Chapter 25
Harry sat back in his desk chair as he took one last look at his copy of the Daily Prophet; the five year old picture of himself and Hermione which had been taken at the ceremony where they'd received their Order of Merlins looked back at him. Their younger selves didn't look any happier than he felt at the moment.
He could only assume that the paper's staff had chosen it because they were all dressed up. He knew they had access to more recent photographs. Ron had been quite literally, and not very artfully, cut out; Harry didn't imagine for a moment that was unintentional.
He chucked the paper at the office door just as Malfoy stepped through it.
"Well, I guess I don't need to ask how you feel about the article."
"How did you think I was going to feel about it?"
Malfoy shrugged. "You had to have known this was coming."
Harry shook his head in frustration. "There wasn't anything for them to write, it was a wedding announcement, the rest of this is speculation."
"Which is why I suggested that you at least throw them a bone and send them a wedding picture to appease them. They went from expecting to be able to cover the wedding of the century between the Boy Who Lived and a quidditch star from a prominent family who is a war heroine in her own right, on the grounds of an estate very few people have stepped foot on in decades- Merlin, I bet at least one publication was planning a special issue to feature it.
Harry snorted in derision.
"And what they got," Malfoy continued, making his way into their shared office and plopping down in his own desk chair, "was a three sentence statement that you got married a continent away, to a muggleborn witch whose barely been seen in Britain in years, and who they didn't even know you were seeing. And that you did it in front of twenty people, most of whom aren't even British, and none of whom have gone on record about it. Of course they're going to speculate!"
Harry ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. "The press adores and loathes me in turns. Why should I engage with them? I find my fame obscene, you know that."
"Yeah, but the fact is that you are famous, refusing to acknowledge it isn't going to make it go away. You should at least attempt to control the narrative," Malfoy sat forward, leaning towards him, resting his elbows on his knees, his expression as compassionate as Harry had ever seen it. "Listen, I understand why Weasley didn't comment. He's in a precarious situation, I almost even feel sorry for the git. But why don't you let me and Astoria make a statement? We can gush about the whirlwind courtship of two war heroes who found love together and about how honored we were to witness your nuptials, how gorgeous the bride was, etc, etc. They'll eat it up with a spoon."
Harry snorted. "And it won't do your reputation any harm either."
Malfoy just shrugged.
"I appreciate the offer," he sighed, "and I'll discuss it with Hermione, but the reason we went with such a simple statement in the first place is that we didn't want to rub the Weasleys faces in it. And I think allowing you, of all people, to talk to the press about our wedding would be doing just that."
"Have you heard from Mother Weasley?" Malfoy asked wryly.
Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. He had been uncertain how to relay the news of his marriage to the Weasleys. So Ron, Merlin love him, had volunteered to deliver a letter to his parents as well as an offer to use his mobile if they wanted to actually speak with Harry.
Days later and Harry only knew that they'd read the letter, he hadn't pressed his friend for more information than that. He already felt incredibly guilty about the way he'd placed him in the middle. "No, I'm not sure what I expected, a howler maybe?"
Malfoy snorted.
"Molly has a right to be upset. She's been like a mother to me and she didn't even get to attend my wedding."
"Maybe, but in the end she isn't actually your mother, and it was Hermione's wedding too. And we both know her presence would have made Hermione uncomfortable at her own wedding, no matter what that self-sacrificing little chit might have tried to tell you, and that would have been far more unfair. Not to mention, people elope all the time. Mrs. Weasley will get over it."
"Yes," Harry eyed the other man knowingly, "because your opinion on this issue isn't at all biased."
"I've never pretended Molly Weasley was my favorite person, but that doesn't make me wrong. Speaking of the self-sacrificing little chit, how is she?"
"What?"
"Hermione, how is she after the article?"
"Oh, I assume she's fine."
"You assume?" Malfoy asked pointedly.
Harry shrugged. "I haven't seen her this morning, she had already gone into work when I got up. She left a note, she seemed fine."
"And you didn't even bother to go to her office to check on her?"
"She couldn't be bothered to wake me up, so I assume she doesn't need me."
"Potter, are you kidding me? Your wife was basically just called a gold-digging mudblood whore in a national publication and you're up here pouting because she went into work early?"
