It was Molly who had found out first. She had Apparated to London to buy a few last minute things for Christmas gifts, and when she had returned, the house had been in ruins, and the Dark Mark floated lazily in the winter sky, mocking her with the cruel and undeniable knowledge of what had happened.
Fred had been out with his girlfriend, Genevieve Delacroix. Ron had been called away earlier in the day to an Auror's assignment in Poland. Percy hadn't made it to the gathering because Penelope had gone into labor, and he had naturally insisted on being with his wife for the birth of their first child. Ginny had been detained helping a flurry of last-minute Christmas shoppers buying their child a magical pet in her shop. But the Weasley's tradition of family, of togetherness at the holidays, had left the lifeless bodies of Arthur, George, Bill, and Charlie to speak for it.
Hermione sat now playing chess with a listless Ron in her room at Hogwarts. Following the attack, all the surviving Weasleys had been immediately taken into sanctuary at Hogwarts. There was no reason to suppose that the Death Eaters wouldn't try to make a clean sweep of the family of the defiant late Minister of Magic.
"Queen to B7," Ron said, and his jasper queen marched diagonally across the board and gave Hermione's rose marble pawn a good solid right to the face. Hermione grimaced. Minerva had given her the set for her birthday, and she was still getting used to the pieces' quirks and pleading them to work with her. At least she was a better player than before--she and Snape played often, though he worked his obsidian set with more ruthlessness than she treated her pieces.
"Have you seen your niece?" she queried softly, carefully removing the unconscious pawn and placing it beside the others he had captured. Ron truly was distracted--she was beating him soundly. "Bishop to C4. Check."
Percy and Penelope's new daughter, Maria, had been born at Hogwarts. Mother, father, and baby were doing physically all right. All the Weasleys seemed to be understandably lifeless though; they were in profound shock. Poor Fred, she thought sadly, remembering how he was almost never seen without George. They always took so much delight in confusing us as to who they were. No more of that now.
Ron nodded, a ghost of a smile coming over his features. "She's beautiful. Mom's taken to her…" He trailed off, the unspoken thought of, Because she's remembering when we were all newborns, as clear as a storm cloud in a gale. "How have you been, 'Mione?" he asked softly. "I hardly see you."
"The war for you. I'm doing all right, though it hangs over my head a lot to get them ready to go out and fight. It's worse than being a student--there, if you make a mistake, it's only yourself that ends up--" She broke off, realizing that death and the war were not subjects he wanted to hear about at the moment. "I'm enjoying it very much," she concluded lamely. "It's a bit funny to be teaching the ones we went to school with, but it's good. How about you?"
"Oh, the usual." His blue eyes studied her intently. "Hunting down Death Eaters, trying not to get killed." He looked down at his hands for a second. "It should have been me. I'm the damned Auror here: why George? All he did was run a joke shop. For God's sake! Bill was a money curse-breaker and Charlie worked with dragons. What did they do that they were such a danger to the Death Eaters?" He clenched his fists in anger.
"Ron, they didn't do anything wrong. They're out to kill anyone they can," she protested. "They don't give a damn whether you're a toddler or the Minister of Magic."
"Just unlucky, is it?" he said sharply. "Where the hell were the Ministry spies? They saved the MacKinnons, the Bealeses, the Gerards--why not my family?"
The words cut through her like an icy blast, and the guilt of those they hadn't been able to save returned, gnawing at her heart. She felt some need to defend her actions, to say she was doing the damn best that she could, and that she regretted every single one that slipped through their fingers. But she couldn't; she had sworn to Snape and Dumbledore that she would tell nobody. A spy was only of use if secret, and no matter how good people's intents, Veritaserum would readily pry things out of them. So it was the fewer who knew about her spying, the better.
"I'm sure they're doing the best they can," she said lamely. "I know that's cold comfort." Inside her mind was racing to try and remember any possible reference to an attack on the Weasleys, however subtle. There had been that statement about going after "larger prey", but there had been so many possibilities of important magical figures all across Europe. It was as though Voldemort had said he'd kill one person in Whitechapel: impossible to know whom.
