Down Under

It is happening again. 

It is happening again, Hermione’s brain screams. 

Time bends. In a single, horrible fraction of a second the ceiling comes crashing down around them in a shower of dust and sparks. Hermione feels as though the moment itself is wrapping around her, trapping her, rooting her to the spot.

It is happening again.

She can see the bodies falling, hear her classmates’ screams, feel the stone crumbling around her as the castle implodes. 

It is happening again. 

Hermione stands in the spot where moments before, their table had sat. Her legs feel as though someone has cast a full body bind: knees locked, feet frozen, unable to lift themselves from the ground. She swallows, her face numb. 

A warm pressure appears around her torso, tugging her to the side. Hermione whips her head around and opens her mouth to scream. 

George looms behind her, one arm wrapped around her waist as he shoves her through the chaos. Hermione’s relief quickly turns to panic as she takes in his appearance. His hair is inexplicably a patchy, ugly brown. More pressingly,  thick rivulets of blood run down his face, coating his jaw and neck in scarlet tracks. 

He catches her eye and pushes her forward. 

“Come on, Granger, help me out here,” he pants, his footsteps smacking against the carpet floor as he tries to run for them both. 

Hermione takes a deep breath in, the air scraping against her lungs as the world comes back into focus. She can hear screams and sirens, can smell smoke and taste the dust emanating from collapsed drywall. 

She is not at Hogwarts, but this is not good. 

Yaxley sits crouched behind an overturned table nearby, his eyes on Hermione as he shakes drywall dust from his shoulders. He twirls his wand in his hand, and a flash of red erupts from it. 

George’s fingers dig tightly into her waist as he lurches sideways, forcing them both out of the curse’s pathway. 

“We have to get out of here,” he yells. “Get outside so we can disapparate.” 

Hermione gives a jerky nod. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Yaxley’s wand slice through the air again. Her own wand is up almost without her thinking of it, and she casts a shield charm between them. A gentle blue film explodes from her wand, casting a shimmering barrier between them and Yaxley.

George tugs her forward, and Hermione picks up her feet. 

She runs, shaking George’s arm away. He elbows through the stream of people rushing for the street, wand clutched in his hand as he glances at her over his shoulder. Hermione follows him, weaving through the fallen tables and writhing bodies towards the restaurant’s front door. 

She hears heavy footfalls behind her and can hear a deep voice murmur an incantation. An angry red jet narrowly misses Hermione’s shoulder. It strikes the outer edge of her shield charm, disintegrating the safeguard into a cloud of sparks. 

Hermione forces herself to continue running, keeping her eyes locked on George’s shoulders ahead of her. She hears another murmur, and turns just in time to duck and avoid a jet of purple light. She looks over her shoulder, her lips already forming the words to cast another shield charm. 

Yaxley runs behind her, dark eyes glinting as he jabs his wand towards her again. He is gaining ground on her, only a few steps behind.

Hermione tightens her grip on her wand and slices it through the air behind her. “Protego!” she shouts wildly, her chest clenching as she prays silently the charm works. 

She sees the gentle blue light appear once more, and lets out a breath. 

She turns back to face the doors. She can see George near the front, neck twisting as he searches for her in the rushing crowd, his eyes wild. She reaches out a hand towards him, sees him change course and run towards her, pushing against the wave of bodies. 

Hermione puts one foot in front of the other, and then does it again. She does not let herself stop to see or hear the crumpled forms on the floor. She does not pause to look back at Yaxley just a few steps behind her. 

 She is almost at the front door, almost to the sidewalk where she can grab George’s hand and they can disapparate. She stretches her arm out as far as she can, her fingertips straining to reach him. 

She is so close. 

She is nearly at the front door when some unseen obstacle catches her foot, and the ground rushes up to meet her face. 

Hermione lets out a sharp cry as her forehead bounces off the ground, all the air in her chest leaving her in a violent huff as her body hits the floor. 

She can feel heavy footfalls reverberating through the carpet, can almost feel the pulsing anger and twisted glee radiating off of Yaxley as he approaches. 

