Chapter Ten: A Shift in Perspective
Disclaimer: I am so very sorry for this really delayed update to this story. Real life just came up like a tsunami and swept away everything in its path. But now that NaNoWriMo is back and I am being forced to write every day, the updates will come. Just to let you know, there is a shift in tone back to a lighter feel. I was re-reading my last chapter and it got dark so very quickly. Once again, I own nothing of the Harry Potter universe except for Eleanor Montgomery, who will once again be up to her suspicious activities. I would be thrilled if you would leave a review! What you thought was good, what needs work. Thank you!
Harry Potter was on the warpath.
Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was now three weeks since Ginny and Molly's funeral, and he'd had enough drinking himself into a stupor and then sobering himself up to go into the office. Maybe it was the fact that there hadn't been another kidnapping or murder since his wife/ex-wife and mother-in-law had been killed. Maybe it was the fact that he was tired of Verna's disapproving looks and annoyed little sniffs, or the way that Hermione had started to avoid him because she didn't want to tell him her latest theories about the case. Maybe it was the simple, and yet somehow obnoxious, fact that he hadn't seen a sign of Draco Malfoy since the funeral, Gawaine Goodman – his Unspeakbale watcher – had reported nothing suspicious at all for two week and had been reassigned, and he kept getting Malfoy's annoying little missives signed with the heading if the Department of Archives and Redundant Paperwork every other hour.
Maybe it had to do with the fact that Harry hadn't been able to locate either Andromeda Black or Eleanor Montgomery and that Romilda Vane was playing dumb about the whole thing. Not even Teddy was willing to fess up to anything, or even knew anything, from what Harry had been able to discern.
He was tired and cross and at the end of his rope.
On the plus side there had been no more murders to add to the Strickland Case. On the negative side, there was no more progress being made on the Strickland Case.
It was all Going To Hell.
The Wizarding Public had started to cautiously call it a victory. Whatever had happened between the Murderers and Molly Weasley and Ginny Potter had obviously ended the long months of fear and death. And since those two women were related somehow to Harry Potter, their Chosen One, the Boy Who Live to Defeat Voldemort and now ended other Villains Through His General All-Around Awesomeness, he was getting all the credit.
His name was all over the newspapers again, mixed in with articles detailing his heroic struggles with alcohol, his two sons still at Hogwarts, and all of the people he had lost in his life while fighting the good fight. Mr. Weasley and the rest of the Weasley Clan were subdued and mostly avoiding him. He'd run into George the other day, who'd taken him out to a pint, but hadn't really said a word the entire time, and he'd visited Ron at WZ Pharmaceuticals the other day, where he'd had to endure prolonged exposure to Blaise Zabini and his…..personality. But that had been it.
And no one, not the newspapers, not even the Weasleys, were mentioning his daughter to him; his missing daughter. Harry dreamed of her every night. He went over the case files every day. He followed up with Dawlish and Hopkins who had been given the case for new leads multiple times throughout the workday. Nothing changed. He went over the Slytherin Table where she was taken. He tried to backtrack the way that Molly and Ginny had been sent to the outskirts of the Hogwarts Wars. He called in the Unspeakables and the Experimental Charms Division and wrote to experts from all over Europe in magical transportation and wizard signatures.
He spoke to Hermione about what Lily had told him; Lines of Matrilineal Descent. But not even Hermione had been able to find any record of anything regarding that in any library she had checked.
After the first week the dreams of Lily had turned into nightmares, but he had still been unwilling to think the simple truth that his daughter was dead. It just wasn't true. He was Harry Potter. He was a hero for God's sake. He was supposed to be able to deal with these things. He was the one who should be in danger, be kidnapped and tortured and afraid; not his eleven-year-old daughter.
The second week had seen Harry receive a letter of condolence from Scorpius Malfoy – or Greengrass, or whatever the boy was calling himself these days. He was Lily's best friend, apparently; a Slytherin and Draco Malfoy's son. It was all just so very confusing.
Dear Mr. Potter, (the letter had begun, and Harry, even in his state of worry and pain and grief, made sure to mark that the boy's manners were Better Than His Scum Of A Father)
My sincere condolences on the loss of your wife and mother-in-law, and the pain that the disappearance of Lily must be causing you. I am sure that you are doing all you can to locate her. Lily is the most resourceful and resilient person I have ever met, and a dear friend. I am sure that she is fighting, and any help you need to locate her, just ask me.
Sincerely,
Scorpius Abarxas Black-Malfoy Greengrass
Harry had snorted at the overly formal language coming from a twelve-year-old, but figured that's what you got from raising your son to be a Pompous Pureblood Prince.
Besides, his daughter was resilient. If she could survive Slytherin House, she could survive until he found her.
Third week saw him in the depths of despair. He'd tried to explain it to Hermione when she'd come to forcibly drag him from his office to get a couple hours of sleep. "I'm not doing anything right!" he'd railed at her, at the absolute end of his rope and all but crying in frustration. Hermione stared at him with that blank look she had perfected over the last two weeks. He knew that she was driving herself harder and harder to look for any and all clues or patterns, and that her search was bringing up nothing. He had attempted to convince her that this wasn't her fault, any of it, but to no avail. Really, Hermione was turning into him, with all the blame she was heaping upon her own shoulders. It was just that he really did deserve the blame, which was what he was trying to tell her.
"I'm supposed to be the hero, the savior. I'm the goddamn Boy Who Lived," he snarled.