Harry's head snapped up. "Watch your mouth," he hissed.
"I was only making a point. Just because they were more polite in how they said it, we both know that's what they meant and so will everybody else who reads it. That-" he pointed to the discarded paper, "was not kind to either of you, but it was much crueler to her."
Harry knew that Malfoy was right, but the fact was that in the four days since they'd returned from Florida he could probably count on one hand the number of hours he'd spent with Hermione, not counting the hours they were asleep. And he was angry, against his will.
He knew that she was swamped at work with some secret project which she wouldn't talk to him about, but surely she could have carved out a little more time for her husband of less than a week, right? It hurt that she hadn't needed him this morning, and a small part of him which wouldn't stop niggling at his brain, wondered if she, in fact, needed him at all. She'd lived without him for years. Perhaps she was regretting their rather impromptu wedding.
And the most annoying part about his whole thought process was that he knew he was probably being unfair. He knew how Hermione was when she got buried in her work and she had been honest with him about how busy she was. He was the one who'd decided to spring a wedding on her, also knowing that there was no time in their immediate future for a honeymoon. But the past few days had brought back all the insecurities of the last couple of years, and knowing better didn't actually make him feel better.
"If you're so concerned about her, why haven't you checked on her?" Harry sniped at Malfoy; it was always better to take his temper out on Malfoy than somebody who wasn't used to it.
"Because a lot of the things that the Prophet so politely talked around, I've said explicitly, to her face, on many occasions, and I thought she might not want a reminder of that today. But since you're being such an idiot I think that I will, she should know that some people care." And with that he jumped up from his desk chair and shot out the door.
"Damn it," Harry muttered and jogged after the man, calling for him to wait. Malfoy glared, but did as he was asked. .
When they reached Hermione's office Malfoy knocked briefly and it was Astoria who called for them to enter. Hermione was standing over her desk, which was covered in piles of papers and she was writing furiously in a muggle notebook. She didn't even look up as they entered. Astoria was seated next to the desk and Harry could tell at first glance that she was exasperated.
"Good morning, Hermione," Malfoy said politely, like she wasn't completely ignoring them.
She still didn't look up. "Hello, is there something that you needed? We're very busy."
"No we're not," Astoria contradicted flatly.
Hermione's head snapped up and she glared at the other witch. "We only have a couple of weeks!"
"I'm aware of that, but unless you have an entirely new theory then we're at a dead end again. Working yourself to death doing the same calculations over and over won't change that. Go home, spend some time with your husband, stop pretending that article didn't hurt your feelings."
"There's got to be a way to make it work, the theory is sound. And I don't care about the article."
"What are you made of stone?" Astoria snorted, "that article was awful."
"I'm used to it, hell everybody in the room is used to being treated like that. It doesn't matter, this matters," she brutally poked her notebook with one finger.
"Fine, but tell them what we're working on," Astoria gestured to himself and Malfoy. "That way at least Harry might stop walking around here looking like somebody kicked his puppy because his brand new wife suddenly disappeared into her work."
"Astoria!" Hermione hissed.
"No Hermione! Look at Harry!" She pointed at him. "I understand that this is a labor of love for you, but you're only doing more harm than good by keeping it from him at this point."
Hermione just continued to glare for a moment, but then her entire face fell and she finally looked at him, her eyes swimming with tears, she brought a trembling hand to her mouth. "Oh!" She gasped.
He just raised an eyebrow at her: hurt, confused, and more than a little annoyed.
"Astoria," Hermione began, Harry recognized the expression on her face as the one she got when she'd just had a breakthrough in her thought process, "we determined that the average patronus isn't magically robust enough. So we need an above average patronus," she recited, she was looking at him but her eyes were far off.
"Not just above average Hermione, the power requirements are impossible," he heard Astoria huff, "why are we still talking about this?"
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, and the definition of impossibility is literally standing in front of us," Hermione giggled, sounding a little hysterical, her eyes met his. "We were so caught up in the arithmancy, in calculating the power of the caster that we forgot about the nature of patronuses themselves," she said, her eyes never leaving his as she spoke. "Love, if you don't mind, would you introduce Astoria to Prongs?"
Harry rocked back on his heels, a part of him wanting to protest. "Okay," he said finally, finding himself unable to give any other answer, even though part of him wanted to be petulant and argue with her.
