Chapter Five - Explanations and Escapes

A/N: Hello! So, this story is not abandoned, just... taking a really, really long time. Life has been hectic, but has finally calmed down, and with any luck, I can actually do some writing on a semi-regular basis again for a while. :)

Not daring to even exchange a glance with Neville, Hermione held her hands up slowly in front of her body and tried not to look as angry and terrified as she felt.

“Mark, put the gun down,” David said forcefully, looking exasperated when instead of Mark doing what he asked, Aaron, the man standing beside Brian, lifted his own gun.

“Of course we didn’t lead them here,” Hermione said softly, attempting to sound calm and reassuring. “If we’d done that, why would we have helped keep them out?”

“Were those things wizards?” Laura asked, ignoring the guns raised beside her. Tears were streaming down her face, and she held her daughter crushed against her side. “Those things that killed Ned, were they wizards?”

There was no sense lying, Hermione realised. They’d already given themselves away in a moment of panic, and the only way out of this now was to tell the truth and hope that everyone would remain reasonable—which didn’t seem overly likely, all things considered. “Yes,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “But not just wizards. They’re werewolves.”

“Werewolves don’t exist,” Aaron said.

“Just like wizards don’t exist?” Neville asked, a hint of anger in his voice, and Hermione bit her lip and silently begged Neville to shut up, or at least calm down.

“Can we please put the guns away before someone else gets hurt?” David asked again, reaching for Mark’s arm and examining the bite wounds carefully.

“They do exist,” Hermione interjected. “They’re real, and they know where we are now.” Pausing and dropping Mark’s gaze, she added quietly. “You were infected when they bit you. You’ll become one of them during the next full moon.”

David hesitated, and then loosened his grip on Mark’s arm, looking nervously at the blood that was gathering in small pools in the indentations in the skin made by his own fingertips. Mark gave him an incredulous look.

“You don’t actually believe her?!” he growled angrily, jerking his arm away and sending droplets of blood spraying across the floor. “She’s trying to turn you against me!”

“Why would I do that?” Hermione asked, trying to make him see reason, but it was obvious that he wasn’t listening to her.

Mark continued, “They’re trying to scare us so we don’t kill them! Don’t you see?” He turned to face the others in the group, taking in their nervous expressions, now focused on him instead of Hermione and Neville. “They’re lying, you idiots!” He backed against the wall, aiming his gun first at one person, then another, then back again, looking crazed with fear and shock.

“Mark, come on, calm down. No one is saying that,” David tried to reassure him, but the way that he was holding his bloody hands, as if he were afraid of them, said more than his words ever could. “Just put down the gun, okay? This is crazy. You’re losing a lot of blood. You need to sit down and let me bandage up your arm.... Please, Mark.”

“I know what you’re all thinking,” Mark said as if he hadn’t heard a word. “You’re thinking you should kill me. You think I’m one of them now, but you’re wrong. They’re the ones you should be after.” He motioned towards Hermione and Neville, sending another spray of blood into the air.

“What happens if he becomes one of those things, those werewolves?” Nancy asked, her voice shaky.

“He’ll want to kill. The wizards are only able to control their actions when they’re like that because they have a special potion. I don’t know how to make it.... Without it, a werewolf only wants to bite everyone it can find. He’d kill or infect all of us,” Hermione said warily.

“I wouldn’t do that!” Mark shouted, aiming his gun at Hermione once more. “How dare you say that? I would never—”

“You won’t be able to stop yourself,” Neville interrupted, taking a step forward but stopping when the gun suddenly pointed his way. “You won’t know what you’re doing, and you won’t remember it the next morning.”

“Will you all just all sit down and talk about this without weapons?” David asked again.

“We should kill both of them!” Mark shouted.

“We can protect you!” Hermione pointed out. “We can help get everyone somewhere safe, maybe even find a place for you to stay when you transform so that you can’t hurt anyone. We can help y—”

“No,” Laura said flatly. “No, we don’t need your help.”

