CHAPTER 2
Disclaimer: if i'd written the harry potter series, I wouldn't have gone and made wands the weapon of choice. No sights, movement-based spellcasting, physically tiring out when using magic, no sense of group tactics whatsoever... If i'd written the Harry Potter series, I wouldn't have made the ability to aim spells a nigh-on miraculous talent few possess. Obviously, I didn't write Harry Potter. I don't own Harry Potter. I really don't want to, in the end.
I mean, more than half of the fanfics I've read so far either exploit or correct one perceived negative aspect or another to HP canon, namely the fact that casting spells the easy way equals absolute belief that you can do it, that you're right to everyone else's wrong. I mean, who wants to write a seven-book series that makes billions dream, only to realise that you've pretty much written common bloody sense out of your main setting's society by the end of your second book and that it's too late to reverse this little problem? How do you predict a society whose first response to "get a servant" is to create/enslave an entire sentient for the specific purpose of serving wizard-kind? How do you write such an incredibly cretionous society into existence?
I don't know, because I don't own Harry Potter or any other works referenced either intentionally or accidentally in this work of fiction. Instead, I get to bitch when writing creative disclaimer notices while JK Rowling George Lucases her franchise. Good times.
A/N: I made a few blunders in this fic related to canon detail: I completely neglected Lily Luna Potter (thanks again for the review, luvsanime02) in the first chapter. In fact, I wanted to imply that the entire brood was finally off to Hogwarts (o_o) which was a blunder on my part. So, for the purpose of enjoyment, please assume that all the kids are off at Hogwarts and that they weren't abandoned as their parents tried to escape the terrorist attack. As for the other oversights, i'll probably re-edit at some point in the future. For now, on to the story!
Central London Disaster Control Centre (Mass Transportation), Cardiff, 11.16
Absolute silence reigned in the CLDCC's main office. Well, as close as an office could get to being silent whilst full of damage alarms going off to alert the DCC office that the very foundation of the building had been shattered and was threatening to topple into at least a half dozen tunnels whose contents were vital to the continued survival of the city whilst looping video feeds of a train full of hazardous chemicals detonating splashed across every screen in the building. Not to forget the videoconference that had been abandoned when the first alarms and automated damage reports started trickling in, leaving the offsite attendeed to discuss just what was going on and what should be done from their end to help.
Predictably, shouting had started thirty seconds after the first shrill sound woke up the general manager, who'd been dozing in a corner while his employees were forced to look like they were paying close attention to the man explaining just why any instance where a standard operating procedure was set forth turned into a fixed cost per SOP deployment instance and why this affected for the organisation's budget adversely.
So It was probably fairer to say that every office worker was sitting there dumbstruck, all the thousand little things that needed to be organised right away to keep this attack from killing even more people forgotten. The scene they were witnessing on the live stream from King's Cross was just insane. Platforms 9, 10 and 11 were gone.
There were pieces of train and building littering Pancras Road, though most of the roof was still completing its ballistic course and coming to rest all over London. The inside Station house running between platforms 8 and 9 had been blown into the main platform area. The ticket platform on platform 8 had been blasted clear across the station, barrelling through the outer wall as if it wasn't there before coming to rest on York Way Road, where it had promptly been hit by a 4 wheel drive car. Amazingly, the ticket clerk was now trying to crawl out of the wrecked ticket cubicle, if anybody decided to believe what the CCTV system was telling them.
The main concourse hadn't been so lucky. The train hadn't just had one compartment full of hazardous chemicals, every single carriage had been filled to the brim with them. Superheated masonry, coated with a cocktail of poisonous chemical residues and travelling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, tore through the main concourse like buckshot, completely shredding two thirds of both trains on platform 7 and 8. Though travelling slower by the time it got through both trains, the debris was still just as lethal as the razor sharp metal shrapnel coming from the trains joined the superheated stone projectiles and gutted the rear half of the trains on platforms 5 and 6. Though the platform 4 train only suffered small amounts of damage thanks to the set of dividers lining the platform, the same could not be said about the buildings lining Pancras Road, several of which caught fire after being hit by bits punching through the outer wall.
That was the initial damage. Then the remains of the roof collapsed onto the twisted wreck that used to be the rear half of the central concourse. But that wasn't the thing that had silenced the DCC workers. No, that distinction goes to the fact that anything extending beyond the boundaries of platforms 9, 10 and 11 was untouched by the blast.
There was a ruler-straight demarcation line that split King's Cross in half; everything before the end of platfoms 9, 10 and 11 was a smoking wreck. Everything after was in mint condition. On one side of the line, the tiling had melted. On the other side of the line, the floor was slightly wet from being cleaned.
On one side, the ceiling had collapsed on top of a disaster area. On the other, pigeons were still nesting high up in the supporting girders, showing that not even a slight vibration had occurred when nearly half of the roof had collapsed.
On one side, there was a slowly widening hole where platform 10 used to be, with debris, the wounded and smouldering corpses falling through the hole into an inky darkness the camera couldn't resolve. The floor was still solid on the other side.
On one side, not a single soul had survived before the blast wave reached the platform 7 train, bar the ticket clerk still trying to crawl out of his mangled workspace. There was blood, wreckage and fire everywhere. On the other side, hundreds upon hundreds of untouched people just looked in shock on as a massive white wall of energy appeared out of nowhere and stopped the blast from hitting them, period. No shrapnel, no fires, no dead, nothing. Just a massive wall of glowy white stuff and a bunch of people on the verge of fleeing in panic. The only one on the untouched side of the divide that had been injured had been within spitting distance of ground zero, coming down with what looked like a stroke, the camera picking up the pool of blood seemingly leaking out of every visible orifice. Oh, no wait, the woman that had been kneeling close to him had grabbed the bloke and they'd disappeared. Right in front of the CCTV camera. The workers blinked, shook themselves and went back to work. Crazily, precisely defined damage area aside, there was work to be done now.
