Shifted

Whereabouts

To Lupin's credit, he didn't immediately start firing. Out of all the adults in the Order, Lupin tended to have the most steady head. But things had been different since Hermione first seeked him out at Shell Cottage.

The relationship between Lupin and her had always been a friendly one. As a professor he'd stolen her attention right away. His hands-on method of teaching, especially directly after a droning lesson from Professor Binns, always left the students with a buzz in their veins and smiles on their faces.

When things started to really go south with the war, she'd been one of the people brought in to help draw up battle plans or ideas. Though, between Harry and Ron, she'd actually had very little to say. Strategies wasn't her area of expertise. The first time a platoon had been sent out following her orders, she'd lost nearly a dozen lives. And it had been considered a success.

She didn't want to write up strategy after that. Throwing knives felt like the only thing she was good at. Maybe she was destined to be a warrior. It didn't line up with what she knew about herself, but she was finding the time of war was a completely different world.

Ron flourished in the strategy room. It was scary, almost. Watching him come alive as he laid out plans to decimate populations. To kill the very people they'd gone to school with.

Late in bed, after watching him laugh and joke with Dean and Harry just minutes after laying out a plan that would slaughter thirty people with the stroke of a wand and well timed explosive, Hermione realized this was how he'd felt when he saw her throwing knives.

They weren't the same people they were in school. Those two could have grown up to have a happy way of it. Maybe even get married, pop out some kids and call it a life.

Hermione wondered if she ever would have known. If one day, maybe, she'd feel the tingle for it just like her magic had come alive when she was young. If she'd walk past a pair of running shoes and crave to put them on, or if she'd be chopping vegetables and suddenly wonder what that blade might feel like releasing from her hands, zooming towards a target twenty feet away.

She wasn't who she was supposed to be. Hermione Granger was clumsy and unathletic, more suited to books and quills.

And now, even those wouldn't do her justice.

Draco's back was still to Lupin, and Lupin's wand was raised threateningly at it, as if he were responsible for his lapse of control.

Lupin looked awful. His eyes were ringed with purple smudges, tiredness pluming off his thin, bedraggled body.

Though he looked sure of himself and any actions he considered making, his wand hand shook, a blur against the setting sun.

"Remus." Hermione spoke softly, soothingly. "Put your wand down. Come inside and we'll explain."

His eyes darted over, wild, as if they saw right through her.

She lifted her hands up. "Please. Harry's inside. I'm sure he wants to be the one to explain this all."

Slowly, as if coming out of a dream, Lupin dropped his wand and shook his head.

"This had better be good."
---
Much to Hermione's surprise, Lupin did not raise his wand again.

Not when Harry's guilt ridden face came into view. Not when Theo ran into his stricken body exiting the kitchen.

He merely turned to Hermione and said with deadly calm, "What... is going on?"

They sat. The cabin was truly only meant for two people, but Hermione and Draco shared the chair in the corner and Harry balanced on the arm of the couch next to Theo, leaving Lupin to lounge on two cushions himself.