Hermione plants her hands on the ground and takes a deep breath, her chest aching and head spinning. She must keep going. She cannot outrun him, not now that she has lost precious seconds. But she cannot allow him to overpower her this easily, splayed out on the ground waiting for him. She will not go quietly. She pushes her body up, shifts her weight onto her feet. 

Without warning, everything around her goes dark. 

Renewed screams and cries fill the air, and Hermione joins them as rough hands catch her around the middle in a tight hold. 

“Shh,” George’s voice is gruff in her ear as he pulls her to her feet. Hermione feels him shift, hands tightening at her waist as he presses her into his side and turns on his heel. 

A wand illuminates just beside them. Hermione catches sight of Yaxley’s face contorting, his body lunging towards them, as George twists on the spot and darkness once again presses in on her. 

***

Hermione’s feet hit solid pavement, and her knees buckle. She tumbles to the ground, George dropping alongside her in a tangle of limbs.

Yaxley, she thinks, her thoughts swimming from the fog of apparition and pulsing adrenaline. Where is Yaxley? Did he—

She stumbles to her feet, a wave of nausea cresting in her gut as the world around her continues to spin. Hermione lets out a gasp, her body heaving as she tries to center herself. The fear and anxiety make their way up her throat, and she can taste the bile on her tongue. 

Hermione barely registers the sour taste in her mouth before she keels over, hands on her knees, and retches into the street. 

Groaning, she forces herself to straighten. Her heart slams painfully against her ribs and the remaining bile burns against her throat as she clutches her wand and looks around. 

She must find Yaxley. 

The waning rays of early evening sunlight assault her eyes, great black spots appearing in her vision and the world going hazy at the edges. Hermione makes herself blink, her eyes screaming against the bright light as she frantically scans her surroundings. 

They are in an alley, most likely the one near the public library. Hermione’s pulse thrums wildly against her skin as she examines the familiar scenery, half expecting Yaxley to emerge from behind the dust bins. 

She takes a breath, blinking rapidly in an attempt to banish the black spots popping up in her view. “Homenum revelio,” she murmurs, pointing her wand towards the building in front of them and turning in a circle. A light golden sheen appears in the air around her and George, but nowhere else in the street. 

Hermione lets out a breath and drops back onto the pavement, her chest feeling as though it might explode at any moment. Beside her, George sits up, a hand pressed against the top of his head and a deep frown etched on his face. 

“What the absolute fuck just happened?” he chokes. “Was that—”

“Yaxley,” she nods, gulping air and pushing damp strands of hair from her forehead. “Yaxley. He’s here. He’s in Sydney.” 

“Right.” George nods sharply and winces as more blood pours over his forehead. 

Hermione’s heart slams against her chest with even greater force as her eyes catch on George’s face again. “Your head,” she gasps, scrambling beside him and getting up on her knees. “Your head—we have to—” 

“It’s alright,” he wheezes, one hand still pressed firmly against his crown. “Not cursed or anything. A piece of the ceiling hit me when it came down.” 

“We should—” Hermione shuffles closer and nudges his hand away, her fingers weaving through his blood-sodden hair. She finds the source of the bleeding, a deep gash at the crown of his head, and flattens her hand over it. 

“I have dittany,” she says quickly, shaking the beaded clutch into his lap and hurriedly applying more pressure to his head. “It’s in there. If you can summon it—” 

George nods again, and Hermione feels a fresh gush of blood flood over her fingers. 

“Try not to move too much,” she huffs. “You’ve already lost a lot of blood. And with the apparition—” her chest constricts, and she leaves the rest of the sentence hanging between them. 

George opens her bag in his lap, taking his wand and mumbling “Accio dittany.” A small phial flies out, which he catches and hands to her. 

Hermione takes the phial in her left hand, unstoppering it with her teeth before bringing it up to the wound on George’s head. She gently removes the hand covering the gash, tamping down the rising bile as blood once again pours out. With a shaky breath she raises the phial over him and tips one, two, three drops of dittany into the bloody mess of hair and skin. 

She nearly cries out in relief as the bleeding abruptly stops and the gash recedes, the skin of his scalp coming back together as though sewn by an invisible hand. 

Hermione drops back down onto her feet, shoving the stopper back onto the phial and handing it to George. 

