When Hermione awoke it was still dark outside, only the smallest sliver of the morning dawn hinted at the time being closer to sunrise than sunset. With sluggish movements she tried to shift her body to peek at her alarm clock but was prevented by a weight that pinned her waist to the bed. Turning her head to the side, she was met face to face with a handsome, young man sleeping peacefully beside her.
Hermione raised her hand to softly run her fingers along Harry's stubbled cheek, feeling the way his jaw had visibly sharpened and lost his previously boyish look during the time he had been gone. Idly, she thought that she should feel more embarrassed than she did lying naked next to her also-naked best friend, but she couldn't shake a feeling of rightness that had found its way into her chest, spreading a warmth throughout her body that she wanted to never leave.
Turning her head again, she caught from her bedside clock that it was still early in the morning. With her mind calmed, she began to drift off after lacing her fingers in Harry's hand that lay atop her. Her last thought before sleep took her was that she hadn't suffered a single nightmare or fallen asleep the night before stressed and anxious, a feat that had previously been as uncommon as Harry being found.
…
Morning light reached across her face, heating her skin pleasantly. Hermione struggled to get her eyes to open in the state of utter comfort that she was in. It didn't take long though before a pat beside her and a sudden jumpstart to her heart to cause her eyes to fly open. She sat up quickly and opened her mouth to call out Harry's name. After his name left her lips she froze, suddenly suspicious that any sound she would make might prevent an answer from reaching her ears.
"Hermione? Are you still in bed? You'll be late for work!"
Hearing his muffled voice through the closed door broke the spell and she breathed a deep breath before letting it all out like a deflating balloon.
I don't think I'll be getting over that any time soon, she thought and opened her mouth to yell back through the door. "I'll be right out!"
Glancing at the clock, she realised that he was right, even rushing to get ready she would be cutting it close to be on time. She decided while getting changed to text Anna, mentioning briefly that they should grab lunch together today as well as apologising for the few messages she hadn't responded to since last seeing her. A response came right as she rushed into the kitchen and swiped a piece of toast from the plate in front of Harry, who grumbled and went back to buttering the second piece that was still on his plate. Anna confirmed lunch and immediately followed up with seven messages back to back asking her if she had seen the new episode of the crime drama they had been following and watching together. Hermione suppressed a giggle and sent back that they could talk at lunch, before turning the phone off and putting it in her bag.
Harry looked up at her and pointed at her menacingly with the dull knife he was holding while she munched away, "You think you can just waltz in here and steal a man's breakfast, hm?"
Hermione, half a piece of toast in one hand and glass of water the other, stuck her tongue out at him from across the kitchen. "Oh hush, you don't think I've forgotten that you don't like toast for breakfast do you? I know you made this for me, and on a side note I don't think a butterknife makes a very good wand."
A hint of smug satisfaction had tinted her words but a surprised yelp followed right after as Harry raised one eyebrow at her and she slid across the floor as if yanked by an invisible force. Suddenly she was nose to nose with Harry with his arm around her waist and his dark eyes staring into her wide ones. His tongue flicked out and swiped up the crumbs left on her lips before he grinned and planted a kiss on her. She easily returned it but firmly pushed herself away after a moment.
"Geez Harry, you don't leave much on the 'impressing people' table do you?" Hermione laughed out before stuffing the last bite of her piece of toast in her mouth and wiping her lips with her sleeve.
Harry's grin widened and his eyes lit mischievously, "Oh last night was that good? I couldn't get a good read on all of the loud noises you kept making…"
Hermione's jaw dropped open and she smacked his chest as her cheeks reddened. She harrumphed loudly and raised her chin before turning and walking away from him towards the front door but not before his hand shot out to smack her bottom. She dared not turn back around as she stalked to the door, refusing to let him see how red her face was or how hard she was trying not to let a smile take over. She had her shoes on and the door open when she heard him call out to her.
"Hey there's still one more piece of toast here for you!"
She could practically hear his damned lopsided grin in his voice and struggled not to let her own smile into her words, mocking a serious tone that could have fooled nobody. "I will see you tonight Harry James Potter."
With that she closed the door quickly and had to take a second to compose herself before she apparated to the ministry with a crack.
…
It was quarter after noon and Hermione was sitting at a lovely patio table belonging to a Mexican restaurant that her and Anna often ate at together. She was already half-way through the appetisers that she ordered by the time Anna sat down opposite her in a less-than graceful way.
"Oh babe, you would not believe the kind of traffic on the road right now," Anna moaned, grabbing a tortilla chip from the basket and nibbling on it absentmindedly.
"Anna, you say that everytime we eat here, when are you going to learn to leave earlier?" Hermione shook her head in exasperation and laughed.
Anna took on a faux air of superiority, tilting her nose up and speaking haughtily, "No no my dear, you see, I am a firm believer in reverse psychology–"
Hermione struggled to keep from rolling her eyes, and was unsuccessful.
