Nox

We are Unbreakable, the words engraved on the silver doors of the long, narrow building read. Unbreakable spelled with a capital U, eh? Hermione shivered as Draco steered her past it and through the doors. They descended a staircase at the far corner of a darkened room.

Not long after, the chill air of the smoky room brushed past, nipping at exposed skin with dreadful, practiced accuracy, making those unaccustomed to cold nervous and uncomfortable. Neither Hermione nor Draco flinched or were bothered. He'd grown up in a drafty manor; she had lived in sub-standard housing and on the streets since she was eighteen. He was leading her along the long, narrow room, whispering for her to look to her right or left at certain things or influential persons, or to look directly forward, so as to avoid looking at something else. She was dressed in a long, iridescent dress made of a stiff-looking, soft-feeling fabric that juxtaposed between the dark plum of her mother's eyes, and the deep emerald of Harry's. It was sleeveless and strapless, but she wore a sheet of transparent fabric of the same combination of colours around her shoulders. Her hair was washed, trimmed, and piled on top her head in a style more elegant that any Hermione could remember ever wearing in her life, even at the Yule and Graduation Balls, and her cousin Andromeda's fairy-tale style wedding. She felt she looked like she belonged in a fairy tale, as a wood nymph or a dark-coloured dryad, or an extra in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She was confident that she would not be recognized until she was introduced.

The other witches and wizards walking up and down the long room and standing, talking, were dressed up marvelously in the same magnificent fashion as Hermione. She couldn't imagine why everyone was so decked out, and Draco had yet to tell her anything. She suspected he was afraid she thought he was gay after the way he had fretted over her appearance for three hours before their arrival. He'd even picked out the dress, from the sheer stole to the stylish uneven hem of the dress, which wasn't true. There was something in the air around him that screamed sex, but it wasn't a fancy for wizards that screamed.

The pressure of his hand on the small of her back kept her moving forward as she caught sight of someone who literally made her want to turn around and sprint the other way, back to the forbidding street she'd been on only hours before, strutting her stuff for the assholes of the underground of the Eastern United States. In her ear, he whispered, "This is the Honeycomb. This is our headquarters."

She looked around funny for the first time. "Why the Honeycomb?"

"The Pillars lining the walls and the root-woven roof reminded Potter of the Honeycomb in Watership Down," he replied. Now that he mentioned it, it did recall the memories she'd painted in her head as she'd read the allegorical book.

"It gives me the sense of Efrafa," she said. "So organized and terrible."

"Terrible, eh? We aren't terrible."

"Terrible is an interpretable word."

They were silent as they continued the rest of the way up to Harry, as he stood with a blank look on a face aged beyond its years. He was the only one in the room who appeared to be dressed in everyday clothes, rather than those of the fantastic nature. He wore a simple but undeniably outrageously expensive steel grey suit and monochrome shirt and tie of a similar colour, just slightly lighter. His hair was mildly orderly, his brow smooth, if not for a permanent groove that snaked its way just above his black eyebrows. He was holding up a wand Hermione assumed correctly was Draco's. The two wizards were efficiently amicable to one another, as though they'd been through a lot together and were used to and enjoyed the other's company, but would never actually admit to enjoying it. She stood there, looking around the ornate, low room; at the golden moulding at the junction between the ceiling and walls, the gothic-era paintings, dark lighting scheme, heavy black-out curtains drawn across the windows, the grey stone walls, the lonely torches in black cast iron holders. She looked anywhere but on Harry.

Harry who had, along with Ron, been devastated and hurt when she'd been arrested for Ginny's murder, and had told her she was as good as dead to them. Harry whose simple memory had caused Hermione to collapse into tears on many occasions over the years she'd been gone. Harry who she had thought hated her for murdering someone he loved who she never murdered anyway. Harry whose face had haunted her dreams for so long, whose expression of suffering and antipathy when she'd been found with Ginny and Katie's bodies had imprinted itself forever on her memories. She refused to face those demons, she tried to pull away from Draco unnoticed by Harry, but unfortunately her movement only caught his attention, and he looked at her with acknowledgement.

"Oh, hello," he said, a half-sheepish smile on his face. She stared at him, no inflection in her gaze or her reply of hello. She refused to let him sense her resentment of his readiness to believe the accusations of murder when he'd stood by her through so many other things. She refused to let him know of her tears or still-raw wounds.

Draco watched Hermione with concern at her lack of feeling in her brisk interaction with Harry, who had once been her best friend. She politely did not take the hand Harry offered.

However, Harry's words still circulated in her veins. "Mione! How could you?" he said, his eyes full of tears as he stared at her, standing over the two lifeless forms of his girlfriend and fellow Gryffindor. She was too stunned to second his anguish, too dim-witted to scream she didn't do it. But he thought she had, and the view of the scene certainly looked that way. Hermione had a gash across running from her left collar bone, over the hollow at her base of her neck, and then running over her right collarbone, before slashing across her shoulder. He didn't question her or her injury, just assumed.

"Trust Draco to find a date for one of our boring old meetings," Harry said with a laugh. Draco shot him a 'shut up you stupid sod' kind of look, which he caught and was confused by. "I must ask your name, Miss," he said.