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asks, her fingers running again through the brown hair, searching for additional wounds that could have contributed to the shocking amount of blood that soaks him. 

George shakes his head slowly as he drops the dittany back into the beaded bag. “I don’t think so. What about you?” He twists, his hair slipping through her fingers as he faces her. “Did he—” 

“No.” Hermione shakes her head and brings a hand up to her forehead, grimacing as the black spots once again burst across her field of vision. “None of the curses hit me. It just—my head—” 

“Are you bleeding?” George asks sharply, eyes flicking across her face as he brings a hand to her hair. 

Hermione shakes her head again, biting her lip as another swell of nausea rises in her chest. “No,” she gasps. “No. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s just—these black spots—they won’t go—” 

The rest of the sentence is lost as she turns and vomits again on the pavement. 

“Oh,” George says, shifting onto his feet and putting a hand between her shoulder blades. 

Hermione lurches forward into a kneeling position, hands catching roughly on the gravelly pavement as her stomach empties itself. George kneads small circles into her back, one hand coming up to tuck loose strands of hair away from her face. 

Hermione hears a whimper escape her as she heaves, her body now expelling nothing but air into the alley. She can feel tears leaking from her eyes and onto her face as her stomach clenches tightly, collapsing in on itself before forcing bile and rotten breaths up her throat. 

“You’re alright,” George murmurs, the heel of his hand still pressing gently into her shoulder blades. “You probably have a concussion is all. I can fix that once you feel like you can sit up.” 

Hermione merely groans in response. Her head hangs heavily between her arms, the ground wobbling beneath her. Another bushy curl falls against her cheek and she feels George catch it and clumsily tuck it behind her ear. 

When at last the heaving stops, Hermione rocks back and sits on the ground, burying her face in her hands. 

“Hey.” George shifts beside her, taking one of her hands in his and peeling it away from her burning face. “Look at me.” 

She lowers her hands and finds his eyes on her. She swallows, her throat constricting at the sour taste lingering in her mouth. 

George keeps one hand wrapped around her fingers, and his other holds his wand up in front of her. “You have to keep your eyes open for this or it won’t work,” he says. “Just focus on my wand.” 

Hermione bites her lip and nods. She pins her vision on the tip of the wand in front of her, ignoring the pounding in her head and the growing haziness at the edges of her sight.

“Capiclarus,” George murmurs, giving his wand a sharp flick. 

It feels as though a set of heavy curtains in Hermione’s brain have been suddenly opened. The ground below her solidifies, the black spots in her vision recede, and something deep in her core stills.

Letting out a deep breath, Hermione waves her wand and conjures a glass of water which she drinks down greedily. When the water is gone she flicks her wand to vanish the glass and then waves it at her face to magically scrub the inside of her mouth. 

“Better?” George asks beside her. 

Hermione nods, leaning back and laying flat on the ground. Her breaths grate against her lungs, and her heart thumps heavily in her chest. 

She hears George shuffle against the pavement, and turns her head to look at him. 

“Yaxley’s in Australia,” she says, voice catching. 

George nods, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Yeah. Bad luck, that.” He slants a glance at her. “Any ideas on how he found us?” 

Hermione bites the inside of her cheek. “No,” she admits. 

George sighs. “Me either. It seems like he got there right after we showed up. We’d barely been seated—” 

“Oh!” Hermione inhales sharply and bolts up.

George jumps beside her, his wand coming up. “What?” he exclaims, looking around them wildly. “What is it?” 

“Put your wand down,” Hermione hisses, reaching out and pushing his hand into his lap. “What if—” she looks over her shoulder. “What if he found us because we were using magic? When you confunded the host? What if there’s some sort of trace—” 

George frowns and shakes his head, rolling his wand between his fingers. “How would that help him find us, specifically? There’s thousands of wizards in Australia.” 

“I don’t know—I just don’t know—” Hermione runs a hand over her hair and swivels her head to look about the alley. “But think about it, George, what else could it be?” 

George frowns, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he considers her. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t make sense. There’s loads of wizards just in Sydney. We weren’t—” 

“We were in muggle Sydney, though,” Hermione says. Her heart rises into her throat again, the panic once again taking root. “There could be a way to track unusual magical activity.”

