A gull screamed from the air as Hermione briskly walked from the campground down to the small marina. Her breath puffed out from her mouth, but her fingers were warmed as they clutched the smooth curves of her ceramic mug. Ethel and Mort were up drinking coffee outside their antique Airstream, and she nodded kindly at them as she walked past their camp site. They were long-termers, like her, and knew that, to Hermione, privacy was next to godliness. Her shoes crunched over the fine gravel as the Siuslaw River bloomed into view before her. The gull screamed again as she finally made it to the easternmost dock where she set up her folding chair every morning to watch the boats head west towards the sea, likely towards Heceta Beach and the lighthouse.
It had become her ritual to rise early enough to watch the sailboats leave for sea every morning. There was something significant to her in the departure of the boats, though she knew her demons well enough to avoid analyzing that symbolism.
That gull screamed again, and, shielding her eyes, Hermione raised her head to look for it.
There it was, balancing on a stream of breeze above a particularly haggard boat. She followed its gaze to the sailors below, and felt a sharp twang of sadness at the mother wrapping a scarf around her young daughter's neck. Hermione allowed herself a moment to mourn that her own mother would never again demonstrate such practical affection ever again. Wouldn't even call, couldn't even write. No, for Hermione's mother, and father as well, were happily running their dental practice out of Wallangong, blissfully unaware that they had ever had a daughter.
Hermione clutched tightly at her mug as she fought to not remember the anticipation she felt as she applied for the International Portkey after scrying for their location. She had been surprised at their relocation to Wallangong from Sydney, where she had deposited them after clearing their minds and lives of her existence. While posing as a census-taker, they had invited the strangely familiar young woman in for tea, explaining that the move had been prompted by a desire to settle down and start a family. Hermione's heart broke as her mother politely described the failed pregnancy that had gone unnoticed by them both until, during a routine gynecological exam, her new Australian doctor had noticed evidence of motherhood. They assumed, they told Hermione over steaming mugs of spiced chai, that it had ended early enough along that they never even would have noticed. Hermione had waited until she made it to her hotel room that afternoon before finally breaking down and wailing hysterically. Her entire life, the sum of her experiences with the people she loved most in the world, reduced to a thinly explained-away failed pregnancy.
As Hermione watched the mother and daughter sail off under the distant bridge, its art deco spires topped with mist, she clamped down firmly on the despair welling up in her gut. It did no good, she thought, to dwell. Sipping from her mug, she remembered that she was nearly out of cream and tea leaves, and that forming a shopping list would serve as an excellent distraction from her morose thoughts.
#
Hermione bent down, setting her mug on the slatted wood of the dock, and slung the backpack straps of her folding chair around her shoulders. Once her seat was unfolded and angled just so, she sank heavily into its vinyl, patterned folds, and pulled the moleskine from her back pocket. Remembering to pluck the dulled pencil from behind her right ear, she began to write a shopping list for the day. As she debated between eating chicken breast for dinner again, or buying a bit of fish from the marina later in the morning, Hermione heard a voice from two decades before.
"I just knew you'd have a book in hand when I finally found you, 'Mione."
The pencil stilled against the unlined page, and Hermione's stomach dropped. She had thought to go the rest of her life without ever hearing the voice of Harry Potter ever again, even deepened and rasped with the years gone by as it was. Hermione wished suddenly that she had her wad on her person, rather than having stowed it away in a nook of her camper. She would have very much liked to disappear. She twisted in her seat, but did not stand up to greet him.
"Harry. How did you find me?" She nearly flinched at the accusation in her own voice. As infrequently as she conversed with anyone, she often forgot how very severe she could sound.
"Lavender was the one who finally found you. She scried for three weeks, and the answer was clear enough, if unexpected. We always thought you must have gone to Australia." The accusation in his voice was just as clear.
Hermione nodded and closed her notebook, replacing her pencil behind her ear. She hated that he would see her this way, hair still tangled from sleep, legs shoved hastily in sheepskin boots and graying sweatpants. She imagined that she looked every day of her 35 years.
"I did go to Australia, though I didn't stay. I suppose I better invite you in for your trouble. It's not often that I have company, so you'll just have to excuse the mess." She stood, bones popping in the cold, and bent to fold up her chair. A twang of embarrassment clenched her gut at the floral chair, fraying and sagging, seen through new eyes.
"I went by your campsite, but an older couple told me you'd be here instead." Harry looked at his palms, and Hermione could see tears swimming in his eyes. All the many years and miles between them, summed up in a simple comment that he couldn't find her where he had looked. The silence yawned into something significant between them, and Hermione grew desperate to end it.
"Come on, then. This way." She walked past him, astonished at how tall she had remembered him to be, how much shorter he was standing before her. "That would be Ethel and Mort. They stay here during the summer, and travel to Arizona to visit their daughter in the winter. I think the Americans would call them 'snowbirds', though I may be misunderstanding the term."
"Hermione." Her desperation grew.
"I don't have much tea left, so we'l have to stretch the leaves a little. The market doesn't open for a few hours yet, though I might have some coffee grounds lying about somewhere."
"Hermione!" She turned around sharply.
"What, Harry? What is it exactly that you want from me?"
He seemed to shrink further into his frame, hands clenched at his sides. He wore hiking boots, she noticed, new hiking boots. She wouldn't be surprised if the price sticker was still stuck to the sole.
