My sincere apologies to any readers from Australia. I've taken a stab at your slang and probably mucked it up big time.
Chapter 14
We emerged from the dark Floo in Australia's Floo Port Authority and tried to get our bearings.
"I suppose," Severus said, "the first order of business is to find accommodations."
My brow furrowed. "I thought we would head straight to the Ministry and talk to the Auror who sent the letter."
"You do realize there's a significant time difference between London and Sydney, don't you? You have been here before, so you must."
"Yes, but I've forgotten how many hours. What time is it, anyway?"
Snape nodded in the direction of a dozen large clocks on the wall, all displaying the current hour in various countries.
"It's ten forty-five at night here," he said. "The Ministry will be closed, of course."
"Oh." My heart sank. I'd been so anxious to come right away that I hadn't even bothered to consider the ramifications of a nine hour gap between cities. Everything I needed to accomplish would have to wait until the morning. "When I was here with Harry, we found rooms at a Muggle hotel when we left the airport," I volunteered lamely.
Severus walked up to a welcome wall, which advertised local amenities for traveling witches and wizards.
"There's an inn advertised here, the Scullery Dog. Third grate on the Red Floo line. Shall we try it?"
"Sure." My body was in no way ready to call it a day, but the late hour gave us no choice.
We scanned the available Floos and saw that they were color-coded.
"Do you mean to say that you and Potter flew on a Muggle airplane the last time?" Severus asked as we walked toward the Red Floo entrance. "Whatever for?"
"It was right after the final battle. We didn't want to be recognized at the Floo Port and have people make a big fuss over us. And frankly, right then it felt rather good to escape magic for a while and just travel like two normal people."
"Like Muggles."
"You know what I mean." I had in no way intended to imply that witches and wizards were abnormal, but I was too weary to discuss it further just now.
When we emerged from the Red Floo, we found ourselves in the lobby of the Scullery Dog Inn, est. 1790. In contrast to the dark corners of the Leaky Cauldron in London, the place was bright and spacious. Severus turned to me.
"It looks decent enough. Shall I inquire for rooms, or do you want to do the honors?"
"Go ahead," I said. "You look more intimidating."
He gave me a look, but walked to the desk anyway.
The desk clerk, a young woman with dangling claw earrings and a bright blue streak of hair falling over one eye, saw him coming.
"Are you right?" she asked brightly.
Severus stared at her, momentarily taken aback by the question.
"Usually," he said, mystified. "Two rooms, please."
"Righto," the girl cried. "If you'd come a week ago, you'd have had Buckley's chance, but not to worry. She'll be apples for you."
Snape and I exchanged confused glances.
"Not from here, are ya?" She winked and passed us each a parchment to fill out and sign.
"No. Britain," Severus muttered.
"Oh. That explains it, all right."
I didn't know if it was a compliment or not. We completed the paperwork, and then the girl passed two keys across the counter to us.
"Here you go. And my name's Maisie. Anything else I can be helping you with?"
"I realize it's late," I put in, "but because of the time difference, we won't be ready to sleep for hours yet. Is there any kind of pub or restaurant where we can find food?"
"Bob's your uncle," Maisie said promptly.
At last. Something we understood.
"There's a place down the road, name of Cowan's," Maisie told us. "Good tucker, open twentyfour-seven."
"What road would that be, exactly?" Severus demanded. "We don't even know where we are, other than somewhere in Sydney."
"That's right, just off the boat. But you're not, because you came by Floo!" Maisie hooted at her own joke. "You're in the wizarding shopping district, loves. We call it WizRocks, because it's just off the Rocks area near the harbor. Rocks is a real old spot, you know? Old settlement. Anyway, just head out the main door there and turn right. There are three streets in WizRocks: Somme, Moore, and Loess. Cowan's is on Moore. We're on Loess, if you get lost."
"Would any other shops be open?" I asked, curious. Perhaps there was a bookstore where we could kill time.
"Only a sundries shop and a dance club at this hour."
"Does the sundries shop sell potions?" Snape inquired.
