Chapter Six:

Underneath the Magnolia Tree

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

Emily Dickinson

I

"How did you find me?"

The bench Hope Potter sat on was akin to all the other's littering the street. A rosy cedar white-washed in pale lacquer, iron pins and shafts curving into great arms at the side. There were patches of the original wood colouring peeping through in corners, weatherworn and battered, the arms rusted in fixes, someone called Luke having carved his name into the back panel, and someone else, perhaps years later, adding the harsh slash over it.

It was that that made Hope think.

This bench had sat here, in this very spot, underneath the shade of this magnolia tree in bloom for an age, and Hope wondered about the people who came before her, sisters, colleagues, secret lovers, maybe even children skirting below to hide in a game of tag. Strangers, every last one, who had come to this very place she had, found themselves sitting in this very spot, from all different places, with all different faces, and all distinct hearts.

What did they talk about?

She tried to imagine it; what normal people would speak about. Maybe boys and Homecoming dances, maybe workloads and nauseating bosses. Maybe mortgages and car insurance, and which wine to pair with lunch that day.

"I used to be a runaway myself. I know all the tricks, and I know what to look for in a crowd to spot one."

Hope turned on the bench, to face the other woman sitting across from her under this magnolia tree in bloom, and her vision waned. Hope wasn't a normal girl, she never had been, and her point of reference was skewed.

Who knows what the hell the people before her talked about on this little bench in New Orleans, but it definitely wasn't this.

"I'm not a runaway."

Perhaps Hope's reply had been too harsh, but she was a Gryffindor at the end of the day, through and through she was red and gold and something reckless, or just plain wrecked some would say, and the thought of running away from anything doesn't sit right with her, feels like an insult to injury.

Feels like a slap.

Even in her darkest days, Tom in her head and she on the Ministry floor and Sirius's dead through the Veil, Hope had never, not once, thought about running away-

Except here, except now, except with this woman, and that feels... Bad.

Wrong.

Weak.

Here Hope wants to run away. Here, she doesn't want to listen to what has to be said. Here, she's afraid of what it could all mean for her if any of what the woman had said was true-

Hope suddenly feels weak, and she hates it. Sort of hates this woman too, for making her feel this way, for making her feel like a wound that has had its scab picked off. Something open and enflamed.

Hope turned back to the throng around them, people going about their day no more aware of the women on the bench than the flower was of the magnolia tree it bloomed on, the idle ding of a bell above a shop ringing as doors swung open, the clack of boots and heels striking pavement stones, and fried pastries sugary sweet in the air.

Her senses were still haywire, still far too much all at once. Hope would still take them over this conversation any day of the week.

"According to you I am only a day old. I was born yesterday… Quite literally. I shouldn't even be able to lift my bloody head yet."

The woman-

Hayley, she had said her name was, a name more secure for Hope to think on than the other moniker she had gave herself, shuffled beside her. Hope wanted to reach over and pat her on the shoulder, do something to ease the evident discomfort of the other woman, having never done well at seeing someone else in pain.

She doesn't.

Hope wants to, but she doesn't.

She was having a hard enough time holding herself together, let alone trying to do that for someone else.

"You don't believe me."

Hope rubbed a tired, calloused hand down her face.

"Look… It's a lot, alright? Murder-happy covens of Witches, who aren't at all like the Witches I know, millennia old curses, original Vampires and Hybrids and packs of Werewolves, and… And me, a supposedly kidnapped born-yesterday sixteen-year-old who is… What did you say, again? A Tribrid? Part Witch part Wolf part fuckin' Vampire. Can you really blame me for my reluctance? I've seen and lived through some weird shit in my time but this… This takes the bloody cake."

From the corner of her eye, Hope saw Hayley nod.

"How do you explain it, then? You drained that man, you shifted into a wolf, and your blood-"

"My blood supposedly finished your transition into this thing called a Hybrid. Yeah, I heard you the first time. Doesn't make it make more sense, sweetheart."

Hayley didn't take the shot harshly, in fact Hope saw her smile at the dripping cynicism, nearly tenderly, almost wistfully.

