Hero Against Own Will

Chapter Two. She who fights for the future.

Historical information.

Blackheart Fortress was constructed in the early 1990s as a place for criminals apprehended within London and its surroundings to be held at until trial. Or until their execution, though sometimes there was no difference, for the laws were harsh and the punishments cruel.

The prison itself was situated not that far from Manchester and that was where all the escaping prisoners were trying to get to...

There were 95 escape attempts over the years, but only one of them was reported to be successful. The escaped prisoner, however, was accidentally shot dead while being re-captured in Manchester about a month later ...

*****

They took him through the corridors of the Fortress, half-carrying his limp body - the interrogation at the Secret Service's Field HQ, conducted by Captain Malfoy himself, left him with a horrible pain in his sides, yet no broken bones. He had to hand it to Malfoy - he knew his job well.

They were carrying him from the warden's office, who just wrote down Harry's answers to the standard questions.

"Name? Date of Birth?" the warden asked.

"Harry James Potter, July 31^st 1980," Harry replied quietly.

"Magical ability rating? Profession?"

"Latent Squib, archaeologist."

After a bit more of Q&A, the guards scooped Harry up from the bench they dropped him onto earlier, and carried him towards his cell.

He was awake, however, and was trying to memorize the way out - a bad habit of his he picked up while still at Hogwarts. Actually, his father was convinced that Harry did not need the Marauder's Map, for he knew the school's plans very well even without it.

The guards threw him into an empty one-man (judging by the amount of shelves to be used as beds) cell, locked the door and left.

When the sound of their footsteps faded away, he heard a hoarse female voice call.

"Hey, newcomer! What'd they put you here for?"

Harry gathered himself up from the floor, fell onto the 'bed' and honestly tried to remember.

"Storage and usage of an illegal magical weapon, about nine centuries old."

"D'ya do it?"

"What?" he did not quite make out all of the words in her question.

"Did you do the thing you've been arrested for?" she repeated.

"Partially. Storage - yes, usage - no."

"And you are?"

"Harry James Potter, ex-famous archaeologist," he replied, the pain in his side finally starting to subside.

"Oh. I've heard of you. A Squib, eh?"

"Not a Squib, a neutral. I chose not to use magic; it is against my philosophy of life."

Silence was the answer to his words.

"And who are you?" he asked after a while. The pain was almost gone, but he was sure, when they really want to make him talk, they'll make sure it won't be gone a long time.

"Hermione Granger," she replied after a slight pause, "Yes, the Hermione Granger," she added as if foreseeing his question.

He marvelled at this 'foresight', then realised that while she was here, she must've been asked that quite a lot of times.

"So, how's the Resistance doing?" he asked, not knowing what else to say, yet feeling a need for a conversation.

"And why do you care?" she sounded offended.

"Well, I'm in a cell in Blackheart, you're in a cell in Blackheart, and I'll eat the sword they want to take from me if I am a spy, so..."

She laughed. This laugh was not the laugh of a happy person, more of a person that considers the words of another person to be complete and utter rubbish in the current circumstances.

"So you don't trust me, eh?" he asked, thanking whoever out there is controlling his fate for making the guards lock him up in his own clothes, as he fished a small length of coil wire out of his pocket. Having the "Take everything that's not nailed down. Properly that is" sickness, also known as kleptomania, strike him every now and then was yet another thing that made people call him queer.

"No, I don't," she said as if he asked if she believed in her being found innocent.

"And if I help you escape?" he asked meaningfully, admiring the idiocy of the person that made the keyhole on the prisoner's side of the door.

"You? Help me? Escape?" she was now laughing more like a deranged maniac. Harry ignored this, wondering how long will it take to... Then the lock clicked open.

"What, have trouble believing that?" he asked her, already being outside. She stopped laughing abruptly.

"Are you sure you're not a spy?" she asked in disbelief.

"We'll se about that!" a guard yelled. Only now had Harry realised that this guard was here when he arrived, only sleeping.