“Yes you d—”

“No! Just get out. You knew this was going to happen and now my husband is dead! You acted like you were my friend, and you let him die! Now get out!” Shoving her way past the others, Laura began dragging things away from the door. “Get out before I let Mark shoot both of you.”

“You can’t just let them go!” Mark said, hurrying toward Laura and grabbing her shoulder, forcing her to turn and face him. “They’ll bring them back here! They know where we are!”

“We can’t stay here anyway,” Brian pointed out.

Mark shook his head, his voice slightly calmer now that he felt the others were on his side once more. “They know too much. They shouldn’t be allowed to—”

“We can’t just kill them either,” Nancy bit out. “If we start murdering people for no reason, we’re no better than they are.”

“They’re wizards! What other reason do you need?” Aaron asked incredulously.

“Look, they don’t have wands, right? Can we just lock them in the bedroom and talk about this?” David tried again. “Mark, Aaron, please. Gunshots would only lead other wizards here. We need to think about this rationally.”

His words seemed to have some affect on the others, and finally it was decided that they would do exactly that. Not wanting to push their luck any further, Hermione and Neville allowed themselves to be led at gunpoint to the back bedroom and locked inside. The second the door shut behind them, they ran to the window and threw it open, looking down at the alleyway below.

“We’re four stories up,” Neville said, echoing Hermione’s thoughts. “We’d probably kill ourselves jumping out of here, or at least be hurt badly enough that we wouldn’t be able to get away.”

“We’re dead anyway,” Hermione pointed out, glaring around the room anxiously. “Is there anything we can hang out the window so we can at least get closer to the ground?”

“Nothing but the bed sheet, and that won’t get us very far. Maybe six feet at best, if we can find something to attach it to.” Despite his words, Neville began pulling the quilt off the bed. “Maybe if we tear it into long pieces and tie them together?”

“Maybe,” Hermione said. “But if they come apart....” Examining the alleyway, she suddenly turned away and grabbed the end of the mattress and pulled it away from the bed frame. “Help me,” she said insistently, climbing onto the frame and bracing her feet on one side and pushing on the other, pausing when it began to give way with a loud cracking noise. When everything remained quiet in the hallway, she began pushing on it once again. Neville knelt on the other side and pulled, wincing as the pain in his chest grew steadily with the effort.

Finally the board came free with a resounding crack of splintering wood, and Hermione began moving it towards the window. “Maybe we can get over there,” she said, throwing a quick glance at the closed window on the other side of the narrow alley, barely five feet away.

The board reached across the distance, but barely, and they both eyed it warily. Even if they made it across, the force of them trying to open the other window or break through would probably knock the board to the ground far below, along with whoever was still standing on it.

Casting his glance around the room, Neville grabbed something from a shelf in the room—it looked like an alarm clock, but Hermione didn’t get a good look—leaned out the window and threw it across the alleyway, shattering the glass.

“Go, now!” Neville said, pushing Hermione towards the window as they heard voices coming down the hall.

She was about to protest that Neville should go first, but they didn’t have time to argue. Climbing through the window, she balanced her weight carefully on the board, careful to avoid the screws that were sticking out of the ends at odd angels, and crept across it on her hands and knees as quickly as she dared. Neville held on to the end tightly, trying to steady it. The board rocked back and forth ominously, but stayed in place, and when Hermione reached the other side, she put one hand on the wall to steady herself while she pushed the rest of the broken window onto the floor of the flat and climbed inside, gasping in pain as bits of glass cut into her hands and arms. Turning back quickly, she held onto the board while Neville began climbing out of the window.

When he was only halfway across the alley, the door back in the small bedroom was thrown open, and Mark, his arm newly bandaged but still bleeding, stormed through, followed by the other inhabitants of the flat. Hermione tugged the empty window frame up so that the jagged edge of glass was out of the way and leaned through, and Neville grabbed her hand, launching himself through the window and knocking them both over. The board clattered loudly into the alleyway seconds later, and without sparing a second for feeling relief, Hermione and Neville began crawling towards the door of the room, afraid to stand up and make themselves targets.