Anna continued, "Any day now, everyone else will decide to leave early for their own lunch dates, leaving me with wide open roads and an unmarred schedule!" She finished by raising half of a tortilla chip in the air, looking at Hermione like she had just proven herself to be a genius. Just then, the waiter arrived and took the pair's food and drink orders before leaving and shortly returning with the drinks.
"Have you been drinking?" Hermione jokingly accused her best friend, sipping at the glass of iced water in her hand.
"No, but I wish I had been," Anna grumbled while taking a large swig from the fizzy pop bottle she had ordered. "Don't tell me you didn't watch the last episode, it came out last night and has had me in a wreck all day!"
Anna was staring through the hole in the bottle with one eye as she swirled the liquid around inside of it, speaking to Hermione without looking up. At some point while Hermione was struggling to keep up with the flood of words, their food had arrived. It did nothing to halt Anna's endless tirade. "...It's not like I really disagree with what Talia said to Nol– his character has been a bit of a bum since last season. And in reality–"
"I found him."
"He deserved everything she said, but she could have– wait what did you just say?"
Anna had set the bottle down and now stared at Hermione with unblinking eyes. A beat of silence passed between them and Hermione's unwavering gaze back seemed to communicate the answer that Anna was looking for. A sudden squeal sounded from within her friend and Hermione resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears or cast a muffliato at her. Several of the restaurant's patrons seated near them cast glances their way at the outburst, some amused and some affronted.
"Hermione! When– what– where!?" Anna was struggling to contain herself while simultaneously attempting to push all of her questions out at once.
Hermione leaned forward and pressed a hand down on one of Anna's shoulders. "Breathe, Anna."
Anna's face was flushed and she took a deep breath before slamming her hands back down on the table, causing the plates to rattle loudly. "Oh I'll breathe when I need to, thank you very much! Now you had better tell me everything or so help me–"
At this point some of the people at other tables on the patio were starting to take more notice of Anna. Hermione managed to slip a hand beneath the table and into her extended pocket. Holding her wand, she murmured a silencing spell under her breath. Anna's eyes widened and her hands flew to her mouth as soon as the sound of her voice stopped.
"Anna, I know you're freaking out, and if I'm honest, I'm barely keeping it in," Hermione's voice dropped to a deadly whisper, "but I need you to keep your voice down because this is very much not your private kitchen."
After Anna's quick nod, Hermione's hand jerked from within her pocket, still holding her wand.
"Okay, I'm going to forgive you for that because these are Harry-level stakes here and I don't know how you're managing to keep it in, but that had better not happen again." Anna's words punctuated by her glare made Hermione turn a shade of red out of embarrassment and duck her head slightly.
She quickly recovered and without skipping a beat, dove into a slightly-less-steamy recounting of the previous 48 hours. By the time she was finished and realised the time, the two had cleaned out three extra orders of chips and salsa. Hermione rushed to explain that the conversation wasn't finished but that it was time for her to get back to the Ministry. Anna, still being high on the over-a-year long search coming to an end, agreed without another half-jokingly asked question about how good the reunion sex was. This worked out well for Hermione because she only just managed to get the lasting flush out of her face from the first time Anna asked a similar question, right when Andrew met her in the hallway outside her office.
"Ma'am, ma'am–" Andrew stumbled over his words as he nearly collided with her coming around the corner. "I was looking all over for you– it's Barnes, he–"
"Woah Andrew," she steadied the man with her hand as he caught his breath. "Let's take it from the top, slowly this time." Hermione motioned him to walk with her as she finished the distance to her office and put her things down.
"Well, technically I wasn't supposed to know about this but just a minute ago as I was walking out of the bathroom I heard Barnes talking with his partner as they headed down to the cells. I overheard enough to know that Head Auror Roberts wasn't very happy with your order to the transport guard to keep Macnair here and sent those two to see it finished." Andrew was wringing his hands in worry as Hermione threw her robes back on and whirled back out of her office. He nervously kept to her heels and continued talking. "I came to find you as quick as I could but you wer–"
Hermione threw up her hand without missing a step on her path to the lifts. "Thank you for telling me Andrew, you may go and inform Roberts that I will be questioning his prisoner myself and will have a full report ready for him by the end of the day to justify my suspicion."
"Miss Granger, it's entirely too dangerous to go down without an Auror escort–"
Hermione stepped into the lift and closed the grated door behind her as she interrupted her assistant again. "Andrew, whose names are on the plaque of the war memorial in the atrium?" She raised her eyebrow at him pointedly as the lift descended below the floor. The last view of him she got was his open mouth working soundlessly.
Hermione wasn't one to make decisions rashly or without a plan, she liked keeping a strict schedule, maintaining a rigid routine, picking up after her dumb friends, chasing after them the instant they got themselves into trouble again…
Sometimes plans were overrated anyway, and sometimes decisions needed to be made rashly. She couldn't help herself though from wiping her palms on her robes as the lift continued to descend. Questions started to fill her mind out of nowhere. When was the last time she had seen a Death Eater, let alone interrogated someone? Was the War really the last time she had practised her duelling? Did she even know what she was looking for from Macnair?