Hermione, knowing that he wasn't the least bit angry at her, but rather at his own fallibility and the fact that he just wasn't smart enough or fast enough or strong enough or even lucky enough to crack this case wide open, watched him dispassionately. She was running on next to no sleep and had been checking on her own children several times a day – as well as on Harry's – just to make sure that they were all doing alright. Well, as alright as could be expected given the circumstances.
"That doesn't mean you have to do everything by yourself, Harry," she consoled him. "It doesn't mean that you have to be the one to find Lily. That's why you have a whole Department of Aurors under your command."
"But yes, it does Hermione," he insisted. "That's exactly what being Harry Potter means. I'm the hero. I'm supposed to be the one who confronts the dragon and saves the princess. I'm supposed to be the one who defeats the villain and brings peace to the Wizarding World. That's what being a hero means. It means that it is always your fault, and it is always your responsibility. It is always you who has to bear the burden and make the sacrifices. But I have no idea how to make a sacrifice because I don't know who the enemy is! And so Ginny and Molly – who decided not to tell me, or anyone else, anything – knew something that I should have known and went in my place. Tell me exactly how I am not at fault for this, Hermione! Because deep down, you know that I am."
Hermione had left his office in a thoughtful frame of mind, and now it was week four and Harry was extremely pissed off. Sometimes, he thought to himself, as he stood outside the Tonks-Lupin residence under his invisibility cloak, being the hero means applying force in a direction that might appear to be slightly morally ambiguous.
When Teddy Lupin Apparated in from his shift, Harry silently and efficiently stunned and kidnapped his own godson. He had tried to be patient, he really had, but enough was enough. Andromeda Black was involved in all of this somehow. She had been missing from her work and her own home for three weeks, and Teddy Lupin wasn't saying a word. Harry had tried the nice approach, but it had involved patience and he was never known for his patience. If he knew anything about the Black sisters it was that all three of them were extremely gifted and scarily brilliant. He was convinced that Bellatrix in her heyday could have even given Hermione and Dumbledore and run for their money. And Snape.
And that meant that Andromeda Black would not have left her grandson – and Romilda Vane, however the woman was related to the Blacks – without some sort of magical alarm that let her know if something happened to them.
Harry suspected that his kidnapping of Teddy – without tell the boy his true identity – would be enough of a draw to bring the powerful witch to him. And when she came – if she somehow managed not to kill him in her rage – he was planning on demanding some answers.
Howard Cho, former Ravenclaw, now head of the Daily Prophet, was at the office religiously at 6 am every morning. He had been following the same practice of an early start since he had begun his career at the Prophet thirty-five years ago, at the very rung of the establishment; the Obituaries.
In any other culture this would have been a fairly prestigious job, Obituaries are, after all, fairly entertaining to read. The way people try to politely word death and avoid saying anything bad about the newly dead person – even if they were a first-class tit – has been an exercise in humor and subtlety since Obituaries became a thing.
Probably sometime during the Middle Ages, Cho thought to himself. Those people had really twisted senses of humor.
He hummed absently to himself as he locked up the house and then Apparated to the office. The weather was unusually fine this late-fall morning. Although the sun would not rise for several hours, the wind had died down to a minimum and it was even mildly warm out instead of the raw, bite he expected from mid-November. The moon had vanished beneath the horizon, and the stars had all faded beneath the black-purple glow that hovered over the east, but it wasn't really dark out. Diagon Alley was filled with streetlamps and the shop lights of those owners who believed in getting as early a start to the day as he did himself.
He was always the second one to the office, despite how early he arrived. Susan Clarence was one of the junior editors on the cookery department and her ambitious nature and ability for hard work reminded him of himself at that age. He figured that the young woman would go far and was thinking about moving her over to the sports department to see how she handled the chaos that was the Quidditch Section.
When he walked into the main office though he knew that something was off. Although all the cubicles were darkened, and only the far lights of his office and the break room were lit, he knew that there were someone else here besides him and Susan. One look at the blanched face of his young employee told him that.
He tried anyway. "How are you this morning, Susan," he asked, attempting a light, civil tone and unable to disguise the suspicion or fear that colored his words.
Susan merely raised on shaky arm, her eyes wide with shock, and pointed towards his office. "Someone to see you, sir," she all but whispered.
Howard Cho walked towards his office on shaking legs, cursing himself for the first time for not being in Gryffindor House and thus thinking nothing of walking headlong into potential danger. All he seemed capable of thinking about at this moment was the possibility that a very dangerous murderer, or murderers, could be sitting in his office at this very moment and waiting with baited breath for him to arrive.
The fact that such a person or persons would hardly have bothered to leave Susan Clarence alive did not once cross his mind either, and might have made a more rational person – or someone with a more sarcastic brain – question whether he deserved to have been sorted into Ravenclaw either. Nevertheless he walked into his office and almost had a heart attack anyway, for there, sitting calmly in the chairs reserve for guests were Molly Weasley, Lily Potter and his own investigative journalist Ginny Weasley Potter, who smiled at him brightly as he walked in.
"Hello, Mr. Cho," she said. Mrs. Weasley told him that he was looking unwell and had better sit down, and little Lily Potter gave him a half-hearted way. All three ladies looked to be in the prime of health, although Ginny looked mildly annoyed.
After a moment, during which he managed to fall more or less into his own chair, and gripped the side of his desk while rapidly swallowing and trying to process this strange turn of events, he turned to his visitors. "Nightmare?" he asked hopefully. Ginny shook her head. "Ghosts?" he tried again. Another head shake. "Drug induced hallucinations?" he tried somewhat desperately.
"Young man, are you telling me that you would touch a mind-altering substance?" Mrs. Weasley demanded loudly.
