This chapter is for Waterflower20, who always makes me think.

Chapter 12

The Fugitive Hermione Granger

Judy Raynott, who had spent the last few months of her life hiding out in a stranger's cellar, peeked out of the parlor window. It had been several hours since she happened to see the girl and her companion enter the house at the end of the street. She knew that she should return to the cellar—she and her daughter were in agreement that they would only venture out after dark—but she could not take her eyes away from the house. The elderly witch shivered despite the two jumpers she had taken a wardrobe upstairs. Underneath layers of stolen cable-knit, she wore a weathered t-shirt that read Montrose Magpies '75. That shirt and an ancient bay owl named Heathcote were the only things she had left to her name.

"We're perfectly safe here. We need to just mind our own business," her daughter, Jane, muttered.

"If someone else turns her in, they'll search the rest of the neighborhood. You think they won't check the cellar?" the older woman responded. "But if we're the ones who turn her in, we could get credit for it. Prove that we're useful."

"I think we would just bring attention to ourselves."

"If you had a chance to trade that girl, some stranger who probably did something wrong anyway, for your own life, you wouldn't do it? For the life of my grandbaby?" She nodded at the infant her daughter held. Her son-in-law, who had been employed as an ambassador in the Muggle Liaison department, left for supplies nearly two weeks earlier and had not returned.

Jane's mouth twisted on her thin face. "If they want her, she's probably innocent. They're the reason we're here, the reason why Clifford—" Head spinning, she took one great, sobbing breath. Nearly three days had passed since they consumed the last of the food. That morning, her breastmilk ran out before her son had finished eating.

"You don't know that he's dead. Or that if he is, it was them."

The younger woman closed her eyes. She tightened her arms around her child. "He's dead. Cliff would never have just left us."

Judy turned her gaze back to the house with the green door. "Hand me a quill, please. I don't want them to slip out while my back is turned."

"No. You know what's going to happen if you turn that girl in? We're going to watch her get taken away, and then we'll be next. And… And you know what they'll do to me. Squibs don't have a place in this world anymore unless they're connected."

"I think you're wrong, Jane. That girl's a dangerous criminal. We'll turn down the reward, and ask for our old lives back instead. Of course they'll say yes; it won't cost them anything. We could go home."

"I will not have any part of this!" Jane exclaimed. "We'll get by. We'll move to another house on the street when they leave."

"And what if the other houses don't have any food in them?"

"We're not sending some young girl to her death! That's it. That's final. We're not those people! Dad would agree with me. Clifford would agree with me. I don't want my son to grow up with a murderer for a mother, and that's what I'd be if we turned her in."

Judy sighed. "I just want him to grow up."

Jane bent forward until her forehead touched the bedsheet swaddling her son. She silently promised him that she would see him through this. "We'll change houses. We'll find one with some food in it. As soon as it's dark," she promised wearily. "Okay?"

"Fine. But I'm going to keep an eye on them just to make sure they aren't up to anything. Now, hand me the babe and have yourself a kip before sundown. You've got no color to your face at all."

"Wake me up in twenty minutes?"

"For sure, love."

Nodding gratefully, Jane shifted the weight of her child to her mother's arms. She walked into the kitchen, and her mother waited to hear the telltale sound of the cellar door open and then close.

Several long minutes passed. Satisfied that her daughter was asleep, Judy Raynott backed up. She felt the hard edge of a coffee table graze her shins. Refusing to take her eyes off of her target, she crouched, groping blindly behind her until she felt the stiff feathers of a quill underneath her fingertips. On top of the hat rack, Heathcote hooted. The baby began to stir.

"Shh, shh," she whispered soothingly. "No one's going to hurt you, my little love. Gran will make sure of it."

She approached the window once more and laid a piece of parchment on the sill. With her grandson in the crook of her arm, she began to write.

To whom it may concern:

I have discovered the location of the fugitive Hermione Granger.

}{}{

They waited until dark to make the journey to the inn. Antoine and Neville walked in the front of the group, speaking quietly, Scabior and Hermione some twenty paces behind them. At the rear, Ron and Harry stepped side-by-side underneath the invisibility cloak. Their wands were ready, but the streets of Hogsmeade were nearly empty.

