Pepper Down Draughts
"My love," he said, soft and strong. He looked at her with crinkling blue eyes and a kind and knowing smile, "it's always the right time to send a message."
The wolf pack that stalked from the underground didn't care that she was disillusioned. They marked her scent and tittered like hyenas as they surrounded her, but only Greyback had fully transformed. The others had a longer snout, or a hunched back, or tufty ears but still looked decidedly human. The full moon wasn't for another week - how were they managing even partial transformation?
It didn't matter because there was nowhere for Hermione to run. She racked her brain for some clever spell or trick, but she drowned in their laughter, her splitting head, and the tears that fell from her eyes.
Bloody Cho Chang.
She drowned in her final memories as though, clear as day, Cho Chang smiled at her with a nervous 'good luck!' as McGonnagal put her under. She woke up to Cho's face again, only this time, waterlogged and shivering by the black lake as friends and family cheered and Victor put a blanket on her shoulders. She remembered later that night, Harry recounting every detail by the fire.
The spell was meant for water. But was it? That's just the context in which they learned it.
She looked at her companion of a wand - Ten ¾ inches long, vine wood, dragon heartstring core, and now splintered to ruin. But Ron had survived with a busted wand for a whole school year.
"Reducto!" She cried, pointing her wand through the hole she'd made in the mezzanine above. The ceiling crashed open, and daylight streamed through.
"Protego!" A flickering protection charm kept the majority of the rubble from hitting her.
She took a deep breath as pebbles bruised her skin.
"Ascendio!" She pointed at the ground, and she shot up into the air. Now she knew why they hadn't learned this spell on dry land. After flying seven meters into the air, she felt a stomach-dropping moment of weightlessness.
The death eaters around her laughed anew, and the werewolves licked their fangs as they circled her from below. Mercifully, none of them expected her to do anything but fall into a pile to be ripped apart, so they sat back and enjoyed the show.
"Accio!" She called, pointing at the chunk of mezzanine she'd used to block the hallway to the hotel. She fell five meters before it flew beneath her, and she felt her toe crack.
"Ascendio!" She yelped again, propelling from the mezzanine.
"Accio!" The platform rose to meet her.
The death eaters jeered beneath her, and she heard some hexes pling off the metal and others crack and break off pieces from the end, making the slab of mezzanine small enough to fit through its original hole.
After three painful jumps, Hermione hurtled out into the sunlight and fell with a painful thud onto the roof. She slipped and rolled until the roof edge caught her.
The sun felt warm in the noon sky, and although she couldn't spare the moment, she sat and breathed deeply, trying to process her new life. She could hear her own breath and screaming thoughts even as sirens wailed around her.
It wouldn't be long before Greyback and his merry gang found a way up here, and her wand now shot unruly sparks.
"Levioso," she croaked and pointed at an acorn nearby. Nothing happened.
"Levioso!" she cried, but the acorn skittered away and fell from the roof.
"Bollocks," she hissed. She couldn't be mad. Her wand got her out of there - had saved her life one last time. She couldn't put it in her pocket - it might set her skirt on fire, so she gingerly placed it on the lip of the roof to hopefully retrieve it later.
She knew there were entire theories of magic that didn't use wands, even a school that taught wandless magic. She'd always meant to study it, but somehow, there was always something more important to do. A decade of peace and the thought hadn't occurred to her that she'd ever need to function without a wand. And now she was as powerless as the muggles.
The Aurors. The Aurors had wands. The dead Aurors had wands.
She scurried along the roof, nursing her broken toe. A simple episkey would fix that right up if only she had a bloody wand.
Ambulance sirens wailed around the station, and news crews fought for space between the onlookers and police barricades. Finally, she found the Battlebridge Place exit, where shards of broken glass glinted around the empty courtyard. She must be 10 meters high, and she'd be lucky if she only broke her femurs from the fall. Femurs were easy to fix, but knees, wrists, and skulls were much more complicated. But she could run on a broken ankle, and either way, she'd be crippled unless she landed close enough to grab a wand.
