Chapter 3
Hermione was roused from her sleep, if you could call passing out from grief and too much booze sleeping, by her current TFC licking her eyebrow.
“urrrgh, get off” she halfheartedly swatted in the vicinity of the scratchy tongues owner.
The cat, like many cats she’d cared for over the years, had an attitude bigger than its small body called for and clawed at her flailing hand.
“Ow, shit! Really now, get off!” Sobering up from the pain of claws to the back of her hand she shoved the cat unceremoniously off her and the bed she was laying in.
“You shouldn’t scratch the hand that fed you, don’t you know that?” She glared daggers at the black and white fur ball. Said fur ball swished its tail and circled the empty food bowl near the kitchenette and sat down next to it to stare at her pointedly.
Scrunching her nose in irritation and letting out a groan of frustration she set her feet on the rough wood floor and marched over to feed the TCP. She muttered about how ungrateful all the cats she seemed to get saddled with were and how inconvenient it was to have cats just show up unwanted and announced.
Setting the newly filled bowl on the floor she stooped to give her fluffy companion several pets and ear scratches.
Today was a moving day. She had been at this location for roughly a month and that was her max time limit for staying in one place. Any longer and her magical signature would be able to be detected. The Ministry of International Magic, Statute of Secrecy department was now in charge of keeping accurate records of every witch or wizards permanent dwelling as well as enforcing the Statute of Secrecy. Voldemort had conquered the entire wizarding world about a year after the final battle. He then combined every magical governing body into one giant conglomeration run by the new Overlord of Magic, Lucius Malfoy. It was, of course, obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain that Lucius was just a puppet put in place so Voldemort could stay in the shadows killing and torturing people as he wished. Mostly the MIM was used to enforce absolute obedience to the new pureblood regime.
The single loophole to the detection map they had was if a witch or wizard constantly stayed on the move. So, that’s what Hermione had been doing for 7 long years. Every month she looked on a map and chose a new location to hole up in.
Hermione’s research, research being a loose term as it included some very close calls and several hexed death eaters, had revealed that it took approximately 4 weeks and 3 days for a magical signature to fully seep into the surrounding area triggering some kind of notification relaying the new location to the death eaters running the Statute of Secrecy office. She wasn’t sure if a new dot lit up on their map or if a paper appeared from thin air saying “look here” suffice it to say this is just the way things were now.
Hermione began packing up the months worth of clutter by tossing it unceremoniously into her beaded bag. Any trash that accumulated was vanished. She didn’t bother with the fine layer of dust covering much of the kitchen and living areas. She mostly spent her time in the bunk beds or the bathroom where she like to cry in the shower. She had once seen a muggle wearing a shirt that said “Life is Good,” she wholeheartedly disagreed with that sentiment, life was a miserable and joyless pile of shit. She wanted a shirt that said that.
She shood her TCP outside and began disassembling the tent with quick practiced movements. She could likely erect and disassemble the tent blindfolded by now. She turned and searched for her TCP to say goodbye but the cat was nowhere to be seen.
She sighed and turned to take down her wards and hex bombs.
She was just removing the last few hexes from the area when she heard a crashing noise coming through the woods. Fuck, she thought, I haven’t had time to decide where I’m apparating to next! She couldn’t just apparate without any kind of knowledge of where she was going, she would surely splinch herself if she tried. Best to run then, get to a safe place and then figure it out.
She began running in what she believed to be the opposite direction of the noise. Though Hermione had never prided herself on her sense of direction so this was really just a guess.
Her stomach began to protest all the movement after a few minutes. She hadn’t had anything to eat that morning and the leftover vodka wasn’t sitting well now with nothing to soak it up.
She had just begun to slow down to try to pace herself and keep the contents of her stomach from exiting her body when something large and quite solid rammed into her right side.
“Ow! Fuck!” She quickly righted herself and drew her wand to point at whatever had run into her. Facing her foe she was shocked to find Draco Malfoy in front of her with his own wand drawn and pointing at her.
“Malfoy?” she whispered. It felt like her jaw had unhinged itself that’s how far it had fallen. He had grown taller since she last saw him on the battlefield. He was larger everywhere else too. No longer the thin pale boy from Hogwarts. Now he was tall, pale, muscled, perfection, topped with tousled white blond hair. She mentally shook herself and reinforced the strength that had started fading from her wand arm. She must remember he was a death eater. He was a perfect, handsome, god of a death eater and she would not waver. If she had to hex or kill him she would, he probably deserved it after all. She had seen the headlines about his work from the Dailey Prophet years ago.
She saw the shock register on his face as his eyes widened. Did he take a small step back as well?