Hunter and Prey

She woke almost mad with need to go to the bathroom. Hermione staggered to her feet, saw a toilet and sat down on it with relief. The seat was icy against her skin; old porcelain not plastic but it didn’t matter. She sighed as the fierce cramping in her abdomen eased. The flush toilet was truly a wonderful invention.

But hadn’t there been a champerpot last time? Hermione looked around her with grave suspicion. It was indeed a different room. It looked like a bathroom circa 1950. There were dirty pink tiles everywhere. She had been lying on a blanket in the shower stall, which had an edging of brown and cream sea creatures though several of the starfish tiles were missing.

Little things told her the house this bathroom was in had not been abandoned. Firstly, there was toilet paper. The holder was cracked and had been repaired with masking tape but the small blessing was there. There was soap by the sink too. Hermione washed her hands thoroughly after she flushed. Hot water eventually arrived from the tap, which prompted her to drag the blanket out of the shower stall.

She soaped and scrubbed herself with an old flannel that smelled of damp but she didn’t care. Half way through getting herself really, really clean Hermione had a flash of alarm and jumped out of the shower to lock the bathroom door. She was now safe. Returning to the hot water, she took slow, deep breaths until her panic eased. Examining her wrists, the worst of the redness had faded as the abrasions healed.

More time had passed. Fenrir was moving them around to avoid capture that much was obvious. Hermione thought about the owners of the bathroom and her jaw tightened. Maybe they were away. She prayed, truly prayed, that the people who lived here were enjoying a nice holiday somewhere.

The hot water ran out before she got out of the shower. Hermione rinsed herself off then dried herself on the blanket because there were no towels. She hunted around in the vanity, found toothpaste and a toothbrush that looked reasonably new then scrubbed her teeth. It was a soothing activity and took away the morning after taste in her mouth. Drinking her fill from the tap, Hermione looked at herself in the mirror.

Hermione Granger looked back. Her new salon haircut, which had been quite expensive, was ragged but there were no bruises. No redness around her neck though she remembered the rope collar bitterly. Nothing in her eyes showed her thoughts, which turned now to escape. Further investigation of the bathroom got her a pair of lethal looking metal scissors and a glass bottle of orange liquid that smelled like bleach.

It was time to leave. Hermione wrapped herself in the blanket then cautiously opened the door. She looked out into a narrow hallway with old floral patterned carpet. Someone had painstakingly rag-rolled the walls a pleasant combination of white and cream, which lightened the hall without being too harsh. The owners of the house didn’t have the money to renovate the bathroom but they had done their best with what they had.

Hermione imagined them as a young couple with their first home, rather like her and Ron. Please let them be away she thought as she slid past a closed door. Please let them not be dead behind that door, lying in pools of their own blood like others she had seen. She paused at a second door that was ajar. There was a noise. Her hands clenched around her improvised weapons. A wand would be so useful right now. The noise continued. A child cried.

She had to look, couldn’t leave without looking. Hermione knew too much about Fenrir’s habits to abandon a child to his mercy. Peeking around the door she saw a cot, one of those convertible wooden ones that expanded as the baby grew, with a little shape inside. Instinct told her to be cautious. She pushed the door open all the way. No one was hiding behind it. Putting down the glass bottle, Hermione edged her hand around the door to turn on the light.

The soft glow from the frosted ceiling fixture illuminated a nursery. There were cartoon lambs on the walls. A toddler in a pink rompersuit cried pathetically in the cot. Hermione hurried to the little one, carefully picking her up without putting down the scissors. The sensible thing would be to come back for her. Her chances of escaping without notice with a small child were not good. But she couldn’t do that, not with a werewolf in the house. Settling the baby on her hip she turned to leave.

“You’ll make a good mother.” Fenrir showed his teeth at her in a grin, looming in the doorway.