Sorry for the delay, everyone! I've joined the Smutfest again (and I'm running it this year), and my story has gotten somewhat out of control. Again. Why can't I have simple story ideas?

"Bad news," Morgan announced, walking up towards the group after checking them into the motel that night. They were exhausted from a day where they all were running around, trying to get answers, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere, and all of them were ready to relax and get to bed. "They only had two double rooms. Someone's going to have to share a king bed."

"Well, Kevin informed me that I am a dead woman if I shared a room with you again," Garcia smiled. "So I guess Hermione and I can have a bit of girl time," she added, reaching for the key.

"Sounds fun, baby girl," he smirked at her, clearly needing to let off some steam as he had been accosted by of Sarah's uncles earlier.

"The mind can come out of the gutter now," she replied with a sweet smile. "Besides, now you guys get to fight over who shares a room with Reid the insomniac."

Rossi, Hotch, and Morgan were exchanging glances as Garcia led Hermione down the line of hotel rooms to the one at the farthest end. She opened the door and walked inside, but bust up laughing as soon as she turned on the light.

"What?" Morgan called.

"It's the honeymoon suite!" she giggled. "We're going to have lots of fun in here!"

"Goodnight," Hermione rolled her eyes, pushing past Garcia into the room. 'Honeymoon Suite' was a bit of a stretch. It had obviously been thrown together for couples who couldn't spring for a longer getaway than their wedding night. There was a king-sized bed with a mirror hanging on the ceiling above, and also an oversized bathtub fitted with jets, something Hermione was convinced that neither of them would be willing to touch.

"I've seen some nasty crime scenes, but this is something new entirely," she muttered with a smirk as Penelope closed the door.

"It's not the end of the world," Garcia replied with a chuckle.

"It's far from the worst place I ever had to stay."

"If you want I could make it better. I'm sure whoever got stuck with Reid would be happy to switch for me."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" she asked, trying to feign ignorance.

"Oh, please, sweetie. Anyone with an iota of perception can tell you two have eyes for each other."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I totally don't believe you, but I'm not feeling up to fighting you about it right now. That will come later. Do you mind if I catch the first shower?"

"Not at all," she said, tossing her bag on one side of the bed and flipping on the TV to a slightly fuzzy version of the late night news. Garcia grabbed a few things and disappeared into the bathroom. As soon as the shower came on Hermione pulled out her wand and started waving it around the room, trying to make it as clean as possible without looking like she had done anything. By the time Garcia emerged several minutes later she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the case file spread out in front of her, a notepad with her hand-scribbled notes perched on her knee, her pen poised above it, ready to write anything relevant.

"Oh, no you don't," Penelope said, waving at the photos. "I have to be surrounded by that stuff all day, I refuse to let it contaminate my sleeping space. If you have to work, please do it at the plastic table and chair provided by the crappy coffee machine in the office."

"I'll put it away," Hermione smiled, gathering the file and placing it in the drawer by her side of the bed. When she turned back Garcia had placed a few stuffed animals on her side table by the alarm clock. Hermione didn't even bother to ask, she just smiled, gathered her pajamas and her toiletries, and disappeared to take a much-needed shower. Her jacket was practically plastered to her body by sweat, but she didn't dare take it off in front of anyone. As she washed up she stared at the offending mark on her arm, where Bellatrix had carved 'mudblood'. The blade that had eventually killed Dobby must have had some kind of curse on it, the scars never faded, still standing out as a vivid pink against her pale skin. Ten years to the day had passed since she had been marked, and while publicly it was more of a sign of her resilience, privately she wished the damn thing would at least fade as to be less noticeable. She could have covered the mark by magic, as she had been doing when she met Spencer in Chicago, but that kind of magic might be sensed, and she was trying to live as much like a Muggle as possible.

She finished quickly, wanting to get as much sleep as possible before having to jump back into the investigation in the morning. She dressed in a pair of shorts and a thin long-sleeved t-shirt before brushing her teeth and pulling her hair back into a loose braid. When she emerged from the bathroom Garcia was watching a late-night comedian and exchanging instant messages with Kevin on a tablet computer.

"Tell Kevin I said hullo," she smiled as she climbed into bed.

"Oh, I already did," she replied, signing off. "He was very concerned with who I wound up sharing a room with, though I think as long as it was you or Reid he would be okay."

"Dare I ask why he would be okay with Reid?"

"Because Reid wouldn't get fresh with me."

"Would anyone on the team get fresh with you?"