Trafalgar Square, 11:16
Sophia Michaels tidied herself up as she turned to face her cameraman. She'd had to beg, plead and cajole her boss into doing a segment of the news from one of London's famous landmarks. And then it'd taken an entire day of airports, security checks and flying in a rickety bloody Airbus just to "cross the pond", as these strange folks called it here. Then again, it's not everyday that an Alabama weather girl gets to do this. Today would be a special day for her. This was her date with destiny. After this, she'd finally get noticed by a National News Station! She cleared her throat and waited for the cameraman to signal the live connection.
" And hello right back atcha, Rick! Well, as you can see, it's a nice and sunny day in london, with little chance of showers here-"
And those were the last words ever uttered by one Sophia Michaels, weather girl, mother of 2 and loving wife, according to her headstone. For today was her date with destiny. Which was to get squished by a flaming Portaloo that had just dropped from the sky. And her wish of being noticed by a National News Station would be fulfilled too, with the discovery channel featuring her on their nightly news in the wtf – strangest death of the week segment.
St. Mungo's Emergency Admissions, London, 11: 17
The nurse on duty looked up from hearing what sounded like fireworks going off somewhere close by, the massive boom from the report puzzling her. As far as she knew, there were no scheduled Muggle holidays today, and setting off a firework anywhere in London was considered a criminal offence by both Muggle and Magical law enforcement. Hell, normally most of the noise coming from London was muffled by the hospital's wards and silencing charms, but she could clearly hear an echo of the blast. That thing must've been a real corker, her desk had vibrated a moment before, too... Wait, something's-
CRACK! She jumped three metres in the air upon hearing the noise an incredibly sloppy apparition made. It didn't help that she was still on edge after hearing that muggle firework go off unexpectedly. But then she caught sight of just who had almost splinched themselves in front of her and thanked Merlin that she'd decided to wear make-up today.
"Lavender?" The wife of her ex-boyfriend (better her than me) exclaimed as she saw just who was manning the entrance to the Emergency Response ward. The years had treated her old dorm-mate quite well, despite the thick rope-like scar that started at her left cheek and tapered off on her right thigh. The blade that'd sliced her open after the final battle had both gifted and cursed the fluttery teenager, infecting her with lycanthropic thaumic deficiency syndrome and granting her a nigh-immortal healing capability at the same time. So, three weeks out of four, she was Nurse Brown, able to work 100 hour weeks, forego creature comforts such as sleep on demand and capable of telling what is wrong with any person she came across with a sniff. Then, on the fourth week, she'd fall into a coma as her magical core was stripped of any reserves it had to feed a very slow and inhumanly painful transformation. On the night of the full moon, she'd transform into a massive Alpha werewolf with fearsome magical powers and a taste for magical creatures. The one time she'd gotten free during a full moon, she'd awoken three days later bathing in the blood of a still-cooling Brazilian Battle Dragon.
Upon graduation, she'd been approached by St. Mungo's and offered a Healer's apprenticeship in exchange for helping their rare diseases labs research LTDS and discover a wolfsbane alternate that would work for the disease and in exchange for working as an assistant to the matron in the spell-damage ward. She still looked like she was a teenager, despite being senior to more than half of the current staff, and many had made the mistake of thinking of her as one. Hermione knew better though: nobody was as good at non-magical diagnostics as Nurse Brown, who'd been the first to tell her that she was pregnant with Rose and Hugo. She also tended to suffer fools badly which is why Hermione silently pointed to Harry's unconscious form.
Lavender just nodded at her motion and pointed her wand at the two friends. "Luce veritatis, luce salutem, lucem proximus fatis". The pair lit up as a multicoloured spell hit their exhausted frames, covering the two in a light blue hue from head to toe. Lavender frowned as Harry's light blue started to darken and turn to a dull pink. "You are suffering from mild magical exhaustion, so you're fine. I don't foresee any reason for you to need treatment. Now, let's see what is going on with Harry. Levicorpus."
Hermione followed Lavender and an unconscious Harry over to a vacant diagnostics bed in the main triage area. She could not take her eyes off her best friend. He was bleeding out of every orifice, from his tear ducts to his ear drums and all the messy bits in-between. However, his skin was behaving oddly. Instead of whitening with blood loss, it seemed to be getting noticeably darker, developing a greenish-brown tinge around the edge of his fingertips. Arriving at a vacant diagnostics bed, Lavender tapped the patient diagnostics-response box, Luna's pride and joy, with her wand. A mirror screen reflecting the patient came alive, lighting up parts of Harry's anatomy as it scanned for anomalies. All of a sudden, the bed glowed a brilliant red and the magical screen started overlaying damage report icons over every single part of Harry's body. Lavender's eyes bugged out as she read the report of what was happening and why her patient was leaking like a vampire's pinata.
"Well shit, he's been dosed with some really heavy corrosive agents. What the hell was he doing, Hermione? Going for a swim in a Morloc sanitation pool? Checking a Nundu for Halitosis? Using a Dragon's egg as an ingredient for pancakes, perhaps?"
