A/N: Thank you to everyone who took the time to review, favorite and follow! And huge thanks to lanamarymack for all her help alpha/beta reading this story! This is the last chapter of this part of the story, but I am working on expansion of the second half. It's called Informants and the first chapter will be posted today. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter twenty-five and go check out Informants when you're finished!
Hermione was not sure how long she actually sat in the back of the police cruiser, but it felt like ages. Eventually, an officer that she did not know slipped into the front seat. He didn't have any details to give her, just that he'd been told to bring her back to headquarters.
By the time that she'd gotten there, she'd convinced herself a thousand times over that they had actually decided to charge her and that she really was going to end up in jail. How much latitude did she have to say that she thought she was acting as an undercover officer? Kicking herself, she once again lamented getting herself mixed up in the first place. She cursed Sirius and Remus, too.
But, when they did return to the headquarters, Hermione was relieved that she was not taken down to the holding cells, but rather into an unused conference room. Only then were her handcuffs removed. She rubbed at the tender skin of her wrists, never realizing how much the bloody things hurt. The officer who escorted her left her there, with instructions to sit tight and wait for further instructions.
She sat there with nothing to do but watch the minute hand slide by on the clock, her leg tapping under the table with unspent nervous energy. God, she just wanted to get out of here and she wanted to go home. Only problem was, she wasn't really sure where home was at this point.
After over an hour of waiting, Remus and Sirius finally walked into the conference room, shutting the door behind them. Sirius gave her a broad smile. "If it's not our conquering hero!" he cheered, looking at her like he was the proudest he'd ever been. "You did really well, kitten."
Hermione did not feel relief or the effervescent joy of being praised that she normally would experience. Instead, she felt slighted, her irritation bubbling up. She sprang out of the uncomfortable chair she'd been sitting in (probably so hard to keep people from falling asleep in meetings) and strode over to Remus in two steps. She shoved him on the shoulder before she could stop herself. "What the fuck?" she demanded. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to come bursting in like that?"
Remus put his hands up, surprised to be attacked that way. "What's wrong? I thought you'd be grateful to be pulled finally," he mused, looking at her with suspicion. "Weren't you the one who was chafing against this assignment from the very beginning?"
She felt cowed, remembering her initial hesitation to go undercover. And really, if she had ended up with anyone but Fenrir, she wasn't even certain that she would have enjoyed it. "I did want it to be over," she answered, lips pursed. "But, to have no forewarning of any kind... It scared me. You left me in the back of a police car — in handcuffs no less — for half a day!"
"I'm sorry," Remus said, though he did not seem particularly contrite. "But, we had a lot of other people to deal with. We got to you as soon as we could."
"I don't really understand why any of this song and dance was required at all," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She was feeling especially surly and she wasn't going to hold back after everything that she had done for them. "I could have pretended to leave to do one more set of drops. Anything to keep me out of the warehouse when the arrests were made."
Sirius clapped his hand on her shoulder, shaking his head sadly. "We wanted to give you some special credibility, so that they wouldn't suspect you were in on it, kitten," he explained, his mercurial eyes reading every micro-emotion on her face.
"Won't that all come out at trial anyway?" she asked, feeling tears spring to her eyes as she remembered how she'd betrayed Fenrir so horribly. Tears sprang to her eyes again and she wiped them away furiously, not wanting to seem weak. Not wanting them to know just how much she'd fucked up.
Sirius looked at her sadly. "Hey now, what's wrong?" he asked.
"It's just... much harder than it seems. Not to make an emotional connection with them, even though I knew that they were the targets all along," she said, hoping this wasn't some terrible reveal. "It doesn't feel good to betray someone like this."
"You do get some training for this if you actually go through the training," Sirius explained.
"It gets easier to compartmentalize the more jobs that you do," Remus added. "You have to keep the different parts of you separate. And remember that they are not actually your friends. It's easy to betray them if you remember that they would do the exact same thing to you."
Hermione remembered all of Fenrir's whispered words and oaths and somehow didn't think that he could betray her so easily. How horrible was it that a criminal somehow had more honor than she did? She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing the tears to go away. "So, if I am going to have to testify anyway, what's the point of giving me clout?" she asked, needing to change the topic.
Sirius and Remus shared a look between one another, before Sirius gave her a guilty sort of look. "We discussed it, and it was... well, you've made such good progress with Dolohov and Riddle..." he trailed off, perhaps realizing that she wasn't going to like what he had to say next. "We thought it would be wise to leave the door open to future work. It wouldn't be odd for you to go underground for a while, but in a few weeks... maybe you could reach out to Dolohov and see if he'd take you on? He seemed just as taken with you as Greyback."