Harry turned around quickly, stopping the guard's baton in mid-air and retaliating with a bit of oriental fighting moves. He didn't learn only sword-fighting... Because there are times when you just have no access to a sword.

When the guard was on the floor, admiring the wonders a concrete wall does to one's head and conscience, Harry pulled the key ring off his belt. Unlocking the rebel's cell, he was expecting her to hit him on the head or something, but instead he saw her sitting in a corner, as if trying to make herself smaller - obviously, the guards here did not treat her kindly.

"Hey, it's me!" said Harry.

She looked up at him in surprise, then stood up, still not believing her eyes. In the meantime, he was observing her.

She was just a tad shorter than he was, and he wasn't the tallest man around, that's for sure. Her short brown hair dirty, her face bearing the traces of destroyed beauty, as there was a scar running from her left cheekbone to the right edge of her chin, avoiding her lips just by a fraction of a centimetre. She was wearing a simple, well-worn and rather dirty grey (Harry was unsure, though, if it was the original colour) t-shirt and a pair of well-worn black jeans, nothing else. A bit of further observation told Harry that she had nothing on under the t-shirt, but he cast that particular thought away.

"Harry?" she asked finally.

"And who'd you expect, that Gestapo fellow Malfoy?" he asked angrily.

"I thought that..." now she did not look like the warrior-like rebel the newspapers portrayed her to be, but a simple scared girl of about his age.

"That the guard kicked my ass, yeah right. Archaeologists also may study fighting disciplines, y'know," he said, "And now let us make our leave."

He offered her a helping hand as she went out, carefully stepping over the guard's body.

"I think you might need this as well," said Harry, pulling a wand out of the guard's pocket, "I'm no good at this since it's against my..."

"I heard that already," she said, taking the proffered wand, that warrior-like part showing its face.

"Alright. Have any bright ideas on how shall we leave this place?" he asked as they sneaked through the hallways, her movements quick and precise, like a ninja's. His own rather reminded the style of a shinobi - less silent, but more effective.

"Yes. The sewer access. We can make our exit there, just have to find the loo..."

Harry simply pointed to a sign on the wall that said "WC" and had an arrow.

"Never underestimate the power of written pointers - one of the first rules of archaeology," he said with a grin.

She did not reply as they silently sneaked through the corridor.

Upon entering the toilets, she had at once put a finger to her lips, nodding at a stall. According to the sounds coming from it, there were two guards in there, making things that best not be mentioned.

Harry grinned in a wicked way as Hermione opened the stall farthest from the occupied one, told Harry to cover his ears, what he did at once, and then cast a spell Harry did not hear (for he was busy covering his ears) as the stall exploded, sending shards of wood and whatever the toilet itself was made of all over the place.

The two in the stall, however seemed to be to busy to react to this distraction as Hermione jumped down into the hole she made. Harry looked down it, frowned at the smell and jumped in, thinking that he had worse (That one time, doing a dig in England while studying wereravens... Now that was horrible!).

Landing was quite painful, but he did not break anything. Hermione towered over him.

"You alive there?" she asked.

"Yeah, just help me up," he replied as she offered him a helping hand.

They silently walked side by side towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

"When you see the light at the end of the tunnel," Harry started grimly, "Check if it's a light of an oncoming train."

Hermione laughed, but said nothing.

*****

They finally made their way out into the fresh (almost) air of freedom. Harry took a full breath in and started coughing violently, because taking deep breaths in near the place where sewage is dumped can be hazardous to your health.

Having managed to get out of the river, they sat down for a moment's rest.

"Do you believe me now?" Harry asked.

"We'll see," she replied, looking around rather nervously, "But first let's get to a safehouse nearby. You know how to handle a gun?"

"No, I prefer swords," he replied.

The 'safehouse' turned out to be a boat house parked several miles up the river.

The war that Voldemort's armies waged in order to take over this particular country had changed the terrain greatly; most people said that the only place in the entire United Kingdom that was not forcibly terramorphed was Voldemort's own hideout, but no-one actually knew where it was, even though the Fine Lord spent his vacations there...

