The Cell

Chapter 13: No longer grey

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

- Emily Dickinson

Hermione shut the bathroom door and leaned against the counter, her head swimming with an overwhelming mix of emotions and realisations from the last 30 minutes.

First and foremost, she was alive and no longer within the cell, something she hadn't thought possible a week ago.

Next, and rather infuriatingly, someone was running around in her body, campaigning for the Ministry's racist, discriminatory muggle-born registration act. When she got her hands on whoever was behind that scheme, she might disregard magic all together and strangle them to death.

Finally, her most recent discovery, was that Draco was still Draco. When she had woken up on the sofa downstairs and been informed of their liberation, she had been filled with foreboding that things would have somehow changed, that their relationship would transform outside the confines of that small room. But when she saw him, cleaned up and freshly shaven, dressed in new clothes, it was as if nothing had changed at all. He was still her Draco – strong, warm arms, with eyes like the sky before a storm.

She had known in that moment that, come what may, he wasn't something that she was willing to give up anymore. Whatever else this war took from her, whatever pain it caused, it would not take him. She simply wouldn't allow it.

She thought briefly of their rescue in and of itself – of all the ways she had imagined leaving that place, surrounded by a pack of Slytherins was not even remotely on the list. The dynamic with Blaise and Theo intrigued her. They were clearly self-preserving, that much was clear, but the very fact that they had left whatever safe haven they were in to enter a warzone for their friend led her to believe there was a lot more to them than their house affiliation suggested.

Hermione stepped toward the shower and stripped off her jumper and trousers, resisting the urge to incinerate them and just vanishing the stale, stiff garments instead. She realized she was without a bra and would have to transfigure something on the bed in the other room.

She turned on the hot water and stepped under it, audibly sighing with relief. It was as if she were washing away months on the run, living out of a tent, in addition to her time spent in the cell. She lathered and rinsed her hair twice with an expensive looking shampoo that had a French label and smelled of honeysuckle. She briefly wondered if she couldn't stay there indefinitely, hidden in the steam under a spray of magically replenishing hot water.

Finally, she sighed and turned it off, grabbing a gigantic, plush towel off a shelf on the wall and wrapping it around herself. Several strategically placed shaving and drying charms later, in addition to finally brushing her teeth, she stepped back into the bedroom and assessed the clothing on the bed.

She selected a plain pair of black trousers and a collared blue shirt that she transfigured into something akin to workout clothing with a tight, built-in shelf under her chest. She also transformed a pair of men's dress shoes into comfortable trainers and an extra sock into a hair elastic, plaiting her damp curls back, away from her face. Her magic was a bit rusty, but the spells would hold for a day or two.

She heard a knock at the door and, after she bid it open, Draco walked in, expression carefully schooled to one of indecipherable emotion – his 'mask,' as she referred to it in her head.

As she sat on the edge of the four-poster bed, the canopy draped in rich blue and green velvet, it occurred to her that here, outside the cell, things were no longer grey.