"No, but he's the least likely to do so. Besides you, though you never know nowadays."

"Right," she smiled, turning the light off. "I may have had a moment back in school, but that day is long since passed."

"That sounds like there's a story behind it."

"Goodnight, Penelope."

"I will get it out of you one day."

"Goodnight, Penelope," she said more forcefully.

"Goodnight, Hermione," she replied, an obvious smirk playing in her voice as her light went off. As Hermione's eyelids fluttered shut her mind was brought back to the night she spent writhing on the floor of Malfoy Manor at the mercy of Bellatrix Lestrange, and she tried desperately to push it from her mind before sleep overcame her.

A few hours later Rossi and Morgan were woken by a frantic knocking on their door. The knocker moved to Hotch and Reid's room before returning.

"Please," Garcia begged through the door. "Someone, get up! Something's wrong with Hermione!"

Morgan was the first one to throw open a door. "What's going on?" he asked in slurred half-sleep.

"It's Hermione," Garcia replied shakily. "I don't know what's doing it. It's like she's dreaming, but I can't get her up. Please," she begged again as Rossi appeared and the door to Hotch and Reid's room opened, Spencer peeking out. "Please, we've got to help her. There's something really wrong."

The group hurried to the last room where Hermione lay, contorted on the bed, mouth opened in a silent scream, tears streaming down her face. As they entered the room she slackened, now racked with sobs, and she started pleading in a hoarse voice, "It's a copy, Bellatrix. Please, I don't know where it came from. We found it in the woods, we were never in your vault. It's a copy. It's a copy. Please, no more." There was a short pause before she began writhing in pain again, teeth gnashing together to stifle the scream attempting to escape, body twisting and contorting, trying to do anything to find relief that wouldn't come.

"What's happening?" Garcia asked as the team seemed to snap out of the trance that had come over them as they watched their newest team member being tortured by invisible forces.

"Granger!" Morgan said loudly as her body relaxed again and she continued to beg for mercy and claim ignorance to the Bellatrix in her dream. Doing the only thing he thought he could do he took her shoulders and shook her, calling her name loudly and more frantically as her body began to tighten with pain again.

"Hermione? You've got to wake up," Rossi joined in, shaking one of her arms hopelessly.

The cycle of pain and pleading repeated itself twice more before Morgan decided that whatever they were doing wasn't working, and he abandoned his post by her side to go to call for an ambulance. But before he could get to the door he was stopped by Hermione stopping her pleas and suddenly seeming to calm down. Turning around he saw that Reid had rushed to take his place, and was holding one of her hands while stroking her hair and murmuring softly in her ear. Hermione's chest was heaving, but her head turned towards his, her fingers grasped his hand with what little strength they had left. Her eyes didn't open, but the torture and pleas seemed to stop. The team watched in stunned silence as Reid, oblivious to their stares, continued to talk soothingly to her, hand carefully brushing the hair that had become plastered to her face with sweat away from her brow.

"What's that on her arm?" Garcia asked, pointing to the arm Rossi still had a hold of. Part of her scar became visible, and without thinking Rossi carefully pulled the sleeve up to her elbow, exposing 'mudblood' to the group.

"I think it's best if we leave now," Hotch muttered, leading the group save for Spencer out of the room. He and Rossi returned to their rooms without a word, but Morgan stayed outside to comfort Garcia, who still looked like she was distressed.

"It's okay, baby doll," Morgan said, taking her into his arms. "Don't worry, she'll be fine now."

"What does mudblood mean?" she asked, sounding lost.

"No idea. Don't worry your pretty head about it, girl."

"Who would do that to her arm? Do you think she might have done it herself?"

"No," he said firmly. "The angle is wrong, it's not her handwriting, and she's not the type. Someone did it to her."

"Who would..." she trailed off and hugged Morgan a little harder before stepping back and wiping the tears from her eyes. "Have you ever seen something like that before?"

"No. Normally I can wake them up."

"No, I mean with Reid," she corrected. "How she calmed down immediately when he touched her."

"Never," he shook his head. "It was something else."

"Yeah," she said, looking at her door and looking as though she were lost in thought.

"Get some sleep, baby doll," he smiled with a final hug. "She'll be okay now."

"Mm-hmm," she nodded, still thinking as she bid him a hasty good night and went back in her room. Reid was still sitting next to Hermione, hands now both holding hers. Hermione was breathing normally, body curled towards Spencer, not showing any signs of the pain she had been in minutes before.