Hermione shook herself and pushed her anxiety into production instead of working against her. She knew why she wanted Macnair questioned further, and it certainly wasn't just for the fun of it. She had already been suspicious that the few deceased Muggles the Aurors had to deal with after catching him and his cronies wasn't the end of it, but Walden Macnair's name had poked her memory. It was from that horrible night with Bellatrix when she had rambled on about the horrible deeds of her fellow Death Eaters and how scared Hermione should be. The poked memory in question was a story about how Macnair had put the Imperius Curse on a Muggle and convinced him to kill his family as well as his neighbours. All for the fun of it of course, leaving Bellatrix cackling madly. She just couldn't believe a man like that had supposedly only killed two Muggles in the whole time he was hiding and running from the Aurors.
She wished Harry were with her, he always made her feel stronger, more sure of herself. Whenever they had been in trouble or some other such business and needed to use his Invisibility Cloak, his presence always kept her from dropping out of fright or screaming in panic to break their secrecy. He steadied her.
As the lift stopped at the floor containing the cells, her hand reached for the lift door handle just as a boom echoed down the corridor towards her followed by a sharp yell that cut off abruptly. As quickly as the sound faded, Hermione was ready with her wand out, facing the empty hallway through the slatted lift door. After waiting a beat and as carefully as possible, she slid the gate open, cringing at every creak from the metal that echoed loudly down the halls.
She crept forward with her wand at the ready through the twisting corridors of cells. It didn't take long for her to realise that she had no real idea of where to go, she didn't know where Macnair was being held, and she hadn't been close enough to the sound to determine its direction either. Pausing at a crossroads of hallways, she turned one too many times and struggled to reorient herself to the way she had come from.
A moment later, a word popped into her head that Harry had muttered before they entered back into her flat after getting Chinese food. She hadn't recognised it and had asked him what he was saying. All he would say as a way of explanation was that he was casting his magic to see if the flat was empty. Under normal circumstances Hermione might have pushed for a much more comprehensive answer but she had been simmering in anger and nerves that whole day.
Murmuring the word and trying to move her wand in the motion she remembered Harry's hand moving, she suddenly felt a pulse of magic leave her and colour blossomed to her right through the walls in the rough shape of three bodies.
Moving as quietly as she could, she stepped down the hallway to her right, the colours already fading in her vision. When she peeked around the corner, she wasn't prepared to be less than a metre from the back of who could only be Auror Barnes from his robes. She didn't recognise the man lying face up also in Auror robes farther down the hallway, but she knew the face of the man standing next to the body.
Macnair's eyes flicked to hers a moment after she peeked around the corner and Barnes must have seen his eyes widen because he turned his head just enough to glimpse Hermione's face. That was all the moment the Death Eater needed, an instant later and before Hermione could blink, Barnes had been yanked forward and was struggling in a headlock against Macnair down the hallway, his wand clattering across the floor.
"Well if it isn't the mudblood whore. I was hoping this wouldn't attract more of the Ministry's sheep but if they sent you they really are getting desperate. Drop the wand or this fool gets it."
Macnair's scratchy, rat-like voice grated against Hermione's ears. He had shifted his wand so that it dug into Barnes' temple, causing him to freeze. She felt a wave of white hot anger threaten to overtake her and cloud her vision but she battled it down and when she spoke, she was surprised at how steady and confident she sounded.
"Give it up Macnair, you can't escape now, you know just as well the wards prevent all means of transport unless authorised."
"I'm so glad you brought that up," Macnair spoke while shuffling over to the Auror lying on the ground. He took his wand away from Barnes long enough to cast rennervate and in a flash Barnes took the opportunity to break out of his hold and fight for the wand. Hermione was having trouble trying to aim a spell at Macnair while avoiding Barnes that she barely noticed his partner getting up off the ground. The man shook himself once while reaching into his pocket pulling out what she knew to be a Ministry PortKey. What she didn't miss however, is the slinking tip of the tattooed Dark Mark on the man's left forearm, peeking out from his robes. Hermione's eyes widened a fraction before she fired a spell aimed at the Auror's chest.
It seemed Barnes caught a glimpse of his partner's actions as well, "Devon?! What are y–"
A moment later, Hermione's spell accidentally made contact with the PortKey now brought upwards in Devon's hand. The resulting explosion of magic slammed her on her backside and against the far end of the hallway where she had rounded the corner. Blinking back dust she saw through the rubble falling from the ceiling to where the three bodies of the men lay at various angles near the centre of where the explosion took place. Her vision was pulsing at the edges and a throbbing at the back of her head made her reach her hand up. It came away sticky and altogether too red.
Harry. The thought sparked through her jumbled mind. Flashes of his smiling face sprung up and before the spell had made its way out of her mouth, her magic pushed and a silvery white doe sprung from her wand. It stomped and reared back, dashing up and away through the ceiling.
The grip she held on reality faltered then, with her last thought consisting of a memory from her childhood. She had been camping with her parents near a lake, and during a hike she had spotted an otter playing in the water. Her mind's focus shifted out of her body to a doe standing at the water's edge across the small lake, staring directly at her as all went black.