Almost as if she were remembering someone else.

Hope sort of wanted her to blow up, to spit and shout, to flail her hands around and maybe go to strangle her. If Hope had ever spoke to Aunt Petunia that way, she wouldn't have been able to piss right for a week.

Hope knew how to handle that sort of reaction. Hope knew how to handle those sorts of people. A fight would have been easier than-

Than this.

Whatever this was.

This woman with her green, green eyes and her soft, soft voice, and her refusal to rise to Hope's prodding no matter the bite she adds to her tone.

"I would have told me the exact same thing if we changed places, but it's your father who would have looked at me like that with sweetheart."

Hope shook her head bitterly.

"That answers nothing."

And it was also painfully… Indictive. The idea that Hope and Hayley, and this mysterious Niklaus, might have something in… In common. That they might have many things in common. That there might be a grain of truth to-

No.

II

Hayley slid along the bench, until their thighs brushed, denim to denim, hip to hip.

"I… I don't think I have all the answers. I barely understand what went down yesterday myself-… It happened so fast. You were there-"

"Ah, yes, about to be sacrificed by power mad Witches-"

"And they had us cornered-"

"In a graveyard with ghosts charging the Witches up like undead batteries-"

"And then that man appeared, the one with the ridiculous hat and beard, and you were gone-"

There was no quip this time, no wisecrack, instead, just a question. A shy, tepid question caught on a breeze.

"Hat and beard?"

Hayley wavered, and finally Hope met her eye and held it.

"Yes… A pointy hat and an absurdly long beard. He wore robes of some kind… Blue. Bright blue."

A wind filtered passed, knocking free petals from the magnolia flowers above.

"Ginger?"

Hayley nodded.

"Was. He was going grey, but you could still it in streaks. He wore strange glasses, cresc-"

"crescent moon shaped."

Hayley shuffled anew.

"You know who he was."

Hope doesn't answer her, instead her gaze flees back to the crowd ahead, but Hayley saw her jaw, a tension to the line, thoughts being chewed between her teeth before they could become words.

Push just a little further.

"He… He had this bizarre necklace. I remember seeing it through the fire. A gold ringed disk with something inside. A tube of gold glitter, maybe."

It was that that did it. Hope made a sort of strangled noise, and her hands clenched into fists in her lap. For a moment, Hayley thought she was going to bolt, run, perhaps even blow and swing a fist at something, someone, but instead-

Instead she folded back into herself, sagging against the bench, and that was somehow worse.

"An hour glass."

Hope murmured, and Hayley nearly missed it if the younger woman hadn't repeated herself, seemingly stuck in her own mournful echo.

"It was an hour glass filled with golden sand."

Hayley doesn't respond, she didn't need to, as Hope reached up the sleeve of her jacket, fiddled with something up there, and then pulled back out, bringing something along with her into the light of day.

A chain. A gold chain, with a pendant clasped in her hand.

Hope didn't look at her, defiantly refused to as she handed it over, waiting for Hayley to take it blindly. She did, and the hand retreated back to a lap, now slack, and when Hayley opened her own grasp now containing the prize, she saw what had been tied up around Hope's wrist.

The gold was worn now in places, the inscription circling the disks hard to make out, but in the middle-

In the middle was an hour glass, top belly shattered, sands long gone but a few stubbornly sticking grains dotting the side.

"Where I'm from, we call it a Time-turner."

Hayley's hand clenched around the necklace, so tight the jagged glass nearly cut slithers into her palm. She wanted to squeeze tighter, thought maybe the pain would keep her feet on the ground rather than float on up and away like she suddenly felt like she was.

"Time-turner? What's a time-turner?"

III

"It's a magical artefact. Witches and Wizards use it to time travel. Normally, the furthest it goes is forty-eight hours. Only backwards, never forwards. Apart-"

Hope chokes up here, feels something hard and hot in her throat, but she pushed through it roughly.

"Apart from that one. It's thought to be the first ever created. Made by some Peverell Wizard fighting death again. The story went that it broke somewhere in the eighties-"

Eighties.

The exact year Hope Potter was supposed to be born.

