How are you feeling today, Ms. Granger?
I don't know, Dr. Metzker. Is that more important than getting my life back?
Hermione's head pounded with the force of fifty gavels. A terrible whine filled her ears. Black dots danced behind her eyelids. Everything hurt all at once. Slowly, she opened her eyes to a blurred pool of light just out of her reach. Cold. She was cold, and damp. Long minutes passed before she realized the chill spreading through her body came from the concrete pressed against her cheek.
Why was she on the floor?
She pressed her unsteady hands into the roughness of the brick wall and pushed herself up to her feet. The pool of light from the broken skylight cast a halo around a cluster of small objects on the floor. Hermione paused, hovering her hand over the small switch on the wall.
Somewhere above her, a bird ruffled its feathers.
She moved her fingers over the panel and the lights came on, hot and glaring. The warehouse was empty, except for her heels strewn several feet away from her purse, with its contents scattered carelessly off to the side. Compact. Wallet. Sunglasses. Muggle change. Ministry coin.
"Hello?" Her voice jumped through the vast space and bounced against something far away. A rat ran straight for her feet. She side-stepped and watched it scurry through a half-open sliding door. Beyond it, a street light flickered against a dark sky, and water lapped gently against the quiet docks.
As soon as she took a few steps towards her belongings, a high-pitched twang screamed through the air. Hermione froze, noticing the small flashing panel on the opposite wall. Wailing sirens jolted her into a flurry of gathering everything back into her purse. As a car door slammed outside, she grabbed her shoes and pushed against the sliding door. It groaned as she slipped into the night.
Hermione pressed her back against the bricks and listened to radio chatter echo from the opposite side of the building.
"Tripped alarm. Yeah, but no one's here. No, it didn't look like a forced entry. Doors weren't locked… Nah, I'm sure. Gotta be a stray animal or a squatter. The alarm probably scared 'em off."
For a split second, she considered approaching the voice. It had to be a security guard or police officer, but her body froze as she thought through her next move. Muggle police were a lot like Magical Law Enforcement. They'd ask questions and demand to know her business.
What would she tell them?
There was supposed to be a meeting…
Lights appeared as the police car made its rounds through the warehouse district. Hermione hid behind a dumpster, surrounded by the smell of rotting fish and piss until the marked car rolled out of sight. Under the flickering streetlight, she dug around in her bag for the charmed Ministry coin Ron had begged her to keep on her for emergencies. Her hand brushed against the coin, finding a small rectangle piece of cardstock. Hermione pulled the coin and the business card out of her purse.
The Freedom Wings Agency card shimmered with its foil embossed wings under the streetlight. Flipping it over, Hermione's lips soundlessly moved, spelling out the warehouse address and the time of the meeting. Eight o'clock. Her watch sported a fresh crack in the face, and she squinted to make sure she was reading the time correctly. The meeting was supposed to have been half an hour ago.
Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong, or she wouldn't have ended up blacked out on the floor. Her body ached all over, and if she had had her wand, or a spark of magic, she would have cast a healing charm and at least been able to scry for a clue about anything beyond getting out of the cab and knocking on the warehouse door.
She'd been on the floor…
Her clothes were torn…
It would be so easy to press her thumb into the Ministry seal and rub three times. Ron's team would be there in seconds. They'd ask her what happened, and when she told them she didn't remember, they'd investigate…
… the anonymous clients she was supposed to meet…
Had they been hurt? Should she report them?
But then, she had no clue who they were or if they'd even been there.
Okay, okay… she'd survived a year on the run. She could do this.
Step one: don't panic.
Step two: get out of harm's way as fast as she could.
Step three: worry about the rest after she was somewhere safe.
Hermione rounded the corner, coming to the first street off the docks. Relief spread through her when she saw no police cars in sight.
During the worst of the insidious takeover of the Ministry of Magic, Hermione and her friends had hidden from Death Eaters in the wilderness for months. Their lives had been on the line. She worked for the new Ministry, now. No one was after her, for Merlin's sake. Getting back to her flat should be as simple as putting on her shoes and walking in the right direction.