"You've been quiet," Scabior observed. He felt grand, triumphant. "What's on your mind, love?"

The fact that I've made the worst mistake of my life. "How we're going to find the Diadem."

"I'll make sure you find it. That's what I do, after all."

Hermione nodded. One foot in front of the other. How many minutes to the inn? How many minutes to Hogwarts? To the end of the war?

An owl flew overhead.

"Tell me something about you that you've never told anyone," Scabior said.

Was this a request or a command? Did it make a difference? "Ah. Well, let me think… I don't… I don't like chocolate."

"What? Who hates chocolate?"

"I don't hate it. I just don't like it very much." She wondered why he kept looking over at her.

"Strange. That's not very interesting, though. Tell me another secret."

Hermione pressed her lips together. A tiny part of her was afraid that if she opened her mouth without thinking about it, she might lose control, start screaming, and not be able to stop. She didn't know what to tell him—she didn't want to give any more of herself to him than she already had. But he was waiting, and she felt as though she were running out of time. "I don't like sunny days, either."

Scabior looked down at her. "Why is that?"

"When I was a child, all I wanted to do during playtime was read. And at home, that was fine. My parents encouraged me to read. But at school, we were supposed to run around, play with each other. If I tried to bring a book outside with me, my teachers would take it away."

"And you had to play."

"I had to stand there awkwardly while everyone else played. The other children weren't cruel or anything, but we didn't understand each other. So, for playtime, I would just… stand against a wall and wait for it to end."

"If the weather was nice." The inn was now in sight.

"Yes," Hermione said softly. "But when it rained, or it was cold, we stayed inside. I could read. Or write. I liked to write, too. Oh, and draw! I was always drawing."

"Were you good at it?"

A smile tugged at Hermione's lips. "No. But I loved doing it anyway."

Scabior reached over and folded Hermione's hand into his. He charitably attributed the stiffness of her fingers to the cold mountain air, unable to fathom that it was his touch that made her withdraw. Too far away to hear what they were saying, Ronald Weasley scowled. "Tell me one more thing."

I hate you. I hate myself. I'm afraid of you. I want you to hold me. As if her own thoughts and sundry self-judgments weren't enough, parts of her she never knew existed were battling to make themselves heard. A small piece of her wanted to hurt Scabior, really hurt him in a way from which he'd never recover. Hermione had never harmed anything or anyone before, and the ferocity of the urge frightened her. At the same time, all she wanted was to give herself to him completely. She longed to bury her face in his chest, feel his chin on the top of her head and his arms around her shoulders.

Scabior glanced over at the young witch as they approached the Hog's Head. "Well?"

"I—I feel really powerless, and I don't want to feel that way anymore, and I'm afraid of what I might do to achieve that." Surprised at her own words, she looked to Scabior for his reaction. The Death Eater was stone-faced.

"I understand."

"You do?"

Scabior nodded, but before he could elaborate, Neville turned and beckoned them forward.

Hermione jumped when she heard a voice behind her. "Blimey, 'Mione, hurry up—it's freezing out here!" She stepped past the threshold of the silent, empty inn, slipping her hand out of Scabior's as she did. Harry and Ron at her heels, she made her way up the back stairs and towards the portrait of Ariana Dumbledore.

For all that he was aware of his own magic and that of others, Scabior was not a particularly self-aware man. He wanted things simply because he didn't have them; he took them because he could. Everything he had, including Hermione, was his because he was wily enough, tough enough, determined enough. Life (at least, life the way he chose to live it) was not complicated.

Lately, though, he felt a nagging insecurity in himself that he thought he had destroyed years ago, when he graduated from Hogwarts and earned his first Galleon. He found himself looking over at the girl almost constantly, as if she might disappear when his back was turned. She seemed unhappy, and he didn't know why—wasn't he giving her everything he promised? It was similar to the feeling of hearing a noise in the night and not knowing the direction from which it came. Scabior couldn't fathom anyone not seeing her how he did, and because of it, everyone, that boy, Neville, Ron, even Harry, even Antoine, who had proven himself beyond loyal—he couldn't fully trust any of them.

