Nox

"You found your way

So why keep asking me

Nothing common suits you

You live again in solitary

Look away for now beautiful alone

Now who decides to settle down

Maybe nobody really cares

What's this to you anyway. . ."

—Orgy, "Platinum"

Chapter Ten - Faintly Remember Breathing

    "Oh, bloody hell," Hermione muttered. She was standing on a street corner waiting for the bus to come so she could get back home to her tenement. And the bus was late. She lit up a Newport and took a long drag from it before stomping her foot and spinning around on her heel a few times. It was unusually cold for February, and she was wearing her diner uniform. Unfortunately, that uniform consisted of a short polyester skirt.

    "Cold?" a woman's voice pierced the chill air. Hermione turned to look at she who dared disturb her. She was tall and had straight black hair past her elbows. Hollow, amused blue-black eyes stared out at Hermione from a drawn, narrow face. She wore too much makeup and there were faintly visible crows' feet at the outer corners of her eyes. She was older than she looked, probably approaching thirty-five (she was actually forty-two, but Hermione never learned that). Her skin was very, very white.

    Hermione snorted and flicked the ash on her cigarette. "Well, fuck, lady, I don't know," she said. Her voice came out much harsher than she'd intended it to, but it didn't seem to bother the woman any. She took another drag and waited impatiently for a response.

    The woman smiled a cracked kind of smile, the laugh lines becoming all too apparent. She had horse teeth and gingivitis by the looks of it. "I'm Cady," she said. Hermione shrugged and went to turn away when she noticed what Cady was wearing. It almost made her choke on the puff of smoke she was trying to exhale. Cady had the body of a woman half her age at most, and she wore a black coat with a white faux fur collar, which made her look vintage-chic cool. Under the coat, which was unintelligently unfastened, she wore a short black dress and thigh-high black boots. She didn't look remotely cold. Cady finally grew fed up with Hermione's blatant disregard for her. "Damnit, girl," she said, "when someone introduces herself, she expects to get the same in return. Let's try it again. I'm Cady."

    "Hermione," she replied, keeping her voice cool and low. She opted wisely not to stoop to this raving woman's level.

    "Pretty," Cady said in a trained voice. "Pretty for a pretty girl."

    Hermione dropped the singed filter to the slushy ground and stared hard at the other woman. It made sense, of course, and these Americans were certainly. . . She didn't allow herself to finish the thought train. "Look, lady, I don't know if I seemed interested in you, 'cause I'm not. I'm just waiting—"

    Cady suddenly laughed a high, fake laugh that made Hermione stop short. "Honey, I know it's 2001 and all, but I am still not a lesbian," she said. "I'm merely complimenting you."

    "I'm standing at a bus stop, under the initial-carved, graffiti-scarred plexiglass awning thing in a demeaningly short skirt on a February snow flurry in the capital of the most snobbish country in the world. What am I supposed to think?" She added, in her head, I'm in this country because my best friends stabbed me in the back. Because they thought I had the capacity to murder. I was a witch, I'll have you know! I've been here three years and I think I'm going to die soon, in all honestly.

    Cady smiled wanly. It was eerily comforting. "It's alright, dear," she said. "You don't got many friends here, do you?"

    Hermione shrugged and glanced at the wall of the awning at the things carved into the plexiglass. Kat wuz here 1999. Rot in pieces. AK + MM. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . Visitors leaving the worst parts of themselves behind in florescent paint and chicken scratch. "No, I don't," she said. "Friends are kind of overrated if you think about it." Hermione believed that. Look what sorry excuses for friends she'd had. They sold her out without a second thought.

    During Hermione's reverie, Cady was digging in one of the deep pockets of her coat. Looking quite pleased with herself, she extracted something paper and then presented Hermione with a black business card. Curious, Hermione took it. There was a silver rose printed on one side. On the back was a name and address in the same silver. "What's this?"

    "Our card, honey," Cady said. "Be there sometime tomorrow. Ask for Kitty and tell 'em Cady sent you." The bus pulled up and Hermione went to board. "Oh, and honey," Cady called out. Hermione paused and looked back. "Don't get pissed at me."

    "Why would I—?"

    "Come on, sweetcheeks, get on and pay your fare," the bus driver said. Hermione gave him a withering look, dropped the coinage into the slot, and took a seat near the back. She stared at the bit of black paperboard she held in her fingers. It seemed innocent enough. But then, why did it give her such a sense of foreboding?

*

    The address on the card led to a house in a squalid neighborhood that appeared to have been magnificent at one time. The house itself was two stories, sided and covered with peeling, pale peach paint. The windows were either partially boarded or cracked. The lawn was brown and green swirled together, which was typical for February. A dusting of snow was left over from the previous night's flurries. A dormer at the attic level was filled with light, and a humanoid shape was standing near the glass, but it might have been a mannequin.