*****

...Harry woke up from two things - the smell of wet wood and the sound of rain tapping the window.

He, as it turned out, had blacked out mid-way and, apparently, Hermione was forced to haul him in here on her back. He made a mental note to thank her for it and got up from the bed.

He was on the second floor; the room was furnished not in the richest way possible, of course, but still was quite cosy and nice. The walls were covered in photos - Hermione standing in front of some building, Hermione and some black bloke holding hands, that bloke alone with a guitar in his hands...

"That's Dean," she said suddenly. Harry turned around sharply to see that she was standing behind him, a steaming mug of hot tea in her hand, "Dean Thomas. You know, the rocker?"

"I'm a bit old-fashioned when it comes to music," said Harry earnestly, "I prefer Bach. Saint-Saens is the extreme for me."

She gave him a look that was halfway from "You're square, dude" to "You sure don't look like it".

"Nice place, who's is it?" he asked, trying to cover up the problematic silence.

"Mine. Those guys over upstairs-" she pointed upwards, as if referring to the government, "-never bothered to check."

"Oh."

"First floor, the broom-closet with the green door. Pick anything that suits you, Mr. Swordsperson," she said coldly.

He came down the stairs, noticing that his all-jeans outfit was quite unclean from all the sewer-hopping, but he was not the most clean-loving person in the world, being an archaeologist and all. The green-doored broom-closet turned out to house a pretty large collection of various things that cut - ranging from a small tanto skilfully crafted into a cane to a claymore that definitely was made for a giant. Harry picked out a falchion that came with a sheath to be fixed on one's back and a pair of long-bladed daggers that looked more like very thin short swords.

Fixing the falchion in the sheath onto his back, under the jacket, and the daggers - into his sleeves, he turned around only to see her standing there, packing up a pair of what looked like pitch-black Desert Eagles into the holsters located under the trench coat she was wearing over the combined sword-and-bullet-proof armour.

"Ready?" she asked.

He nodded in response. She silently handed him a Beretta, which he took and, after checking the clip, put into his inner jacket pocket.

"No extra clips?" he asked. She shook her head.

"You've got your blades, Mr. Swordsperson, why'd you need a gun anyway?"

"Point taken."

*****

After a bit of cleaning the dirt off his jacket, Harry followed Hermione through the woods out to the road. Picking a car and posing as a pair of hitch-hikers was easy, since the Daily Prophet had long discarded the habit of posting real pictures of captured criminals, otherwise they'd be called liars, for such peaceful-looking people could not be enemies of His Majesty the Fine Lord.

They changed the ride several times, just in case, and finally arrived near a bar.

"Heavy Metal only?" Harry asked, reading from the sign on the door.

"Yes, a nice place to hide, don't you think? Last year we were hiding in gay clubs, but the SS overcame that problem by recruiting several er... not-commonly-interested people that managed to uncover us. Now we change hiding places on a more regular basis," she explained as they entered.

The noise inside nearly knocked Harry off his feet, as someone on the stage was playing Manowar's infamous "Black Arrows" (which consists of a single guitar solo made specifically to knock out the non-believers - and it almost did).

A moment later Harry noticed that the man playing it was none other than that Thomas bloke he saw on the photos over at Hermione's safehouse. Hermione came up to him and made some strange greeting gesture. Dean nodded over at the door leading to backstage without stopping the nerve-wracking (for Harry could not manage to find a better-fitting word for it, no matter how hard he tried) noise he produced from the guitar.

Hermione motioned Harry to follow her and so he did.

They settled down in the dressing room that had Dean's name on the door.

"So, he's..." Harry said meaningfully.

"My boyfriend, if you're wondering," Hermione replied in a dismissive manner. Harry chose to say nothing to that, just brooding on his own thoughts.

"That explains the photos... I wonder if he's in on the Resistance... Well, she's the leader of theirs, of course he's in!" he thought.

His thoughts were interrupted as Dean entered, smiling, exchanged a quick kiss with Hermione and turned to Harry.

"And you are..."