George grimaces. “Possibly—”

“And if that’s it,” Hermione continues, her voice growing shriller as her throat grows tighter, “then we just did loads of magic right now. He could—we need—we have to get out of the street.” 

“Right.” George gives a short nod and gets to his feet, stowing his wand in his bag before bending down and holding a hand out to Hermione. She takes it gratefully, gritting her teeth as he helps her stand. 

“We need to find cover somewhere,” she whispers quickly, again scanning the alleyway as though Yaxley might jump out of the shadows at any moment. She tightens her hold on George’s hand, trying to calm her pounding heartbeat as she pulls him towards the main road. “We need to get out of this street, get somewhere where we can sit down and figure out what to do.” 

George squeezes her hand, his jaw tightening as they move. “Well, we know just the place, don’t we?” He takes a breath, the deep red blood coating the right side of his face shining in the fading sunlight. “Back to the library we go.”

***

They burst through the doors of the Darling Square Library, and Hermione suddenly wishes she had thought to tidy the both of them up before arriving. More than one person stops to gawk at them as they make their way quickly across the main floor, and Marjorie at the reference desk lets out a horrified shriek at the sight of George’s bloody face. 

“Let’s find somewhere quiet,” Hermione mutters, pulling George to the back of the room in search of their old working space. “We shouldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves.” 

The table and chairs where they had spent so many days combing through newspapers are occupied, but Hermione spots an abandoned armchair nearby and hurries towards it. She tugs George behind her and shoves him down into the chair with rather more force than she means to. 

“You stay here,” she breathes, releasing his hand and glancing over her shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Where are you going?” he demands, snatching her wrist and glaring at her. “There’s a bloody escaped death eater on the loose I’m not letting you just go and wander—”

“We need to get your face cleaned up,” Hermione says, scowling at him as she twists her arm free of his grasp. “We won’t be able to go anywhere inconspicuously with you looking like you just fled a violent crime scene. I’m going to the washroom to find something to help.” 

George rolls his eyes and reaches for his bag. “We can just charm—”

“No!” Hermione yelps, smacking his hand away from the bag. “We shouldn’t use magic. Not until we have a better idea of how Yaxley found us in the first place.” 

“Fine.” George sits back heavily in the chair and frowns at her. “Go on then. But if you’re not back in five minutes I’m going into the girl’s toilet myself to find you.” 

Hermione purses her lips. “Noted.” 

She hurries to the washroom, keeping her gaze on the floor as she throws open the cabinets searching for something to clean George’s face with. 

Finding nothing save a roll of extra paper towel, she opens her bag with a sigh and thrusts a hand in, digging until she comes across soft folds of a worn fabric. She pulls her hand up and finds a t-shirt, one of her favorites, bunched in her fingers. 

She sighs again. Needs must, and they have to move quickly. She tears the t-shirt into two pieces. She shoves one piece back in her bag and runs the other under the faucet, watching the pale blue fabric darken beneath the water. When it is saturated, she wrings the heavy strip in the sink and adds a dollop of soap onto it before pushing out the door. 

George still sits in the armchair, his bloody face even more shocking under the harsh fluorescent lights. Hermione bites the inside of her cheek and adjusts the damp t-shirt strip in her hand. 

He looks up as she approaches, his face twisting into a wry smile. “Back with two whole minutes to spare,” he says lightly. 

Hermione doesn’t respond. She holds up the cloth in her right hand and takes his chin in her left, moving his head gently to the side and examining the extent of the blood. 

“I don’t think I’ll be able to get everything,” she murmurs, bending down and pressing the fabric to his temple. “But this should do enough that we can walk down the street without people staring.” 

“We wouldn’t want to cause a scene,” George says, grimacing slightly as she scrapes the cloth down his face. 

Hermione bites her lip and wipes his temple again, a layer of grime and crusted blood lifting from his skin. “I’m not going to be able to do anything about your hair right now,” she says. “But we can deal with that later.” 

George shrugs. “That’s fine.” 

“What happened to your hair, incidentally?” she asks, pausing momentarily. “Why is it—”

“Brown?” George supplies, lip twitching. 

She nods. 