"That's a 'no', then," he muttered somewhat disconsolately. Susan stuck her head in the door and nervously asked if anyone wanted coffee or tea. She seemed incapable of looking away from Ginny. Although this was understandable. They both had, after all, last seen her in the pages of the Daily Tattler in illegal pictures taken from the crime scene itself, where she was covered in blood, missing quite a few limbs and most assuredly dead.
"How are you not dead?" he demanded, brought back to the most pressing question now that everyone had declined to offer of a hot beverage. Lily Potter looked at the ground, avoiding his eyes, Mrs. Weasley swelled like a bullfrog as though about to launch into a demand that he mind his own business, and Ginny cut her off with a "It's a very long story." Mrs. Weasley deflated and looked mildly disappointed that her own rant would have to wait for now. Ginny continued, "And we wouldn't even be hear now if my ex-husband hadn't done something monumentally stupid. I'll be surprised if Andromeda doesn't skin him from head to foot. She looked absolutely livid, and exactly like Bellatrix now that I think about it." She shuddered.
"Dear, it does not do to call people names," Mrs. Weasley interjected, although weakly, because she obviously thought the same thing.
Howard Cho didn't know what, exactly, they were talking about, but he was able to grasp the basics. "So you're not dead," he double-checked.
"No."
"And you'll be wanting your old job back then?" he asked, resigned,
"Naturally."
"So…..how are you not dead, exactly?"
And Ginny Weasley Potter grinned, looking exactly like a mischievous school girl. "That's what I'm here to tell you."
&…&…&…&…&…&
The Reappearance of Ginny and Molly Weasley became an International Sensation.
The Daily Prophet sold out in a matter of hours. There was copious amounts of tears from the Weasleys and various, empathetic old ladies who read the story and quietly sobbed into their handkerchiefs, and no small amount of shouting from Harry and Ron.
"And so," Ginny concluded, for probably the fiftieth time in front of the entire extended Weasley family that had gathered in the Burrow, "Eleanor" – the tiny, drab-haired woman waved from her spot over by the fireplace – "was able to catch us before we went in, and convinced us of the merits of her plan. She knew all about…..our certain abilities." Here there was a demand for Ginny to reveal exactly what those were, especially from Harry, Hermione and George, which Mrs. Weasley silenced by entering the room with food, followed by Mr. Weasley who hadn't let her out of his sight since he had arrived at the Ministry and seen her alive. "She had this potion which she poured down the throat of two of the Order who had captured Lily. Then she…disposed of them, and Mum and I…..changed the bodies a little bit."
"Why?" Hermione asked, from her spot on the couch, where she was watching Ginny carefully. Ginny turned to her and raised an eyebrow in a silent question. "I mean why go to all that trouble?" Hermione clarified. "Why didn't she just warn you about them knowing about the whole Line of Matrilineal Descent thing, and then you sneak in, rescue Lily and get away again? Why all this cloak and dagger nonsense?"
There was mild muttering among the Weasleys present as they all considered this point. Harry, who was holding tightly onto his daughter and was surrounded by both his sons, was once again reminded of how dangerous Hermione could be when she put her mind to it. While all the rest of them were just overjoyed that Ginny, Molly, and Lily were alive and safe, Hermione had put all the data she had accumulated together and arrived at the real question. Ginny turned back towards Eleanor to let her answer the question.
"Because I needed to infiltrate them," Eleanor said, simply. "And because Ginny and Molly had no way of detecting the Warding system that they were using. They already knew that all three of us were there, so there was no possibility of escaping and coming back later, because by that time Lily would have been moved and they would have vanished and we would have had no way of tracking them. Likewise, they knew all of Ginny's and Molly's capabilities, but none of us knew what they were capable of doing, so a straight up fight would have ended up quite badly. So I took a gamble. I figured that if it could be arranged that Molly and Ginny 'died' in their attempt to rescue Lily, then in all the confusion I they could sneak out, and I could make my move to infiltrate their circle. Also, I would be in the prime position to track their movements and assess their capabilities to the extent that I could inform Ginny, Molly and Andromeda –"she waved at Professor Black, who was seated regally across from Hermione and Harry and was intermittently shooting Harry venomous looks, that he was trying his best to ignore – "and they could contrive to stumble upon the safe house where Lily was located and have her out in a matter of minutes."
"It all worked out perfectly," Ginny assured them. "We got Lily out in three days. Eleanor kept a watch on her the whole time and managed to keep her cover. Andromeda contacted Narcissa through Draco who – as you know – is the Best Arithmancer in the world, and she drew up several permutations of calculations in order to make our cover story that we had tracked their movements by mathematical proof found in their Apparation coordinates plausible, and then we took a couple of weeks to make sure that they weren't coming after us, and to give Lily some time to….process everything." She shot a concerned look at her daughter, who snuggled closer to Harry.
Harry himself was watching Eleanor Montgomery suspiciously. "So you're a spy?" he asked at last.
"At the moment," she agreed readily enough. She was dressed in Wizard robes today, all black, like Snape would have worn. Although, it had to be admitted, slightly more form flattering than anything Snape, hopefully, would have considered wearing. Harry shuddered and put that thought away in his Things To Never Think About box. "I'm more along the lines of Wizard Relations," Eleanor continued.
"What does that mean?" Hermione asked, still in that suspicious tone of voice which meant she would figure out this woman's cunning plan or wait for her in a dark alley one night.
Eleanor examined her watch and frowned. "It means that I am a very busy person and can't afford to waste time dilly-dallying with you people. I'm on a tight schedule and I have a hero speech to make this week, some memories to prod, and someone to bring back from the dead, so I'll see you all later," she declared dramatically, and made for the door.