Hermione's face went white as she processed just what the nurse had said. "No, we weren't anywhere near any poison! We just got here from King's Cross!". This is bad. I need time to think and tell her what happened, time Harry doesn't have. "Look, I can explain later. Just stabilise Harry for me, and i'll do my best to help you." Lavender just sighed, nodded and tapped a yellow and black magical radiation icon mounted on the wall with her wand. A shimmering barrier sprang into existence around the bed, gently but firmly pushing both witches away as it did so.
"There, a temporal stasis barrier. For now, as long as nobody forces their way through the barrier and the hospital's wards can handle the charge, Harry exists in a time bubble where time flows at the rate of 1 second inside the barrier for every 86,400 seconds outside of it." Hermione relaxed as she heard Lavender describe a product she'd had to practically force the Unspeakables to patent a few years ago. Temporal stasis barriers were uncommon, but their applications in terms of law enforcement and magical medicine made the benefits worth the truly insane requirements needed to power one. As it stood, the fact that the diagnostics box had recommended the highest humanly safe setting (any higher and anything coming through the barrier unexpectedly would detonate the stasis field-and the building the field is located in) told Hermione volumes about how tricky and dangerous the diagnostics magic expected this case to be. Setting a stasis field to a second per day puts the patient on the highest priority listing St. Mungo's had: Patients That Cost Money.
Which invariably attracted the attention of St. Mungo's Chief Healer... "Look Lav, I would rather only tell this story once here, since I still have to go and find Ron and Ginny and talk to the kids. Do you mind floo-calling Andromeda Tonks for me so that we can get down to business?" Lavender just nodded, directed Hermione to go take a seat in the staff break room and left to parts unknown. Hermione sat down in one of the room's plush armchairs and stared at the ceiling, wishing she could hit herself with a cheering charm or ten. Five minutes later, a formidable witch dressed in what appeared to be combination scrubs-lab coat-business suit strode through the doorway, her neutral non-expression telling anyone who looked at her that something was nibbling at her occlumency shields from the inside and that it would be unwise for anyone to test how they were holding up.
She was quickly followed by a sick-looking Lavender Brown and the newly minted Lord Black, Edward "Teddy" Tonks, who seemed for all the world to be dressed up in the best traditions of a fascist dictator, cavalry officer gala outfit from the 18th century, weird sigil badges and fake awards galore. Hermione usually sniggered at the outfit every time she saw what was the traditional uniform of the Head of House Black, to be worn on public occasions including Wizengamot meetings, the staging of public events, Executions and Unveiling The Crimes Of Muggles To Wizarding Society, the last one being an addendum made by the Dark Lord Betelgeuse Black before being beheaded in a duel by Felix Potter. Any thoughts of sniggering were curtailed when Hermione witnessed Teddy's expression. Harry was the closest thing Teddy had to a father and had grown up hearing tales about Sirius from both Harry and Andromeda. He didn't know what Harry felt when he'd lost Sirius to the veil. From the look of him, Teddy was starting to get an idea of Harry'd felt and didn't like it one single bit. "Hey, Aunt Hermione. Heard you got into a spot of trouble."
Edward Tonks, or Teddy as he wanted to be known as, had been preparing affairs for the following year with his Wizengamot liaison officer when the call came. While he was the head of The Most Ancient And Noble House Of Black (capitals and all), he was still only nineteen years old which meant, despite his political capital, he was ineligible to serve as representative to his own house. Harry had foisted the title onto his godson as soon as Teddy had graduated saying something about 'true heritage', 'finally teaching you the value of responsibility' and 'not wanting your mother to come after me with gardening shears when someone manages to off me'. And so he'd spent the better part of the last two years getting acquainted with his new job. He'd learned a lot of... interesting things since then, namely that the Wizengamot believed in 'one man, one vote'-you were the head of a House, you got to vote. 99.9 percent of the wizarding public, however, didn't get to vote, since they weren't on the Wizengamot. This caused problems for young Teddy, who'd been raised to believe in democracy only to find himself tied up trying to control a significant amount of political capital in a feudal throwback of a country. And the kicker was that he still didn't get to vote until he was 25. So there he was, organising things with liaison officer Gerald Filch, when his grandmother comes striding through the door in a way that reminded her little TeddySchnookums all too much of Darth Vader. Her terrifying scowl softened into a look of apprehension as she beheld her grandson and said the words Teddy had been dreading ever since Ginevra Potter told him and his god-siblings (whom he still called bro, little bro and sis) about the Potter curse.
"Teddy, something's happened to Harry. We need to go to St. Mungo's immediately."
Oh, how he longed for the days when he thought that the Potter curse amounted to a lifetime of rebellious hair.
He followed Grandma out of the office, a bit behind to give her space enough to terrify anybody approaching them, and walked into Pandemonium.
His office was on the same floor as the Department of Magical Disasters and Emergencies, which normally consisted of about five people who'd pissed off Senior Unspeakable Agent X somehow, checking magical background readouts from offices all over the UK and Ireland. He frequently dropped by the office to have some coffee and check up on Chang & Edgecombe, whom he'd privately earmarked as his contacts within the Unspeakables and Magical transportation. They may have pissed off way too many people to rise too high in the ministry, but the observation and research skills seemingly bequeathed to every single member of the House of the Ravens had been heaped upon the two in spades. And far be it from Teddy to let a resource disregarded even by his own godfather go to waste. He may have had his reasons, but sometimes he wished his god-daddy would grow up when it came to intrigue.