"Basic ones, yeah."
I thanked Maisie for her help and Severus and I went to find our rooms.
The rooms were basic but clean, and would certainly do for a night or two. I washed the grime of the long-distance Floo from my face and wished with all my heart this was a pleasure trip and not what it actually was.
We found Cowan's Grille easily among the other darkened stores of WizRocks. Severus and I ordered lunch because that's what our inner clocks were telling us, although my appetite seemed to have fled. When my food arrived, I picked at it.
"Eat, Hermione," he urged. "I know you're upset, but you do need to eat something. We have a very long day ahead of us."
"I know." Other than coffee at Snape's house seven hours earlier, I'd not eaten since sometime yesterday.
I finally managed to get down about half the food on my plate. Severus found yesterday's wizarding newspaper, the Spellcaster, on a nearby table and leafed through it. He passed it to me and I glanced through it with little interest. Finally, we left the restaurant and located the sundries shop where Snape bought two doses of a sleeping draught.
"We'll need this," he said. "We're on Greenwich time; with luck, we can catch a few hours of sleep and wake up with the rest of Sydney."
He was right, of course. We returned to the Scullery Dog and our respective rooms. I downed my sleeping draught and fell immediately asleep.
…..
Severus knocked on my door at eight-thirty a.m., rousing me from a deep sleep. I told him I would meet him in the lobby in twenty minutes, then went to shower and dress.
He wasn't in the lobby yet when I went down. Nor was Maisie, I noted. A pleasant-looking middle-aged gentleman was at the desk in her place.
"Excuse me," I said, "but is there any place where I could find a Muggle phone to make a call?"
"'Muggle'?"
"Non-magic. I need to contact the police."
The man looked alarmed. "Is there a problem, Miss?"
"No, not at all. It's just that my parents are—were—non-magic, and I need to discuss them with the non-magic authorities."
"Of course. We do have a telephone here for just such a need." He pulled an outdated mobile phone out of a drawer beneath the counter, tapped it with his wand, and handed it to me. "The battery thing never seems to last," he said with a sigh.
I pulled out the letter Simon Waters sent and dialed one of the phone numbers he'd listed. I explained what I wanted to the person who answered, had my call rerouted a half-dozen times, and finally located a gentleman named Inspector Richardson of the New South Wales Police Force. He would be happy to meet with me around eleven a.m., he said. I thanked him and rang off just as Severus appeared in the lobby.
"I called the police," I told him. "We meet them at eleven."
"Then we have time for breakfast. Cowan's, again?"
"I suppose." The thought of food still did nothing for me, but I would try to force something down once more.
The WizRocks district was, in full daylight, buzzing with life this time. We made our way to Cowan's Grille again, now able to get a good look at Sydney's counterpart to Diagon Alley. There was still the same variety of stores that we found at home, but like the Scullery Dog Inn, were much brighter and newer-looking in the morning sun. It was a clear reminder that compared to England, Australia was a much younger part of the British Empire. We ate breakfast: eggs and bacon for Severus, while a sweet roll was all I could manage. Then we browsed in the shops until time to find the police station.
…..
Inspector Garrett Richardson might be overweight and balding, but he was obviously sharp as a tack. When he asked to see my identification, I could only stare at him stupidly for a moment. ID? Of course he would want to see my ID. Why hadn't I thought to conjure some sort of Muggle identification card? Fortunately, Severus stepped in to fill the gap.
"I believe," he drawled, "that you've left your bag in our rental car, Hermione. I'll get it for you."
"Thank you," I said gratefully. There was no rental car, of course. Inspector Richardson was in the midst of giving me a stern lecture on the perils of leaving one's purse in one's car, especially a rental car, when Snape reappeared several minutes later.
"Here you are," he said, handing me a rather ugly black handbag.
Inside I found superb imitations of both a Muggle driver's license and passport, which I promptly passed across the desk to the Inspector.
Richardson made copies of the IDs for my parents' case file before he handed them back to me. "Thank you. And I am so sorry for your loss, Ms. Granger."