Supposed.

"It's been useless ever since. Just a pretty bauble. Albus Dumbledore gave it to me when I was thirteen. Said it was… Said it had been in my family. Said it belonged to me. Said-… He said I would need it one day. Thing is, as that Peverell found out so fuckin' long ago, when he tried to stay with his dead wife still alive thirty years in the past, things lost in time end up yanked back to where they came from, especially when the traveller stumbles back across a Time-turner again. And they always do. It's almost like... Like gravity. The Time-turner pulls you in no matter how far you run from it, and then pulls you home with or without your consent. It drove him mad, the Peverell Wizard, I think. He ripped himself apart in a time stream in the end trying to stay back in time. A time… A time not his own."

Hayley's voice was low and soft, just like that damned breeze blowing around them.

"Albus Dumbledore-"

"A man with a pointy hat, a great beard, periwinkle robes and crescent moon shaped glasses."

There wasn't much more to be said, it was all there, in pretty little pieces, like the shards of glass missing from the time-turner, a horrible, dreadful picture, if one put the fragments in the right place, shaded the lines just right, and asked just one last question.

One little question, and weren't those the worst?

"What year is this?"

Hayley hesitated, maybe a little bit confused in the sudden turn of questioning.

"It's… It's two-thousand and eleven."

A noise ruptured out of Hope's chest, and she, herself, thought it might have been a cry, maybe a yell, and it was far too late before she realized it was laughter.

Cracked-smashed laughter.

"Hope?"

IV

It took Hope a while to calm down, took her a while to really… Compute what she had heard, to put it all together, longer yet to really get a grasp on what it meant.

"I went to sleep yesterday, and it was nineteen-ninety-eight."

The girl shook her head, laughter dying in her quaking chest.

"Thirteen years… Thirteen fuckin' years. How do you lose thirteen years?"

By Albus Dumbledore's meddling.

That was how.

And it made sense, now, didn't it? The phone call? Hermione had sounded rougher-

Older.

Why she had cried when she heard Hope's voice. What had she said? We thought you were-

We thought you were dead.

Merlin, how old would she be now? Ron and Neville too? Twenty-nine. Nearly thirty.

Her friends were nearly thirty when yesterday they had been sixteen, maybe settled down in little family units, maybe even had steady nine-to-fives and houses of their own and-

Shit, children.

They might have children.

Children they let bounce on their beds, and forced to eat vegetables, and all that other family stuff Hope had seen on TV in grocery adverts and hallmark cards. And here she was, Hope was still sixteen, and she was in America, thirteen years into the future, displaced and dislocated, a joint popped free of its socket and left to dangle-

"How do you lose sixteen?"

Despite it being gently said, delicate and a little bit strangled, it felt like a hot knife slipping between Hope's ribs, especially when she turned, faced the woman beside her who had spoken the question, and saw-

Saw those green eyes, so much like her own, damp, desperate, and-

And if this woman wasn't lying about Albus, the man who took the child, this Hope Mikaelson, than she wouldn't be lying about-…About her child, and the sacrifice, and all the batshit-bullshit that had led them here, her and Hope, underneath this magnolia tree, and-

Merlin-

The paintings.

Her paintings on their wall.

Thirteen years would be quite the time to get a collection.

Thirteen years-

That's all Hope can think. Thirteen years. Thirteen years. Thirteen years.

"You're my-"

Hope can't say it, the name from before, the one that came after Hayley Marshall. It won't come out. It rises from her gut, and it sticks like buckeye seeds in her throat, and it stays there, trapped somewhere between out and in, too big and too thorny.

Her hand, however, lifted from her lap of its own accord, hovers like a dragonfly in the air, buzzing, hesitantly reaching, before taking the leap and curling around a shoulder.

It strikes Hope something hard and vicious when her hand felt something warm and real and solid beneath her fingers as if, even now, she expected her hand to pass right through, that this woman and this bench and this whole bloody city was some half-mad conjuring from a half-mad girl dreaming her half-mad dreams about that funny, always out of reach thing called family.