On the first step, Hermione pitched forward as pain shot through her ankle and up her leg. Catching herself against the locked gates of a seafood market entrance, she kicked the heel of her shoe free from whatever it had caught on, and then winced as the heel snapped clean off.
Never mind the shoes, then. Hermione packed her heels in her bag and kept walking, each step spotlighted by the blinking red letters spelling out 'C-L-O-S-E-D'.
Low, sultry music and the smell of acrid wolfsbane wafted out of a dark space between buildings out to the street. If she had tucked her wand inside her bag, the people inside would at least have recognized her status and likely left her alone. Barefoot and injured, she tried to hide her limp as well as she could. To the residents of London's underbelly, nothing was more irresistible than a helpless thing, lost in the dark.
"Aw, hon. Bad date?" a throaty voice called from the alley across the street. Hermione hunched her shoulders and quickened her stride, ignoring her throbbing ankle.
Not injured. Not lost. Keep moving.
People kept telling her how lucky she was to be alive. And she was. She could hide her scars from view, unlike some she knew. Last time she visited Lavender in the long-term werewolf recovery facility, her friend was still sporting angry streaks of scar tissue all over her body with no hope of ever walking again. It was disturbing how nonchalantly her friend had confided in her that 'not waking up one day wouldn't be a bad thing'.
Everyone had war wounds, she reminded herself. Some were internal, like Ron's. Losing his brother had beaten him down, but he soldiered on - for her - for his family. Loss had made him clingy and sentimental, and sometimes over-the-top suffocating. Occasionally, she'd think about her old classmates and how she hadn't owled them in a while, and then she'd remember how many of them were gone, too.
"I've got something to take the edge off," the voice called. "You look like you need it."
She needed something, but the anonymous offer wasn't likely going to include making a cab magically appear to take her back to her flat.
The voice followed her across the next block, this time coming from the alley up ahead. "You won't get any Johns looking like that."
Hermione's ankle throbbed as her steps came to a halt. "What exactly are you accusing me of?" she called into the night.
A woman stepped out of the darkness, partially lit by a florist's window. Her flowing maroon dress brushed against her ankles, held up by two strips of fabric tied behind her neck that barely grazed her breasts. She looked put out by Hermione's very presence, as if the entire street belonged to her alone.
"Good thing too," the woman continued, "because you won't like what's coming to you if you swipe one of my kerb crawlers."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Hermione must look like a vulnerable, wounded mess of a Muggle, but on the inside, she seethed. She'd been a hero once. A powerful witch. She would not let some street woman accuse her of soliciting when she clearly intended to be anywhere but here.
Suddenly, a firm hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Instinct took over, and Hermione swung her extra large pocketbook in an arc, aimed at the woman's head.
Her bag missed as the woman deftly sidestepped and lunged forward. Before Hermione could react, a hand grabbed her chin, holding her in place. The stench of stale ale fanned over her face. "You fresh little crumpet, trying to serve on my street. I won't let you… Oh!"
The woman's indignation evaporated. Her hand dropped from Hermione's chin. "They've gotten to you," she said. "Please, please don't tell them I'm here."
"Who?" Hermione asked, her mind reeling.
The woman backed into the glass, her backless dress smearing the window, obscuring a vase of lilies. "I'll do anything, whatever you want. Here." She pulled a wad of bills out from somewhere Hermione didn't want to guess and stuffed them into the large shoulder bag, patting it gently. "Notes make it better, don't they?"
"Money doesn't fix everything," Hermione shot back, rubbing at her useless arm.
The barely dressed woman cowered, eyes darting to look down the street and back at Hermione. They stared at each other for a long moment, as if the woman expected another demand.
A million questions filled Hermione's head, tempered by the slim chance that this woman might know something about the warehouses down the street. The woman's flighty posture suggested that she would rather run than willingly take part in an impromptu interrogation. Hermione let the moment linger, and finally, broke the silence with a question the woman was most likely to know.
