March/April 2013
Sirius kissed Hermione on the cheek as she brushed past him, hostess gift of chocolate cake balanced in her hands. "What brings you to our humble abode?" he asked. "Ran out of evil to do?"
She rolled her eyes and looked for a place to set the cake down. Remus rescued her and pulled it from her hands with an offer to cut slices for all of them in the kitchen. "You've never been humble in your life, Sirius," she said.
"Truer words," he admitted, and waved toward one of the chairs in his flat. "We don't do fancy here," he said. "Cut off from the family wealth, and all."
Hermione sat down and favored him with one of her warmest smiles. "You've been avoiding me, Sirius. I thought we were friends."
Sirius wanted to snort at that but it had been true. When she'd been the awkward Muggle-born he'd adored her. She'd been another Lily, though less confident than his best friend's wife had ever been. Hermione had wanted approval. Lily had assumed she had it. "We were," he said and sat down and kept watching her. The girl he'd known over a decade ago, the girl who'd been his friend, would have squirmed under that scrutiny. She'd have started to talk to fill the silence. This woman didn't. She just smiled back at him as if she were happy to sit for hours in companionable silence. Even his horrible mother hadn't had that level of self-possession. An unwilling grin of admiration forced it's way onto Sirius' mouth. "You've grown up," he said.
"People do," she agreed. When she smiled at that the lines appeared around her eyes were the only hint on her face she wasn't still an 18-year-old girl. "Even you, Sirius."
"Dark magic," he said. He'd never been one for skirting the issue. "Your lot tortured Ginny Weasley."
If he'd expected her to go on the defensive, he would have been disappointed. She merely shrugged and said, "She took the tiger by the tail. If you do that, you shouldn't complain when you get bitten." Sirius opened his mouth to retort but before he could she added, "And it wasn't as if Dumbledore didn't know what he was sending her into."
Sirius closed his lips and looked at her without saying anything as Remus came back into the room and set her slice of cake in front of her. She picked up her fork and said, "He does like to use children, doesn't he."
Sirius exhaled and looked up at Remus, who refused to make eye contact.
"Do you think he'll hesitate to use Belladonna?"
Once she asked that Hermione turned her attention the cake. She'd picked it up at the bakery she knew Remus adored and it outpaced anything any of their staff could make. Even Narcissa Malfoy hadn't been able to lure the baker to work for her and she had every intention of enjoying the rich chocolate in front of her. It helped that the long silence meant Sirius was considering her point.
"What about werewolves?" Sirius asked as she licked at her fork.
"I could guarantee full recognition as human," Hermione said. "Subject to human laws of course." She dimpled at Remus who closed his eyes as she offered to erase centuries of legalized discrimination with one sentence.
"Hermione," Remus said. She didn't bother to hide the way a smile tugged up the edge of her lips at the agony in that one word, and the pleasure wasn't just because of the bitterly sweet chocolate lingering in her mouth. There was a special thrill in seeing people betray ideals for their personal gain. Everyone loved the idea of light and goodness until it was balanced against a beloved niece and legal rights.
"You can't do that," Sirius said. "You don't have the power to do that, Hermione. You're just a researcher."
"But if I did?" she asked.
"I won't join you," he said. "No Marks."
"All you have to do is stay neutral," Hermione said.
"Pass the law first," Remus said.
She stood to go, brushing imaginary crumbs from her lap. "Look in the paper tomorrow," she said. She kissed Remus on the cheek as she passed him on her way to the door. "I'll let myself out."
. . . . . . . . . .
Werewolves Recategorized As Human
In a surprise move, Minister for Magic Astoria Malfoy (née Greengrass) brought a motion to the Wizengamot to classify werewolves as human rather than as Beasts or Beings, as has been historically the case.
"With the development of Wolfsbane," Minister Malfoy said, "those unfortunate souls afflicted with Lycanthropy can maintain their human minds during their transformations and legislation needs to keep pace with scientific progress."
The measure passed with little debate, though Thoros Nott commented that, with Wolfsbane allowing werewolves to regulate their own behavior even in wolf form, it might be possible to eradicate Lycanthropy in one generation.
Funding has been set aside to supply all known werewolves with Wolfsbane.
. . . . . . . . . .
Narcissa had decorated the whole of the Manor for Easter but her sparing of no expense had found its fullest flowering on the back terrace. Warming charms turned the whole area into a pleasant spring day, proving yet again that even the British weather yielded to the power of a British witch. Flowers spilled out of urns and bowls filled with chocolate eggs crowded the tables. The Castle Crew, home for the holiday, ran around excited by the freedom from school and the sugar no one pulled out of their hands.