Since no one had been expecting this sort of statement, not even Hermione, they let her pass without a word. It was only when the door slammed in her wake that Harry asked, "Who's she bringing back from the dead?"
&…&…&…&…&…&
The days that followed were some of the strangest that Harry could remember.
"Yes, but why would Narcissa Malfoy help her? She's a muggle!" he remembered Ron shouting during one of their frequent rehashes of the whole thing.
"How did you not know about this whole women-empowerment old wives tale?!" Harry demanded instead, still sore that Ginny had gone off and had adventures and a power that the Dark Lord knew not when he hadn't and didn't. Oh wait.
Ron snorted. "Like Ginny ever told me anything, anyway. You were the one married to her."
"And how come I didn't find any sign of it in my research?" Hermione cried, outrage.
"Yeah!" Harry shouted.
"That's right!" Ron agreed.
There was silence for a moment as they realized that there was nowhere to go in the conversation after this moment. Pansy, sitting on Ron's other side and determinedly sipping red wine, snorted quietly. Hermione had ears like a hawk though and Harry watched her decided How To Approach The Enemy with something that was rapidly turning into amusement. If there was one good thing about all the confusion that seemed to surround his waking life at the moment, it was that Ginny's and Molly's death and…..rebirth as it were, had healed the rift between Ron and Hermione enough that Hermione could now stand to be in the same room as him.
Now she just had to figure out how to be in the same room with Pansy Parkinson.
"Sooooo…..Parkinson," she began after a moment. Ron and Harry pretended to be temporarily deaf.
Pansy turned towards Hermione and raised an eyebrow. She was looking especially elegant today, in a rich, shouting kind of way. Her robes were a deep violet, her hair was swept up with a silver clip and huge silver hoops hung from her ears. Her face was heavily made up, and she wore a deep red lipstick that went well with her dark coloring. Next to her Hermione looked rather dull. Her robes were a sensibly-cut brown color that almost matched her hair, which hung about her face in frizzy tendrils from wear it had escaped her French braid. There wasn't a drop of makeup on her face, but there were dark circles under her eyes. Faint crows feet were becoming more and more visible each year, and she had definitely put on a couple of pounds.
Harry looked over at Ron's pot belly and then down at his own body – still Auror fit but definitely with a certain thickness starting to set in.
Dammit, they were all getting old.
The only thing that was similar about the two women who were cautiously eyeing each other up was the snapping intelligence in their similar-colored eyes.
And then Hermione smiled, an ear-splitting smile of genuine amusement that reached her eyes. "So, Parkinson," she began again. "What do you know about this whole maternal descent power thing?"
Pansy's eyes had widened in surprise at Hermione's smile, swiftly followed by an eyebrow rise at Hermione's blunt question. "That's not very Unspeakable of you," she murmured, attempting to regain her equilibrium and put off Hermione until she had thought through her answer.
"Nothing?" Hermione probed relentlessly.
Pansy sighed and, Harry noticed with delight, still appeared off balance enough that she had given up all hope of trying to think through her answer. "I don't know anything about it. Never even heard of it," she explained. Her eye twitched a bit but she continued somewhat reluctantly at Hermione's impatient hand motions. "But I'm sure that my grandmother does," she finished.
Hermione whipped out her notebook and started scribbling madly. "What makes you think that?" she asked, abstractedly.
"She started getting all evasive on me when I told her about the Strickland Case, and she got positively green when we thought that Molly and Ginny were dead."
Ron turned around and stared at his girlfriend. "You never told me that!"
Pansy shrugged. "I don't tell you everything, Ronald."
"What do you mean you 'don't tell me everything'?"
Pansy sighed, Harry groaned and Hermione tried to hide a not-so-discreet grin. Harry could read the 'Serve you right' on her face clear enough.
Time to get back to the office, he decided, signaling Hermione that they were heading out.
Once they were back they immediately fell into research mode. "What if it's not some kind of conspiracy, Harry?" Hermione twirled her quill around and around her fingers as she thought. At last she stabbed it straight into Harry's chest to get his attention.
"Ow!" He rubbed his chest dramatically, but Hermione ignored him.
Ginny had said that all she knew about the Lines of Matrilineal descent were what Molly had told her; that it was an old wives tale passed down from mother to daughter, and that it claimed that certain abilities were passed down in the blood, abilities that went beyond normal wizarding magic. Ginny said that the power was strengthened when different bloodlines merged, and that sometimes it was passed onto the matriarch of a family through marriage as well as blood, and that was why wizarding marriage ceremonies had a blood ceremony where the husband and wife shared their blood.
Hermione had been looking for a history book that spoke about Marriage Rites and bloodlines for days. She had even gone through the entire Hogwarts library, but she'd had no more luck than previous to discover something. All Ginny had been able to tell them was that Andromeda Black and Draco Malfoy had a suspicion that the murders and disappearances had something to do with bloodlines and blood magic traced through the old pureblood families.
It was not a lot to go on, and Hermione was obviously going out on wider and wider tangents in her quest for a workable hypothesis.
"What if it's a serial killer instead? Like Verna half-joked the other day? What if Draco Malfoy is involved in it all, but only peripherally because she has something on him? What if she just used all those other people as patsies and has been running rings around us the whole time because she thinks that it's funny? What if it's ELEANOR MONTGOMERY?!"
She was standing up from her chair, shouting, by the time she'd finished. Then she paused, narrowed her eyes and then sat back down in a huff. "But that wouldn't explain how she's leaving no trace elements at the crime scene, even if it does explain why there's no magical signature at the crime scene," she muttered. "Darn, I thought I'd had it there for a moment."