"I'm just going to stay in here a few minutes," Spencer muttered vaguely, sounding shaken. "To make sure it doesn't happen again." He was staring down at Hermione's form, looking scared and confused, his eyes distant as if he were trying to remember something.

"As long as you need," she nodded. She was still awake, occasionally glancing at Spencer and Hermione, wondering what had happened to the younger woman, when Spencer left without a word three hours later as the sun started to peek through the windows.

Hermione woke up twenty minutes later to find Penelope snoozing lightly. As quietly as she could she changed into a pair of running shorts and a top and slipped from the room, stepping into the muggy morning for a quick run. She knew she had dreamed of Malfoy Manor the night before, she only hoped she didn't disturb Garcia, but she could still feel the pain lingering in her muscles and wanted to work it out before she went in that morning.

"Morning, Granger," Morgan said behind her, causing her to jump before she turned around. "Mind if I join you?"

"If you can keep up," she smiled, turning and starting to jog down the road.

They had gone about a half a mile before Morgan spoke. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah," she muttered, a pit forming in her stomach.

"Are you sure, girl? Because you didn't look so hot a few hours ago."

She stumbled slightly, but quickly recovered. "What do you mean?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

"You seemed to be having a pretty nasty dream. Garcia came to get us because she couldn't get you up."

She had stopped dead, looking embarrassed. "I didn't know it had gotten that bad. I knew I had a nightmare, but I didn't know..."

"Hang on there, girl," he smiled, placing a hand on her shoulder supportively. "It happens. We've all seen some messed up things, and we all get nightmares on occasion. We just got nervous because we couldn't seem to snap you out of it."

"It happens. It was ten years to the day, so I had been thinking about it a lot and the dream was particularly vivid," she muttered, looking off into the morning fog and biting her lip.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Long story short, I was caught by a crazy woman, she tortured me, some friends helped me escape and that was that," she said plainly as she turned to keep jogging.

"Is that where you got that thing on your arm?" he asked as he caught up to her.

This time she didn't seem to be shocked he knew. She sighed before saying, "It was her favorite insult. And she certainly wasn't going to do something nice like waiting until I was dead to carve something into my skin."

"Can I ask what it means?"

"I'd rather you not."

"Okay," he nodded.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry I disturbed everyone, and I plan to apologize to everyone, not just you."

"I wouldn't bother. They understand things happen. Maybe Garcia would appreciate an apology, but giving it to everyone would probably just create an awkward moment."

"I'll make sure to apologize to Garcia, then," she nodded.

They ran for a while in silence, and were nearly back to the hotel when Morgan spoke again.

"You should probably also thank Reid. He's the one who managed to snap you out of it, or at least that's what it looked like."

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah. Don't know how, but as soon as he started trying you calmed down."

"Perhaps the dream was over. It did end somewhat abruptly in real life," she muttered, hoping he didn't call her on the obvious lie.

"Just take care of yourself, baby doll," he smiled. "You're among friends."

"Thanks, Derek," she nodded as they reached the hotel, and she ducked inside for another quick shower, debating whether or not she could finally dress for the weather or not.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Later that day Hermione volunteered to take Garcia the greasy take-out burgers and fries that were served by one of two restaurants in town- their only options for a meal unless someone chose to drive the twenty minutes to the nearest larger town, and with time of the essence no one was willing to waste the hour. Hermione had volunteered because Hotch had been unwilling to let her step away from his meetings with local law enforcement and witnesses all morning, and thus she hadn't gotten a chance to apologize, let alone get a moment to think for herself.

"Lunch is served, Madame," she smiled as she entered the room.

"Hermione!" Garcia said in shock, lunging for one of her two computers.

Hermione frowned as what was on the screen was replaced by a map of the area. She could have sworn, though perhaps it was just a trick of the light, that Penelope had been looking at an on-line newspaper, and that the menacing, half-crazed face of none other than Sirius Black, sneering up from the stationary mug shot released to Muggles, had been placed to the right of the headline. She inched closer, hoping to see a tab or something that might indicate what Penelope had been looking at, but it seemed the computer analyst had closed the article rather than risk Hermione seeing what was happening. Several other tabs were visible, some were news articles, so Hermione assumed that she had just been seeing things, that her nightmares from the night before were bringing back memories of people from the wizarding world.

"How's it going?" Penelope asked, trying not to sound concerned about Hermione startling her.