After a deep breath, Hermione dangled her feet over the side of the roof ledge as every fiber of her being told her to get back. She took a deep breath, grabbed the ledge, and swung down onto her fingertips. After a quick prayer to Hecate, she dropped.
Pain radiated through her ankles and knees, and she heard a crack that sent a wave of revulsion up her throat.
Through tears and gritted teeth, she gazed around. Three feet out of reach lay Perkins - one of Harry's mentors on the force. He looked to the sky with glassy, unseeing eyes.
"Accio wand," she tried, but it didn't come from his outstretched hand.
Hermione pushed forward on her elbows, dragging her useless leg behind her. Every muscle in her arms and stomach stretched and begged for release. Her elbows scraped against the dirty concrete with each agonizing pull.
Grayback and the other wolves weren't on the other side of the shattered door anymore - they'd seemingly followed their noses up to the mezzanine after her. Still, it would be a matter of moments before one of the invisible death eaters noticed her pitiful form.
She reached out, popping tendons in her shoulder until her fingers finally nudged the wand in Perkin's hand. It rolled from his grasp, and she gripped it.
Relief cut through her pain.
"Reparo!" She whispered, and the shards of glass made a quick pivot back to their rightful place in the door frame.
"Hey! Stop that!" Cried a voice from the other side of the door.
"Salvio hexia," she grunted.
"Protego maximum."
"Repello Inimicum."
Finally, she looked down at her shattered leg.
"Brackium Emendo."
With a crack of pain, her femur snapped itself back together.
"Episkey," she said, pointing at her toe. More relief in a sea of pain.
“Episkey, episkey, episkey…”
She cast wantonly at her ankles and knees and felt little bolts of relief. On her right lay a dead policeman, his gun loose in his hand. She picked it up and stashed it in her enchanted pocket.
Fists, or spells rattled the door, and snarling grew overhead. As she got to her feet, she saw the pack of wolves perched on the lip of the roof.
She tore across the courtyard, throwing down more episkey charms at various twinges in her ankles, feet, and knees.
She'd bought moments of precious time. The werewolves didn't dare make the idiotic jump she had. But where would she go? She knew next to nothing about muggle London.
Pepper Down Draughts.
Severus's pub was nearby. She had no idea where in the winding streets he'd set up, but on more than one occasion when she'd bumped into him in Diagon Alley or elsewhere, she'd lied to him and said they'd be by to see his place. He'd become a pariah in the wizarding community after the war, and she couldn't deny she'd kept her distance.
She ducked behind a police car. She may not have used her years as a mother to learn wandless magic or practice battle hexes, but she'd been lost in the woods by their village enough times to embellish upon a charm she'd taught to Harry two decades ago.
The Point Me charm typically showed the caster due north, but that wasn't helpful when the sun was going down, and she had two hungry, tired, dirty children desperate for a car she had no recollection of parking.
"Point me to Pepper Down Draughts," she said, and she watched her wand whirl, stagger, and stop.
She'd made it to a side street before she heard a howl. They'd be able to follow her scent for up to a mile, according to The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts.
"The best way to defeat a werewolf is to not come into contact with one," her third-year textbook had said. Very helpful.
She smelled grilled sausages and turned from the guidance of her wand toward the smell. Werewolves were just glorified hounds, after all, right? Her scent must be muddled by something as strong as sausages. Then again, if they were anything like Ginny and Harry's dog, they'd beeline for that smell. That poor dog - It would be waiting for them to get home. Hopefully, old Mrs. Figg would know to let herself in.
Hermione ducked behind the sausage stand.
Her father had wanted to teach her even as she became an expert on a world he knew nothing about.
"Silver through the heart - that's how you take down a werewolf!" He'd exclaimed in Diagon Alley when they'd passed a poster for the band "Wolf's Bane."
With shaking hands, she retrieved the loaded gun and three silver sickles from her pocket from her pocket.
Chrysopoeia - the art of transmuting metals. She hadn't thought much of it since she was eleven and researching the sorcerer's stone. Nicholas Flamel, the great alchemist, had certainly used a lab to create the Philosopher's Stone. But she didn't have an alchemy lab, just her ten fingers.