"I don't know, but it isn't THIS. I certainly didn't expect that you'd be happy to see me, not after this much avoidance after this many years, but I thought...I thought you'd feel SOMETHING. Anger, surprise, fear...shame. Something more than this...nothing I'm getting from you. I mean, for Merlin's sake-"
"Don't say that." Rage began to bubble beneath the surface of Hermione's skin, but she tamped it down before it could reach her heart.
"Don't say what, Hermione? Merlin?" She blew up.
"Damnit, Harry! I said, don't say that! I've worked too hard and too long at this for you to blow my cover with your strange epithets and your stupid new boots. Who were you trying to fool with those, by the way? Me, the other campers, or merely yourself?"
Harry clenched his fists even tighter, knuckles whitening. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"Mione, I didn't come to blow your cover. I didn't come to ruin your life, or whatever else you probably suspect of me at this point. I just...I had to see you and tell you in person."
Anger was replaced by something slimy, like dread, crawling up her spine.
"Tell me what, Harry?"
He took another breath.
"You're being deposed. Lucius Malfoy is up for parole, and the Ministry has called you as a witness in his hearing. You're being summoned back to London to give a statement."
"You're joking."
"Jesus Christ, Hermione, you think I traveled this far, to play a joke on you? We haven't been friends for seventeen years. Does that sound like it would be even remotely the real reason for me being here?"
Hermione thought about it. She thought about the unanswered letters, sent back unopened. She thought about the Howlers she'd had to silently dispatch. She even thought about the tears that would fall late at night as she lay alone in bed, repetitively tracing the scarred words on her arm.
"No, I don't suppose it makes sense for this to be a joke."
"Well, call out the bloody parade floats, mates. Hermione finally realizes that the whole damn world doesn't revolve around her."
#
They had reached her campsite. She fumbled with the key for a moment, and then unlocked the door to the small pop-up camper that rested in the back of her aging Chevy. They stepped up into the small space, and awkwardly maneuvered until they were both sitting at the beige dinette table.
Harry looked around the camper with raised eyebrows. Hermione followed his gaze, feeling a small burst of shame at the modest interior.
"Well, Hermione. You've gone full native."
The shame blossomed into full-blown defensiveness.
"Fuck you, Harry. I happen to like my life. I would have thought after years begging for scraps at the Burrow, you'd be a little more sensitive to poverty."
His eyes hardened into flat, green orbs, but he said nothing.
Hermione waved a hand, and the pilot light under the stove clicked on. Flame burst from the one burner, heating the stainless steel percolator above it. She sighed at Harry's twitch of surprise.
"Just because I live like a gypsy doesn't mean I forgo the comforts and conveniences of my innate ability for magic."
"I just assumed...I mean, you live in a campground, Hermione."
"Mine is a self-imposed exile, Harry. I take what comforts I want and reject what I don't."
Hard green eyes went even harder.
"Clearly."
The percolator began to bubble, and Hermione got up to pour the coffee into another mug, chipped and stained. She set it in front of Harry, and he grasped it in both hands, warming his chilled fingers. She sat down across from him once more.
"So, why didn't the Ministry send one of their flunkies to summon me for this deposition?" Harry blushed.
"Well, I did eventually become an Auror, Hermione. Technically, I AM the flunkie sent to summon you. Collect you, really. The deposition is in three days time."
"Huh. Congrats, Harry. I know you always said you wanted to be an Auror. Three days, hmm? Cutting it rather close, aren't you? What if I refuse to come back with you?"
Harry had the decency, she thought, to blush even deeper at her inquiry.
"That's why they send an Auror, 'Mione. There is no refusing the Ministry. Not anymore. After Voldemort was...killed...and his lackeys cleared out of the Ministry, it left those behind a little trigger happy. It's more Wild West these days than you'd maybe believe."
The fact was, though, that Hermione could believe it. Had believed it was coming so firmly, that she'd left nearly two decades before. Not that an unsettled regime was her ONLY reason for fleeing, however. Hermione looked out the grimy window at the misty morning sky. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Shame, that. Bad news had always come to her on beautiful days.
But, then again, hadn't she been thinking that a change might be good? Hadn't she been eyeing the 101 like it held some sort of answer to a question she didn't know how to ask yet?
"Alright, Harry. I'll come quietly. No need for use of deadly force." His eyes, predictably, boringly, widened.
"That simple, huh? Just like that?"
"Well, I do have one condition."
"Anything, 'Mione. Merlin, everyone will be so happy to see you!"
"I don't want to see the Old Guard, Harry. I left all that behind. If I do return to England, it will be on business, and business only."
"...Alright, then. I'll do my best to head them off, though you might find them a bit more persistent than you think." Hermione sipped the last dregs of her tea, and set it on the table.
"I suppose that will all depend on whether you can keep my whereabouts a secret. Honestly, it would be better if you simply acted like I didn't come back with you at all. I can't overstate how little I wish to be reminded of days of yore, Harry."
He seemed to shrink, his shoulders slumping in defeat. Eventually, he nodded.
"Ron will know something's up, he's not technically an Auror, though he does work in MLE, and he knows the protocol for these types of things as well as I. But I can be vague with everyone else long enough for you to give your testimony and return here unmolested."
"There is one more condition, Harry." He slammed his coffee mug against the table and Hermione wondered if it would crack with the force of the blow.
"What now?"
Hermione wondered why she wasn't more nervous to get her demand out. Perhaps enough time had finally passed, perhaps the old wounds on her soul had finally healed.
I won't testify against Lucius. I'm going to testify on his behalf."