Partner

Chapter 2: Partner

The band of kidnappers had searched Hermione and had discovered she had not completely shed her old identity. They had found a card with instructions on how to contact the tax assessment office in case of questions or complaints.

The leader of the gang was tired of the constant digs that he and his men lacked intelligence and initiative. Taking care to hide his face and location, he used the card. The message that Hermione was being held as a hostage was received by Padma.

Padma and Hannah had been given the notification that Hermione was temporarily reassigned for an advanced course in accounting. The extra workload had irritated Padma. The thought that Hermione was the one chosen had infuriated Padma. The suggestion that someone believed the over-achiever worth kidnapping instead of her sent Padma over the edge.

“Listen up, you redneck peckerwood. We will make your life a living hell. If you don’t want to pay your fair share, that’s okay with us because you’re not going to pay your fair share or do anything else in this life. Your entire pathetic existence is about to come to a bureaucratic, scorched-earth halt. All your records are now lost, do you hear me, dickwad? They have dropped into the black hole of our filing system, and the only way you can keep out of prison or even establish that you exist is to replace them one by one. You’re going to fill out forms until your hands drop off. No, wait, you’re going to mark everything with your DNA loaded semen since you’re such an ignorant asshole you probably can’t even sign your own name. You’ll mark so many forms that your member will drop off which will be a good thing. ‘Cause you be messin’ with assessin’, and you be payin’ usin’ tax on your wife’s pussy. By the time we’re finished with your sorry ass, it’ll be buried so deep the Bureau of Land Reclamation won’t be able to find it. Your momma!”

“Who was that?” asked Hannah.

“Another crank call from some homeowners’ association,” said Padma.

“How’d it go, boss?” asked a thug.

“Tough group,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hermione was feeling her way around a black hole of despair. It appeared to be eight feet by ten feet with a high ceiling and no source of light.

There was a tap. Hermione stopped to listen.

“Miss Granger?”

It took her a while to respond. She hadn’t been called that for several years. “Yes,” she said.

“Step clear,” said the voice.

Hermione moved along the wall away from the source of the voice. A pinpoint of light appeared. The voice asked if she was a safe distance away, and she replied that she was. A larger hole appeared.

“Just give me a bloody wand, and I’ll do the rest,” she said.

But the voice asked if she was at least three feet away, and when she huffed and replied that she was, a woman-sized hole appeared in the wall. She looked out to see the last face she wanted to see and the only person she could trust.

“Take this until we find yours,” he said, handing her a wand at last. “Back me up,” he added.

He burst through the door of the hideout.

Get the bloody hell out of my line of fire, she thought.

But, onetwothree, he had stunned the thugs.

She felt cheated. Honestly!

“Don’t just stand there in plain sight gawking,” he told her. “Get in here and look for your wand. And anything else you think looks informative.”

She found her wand in a drawer with a notepad.

“Severus,” she cried, holding up a piece of paper with her husband’s name on it.

He shrugged. “It’s obvious we’ve been betrayed, and that clot is the least of our problems.”

She had to agree, but she still had to fight back the tears.

“Wipe the tears from your eyes and keep looking,” he said. “The people that hired this group aren’t going to trust them alone for long.”

“Oh,” she said. She had found her tax-assessment card on the table.

“Well, well, your husband betrays you, and then you spill the rest of the beans,” said Severus. “You’re a well-matched pair.”

Hermione glared at him, but he just said, “I wonder if they contacted the department of assessment. That must have been fun. And stop your glaring and keep searching this place. Try to repair some of the damage you’ve done.”

They searched, but found nothing else.

“What am I doing here?” asked Hermione

“I’m asking the same thing,” said Severus. “I asked for a foxy lady. I planned to dress her flash and parade her in front of the bad guys as bait. But that’s no longer an option.”

“I see,” said Hermione.

“If you’ve stopped blubbering over hubby, we can go,” said Severus. “Try to stay alert.”

“Just a minute,” he said as Hermione started out the door. “We can’t do much, but we can do something.” He waved his wand, and her hair became long, black, and straight. “Amazingly better,” he said.

She was fuming as they stepped into the glare of the noonday sun.

They strolled casually into a neighborhood of small shops, through a coffee house, down an alley, and across a field into a copse of trees. Severus stopped and looked for any sign of pursuers.

“We may as well be comfortable,” he said. “I can put a glamour on you, a contradiction if there ever was one, and we can travel unrecognized.”

“Will you lay off?” said Hermione. “You don’t want me here; I don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be around me; I don’t want to be around you. I don’t know what’s going on; you don’t have to tell me. And I’m going to be gone in about two seconds.”

“Don’t go back to your house,” said Severus. “Your husband will betray you, and they will kill you.”

“What? Why? Why would my husband want to kill me?”

“Not your husband, he doesn’t care.”

Someone else saying that her husband didn’t care cracked years of self-deception. Hermione was sitting on the ground, pulling at the grass, and sobbing. How had she made so many wrong choices? How had she made such a mess of her life?

After a while, Severus was sitting beside her. “We should go.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Today, London to Cologne by train to get out of England. We’ll risk resting for a day in Cologne. Then, we use our interail passes to get lost on the continent. We keep moving, never travelling in a straight line.”

“If we should keep moving, why are we stopping in Cologne?” she asked.

“We’re not used to this, and your capture has us more disoriented than we realize,” he replied. “We feel energized now from the excitement, but when it wears off, we’ll be exhausted and confused. That’s more dangerous than stopping to rest.”

“I can hold up quite well, thank you,” she said. “And what’s our destination? I can rest once we get there.”

“Ultimately, Brasov, Romania – gateway to the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania.”

“Vampires,” joked Hermione.

“Yes, vampires,” said Severus seriously. “A week from now, you’ll be dining on cornmeal and cabbage rolls and downing enough tuica to forget ten bad husbands. And provoking vampires.”

It was cold. Very cold. The sun was bright. Every blade of grass cast a sharp shadow. Wrapping the cloak tighter did no good since the cold inside was as sharp as the cold outside.