But Hayley Marshall was real, the bench they sat on as real as the magnolia tree above, and the broken Time-turner between them was real, and-

Hayley's hand came up to grasp her own, and that too was bizarre for Hope. It was soft-skinned but calloused, and it was those callouses, those little patches of rough skin, hardships grasped and hardships dropped, that make the empty hallow of her chest ache.

You're my-

"I'm your mother."

V

Hope's hand was shaking. Terribly. Horribly. Even clutched around the shoulder, it shook and shook and shook until even her elbow felt like it was having its own little earthquake, her entire world shivering in an upheaval, and she didn't know where anything would land once the tremors stopped, if anything would land right at all.

The breeze blew, carrying with it the curled, twisted petals of the Magnolia flowers above, and Hope watched them go, watched them dragged along, watched them-

Take off.

Where were they going, she lazily, dazedly thought. Where was the wind taking them? Would some land in the middle of a road to be run over? Would others be caught in curls and braids, tender smiles given as they were plucked from the locks? Would some wash down into drains, or reach somewhere else, somewhere higher, somewhere brighter?

She's just like them, those petals, abruptly, irreversibly. Hope was caught on an unseen wind, carried along, being taken to places and faces unknown and-

"Where do we go from here?"

The question escaped her before she could stop it. There was so many matters to be raised, still so many mysteries, the exact whys and how's of it all, why Dumbledore would go to such lengths and how the Prophesy was fulfilled if Lily and James weren't her… Weren't her-

But that was all Hope had.

Where do we go from here? What do I do with this… Thing suddenly in my trembling hands? A thing she's never had before, a thing that had only ever been in a grave previously, a whole realm of existence away, that other word she cannot say, a thing she doesn't know what to do with, how everyone else naturally enjoyed it, and-

Hayley's hand squeezed her own.

"I don't know… But maybe that's okay. Maybe… Maybe we can figure that out, together?"

There was too much loaded into that question, too much unseen weight to it, so much bloody-

Hope.

There was hope in Hayley's voice, and that was a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and something else entirely that made Hope wish Dumbledore was here, right now, so she could lunge-

But Dumbledore wasn't there, it was just Hope and Hayley and this fuckin' Magnolia tree, no one else she could point a finger at and blame, no way she could turn to indignant anger, the easy thing to do, and instead Hope was left to face that loaded question head on.

So what did she do?

Hope did what she normally did. She landed on familiar sarcasm.

"I don't think you're going to like me very much, love. I'm a bit of a cantankerous wanker."

Now it was Hayley's turn to laugh, a broken, bright thing, and it took Hope a minute to realize she had answered that loaded question already, her use of going, a verb, a potential that Hope was going to be there for Hayley to not like very much.

And it was true, Hope realized.

Despite not knowing what the hell she was doing, what all this could mean, this woman was her-

How could she turn away from that?

Hayley's hand fled Hope's, instead charting a path for her face where it was joined by the other hand, cradling cheekbone, holding on.

"You're so much like him, aren't you?"

Hope doesn't know who him is in reference to, she has an inkling but she doesn't want to follow it, isn't quite ready to, but Hayley, thankfully, didn't seem to expect her to.

"I've missed so much, haven't I?"

Yes.

Yes Hayley had.

She'd miss first days at school, first spells and first fights. She'd missed the first time Hope had broken a limb in a Quidditch match, and the first time she had broken someone else's, Malfoys'.

She'd missed the bad things too.

Nightmares and dead Cedric Diggorys. Basilisks and Horcruxes. Wars and Funerals.

Her own child's lonely, forlorn death.

And so had Hope missed things, being tucked in and read bedtime stories to. Having her scrapped knee kissed and bandaged with cartoon dinosaur plasters. Having her hair ruffled or being hugged on her birthday. Being grounded for sneaking out or sneaking in alcohol and cigarettes.

And maybe that was why Hope couldn't run from this, couldn't flee, couldn't boot it.

Even without the Sanguinis Hereditas spell, the blood heritage charm meant to protect pureblood lines from 'infidelity', the truth is right there, in their faces.