Harry rummaged on his desk for a moment, looking for the preliminary case reports. After a fruitless couple of minutes he heaved a dramatic sigh and shoved every single paper from his desk onto the floor, where it joined random other piles of papers that he'd pushed onto the floor throughout the course of the week.
Hermione watched him critically for a moment. "You realize, Harry," she began, conversationally, "that if you actually did your paperwork when you were supposed to, you wouldn't have to come in every Saturday to sort through all the stuff you pushed onto the floor. Right?"
"No one likes a know-it-all, Hermione," Harry told her, in the same tone of voice as John McClane had said, 'Eat lead, Kincade.'
Hermione smirked.
Harry poked at a single sheet of paper hopefully. Overdue bill. Hastily he turned it back over, hoping Hermione hadn't noticed. "You put Eleanor on the Wall of Web yet?" he asked, hoping to distract her.
"Ginny said to tell you, when you noticed that bill, that she paid it three weeks ago," Hermione said, not even looking in his direction, but scribbling something down in the small, leather-bound notebook she carried with her everywhere.
Harry had tried to steal it a couple of times, but each time had ended either in disaster – once he'd ended up covered in slime and another he'd been sprayed in the face with women's perfume – or he'd been unable to crack the code that Hermione's quill automatically wrote in.
It really was Unendingly Trying to have friends who were Incredibly and Insufferably Intelligent.
"You mean the muggle with Malfoy?" Hermione asked him now.
Harry shot Hermione a quick look out of the corner of his eyes. He found it a bit strange that his muggle-born friend called Eleanor Montgomery 'the muggle,' like someone would call ET 'the alien.' He wasn't going to bring it up to her though because it was all tangled up in Hermione's Family Drama, which had to do with a dispute with her parents which had taken place about five years ago, and which had never Been Resolved. Harry suspected that it also had to do with the fact that he suspected the Unspeakables to be a bunch of ruddy Pure-Blood Supremacists and that they had given Hermione an Inferiority Complex as a result, but the one time he had tried to bring up this observation to Hermione she had all but eviscerated him. So he considered his Good Friend Duty finished for the time being.
"You're doing it again," Hermione murmured now, nose still buried in her book.
"Doing what?" Harry asked, affecting an exaggerated look of surprise. "I'm not doing anything."
Hermione peered at him quizzically. "I don't know, Harry Potter, whether you truly expect me to fall for that, or if you think you're going to get out of a tongue lashing by playing endearingly stupid."
Harry decided that now his only way out if he wanted to survive with all his fingers and toes, was to play Hopelessly Stupid.
Hermione narrowed her eyes again. "I'm not falling for it, Harry James Potter," she scolded forcefully. She looked like she was only seconds away from prodding his chest and inflicting Irreparable Damage. Her eyes narrowed even further as this last thought crossed Harry's mind, and then something clicked into place for him. The only problem with his theory was that there was no way that Hermione could have learned such a skill without him knowing. Could there? It just wasn't possible. Harry and Hermione could speak to each other with limited Legilimancy, and only when they were within several feet of each other. Neither one of them had been able to make much headway with learning Occlumency. Hermione had told him that protecting your mind was much harder than actually sending your thoughts into another person's mind – which is all Harry and Hermione had managed to accomplish. They hadn't even managed to figure out how to read the thoughts of someone when they weren't being projected to them. Of course, both of them had full-time jobs and families and various other issues to deal with, but the slow nature of their progress was really making Hermione, in particular, annoyed. Now Harry was wondering if Hermione had left him behind somehow and figured it out for herself.
Hermione smirked. It was a decidedly Slytherin expression, and one that she clearly must have copied from Malfoy. Or Snape. And Harry had shown her his memories of the Occlumency disaster almost a year ago now. Which meant that –
"Oh my God, Hermione!" he shouted. "You're an –"
Hermione clamped a hand over his mouth so that his last words were a "mmhmm mmmmmhmmmm!" But that meant nothing to Harry because it proved that He Was Right.
"Stop thinking in Capitals like you were narrating the story of your own life to an admiring audience," Hermione hissed in an undertone, finally removing her hand and then wiping it hurriedly on her robes. She shot Harry a vaguely reproachful glance. "A little discretion, Harry, would be nice."
Harry moved silently over to his open office door. The hallways had long since gone dark and silent, with the only light being the small desk lamp that was still lit at Verna's desk in Harry's atrium. As Harry slowly stuck his right half through the doorway and angled it so he could see Verna's desk while presenting as small a profile to her peripheral vision as possible, he looked for his Terror Of A Secretary.
Verna was sitting on her chair bolt upright, with a look of intense concentration on her face as she examined the far wall of Harry's Domain which meant that she was Listening To Every Word. Harry turned back to Hermione, who was watching these movements with no little amusement and wearing an I Told You So expression on his face. Harry scowled.
"I'm an Auror. We don't do discretion. And you're a dirty little spy!" he acused. "You've been reading my diary!" He could have sworn that he heard a choking noise coming from the direction of His Nosy Secretary.
Hermione didn't even miss a beat. "Yes I did!" she said, loudly and triumphantly. "You thought you could distract me by getting a pink one with unicorns and rainbows on it, but I'm onto you Harry Potter! I knew you had a crush on Draco Malfoy! And your use of root vegetables is just obscene!"
Harry felt himself turning red and glared at his friend. "I do not have a crush on Draco Malfoy!" he hissed aggressively, sounding for all the world like someone in denial. He could hear it in his own voice and mentally groaned at the new thread of gossip that was sure to be all over the Ministry like wildfire by midday tomorrow morning. Verna's chair toppled over in the atrium, and Hermione started turning red herself with the effort not to laugh.