"Do you know where I can get a cab?"
The woman pointed with a shaky hand down the street in the direction Hermione had been walking. Vine tattoos snaked from her wrist to her shoulder. "Two more blocks south, and you'll get to the main road. Please, I wasn't here."
Hermione counted the blocks down the row of lamplights and figured it would take another minute before she reached the main street. When she turned back to the florist's window, the woman had disappeared. She couldn't fathom what had the woman so spooked that she'd give a wad of cash to a stranger. But there was nothing to be done about it except hope that the cab would show up where the woman had pointed. She began walking again, this time not bothering to hide the limp.
Another glass-front, this one filled with wheels, gears and chains, came up on her left. She caught her reflection in the light and almost tripped over herself. Hair awry, blouse torn… her pencil skirt sported a nasty side seam rip that, if she moved the wrong way, exposed her underthings.
Bucking hippogriffs, no wonder that woman acted strangely. She quickly adjusted her roughed up coat, pulling her sleeve down to the wrist. Then she tucked her gnarled hand into the pocket.
Well, that was better, but her reflection still made it look like the aftermath of her recurring nightmare, where a thick bolt of orange light had slammed her into the crumbling castle wall. It was the point fixed in her mind, where everything had started to change.
Hermione gripped the Ministry coin in her fist, wondering again if she should just take the easy way out.
At first, she thought she'd escaped the war with only a bruised shoulder. She went back to the renovated castle for her final year at Hogwarts, and afterwards, found a position at the Ministry in Magical Law.
But a year into her career, things started to slide downhill. It started with a splinching while apparating home from the engagement party. The Mediwitch blamed it on the champagne and reattached the tip of her index finger with no complications. Then her dictation quill began omitting dates and times from her correspondence, causing her to miss important meetings with her boss. Wards in her flat suddenly deactivated. Doors and windows flew open in the middle of the night.
Initially, the Healers wrote her symptoms off as a fluke. No one admitted that anything was wrong until the veins in her arm darkened and she lost control of her fingers. One day, she woke up to a gnarled mass of blackened, useless digits attached to her wrist and couldn't even cast a warming charm to heat her kettle.
Her magic was gone.
Ron sent her back and forth between Healers at every opportunity, saying, "Maybe this time they'll find something…" Lengthy and expensive consultations with the CurseBreakers had yielded only frustration and too much time off from work. After months and months of experimental reverse-hexes and useless potions, he didn't understand when she told him she wasn't going back for more treatments. He couldn't fathom her accepting that she was no longer capable of casting spells. And he sure as hell had a hard time believing that she wanted to live alone in a Muggle flat and come to terms with her new reality.
Wizards still wore glasses. No one could reverse the Killing Curse. Werewolves would always change with the moon.
Even magic had its limitations.
Two years after helping win the war that saved the Wizarding World, Hermione Granger had lost the one thing that made her a part of it. She moved out of the magical district and agreed to give Ron her spare key because, by god, all he wanted to do was support her. But he had to stop helping her pretend she was someone she couldn't be anymore. That was six weeks ago. Little by little, Hermione finally felt a hint of that sense of autonomy her therapist had been talking about.
She'd been through the hell of war. She'd been hunted and tortured and fought for her life. She was strong and capable, and magic hadn't been the only weapon she'd wielded to stay alive.
So, no. She did not want her ex-fiance to come running and rescue her the first time she stumbled and fell on her own.
Hermione shoved the Ministry coin back into her bag. Her haggard reflection stared back at her in the glass. She wished she had something to tie the bushy strands away from her face... her face… the hand wrenched out of her hair and patted at her sallow cheeks… what had happened to her face?
Parchment-pale skin clung to her cheekbones, and dark veins ran down her neck. Was the curse spreading throughout her body from her arm?
A screeching sound echoed through the alley, accompanied by rubbish bins crashing together.
Safety first. Panic later.
Hermione hurried down the two blocks and took a left at the next street.