    As Hermione walked up the narrow, cracked sidewalk to the front door, she sighed and squared her shoulders. Just as she raised a hand to knock on the door, it opened and revealed a tired young woman who smiled a tired smile at Hermione and then asked who she was.

    "Hermione Granger," she replied. "A woman named Cady gave me this card. . ."

    The girl nodded gravely and cut her off with a slashing movement with her hand. "Come in," she said. She shut the door behind Hermione once she was in. The air inside the house smelled like cinnamon and roses and was just this side of warm. The girl was wearing a big gray sweater and pants that hung off her in a way that made her skin-and-bones state more painfully obvious. She looked like a twig wearing bits of old elephant skin. Hermione wondered if she knew that.

    "My name is Lillith," she said, offering Hermione a hook to put her coat on. Hermione followed her down a hallway, opting to keep her coat (it was cold), and into a nicely-decorated but dimly-lit and ill-kept kitchen. Three women with the same woebegone expression Lillith had were sitting at the scrubbed wood table playing poker. Piles of Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies stood in for the absentee poker chips. The backs of the cards had donkeys on them.

    One of the women looked up and smiled. She was tall, even seated, with skin the color of the mink coat Hermione's mother always wore. Her hair was in tight cornrows and the ends were fastened in a bun on the back of her head. She was also dressed in oversized clothing. "'Lo," she said in a dense Georgian accent. "I'm Pollyanna, but most jus' call me PA."

    "Hermione Granger," Hermione said. The women raised their eyebrows at her. PA turned to Lilith.

    "Go get Cady, you twit," she said. She glanced back at Hermione, who stood there trying not to look significant. "Don't worry, hon," she said. "Life is a rolla' coasta'. And sometimes you ain't strapped in. But that's the fun'a it, in't it?" Lilith scurried out.

    The other two women PA was playing poker with introduced themselves as Margot and Nilya. Nilya explained her parents were Tolkien nuts and she had a brother named Beren. Margot just made a big deal about the T on the end of her name being silent. Nilya had blonde hair piled on top of her head haphazardly; Margot's hair was black and cut short around her ears.

    There were footsteps behind her from the hallway, and Hermione turned to face the intruder. It was a woman scarcely five feet tall with long red hair and a grin on her gaunt face, lips parted to reveal two rows of shiny white teeth. She offered a hand. "I'm Kitty," she said, her voice a Brooklyn purr.

    "Hermione."

    "Oooh, a Brit. So, what brings you here?" she looked sad all of a sudden.

    "A woman named Cady gave me this card," Hermione said, fishing it out of her pocket and flashing the rose side at Kitty. "And she told me to ask for you. So, now that I've asked for you, would you care to explain what's going on?"

    Kitty smiled and pulled her over to the counter where there was a chair and she pushed her into the chair. "You're hard up on your luck, aren't you? A. . .college dropout working at a low-end job making barely enough to cover your expenses. You live in a filthy apartment that probably had bugs and rodents. You have to friends. You probably left England at a dead run and never looked back. Am I right?"

    Hermione just gaped at her.

    "I know because that was me ten years ago. Well, I was escaping Ohio, but you know."

    "Okay," Hermione said slowly, "but what am I doing here?"

    "Look around you. Look at Margot, PA, and Nilya. Remember Lilith? This house is a safe house. I established it with Cady ten years ago, or so. Have you ever walked down the street at night and seen a shadowy figure near a lamppost or tucked back on a doorstep? That might have been one of these girls."

    Hermione's mind was whirring. She knew those shadowy, willowy people she saw sometimes while walking to the bus stop from the diner were prostitutes. So that meant that. . .

    "I will most certainly not!" she squeaked.

    "Her mind works quick," PA said. "I like you better already, girl." Hermione felt somehow that PA had meant it as a compliment but it couldn't have been construed as such because of the circumstances.

    Kitty smiled tightly, ruefully. She never wanted to see them fall, but she knew the descent was all too easy. She knew the safety in the world of seedy characters that she would ultimately draw this young British girl into. She would worry like mad when Hermione didn't come home one night. It was all a test, a test to deliver Hermione at last to herself.

    "It's okay, darling," Kitty said. "Think about it. Go home and sit with the rats and talk to them. They're wiser than you think. Maybe they'll tell you their secrets. Think about this house, this safety and consider what you're willing to do to survive."

    Hermione tore through the house and out the front door, not bothering to close it behind her on her way out. She didn't even breathe until she was at the safety of the bus stop.

    Back in the kitchen of the pale peach house, Kitty Wengerd smiled sadly to herself and muttered, "You'll be back."

    Of course, she was right. Hermione lost her job when she told a greasy, fat man where he could stuff it when he crossed the line for the last time. She did listen to the rats and their tales were sad ones. She wondered if perhaps she'd gone mad. Talking to rats, she must have been.