“I charmed it before we ran out of there,” he says in a low voice, bringing a hand up to brush the clumpy strands. “I didn’t know—I thought the red might be a bit of a giveaway if someone was trying to find us.” 

“Oh.” Hermione gives a jerky nod and brings the cloth down to the crest of his jaw. “That was clever.”

George flashes her a grin. “You seem so surprised.” 

Hermione rolls her eyes. She wipes the cloth down his jaw and over his neck, the tightness in her chest loosening as the blood covering George’s skin melts away. 

“It just startled me, that’s all,” she says in a clipped voice. “You didn’t look like yourself.” 

“Well, that was the idea,” George responds dryly. 

Hermione brings the cloth down to his shoulder and wipes away the remaining thin splatters. George’s face looks almost normal now, slightly pink but largely free of gore. 

“We’ll have to charm it back,” she murmurs, half to herself as she runs the cloth over the entirety of his face once more. She pauses and runs her thumb through the hair curling around his right ear. “The brown doesn’t really suit you.” 

George snorts. “Would you like me to ask you for a color recommendation next time?” 

Hermione shrugs and steps away to throw the blood-soaked t-shirt into a nearby rubbish bin. “Only if you have a spare moment.” 

“I’ll try to squeeze that in next time we’re running from a crazed ex Death Eater, then.” 

Hermione bites back a smile as she takes the dry strip of fabric from her bag and bends over George again, mopping up the residual soap and water droplets. She brings a hand up to cup his chin again, adjusting his face gently as she works. Her eyes skim over his features, searching for forgotten splashes of blood and dust, determinedly avoiding meeting his gaze. 

“There,” she says at last, dropping her hand and throwing away the second piece of fabric. “I think that’s all I can do for now.” 

“Right.” She sees his Adam’s apple bob as he brings a hand up and tentatively runs his fingertips over his face. “Thanks for doing that.” 

Hermione nods and takes a breath in, closing her eyes as her mind flips through the situation in front of them. 

“We have to figure out how he found us,” she whispers, pressing her fingers to her forehead and squeezing her eyes shut. 

“We’ll do that,” George says, shifting in his seat. “But first we need to figure out where we’re going to go from here.” 

Hermione swallows, the truth of his words hitting her like bricks. “We’ll have to—we can’t go back to the hotel.” Her hand drops to her side and she opens her eyes, knowing from the set in his jaw that George understands her meaning. “If he found us at the restaurant—” 

“He could know where we’re staying,” he finishes the thought for her. “Well, we’ll just have to find somewhere else to lay low, then. Somewhere he won’t look.” 

“Any ideas?” Hermione asks in a shaky voice. 

“We’ll find something.” George runs a hand through his hair, fingers catching on clumps of dried blood. “There’s loads of hotels in Sydney, aren’t there? We can find something that will work.” 

“But if we can’t use magic—” 

George shakes his head. “I really don’t think he found us just because we used magic, Hermione,” he says. He glances up at her, frowning. “I mean, think about it. If someone had put a trace on one of us then why did it take so long for him to find us? We’ve been here for two months, and we’ve been using magic every day.” 

Hermione exhales and catches her lip with her teeth. “How, then?” she asks, her voice catching. “How did this happen?” 

She meets George’s gaze, her eyes beginning to burn as her mind sorts through the possible answers, all the ways in which Yaxley could have landed in the same restaurant in muggle Sydney as them. 

Was it mere happenstance, a freak coincidence? Or did he know precisely where to find them? 

She doesn’t know which answer she likes less. 

“Look, I don’t know how he ended up there tonight,” George whispers, leaning forward in the chair and taking her by the hand. “But I’m fairly sure it can’t be because we used a confundus charm. The timing just doesn’t make sense.” 

Hermione takes a rattling breath and nods. She thinks back to the events of the day, the patterns and habits they have established since arriving in Sydney eight weeks earlier. It is true, as George says, that they have used magic liberally nearly every day since they arrived. And even if Yaxley were biding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity, there have been several other openings when he could have attacked one or both of them. 

“You’re right,” she breathes, running a hand over her hair. “It probably wasn’t the magic. It must have been something else.” She breathes in, squares her shoulders, and faces him. “So we just need to find somewhere else to stay. It’s a good thing we both were able to keep hold of our bags.” 

