Shadow Walks |h.p/h.g|

ch. 17

"Break into the Ministry? Just like that?" Harry asked, a hard edge that he'd tried to squelch rising in his voice. "You're a wanted felon, and I'm supposed to be dead. Lucius Malfoy and his goons are running things. We're not going to get little name tags from the welcome desk!"

"I'm sorry," Hermione said snippily. "I know this may have sounded exactly like the kind of half-arsed thing you'd go barreling into without thinking. But I assure you that I have a clear plan in mind. I've gone in before." She turned away from him, but he sprang up from the sofa and caught her by the elbow. She faced him again, and, as their eyes locked, an electrical pulse surged between them.

Harry dropped her arm, as if the contact had burned him.

"I'm - I'm sorry," he stammered abruptly, but sincerely, surprising them both. "I - I should have - I should have known that you wouldn't do anything that you hadn't already sussed out ahead of time."

They both stopped, the truth of their situation slamming them squarely between the eyes. They had known each other, and yet had not. It was as he'd noticed in the previous universe, but this was worse, because he was being forced to actually interact with a person that was and wasn't the Hermione he knew. And she had to face someone who was both like and unlike the boy-man she'd loved and lost.

He could read the conflicted emotions in her eyes easily, for they mirrored the myriad swirling around his own mind.

"There's a - there's a ventilation duct running down to the Department of Mysteries from the roof," Hermione said, faintly at first, then cleared her throat awkwardly. "Luna dismantled the wards blocking it, put up some experimental shield spells that make the wards seem intact. It's how I used to sneak in; she would feed me information - let me look at memoranda that were charmed so that they couldn't leave the building..."

"How did Luna keep her job?" he asked, blurting out the question as soon as it entered his head. "Wasn't she known as an ally of mine? If she - "

"It's a long story," Hermione said, with a shudder of horror, her eyes becoming blank and expressionless. "Luna - Luna went above and beyond the call of duty to keep herself in a position to receive information. She did it even after the line of resistance became all but defunct. We - I used to put out a grass-roots kind of newspaper, but - but people disappeared; it got too dangerous. And ... nobody really cares anymore." There was a kind of detached disgust in her eyes. "They've accepted the status quo."

"How could they?" Harry asked, feeling her revulsion and loneliness in the center of his gut. "After Voldemort - and - how could they go back to that?"

"Life under Lucius Malfoy isn't that bad - if you stay in your 'place'," she made sarcastic air-quotes with her fingers, "and toe the party line. It - it makes a kind of sense, I suppose, especially for those with families to worry about. There just weren't enough people left after the War with the character to speak out." Her voice got very small. "Sometimes I get so tired."

He understood what she was not saying. She was tired of being alone, of being the only one who cared, the only one who really understood the wrong being done. In their own way, Malfoy and his henchmen were probably frightened of her, of what an intelligent Mudblood with the chutzpah to speak out could do, but as it was, she had been overrun by sheer numbers.

Compassion for her racked him suddenly. She was different, true, but she was still Hermione, and he hated to see her in pain.

"Hey," he said softly, pulling at her arm again, and more than a little surprised when she allowed herself to be moved next to him. "Hey, Hermione..."