The Hunter And The Haunted

Part 2

She did not know when she was lifted off the ground, in arms so calloused and unforgiving, and yet so gentle.

Her mind was so torn with weariness that she never felt it. The inkling of kindness she'd craved for so long.

She would never know how gently she was set into a small boat by the edge of the school, long forgotten, but once had ferried her to the school for the first time.

She would never know that Hagrid's, now mostly white beard, scratched her face as he pressed a soft kiss on her forehead, like a father would do to his sleeping daughter.

A tear trickled down his face and onto her scarred hands.

They have yet to think of a spell that our Hermione can't do...

He touched those scars after he laid her down.

They ran deep, carved in pain and poison.

He thought back to the day when the children had barged into his hut. Ron throwing up slugs. Harry and Hermione holding him up. Ron had been defending Hermione that day. Flaring up against Malfoy when he called Hermione "Mudblood".

The broken wand had backfired and Ron had collapsed, barfing up the slugs meant for Malfoy.

What had war done to these children?

Why did Life have to be so cruel?

Why did their innocence have to be the price to be paid for the sanctity of a world so foul?

The children, pound in the motar of life and the pestal of the war, like occamy eggshell for Felix Felicis.

And lucky were they, till luck itself turned toxic.

Quite like Felix Felicis, when taken in absurdly large quantities.

He arranged her robes neatly and with the help of his old pink umbrella, he pushed the small boat onto the still waters of the Black Lake. It followed the path it always did.

To the other side.

Hagrid watched her float away, great, fat tears rolling down his face now.

Even scarred, even hurt, even bleeding, he could see the little girl he had watched grow up.

Her laughing face, her determined expression, her wit, her smarts.

And her mess of curly brown hair that once was, but now her head was missing large bunches of it.

Ripped off, if the wounds on her scalp suggested as much.

The girl who read.

The girl who did.

The girl who fought.

The girl now floating away, unconscious, half alive in a boat.

Like Lagartha, the Viking warrior, on her funeral pyre.

But there would be no flaming torches to light Hermione up and honour her as she faded into nothingness.

No.

Following her heart; believing in the wrong people, had already left her in ashes.

And Hermione Jean Granger was no phoenix.

She did not know how long she had passed out.

How long she had slept.

She sat up, blinking.

Her eyes grew more focused as she tried to decipher where she was.

She was on a boat, docked to a rotting wooden platform. On the water. On the water.

Hermione's knuckles turned white as she made to scramble to her feet and out of the boat, not before stumbling on a satchel tucked to the side of the boat.

Her heart raced as she peered down into the boat from the side of the dock and reached in slowly, gingerly to pull the satchel out and onto her lap. The floorboards creaked, but Hermione just stared at the bag on her lap.

Was it a trap? Was it a trap? Was it a-

She ignored every screaming voice in her head telling her not to open the bag, and ripped it open, prepared to be killed by carnivorous Danish pixies or a mutilated killer hand or... Hagrid's rock cakes?

Hermione stared.

And then picked one out and held it up.

Hagrid's rock cakes.

Her eyes welled with tears.

Her stomach groaned.

She didn't care if they were hazardous to her already weak teeth, she would soak them in the water of the black lake if she had to.

Anything to be able to eat it.

Desperation makes you a slave.

She knew that.

But desperation was now an old friend.

Her body lurched as she dipped the rock cake in the lake water.

And she bit down on the wet cake.

Munched. It was still hard, but manageable.

Swallowed.

Shuddered.

Deciding that perhaps typhoid may not be the answer to her problem, Hermione let the rest of the rock cakes fall into the depths of the Black Lake. She didn't want anything to lead back to Hagrid. He's been a saviour enough.

The satchel, she might have some use for.

So Hermione strung the brown bag across her body and took to her aching feet, crossing the rotting footboards with care. And headed straight into Hogsmeade.