"You have to admit," she said, quieted now and speaking in short bursts of air in between her giggles "that if you did have a journal it would be filled with Draco Malfoy."
"Yes, because he is suspicious!" Harry insisted, feeling like a broken record. Seriously, what was wrong with people? Every time he had insisted that Draco Malfoy was Up To Something he had indeed been neck deep in something nefarious. People wanted to see a sexual explanation in everything, even when all it was was good old-fashioned instincts about one's Arch nemesis.
Hermione was still laughing. "I believe you," she told him, "I just don't think anyone else will." She stood up and called, "Everything alright out there, Verna?"
There was an annoyed grunt from the atrium, and Harry and Hermione heard Verna righting her chair and settling back into it with a huff. Hermione grinned again. "Alright, I'm off, Harry." She sent him a wave from the doorway, and the last words he heard her say before she disappeared from sight were, "Well, Harry, look at it this way. If Verna decides to tell the entire office about your little crush, at least it will provide some sort of amusement for these people instead of all the doom and gloom which has been floating around here for the last few months. Shake things up a bit. Change the mood. Who knows, maybe you're love for Draco Malfoy will spark some knew theories. Break the case right open. Your love will save the world!"
Harry hurled his stuffed bear that said World's Number One Hero at her back as she fled out the door.
&…&…&…&…&…&…&
Hermione wandered disconsolately around her house later that night, or rather even earlier that morning.
Maybe we're looking for the wrong type of magic, she thought inanely, staring at her row of Terry Pratchett books and the Witches of Lancre series in particular. She walked off towards the kitchen, mind already trying to figure out what she still had in the fridge. But after she had looked through her rather paltry selection of food stuff for the tenth time, she realized that food was not going to help tonight. She had bigger things to worry about, more important decisions to make.
So she grabbed some crackers and cheese and went back to the office.
Hermione Granger had watched Harry Potter become the Chosen One, and an international hero. Books were written about him, history classes were taught that analyzed his life. His named would be remembered for centuries. She had watched her husband become a multi-millionaire and the boyfriend of the most famous pop star in the Wizarding World. She had watched recently as now Ginny and Molly were being hailed as heroes in their own right. Well Hermione Granger was tired of sitting on the sidelines and working from the shadows. She had no intention of being a footnote in Harry Potter's biography or a side-note in history. She was going to be a hero in her own right.
She wasn't sure how she was going to do this yet. She vaguely suspected that an old bearded guy was required at this point to impart wisdom to her, but she wasn't sure how to go about finding one. Professor Flitwick didn't have a beard, and neither did Arthur Weasley or her own father. So she was stuck on that one. Next she needed a cause. She had thought the Strickland Case would be a good cause, but she wasn't making any headway with it, and Harry had taken point with it.
Although she did have a vaguely new direction to take their search, because she had come across an interesting conversation the other day that she had just happened to overhear in the canteen between Penelope Clearwater and Luna Lovegood.
She should tell Harry about this, just in case it was connected.
She paused with one hand on her canister of floo powder. She realized she didn't want to tell Harry about this. She felt mildly guilty about this, but only for a second. It wouldn't do Harry any harm to figure out his own cases for once – well, the ones that required a bit of thought. She could just work on it from a different angle. Perhaps they would meet in the middle?
She sighed, angry at herself because she could never, ever lie to herself about her own motives. She took her hands off the floo powder and started to pace as she thought about her own wants and desires.
She had spent her entire life in Harry's shadow, and that had never bothered her before. She was the smart one, the one who came up with the plans and the solutions and the clever loopholes. She's the one who explained to the hero what he needed to know to defeat evil. And she had always been somewhat content with that role. More or less.
I mean, sometimes she wished for a little more of the credit. A small statue in a library somewhere. Her name in a footnote that didn't include Harry Potter and where she wasn't an addendum.
I mean, was that really too much to ask?
"I want to be the hero for once," Hermione admitted outloud, at last, quietly, and only to herself. She had paused in the very middle of her office, and was supremely glad that there was no one else around in this part of the Department of Mysteries to witness both her ambition and her mental breakdown.
A voice behind her cleared a throat loudly, causing Hermione to narrowly avoid having a heart attack and to trip in her haste turning back towards her open door.
Malfoy's little muggle friend stood there. Hermione raised her chin and narrowed her eyes. The other woman was leaning against her doorframe with her arms crossed and was watching Hermione with a faintly knowing air about her. "So why don't you?" she asked.
"Why don't I what?" Hermione demanded.
"Become a hero," the muggle said, like it was the simplest and most logical thing in the world.
Hermione stared at her, nonplussed, for a moment. "And how do you suggest I go about doing that?" she snapped, when she had recovered her powers of speech. She reached into her sleeve for her wand, fingers wrapping around the shaft as she contemplated Obliviating and Stupifying this muggle and then depositing her unconscious form in the Auror Department for Harry to find tomorrow.
The other woman shook her head. "My name is Eleanor," she snapped.
"Are you reading my mind?!"Hermione cried, outraged, forgetting for a moment that this would have been impossible for a muggle. Her hand tightened even further around her wand. All it would take was one little spell, and this annoying woman, who seemed to have no purpose other than appearing at random moments and in random places, wouldn't bother her anymore.
Eleanor snorted. "Of course not, don't be a twit. I'm reading your face! And all I'm asking from you is a little respect." She took a step forward before Hermione could even react and grabbed her hand, which was still hanging onto her wand, effectively immobilizing her. "And don't even think about Obliviating me. All that does is piss me off."