Hermione was immediately shaking her head no. She had been so on edge the last couple of months and that was with knowing that Fenrir was infatuated with her. No matter how friendly Dolohov seemed with her, she knew that she would not be able to join up with him. The risks were just too great. "Absolutely not," she answered.
"Come on, Hermione," Sirius said. "You've blown us all out of the water with your skills. You've really—"
"You promised me at the beginning, that this was just a one time thing," she snapped, cutting off whatever flowery words he was going to come up with next. "It's way too dangerous. I won't risk my life for people who can't even give me the courtesy of letting me know when arrests will be made."
"Your reaction was obviously enough to convince Greyback," Remus said, not exactly understanding how terrified she'd been. "We kept you safe."
She wanted to roll her eyes at the other man, who had left her high and dry these last few weeks. "I don't think that I am meant for field work," she insisted.
"Alright. Alright," Sirius finally conceded. "Then, it's back to the office with you. Desk duty, for as long as you'll have us."
"Can't wait," she said, biting her lower lip. When she had started her assignment, she had often longed for the blue-light glow of her computer monitor, but now... now she wasn't so ready to go back, though she couldn't pinpoint precisely when that happened.
"But just remember, if you ever get that itch again to go out in the field, Uncle Sirius will always have your back." He winked at her, giving her an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder. "You are a great field agent."
Hermione fought a smile, the first one since things had popped off. "I wouldn't count on it, Sirius," she said, regretfully. "But, there is no one I'd rather reach out to than family."
"And, if you want to take a few days to decompress, no one would look twice at it," he offered, perhaps knowing that she'd been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Surely, spreadsheets can wait another day or two."
She shook her head, brown curls shifting with the movement. "I think it would be better to get my head down," she said, hoping that it would help her forget. Anything to press down all of these awful feelings she had that kept bubbling up. She was terrible, she was horrid, she loved Fenrir.
"If you say so, kitten," Sirius said, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I just have a bit of paperwork to file, but I am sure that I will be seeing you again soon." He turned to leave the conference room, shutting the door behind him, leaving her alone with Remus.
When she met the other man's green eyes, he was looking at her strangely. It was enough to make a shiver run up the length of her spine. "Hermione?" he breathed out, his face searching for any hint of what she was really about to say.
"Yes, Remus?" she answered, after a beat of silence.
"We spent a long time searching the warehouse. That's part of the reason why it took so long for us to get to you," he said, his voice soft. "It seems like... like Fenrir had two sets of books. We could only find the books that were set up as his legitimate business."
Hermione swallowed and stood up a little bit straighter. She had warned Fenrir to keep two sets of books, but she had never realized that he'd actually taken her advice on the matter. In fact, it seemed like he had blown her off at the time. It had rankled, because it seemed like he wasn't taking her seriously. And... she knew that keeping only one set of books would certainly be his downfall. "Oh?" she asked, though she could hear the crack in her voice. "That was smart of him."
"You didn't have anything to do with that, did you, Hermione?" Remus asked, taking a step closer, until there was barely any space between them. "Fenrir never kept two sets of books before... before you came around. Before you got his ear."
Hermione stilled, feeling her heart hammering against her ribcage wildly. She felt like a deer in the sights of a predator and any move would make him strike. "What are you accusing me of, Remus?" she asked, hoping that her voice did not betray any of her feelings.
"Sirius wasn't there to see you, Hermione, but I was. I know how close you got to Greyback," he said, cautiously. "You wouldn't be the first officer to have... a lapse in judgment."
"Sirius might not have been there, but he still knew," she said, hoping that he did not think he had any sort of leverage to hold over her. "In fact, he was the one who encouraged it, if you recall correctly."
Remus gave her a tight smile — the sort of smile that showed he did not believe what she was saying entirely. "No one would blame you," he said, sidestepping her not quite denial. "But, it would be better if you came clean now, before things get any further than they have."
Hermione bit her lower lip, thinking over the best course of action. A part of her wanted to confess everything to Remus — to get it all off her chest. But, then she remembered the strange way that he'd been treating her since she started this work and it gave her pause. In fact, he'd already been treating her like she'd turned, not telling her anything about the end of the operation. Was he worried that she might tip off Fenrir to their plans if she knew? And, would she have done it?