Her beaming smile and quiet, "thank you," made it worthwhile.
He pulled out his wand. "Expecto Patronum," he muttered. For a long time this spell had been almost as easy as breathing for him. He just didn't use it regularly because most other wizards couldn't, and it felt like showing off.
Prongs appeared and Hermione's beaming face lit up further.
Astoria's mouth dropped open and she literally fell back into her chair. She stared at him until he became uncomfortable and started to squirm.
"I'm sorry Harry," she jumped up and approached him. "May I?" She asked, extending a hand in Prongs' direction.
"Sure," he shrugged.
She glanced at Hermione and the two exchanged a look that he didn't understand.
"Yes, yes," Malfoy drawled, "this is very impressive. But I can perform the patronus charm too, why are you both looking at him like he's the second coming of Merlin?"
"Because he might be the second coming of Merlin," Astoria answered as she studied Prongs closely.
Hermione chuckled. "He's stupidly powerful, but I'm not sure I'd go that far. He's just always had a special connection with this spell and emotion based magicks in general."
"What could you possibly be thinking about in order to create a patronus like this?" Astoria asked, her eyes still remained unfocused, but as the words left her mouth she colored spectacularly and she looked at him in alarm. "I am so sorry! That was an incredibly personal question which I never should have asked."
Harry shrugged. He still wasn't certain what was happening, but this had gone from angering to amusing him; even if he still had many, many questions. "It's okay. I've been able to perform the spell for so long, I no longer need a specific memory, I just need to focus on a feeling."
Astoria just looked at him incredulously. "Are you even concentrating right now?"
"No, I don't really need to."
She looked at Hermione who was smiling with a mixture of pride and smugness, if Harry was reading her correctly.
"It's not an elegant solution," Hermione answered the other witch. "For future use we will need to re-work the theory, but I think Harry and Prongs could help us take care of the immediate problem, don't you?"
Astoria nodded vigorously and crossed the space between herself and Hermione to embrace her. Harry and Malfoy exchanged an uneasy glance at their witches' emotional display but Harry felt somewhat reassured that the other wizard appeared to be as much in the dark as he was.
"Okay," Astoria eventually said, "I assume you need to talk to Harry, I'm going to take Draco and catch him up on the situation."
Hermione just nodded. Harry didn't look away from her so he only heard the other couple leave.
Hermione took a deep breath and met his eyes. "Good morning, love," she said after the door closed. "I'm sorry I missed you this morning but I thought I had a breakthrough in my research and I wanted to get here as soon as possible. Ironically, what I really needed was sleeping in bed beside me."
"Are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Yes," she let out a little laugh. "I'm afraid I might have gone about this in the completely wrong way."
"What does that mean?" He prompted her.
"The thing about you, Harry Potter, is that if a person hangs around you long enough, they see so many extraordinary things that they stop noticing how extraordinary they are." She rounded her desk and approached him, holding out a hand towards him, giving him a choice about whether or not to take it.
He didn't hesitate to intertwine their fingers and pulled her against his chest.
"I don't know what that means Hermione, I feel like you're talking in riddles. What have you been working on and what did you need with Prongs?"
"I think he- you- can find the Silent Killer."
Harry's knees buckled. "What?"
"Yeah, it's something I've been working on for months. But it was only a thought at first..and then…"
"And then?" He questioned.
"And then," she looked up at him, her eyes sad and tired, she didn't pull away but dropped her arms, tugged a hair elastic from her wrist, and twisted her curls up on top of her head. "And then I didn't really get anywhere and Halloween and Sahmain came and went and that little girl…"
"Yeah," he sighed, knowing what she meant without needing to hear her say it.
"Yeah," she agreed, "as bad as it was to know what happened to her, watching you sink into such a depression, and especially given your own history with Halloween made it that much worse."
Harry's eyes fell shut. His response to the Silent Killer's latest victim had been troubling even to himself. He'd walked around in a stupor for at least a week.
But of course Hermione understood.
"I didn't want you to get your hopes up," she continued, "if I couldn't find him."
"It would have been enough for me to know that you were trying."
"I wanted to save you for once- not just make you feel better, but actually fix it."
Harry could only stare at her in disbelief. "Are you serious right now?"
She looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "Of course I am."
He just shook his head. "We'll be continuing this conversation later. But for right now, I'm happy to lend you anything I have at my disposal, including Prongs. But how will this help you find the Silent Killer?"
"Well, I started in August with the idea that I could find a way to search for him using his magical signature, given that he'd used the same charm on so many different occasions- it made it easier to build a profile- like DNA for magic.
Harry just nodded. He'd done enough research in muggle forensics- something he felt gave him a leg up in his own profession- to understand what she was saying.
"But it still wasn't enough to find him- tracking spells need a strong tether, you know that and we don't even know who this person is, much less having met him to place it on him."
Harry continued to nod.
"I had nearly given up, but you were so wrecked after Halloween that I couldn't. And that's when I should have told you what I was doing."
"Oh sweetheart," he breathed.
"No-" she interrupted, "I was wrong. Astoria had a point. Maybe at some point I had a good reason for keeping this from you, but particularly in the last week I just didn't want to admit that I might have failed you."
"You could never fail me." He picked her up and carried her to her desk chair and fell into it with her sprawled across his lap. "Tell me the rest."
"That's when I brought Astoria in, instead. She's brilliant, she's not exactly on the books, and I knew she would keep my confidence, if only because she cares about you too."
"Okay."
Hermione swallowed. "We started focusing on the ritual spaces he was building, we thought we could determine a way to track them as he was building them, that kind of magic stands out."
"Smart."
"But it just...it wasn't working."
"And then?"
"Honestly? We'd almost given up again. But then we were in Florida last week and you boys were burning the Thanksgiving turkey."
He laughed at the sudden turn in the conversation. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you totally manipulated us into cooking dinner!"
"Of course I did, I didn't want to cook on my vacation. I just didn't think that you idiots would be- well, idiotic enough to try and fry a turkey!"
Harry bit his lip. Thanks to his years at the Dursleys he was a fairly competent cook. And given that Hermione had promised to marry him on the Saturday after Thanksgiving he'd been in such a good mood that he'd not made a single protest when she'd blatantly manipulated the men on the trip into making the holiday meal.
He'd been feeling too grateful. Now he could recognize how thoroughly he'd been played. But he still couldn't bring himself to be angry, even over the memory of the pre-baked ham Hermione had purchased and hidden as a back-up in case they completely ruined the bird.
"We will discuss this later, witch, but please continue to explain."
She shrugged. "I don't remember what we were talking about at the time, but we were laying on the beach with the other girls and I think because we weren't thinking about it that it finally came to us."
"What's that?"
"A patronus, its designed purpose is to seek out the darkest of magic and chase it away."
"Yes," he agreed simply.
"But we know they can be spelled to send messages. So, our thought was, what if it could be used to do both?"
"Merlin Hermione."
"It gets a little complicated after that, I don't mean to patronize you..."
"No, a simple explanation would be very much appreciated."
"I theorized that perhaps they could also take and deposit a tracking charm."
"But it didn't work?"
"Not for me, not for the few employees we know are able to produce a patronus either. As Astoria said, the power requirements were far more than we expected."
"But me?"
"I'm-" she caressed his jaw "I"m not sure if you're going to love or hate this."
"Go ahead," he sighed.
"It's just a theory, and it's not something I'd ever share with anybody without your permission. But I think your mother's sacrifice did far more than just protect you from Voldemort. I think your magic is literally seeped in her love. I think that your magic is uniquely capable, in beautiful ways."
"What?"
"Well it has been in the past. Like a shield, and against more than just Voldemort. The way your magic has reached out to protect others has been nothing short of astounding, Harry. And I don't think it was always because you loved the others in question, but you have an incredibly deep capacity for the emotion, especially considering how you were raised."
He could only gape at her.
She pulled out of his arms and began to wipe at her face. "Damn it. I should have told you before now. I wanted to protect you, but I treated you like a child. And I definitely should have told you what I was up to once we were married. But, again, I swear, I just wanted to-"
He yanked her back into his embrace. "You've found a way to catch the Silent Killer?"
"I think so," she shrugged.
"And all I have to do is cast my patronus?"
"I'm almost certain, I'll need to run a few more scans…"
He cut her off, kissing her long and deep. "Let's get started, we'll talk about the rest later."