Once out of the room, they stood and hurried out of the abandoned and ransacked flat, racing down the stairs of the building and hurrying out into the street, where they were quickly faced with another problem. It was dark, yes, but there were still werewolves about, as well as the angry, fearful, and probably murderous Muggles they’d just escaped. They flattened themselves against the side of a building, hiding in the shadow, and paused to catch their breath and formulate a plan.

“You’re bleeding!” Hermione whispered anxiously, reaching towards Neville’s chest, and he distractedly pushed her hand away.

“So are you,” he said, glancing at her hands, and then turned his gaze back to the street. “We have to get out of here. Do you know your way around London?”

“Not at all,” Hermione admitted. “The only places I’ve ever been were the train station, St. Mungo’s, and...” Her words trailed off as her eyes lit up. “Come on, I know where we can go!”

Moving as quickly as they could while staying mostly out of sight, they hurried through the darkness, Hermione stopping occasionally to glance around and make sure she was headed in the right direction, before finally she came to a sudden halt and pointed. She motioned toward what seemed to be a large crater in the middle of a dark intersection.

“Is it safe?” Neville asked, eyeing the dead bodies in the road.

“Can’t be any more dangerous than it is up here,” Hermione reasoned, surprised to find that she sounded more sure of herself than she actually felt.

Without another word, Neville hunched his shoulders and bent low, running for the dark void, Hermione only a few steps behind. They reached the edge, amazed that they had done so without being attacked by anything or anyone, and then stared at each other for a minute, unsure of what to do next. Then, sitting down on the edge of the hole, Neville dropped down into the darkness and completely out of sight.

Hermione waited for a tense moment, listening intently, and nearly jumped out of her skin when Neville called up to her, “Come on!” Bracing herself, she followed Neville’s example and sat down, lowering her feet over the edge. Bits of the street crumbled underneath her, and the darkness consumed her legs so that they seemed to completely disappear into what felt like a very dense, very dark cloud of pure heat. Feeling sweat instantly begin to form all over her body, Hermione held her breath and slipped down into the Ministry of Magic.

Cool air hit Hermione's skin as she fell to the floor of the Minister's office, and she glanced up at the web of heat she'd just fallen through, amazed that she could see outlines of buildings in the moonlight. Glad that they'd at least be able to see anyone coming after them before they themselves would be seen, she glanced around the room, squinting to make out anything in the darkness. A dim light glowed through a doorway up ahead of them, and they made their way toward it. In the hallway a single candle, the magical sort that never burnt down and melted away, glowed from its place on the wall. Stretching and standing on his toes, Neville wiggled it out of place and held it in front of him, careful not to let the tiny flame go out.

Normally hundreds of these candles lit the hallways of the Ministry so brightly that it was sometimes easy to forget that electricity didn't exist in the wizarding world. Now the light given by this single candle created little more than shadows; the darkness was so complete that they could still barely make out much more than what was right in front of their faces.

Edging along silently, they stepped over ruined and broken furniture, finally coming across a dead body. Almost holding their breath with anticipation, they searched for what seemed like forever, checking the surrounding area as well as the body itself, but were unable to find the man's wand. As they crept through the rest of the first level, they came across more bodies, also wandless. Feeling despair wash over them, they continued through more dark and abandoned hallways. The only sound to be heard was the occasional rat skittering away as they approached.

Hermione woke up to complete silence. She waited for a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and then looked around, startled to see Neville gone from his makeshift bed against the opposite wall.

They'd spent the rest of the night sleeping in Arthur Weasley's office, tucked into the back corner of the second floor. It had seemed like the best place to stay—they felt almost safe there. The floor above them was all but gone, and everything around them practically in ruins, but further down there was more destruction, more dead bodies, and more rats.