Today though, the normally placid office was in chaos. There was a literal queue that had formed in front of the Department going all the way back to the elevators. He recognised a couple of Aurors and Obliviators in the queue, dressed as muggle firemen and soldiers of all things. He could hear Cho's shrill voice coming from the entrance, screaming at some unlucky bastard that there was no point sending Obliviators to King's Cross, seeing as the footage was already looping on every channel the BBC had and that web traffic ranked the video at number two behind the latest chinese pop sensation – and it had only been up for five minutes. Then she went on about how he could take his orders and shove them up his nether orifices, because sending in Obliviators or any kind of magical elements in now would be just begging for Muggle Soldiers to march on the Ministry.
And Edgecombe, poor girl. Her forehead was coated in sweat, the dewy beads hanging off the tips of her hair as she sped for the elevator. Andromeda kept the door open for her as the girl seemed to lunge through the opening. Ted looked at her, amusement hiding his anxiety for now.
"Tough day, huh?"
Marietta just looked at her young sponsor. Her eyes clearly indicated just what she thought about being asked such a stupid question and just where the questioner can stow the answer.
"There was a terrorist attack on King's Cross ten minutes ago. Half the station is now smeared all over central London. Dozens of fires are starting all over the place. The Greater London area was gridlocked less than a minute after the explosion as muggles abandoned their cars and sought shelter from the rain of debris. This, of course, means that the projected timeline for the deployment of muggle Emergency Response personnel is now sitting at forty minutes rather than the projected 10 minute mark, with the units closest to ground zero being asked to pack as much stuff as they can and proceed on foot rather than wait for the roads to clear. The coincidence between the attack and Hogwarts Day points towards magical instigation, implying the possibility of muggle counter-terrorist activities being extended to include the magical world.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that a mage-level surge of processed warding magic was detected in King's Cross at the same time that the train station was blown to high heaven, turning the magical usage monitors for the entire London Borough into so much molten slag. The life span of magical Britain could very well be measured in days thanks to this little event. And here you are asking me stupid questions, mister Tonks." Ted and Andromeda stared blankly at the passing levels as Marietta talked in that icy tone she normally reserved for fools. Had she spoken to them like this on a normal day, she would've been out on her bitchy little derriere before the day was out. Instead, she had the full attention of the political powerhouses behind the Black family.
"What happened?" The clipped tone that Andromeda used when under pressure barely hid the strain she was feeling. Marietta breathed in. The Edgecombe girl was still winded from her little sprint down the corridor, though she hid it better than she did her emotions.
"That's the thing, we don't know yet. The CCTV footage we've got shows an entire train going Ka-boom. If everything was normal" Marietta's face visibly tightened as she breathed in " King's Cross should have ceased to exist. Instead, we now have a straight line separating the main area of southern England's biggest train hub from what some bright Muggle spark has dubbed 'Britain's WTC'. It's clear magic was involved, and I really don't appreciate having to convince a bunch of dunderheads that maybe, just maybe, ground zero for the biggest terrorist attack of the year is not the best of times or places to start obliviating people. And why are you two so worried?"
Teddy tried to looked cool and collected "Worried? Us? That's funny, Marietta."
"Well, Teddy-boy" Teddy winced as Marietta deployed Victoire's pet name for him "i can tell you're worried for two reasons; first, your hair is currently cycling through colours I didn't even know existed, which you only ever do when you're too distracted to keep it in check. And second, your grandmother's wand hand has been twitching the entire time, indicating the urge to hex something or, more likely, defend you and herself from perceived danger. Which means" and she turned her full glare on him "you're both worried. Why?"
Fucking Ravenclaws. No secret is ever bloody safe around them. "Harry just arrived at St. Mungo's. Lavender's looking after him, but called me and gramma over the floo."
"How bad?"
Grandma Tonks then turned to look at the girl, concern managing to break through Occlumency shields thick enough to keep her love for a muggleborn wizard a secret from the Blacks for close to two years. "He's in stasis right now. His blood toxicity indicators are off the charts. Whatever he's been dosed with, it would likely kill him in minutes should the field drop before we've found the antidote. The main problem, though, is that there are no detected entry wounds and the amount of it pervading his bloodstream was increasing when the field activated. It's like whatever's killing him is actually being produced by the body itself." Teddy went pale at hearing what had happened to Harry. His godfather (his dad) was actually dying. Without realising it, his hair stopped cycling in colour and dropped into a deep purple and electric blue combination which Andromeda had seen only once through her daughter's hair; it was the colour of grief. She didn't say anything, settling for hugging her distraught grandson while he tried to keep himself under control.
"Figures he'd be involved." The Tonkses turned to glare at the Edgecombe woman. " Remember, Teddy, that there is one thing the entire DA knew about Harry Potter even way back when: Harry wins. Period. I may have been thrown out before the end-of-year crisis, but I have seen that one rule re-asserted again and again. So forgive me if I spare myself the melodrama and the tears until after the man who's already survived the killing curse twice is buried under a concrete dome five feet thick. Harry will win this one." And then Marietta smiled "And then you two will look back at your foolish display here and laugh about it." the elevator chimed, indicating that the cage had arrived at the main lobby "Until then, Lord Black, Lady Tonks." She nodded to their dumbfounded faces, turned and launched herself across the Lobby to the external floo connection, leaving chaos, crashed paper planes and startled pedestrians in her wake. Teddy stood there for a good five seconds, blinked and shook his head, a wry grin developing on his face.
"Typical Marietta. A bitch for all occasions." Ted growled. His grandmother shuddered. "She reminds me too much of a young Severus Snape. Be careful around her, Edward. The house of Ravens has sheltered more than one gifted Snake over the years." "Yes grandma, i'll keep in mind that I should beware of the slimy Slytherins". Teddy chuckled to himself. Sometimes, it was nice to make his gramma twitch. "I am not slimy!" And sometimes, he'd do better not to. Oh well, too late now...
