her and four other girls for orientation. Staff members talked a bit about what the place did and their situations. Then came a short video about the charity. Perhaps they were concealing their motives, but there was not a single mention of witches. The onboarding process included a long checklist full of names and tasks. Her job was to complete the whole list by the end of the week. If nothing else, Hermione was impressed by their organization and intentionality. Hogwarts would do well to take a lesson from these people.

Next came a snack and a video about being pregnant. She chuckled at the title, "What To Expect When You're Expecting." It went over the changes in the female body, the baby's development, the division of the trimesters, and so forth. She was shocked. This was literally the first time she had ever received any information about what happens now. While they had spent tons of effort on birth control, the fact that she had never once run across anything about actually being pregnant seemed suspicious, especially given the wizarding community's chronically low birth rate.

They continued on from office to office, meeting various staff and checking off the million administrative items needed.

After the rounds of videos came legal identification. Most of the girls had literally none. About half didn't even properly have names, just pimps nicknames. Sugar, bitty, curls, slim, goldie, and so forth. They all laughed when Ellen called her Minnie. "Like the mouse!" Not a single one of them used real names. She was officially one of them.

Half an hour later, she was sitting across from a gray haired man wearing a suit and rimless glasses. Every scrap of his being shouted, "lawyer." He introduced himself and then offered her a donut. She was saying no when her stomach rumbled. She winked. "I guess the baby says yes."

The sweetness evaporated onto her tongue as he explained the situation. Without proper legal identification, none of the benefits available to women in her situation could be used. It was sticky, because most teenagers don't have anything outside of their parents. In her situation, it would land her in jail or get her deported. Worse, traffickers could use their old identities to track them down. Luckily, they had a solution. They talked a bit and she slid Jessica's Australian passport and ID card across the table. The lawyer eyed it a bit and slid it back. "Now comes your choice. I recommend you leave Jessica behind and start fresh."

People were looking for the girl who died in the car wreck. The ticketing trail would lead them straight to her while her lack of American credentials would ensure deportation. The girl's family would come, or at a minimum, send the local authorities to investigate. The logic was straightforward enough. The group needed to get one of the girls out of the United States. Records would show that Jessica Mallory returned to Australia. Hermione would take the name and identity of a girl who was born the same year she had been, but died at one year old. She filled out the forms to for a "copy" of her Montana birth certificate. With any luck, that would show up in a week. Then she would apply for a replacement social security card. Once those two things were in hand, she could get an official Oregon ID card.

Hermione was now "Kay." Her story? Kaylee Rae Rickson's father served in the United States Air Force at RAF Burtonwood. She grew up in England, hence the accent. Her parents died in a car accident last year and that got her shipped back to the states. She had bumped around and ended up pregnant.

She was a bit nervous with a background that tied her to England, but it was a fresh start.

With her new name and information memorized, she was off to a clinic. The doctor verified she was pregnant, gave her a tentative due date, declared her underweight, and prescribed piles of vitamins. From there, it was off to the local career center for job aptitude tests, which, unsurprisingly, indicated "Pharmacy Technician."

Hermione gulped down the turkey sandwich, crisps, two pickles, and salad, while pondering whether it was a boy or a girl. Baby names were floating through her head when the next round of testing began. She was ready to ace the highschool graduate equivalency exam, but instead gritted her teeth and cried as question after question eluded her. Maths, English, Social studies, Science, and History mocked the so called brightest swot of her age. She bombed subject after subject, barely breaking a twenty percent aptitude. How was it even possible that Hogwarts valedictorian to be was so completely incompetent? The woman patted her shoulder. "You did a lot better than most of the girls. They barely know anything besides counting money."

The woman's hand was warm on her shoulder. Her sides ached as the sobs sniffed out. How had she failed to recognize the utter uselessness of witching curriculum in the muggle world. Her parents were DENTISTS for Merlin's sake.

Their final stop for the day was a chemist, (called an apothecary in America,) named "Spice and tea." The door swung open with a welcoming jingle and the heady aroma of potion ingredients calmed her frazzled nerves. She roamed the aisles as the woman ambled to the counter and tapped the bell. An older man with olive skin and an unruly heap of kinky, black hair came through the back door. Hermione was turning a corner behind a pallet of crushed oyster shell when the shop keeper and her escort twisted their heads and transformed. Orange and white fur sheeted his skin. His jaws widened and lengthened into a fox-like canine snout dotted with short whiskers. Short horns sprouted out of her head as coarse, black spotted brown fur covered her body. Her nose lengthened into a goat-like profile.

She pushed her hand over her mouth to conceal her gasp. These were Wesen! She had read about the human-monster chimeras in Hogwarts forbidden section. They had been exiled from Spain in 1492 and then Wizarding England in 1516 under Henry VIII's wife Catherine. She slowly crept to the counter. They were already back in their human forms when she whispered, "I don't want to be rude, but are you Wesen?"

They froze and stared at her. She continued, "I've read about Wesen but I've never seen them in real life."

The man raised his nose and slowly sniffed. She waited, but they remained silent. It was taking too long, so... "I can't transform. I think the right term for me is vorrherrscher?" She snapped and a shimmering blue witchlight flicked off her fingertips. The glistening orb hovered over the counter until a quick wave vanished it. She continued, "I've had some training in potions."