His grip on the girl was loose. He was afraid to lose her. He had never been afraid to lose anything before—in part because most of his life, he hadn't had anything to lose. Later, he knew anyone foolish enough to take something that was his was foolish enough to die for it.

Scabior could have killed Neville back in that house for the crime of being touched by Hermione. In fact, he could have killed the rest of them, too, just to be safe, and taken the girl to a faraway place where nobody could distract them from each other.

Honestly, he didn't know why he hadn't.

}{}{

When the passage door swung open and Harry, Ron, Hermione, Scabior, Antoine, and Neville stepped through it into the Room of Requirement, there was a moment of silence, followed by cheering so loud and enthusiastic, it hurt Scabior's ears to hear it. The members of The Golden Trio were folded into the crowd of students. Dozens of voices spoke at once, making it difficult to parse any particular conversation.

"I can't believe you're—"

"Do you know if my nan's alright? She—"

"—A great big bloody Hippogryph!"

Someone set off a pack of Fairy Lights, which illuminated the room and revealed an army of disheveled bunkbeds. Another student broke out a set of bagpipes, which happily whinged a tune quick enough to dance to. Several Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products made an appearance, their owners having deemed this a special enough occasion to use them. A Fanged Frisbee twirled through the air, snarling.

Scabior and Antoine, both deeply uncomfortable, stood by themselves near the door.

After a moment, a slight girl stepped from the horde of celebrating teenagers and pointed one finger at Antoine. "I remember you," she said slowly in a sing-song voice, a grin spreading across her face. "You're my hero."

Antoine ducked his head. "It was no bother, really. We were already bustin' out the others, might as well have got you out, too."

Scabior's eyes widened. He threw his head back and tried not to groan. "She was at Malfoy's the night we… That's her?"

"Miss Luna Lovegood," Antoine said, nodding towards her. The girl curtseyed. Her hat, a great, floppy thing in a shade of green no hat should ever have been, tumbled off of her head. Antoine caught it before it hit the floor and handed it back to her.

"You're too soft," Scabior said. He meant it in a teasing way, but his voice was flinty. He recalled the marks he had left on Xenophilius Lovegood after the man attempted to trade Hermione and the others. If he had known that the blonde girl in the manor was Xenophilius' daughter, he would have left her there, or killed her. Their situation was dangerous enough—he didn't need his whereabouts getting back to a man he had tortured.

Before he could convey any of this to Antoine, though, Luna reached out, taking the young man by the wrist and pulling him into the celebration.

In a room full of people, Scabior was now alone. Put off by the man's appearance and glowering disposition, the students avoided him, leaving a wall of still air between them. There was a sour taste in his mouth. It didn't matter if he didn't know who most of these people were—he despised them for their merriment, their joy. He was imagining what they would do if he began casting curses over their heads. And then—

"I don't know what you like, so I got you a few different things," Hermione said at his side. When had she come back? "There's not a lot—someone's sneaking off to the kitchen to get some proper food. But it'll tide us over."

Scabior surveyed the assortment of sweets Hermione held in her hands. Cockroach Clusters, Fudge Flies, a fresh-looking pumpkin pasty, and something called "Twizzlers," which he hadn't seen before. He was reaching for the pasty when he stopped and glanced up at the girl. Her eyes, sparkling and bright, were on the other students.

He took the Cockroach Clusters and the Fudge Flies. "Those are pretty disgusting," Hermione said as Scabior stuffed them into his mouth.

"They're my favorite," he said, trying not to vomit.

I hope you guys liked this. I'm going to try to get at least three or four more chapters out this week, but we'll see. Want chapters sooner? Just review! Every time I get to read your thoughts, opinions, and observations on the story, I get inspired, and I pull it up and keep working on it.

**Also, a general note: FF is being really weird about my private messages, saying I have them but not showing me anything. If you've sent me a PM in the past few days, try resending it.