Hermione wrenched herself backwards, but took her hand out of her sleeve minus the wand. She really didn't appreciate being called a twit. In fact, Hermione decided, as she took four steps back so that she would be able to sit on the edge of her desk, it was time for her to take control of this conversation.
The other woman was undoubtedly expecting Hermione to act immaturely, just like Hermione had – much to her dismay – acted the first time the muggle had met her in that café with Draco Malfoy. And suspicious, which is how Hermione had acted up to this point. But Hermione was a very gifted Unspeakable for her unique ability of being unpredictable. In the cutthroat world of the Department of Mysteries this ability had saved her life and career more than once. It had also been an invaluable ally out in the field and undercover. It had elicited information that no one had thought she could obtain. This muggle woman couldn't know that because she was pushing Hermione in all the wrong buttons. And she had specifically attempted to get Hermione off balance during this entire conversation. If Hermione had been Harry or Ron or Ginny, or anyone else, this tactic would have worked.
But Hermione had analyzed the course of this conversation and decided that it was boring, and she wouldn't learn anything new from it.
So it was time for Hermione to sew a little bit of chaos into the proceedings.
"Won't you come in and sit down?" she asked politely.
The Muggle started in surprise, raised an eyebrow, and then a slow smile spread across her plain features, turning her into a beauty for a moment. "Don't mind if I do," she said, sitting herself down with aplomb.
Hermione mirrored her on the other side of her desk. "Lovely weather we've been having."
"Yes, very lovely. Exceedingly warm for this time of year."
"Indeed. Although I think we might get snow sooner than expected."
"Do you think so?"
"Yes. Also, you're a lying, dirty, scumbag," Hermione said pleasantly.
"Am I? Well you're a failure. You could never be a hero. You don't have the balls?"
"Is that an Americanism?" Hermione's eyes narrowed. "Are you American? That would explain your complete lack of respect for other people's boundaries."
"And the fact that you're English explains why you don't have the stones to get things done."
"What things?" Hermione demanded suspiciously.
"Also my real name is Tatia Chernendov and I'm from the Ukraine."
"What?"
"What?"
"Stop it."
"Why don't you stop it?"
"Oh my god, what are you, five?"
"I know, I look young, don't I?" Eleanor said complacently, eyeing Hermione like the cat that had the canary.
"So you're a spy?" Hermione said, still trying to surprise the other woman with rapid-fire changes in topic.
"And you're a failure," Eleanor said cheerfully. "You could never be a hero. You can't even solve this simple case."
"Have you?!"
"Have you noticed what's going on among the Unspeakables?"
Hermione paused, gritted her teeth, and then continued on, mirroring Eleanor's cheerful tone. "Of course I have," she said, sugar sweet.
"Such a shame, really." Eleanor's tone was mock sorrowful.
"I agree," Hermione said, having no idea what she was talking about.
"Someone really has to do something. Or Harry will have to step in. Poor boy's so busy helping everyone. Or I will," she mused.
"I have everything under control," Hermione insisted. She couldn't advertise her own ignorance with admitting that she was losing this round to a muggle. Oh the shame.
"Well, that's nice then," Eleanor said, brightly. She stood up to go. "Anyway, things to do, places to be. I just came to tell you that there's going to be a bit of a spanner in the works thrown in tomorrow."
"What does that mean?" Hermione asked, suspiciously. She tried to read Eleanor's expression. "Who are you planning to resurrect?!"
Eleanor vanished out the doorway before Hermione could get around her desk. "You're fighting spirit," the other woman's voice floated down the hallway. "Who ya gonna call….Ghostbusters!" And then she was gone.
Hermione stood before her desk blinking rapidly for a few seconds. "What the hell just happened?" she demanded of the world in general. After a few more blinks she realized that Eleanor had completely dominated the conversation, no matter how Hermione had tried to steer it. That woman was clearly a devious bastard of the first order, and should be watched with all conceivable caution. And Hermione still had no idea what the other woman had been after. All that rot about…..something suspicious going on among the Unspeakables? Just like Hermione had vaguely overheard being discussed between Penelope and Luna. And which she had not noticed until then. And which could need a hero?
"Merlin's balls," she swore, and tore off down the hallway, to break into the Head Unspeakable's Office.
&…&…&…&…&
Somewhere down the pristine pale-green hallway on the second floor at WZ Pharmaceuticals, someone was playing Burn the Wand at Both Ends on the Wizarding Wireless, and if Ginny had to hear that song one more time she was really going to….do something violent.
She wasn't sure what exactly, but it was definitely going to start with at least a Bat Bogey Hex.
And if she happened to run into Harry on the way, she was going to send one in his direction as well. That man had been completely impossible to live in the vicinity of these past few days. He'd been harassing her constantly for anything she could remember, and when he wasn't do that, he was nagging her about needlessly putting herself in danger, maybe getting back together to try and repair their marriage, and sulking that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him about the strange powers she had inherited from both the Weasley and the Potter lines.
Honestly, he was so persistent that she was mildly tempted to give up just to make him stop.
Ginny Weasley Potter – who was still waiting for her divorce papers to be finalized – had decided that this was the day that she was going to finally have it out with her brother, Ron. She had a mind for a mid-life career change…..well, another one. Because she was re-inventing herself dammit. And because she had no intention whatsoever in involving herself in whatever latest debacle Harry and Hermione had involved themselves in.
She could sense that the Wizarding World was about to change. That Eleanor woman was a strange force of nature, and if Andromeda Black and Draco Malfoy's mysterious words and dark predictions about a partner were true, well then things were going to be…chaotic for a while. And Ginny was going to be far away from it as possible. Ron would help her. He had thrived on his own, without taking on the woes and burdens of the Wizarding World alongside Harry.