Hermione sighed dramatically. "I keep getting ideas, but Hotch moves at a mile a minute when he wants to. I feel like if I step back and think there might be something glaringly obvious that I'm currently missing."

"He's just trying to work out how you fit in. We often do our best work as a team. Someone says something, someone else has a revelation, we wind up amending the profile or figuring out a vital clue... sometimes it's like it's all scripted for television or something."

"Don't need to tell me twice. I'm just listening to the witnesses and something's not adding up. I know people tend to have a better view of victims after they die or go missing or whatever, but I feel like there's something they're hiding. Like she might not have been as happy and outgoing as everyone makes her out to be recently."

"Everyone keeps secrets," Penelope nodded. "It's just a matter of finding out what they are and how they fit into the case."

"Secrets can be the difference," she muttered. "Did you find anything new?"

"Not really," she sighed, turning to her computer. "But frankly, with the limited amount of technology available in the area it's hard to really bring much of anything up about her. The state issued her a driver's license on her sixteenth birthday, but she's never had a run-in with the law, either traffic or otherwise. The school has a basic website, but still seems to keep all their records off-line, so I can't access them. There's a few pictures of her from the local paper, but they only gave into the online bug a year and a half ago, so she was in high school before they ever would have considered putting a picture in. Of the four I can find she's in a cheerleader's outfit in three, and in a group photo of her youth group in one."

"Can I see them?" she asked, moving her chair forward.

"Of course," she said, pressing a few buttons casually and bringing up the four pictures with accompanying captions. Hermione studied the group pictures once quickly before focusing on two in particular. "Can you enlarge those two?"

Garcia did as she was asked, blowing up the youth group photo and one of the football game photos.

"Do you notice something a little odd about the youth group?" Hermione asked.

Garcia furrowed her brow as she looked. "It looks like your typical, Southern, mostly-white church group."

"Exactly. When we came into town the sheriff made a point to tell me that the different sides of town, and thus the churches in this town are just short of legally segregated. So why is there one African-American in the group?"

"It could happen. I'm sure it occasionally does happen."

"Amari is standing quite close to that young man," she pointed at a tall, handsome boy, who was standing just to the right of Amari in the picture, close enough they were touching.

"Her boyfriend is standing on the other side."

"I'm not ruling anything out based on their boyfriend being there."

"You can't base everything off that one picture."

"Which is why I brought up the second picture. Look at Amari in that picture. All the cheerleaders and football players seem to have formed two groups, based on skin color. Who is she talking to? The same boy."

"Again, it could happen."

"Can you figure out who he is for me, at least?"

"Do you really need to ask?" she smiled, typing a few things on her computer, then reading the results. "Paul Smith, aged 18... huh."

"What?"

"I'm not finding anything about him before he got a drivers license here two years ago. He's living with Samuel and Pamela Halloway, who are not his parents, but I don't see any foster information on him."

"That sounds a bit odd."

"The problem is that small towns are horrible about record keeping, and it's not unheard of for someone to shuffle from family member to family member without the state knowing," she shrugged. "There's a fair amount of suspicion towards the government in certain areas."

"Sounds like we're going to have to talk to Paul Smith. Could you get me the address?"

"Already heading to your phone," she smiled.

"Thanks, Garcia. And, I apologize again."

"Don't mention it, Hermione. It happens."

"I'll see you later," she smiled, hurrying from the room to go talk to Hotch.

Penelope waited until she was sure Hermione was gone before pulling the tab with the picture of Sirius Black back up. She glanced at the headline, the third day in the row the mysterious murderer had been a fugitive, decided it probably had no new information, closed it completely, and erased the page from her history. She had started her search with nothing but the name Bellatrix, but it was not a common name, and when a picture announcing a mass prison breakout appeared she was quite sure she had found the right Bellatrix. But finding the crazy looking woman had not answered many, if any, of her questions. Information other than she was a fugitive was proving difficult to find, even a birth certificate proved elusive. And she couldn't look at the pictures of Bellatrix and her cohorts very long before thinking she might get her own nightmares, none of them looked this side of sane, and so she went searching for the other name she heard mentioned several times in the story- Sirius Black. But Black looked as maniacal as his cousin, and she was left wondering just what Hermione had done before she even hit twenty that would have such a scary looking group of people hunting and hurting her. She had a bit of research ahead of her, but was conflicted about the whole thing and had to stop for at least a break from their terrifying eyes.

"Perhaps I should switch rooms with Reid," she said dryly to thin air. "I wonder if Kevin would mind me bunking with Hotch?"