Hayley's her-

Hope can sense it, deep down, that knotted up wolf in the middle of her chest, that little bit of raw animal instinct she's always had in spades but has finally taken shift of her, perked up and alert and wagging its bloody tail.

Ours, it says.

One of us, it echoes.

Family, it starvingly finishes.

So Hope reaches up, lays her hand atop the one on her cheek, and she holds fuckin' on because-

Because, sometimes, that's the only thing the petal caught in the breeze can do. See where it takes them, come sewers or sunshine.

VI

"I guess…"

Hope began.

"I guess… If we're both immortal now then… Then we have plenty more time not to miss things at all."

It was pathetic, really, this little seed of fledgling potential. A vague, tentative future being offered up on a fractured platter. Yet, it was all Hope could give, the deepest her pockets could reach. She might not know exactly what she was anymore, her senses, this feeling, dying and coming back as something more, but she does, and always has, known who she is in her soul.

She was vindictive shit when Hope wanted to be. She could be mean and cruel, even on her good days. She was paranoid, and suspicious, and, as Snape and Malfoy could surely attest, easy to slip into dubious obsession when she thought she'd found a target for her mistrust.

She was loud-mouthed and brash and bold, and bloody quasi-mad half the time. Sometimes she acted before she thought, and when she did think, it was normally dark little dreadful things that filled her head. Murder. Mayhem. Megalomania.

The usual for a teenage girl, Hope would cynically remark.

She was scarred too, both on the outside, in her mustn't tell lies and her lightning bolt, and inside. She had an irrational, unreasonable fear of aunts and uncles, couldn't even meet Hermione's that one time she visited the Granger family home. She was claustrophobic from a childhood spent locked away in a mouldy understair's cupboard. She still couldn't force herself to eat a full meal after spending a youth only having scraps she had salvaged from the kitchen bin. Fuck, she can't even say the word mothe-

That is to say, Hope was not a completely good, entirely ideal person. She was, funnily enough given the recent circumstances, an achingly human person. She had scars, and she had her problems, and she had her moments of malice. And… And she wonders if Hayley could see that. If Hayley could see all that, every stain and tarnish Hope had within, and if she found her-

Deficient.

Not exactly the rosy-cheeked, babbling, bouncing babe. No lace or bows or softness to be found. No. That, if there ever had been a chance for Hope to be any of that, to have any of that, it was… it was long, long gone.

Gone yesterday, when Albus Dumbledore whisked her nearly thirty years into the past for reasons perhaps only he knew.

Not exactly what you wanted, am I?

The truth was Hope was never what anyone wanted. Not really. And not ever for anything more than what she could be used for. Hope was okay with that. Truly.

But would Hayley be? Would this Niklaus and this Elijah and this Rebekah and-

This… This was Hope. This was all she had, as meagre, paltry, terrible as it was, as she was, Hope couldn't change it. It must have been hard for Hayley. Expecting a child and ending up with-

With fuckin' Hope Potter. Trouble extraordinaire. A broken, empty, Horcrux of a girl with barely two bits of sanity left to rub together.

The hand on Hope's face was warm, hot in a way that had nothing to do with heat but with a sense of branding, fingers flexing over the bend of a cheekbone as Hayley's thumb swept along the arc.

"Years, and years, and years I would say… If you want those years?"

Hayley's voice sounded wet, damp and barely strung together, but, thankfully, no tears were falling. Hope didn't know what she would do if she began crying, as she didn't know what to do exactly now, with that open handed approach. Hope couldn't remember the last time someone had asked her what she wanted.

Maybe they never had.

But there it was, and now there was that brilliant, horrible thing called choice laying prone at Hope's feet, and she didn't know whether she should kick it away or help it stand back up, felt herself split in two by it, contradicted and undermined.

What did she want?

Hope… Hope didn't have a clue. Had never really thought about it… Had always been so busy fighting this war or running for that Horcrux or dying that way to really consider her own… Desires.

What did she want?

