A Dark Time For The Light

76

Remus’ next treatment cycle left him drained and morose and extremely nauseous for days. Severus worked hard at his Potion for the upcoming change. He and Poppy had discussed possible alternatives to the soporific and had come up with nothing, likewise discussion with Doctor Millward had yielded none. As a last resort, Severus had visited a vet’s, but was not allowed to buy animal tranquiliser over the counter, especially without a canine patient to examine. Severus was genuinely afraid for the coming change.

The girls turned up that afternoon to do their turn at House-Elf-ery. Remus was in bed, asleep and Severus was pacing the living room his hands carding his hair in frustration. Hermione gently asked what was wrong and in a fit of pique, he told her. In an instant, she checked her watch, Josie should be on afternoon break. She called her, “Jose, can you talk?”. “Yeah, I’m on break, whassup?”. “Jose, I need ya, girl, well, we need ya, babe. Another mission. Like our old ones. You know?”. “Whoa, not on the blower, Miney. I finish at six, I’ll be over at yours by half-past or thereabouts. See ya later”. Hermione closed her phone with a smile. She patted the man’s arm, “I’ll sort it out, Sev, don’t you worry. Now let me at your Internet for a bit”.

Dazed, the man waved her into the chair and she booted the machine, she needed to do some research. Ginny was curious but she and Sev disappeared into the kitchen and started cooking while Hermione made notes as she scanned various sites. Items on contra-indicated drugs to chemotherapy, then sites that told her the specific names of tranquilisers both animal and human that would do no harm. In less than 20 minutes, she had what she needed and closed down with a grim smile on her face. Time to unearth her ‘picks. Remus was awake again, but too worn out to leave his bed, so the girls left them to their meal after hanging up the laundry they’d done.

As they walked back, Ginny kept casting sidelong glances at her lover who walked in silence, frowning. She asked, tentatively, “What are you planning?”. Hermione just shot her a look then looked down again, staying quiet. Ginny stopped her then, in the middle of the street, “No!!. You can’t!!. You’re going straight now!”, her tone was anguished. Hermione leaned in with a low growl, “He’s tried all the legal avenues. We have to help. Sev could get seriously hurt. Remus could kill him. One swipe of his front paw could take Sev’s throat out. I know my Magical creatures, Girlie, and Remus is due to go into his Spring Rut, he could rape Sev and tear him to pieces doing his Alpha male thing and not know a thing until morning. Imagine waking up to find the love of your life in bloodied pieces all over the flat, half-eaten and knowing you’ve done it”. This served to quell Ginny’s objections, but she was still nervous at the prospect of what Hermione was about to do.

As promised, Josie turned up that night straight from work, shared dinner with the rest of the House, then Hermione dragged her off to the girls’ room, leaving a forlorn Ginny on the living room couch curled up. Colin and George gently questioned her, but she stayed close-mouthed, “I can’t tell, it’s to help someone close to us, that’s all, but I’m afraid she’ll end up in trouble again”. Her big brother threaded his arms around her and held her, not asking any more questions, just brushing her tears away with his fingers.

Hermione thanked her friend as she fed her into a taxi, the fare stuffed into her pocket. The deed was to be done tomorrow night, they’d carefully selected the locations and plotted and schemed as of old. The partnership was back and both girls’ eyes glittered as they parted. Ginny was scowling and distant for the rest of the night and slept as far away from Hermione as possible that night, a balled up mass of anger and resentment on the far side of the bed. Hermione tried to talk to her, but Ginny clamped her hands over her ears and refused to listen. Hermione sighed at her girlfriend’s perceived innocence and childishness and rolled away from her; though, as she lay on her back staring at the ceiling, she couldn’t deny the little bubble of excitement in her gut.

After she was sure Ginny was asleep, she assembled her toolkit, diving under the floorboard she’d loosened, digging out her small but powerful bolt-cutters, hacksaw and most important, her lockpicks in a cute little zip-around case, pliers, wire-cutters, some croc clips, her nifty Mag-lite with fresh batteries in and her pack of latex gloves. Just for good measure, she stashed her fine wool balaclava and dug out the pair of the most common trainers in the land, two sizes too big and stuck the two little pieces of wood in the toecaps, if she left footprints, they would look like a size 8 male shoe, not a size 6 female. She really was most thorough, and as she was no longer a junkie, she had her wits about her this time. She thrilled as she surveyed her kit, she included a length of nylon rope and some plastic lockable bag-ties.

