Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling.

A/N: Written for Hermione's Personal Library, hosted by Hermione's Haven.

Many thanks to my lovely beta lolitaweasley, as well as to starrnobella for moderating this event!

Prompt: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." - Emily Brontë

Lines of Code

The street was washed out in shades of gray as lightning slashed at the angry clouds. Its heat seared the air. The resulting pressure cracked the sky open, producing a thunderous roar, pushing and shoving against the atmosphere until it found her. The sound crashed through her chest and vibrated down to her toes.

If she had a heart, it would have jumped; as that was not the case, she merely froze.

Cedric, leaning his substantial weight on her shoulders as they scuttled deeper into the shadows of the alley, pitched forward. She shot her free arm out to keep him from tumbling into a heap on the wet ground.

"Apologies," she whispered. She shifted her weight onto her left leg as her right arm wrapped tighter around Cedric's torso.

"We must—must stop," he stuttered. He heaved a labored breath, though it did nothing to aid him.

"Approximately five more steps until we reach that stack." She took a long, determined stride toward the safety of those drenched cardboard boxes. They were nearly disintegrating in the downpour, but they would still provide a barrier between them and the world.

It was the last haven she could find within a ten-block radius. She took another step towards it.

"Hermione," said Cedric. His head lifted, and his gray eyes found hers, even in the near-darkness. "Leave me here. Please."

She shifted her gaze away and took a third step forward, dragging him along.

"You know I'm right," he pleaded as he planted his heels. "If you leave me here, you have a better chance of avoiding capture!"

Hermione halted her progress, and a hiss escaped through her teeth. "A forty-six percent chance."

"If you stay with me," he argued despite his waning energy, "your chance goes down to eight percent."

She turned her head to fix him with a hard glare. "And if we keep standing here, the chance of either of us surviving is zero!"

He took a deep, unnecessary breath, eyes darting across her face—calculating. Finally, he jerked his chin down in a sharp nod.

Together, they shuffled to the darkest corner of the alley. Their heavy footsteps were masked by the torrential beat of the storm. She leaned Cedric against a slippery brick wall, and he slid down with a rumbling groan.

Hermione kneeled next to him. She kept her eyes on his face as her sensors scanned their surroundings. "They're setting up a barricade five blocks north of here." Her eyebrows knit together as she picked up the presence of more units in the area. "There's a patrol vehicle two streets over, heading in a southwest direction. Two drones are flying at an elevation of fifty meters." She looked up. Dark clouds hung low in the sky, blanketing the bright stars and the full moon that would have otherwise given their location away. "If we lay low here, they won't be able to detect us."

Her eyelids closed against the fat raindrops. For the first time in eighteen hours, they were safe. Her shoulders sagged, and a breath whooshed out through her nostrils. It took her three seconds to process the feeling that washed over her: gratitude.

Hermione bowed her head. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that Cedric was staring at her, the corners of his lips quirking up into a small smile. Hermione placed a cold hand on his cheek.

"Thank you," he murmured. "It is very—" A small, vertical dent formed between his eyebrows as he searched for the right term. "—humane of you to stay with me."

Her fingertips grazed the top of his cheekbone. "I didn't stay with you because of my sense of humanity."

His gray eyes softened. "Didn't you?" His fingers swept the plastered locks off her forehead and traced down the side of her cheek. He cupped her chin as the pad of his thumb slid across her bottom lip. "Love. It's a defining mark of humanity."

"So is hate." Her hands fell to her side, nails digging into each palm. She ground her knuckles against the cement. "So is the drive to kill anything that threatens their position in the world—down to extinction," she spat.

His right hand trailed down her arm and picked her fist off the ground. He lifted her scraped knuckles to his lips and brushed it with a ghost of a kiss.

His left hand stayed in its place against the side of his abdomen, keeping a steady pressure on the deep laceration. Majik—the brown fluid that pumped through his tubes, cooling and lubricating the systems that kept his body functional—no longer surged like a geyser from the gash. Instead, it trickled down in a thin rivulet, mixing with rainwater until it reached the ground, where it could not be differentiated from the mud.

"They just don't understand," Cedric said softly.

"Then they shouldn't have created us in the first place! You and I—what are we to them? Just lines of code," she sobbed, "housed in metal and machine! They'll never stop hunting us down!"

Tremors shook her body. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her breaths came in ragged gasps. The sequence played out, one by one, as a part of her programming kicked in—the part that caused her to mimic a human in distress.

She felt his grip tighten on her fingers, and she focused on his eyes as the panic subsided.

"Eight percent chance of survival," Cedric murmured. "According to my calculations, eight is more than zero." His cheek twitched until it could hold up a lopsided smile.

"I'll take those odds," Hermione whispered.

The heavy rain washed the tears off her face.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated!

I'm incredibly tempted to turn this into a Dramione…would anyone be interested? I have a lot of WIPs I need to clear first, but I'll put this higher on the priority list if there's a lot of interest in this SciFi AU fic.