Standing and making her way carefully into the adjoining office where the small cache of candles they'd collected were sitting on a desk, giving the room a haunting glow, she felt panic flood through her when she realized that her friend wasn't on the second floor at all. Carefully lifting one of the candles and shielding it with one hand to keep the flame from blowing out, she moved as quickly and quietly as possible, climbing up the stairs to the first floor, which had once held the Minister of Magic's office. The Minister himself still lay on the ground, his wand broken in two but still clutched in his hand, and Hermione stepped gingerly over his body, glancing up at the dark night sky. She knew that no Muggles could actually see past the edge of the crater made by the Death Eater's attack—or had it been a Muggle bomb? She wasn't even sure anymore—but it still made her nervous.

The smell in the air was just as horrible and made Hermione sick to her stomach. In every room and corridor, the only thing to be seen was dead, rotting bodies, and the stench was overpowering. Everything was always dark, and the view from the charmed windows showed only steady, dreary rain.

When she didn't find Neville in the Minister's office, Hermione debated between continuing up to Muggle London and going down into the lower levels of the Ministry. Deciding that it was safer for her in the Ministry, despite whatever dangers may be waiting, she crept back down the stairs, ignoring the leaning door on the second floor and continuing on to the third.

The third floor looked very similar to the second, as did the fourth. From there, each was a bit darker, a bit scarier, and a bit more depressing. The smell almost overwhelmed her, and she fought to keep from being sick. Still, further down she went. In the Atrium, a place she had stood just a few years ago with her friends, she passed the statue that had once topped the magnificent fountain. Instead of being displayed proudly in its usual place, it had been completely shattered and was lying in scattered pieces on the ground.

She eyed the stairs to the next floor down, and found that she almost couldn't resist. When she reached the ninth floor, the door to the Department of Mysteries stood open. With each turn down a new corridor she found more open doors, and the spinning room no longer spun. The Brain Room, as she'd taken to calling it, had been nearly taken over with brains that grew like ivy, wrapping themselves around the dead and creeping up the walls. Hermione hurried past, hoping she hadn't been noticed.

A moment later she came upon a room that still haunted her nightmares on occasion. The Veil, the one that had taken Sirius' life just a few years earlier, stood in the centre of the room as if nothing had ever happened to the building around it. And there was Neville, lugging a dead body towards the innocuous-looking archway.

"What are you doing?" she asked softly, her words echoing in the cavernous room. Neville jumped, startled, and then relaxed when he saw her.

"I hate the smell," he said, shrugging, and continued toward the Veil, grunting with effort as he moved. Without hesitation, he shoved the body through the archway, and Hermione watched as, instead of falling through the other side, it disappeared completely. "I counted; there are thirty-two of them. No wands so far. Well, no whole ones. Found a few broken ones, but it looks like the Death Eaters took all the usable wands with them."

Without another word, he nudged his way past her and walked up to the Atrium again, grabbing another dead body beneath the arms and dragging it towards the stairs. Not knowing what else to do, Hermione picked up the woman's feet and helped, resolutely not looking at the person's face. She didn't want to know, she decided. It was easier if they were faceless, nameless Ministry employees, and not old friends and acquaintances.

They were both hungry and feeling weak from having not eaten, and so they didn't get too far. After only moving two more bodies, they decided to rest a bit. Later that day they moved two more, and then stopped again. Finally, they discussed going aboveground to find something to eat. They decided to wait until the sun had set again, knowing that would be safest.

Searching for food, they quickly discovered, was not exactly a viable option. After an entire night of scavenging, they had come up empty-handed. This was due to bad luck more than anything else, Hermione knew, but still, she was reluctant to try again. They had come upon a building of Muggle flats not long after leaving the Ministry, and had thought themselves fortunate. They were disappointed to find that all of the flats had already been broken into and all of the cupboards and refrigerators had been emptied of anything that wasn't spoiled.

As they continued towards the top floor, hoping against hope that they would find something, anything, to eat—it had taken them a half hour to get only four buildings away from the entrance to the Ministry, thanks to the need to stay completely out of sight as much as possible, and they weren't anxious to try finding yet another building to search—they found one door that was still locked. Hopeful, they broke the lock as quietly as possible and let themselves in, only to have a bullet lodge itself in the door mere inches from Neville's head.