The woman had been true to her word. There on the corner was a man getting out of a cab. Hermione ducked her head and slipped into the back of the taxi while the door was still open, a bonus, because she didn't have to reveal her gimp hand. The man gave a start at her unexpected appearance in his recently vacated seat, then straightened his tweed coat and closed the door for her. Another bonus, since she didn't have to ask.
"Where to?' the cabbie asked, pulling away from the curb.
"Albert Square," Hermione automatically quipped. It was a ten-block deviance from her flat, a habit leftover from the year that she'd learned to leave no trace of where she'd been. Back then, it was easier to trust no one, because most times, it had kept her alive.
She leaned her head against the glass, watching the streetlights pass as the cab whisked her back to bustling midtown London.
When she first moved into her new flat, Hermione's new neighbors, Margaret and Benny, had invited her over for coffee straight away, and checked in with her on the weekly. Around them, she felt like she could accept her new normal. It was nice, spending time with people who had no clue that magic was missing from her life.
But as much as they had bonded, she couldn't pop downstairs to Margaret and Benny's place after a night like this and hash out her problems over wine coolers and crisps. No, she'd have to save her complicated problems for Dr. Metzker, who listened with the patience of a sloth and demanded answers to uncomfortable questions about her mental state.
She was also the person who had gotten her into this mess.
Hermione caught the reflection of a dark stain by her collar in the rearview mirror of the cab. Out of curiosity, she leaned forward, trying to get a better look.
The cab stopped, jerking her forward.
"This is it," the cabbie said, and turned around for the first time. His sudden slack expression confirmed that maybe the rear-view mirror was trying to tell her something. "Are you sure you don't want me to take you to the Hospital? There's no charge."
"No, just wait here while I…"
She reached into her bag, finally grateful for the large purse that held everything her therapist said she would need to get by as a Muggle. She got out her compact and shifted forward in the back seat to get a good angle in the rear-view mirror of the cab. Then she powdered over the dark lines on her face. Even Dr. Metzker agreed she should avoid getting admitted to St. Mungo's again. They couldn't help her the first, second or third time they had admitted her.
"It's a skin condition," she told the cabbie's worried expression, putting on a second layer of powder around her jaw line where the veins seemed to be the darkest. "Very rare. No need to worry."
But she had every reason to be worried. If anyone in the wizarding world recognized her in such a questionable state, they'd lock her in a sterile room, run tests that revealed nothing - subject her to experimental treatments that didn't work.
She winced as she powdered down her neck, covering cuts and raw skin. A nasty bruise on her cheek got a double layer of powder, making her look less like a ghoul. She met the cabbie's gaze through the mirror.
"You don't have to stare."
He dropped his eyes. "S'not natural."
"Hey," she called sharply, causing him to look back. "Obliviate," she whispered.
The cabbie stared back at her like she was crazy. She probably looked it, babbling nonsense charms that had no effect in front of Muggles.
"Never mind. Forget I was ever here." She reached into her bag and dumped the fistful of street cash into the front seat of the cab.
"Yeah," he said, keeping his eyes on the money. "Never saw a thing." Hermione shoved the door open, got herself out of the cab, and slammed it shut with her hip.
Ten blocks. Broken heels. Twisted ankle.
Apparition would be useful, or an invisibility cloak, or a time turner. (If she was fantasizing, she might as well go big, yeah?)
Hermione started limping home. All she wanted was to sink into her oversized couch. Phone Dr. Metzker and demand to know what kind of client would abandon her on the floor of a darkened warehouse. Try to jog her memory about what had happened and why. Maybe pour herself a drink and crawl under her covers until she had to face another morning.
When she finally reached the steps to her flat, she took a long breath, and went through the exercises her therapist had drilled into her. Taking stock of her emotions, Hermione labeled and filed them away to clear her mind: there was a little guilt (always in the background, still unable to shake), some queasiness (probably from the fall, she'd have to check herself more thoroughly once she was inside and cleaned up), and then, as she looked up to her third-floor window, a sudden, undeniable sense of unease.
She had definitely not left a light on inside her empty flat.