"What can you tell me about the accident?" I asked, torn between listening and covering my ears to avoid hearing the answer.
He opened a file and handed me several photos showing a mangled car. I gasped; immediately, I felt Snape's strong hand gripping my shoulder.
"The details are rather sketchy, as no one witnessed the accident," Richardson told me. "But it was raining at the time, and you can see in the photographs that the road curves there. It was simply a case of too much speed for the road conditions."
I read through the police report filled out at the time of the accident, unsuccessfully fighting back tears. The Inspector passed me a box of tissues.
"What happened to their bodies?" I asked, my voice trembling.
Richardson looked through more paperwork in the file.
"When no one came forward to claim them, they were cremated."
"Are the remains available?" I whispered.
He searched through more papers. "I believe they're retained at the morgue for a year from the date of death."
I tried to form the next question, but all that emerged was a sob. Once more, Severus came to my rescue.
"How do we go about claiming them? May we take them back to Britain?" he asked.
"Of course. I can probably have the remains here by tomorrow morning, if that would be satisfactory."
I nodded wordlessly. The last thing I wanted was to visit a morgue.
Richardson discussed regulations about transporting remains into another country and what restrictions the airlines might have. It was all totally unnecessary, of course, and I tuned it out while Severus kept up the pretense of listening carefully to the information. It gave me time to collect myself, and finally, I found my voice once more.
"Do you have any idea of what happened with their home and their belongings?"
Inspector Richardson flipped to the last page in the file. "It appears that after several months their landlord was justifiably anxious to let the house again. Your parents' clothing and personal effects were boxed up and stored in our evidence locker. You would like those, I'm sure?"
"Yes." So the house was rented; at least I didn't have to deal with selling the property and all the red tape that it entailed.
We made arrangements to meet back at Richardson's office the next day. I clutched the ugly black purse under my arm as we walked out.
"Thank you for your quick thinking," I told Severus. "It never occurred to me that they would want to see my identification."
"Not a problem," he said quietly. "I should have thought of it myself, for that matter. We have the rest of the day, Hermione. What would you like to do? Would you prefer to go back to the Inn and rest?"
"No. I'd rather keep busy, if you don't mind. Or did you want to go back and rest?"
"No, I slept decently enough. I'm sure we can find something to keep us occupied."
We spent the afternoon visiting the Sydney Opera House and the Muggle Rocks area, finally ending up in the WizRocks shops again. Severus picked up some obscure Potions ingredients that were unavailable in Britain while I bought a book on Defensive Spells. I showed it to Snape, and he confiscated it at once.
"Interesting," he said, leafing through the book. "This may be helpful in my editing project."
I snatched the book back, smiling for what seemed the first time in forever.
"And I would be happy to loan it to you, Severus. All you have to do is ask."
"Cheeky witch," he muttered, but I could have sworn he was smiling as well.
…..
We returned to Richardson's office the following day. When he brought out the plain boxes holding my parents' remains, I fumbled for Snape's hand and gripped it hard, trying to remember to breathe.
"Again," Richardson said, "I'm very, very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you." I regarded the boxes with a wave of overwhelming sadness.
"The boxes with your parents' personal effects are on the loading dock. If you'll pull your car up there, someone will be available to help you load them," Inspector Richardson told us. "If you'll just sign this form, saying that we've turned this all over to you?"
"Of course." I scribbled my name on the bottom of the printed form, then rose from my chair. "Thank you so much for your help, Inspector."
"You're quite welcome, Ms. Granger." Richardson said, shaking my hand.
I picked up the boxes with the remains. They were so much lighter than I'd expected. Two lives, now confined to two small containers…
"I can carry them if you wish, Hermione," Severus offered softly from my side.
I gave him a wan smile. "Thanks, but I can do it."
Severus and I followed the directions Richardson gave us and found the loading dock with no problem. The man on duty looked duly puzzled when we showed up without a vehicle, but a simple Confundus Charm worked the trick. Snape shrank all the boxes, and we left, heading directly for the Floo Port Authority.