They arrived at the floo network just as the emergency alarms started chiming and the bright blue flames signifying permanently opened incoming connections of fixed origin flared to life across the left side of the Lobby, while the right side started displaying a countdown just as Teddy and Andromeda found themselves facing the floo connection.
"St. Mungo's emergency ward!"
St. Mungo's Floo Station (incoming), London, 11: 25
To Andromeda, St. Mungo's was as impressive as ever. When she'd started out as a Junior Healer's assistant near the end of the First Blood War, she'd had no idea just how long she'd get to spend roaming the corridors of one of the oldest European hospitals still standing. She'd taken refuge in the apprentice's quarters when her family had sicced Voldemort-aligned mercenaries, kidnappers and bounty hunters on her and her new husband, she'd given birth in the very maternity ward she had been working in at the time, she'd helped countless numbers of her Hogwarts peers through childbirth and death in the very rooms she'd given birth to her daughter and caught sight of her daughter's rainbow hair sticking out from a black bodybag. For five years, her, Ted and Nymphadora lived in St. Mungo's, visiting and comforting friends and the rare family they deigned to talk to (Ted's muggle family was unimpressed with him spending seven years and some good money on becoming a two-bit houdini in their eyes). And then Voldemort died the first time, Harry Potter happened and Andromeda almost went to Azkaban to kill Sirius. Luckily, Ted had talked her out of going ahead and killing the 'traitor', though she'd only listened when Ted had brought up dementors.
It was a shame that Nymphadora had never remembered her time running through these very corridors, her curiosity often reflected in the colour of her hair. She'd loved the underground passageways, the warehouses and kitchens staffed by more House-Elves than even Hogwarts boasted, all free and living happily within the biggest medical institute in wizarding Britain. It was a rare time not to find Nymphadora waiting on the couch at the end of the day, wearing her 'I am sorry' hair colour (vivid green and silver, mommy's favourite colours) while Andromeda was forced to listen to the house elf in charge of subterranean security tell her all about just how little Tonkie-girl snuck into yet another biological research lab in an effort to find new and interesting things to play with. Nymphie had cried for days after leaving the hospital and losing all her little green friends before, one day, she started acting as if she'd never seen the place. Andromeda couldn't tell which behaviour upset her more.
And then, just moments later it seemed, her little angel had grown up, married Remus of all people, given birth to Teddy and died facing her auntie Bellatrix. Even nearly twenty years later, Andromeda still wanted to do to dear Bella what Bella had done to Alice. She didn't, however, begrudge Molly for getting rid of the crazy bitch. She just wished she could have been given the chance to defend her baby too. But hey, her daughter, damn fool that she was, knew the risks. And had left her to cope with a new-born baby while she waltzed off into the afterlife with her permanently cured husband. When she'd finished crying over how fucking selfish her daughter had been, she'd taken baby Ted and moved back into St. Mungo's staff accommodation.
Of course, by then she was the senior healer for battlefield wounds and combat spell damage, having trained and honed her skills during the hardest days of the first blood war whilst being seemingly bolted to the very walls of the casualty admissions and triage office during the second blood war. Her contemporaries had either fallen victim to Voldemort and his pawns in the ministry or had fallen victim to the hushed-up retaliatory strikes against Death Eater supporters and family after the victim tally of the battle for Hogwarts made the front page on every single paper bar the Daily Prophet. She herself had treated former colleagues who had tried fighting it out after Voldemort's final death, only to have Kingsley Shacklebolt borrow an SAS squadron, point them at the barricades and tell them to only keep any hostages they find alive.
There were over fifty Death Eaters dug into the lower levels of the ministry, reserves that hadn't been called up to the front or had dawdled behind until it was too late. The SAS kept five of them alive and decided to interrogate them after one of the surviving Death Eaters said "concentration camp". To this day, Andromeda was puzzled about how exactly a muggle can remove someone else's jawbone with a sharpened spoon, yet still keep the Death Eater alive long enough for her to give him a dose of skele-grow. Apparently, the Death Eaters she couldn't save had had worse done to them. Yet the information the muggles extracted had paid off, with the hidden locations of over a dozen small camps hidden way up North being raided the next day, thanks to troops loaned for that purpose by the ICW. And she'd treated those people too.
And then she had been called into the morgue alongside Harry Potter, in order to 'ascertain as to the identities of subjects 28935MMPHM-908-BOH and 28941WWF-909-BOH'. Harry'd taken the week off on her behalf after that. She only noticed when she awoke in a panic 4 days later, only to be told by a couch-dwelling Harry that it'd all been taken care of and would she kindly go back to sleep now, as she'd wake the bloody baby again.
When the final batch of camp survivors had been released, she had been promoted to director of the spell damage department of St. Mungo's, offically courtesy of the ground-breaking treatment of the Cruciatus curse she'd pioneered back in the 80's with Severus Snape. The real reason was that the previous director was the one she'd treated for forcible jaw removal. She sincerely hoped that he was enjoying his stay in his Azkaban stasis bubble, prisoner of both time dilation and a cognivore forcing him to relive his crimes from the perspective of some of his few surviving 'experiments'.
And to her, his involvement told a lot about why Voldemort had been so powerful.
