Hunter and Prey

No one intruded on her misery. Hermione eventually cried herself out and lay wretchedly sniffling. She was in deep trouble now. It wasn’t being pregnant or rather it wasn’t only being pregnant. She was an adult. She could make the difficult choices. What troubled her was the other person. Fenrir hadn’t Stupefied her. He hadn’t been the one laughing in her hazy memory. So there was someone else, some who delighted in her pain.

She was not quite twenty six and had more enemies than she could conveniently name. Most were in Azkaban or had buried themselves so deeply even the Unspeakables couldn’t dig them up. Malfoy was the most obvious choice as the werewolf had mentioned him. That was not evidence she would like to take to a Tribunal but she could believe it.

Hermione closed her eyes to thwart more tears. She hadn’t anticipated this. Once Fenrir had dragged her through the hedge she had expected to die. Her only option had seemed to be going down fighting. Given the werewolf’s notorious hatred of wizards the last thing she had expected was a curse.

What was the chance they had not found Elinor? Fifty/fifty? She had no idea. The feeling of the breeze she remembered could have been flying on a broom. That was always chancy in daylight hours near Muggle settlements. They wouldn’t have hung about. Would they have bothered to search for the little girl? Again, maybe or maybe not.

Who was feeding Crookshanks? He had his own cat door but that didn’t help. If he felt neglected he’d wander off and get into trouble. Had Basingly called her parents? They’d been sick with worry throughout the war. They weren’t happy about her doing fieldwork either. They’d seen Bill. And now they had to wait for news. She had spared them that at least when she sent them to Australia. There was nothing she could do to help now.

Except escape. The grim reality was whoever was holding her need only hold her for another three months or so. Much after that and she would be too weighed down to run. Fucking hell, she would be huge. Hermione blinked fast, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Don’t think about it. Focus on the solution not problem.

Eventually she cajoled herself into getting out of bed. It took longer than Hermione liked to admit. She was so tired. But she made herself do a circuit of the room, following the walls to get an idea of the size of her cell. It was bigger than she had expected suggesting an industrial use. A bathhouse perhaps? Her hands brushed against what felt like shower faucets. She turned one experimentally but nothing happened.

She found the door. It was metal and didn’t shift a centimetre no matter which way she pushed, pulled or slid. Hermione was reasonably sure it slid but until she saw it open there wasn’t a lot she could do with it. She could kick it and she did for no better reason that she wasn’t going to accept being locked up in the dark with good grace. Nett result was a sore foot.

Continuing on around the walls Hermione found a much smaller door set low in the wall. A hatchway somewhere, it seemed. She got the blanket so she wasn’t sitting on the cold floor then set to getting this door open. The hinges were on her side of the wall. Feeling for latches on the edge opposite the cylindrical bumps, she found a blocky lump. This would be much easier if she could see what she was doing.

By trial and error, Hermione found which protrusions were the latches and tried to open them. There was something sticky on her fingers when she gripped the catch. Echoes of the wet patches on the mattress made her automatically wipe her hands with a grimace. Get a grip! She told herself sternly. Stubbornly, she sniffed at her fingertips. The substance smelled like oil with a strong hint of rust. An old door recently lubricated.

On the right track then, Hermione smiled to herself. She shoved and rattled the latch then pulled. The small door opened with a groan but it opened freely. Peering forward she couldn’t see much but she thought the darkness was a little greyer, suggesting some source of light beyond. Or her optic nerves could be misfiring in an attempt to process visual information when there was none.

Hermione felt around the interior of the cavity. The walls were tiled but the floor was wooden. She ventured in, finding she could crawl quite easily but standing up involved crouching over painfully. The tunnel extended for the count of thirty-one before ending in a wooden panel. It gave a little when she pushed against it gently so she shoved.

Moonlight flooded in. Hermione looked away, blinking, but her eyes adjusted readily enough telling her she hadn’t been kept in the dark for too long. She was still in the dark metaphorically speaking but she aimed to remedy that. Emerging out of the tunnel into a partially overgrown cobbled courtyard, she took a deep breath. There was a brick wall a few strides ahead of her, more courtyard ending in bushes to the left and building to the right.

Hermione hurried to the wall. It was old, the mortal falling away. There were plenty of hand and footholds so she got up relatively easily only skinning one shin in the process. She paused on top of the wall, lying flat so she wouldn’t be obvious. Moorland stretched out before her. The treeless, green, bumpy hills beaconed so she lowered herself to the ground and blanket-clad set off. She got all of about twenty metres before a voice behind her snarled.

“Why do you keep running away from me, bitch?”