Ginny surreptitiously watched her through slitted eyes. It wasn’t the fact of the burglary per se that disturbed her, it was the fact that Hermione was obviously getting off on it that riled her. She watched as the love of her life gazed lovingly at her lockpicks, cleaning each one, then oiling it, then packing her kit carefully away, coiling the rope, placing the tools in her bag almost reverently, a half smile playing with her mouth. She stashed the bag under the bed, then stretched and climbed back into bed and turned the light off. She was asleep in minutes. Her lover lay awake and fretted most of the night.

She cast a slightly disgusted look at her lover as she left for work the next day. She didn’t kiss her goodbye and flounced out of the House. She was short with Josie that day, until the smaller woman cornered her at lunchtime, “We’re not doing this for us, Ginny, but for your friend. Miney told me the possible consequences of him being in his natural state. Stop being an arse about this. We can help. Yes, of course, we risk gettin’ arrested, but that’s what mates do, Ginny. Miney isn’t the innocent she once was and I sense this is at the back of all this attitude, isn’t it?. You want Miney back as she was, brainy and Middle-class and innocent”. Ginny was dumbfounded, “But, Hermione a criminal?”.

Josie laughed at her concern. “She’s done this before, she can do this again. Face it, Ginny, your lover is a criminal, not the sweet innocent you imagine. I didn’t corrupt her, she has a natural mind for all of this. Face up to it. She changed. She’s not the same girl you fell in love with, mostly the same but with new bits you don’t approve of added on. Miney’s a survivor and she’s done some pretty serious shit in her time. I know. I was there while she did it. She’s a fuckin’ demon with those lockpicks. You’ve got to let go of this, Ginny, and let her do her job. It was Hermione’s strategies that got us back into that house to fix the system, so you lot can spy on Voldiedude, my input was minimal. So, stop bein’ a brat and let her do her thing and help Remus, who I also like, by the way. I had a top natter to him at Harry’s party, he’s a nice guy and shit doesn’t deserve to happen to nice guys. This is the only way, so lose the attitude. She needs you. She’ll do the job, well jobs actually, and need someone to pick up the pieces afterwards. She never had that wi’ me, but she does with you. You are the love of her life and she hates it that you disapprove, but she will always risk herself when a friend is in danger. Didn’t she do this in School, when her, Harry and your brother were fighting Voldiedude the last time?”.

Ginny sagged against the wall at this verbal onslaught. She’d taken the moral high ground without thinking it through, and Remus really did need help. Josie was right, she really did think that she’d got her sweet brainy love back as she was before, “It’s just that I worry. I think she gets off on it”. Josie smiled then, “Well, yes. I think our Miney’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie. It is a high in it’s own right and I think she does enjoy it. Me? I’m shit scared, but me ‘n’ her are a good team. She says ‘jump’. I say, ‘how high?’”.

Just in that instant, Ginny divined the nature of the relationship between her lover and Josie. She gazed into the girl’s eyes and gave up. “What do I have to do?”, she whispered. Her supervisor laid a hand on her arm, “Just be there, Ginny. She doesn’t want to go back to that old lifestyle again, I promise, but she cannot see any better way and she’s frightened for Sev and Remus. She probably knows more about werewolves than Remus does, you know what she’s like and she’s been researching like mad. We know exactly what we’re nickin’”.

Ginny buried her face in her hands a moment, then stood straight and nodded, “Okay. Thanks”. They shared a conspiratorial grin, then Josie looked at her watch, “Shit, we’d better get back or they’ll have our guts for garters”, they clocked back on for the afternoon.

Night was around them as the two girls stood suited and booted behind the veterinary surgery they’d selected. Hermione rolled her balaclava down over her face and shinnied up the drainpipe with agility. Three minutes work and she had disabled the alarm while Josie was hacksawing through the lock. The door was pushed open. Not a sound. They high-fived each other then searched the place until they found the equivalent of the DDA cabinet for animals. Hermione read the scrap of paper by torchlight as she rifled through the drug cabinet, stuffing various things in her blouson jacket. That job done, they left as stealthily as they had come.