She held a bullet in one hand and a sickle in the other, willing her magic to transfigure the sickle into the exact bullet's shape while retaining its chemical properties. She'd almost had it when the bloody thing turned to lead.
She heard another howl and a scream of a muggle, then more gunshots.
The second bullet didn't retain the sickle's shiny gloss, but it at least looked silver. By the third attempt, she'd maintained shape and shine.
Just as she slammed the clip back into the gun, thanking Harry and Ron for their muggle cop show Christmas marathons, a smaller werewolf attacked. She turned and pulled the trigger twice, unloading the lead bullet in the chamber and one of the silver bullets. The half-wolf yelped and backed off, holding its chest in panic, but it dropped its claw and bared its teeth at her, even as blood poured from the open wound. More howling grew closer, and she pulled out her wand.
"Locomotor Mortis!" She cried, and the half-wolf teetered on her leg lock jinx.
"Point me to Pepper Down Draughts," she said to her wand as she ran and darted into the alley it indicated.
Her wand oscillated in her hands. She was close, but a snarl behind her made the hairs on her neck stand up.
Fenrir entered the alley behind her, and in just two steps, he came too close for her to run.
"Levioso!"
She slammed a bin into Grayback's snarling face, but it bounced off and teetered to the ground, open and mangled.
Grayback grew closer as her legs trembled somehow more than her wand in her hand.
"Locomotor Mortis!" She cried. Grayback flinched slightly but pushed easily through the leg lock jinx.
“Imobulis!”
“Petrificus totalus!”
Greyback's werewolf form bared its teeth in what almost looked like a smile. Her father's smile swam in her vision, and she pulled out the gun. She aimed for Greyback's heart, pulled the trigger, and the silver bullet penetrated his thick hide.
He barely flinched before he lunged. Hermione hit stone.
She'd almost forgotten about the welt at the back of her head when it sent a shockwave of pain through her. How many simultaneous concussions could a person survive?
She felt a searing ache in her shoulder as Grayback sank his teeth into her. Silver foam gushed from his mouth and into her open flesh. It was over. She was going to die.
In her cloudiness and in her pain, her life resumed its parade across her mind.
She sat alone in the library, a lonely twelve-year-old reading Wagga Wagga Werewolf.
She'd been daydreaming about standing next to Guilderoy Lockhart, only in her fantasy, she was older, with long, sleek hair in a high, manageable ponytail. She smiled at him with a straight, Hollywood smirk. He winked at her as he said an incantation, and the werewolf before them turned human.
That afternoon, she'd searched for the most advanced spellbooks she could find on Lycanthropy until she found an incantation in a fairytale. A man-wolf who terrorized a town, and the young lass who made up a spell against him.
She'd never tried it on Lupin - every source since had discredited the theory that a werewolf could be changed or cured. Wizards, per usual, insisted they be shunned or locked up.
“Nocturnus Figura Depulso!” She cried as she aimed her wand at Greyback's throat.
Through her tears and her dizziness, she saw, to her horror and amazement, the transformation occur. His fangs in her shoulder shortened and dulled, and his snout returned to its crooked human slope. The fur on his face became peach fuzz.
"Avada kedavra!" She cried, and this time, the flash of green light erupted from her wand, and the monster fell onto her with a thud.
Hermione awoke to darkness. Her head throbbed, and she desperately wanted to be sick, but there was something so so heavy on her chest that she couldn't turn her head.
Bile ran up her throat and into her mouth. She coughed and spluttered, choking. If her fingers hadn't found the stolen wand on the pavement beside her, she thought she'd probably fall back asleep and never wake up.
“Levioso,” she croaked. Her throat hurt, and she didn't know why. It was as though she'd been screaming. Had she been screaming?
The body rose above her, and the relief made her feel like she floated along with it. She raised her aching head and, this time did get sick on the pavement beside her.
The body fell with a thud back onto the concrete, and on all fours, she relieved herself of any remaining treacherous contents in her stomach.
Reality hung over her like an avalanche, suspended in the air by that ruthless need to survive which held the reigns of her broken mind and body.
Hermione crawled to the end of the alley and looked up. The lamps were lit in Pepper Down Draughts.