    On St. Patrick's Day, she found herself with one suitcase standing on the front porch of Kitty's house once more, swallowing her pride.

*

    The pattern of respiration is one constant you can depend on. Without respiration there would be no human life. Oxygen becomes your friend and you thank whatever you believe in for it. Hermione was one girl who never noticed trifling things like that. She was barely twenty-four (having had a birthday at the end of September) and she felt fifty. The world had been shot to hell and all she could think about clearly was the pattern of Draco's breathing in the bed beside her.

    Inhale. Exhale. So simple.

    She sighed and turned her eyes away, focusing instead on the window and the sheers and the darkness on the other side of them. How had her life fallen apart so? What had she done to deserve such a punishment? If she hadn't rationalized herself out of her family's Catholicism when she entered Hogwarts, she might have had a notion to beg this failure of a God why he hated her so. As it was, she never considered that an option.

    She turned her head a little to look at Draco. His eyes were closed, which made him look so vulnerable. She couldn't remember him looking vulnerable near her before. He always fell asleep last and woke up first. He was beautiful, she decided. His skin was grayish, yes, and there was the curious unbalance from one side of his face to the other, the crescent moon scar he obtained in a clash with Death Eaters (lucky thing it was that Virgil Crabbe's knife missed its mark and didn't poke out his right eye), and the pinprick hole on his chin where it was pierced, but he was still beautiful.

    The simplicity of respiration must have been what drew Hermione to it. In her days of happiness, at Hogwarts before Katie ruined it, she would have preferred writing a complicated Arithmancy exam to any simple, involuntary muscle spasm such as breathing. But those days had come and past, and she was older and jaded, and time had gone by way too fast. She realized she didn't have time or drive to tackle the things that had once given her more pleasure than a man, and retreated to the little things she'd taken for granted. Like warmth. And oxygen. And even that ephemeral little bastard with a four-letter name she didn't dare think about. The one she suspected to be lurking around the bend somewhere, because in Draco she found the catalyst to melt her adamantine barriers against it. And it frankly terrified her because she didn't like falling into anything.

    His skin was cool to the touch, but he generated a lot of warmth. She was perfectly comfortable for the first time since she'd stood on Kitty's doorstep, shivering in the early March lion weather, praying to the shreds of her gods to save her soul. His face was twisted into a look of distress, and his dream was a sad one. But she didn't know that. All that was intelligible to Hermione at that moment included his breathing, his warmth, and the cold of his skin that no amount of smoldering embers could cure. And for the first time, she was blissfully unaware of anything else.

*

    Her thoughts may have been simple and devotional, but the dream that had ensnared Draco was complex and convoluted. He wanted out of it but it wouldn't let him. It was a power greater than he was.

    His outstretched hand was pale and in shades of gray, blurred at the edges, and reaching after her as she pulled away from him. Her face was shrouded in dark gray but for her lips, vibrantly crimson and smarter than the pool of blood sliding its way across the floor beneath their feet. When he made a step towards her, she only slipped away, and he slipped on the blood.

    She moved like the serpents that had once ruled his head, languid and serpentine and she glittered ethereally without sparkle, wearing that plum-and-emerald dress without the color. The curves and angles of her face, collar bones, and shoulders were blurred at their highlights and edges and he could only just make the details of her face out because of the way she moved. Her long, straight, dark hair swirled around her head as though it possessed a mind of its own. Only those haunting lips were clear, and they were framing words he didn't want to hear. The sound of her voice never passed his ears, but reverberated hideously in his head and in his soul and most importantly in his heart.

    "I can't love you, I'm sorry. Good bye. I don't love you. Good bye. Good bye. Good bye."

    He seemed to be too slow, and when he tried to move faster he only stumbled and fell. The oppressive darkness of the dream and the terrible red of her lips, the blood he slipped on, made him want to scream and cry, but not as much as it made him even more determined to find a way to make her stay. He felt that buried fragment of courage he'd long forgotten he had (not having been a Gryffindor and all) come alive and spark a flame in his breast. But even combined with all his ingrained Slytherin cunning it wasn't enough.

    She was pulling away. Why, he didn't know. He didn't care why, he just didn't want her to leave him. She made him content. It hadn't taken a frightening dream or even a twist of the balls to make him come to such a conclusion, for he'd known it all along, even when she'd first slid into his rental car on a back street in Washington, DC, wearing a thin black coat longer than the black dress under it, and not knowing why she got in his car.

    He wrenched himself awake and out of that horrible place he'd somehow imagined himself into. Anything he could do to place himself next to her more solidly was good enough for him.

    She didn't question him when his breathing changed (announcing he was awake) and he pulled her close.

    Ask no questions and be told no lies.