The chemists was more difficult. Anticipating burglaries, most chemists had extensive security systems, but this time the girls weren’t looking for a methadone provider just Valium and other tranqs, so they picked a family run place, a lock-up. Hermione could feel the adrenalin coursing through her as she disabled the rudimentary alarm and then spent half an hour picking the locks on the back door. They were in!.

They went into the main dispensary area behind the counter. Pharmacists were so neat. No DDA box but plenty of what they sought. Hermione once again filled her jacket, then laughed. “There’s a few DDA items here, speed, not downers”, and secreted a bottle of Biphetamine, one of Dexedrine and she found, to her delight, a bottle of Methaqualone. “Cool”, she squealed, “Bombers, Dexies and Mandies”. They had everything they came for and left.

By now it was pretty late. They took off balaclavas and gloves and hailed a cab. Hermione called Severus, “Wait up for us, we’re on our way round”. Severus made to protest but Hermione cut him off, “Just have the fucking kettle on. Tea for four”, she rang off.

He let them in, moments later, looking disarrayed and jubilant and led them straight into the kitchen. Remus was sitting at the kitchen table. Hermione leaned over the table and unzipped her coat. A plethora of bottles, phials and filled needles dropped out, plus several sterile needles along with the balled up gloves and hat. She started to sort through the hoard. “This one while you are still human, I’ll come over and administer it, it has to go in a vein, then this one every two hours intramuscularly once he’s changed, either in the thigh or shoulder, just stick the pin in a half-inch or so, then a dose of this one as he’s changing back. Oh and we picked up a load of industrial strength lube in case it still goes tits-up, but this tranq is for big dogs, so it should work, but you don’t get these”, she pocketed three bottles. The men glanced at each other.

Severus and Remus were silent. Amazed. “Hermione, what did you just do?”. Josie stood silent to one side. “What do you think, idiots?”, Hermione demanded. “We just broke into a vet’s and a chemist’s to get this stuff. I know, I know, not the most orthodox route, but none of these should harm your treatments, Remus. I checked on the ‘Net”. The two men were still silent, too stunned to speak. Then Remus walked towards Hermione and hugged her, “Thank you. How many years in jail have you just risked for this?”. Hermione grinned, “Fourteen”. Severus moved slowly, wide-eyed towards the girls and hugged them both. “You two are quite a team”. Josie looked up saucily into those deep brown eyes, “Have you guys got a beer or a whisky about ya, ‘cos I could do with some serious de-stressin’ here”.

Severus came back to himself and offered the girls a beer, passing them a cold can each. They quaffed them in moments. He handed over two more. They disappeared as quickly. Their third cans they sipped. Remus surveyed the contents of the table shaking his head, “You mean you broke in and burgled two different establishments and risked fourteen years in jail just to help?”

“Yes. I’m a Gryffindor and a bloody good burglar. I know about Magical creatures and I know about the, erm, Spring Rut. You could, Remus, conceivably kill him at your next change. I can’t let you do that. You love each other too much”. Tears sprang to her eyes, “And we love you, too. Me and the others. All of us. Once you’ve changed, you could take Sev’s throat out with a swipe of a paw. It was the thought of you comin’ back to find Sev in bits all over your flat...”, and her voice trailed away into heaving sobs and her head hit the table. Remus had his arms around her in an instant and she howled against his chest, “Nobody got hurt, just a couple of insurance companies”, she sobbed. Josie crouched beside her friend, “You’ve got more bollocks than most guys I know, hon”, and both of the men present couldn’t help but agree.

“Hermione, tell me again the order of the administration of these drugs”, Severus asked as he noted it down on paper and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet.She calmed, composed herself, and told them. Both of the men hugged her and Josie as they climbed into a taxi. As it pulled away, Josie told Hermione of the chat she’d had with Ginny earlier in the day, “I think she finally got it, babe”, was her comment as the cab drew up to the House. Hermione pecked Josie’s cheek and went in, exhausted, wrung out.

Ginny’s only question was, “Did you succeed?”, as she divined the state her lover was in. Hermione just nodded and was led to bed. Ginny curled herself around her holding her tight and they both slept.