George nods, eyes flicking down to the knapsack at his feet. “Any thoughts on where we look for a new hotel?” 

Hermione pauses. “We should move out of the touristy part of the city and find something on the outskirts, or else look in a different town. I expect he’ll be looking for us now in this area.” 

“Right.” George gets to his feet and slings the knapsack over his shoulder. “We should probably get moving, then. I don’t know how long it will take for us to find someplace, and we don’t want to get shut out.” 

“No, we don’t.” Hermione opens her bag and peers inside before slowly reaching in and extracting the battered map of Sydney. She unfolds a section of it and purses her lips. 

“The more randomly we choose the location, the more difficult it will be for him to guess,” she murmurs absently. “So let’s try here.” She jabs a finger at a suburb south of the city. “We haven’t been there before,” she says. “So even if he’s been tracking us for a while he might not expect it.” 

George stoops over her shoulder and scans the map, nodding as he considers it. “Alright,” he says after a beat. 

Hermione twists and glances at him, arching an eyebrow. “You approve?” 

George flashes a smirk. “I’ve told you before, Granger,” he says, “where you lead, I follow.” 

***

Hermione apparates them to the suburb and to her relief they find a chain hotel along the main road advertising available rooms and suites. George insists Hermione wait in the seating area of the lobby and let him get the room, seeing as their Sydney reservation had been booked using her alias. 

“We have to disrupt our pattern however we can,” he urges, pushing her down onto the squashy couch and fishing his charmed passport from his bag. “If Yaxley’s gotten to the hotel, he’ll likely be searching everywhere for Elizabeth Wilkins.” 

Hermione acquiesces and watches as George strides to the front desk, handing the charmed piece of paper over to the smiling woman. 

A few minutes later he rejoins her, room key in hand. “I told you it would be fine,” he says, shaking her head. “Went smooth as anything.” 

“I’m so proud.” She rolls her eyes and holds her hand out. “Can I have my key?” 

“Ah.” George’s eyes drop to the floor, a rather sheepish look coming over his face. “I—er—I only got the one. I thought—with that psycho on the loose—I thought it would be best if we were in the same space—er—you know.” He glances up at her, then quickly drops his gaze again. “That way we know we’re both alright and we can just do one set of reinforcement spells—” 

Hermione bites her lip and says nothing, her face feeling as though someone has lit a match in her skull. 

A pink flush creeps up George’s neck like ivy. “If it’s too—if you would rather—I can just go back and tell her I need another—” he sputters, putting a hand to the back of his neck. “The confundus works wonders, I’m sure she’d do it.” 

“No,” Hermione squeaks, her voice finally returning to her as she shakes her head. “No—it—it’s a good idea. I just—” 

She trails off, her face burning. She has never shared a living space with a boy before, other than Ron or Harry. And somehow this feels different, much different, than the months she spent living in a tent with her two friends. 

But she cannot argue with George’s reasoning. And though she would not say it, not for a million galleons or perfect scores on her N.E.W.T.s, she does feel better knowing he will be nearby in the nighttime. 

“Er—right—” George clears his throat and adjusts his bag on his shoulders. His ears and neck remain a fiery pink as he casts a glance around the lobby. “We should—” 

“Yes, we should,” Hermione nods. 

The room is on the third floor, and Hermione’s pulse trembles again as she follows George through the doorway. The door swings shut with an almost accusatory slam, and she stands still. 

The room is about the same size as the room she had had to herself in Sydney, though the extra furniture makes it feel smaller. Two double beds sit side by side, each with a corresponding nightstand. Against the wall is a little kitchenette with a microwave, hot plate, and refrigerator. An entertainment stand sits beside the refrigerator, housing a boxy television and a printout of available channels. 

As George drops his bag on the bed closest to the window, Hermione pulls out her wand. 

“We should set the wards,” she says as she turns towards the door. 

“Yeah.” George snatches his wand and joins her.

Hermione lifts her wand and takes a breath. “Protego totalum,” she whispers, her wrist twisting as the silver protective threads weave and dance around the perimeter of the room. “Muffliato. Repello inimicum. Protego horribilus. Salvio hexia.” 

