Hermione

Help, someone: Is "bird" still a word that means "girl"?

I'll need to edit this a little more.

*

The evening was dreary, wet, and dark. Heavy clouds hung in the air, and freezing rain lashed the trees and windows. Hermione doggedly pulled on a black sweater, black jeans, black shoes, and then shoved the mass of her hair under a black knit cap. She looked outside again glumly. If anything, the freezing rain picked up. Hermione heard hail hitting the window. She put on a dark winter coat and pulled up the hood. Then she shoved the gold square and the white square in her jeans pocket. Crookshanks was curled in front of her radiator in the glow of a floor lamp, purring and from time to time kneading the hot metal with his paws. Hermione patted his ugly head, and he looked up at her through pleasure-slitted eyes before closing them again.

Well, there was nothing for it. Hermione exited her flat and looked around. Not a living thing was in sight. She turned in place and found herself outside the Malfoy grounds, hidden behind some foliage near the wrought-iron front gates. The rain and hail had let up, but cold water dripped from everything. Hermione opened the white square until it became the book, then turned to the map. Hermione decided to go around back, which would put her several miles from the mansion. She looked around. A lost and lonesome wind riffled the foliage. The mansion stood silent, unwelcoming, and empty. Hermione Apparated to the back of the grounds. Now she stood against the fence with a view of the rolling, severely landscaped grounds. Hermione imagined house elves trimming the shrubbery every day. Sheets of mist blew across the land. She looked left, then right, then Apparated to just inside the fence. No sense in trying to climb it. It was two meters high with no handholds or footrests. She took several steps cautiously forward.

Suddenly, a form materialized from the mist. Hermione froze. A big-boned rangy man came into view. To Hermione’s horror, he seemed to have been waiting for her. He was wearing shabby, torn clothes, smeared and spattered with some rust color. He raised thick, yellowed, curling fingernails, caked with gore, to his mouth. And then he parted his lips. Hermione saw pointed incisors. He licked his nails slowly, obscenely. And then he smiled at Hermione with all his teeth. Fear surged through every particle of Hermione’s being. Her legs wanted to sprint across the grounds, and she kept a fierce lid on the desire. Slowly, careful to keep Fenrir in view all the time, she backed up to the fence. When she felt its solidness behind her, she Disapparated to just outside it and continued backing away. Fenrir just watched her. When she got a bit farther away, he pointed upward. Hermione glanced quickly in that direction. The moon was shining, a skullcap in the sky. Then Hermione knew she had to leave at once. She backed up several more steps. Fenrir made a strange growling noise. Just as he began to charge, Hermione Disapparated to the alley outside her flat. Her breath was coming in gasps. She stumbled up the steps to her flat and threw herself inside.

Once within her own place, she babbled all the protective spells she knew, peeling off her wet clothes as she did. She put a kettle on and soon sat by the radiator wearing nothing but a wool blanket and wool socks, sipping boiling tea and thinking over the evening’s work. She would have to try again. She just couldn’t get over how Fenrir seemed to be waiting for her. Almost as if she were…expected.

That night she dreamt of Snape. He was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him. She felt desire, guilt, and apprehension. Then she felt his lips on hers. “Everything will be all right,” she thought.

The telephone jangled in her ear. Hermione kept a Muggle phone for her parents’ sake. “H-hullo. Oh, hullo, Mum,” she mumbled, trying to make her jumbled senses come together. “Yes. Everything’s super. Oh, well, working hard. No young wizards right now, Mum. No time. Now please—please, Mum, Dad, don’t bicker. Don’t— Please—“ Hermione held the phone away from her ear. Same old, same old. “So, yes. Yes, I’ll come on holiday. Skiing again? I thought that wasn’t really our thing. Oh. Not really my thing. All right then. Skiing. Yes. Yes. All right then. I have to get to work. Must go. Yes. Good-bye, Mum.” Hermione hung up, sighed, and threw on her work robes.

A short time later she was back in the Ministry, wending her way down the corridors toward her office. She wanted even less than usual to see Philomena Potts.

“Hullo, ‘Mione.”

She groaned internally.

“Hi, Ron,” she said brightly, turning to see Ron’s face, white under his red blush, the blue eyes both soft and angry at the same time. Witches and wizards streamed past Hermione as she came to a halt by Ron’s office. Here it comes, she thought.

“So, erm, I’m taking you to the Yule Ball, right?”

“No,” she said in a low voice. “I’m going alone.”

“W-what?!” he squawked.

“Listen, Ron, I’ve done the wrong thing by you.”

“Bloody right!” People stared as they passed by.

“I do care for you, Ron. I really do--”

“Really?” he cut in sarcastically.

“—I do!” she said fiercely. “But it just isn’t working as, er, a boyfriend-girlfriend thing.”

Ron glowered at her, every bit of skin above his robes glowing red. “You just wanted this job.”

“No! It has nothing to do with that!”

“You just used me to get this job.”

“Ron, that isn’t true!”

“I can take it back, you know! I can get my dad to have you sacked!”

“Ron—“

“Or maybe,” his face took a mock-thoughtful expression, “you don’t really like blokes. Maybe it’s girls you really like.”

Hermione could only stare at him.

“Yeah, maybe that’s what I’ll tell all the blokes here.”

“Ron, you know that isn’t true, and if you spread that lie, you’re just showing what an insecure prat you are!”

“Yeah, well, see you around, Hermione.” And Ron spun on his heel and stalked into his office. The door slammed in Hermione’s face.

She walked off with resignation, ignoring the gaping crowd around her.

Wanting solitude, she ducked into one of the hidden corridors and began quietly picking her way through the narrow tunnel.

“—don’t suspect anything.”

A young woman’s voice. Hermione halted.

“Very good.” Lucius Malfoy’s unmistakable drawl. “Get them thinking about Potter again. Tell Rita Skeeter there’s a shagging pool at the Ministry, and that Potter’s winning.”

“Potter doesn’t work at the Ministry,” the young woman pointed out sulkily. Hermione thought she recognized the voice of the Squib girl.

“Yes, well, tell Rita he’s an honorary participant. Tell her any damn thing. I don’t care. Just keep the focus on Potter. And now, how about your focus, Nichola?”

“Good as ever, Mr. Malfoy.”

Hermione heard the rustle of robes, then a man exhaling in pleasure. And then she heard the hums and knowing giggles and a slurping noise. Hermione turned around carefully and made her way silently out of the tunnel.

It was Dec. 22. Dumbledore's gifts to her pointed unmistakably in one direction: She had to know what the map was supposed to lead her to and what the Malfoys were hiding. She would have to try Malfoy Mansion again. Tonight.