He could've cared less about blood status, since that was merely the excuse he used to enslave his major sources of funding. No, he'd wanted pure evil. And the number of muggleborn medical personnel the Aurors had found running those camps had shocked everyone bar the muggleborns involved, escaping prosecution thanks to the fact that muggleborns made up 98 percent of Britain's medical staff by the end of the war. The hospital would probably have gone on strike if the deals struck with the purebloods hadn't been struck with the 'mudblood coalition' too, as the union of muggleborn workers came to call themselves. So they'd been put on lifetime probation, same as the Death Eathers who'd subtly wheedled themselves out of Azkaban yet again. Still, 'paging Dr Mengele' had become a familiar taunt in St. Mungo's hallways, and the majority of 'questionable' muggleborns being involved in real messy 'accidents' along the way was rarely brought up in polite company. Voldemort got evil. And the purebloods have said nary a peep against any Healer they knew of since. They did, after all, take care of their own. One way or another.
So there she was again, the same entrance she'd seen hundreds of times over the years, though the times when she felt like this had been mercifully few and far between. Still, looking at Teddy's hair, she reminded herself that, while she may have it bad now, he's got it worse. And there was the staff area adjoining the Emergency Ward Block, an anxious Lavender Brown fidgeting quietly to herself.
"Where's Healer Finnegan?"
Nurse Brown looked up and relaxed as she saw her former apprenticeship referee and long-time friend start talking in her clipped, no-nonsense tone.
"He's been called into the Magical Disaster Triage Area. Apparently, something big went down this morning."
Andromeda snorted. "I heard. Apparently, there was a terrorist attack on King's Cross not five minutes prior to your call."
Nurse Brown flinched as she heard the news. She still remembered the aftermath of the 2005 bombings. One of the subway bombs somehow took out a disillusioned warding cluster that maintained the floo network's stability. Three hundred people were on their way to the ministry via the floo network at the time the stabiliser failed. 60 people made it to the hospital alive. The first thing the wizarding world knew about it was when Arthur Weasley's skin, and only his skin, flew across the main lobby and hit the wand-weighing clerk in the face. Sure, they put the poor guy back together later, but it'd taken months and Arthur had been teetering on the precipice for the majority of his stay. Most weren't so lucky though, ending up in pieces in front of fireplaces up and down Wizarding Europe. One guy had his spleen deposited in Majorca, his liver in Beauxbatons' arrival flooplace and left his left eyeball at a resort in Transylvania. The rest of him landed in the high security wing of Nurmengard Prison, where he died a miserable death drowning in his own blood. And now, another muggle transportation hub had been blown to hell on the one day where the majority of the wizarding world for the UK is within spitting distance of the target. She was wondering why she hadn't been called upon yet to support the operation. So it wasn't a muggle firework. Merlin. And how did Harry get poisoned in the middle of an explosion, of all things? She sighed, put on her professional mask and faced her superior. "Hermione Weasley's waiting in the staff lounge room off Emergency diagnostics. She should have the full story for us then."
Andie frowned at the direction Lavender had taken this conversation. "And why, exactly, do I have to hear it from her rather than from you?" Hermione could be a sweet girl most of the time but Merlin, she can just go on and on about the most inane of details. Nurse Brown looked away from her boss, motioned her and Ted to follow and went down the corridor as she spoke. "She's in a state ma'am. From the little I could gather, she was too busy freaking out about Harry's condition to be able to relay any information coherently enough to be of any use. Giving her time to cool her heels was the best option at the time."
"And she asked you to fetch us first, I bet." Teddy chimed in. Lavender winced. "Yes, she did". "Auntie Hermione's smart" Teddy said to the world in general before frowning. "Except when she forgets what prophylactics are for." Andromeda frowned at her grandson. "Now now Edward, now's not the time to be influenced by Aunt Guinevra, of all people. This was more evidence of 'Potter foolishness', as Severus used to call it, that's all." Teddy huffed at that. "Why do you bring up Severus, of all people, whenever you blame Dad for something like that?" Andie's eyes lost the little humour their little conversation had infused into the day. "Because he knew your 'Dad' best, son" Where in the hell had grandma learned to do air quotes like that? "Yes, because berating him constantly as a kid and reading his mind every single day kinda does that" "Ah, but it did keep him alive."
Teddy snorted. "Oh really? But he wasn't a Saint either, you know. Kinda hard to be when you're a Death Eater and as a double agent-" Despite the subject matter, this was safe bantering ground for the two, Teddy's puffy gryffishness and Andromeda's personal Slytherin hegemonic experiences bouncing insults and defences off each other "Come on, Dumbledore wasn't much better, you know. Even the best of wizards can make mistakes, Severus was just man enough to pay for his" "And so does Aunty Hermione. Ha! Gotcha!"
"Indeed, she does weather the remarks made to her incredibly well. Anyway my Slytherin side anticipated this and let you win this one in favour of peace and quiet" "And my Gryffindor side can't help but gloat and go 'gotcha'. Ha! Air quotes, right back atcha!" " Oh please, i've been doing air quotes since your mother discovered punk rock and pink hair." "Suuuure, grandmother Andromeda Dorea Tonks, keep telling yourself that. Maybe magic will listen to you and get time to make it true too." "Hush you. Anyway, we're here."
The smile slid off Teddy's and Andromeda's faces as they came to the staff lounge room, the sight of an exhausted and miserable-looking Hermione telling them both more about today than they cared to know. She'd looked better when she was forced to listen to Harry explain to Ginny just how Rose had come about and how he could do that to his best friends & family. Teddy had hidden at the top of the stairs at the time, trying to figure out just why ickle Rosie was causing so much upset.
"Hey aunt Hermione. Heard you got into a spot of trouble."