Beside her, George lifts his wand and murmurs his own string of incantations under his breath. 

When the last of the enchantments have been cast, Hermione takes a tentative step backwards and sets her wand on the entertainment stand in front of the television. “I feel better now that’s done,” she says. 

“Me too,” George responds. “And now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the second most important thing.” He points the wand at his head and gives it a wave, and his hair abruptly changes from the faded brown to its usual flaming red. While the change feels like a relief to Hermione, she cannot hold back her gasp as the dark pockets of dried blood become even more apparent. 

“What, did I get the color wrong?” George grumbles, putting a hand up to his head. 

“No,” Hermione shakes her head. “The color’s fine. It’s just—all the blood—” 

“Oh.” George shrugs. “I’ll shower in a minute and take care of that.” He then turns his wand to the knapsack on the bed. He flicks his wand and the knapsack transforms into the black duffel bag, which George picks up by the handle. 

“Well,” he says, turning to Hermione. The pink tinge reappears on his ears as he swings the duffel bag at his side. “I’m just—er—going to shower. If that’s alright.” 

“That’s fine,” Hermione squeaks. She puts her bag on her own bed and hastily opens it. “I’ll just do some unpacking and—and organizing.” 

A long, excruciating pause stretches between them. “Right,” George says at last. “Well—I’ll be back, then.” 

As George disappears into the bathroom and the sound of the shower echoes into the room, Hermione busies herself examining her own reflection in the mirror. 

Specks of blood, most likely George’s, decorate her hands, and she can already see an angry purple bruise blossoming on her forehead from her fall at the restaurant. A fine layer of dust and grime covers her face, making her skin look gray under the overhead light. Her hair, which she had so carefully twisted and pinned into place just a few hours before, looks wild. Frizzy tendrils hang loose, the knotted curls dotted with rogue flecks of drywall and blood. 

In short, she looks like a horror. 

A bone-deep exhaustion seems to drop over Hermione like a blanket, the last of the adrenaline leaking from her system and the stress and terror of the day finally hitting her with their full force. She staggers back until her knees find the edge of the mattress, and drops down, settling her head into her hands. 

She can feel her chest clenching again, her heart resuming its violent strikes against her bones. Something heavy and sharp roils in her stomach and for a moment she worries she is going to be sick again. She lifts her head from her hands, trying to think where she can vomit while George remains in the bathroom. 

She and George are safe, for now. They escaped Yaxley in the restaurant. They are in a new space, with a thick layer of protective spells between them and the rest of the world. 

She may die soon, but she will not die tonight. 

And so her mind flips to the next thing, the fact she has been pushing away ever since she caught sight of Yaxley sitting beside her. 

The image rises in her eyes again: the dim light of the restaurant, the bubbling chatter surrounding them, George’s hand pressed against hers and his eyes alight as they tracked her movements, and Yaxley undeniably leaned towards them, his face tight in concentration. 

Somewhere on the other side of the wall the shower turns off. Hermione’s eyes burn as she turns over the image of Yaxley in the restaurant, inspecting it as a curator might inspect a photograph. 

He had heard them. 

She knows this without anyone having to tell her. She knows it from the brief gleam she saw in Yaxley’s expression, the disdain splashed across his features. She knows because it would be foolish to think he had not heard, when he had been right beside them, and she and George had taken no trouble to keep their voices quiet. 

Hermione digs the heel of her hand into her eyes, pressing so hard that bright stars erupt across her vision. She takes a jagged breath and thinks about all the time she and George have spent already, searching for her parents. How many false starts they have had, how many towns and villages they have visited, how many days and weeks they have spent trying to track them down. 

She thinks of how many weeks or months it may still take to find them, how little idea they have even now of where to look. 

She thinks again of the maniacal gleam in Yaxley’s eye when he questioned Mary Cattermole in the Ministry of Magic, the cruel determination that twisted his face as he pursued her in the restaurant. She thinks of what he will do should he decide to look for her parents, if he decides that they are his best way of reaching her. 

 The walls of the room close in on her, and Hermione feels as though the edges of her body are blurring. She does not know where the mattress below her ends and her skin begins. She does not know how much time passes through and around her. 