She had wanted once before hadn't she? She had wanted Sirius to take her away on the back of Buckbeak, to go to the seaside and make that ever abstract notion of home somewhere more ambiguously constructed safe. Hope had spent nights upon nights envisioning it, as best as a war orphan could, even after he had flown away that fateful night and left her behind on the astronomy tower. What living with someone else who cared could be like. What having a family might-

What did she want?

She also remembered quite clearly not wanting to die, but still walking to Voldemort with her wand down all the same. She remembered giving up her sixth year to go hunting for the end of the conflict. She remembered having to sacrifice so much, little pieces of herself, dreams and school and friendships and normalcy, just so one day people might not have to live the way she had, do what she had to do, become what she had become.

What did she want?

Want.

Yes.

Want.

There was only one thing Hope Potter had ever, truly, completely wanted.

"I want to go home."

For once Hope does not mean Hogwarts, the closest thing she had ever known a building come to be a thing called a home, or even the Weasley Burrow, not Grimmauld Place or Godric's Hollow. Those had been homes for other families, both alive and dead. Never really… Never really hers.

Hope had simply existed there.

No, Hope wanted to go home. To an actual home. Somewhere finally safe. Somewhere where family could be. Laughter, joy, arguments, sorrow, all of it. Hope wanted it all, and it bleeds into her voice, swells the words to something fat and heavy and bloated.

"I just want to go home."

The rest, whatever the rest could be, Hope can figure out later.

Hope and Hayley could figure out later.

The hands on her face quake, so does the smile on Hayley's face, shuddering moments of painful happiness.

"Then let's go home."

VII

"And for the last time, don't come back until you've completely searched the Lakeview area, or you won't be leaving this house in one piece again!"

Niklaus Mikaelson snarled at the ashen face of Marcel's fledglings on the backdoor porch, slamming the door behind him as he whirled back to face the kitchen.

Elijah was at his side immediately.

"I couldn't find any sign of her in the Central City district."

From the hallway leading into the open foyer, Rebekah came marching in. Klaus glanced her way expectantly, and then slumped when she regretfully shook her head.

"I scoured the Bywater for hours… Nothing. She wasn't there, and I don't think she has been either."

Bracing his arms against the kitchen island, elbows locked and knuckles white as he grasped the rim, Klaus's head hung low as his mind whirled.

Marcel spoke up before he came into the kitchen, joining the disarrayed family, from the other hallway leading to the living room.

"Not so much as a blond hair in the Lower Ninth Ward. If Hope's been there… She knows how to hide her tracks real well."

Klaus kicked off from the island with an almost marble crumbling shove.

"She was right here! She couldn't have just disappeared-"

Again.

No. Not twice. Klaus couldn't-

He wouldn't-

"She has to be here somewhere. We're just not looking hard enough. I've checked the Gentilly, the French Quarter, Uptown and Mid-City areas myself. One of us has missed something."

Elijah, smoothly, intervened, popping the button of his blazer to shirk the expensive jacket off, rolling crisp white sleeves up to elbow.

"Perhaps if we employ your witch, Davina, Marcel-"

Marcel rolled his eyes.

"We tried that, remember? She's resting after whatever magic Hope has lashed out at her when she got too close to sensing her with the location spell. All Davina could figure before she was thrown across the room was that Hope was in New Orleans. That's it."

Marcel edged deeper into the kitchen.

"Where's Hayley? Maybe she and her little pack of overgrown mutts can sniff out a trail-"

Klaus cut him off sharply, swiftly, stonily.

"Be very careful of what you speak next."

Marcel dropped the matter immediately, hands flying up, open palmed, placating.

"I'm just trying to help."

Before the situation could get much worse than it already had, that is, Niklaus to take his evident anger out on Marcel and snap his neck, Rebekah spoke up from the doorway.

"Hayley's already gone to visit the Labonair pack about three hours ago. They're likely out in force on the streets already searching. Maybe if we wait for them-"

The back door opened, swung wide, and Hayley stepped up onto the glossy tiles, boots clicking as she made her way into the kitchen.

VIII

Klaus swivelled on the brunette Hybrid.

"Has the Labonair's found anything?"

Hayley moved further into the kitchen.