He frowned. She focused her powers and touched his hand. "Please. My parents were murdered. I haven't got anything."

The man pinched the bridge of his nose. "I... I guess we could use some help in the evenings packing orders and stocking the store." He introduced himself as George Calvert and took her information.

It was twenty minutes back to the church. She was introduced to a group of about twenty children with various stages of swollen bellies. Hermione gawked. Like Pinky, none of the girls looked older than twelve. Most had tattoos while some sported brands. Many had missing teeth, needle tracks, and pocked scars from cigarette burns dotting their arms and legs. Shock turned to fury and then sadness as the officer's words replayed in her head

Their chore was mopping out the hallways this week. Hermione had seen her mother do it, but she had always charmed the tools like Mrs. Weasley. There was no way she could do that around these girls. They didn't waste any time, jumping straight into drawing hot water, mixing in some cleaning chemicals, and swabbing the stringy mops over the floor. She grabbed one and followed their lead, dry mopping after one of the girls wet mopped.

The gray water made her grimace, but the piney scent of disinfectant didn't bother her stomach. They were clearly giving it a quick once over. Half an hour later, they were in thick rubber gloves scrubbing down the bathrooms. They laughed at Minnie's British accent and the unfamiliar words she used.

They went back to telling their stories. None of the girls had seen the inside of a school past third grade. Hermione's chest burned as the reality soaked in. She had lived in the lap of luxury. Even at her worst, she enjoyed privilege and pleasure these never knew. Sleeping in a bed was new to most of them. Sure, they had sex on mattresses, but they slept on the floor. Meals were another surprise. The church women coached the young girls on using forks, spoons, plates, napkins, as well as basic table manners.

Days passed and items checked off while Hermione settled into the routine. Truthfully, the lack of combat and the constant threat of death was like heaven. She flew through her high school graduate equivalency diploma prep classes and aced the test. The coursework was relatively easy once she got ahold of some books. When she wasn't studying, she tutored the girls. Only about half even knew how to read. Most of them actually spoke other languages, usually Spanish. She was fluent enough and they were thankful for someone to chat with.

Evenings started with an early dinner. While the others sat through another round of chapel, she rode the city bus through tree-lined streets to Spice and Tea where she worked with the owner's thirty-two year-old son. She stocked shelves and packed boxes while Freddie prepared orders and made deliveries. A couple weeks in, she offered to help. He was a bit wary, but sighed as he eyed the stack of order paperwork. His delivery schedule meant the backorders got worse every day.

Training began with collecting ingredients and quickly moved through preparing, mixing, compounding, and synthesis. The next week, he introduced her to The Books. Rows and rows of them stacked shelves from floor to ceiling behind the front counter. These medical manuals were full of diseases and conditions, their cures, and adjustments for various types of Wesen. Only about a quarter of them were in English. The majority were German, French, and Latin with a smattering of Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. He was gobsmacked but relieved when she read them perfectly and created the remedies without any help.

There must have been five hundred manuals out front alone. Several more lived on dusty shelves in the back. Hermione was amazed. She assumed her Potions classes were fairly thorough, but they barely scratched the surface. The main difference was that these preparations were thorough and correct. There was none of Snape's chase the recipe game of avoiding a smoldering lump of brown goo. Still, she used every trick she knew to always test potency and prepare each batch with precision.

With her grinding through the backlog, Freddy had more time for deliveries, which meant Hermione had more time to study the tomes. She sketched each Wesen she saw and noted their species along with any information she could piece together. Most had species specific allergies and health concerns. Some couldn't tolerate certain ingredients while others needed heavy doses to be effective. So many abstract pieces from her potions and herbology classes clicked together. Why had they never bothered to reveal WHY they spent so much time learning to adjust potions? Why hadn't they bothered to tell them how important it would be to revise ingredients and preparations due to a patient's specific condition? Now, it made perfect sense. She dug into the dozens of alternative preparations and made notes by the sketches of their monster chimera forms.

It took a month, but she turned up few copies of The Daily Prophet. Her heart nearly stopped. The front page featured Harry and McGonagall wrapped in chains and being dragged off to Azkaban. Neville and most of the Gryffindors were awaiting trial for their part in the battle at Hogwarts. While most of them would be paroled, Harry faced serious charges for Tom Riddle's murder, illegally fighting death eaters, and attacking the dementors sent to Hogwarts. The article cited thirty-three pages of accusations included robbing Gringots and releasing a dragon into Wizarding England. McGonagall was charged with hundreds of counts of child endangerment, as an accessory to thousands of crimes, impeding ministry investigations, and for the deaths of sixty-one students over the last year. Hermione Granger, Ron, and Ginny were on the run, and had presumably fled the country. The violence had escalated, with death eater attacks almost daily. She fumed at The Ministry's response of cracking down on those who fought to preserve the lives of the innocent, but that was the only consistent thing they had done since she learned about witches.

Her heart ached as she rolled back and forth in the bed. The guilt of leaving gnawed deep into her.

It wouldn't accomplish anything, but she still asked the priest to pray for her friends in jail. It wasn't fair that they were locked away while so many evil men were still walking free.