No, she wasn't going to tell anyone that she'd mentioned separating his books. She wasn't sure that it would help their case against Fenrir, but she was absolutely positive that it wasn't going to help her.
"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Remus, but I am not going to confess to something that I didn't do," she said. "Fenrir would hardly be the first criminal to think of separating his books. Maybe it was Antonin who suggested it. But, he didn't say anything about it to me."
Something in her haughty, imperious tone must have done something to convince him, because she saw his shoulders drop an imperceptible degree — like he'd been carrying weight on them. Maybe his suspicion of her had really been weighing on him.
"Good, good," he said, pressing a hand to her upper arm and giving her an affectionate squeeze. "And I want you to know that I never agreed with Sirius telling you to give into Greyback's advances, as I am sure you were already aware, but you did manage to crack into his inner circle in a way that I was not privy to, so I suppose I should have been more trusting that you knew what you were doing."
"I didn't," Hermione squeaked, not wanting him to have some idea that she was a sort of mastermind.
"In any case, I am glad that you are free from him now. I am sure that it couldn't have been easy," he continued, something in his gaze making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "Now, there is no reason that you couldn't find someone more suitable to be with."
Hermione swallowed, unable to break Remus's gaze. It felt like he'd been reading her every thought and emotion since they entered the conference room. He was in her space, filling her every sense, so that she couldn't escape him. Another chill ran down her spine and she remembered Fenrir's assertion that Remus had been acting jealous — that he had wanted her for himself. Hermione had dismissed that idea out of hand, thinking that it was too preposterous to consider.
But now...
Had Fenrir been right?
Remus cleared his throat. It looked as if he was about to say something else, before he thought better of it and changed course. "Some of us are going for drinks after work tonight. To celebrate," he told her, dropping his arm to his side. "You'll come with, won't you?"
Hermione thought over his words for a minute. Was he asking her to go to drinks with him or as colleagues? Nibbling at her lower lip, she tried to tease it out. "Oh yeah? You and Sirius, or...?"
"Harry and Ron will come as well," he added, reassuring her. "And some of the others who have been working the case."
God, she felt so tired all of a sudden, Hermione couldn't think of anything she'd like to do less than go get drinks at some noisy bar. And, she was certain that alcohol would not help her delicate emotional state. But, if she went home, to her old empty flat, with only her thoughts to occupy her, she couldn't be sure that she wouldn't spiral. Maybe it would be best for her to keep her mind occupied. Plus, it would be nice to reconnect with Harry and Ron after being undercover for so long. Surely, they would have enough stories to tell her to fill her mind and keep it off of Fenrir Greyback, sitting lonely in a cell somewhere.
"Of course, I'll come," she answered, cursing herself for not sounding as excited as she should. She'd closed the case, after all.
But, she still could not help but wonder about the cost of closing the case. She'd betrayed a man that she had come to love. Or maybe it was worse that she'd ever decided to emotionally engage with a man that she was setting up to fall the whole time. Remus had promised that she wasn't the first to have complicated feelings, but she certainly felt alone on an island right now. She had no one to turn to, no one to confess her sins to.
And, it was worse knowing that Fenrir was locked away in a cell right now, completely unaware of her role in this mess. How long would it be before he discovered her betrayal? Would his solicitor tell him when he got discovery or would Fenrir figure it out on his own once he had enough time to think? Would he determine that she had always been just a little too convenient? What would he think of her when he finally discovered the truth?
It was suddenly too much to handle again and she felt tears in her eyes again. She pressed her hands to her eyes, willing them to go away, but Remus already saw.
"Fuck," she whispered, more to herself. Looking up at him guiltily, she gave him a watery smile. "It's just been a long day and I've got to just get my head around it. Am I free to go? I would love to go home and take a shower."
"Oh, yes, of course. We can do a full debrief next time you are in the office," Remus promised her. "I hope you will take Sirius up on the offer to have a few days to yourself. It's totally normal to need to decompress a bit after undercover work. But, I promise that you will find yourself again."
"Okay," she said. "I'll just go home then."
"And, I'll text you the address of the bar we decide on," he said, as if he didn't have a care in the world. Why didn't he need to decompress? "You're still coming out, right?"
"Yeah," Hermione agreed, even though she didn't want to. She pushed past him, suddenly feeling too trapped in this little conference room. She needed to get out, she needed to stretch, she needed to hide with herself. She needed to forget going undercover and infiltrating Fenrir's operation. She needed to forget Fenrir all together.
Maybe drinking wasn't the worst idea in the world.