Her jaw dropped, to his further confusion. "You don't recognize me?" she asked.

He shook his head slowly, "No, you don't look familiar at all."

She let out a high, bitter laugh that conjured up memories of Voldemort to Harry. He shuddered and she narrowed her eyes. "Your lack of loyalty to a friend and your lack of faith in me was tragic, Potter," she pronounced. "But I'm over it." She turned to Draco, saying, "This was wonderful of you, but I am settled in my life. I cannot do this. He abandoned me once, he and Ron both. They didn't listen and they didn't want to listen. I can't forgive that. This was a mistake. I have to leave."

Harry stood stupidly, looking between Hermione and Draco. Draco was so streamlined and pale in his grace and sudden confusion. His eyes seethed that pure emotion. She ripped herself away from him, turning around and retreating to the exit, breaking into a full run and breaking through the door at the far end of the room. Harry and Draco stared after her in stunned silence, before Draco came to and went after, snatching his wand away from his counterpart. Not long after the wood left his grip, Harry snapped out of his stupor.

In a small voice, he whispered, "Hermione?"

Hermione just ran, as fast and as far as her legs could stand, until she came to a bridge. She looked back only then, to see one figure running after her, pursuing her. She didn't want to be pursued or followed. She wanted more than anything else to go back to the monotony that was her life. Wake up, get dressed and processed, go out, get picked up, fuck, get paid, repeat, go home, sleep. She wanted nothing more than that. She wanted to forget the atrocious crime committed against her at the age of eighteen.

Halfway across the bridge, her legs began to cramp up. She stopped briefly in her flight, to bend down and rub the aching muscle in her calf, but noticed her pursuer gaining on her and she forced herself to continue. She did not breathe, she just ran. She ran in spite of every ache that was building in a ferocious crescendo to a climax that would be anything but orgasmic. This climax would be the pinnacle of her over-exertion. She was a smoker, a cigarette never far from her. There was a new pack of Newports in her purse sitting on the lamp table beside Draco's bed. She smoked Newports because she met few men who ever could. It made her feel special.

But finally, her body gave up, and she came to a dead stop, about a mile past the bridge. She was sincerely surprised she made it as far as she did. She slumped to the ground, to her bruised knees, tearing the hem of her remarkable multi-coloured dress. She didn't care. She wanted to escape but her body wasn't going to let her. The footfalls behind her slowed down and she turned her head to see Draco Malfoy come jogging up behind her, barely looking winded. He gave her a cheeky smirk and offered her a hand. She glowered at him and helped herself up. He shrugged.

"You're acting about five years old, I'd say," he said. "The man didn't recognize you, Hermione. You look nothing like the girl you once were. Nothing. You are nothing like that girl. Hermione. . ." his voice faltered for a moment, as though he were trying to find euphemisms for the next words he would use. "He was in love with you once, but Ron was his best friend, and when Ginny died, Ron was shattered, and so was Harry by result. Ron didn't care if you actually did it or not; his sister was dead and he wanted blood. It really pains me to have to justify what they did to you. But you know Ron."

She was crying silently, but at the final four words, she let out a strangled sob and threw her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest. Feeling awkward, he hugged her back, patting the top of her head. Her whole body felt cold to him, and she shook. She just felt numb.

The setting sun lit the world afire, bathing the buildings a red, almost unnatural luminescence. The sky's zenith was completely black, devoid of colour and warmth, much like the brown of Hermione's eyes. There were few stars visible in the city. Not even Polaris was to be seen. There was no moon to illuminate the swallowing blackness that creeps in the wake of sunset waiting with an all-consuming avarice to claim the souls of the weak and power-hungry. Soon, only the horizon possessed any bright hue at all, a red-orange befitting of a Weasley's hair.

While she wasn't paying attention, but just crying, Draco took his wand out of his pocket and whispered a spell between soft words to quell her sobs and dry her tears. She drifted to sleep there and then, her worries and arguments receding into the dimmer parts of her brain, far from consciousness. He picked her up and wasn't surprised that she weighed very little. She probably hadn't had a proper meal in seven years. She had bathed and showered three times each since he'd rescued her, but she still reeked slightly of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and reefer. It was probably part of her now, the signature scent, married to the protein in her hair.

He used a special transportation spell reserved usually for the Unspeakables and Aurors and their prisoners, because it allowed up to three people to travel with a single spell. However, it was three times more difficult than Apparition, and even many Aurors and Unspeakables didn't bother with it.

With a few flicks of his wand, he got her out of the dress and into a more comfortable ensemble and then tucked her up in bed.

Ron was standing in the main room of his hotel suite, looking amused. "You act like the father of a small child with her," he pointed out.

Draco shrugged. "She's a little fragile right now, if you hadn't noticed. Seeing Harry today really fucked her up." He walked past Ron to the bookshelf and pulled down a book about magical remedies. "Why are you here, Weasel? Haven't you got a very bad witch to be interrogating right now back home?"

Ron raised his eyebrows lazily. "Oh, you mean Katie, do you? Yes, but that's why I'm here."