They turned and ran, and whoever was inside the flat followed them, screaming at them the entire way. They didn't stop until they made it to the Ministry and both of them, shaken and trembling, tumbled onto the floor of Arthur Weasley's office. Feeling a bit too sick to their stomachs to eat anything anyway, they decided not to venture into Muggle territory again that night.

The next morning, feeling as though she were starving, Hermione set Neville to looking for something that could be used as a knife of sorts while she coaxed a fire to life inside one of the Atrium's fireplaces. It took them the better part of the day to catch a rat, and doing their best not to think about exactly what they were doing, they killed it and cooked it over the fire. Neville remarked that it wasn't really all that awful—they both knew he was lying, but neither really cared.

Over the following week they had many other such meals, and drank what rainwater they managed to collect. Whenever possible, they avoided going aboveground; it seemed safer to stay in a place where the Muggles couldn't come after them. They finished disposing of the dead bodies, and on one occasion where her discomfort overcame her desire to stay hidden forever, Hermione snuck up to the 'surface', as they'd taken to calling it, and returned four hours later with an armful of blankets and a few pillows. All in all, she was miserable but safe, and she decided that was the most she could ask for, all things considered.

Neville, however, seemed to be weakening by the day. His pain had turned into a near constant thing, and he shivered and trembled most of the time, even though he'd taken to sleeping by the fire that they kept burning in the Atrium. Much of the day he lay under his blankets, his mind far away, and only spoke when he was spoken to first, and so Hermione never stopped talking. Hermione had never felt so alone in her life, and though she'd always valued silence, now she despised it. If she kept talking, and he kept answering her, then she knew she wasn't alone after all. It didn't matter what they were talking about—and after a week, they'd covered every shared-interest topic Hermione could think of and had moved on to things Neville knew nothing about, since he rarely paid any real attention to the conversation anyway—as long as there was something for her to focus on besides the dark office space, the smell of death that still lingered in the air, and the rats and cockroaches that crawled down the very walls they slept against.

Everything continued in much the same manner for what seemed like forever, but had only been, in reality, a few days, until one day Hermione woke up to find Neville gone. She found him in the room with the Veil, sitting before the archway, staring at the curtain that dipped in and out as if being blown by a breeze that no one else could feel.

"Neville? Are you all right?" she asked softly, walking up behind him and placing a hand on his shoulder. He jumped, as if he hadn't heard her speaking and hadn't realized she was there until she'd touched him.

"What do you think it feels like to die?" he asked, turning his gaze back to the Veil.

"I don't know," she answered, gripping his hand in hers. "But you're not going to die, so it doesn't matter. Come upstairs. I'm going to make something to eat."

"Tired of rats," he mumbled, pulling his hand away, but he allowed her to help him up to the Atrium nonetheless.

The trip downstairs had weakened him even further, and by the next day, Neville couldn't gather the energy to do so much as eat. Hermione gave him water when he woke, and sat by his bedside, talking constantly as always, hoping that he'd hang on just a little longer—but what he was supposed to be waiting for, she didn't know, and that terrified her. A few days later Neville wouldn't wake at all, and Hermione held his hand, stroking the skin softly with her thumb until the slow rise and fall of his chest stopped completely.

Refusing to let herself get upset—You knew this was coming, you shouldn't be this upset! she scolded herself—she brought him down the stairs as gently as she could and then pushed him through the Veil.

She stood there for a long moment, staring, contemplating following him. What else do I have to live for at this point? she wondered. Some time later, deciding that the Veil would still be there later if she should have need of it, she made her way back upstairs and lay down on her bed, trying not to pay attention to the blankets piled against the opposite wall, trying not to think about the fact that Neville was supposed to be sleeping there.

It wasn't until the next morning, when she found herself talking as she prepared breakfast and it occurred her that no one was there to answer her, that she cried.