"I didn't make it to the compound. I was-"

Klaus broke, and broke hard, all gritted teeth and jumping neck tendon, and yellow shimmer to eye.

"What do you mean you didn't make it to the compound? You've been gone for three hours! I'm sorry, is this not an urgent enough matter for you-"

"Oh, come off it. Just listen to me-"

"Should we all just sit around and twiddle our thumbs and wait for Hope to just stroll on back in through the door-"

"Nik-"

"Or, better yet, how about we all just go have a nice little nap and forget this ever happened-"

"Niklaus!-"

The bark to Hayley's voice, and the flare of yellow eyes, was just enough to stall Niklaus long enough for him to notice her very slow, and very pointed, glance to the back of the kitchen, to the open doorway, to the crux of the porch outside.

Klaus followed her gaze, saw the shadow first, deep and dark against the white tile. Boots came then, attached, as they normally were, to legs, and a chest, and arms and legs and finally, a head.

A head of tangled sandy blonde curls, green summer eyes and a dimpled face all too familiar to any Mikaelson.

Hope stood in the doorway, and smiled.

"Am I interrupting something?"

IX

England: Ministry of Magic

Cafeteria, Third Floor

Hermione Granger sat at the small table in the middle of many, surrounded by the idle chatter of workflow breaks, grasping at her cup of Earl Grey barely sipped from.

"I'm telling you, Ron. It was her."

Ron Weasley sat opposite her, drabbed and dreary in his grey Auror uniform, for once only playing at eating, poking his roast with a clean fork, pushing mash potatoes left, right and around.

"We've been through this so many times, 'Mione. Don't you remember the last one? The one who said they got spiked with a Polyjuice and it wasn't wearing off and that's why they looked different? The one who swore left and right it they were Hope, who wanted the keys to the Potter Vaults and Grimmauld Place-"

His fork, finally, clattered on the porcelain as he abandoned the act all together, squaring Hermione with a tired look.

"That's all they ever want. Or, if not the money, it's a trap like the other three. Rogue Wizards knowing giving off signs of Hope will draw us, Minister Shacklebolt, or any of the old Order out. Maybe even that one from France who kicked off a media storm when they publicly claimed they were Hope reincarnated-"

"That's different-"

"Is it?"

A sigh, soft and suffering, and Ron's face tempered, fleck of grey at his temple sparking white in the candlelight of the cafeteria of the Ministry.

"I get it, alright? I wish this was Hope too, as I wished all the others who came forward were… but in the end they weren't. This one will be no different. We were both there that day. We both saw her and Voldemort disappear in that strange light. Neither one left anything behind. They're… They're dead. It fucking hurts. I know. But we have to accept that. I thought we had accepted that."

Hermione stared down deep into her cup of tea, the dark reflection of herself bounced back from the steaming surface, the hint of a wrinkle just beginning to peak like dawn at the corner of her eye.

"We still don't know what that light was. What that magic was. No one has been able to figure it out."

Ron shook his head.

"But we do know it was powerful. And… Thirteen years, Hermione. It's been thirteen years… Why would Hope ring, on a Muggle phone of all things, in the middle of the night thirteen years after she died-"

"Disappeared-"

A sharp glare was shot her way before Ron, determinedly, carried on.

"After she disappeared? Why say she's killed Voldemort when he's been gone for thirteen years too? It-… It doesn't make sense, and it's too good to be true. Do you really think if Hope was alive, she would just… What? Turn her back on us for all these years? No. No."

Hermione, finally, relinquished her tight grip on the cup, pushing it away from herself.

"But what if it's not a trick? I got in contact with the phone company and the number came from America. Better yet, they managed to find the area code. 504. New Orleans, Ron. The number came from New Orleans-"

Ron scoffed.

"And that's somehow meant to make me believe it's Hope? That makes it only more questionable. Why would Hope be in New Orleans after all this time?"

Hermione opened her mouth, closed it again, tried all over once more.

"I-… I don't know. Yet. But doesn't that make it more real? If this was another person trying to cash in on Hope's name and legacy, they would have used something of her past like all the others. They wouldn't have come out of left field with New Orleans… And it's Hope, Ron. You remember her just as much as I do. If there's something strange and impossible going on, she's in the heart of it."