The Weasleys made sense, in retrospect. After all, he had been the Minister of Magic, and with it being Christmas, the Weasley family would be gathered together. It was the perfect time for a massacre. She looked at Ron with pity. Logan Gwalch, the new Minister of Magic, had seen that the Weasley family had been properly buried. None of the Weasleys had been permitted to attend for fear of another attack by Death Eaters trying to finish the job. After all, as Ron pointed out, he was the Auror and thus still a threat.
"Maybe," he sighed. "Knight to C4." With that he stayed largely silent, seeming grateful just for her mere presence as they played on. They chatted of idle things, she noticing that he was wearing the annual Weasley sweater that he usually disdained with something close to pride now.
Work as an Auror had definitely matured him, given him a sort of gravity and self-confidence. He was far from the boy who could change into a whining prat at a moment's notice. "Have you heard from Harry lately?"
She gave him a wry smile. "He sent me a book on accomplishments of Muggle-borns in the magical world for my birthday, saying he bet I'd be in the next edition." It was a thoughtful gift like she'd been used to from him in previous years. "I'm not quite sure why he insisted upon tucking two tickets to the Cardiff Dragons inside. No, I haven't physically seen him since summer in between my two years at Lothlorien. I was so busy with studies, and he with Quidditch."
"Mm," he agreed. "He's changed," he said sadly. "I think when Voldemort came back, you know--"
"You're using his name?" He never had before.
"He killed my family, 'Mione. I'm not going to pansy around it by calling him You-Know-Who. That gives him fear and respect, which he isn't getting from me." He resumed his former thought. "When Voldemort came back, I think we all expected him to get through Hogwarts and then immediately march on him to vanquish him, yet again. That's damn heavy to carry on your shoulders at sixteen--to be the salvation of an entire world? Maybe he just wanted to be normal again, to be a kid. Not that it excuses it…maybe if he had stepped up to fight the war would be over. But I think I can at least understand it. He's as human as you and I, much as we like to think he's something more." It was largely what Snape had said, actually, she recalled.
Two more moves and it was in checkmate; his tiny king bowing his head respectfully to her and leading what remained of his army from the board to Ron. Her pieces were chortling in triumph as she guided them back to the slots of their leather case.
Harry arrived after dinner on Christmas Day, a day after the Weasleys arrived. Predictably, Dumbledore called a council of the teachers to hear what the formerly absent knight for the Light had to say. There were whispers going up and down the corridors as she strode towards the conference room. "Harry Potter's back!"
She was surprised to see the pitiful remnants of the Weasley clan there as well, extra chairs crammed around the table. She took a seat by the fire, grateful for its warmth. The doors clattered shut with protest and they looked up to see Snape striding towards the table, obviously in haste. "My condolences," he said quietly to Molly Weasley. She nodded slightly, and Hermione caught the slight look of guilt in his eyes as well when they met hers. Both of them were wondering if they had missed something vital.
Then she turned to see Harry. He sat there in a simple pair of dark grey robes, eyeing all of them a bit nervously, a slight flush in his cheeks. He looked like a penitent little boy about to be punished, realizing with dread just what he had done.
Dumbledore cast a Mustelicas Charm. Wisps of brownish smoke began whirling into every nook and cranny of the room. The Ferreting Out Charm served to explore a particular chamber for any sort of spying devices or suspicious magic not bearing the hallmark of its caster. If there were anything detected, it would emit a loud hiss and turn a bright blue. It did so around Minerva. "I lit the fire with Incendio," she explained, as Dumbledore nodded and Banished the smoke. The room was clear.
Once everything calmed, Harry spoke up, tentatively at first. "I--I'm sorry that I ran. Ron…" He looked at his old friend. "If I had…" His voice failed him, cracking with grief. The Weasleys had been like family to him, after all. Molly Weasley put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He's human too, she thought. And if they can forgive him, we all can.
There were still eyes faintly gleaming with resentment at what could have been seen as Harry's desertion, but the blame was put aside in pursuit of a far more important goal: the fight against Voldemort. For that, grudge was put aside and they were united under a common banner. The past was gone and could not be helped: they had to look forward to a dark and uncertain future first.
"Never mind that," Ron told him quietly. "It's…it's done, Harry. All we can do," his voice taking on an edge of steel, "is move forward. And fight."