"Harry James Potter, sword-swinger extraordinaire, at your service, sir. The now-retired archaeologist, courtesy of His Majesty the Fine Lord," said Harry with a slight flourish.

"Right. What is he doing here, dear?" Dean asked of Hermione.

"He's the guy that helped me escape. While 'queer' might be his middle name, he still can be quite useful to the Resistance."

"Is it my imagination or you two are ignoring the fact that my actual middle name is James?" Harry asked, sounding offended, "Not to mention talking about me as if I'm not here!"

"You are not here!" said Dean meaningfully, nodding at the door.

"Fine!" said Harry.

He stepped outside, slamming the door shut after himself. He leaned casually onto the wall, waiting. After all, he had nowhere to go, so waiting was his only logical option.

Several minutes later, however, he suddenly became aware of something being amiss, and an inspection via a slightly opened door revealed that there was a police action taking place, right here, right now.

Mouthing a single swearing word that comprised of the letters 'h', 'i', 's' and 't', not necessarily in that order, he darted back to the door that had the words 'Dean Thomas' written on it, opening it swiftly.

"Sorry to interrupt you two," he said, looking at the two, frozen in mid-snog, "But there're coppers all over the place. I just want you two to know," he explained, and then, seeing that it made no effect, he also knocked on the door, and added, "Yeah!"

Having said that, he closed the door as swiftly as he opened it, but they both emerged from it moments later.

"Time to scram!" Dean yelled, leading the way through the narrow hallways, as they finally got out back into the open. There were helicopters hovering above, cop cars parked next to the front entrance, but the back door was unguarded.

They made their way through the small door in the wall right in front of the back door, and proceeded to relocate themselves with the fastest speed their feet could manage. Hermione pulled out her guns on the run and sent a few shots in the direction of the cops that were running after them. Harry saw one collapse, though he was unsure if this was the copper's way of dodging the shot or that he was indeed hit. Dean turned into an alley swiftly, Harry following him, while Hermione stopped for a moment, unloading the rest of her guns' clips into the servants of the law.

Harry used another bit of his more queer skills, for his running start let him reach the top of the wall that turned the alley into a dead end, and climb over it. He helped Dean up as Hermione holstered her guns and ran up to them. Harry jumped down from the wall, letting Dean pull Hermione up and stood at the small hole in the wall, watching what was happening on the other side of it.

He saw Hermione do a running jump as well, and, according to Dean's grunting, she made it high enough. She was out of Harry's field of view now, but he did see the two cops that ran in after her. He swiftly looked up at Dean and saw that the rocker was not in a physical shape as good as Harry's, so the cops would have enough time to organize Dean's and Hermione's deaths from lead poisoning.

Without thinking, he whipped out his Beretta, sending bullet after bullet through the hole. He could not see since his gun occupied most of the hole, but according to two muffled yells of pain, he hit something. Or somebody. Once the clip was emptied, he took a look. One copper was down on the ground, his hand a bloody mess.

"While they wear bullet proof armour, their gloves are still common fabric!" he thought as he saw that the amount of blood that already leaked from the hole in the forehead of the other copper was more than enough to feed a whole army of thirsty vampires.

The two thumps next to him told him that Dean finally pulled Hermione over the wall. They were now looking at Harry.

"And you wondered why I need a gun?" he asked finally.

*****

They were walking through the sewers. Again.

"You have some sentimental value attached to this gun or I might drop it already?" Harry asked suddenly, "It is of no use to me without ammo. Unless you suggest I use it instead of a rock. But rocks hurt more, you know..."

"Relax, mate. We'll get ammo for it where we're headed," Dean replied.

"Which brings up two more questions - where are we headed, and will it help me get to London?"

"Why'd you need to get to London all of a sudden?" Hermione asked.

"I have to recover the sword those bastards put me in jail for. You know, I am a scholar after all," Harry replied.

"Yeah? I would never have guessed," Dean replied sarcastically, "A friend of mine. He lives on the outskirts of town, and I suppose he has a car, so that's answers to both of your questions."

"Let's just hope he won't be too eager to give us in to the coppers," was Harry's reply.