Ron sank deeper into his chair.

"Was."

He asserted.

"She was in the heart of it."

Hermione couldn't… Begrudge Ron his stubbornness on this matter. It had been so long, and so many other's had tried to steal Hope's towering ghost for there own, to get their hands on her fame and her money and-

It hurt.

It bloody hurt, that each and every time, the chance those claims brought were eventually smashed on the ground like glass on concrete.

Ron was merely protecting himself from another great fall.

Hermione wished-

Hermione wished she could do the same, wipe the foggy memory of the call she had received last night from her mind, that she had gone back to sleep and left it there…

But when it came to hope, like the girl herself, it was hard to kill.

"You didn't hear her last night. I swear Ron… She sounded just the same. She-"

Ron reached across the short distance of the table separating them, grappled with her hand, and squeezed.

"You're not going to let this go, are you?"

Hermione rolled her hand, threaded her fingers through Ron's freckled ones, holding on just as tightly, smile small and sad.

"I can't. Even if it is a trap or a trick… Better we find out now. Better we stop it now before it inevitably escalates. But if it isn't-… if it's Hope-…"

Hermione sighed.

"I've got to go. I've got to see. I want… I want her to meet little Rose and Hugo-… And, Merlin, if she sees how big Teddy has grown-… There's so much-… I just-"

"I know."

Ron grinned woefully.

"I know. That's why I've booked off a month from work this morning when you first told me. I'll watch the kids, and you go find out what's going down state side."

Hermione laughed incredulously.

"Then why argue with me now-"

"Because I don't want you to get your hopes up-… I don't want to get my own up. We have to have realistic expectations here. If… And that's a big, big if, this is, somehow, Hope… She was still gone for thirteen years. We need to know why. How. Hope wouldn't have abandoned us. Hope never ran from a fight. We both know that."

And they do.

Deeply.

"Which means either something bad has or had happened, she's been captive to something or someone all this time-… We… We didn't look hard enough-"

That was a hard pill to swallow, for both Hermione and Ron. To think they had just not seen her, not looked hard enough, ignored-

Ron shook his head, clearing the darkening clouds from his mind.

"Hope or not Hope, we need to know what's going on. I can't let this go, either."

Hermione ran her thumb down the expanse of Ron's hand, thumb stalling on the underside of his wrist, feeling the soothing thump, thump, thump of his big heart beating there.

"When did you get so wise?"

Ron winked at her.

"I think you've finally rubbed off on me after all this time."

Hermione grinned.

"Or Molly's hits with her spatula's have finally knocked some sense into that big head of yours."

"Explains why I married you. I'm suffering from brain damage-"

"Ronald Weasley!"

A beat.

"When do you go?"

Hermione gently pulled her hand free, reached anew for her cup, and sipped at the lemony sweetness.

"I'll leave for New Orleans this afternoon."

A.N: Still debating the pairing. Now I'm stuck between Silas (big thank you to one of my lovely readers for bringing this one up! I hadn't even thought of it before) and Kai. Both have their good points and bad, but I'm still currently leaning slightly more towards Kai for the simple fact of all the Doppelganger drama Silas comes prettily packed with lmao. Yet, the idea of Hope introducing her bloody boyfriend to her family, and him turning out to be nearly twice the age of her own father, and Klaus's reaction to that, is very nearly too hilarious to pass up. I've got to give it some deep thought and fast. I'll most likely have a solid decision made by next update as Hermione, next chapter, starts uncovering plot things that either lay Silas way or Kai way. As for when you can hesitantly expect a next update, I think relatively soon. I'm having such a blast with this fic, at the moment, that my poor little fingers are typing away whenever I have a spare few moments lol.

Well, that's it folks for this chapter. Hope you all liked it. As always, thank you so much for the engagement, I hope you are all enjoying this so far, and I will hopefully see you all again soon with a freshly ironed chapter. Don't forget, if you have a few spare moments, and a few thoughts bouncing around your head, don't forget to drop a review!