    Why would there be lies? She pulled away and concern creased her brow. That's when she started to ask those questions. A plethora of them, and at once, Hermione realized what she must do to ensure that four letter word never wormed its way in. It broke her heart into a million more pieces.

    "What's wrong?" he whispered. She shook her head and sat up. The dawn was starting to slant through the windows.

    "Draco, I want to go home," she said.

    Surprised (and even stung), he sat up and pulled completely away from her. "Why?"

    "Because it's my home," she said. "Whatever else, I have a life there, now."

    This didn't compute to Draco. "Oh yeah," he said, "being a prostitute is such a life. Hermione, you've got tracks in your arms, you're skin and bones, if not for the ASTD you'd have venereal diseases and a kid or two, you're the saddest person I know, and you don't even know yourself anymore. I hated you at Hogwarts, and as much as I like you now, I'm finding myself starting to hate this apathetic person you've let yourself become."

    She put her hands over her face and inhaled sharply. "I don't want to argue with you," she said. "But the fact that Katie's somewhere lurking around scares me to death."

    "Which means you'd be safest here with me," he replied, at a loss.

    Shaking her head, she said, "Draco, I won't be safe anywhere. But I would be safe hidden in America as a Muggle. I can get a new identity if you want me to. I can be a new person. I'll dye my hair and I'll gain a hundred pounds and I'll get a job on a soap opera as the fat, long-lost sister of one of the starlets. I can act, you know. I was in plays at NYU before I had to drop out. I just don't want to be on this side of the Atlantic anymore. My sense of security is off here. This is the land that wronged me, Draco." She stood up and walked away from the bed, towards the bathroom. He sat on the bed, his legs drawn up in front of him, and frowned as the light flipped on and the sound of running water filled both rooms.

    She stared at her reflection in the mirror without seeing it. She figured she looked into mirrors enough. She ran her hands under icy water before bending down and splashing her face with it. That was refreshing and it really did help to clear the jumbled up mess in her head and in her heart.

    The terror and disbelief on Blaise's face when she'd run up to them and delivered the news of Katie's escape had stayed with Hermione. Blaise had sobbed into Draco's chest while Hermione had just stood there in shock.

    "I don't understand how she could just disappear! We had guards. We had Vince on it, Draco, and he's the best guard there is. We had Brayton and Nikolas posted at the dungeon entrance. You've seen them there. There were wards to prevent it!" Blaise had shrieked at her brother. "What did we do wrong?"

    "Shhh," he had soothed, sounding as perfectly understanding as Blaise could ever remember him sounding to her. "She's a wily, horrible little creature. There's no way to hold her."

    "How can you be so understanding!" Blaise demanded. She yanked away from him. "Do you have any idea how much paperwork I'm going to have to do now to explain it? That we had her, even though she's supposed to be DEAD, and then we LOST her! People already don't trust Harry anymore. They're going to get wind of this and they're going to think we're all mad or that we're lying to them or that we're hallucinating!"

    "Blaise, that's my problem. Remember, I'm the press whore. I'm Happiness. I keep people happily uninformed if need be." He fixed her with a stern look. "You just worry about finding her."

    After Blaise had allowed him to lead her over to where Loppy was waiting concernedly at the doors, Hermione had sunk down at the table and poured herself a glass of Captain Gorgon's spicéd rum from the glass and silver iron wet bar cart behind her chair. As she downed it, feeling the tang slide down her throat, she looked at the moving picture on the bottle's label. A fat white dog cowering before a medusa with hair of writhing blue-green snakes. The dog was barking without sound.

    Her eyes in the mirror, Hermione found with a start, weren't as blank as she's trained them to be. PA had told her it was important to keep any intelligence separate from your job, because men just don't like the intelligent ones. And after being so destroyed at seventeen for no good reason and sentenced to exile at eighteen, it wasn't hard for a twenty-and-a-half-year-old Hermione to do. In a completely masochistic way, she was glad to be rid of her intelligence sometimes. After spending her entire life striving to be the best of the best of the best, it had been a welcome reprieve to not have to be.

    When she reentered his room, he was dressed and the bed was made. Another of Blaise's outfits, this one a tailored champagne-pink dress with gold-pink embroidery near a hem falling just above the knee, was laid across the comforter. It would go nicely with the white leather sandals Blaise had given her, saying they'd belonged to Narcissa before she developed bunions from too many years of wearing high heels. A sense of sadness washed over Hermione before she could stem it. Today his dark red shirt said, "If you're this close already, suck my dick" in very, very tiny white letters just above his navel. It was the crudest one she'd seen yet.

    "Are you mad?" she asked.

    He turned to look at her and seemed thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head and smiling, "No, Herm, I'm not. Just. . .confused." What she didn't know was the only thoughts rushing around his head were about that dream he'd had. And slowly, for some reason, it was coming true.