At the Motel

13. At the Motel

They arrived at the Kings Inn—a cheap motel with a pebbled, almost empty parking lot, but with deadbolts and chains and steel-clad doors. While Darla unpacked and Stacy tested the beds for jumpability in their ground-floor suite, Hermione walked down the road to the local Chickin-Lickin to get them some food.

She thought back to their ride to the motel. Darla, bristling with suppressed fear and suspicion, drove with her eyes darting every few seconds to the rear-view mirror. Stacy, between them, clasped Hermione’s hand complacently and patted her mother’s leg.

“My-mee?" she addressed her new friend, "Know wha’ I wan’be when I gwow up?" She beamed a perfect baby toothed grin. "A jim-niss.”

“She means gymnast,” put in Darla unexpectedly. It was surprising--the mother was not too distracted by fear of being followed to keep track of her daughter’s attempts at conversation with this interloper.

“That’s nice,” said Hermione. She remembered the awe of seeing Olympic gymnasts on the telly, defying gravity almost magically with their leaps and cartwheels and backflips. Stacy was small for her age and would probably remain so. Her tiny hands and bird-like bone structure were a miniature of her mother’s. She would be a tumbler or balance beam artist—when she wasn’t busy studying Transfiguration and Ancient Runes at Hogwarts.

When Hermione came back from buying dinner—two Chickin-Chunks’n’Chips and a Jolly Meal--she noticed a yellow G & E truck in the parking lot. There's a funny coincidence, she thought. It made her think back to the first one of those she had seen. Not the ones that had arrived in the wake of her warning, but coasting down the road away from the cul-de-sac when she and Sirius had arrived earlier in the day. A young woman had been driving--a buff young woman with flowing gold hair, much the same color and curliness as--Stacy's. Another coincidence. And Sirius had remarked on the woman's dimples. Stacy has a dimple too--Hermione’s heart skipped a beat. Had it even been a woman in the cab of the truck? She'd thought the dark outline on the lower part of the face had just been a shadow caused by the woman's hand—that strong, slender, brown hand--shading her eyes from the morning sunshine. But what if it had been not shadow but--beard stubble?

She walked carefully into the motel foyer and eased her parcels into a chair, then tiptoed down the hallway to their room, which was at the far end. She edged up to the door, placing her hands on the steel surface, willing herself to hear that everything was all right. But through the metal sheathing, she made out a soft, high-pitched keening and then a deeper voice that chilled her.

"That's right, Stacy," it crooned. "Good baby, letting me in while Mummy was on the toilet. You've always been clever with opening locks, darling. Now, we can all have a cozy little talk..." The voice became a murmur, punctuated by sobs and suppressed whimpers of pain.

Hermione had the key at the ready. It was the card kind that you slipped into a slot, being careful not to turn the doorknob until you saw the green light: nice and quiet except for a faint click that hopefully the boyfriend would not hear over his gloating. She pulled her wand out of her bag. A Stun Spell should take him out, but… what if he has a weapon--a gun--or a knife pressed to Darla's throat? Hermione shuddered. She had to take the chance.

At this moment, Minister Scrimgour's words came back to her. By performing this spell, she could be banished from the Magicosm and her wand confiscated. Harry had gotten away with stuff like this before, but, well, that was Harry. She, Muggleborn Hermione Granger, had been expressly warned by the Minister of Magic himself about the change in the law and had already been found at a place where there had been a suspicious use of magic. And this time the Aurors would appear and find that she had done magic. They would ask what she was doing there.

She couldn't tell them about Dumbledore's list. Scrimgeour might try to use the information to keep Harry from his fated duty.

No, her path was clear. She would use magic and risk the ban. She had promised Darla and Stacy that they would be safe, and it was her fault that they were not. She blocked out of her mind unrelenting images of her friends—Ron especially--going on to fulfill their magical destinies without her.

Rhythmic slapping sounds were coming from beyond the door now, and the whimpers increased in volume. She slipped the card quickly in and out of the slot. She thought she heard Stacy crying for her mother. She squeezed her wand, squared her shoulders, turned the handle, and pushed.

At that instant there came an explosion, a splintering crash, and some kind of shock wave that slammed against the door and almost forced it shut again. But Hermione countered it, thrusting her whole body against it, praying: No--dear heaven--he doesn't—he couldn’t have--not a gun— please--

Swinging the door wide, she took in an incredible tableau. There was a haze of smoke, as from cigarettes--or a recently discharged firearm.

Darla was splayed out on the far bed, her face puffy and mottled, blood snaking down her cheek, but alive—coughing and crying. Against the wall under the window curtain lay the golden-haired monster—sprawled crazily over a chair, his head twisted and lolling on his shoulder at an impossible angle to the rest of his body. One leg was stretched out in front of him, the other dangling over the chair arm. A cigarette was burning a hole in the carpet, just beneath a too-still hand. His eyes stared at her in an expression of disbelief. His work shirt was spattered with some dark liquid. And there was a fast ebbing halo of blue flame receding from his body.

But as she glided past the entryway into the room proper, not daring to make a sound, Hermione realized it wasn’t really her at whom his sightless gaze was directed. He was looking at something just off to her right, a slight figure balancing athwart the pillows on the other bed. It was little Stacey--her back arched and her arms stretched out towards him, like a tiny gymnast posing in triumph after a flawless tumbling run, her fingers glowing with that same bright blue aura of energy that surrounded her father.

Now Stacy turned and smiled that angelic, dimpled smile as if she sensed that her new friend My-mee would see that everything was made right. Then she sighed and collapsed on the pillows in a small exhausted heap.