"So, this is where you've wandered off to."

Hermione is leaning against his car, tapping her nails on the passenger window and staring him down with the single-minded determination she knows has only grown with her age. She won't let him out of her sight now that she's found him. Not even for a second.

"Werewolves really that interesting? Didn't think you liked them all that much." She pushed away from the car and started walking toward the clinic, toward him. "Not that you ever had anything against Remus, I remember how you defended him better than most, but it takes a good actor to stop from flinching."

She paused a hairsbreadth away from him. Centimeters between their skins and it felt like it was both miles and nothing at all.

"You're not a very good actor, I'm sorry to say, and I stopped believing the best of people a long time ago. Long before people actually started betraying us."

She had always been pragmatic. In the earlier years her naivety and goodhearted childishness had balanced it out – perhaps not perfectly because she was still Hermione Granger and Hermione Granger did not understand people – and the world had been much simpler and she had been much more optimistic and positive.

But she had always been pragmatic. Always logical to a fault and eternally stubborn.

They had all been, the three of them. Stubborn as mules.

It had worked both in their favor and against them, making them closer when things were good and making the trenches that much wider when they were not. Trusting someone until evidence were shoved down their throats that they shouldn't and not trusting someone until they were dead on rotten floorings and the world shifted around them.

They had all learned the lesson. To trust no one but themselves but to never not trust anyone either, none of the extremes were good for you if you wanted to live.

And if Hermione was anything, it was a good learner.

Her hand caressed his cheek as she embraced him. Slimy like the snake she had turned into when she had shed her skin. "You ran away after the war, honey. Left your family behind, your friends, your life. It's very hard not to find that suspicious."

She gave his cheek a light pat before she slid it around the back of his neck, tightening just slightly, still smiling that unnerving smile she had practiced to perfection in the mirror. The one she knew creeped people out even when they didn't actually see it. "And it certainly doesn't get any better when you start to dabble in magic that most know to stay far, far away from."

Her nails scraped against his skin, pressing down almost hard enough to leave marks in their wake. She stepped back, assessing.

He still hadn't moved from his spot, either toward or away from her, and his eyes were perhaps not as rattled as she had expected. He had grown cold and calculated in these years he had been busy being missing. Sure of himself and his place in the world.

And he had been expecting her. Not that she would come this very moment at this precise spot – and maybe not even her in her role as herself – but he had always known that his past would catch up to him at some point. He wasn't stupid.

But Hermione had learned over the years how to unsettle someone to their very bones, and she knew she had gotten to him, however prepared he had though himself to be. She knew that his hand was ready to pull the proverbial trigger at any given point, should she prove to be more than just the threat she was now.

Should she become a danger to him, he wouldn't hesitate to kill – or at the very least incapacitate – her. She actually liked him a little more, because of that. She knew where she had him and no one was playing it differently.

But she also knew that it would take much luck on his side to come out on top when she was the opponent. Much more luck than she thought he could have without the golden help of Felix.

She was very, very good at her job.

"You should start talking, Dean, because if I can't find a reasonable explanation for the things you've done not even Seamus will get me to settle for anything less than a body bag."