Isolation

31. Blood

.

She didn't even remember shouting, "RUN!" to Harry and Ron.

She was racing away before her voice reached her ears, surging her body forward and snaking around trees with everything she had. The ground seemed to quake with the fast and thunderous footsteps of the Snatchers, and the sound of it rumbled all around her. Patches of mud and hidden bumps rocked her balance, but she tried to keep her focus amongst the adrenaline storm.

Harry was to her right - about twenty feet away - sprinting through the forest with two Snatchers on his tail. She couldn't see Ron, but she could hear him calling out to them, maybe another twenty feet or so from Harry, and she prayed he had the sense not to blurt any of their names. If they could just get some distance and reach each other to Apparate. If they could just get somewhere safe. If they could...

The Snatcher behind her was getting closer.

She could feel his shadow against her back; the chill of it on her neck. She hurled a spell over her shoulder, and the sparks of it singed her cheeks. She heard a thud and hoped she had successfully managed to hinder his chase, but she could already feel another one catching up to her.

The wind of a hex rushed past her ear, and she raised her arm to shield her eyes when it struck a tree and launched a spatter of splinters towards her. She fired another spell behind her and somehow managed to find some more speed, trying to veer towards Harry and Ron. If she could just get to them...

She heard a change in Ron's shouts and knew that they'd caught him.

That was it then. There was no way they'd leave him behind. They were in trouble.

She made a decision and kept running until she was close enough to Harry, and the Stinging Hex was the first spell that popped into her head. She hit her mark; Harry's face, and she watched him stumble as the inevitable pain began to register, and his features began to inflate and swell. She hoped it would be enough to alter his appearance. To make him unrecognisable.

Ron was struggling persistently against the two Snatchers who dragged him over to their group, but it was futile. There were Snatchers surrounding them from all sides now, slithering around the trees and circling them. Two of them took hold of her arms, but it was only when Fenir Greyback marched towards them that Hermione realised just how terrified she was, and the lingering look of hunger he directed towards her made her feel sick. He looked just as she remembered; feral and unkempt, and her eyes fell to the smudges of dried blood under his fingernails.

"Running is never a good idea," he said in his scratchy tone, his calculating glare shifting to Harry. "What the fuck happened to your face, ugly?"

"Al-allergies," he stuttered.

Greyback cocked a too-bushy eyebrow. "Names. Now."

"Dudley. Vernon Dudley."

"And you, ginger?"

"Stan Shunpike-

Fenir backhanded his cheek, and Ron grunted at the impact. "Your real name."

Ron swallowed hard. "Barny Weasley."

"A Weasley?" Fenir repeated. "You're a Blood Traitor then. The Order of the Phoenix ring any bells? There are a few Weasleys in there."

Ron shook his head, and Hermione averted her gaze when Fenir turned back to her with that same perverted stare. "And you, girly?"

"Penelope Clearwater," she said with more conviction than she felt.

"Pretty name for a pretty thing," he said, licking his jagged teeth and reaching out to stroke her cheek with a yellow and sharp fingernail. Hermione shuddered and tried hard not to retch. "I bet you taste sweet-