Harry nodded in relief, wiping his glasses off on his robes. "I'm ready to do what I have to." His determination was not open to doubt. He looked at all of them earnestly.
"Tell me what I need to do," Molly spoke up next, her voice quiet but with a distinct edge: the anger of a mother whose children had been attacked. "I'm not going to stand by."
"We are doing much of what we can," Dumbledore said, obviously apologetic. "We have spies helping to eliminate the Death Eaters one by one--you know that, Ron," his gaze sliding over herself and Snape with minimal pause. "And other spies working to get to the intended victims before the Death Eaters may. Still, there is much to be done."
"We're doing nothing," Percy protested, handing a peacefully sleeping Maria to Penelope, "sitting here waiting to be attacked!" There was ire in his eyes that she didn't remember from his days as perfect, bookish Head Boy.
"What would you do?" Persephone asked. "Declare outright war?"
"Yes!" Fred spoke up. "We're all sitting ducks, damn it! We've been sitting and trying to ignore all of it through Fudge's time, and Dad was just starting to turn it around. I'm not going to let that work go to waste while Gwalch pansies around."
"We have," Draco spoke up, "from the time of the Dark Lord's return, killed twenty Death Eaters, directly or indirectly. But there are still many more all across Europe, and the Dementors, the vampires, the ghouls, the Bann Sidhe…"
"We can't just wait for him to pick us off one by one," Harry agreed. "People die in wars. Muggles know that all too well. Whether you're a fighter or a bystander, you might die. I think it a far, far better thing to die on our feet rather than live on our knees."
"It can't just be a mass attack," she added quickly. "We'll have to go at it by and large as we have--undermining them, spying and saving their intended victims, setting up ambushes, causing them to divide themselves. Until the magical world is united and ready to make a stand against Voldemort, we don't stand a chance in open combat."
A resounding approval went around the table. "You do realize," Snape said tone serious in the first words he had said at this council, "that we will be working outside Ministry jurisdiction. If the Ministry catches us, Gwalch will not be kindly inclined to rebels in a time of war going outside official orders. If the Death Eaters catch us, be assured we your return will not be bargained for."
"The Ministry," Ginny said with nearly tangible loathing, "didn't do anything to protect Dad. They told him to handle it himself--he was the head of it all. If we're rebels, so be it."
In short order, it was agreed that the long-awaited but hesitant step to break free from the defunct and paralyzed Ministry was to be taken and loyalties sworn to the cause under the effects of a Truth Spell. They all stared at each other as if in disbelief over the step they were taking. It was the crossing of the Rubicon, all bridges burned behind them.
They filed out of the room almost in disbelief, heading for their rooms. Hermione shook her head as if in a daze when Harold Lowe asked her what the homework over the holidays had been for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Poor lad was brilliant, but absentminded with little things like that. She couldn't seem to form a coherent reply to something so small right at the moment, managing only a, "Tomorrow, Mister Lowe," through a dry mouth.
She was aware of Snape walking beside her a few moments later. "I'm sorry for Weasley's family," he murmured softly, the two of them stepping aside into an alcove. "I know you cared for them." Molly and Arthur Weasley had become like her mother and father for the magical world and the Weasleys like the siblings she had never had--underneath her robes she wore a Weasley sweater of heathery wool that she had gotten last Christmas at Baker Street.
"Thank you, Severus," she said softly, realizing numbly that he knew all too well how it felt to lose family--both his parents had died when he was twenty, even younger than she was now.
She remembered his question at the Yule Ball if she loved him, and how close she had come to saying that it was quite possible that she did. But now was not the time, or place, for romance. It was war now, and when even tomorrow was a dim and uncertain shore that might possibly never be reached; she didn't want to hurt or be hurt by loving only to possibly have one of them die. Still, in her heart and her head, she knew it to be true. She was fond of him.
Before she could say anything further, he murmured softly, "Good night, Hermione," gently taking her hand for a moment and squeezing it, the pressure of his fingers like a lifeline, and then fading away into the darkness. She listened until the dim echoes of his footsteps on the flagstones faded away, and then went towards her own room. She would sleep uneasily tonight.