Andromeda turned around to look at her godson, the master of sarcastic understatement. The wry chuckle sounding from the recliner behind her belayed some of the choicer words she was about to field at her grandson. Nurse Brown just tried to keep her face suitably blank, giving away neither amusement now stress. Hermione started up, the chuckle having relaxed the tense atmosphere pervading the room slightly.
"Harry's involved, Teddy. Just how did you expect me to stay out of trouble?"
Teddy chuckled at that. He still remembered the last time Harry'd been 'convinced' to give Defence Against the Dark Arts another go. Sure, the grade average of all had students shot up. Of course, there were fewer hospital wing visits from all students, often for surprising reasons. Then Halloween had rolled around. And one Edward Tonks-Black, Hufflepuff head boy in his seventh year, found himself defending a group of firsties from a dimension-travelling omnivore that had torn open a dimensional rift located in the space once occupied by the Room of Lost Things. He'd had to write out and keep up a heavy-duty runic Protego Ward for close to five hours before Harry jumped on the omnivore's back and plunged the Daggers Of Slytherin (long story, according to Harry) between the third and fourth vertebrae of the magic-immune demon, the only weak spot that could be attacked by a magical object with a discernible effect.
"Yeah, I get that. So what happened out there?"
And Hermione proceeded to tell them about the past 30 minutes of her life. How she'd noticed Harry stop and write something out on the ground, how they'd activated the array with less than a second to go, how Harry had collapsed bleeding on the ground before, finally, recounting her stay in hospital.
"- And that's when Nurse Brown left me here. I've been racking my brains as to why he collapsed like he did, but the best I could do was send a Patronus message to Poppy Pomfrey, to see whether she kept Harry's old medical file or not."
Andromeda frowned, thinking about the information Hermione had relayed to her. To Andie, it sounded like a case of poisoning, either from a hitherto unknown magically charged virus (and Merlin help them all if the Muggles ever discovered that at King's Cross) or from... venom... something Nymphadora'd told her she had learned when talking to Sirius about Harry's studies at Hogwarts tickled at the back of Andromeda's mind.
"Hermione, do you recall any instances where Harry could have come into contact with a class 3-X magical creature or higher?" Hermione snorted at that. "What kind of creature are we talking about, exactly? He's fought against almost every creature on the Dark Creatures list at least once. Hell, he almost got eaten by a bloody Nundu during the Egyptian progroms."
"The venomous kind, dear." the others in the room looked vaguely puzzled until Hermione blanched and Lavender ahh'ed at almost the exact same time. "The symptoms-"
"-Are consistent with being affected by venom. Which means-"
"-That Harry would've had to have been bitten. But then-"
"-The last time Harry was bitten by a venomous Dark creature-"
"-level 3-X or higher-"
"- Was more than a quarter century ago, when he was fighting -"
"-THE BASILISK?"
After that eerie display of synchronisation, the group fell into silence as the implications sunk in. There was no known cure of Basilisk Venom. There was, bluntly put, nothing to cure. The Venom was simply the liquid version of a Basilisk's Stare, capable of petrifying on contact and killing on ingestion. It was pretty much a magical acid, a corrosive agent so strong it could be used to kill Horcruxes. What made it worse was that the venom's potency fed off its victim's own magic, with the result that it was pretty much an analogue to coral snake venom when used on muggles while a dragon's outer skin would turn into a pouch full of a sludge that basilisks, especially of the Elder King/Queen variety Harry fought back in second year, would find highly nutritious.
So for 12-year-old Harry with a ton of problems with his magical core due to malnourishment, emotional and intellectual neglect and oh, maybe the magical strain of housing and containing the soul of the ultimate evil magical being of his generation, the phoenix had plenty of time to pour tears into the open wound left by the basilisk fang and counteract the poison. But to a fully-grown Harry, the circumstantial master of death, whose magical core had had eighteen years of comfort, nurture and nourishment to help repair the damage it'd incurred early on, a bite from that basilisk meant that he'd dissolve into a squishy goo within a matter of seconds. But he hadn't. Why was that?
Hermione had realised, after her sixth year, that when Harry dropped a hint on you it was generally for a good reason. Ron just came out and said it, but Harry just had to act in an understated and polite manner. Both approaches carried its pros ("Hermione, I love you!"-"And why would I not be friends with the smartest witch of her generation?") and cons ("Hermione, I just noticed you're a girl!"-"Hermione, don't you think Draco's acting weird lately? I mean, it's not like he imperioused Rosmerta or anything – oh wait, he totally did! Don't you think that's strange, Hermione? Doesn't the fact that he's obviously up to something strike you as odd? Come on, you stupid bint! USE THAT FUCKING BRAIN OF YOURS ALREADY!"), but Harry's consistently obtuse hints when he's trying to get you to figure something out because he is unable to tell you directly meant that every female in his life was High Grand Mistress at any game involving non-linear thinking by the time their third meeting had rolled around.
Ginny had gotten it by the end of her fifth year. Andromeda had gotten it considerably faster, correctly interpreting the veiled and subtle negotiations going on behind their second seemingly innocent Teddy-centric conversation ("He absolutely loves going to the park on weekends" translated into "You will be looking after Teddy during a minority of weekends where I need alone time. We traditionally go to the park because he makes less of a fuss of things there, which is not surprising due to him being the child of a werewolf. Go there when I foist him off onto you, so that I know where to look if I cannot reach you."). Luna had him sussed by the end of the postwar victory celebrations.