And if his partner Blaise Zabini gave her a hard time about it, well Ginny Weasley would have a Bat Bogey Hex ready for him too.
&…&…&…&…&…&
The call came into the Aurors Department at 11 the next morning; the Weasley's house was on fire.
Harry and half the Department Apparated there to find the entire Weasley family standing on the front lawn in various states of bemusement. The house was just sitting there, in the middle of the flames, but not burning. The Aurors snapped into action and for the next 45 minutes attempted in vain to put out the flames. Nothing worked. It merely caused them to spread.
When Harry saw a familiar figure walking down the lane in their direction, amongst the various neighbors that had been called out due to curiosity, he called a halt to the others.
The woman called Eleanor stopped, stared at Harry and then at the house behind him that was blatantly on fire. Her eyes widened until she looked like a child – or a deer caught in the headlights. "I was just walking by," she assured him.
Harry didn't know whether to snort or to arrest her on general principles. Really, her kind of behavior was Not Done. "What are you really doing here," he demanded, reaching out and grabbing her arm to stop her simply walking away from him.
Eleanor looked down at his arm and then back up into his face. Then her own features screwed up into a clearly false terrified expression. "Sexual Harassment!" she yelled at the top of her voice, causing every Auror in the vicinity, as well as curious bystanders, to turn around and stare.
I'm being subjected to sexual harassment!" she howled again. "Oh, is there no one to save me?!" she declared dramatically. Harry dropped her arm and took several rapid steps backwards. Any declaration of sexual harassment was inevitably followed by hours and hours of interdepartmental awareness meetings and re-education classes.
It was a terrible, terrible punishment and Harry didn't want to be known as the person who had caused the Department to be put on The List.
Eleanor smirked at him, neatly sidestepped him, and then continued onwards.
Straight towards the Weasley house.
No one thought she was actually going to walk into the flames. At the very last second they were sure that she was going to turn back, but no one could turn away just in case she did walk into the flames. The moment she reached the flames, which were turning blue and green from the heat, Harry suspected, she turned back towards the assembled Aurors and Weasleys. "Are you coming?" she asked, playfully.
And then she vanished into the fire.
There was an audible gasp from about half the onlookers. Harry rushed over, casting spells for the magical signature of Apparation, or any other sign of her using or utilizing magic. Instead, on the very boundaries of the fire, he found a large amount of floo powder. Harry paused a moment, studying the flames critically. He felt Romilda and Ron come up on either side of him, also watching. At last he stuck his left hand directly into the flames, ignoring Ron's shot of warning. His arm went straight through and Harry felt cool, dry air on the other side. He moved his hand around a bit more until it touched smooth stone.
Finally, taking a deep breath, he moved his whole body into the flames, knowing that the Weasleys and his Aurors would follow him.
He found himself in the middle of the Ministry, standing before the Fountain of Heroes and a statue of himself. His lips curled in disgust.
Eleanor Montgomery was standing in the middle of the Ministry Atrium, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Ministry workers. Hermione was one of them. As was Draco Malfoy. There was a hubbub of voices as the Weasleys and the various Aurors were added to the mix, but she simply waited them out. At last, the quieted and waited to hear what she would say.
Harry wondered why no one thought to arrest her and question her. Why did they all just wait for her to speak? What power did she hold over all of them?
He decided it must be because Eleanor Montgomery did not play by the accepted rules. She wasn't awed by Wizards or scared. She didn't obey the authorities, or even the accepted laws of physics. She didn't have any motive, or even a home-country. She was this…..force who came out of nowhere and was messing with things. She had saved Ginny and Molly when they should have died. She was in contact with Draco Malfoy and in cahoots with him over Merlin knew what, and now she was standing in the Ministry Foyer about to make an announcement.
Harry had the sinking suspicion that she was about to unleash a cat from the bag that wasn't going to be put back in again. Everything was about to change. He wished he was far away.
"Everything is about to change!" Eleanor said, winking at Harry.
Oh God, he thought.
"I am here to tell you that you have lost your way!" she continued. "You have become placid and dull, mired in your rules and refusing to look beyond the narrow boundaries you have set for yourself. Voldemort did not teach you anything, for you placed everything your learned fighting him back in the box from which it came. Well, you're not going to be able to put this back into a box. I have brought a bit of the past with me, to show you what was lost!"
She waved her hands back towards the fireplace from which she had exited.
Fred Weasley – not looking a day older than nineteen – stepped out of one of the green, glowing fireplaces behind her.
There was dead silence in the Atrium. No one moved. No one even thought. The only sound was that of hundreds of people collectively holding their breaths. Event he fires died down, and the steady flow of the fountain with the overly large statue of Harry Potter himself, seemed muted. Fred saw it and raised an eyebrow, looking like he very much wanted to make a snarky comment.
But he didn't. Instead he looked around at all the people gathered there before him, cataloging the effects that twenty plus years had had on them.
Finally George whispered, "That's impossible."
Eleanor shook her head, brown hair swirling around her like a halo and a down-right evil grin on her face. "I can do anything I want," she claimed, waving at the returned-to-life Fred by her side.
And from that moment on the rumor mill that was the Wizarding World firmly maintained that Eleanor Montgmery, Muggle, Potetially American, could alter the laws of life, death and taxes with just a wave of her – seldom manicured – hand.
No matter what Harry claimed to the contrary.
&…...&…..&…&…&…&
End Note: Were you surprised that Fred was the one that came through the flames? Please review and tell me what you think.