Astoria kept one eye on Scorpius as his blond head darted around guests while she dimpled and smiled and charmed the political visitors. To the little ones this was a sweet-fest. To the adults it was a chance to meet informally and make deals no one would talk about in the Ministry itself. "Mr. Podmore," she said to the square-jawed functionary who'd been asking her about research gains the Unspeakables had been making. "I'm so sorry, could you say that again?"
He nodded his head and his straw-coloured hair shook like barley in the wind. He began his long, dull query again and a few minutes into it she already knew her answer. Budgets were always an issue but her administration was committed to furthering research. It was a pat answer she gave multiple times each week. The children shoved at one another and tossed chocolate eggs back and forth as he talked and talked. Scorpius had slipped his arm around his sister. Not his sister, Astoria reminded herself. Rose was his cousin, her niece. That didn't reduce her urge to find out why the girl had started to cry, why a tear dripped down her face, in the slightest.
Scorpius dragged the girl by the arm up to their mother and Astoria had to excuse herself again as children interrupted her focus on the dull Sturgis yet again. She could feel Lucius come up behind her and felt a surge of gratitude that her politically astute father-in-law could read the room as well as he could. "Tell her, Mama," Scorpius insisted. "She'll see her mother again this spring."
Astoria froze.
Lucius froze.
Sturgis took a step toward the children with fierce interest burning in his eyes. "Rose Weasley," he breathed out as though he could see the girl for the first time. Illusions sometimes worked like that, and the spells guarding the girl depended quite a bit on people seeing what they expected to see. Strip that away and a ginger-haired girl with freckles stood there next to her blond cousin. Lucius and Astoria looked at each other, and before Astoria could even move to draw her wand, Lucius had his out.
"Imperius," he hissed and the man drooped into a puppet as Lucius spun out a series of instructions. No one had the late Vincent Crabbe's facility with that spell, but Lucius was no slouch and Cassandra Malfoy was his de facto granddaughter. When he was done Sturgis Podmore smiled a bit blankly at Astoria and complimented her on the party before ruffling the once-again-blonde girl's hair and telling her she should just watch what her mother did and she'd grow up to be an exemplary hostess.
After he'd walked off, Astoria allowed the tiniest of shakes to show in her hands. "That was close," she said. She looked at Scorpius, who'd already shrunk into himself. "You must be more careful," was all she said and he nodded, more chastised by that simple sentence than he would have been if she'd yelled.
"It will be over soon," Lucius said. Scorpius swallowed and looked from mother to grandfather for permission to go before he ran off, Rose's hand in his.
. . . . . . . . . .
"What are you doing here?" The researcher looked up at the dazed looking Ministry employee who'd somehow found his way down into the bowels of the Unspeakable area. "The Department of Mysteries is a restricted part of the building."
"Have to," the man began, then walked past him, his eyes on a cabinet filled with arcane and poorly understood artifacts. The whole room of scientists launched themselves at the intruder before he could open the door and do who-knew-what with one of the risky toys they collected.
"It's not that they are inherently dangerous or evil," one of them said later to the reporter who cornered him outside the trial. "Fire isn't evil either; we use it to travel and cook and… it's just that when you misuse something you don't understand, you can get hurt." He considered the lightning sphere the man had been reaching for before they had finally tackled him and called security and shuddered. He'd been so weirdly focused on reaching it to the point of ignoring his own injuries. "This man," he began.
"Sturgis Podmore," the reporter said.
"Right, this Sturgis Podmore could have inadvertently done the equivalent of starting a forest fire. That part of the building is locked for a reason."
"Do you think his sentence to Azkaban was too harsh?" The reporter leaned forward, her quill almost vibrating with excitement at landing this interview. The Sturgis Podmore trial sold papers and this exclusive interview might get her moved to a more exciting beat than scientific research.
"No." The Unspeakable seemed to draw the word out as though he regretted it. Azkaban was truly a terrible place, but trying to steal secrets from the Department of Mysteries couldn't go unpunished. "I think it was a just decision."
. . . . . . . . .
Draco sorted through what felt like endless reams of parchment as he walked through the halls of Castle Library. He'd apparated over that morning, had a cup of coffee Greg's new find had made, and said hullo to Luna, who had decided to paint one of the walls in the main hall with what seemed to be an elaborate mural of apples. Trees grew up the wall, and she was adding a brown-skinned witch in a black bustle dress plucking one of the fruit. Judging by the pile of cores already outlined at the witch's feet, it wasn't her first. "Nice," he said.
Luna smiled at him rather absently as she floated a brush with a brilliant red to her hand and began work on the apple in the witch's and. "The cadmium in this pigment is a poison," she said. "Apple of life, apple of death."