She knows that her heart is trying to slam its way out of her body and onto the floor. She knows her throat is closing in on itself, shoving her breaths back into her mouth so they cannot reach her lungs. 

Her body is turning on her, turning on itself, and Hermione does not know how to stop it. 

She tries to take a breath and hears, as though from another room, the strangled cry that escapes her instead. The burning behind her eyes intensifies, and she knows by the dampness leaking onto her palms that the dams have burst open. 

“Hermione?” 

A door clicks shut, and something falls with a thump to the floor. 

Hermione does not look up, but shakes her head, trying to draw another breath as she presses her hands further into her eyes, trying to mop up the heavy tears falling down her face. 

“Hermione.” 

Warm hands wrap around her wrists, prying her palms from her eyes. She sniffs, her chest burning as oxygen forces its way down her nose. 

The mattress dips beside her, and she can feel the presence of another person nearby. 

“What’s going on?” 

Hermione blinks, the tears obscuring her vision so that she can only make out a blurry rendering of George’s face, leaned in so close their noses are nearly touching. 

She takes a rattling breath, her head and chest and throat all screaming at the action. She cannot breathe. There is too much inside of her. She is too full. She simply does not have enough room for more air. 

“Hermione. Talk to me.” 

A hand comes to her back and presses against her shoulder. Hermione sinks into the touch, her shoulders dropping as she tries to staunch the tears. 

“He knows,” she croaks, looking up at George’s blurry face. “He knows about my parents. He heard us talking, I know he did. And he—” she cuts off again, the words crumbling against her teeth. Her hands come back to cover her face as she shakes. 

George’s arms wrap around her, pulling her tight against his chest. Hermione lets her face rest against his t-shirt, still shaking as a hand comes up to rub small circles between her shoulder blades. 

“We have to find them,” she cries. “We have to. Or he’s—”

“We’re going to find them,” George murmurs, his mouth pressed against her hair. “We’re going to find your parents and we’re going to get back to Britain before Yaxley can do anything to them.” 

“How?” Hermione moans, fresh tears coming as she thinks of the man’s twisted smile, the horrors he will no doubt have in store for her parents, who won’t even understand why they’re being targeted. “How are we going to do that? It’s been two months—” 

George’s hand flexes against her back, and he brings the other up to her hair. “We’ll get a good night’s rest,” he says softly, fingers weaving through the knotted curls. “And in the morning we’ll revisit our plan. We’ll see if there’s anything new we haven’t thought of. And we’ll keep going.” 

Hermione nods against his chest, feeling a wet spot beneath her face where her tears have soaked into the fabric of his shirt. She breathes in, holding the air in her chest and forcing it into her lungs before letting herself exhale. 

George’s arms tighten around her, his thumb stroking lightly against her back. She knows she will feel embarrassed for this episode later. But for now she pushes the feeling away. 

She imagines the feeling as a small tempest in a glass mason jar, imagines her hands closing the lid on the jar tight so the tempest cannot escape. She imagines shoving the jar in a small trunk, down at the bottom so she will have to dig through all the other contents later when she comes to find it again. 

Into the trunk she puts the image of Yaxley eavesdropping on them in the restaurant, the sight of his face illuminated in the dark as she and George disapparate. She puts the long list of places she and George still have to look for her mum and dad, all the towns and villages they will have to visit and explore. She puts the books she still has to read to figure out how to safely undo the memory charm, and a thick scroll of parchment detailing all the ways she knows the reversal can go wrong. 

Finally, she puts a picture of this precise moment, the warmth emanating from George’s chest, the smell of cinnamon and smoke and hotel soap engulfing her, the feeling of having someone to cling to when the world falls apart around her. She lays the image in the trunk and snaps the lid closed before taking a key and locking it with a decided click . 

She shoves the trunk into a deep corner of her mind, stacking other boxes and folders on top of it for good measure and hiding it behind other, less frightening thoughts. 

She will feel embarrassed for this, and she will feel terrified for her parents, and she will feel hopeless for herself. Hermione sinks further into George’s chest, taking another deep breath as she holds tightly to him, and decides she will feel it later. 

She will feel everything later.