Harry was a Slytherin, whether conscious of it or not, and forced almost anyone who wanted to get to know him better to let their inner Slytherin out to play. To Ron, the realisation that that was what his friend did was a cathartic one. Nowadays, he disliked Slytherins not because of their slimy Snakiness, as he put it, but because they'd allowed themselves to be talked into going full Slytherin. Turns out the hat asked him too. He said it offered that choice to the majority of Hogwarts students that were purebloods. She'd still not confided that it had asked her as well ("Come on! It's not like they can't tell you wouldn't belong! The whole place believes in that pureblood jinx crap. I mean, think about it! If it were true, would I be stacking the place with jumped-up half-bloods? They'll just assume you're one of them! Please, help me stop them going down the drain! I'll even make you Head Girl! Oh, okay fine! Go play with the knuckleheads you're so fond of, you prejudiced-GRYFFINDOR"). The last time a student entered Slytherin with a muggleborn name, Wizarding Britain ended up with Snape. The time before that, it was Voldemort. Slytherin's reputation was, as far as muggle-raised wizards were concerned, accurate. If you went into Slytherin as a muggle either born or raised, chances are you would turn out more Sith than Jedi. No, better not tell anyone about that little tid-bit.
Still, her Slytherin senses were a-tingling as they so often did in these quagmires, nudging details into place until an accurate enough picture could be drawn in her mind. She examined the circumstances behind him collapsing... the pensieved memories she'd seen of the Basilisk fight... How the Phoenix had healed the wound... how she'd only gotten away with magical exhaustion... magical exhaustion, that's it!
"Say Andromeda, what do you know about how Phoenix tears work?"
Andie snapped out of it and thought on the question. "Hmm, they were one of Severus' favourite research ingredients for potions, they are a highly versatile magical vessel, you can make wand cores out of the iced over tears but they explode if you thaw them out, they are said to heal all wounds, but that is a lie as the Phoenix's magic merely reverses the damage of time to the optimal point and keeps the wounded appendage under stasis in said optimal state. The temporal stasis is said to be fuelled by an incredibly small portion of the beneficiary's magic. Traces of Phoenix Tears have been found in the tombs if wizards and witches that lived tens of thousands of years ago, the bodies of their beneficiaries perfectly preserved from the ravages of time. That's all I can get off the top of my head."
"So if you were to drain any Phoenix tears involved in a stasis field of their usual regular dose of magic, what would happen?"
"The stasis field would collapse and any damage that was hindered is said to be returned ten-fold." And then Andromeda got it. "And if the stasis field were to, say, surround an old wound swimming in Basilisk venom-"
"- Then the amount of Basilisk Venom in his system would start to increase as the stasis field gives out, resulting in ten times the original amount of Basilisk Venom to be present in his body by the time the field has completely collapsed!" Hermione was almost jumping up and down on the spot. She knew it was wrong, but it felt so good to finally start Doing Something again! But then reality caught up with her as she heard a voice laced with sadness coming from the doorway.
"So he really is going to die this time, isn't he?"
There, having just entered the room, were the tear streaked faces of Ron Weasley and Ginevra Potter. However, a third figure was currently leaning against the wall near the entrance, his Unspeakable unit patches displayed for all to see (which was Against Regulations) on a faded leather duster, sporting a three-day beard and a pointy hat that had seen better days during the Crusades. He had the smirk commonly known to all secret service types as the 'i'm about to help you and you're going to hate me for it' smirk. He raised his eyebrow at the incredibly pessimistic attitude Harry's family seemed to display towards the one person given the codename "Hard-To-Kill" by the Unspeakables who, Lord knows why, had actually tried to assassinate him a few years ago by throwing a Nundu at him in Egypt.
To be fair, they did that to any and all potential recruits.
Harry hadn't appreciated the offer, though.
After he'd survived that and had a highly classified, though incredibly loud and painful talk with one Algernon Croaker (who'd subsequently faked his own death by blowing up his hotel room and making his escape to the Bahamas via helicopter, so far the only known form of resignation notice the department pays attention to), the Unspeakables had decided to shelve any assassination attempts until further notice and had started to work with him instead. And one Dean Thomas, junior Unspeakable (official) and holder of a class Gamma-7 clearance level (whatever that means) was the man assigned to liaise between Potter and the head of department who had decided that losing a rookie was better than losing a department head, namely himself. All for this. Dean Thomas was about to make the Offer. And for once, Harry would be unable to refuse. He cleared his throat and spoke softly:
"Maybe not, Miss Potter. Not if I can help you, at any rate."
A/N: So there you have it boys and girls. Yet another exciting chapter that can be summarised by saying Hermione and Harry go to the Hospital, talk with Nurse Lavender, who calls in Andromeda and Teddy Tonks, brainstorming occurs and the problem is laid bare. Everyone bursts into tears and Dean Thomas arrives to 'save' Harry. That's the entire chapter, by the way... But with some cool exposition and hints as to what some of your favorite characters have been doing post-Battle added onto it.
The Nymphadora-Andromeda bits were sad, but hey, if life smelled like roses we'd smell shit out of sheer boredom. Now there is a bit more swearing than usual in this chapter, but remember that these guys are under a lot of stress. And now remember that there IS going to be a chappie or two dedicated to exposing what surviving a nuclear war would be like, so expect quite a few more gooey bits coming up. And again, apologies for any canon deviation. It just makes things easier for me not having to rush back and forth between word processor and Harry Potter wiki right now. I'll re-edit the story should I feel up to it later, but not for now. Don't worry, none of the bits i'll ignore will affect the storyline as it goes on or significantly impact the characters' behavior.
Props to anybody getting the slightly modded Dead Like Me reference.