"Right," said Draco, and shuffled his papers again as he fled to safer ground. He needed to go over the results of the most recent round of investigation into members of the Wizengamot. Amelia Bones remained squeaky clean, despite their best attempts to find a way to blackmail her, but she also seemed concerned about the standards at Hogwarts and was coming round to the opinion that perhaps Albus Dumbledore would be better off researching down in the Department of Mysteries than running a school. It wasn't what Tom wanted - he seemed peculiarly obsessed with humiliating the man - but it was a step towards getting control of the school without violence and Draco had hopes he could convince at least Hermione to talk to Tom about removing Dumbledore first, and crushing him second.
He pushed the door open to the library, planning to spread his papers out on one of the tables, only to be met with a slight obstacle to his plan.
Hermione was spread out on the table. She was naked, she was tied down, and Draco realized with absolute horror that Tom Riddle had some kind of small whip in his hands.
Draco backed away as quickly as he could, papers fluttering to the floor, hands over his eyes, as he gasped out as many apologies as he could as he escaped out the door without a single crucio thrown his way.
"Merlin," he could hear Hermione say even through the heavy wood. "That has completely spoiled the mood."
. . . . . . . . . .
Albus Dumbledore just blinked at the man in his office. He'd seen Gellert so many times in his mind's eye since their fateful last meeting that it took him a moment to realize the man really was there. The lines on his face helped. The Gellert in his memories and dreams remained eternally youthful, eternally beautiful. This man wore his imprisonment in the wrinkles and crevices that marred what had been perfection.
"You look well," Gellert said.
Dumbledore stood and reached for his wand, but his hand had no sooner twitched than Gellert waved and the wand skittered away until it came to rest under a chair, almost huddled against the baseboard. He wondered, briefly, if that counted as winning the wand. Gellert made no attempt to summon it, so perhaps not. The Elder Wand could be a tricky thing. He'd have preferred the man to just battle for it. This kind of trickery made him nervous.
"Try to remember I'm not a school child," Gellert said lazily. "And I'm not likely to make the mistake of trusting you again."
"You murdered my sister," Albus said. He wasn't sure, of course, but Ariana had died and he preferred to tell himself Gellert had cast the curse that had struck true. Not being trusted shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, but Dumbledore felt the sting of that smirking accusation. Old friends and lovers know the best places to wound.
"You betrayed me into decades of imprisonment," Gellert said. He might have been discussing the bright weather of early spring for all the concern in his voice, and that hurt too. Albus kept a serious expression of appropriate concern on his face to mask the thousand emotions that threatened to throttle him just because this man was sitting there, in his office. "I suspect a close examination of both our memories of that day would cast a different light on poor Ariana's death." Gellert lowered himself to a chair in his former lover's office eyed the spinning silver balls on the desk and glanced up at the portraits. Some of them looked back curiously but most pretended to be asleep. It was the office of a successful man and as Dumbledore stood he seemed suddenly like the awkward child Gellert had always brought out in him, eager to please and impress the older, more powerful boy.
Dumbledore lowered himself back down onto his chair and said with all the ease he could muster. "I didn't realize you were back in Britain."
"Oh?" Gellert raised an eyebrow. "Young Tom Riddle and his lovely wife arranged my release. I think a few Imperius curses might have been involved but I am a free man again." His legs stretched out and his ankles crossed and he became the picture of aristocratic insouciance. "Naturally, I came running back to your - what do they call it? - your loving embrace."
"What do you want?"
"Why would I want anything?" Gellert steepled his fingers together and pressed them to his lips as he pretended to consider the question. "To see you, perhaps? To give you the opportunity to beg my forgiveness."
Albus folded his own hands with outer calm in response to that suggestion. "You wished to subjugate huge swathes of people to your own ambition," he pointed out. "Your experiments with the Dark Arts - "
"Fascinated you." Gellert interrupted him. "Try not to paint yourself as the noble defender of the downtrodden, Albus. It's tiresome and false."
Albus Dumbledore summoned a more genuine smile at that. "I am not that boy anymore," he said.
Gellert's smiled bared teeth he must have had fixed since his stay in prison. They gleamed with perfect whiteness and not a single one dared to shift from their straight lines. Albus found himself fascinated with that mouth anew, even half hidden as it was behind hands. "That's why you're losing." The lips moved and his eyes were so busy tracing the shape of the words and watching the teeth flash and disappear again that it took him a moment to realize what Gellert had said.
"We aren't losing," Albus said. "Love always wins."
Gellert laughed at that. It was the same full-throated sound, filled with joy, that had helped enchant Albus so many years ago. "I suppose it does," he said and Albus could feel the flames licking at his hand where the cursed ring sat. "I suppose it will."
Albus closed his eyes and when he opened them Gellert was gone. He fetched his wand and checked how many hours it was until he could drink his next potion before he sat down again, feeling very old and very tired.
. . . . . . . . .
A/N - Thank you to cocoartist, who beta read and brit picked this for me, and to Mags0607, who combed through all the last chapters looking for inconsistencies and dropped plot lines, and whose help in that area has been invaluable.
