"Concealment and disguise are essential to survive" Luna informed, as she walked in the seemingly empty room.
Her wand pointed to a slight deflection of the light near the wall, and a young woman cursed, no longer invisible.
"Dark wizards won't hesitate in killing you on the spot, if they get even a glimpse of you" the blond woman answered, and, turning around, she resumed her absent pace. "To conceal, is to keep yourself safe… most of the time… You cannot trust allies to find you, either."
A young man blinked, unaware that he wasn't part of the carpet anymore.
"You must trust your determination and skills. Otherwise, you are all alone."
"I can't believe you are running late again, Harry" Hermione protests, watching him over the folder she has been carefully studying.
The wizard smiles as he rubs his hair with the towel, and watches her eyes return to the document. The strength he puts on the task lessens. Today Hermione is wearing beige. It suits her.
"You don't have to wait for me" he points out.
"Don't be ridiculous"
The witch approaches him and dries his hair with a wave of her wand, and moves to adjust his robes, arranging its neck with the ease of experience. He is, as usual, taken aback, but she never wants to hear about it and he lets the shiver come and leave and the warmth fill him as a humming wave of her magic. The folder floats beside hers. She grasps it before turning around.
"Come on" she orders, handling him a sandwich with a hand as the other grasps his. He tries to hold her back for a sec to put on his shoes, but he's still jumping on one foot as she steps into her chimney and right into Ron's private one in the Ministry. Greeting his secretary, she walks towards the hall that leads to the aurors' headquarters. The auror finally manages to keep up with her by the time they reach it. Beatrice greets him brightly and he smiles uncomfortably before being pulled to an empty seat.
"I hate meetings" William is complaining, again; a summoned pillow his hands behind his head, and he leans back, a bit too comfortable. "It was livelier when we had death eaters to fight, and didn't have to fill the time with pretty words."
"Leave it" Hermione whispers to her partner, without looking at him. "You should be eating instead."
Harry, who has been eyeing his colleague with murderous eyes, deviates his gaze towards her as she answers the magically modified cell phone and starts speaking in German. The pang of jealousy he feels seeing her smile, vanishes as his bracelet turns blue cold under his skin. Her eyes are narrowed now. He hopes it's not bad news, and keeps looking at her even after Luna has floated to the center of the room and started speaking.
"What was it?" he asks in a whisper.
"Nothing, I hope" she answers, and pushes her lips together in a tight line.
Teams leave as they are given their assignments. The room is half-empty by the time Harry stops giving her wondering gazes.
"Buckbeack" Luna calls at last, "you have kept up with the new findings."
"We have" Hermione answers for them.
Harry basks in his luck. He hasn't. But trust Hermione to cover for him. She always did.
"Then you know where this leads" Luna makes an old baby shoe levitate towards them, and Harry catches it easily.
"Where are we going?" he asks in a whisper.
Hermione looks at him severely and then the portkey activates. Her expression is so familiar that it amuses him. Anyway, the smile dies as soon as he realizes where they are.
Azkaban.
"What are we doing here?" he asks, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
Not every day he goes to prison without warning.
"If you had read the memos" Hermione explains calmly, "you would have known that the Lefayes have relatives here."
"Here?" Hermione nods. "Death eaters?" he asks again, and she nods once more.
The reference sounds strange in his own voice; so many years without using those words –even if other aurors did often-. Not that he could spend months without thinking about all those teenage years (their whole adolescence, really), but it has all been in the past. He hopes it still is. Her slight frown –so small that she must think he hasn't seen it- worsens the fright he feels. However, it keeps been impossible.
"It has been twenty years, Hermione…" he answers, green eyes narrowed with dismissal. "Voldemort's sectaries are long gone, to Azkaban or to hell, and those remaining are safely tucked away, not to say, a little bit too old to think of newfound glories."
He sounds defensive, and her gaze flies to where Harry's hand rest now: over his front.
"Harry, it's not me who sent us here" she reminds him. "It's just a lead. The only one we have, really."
"Relatives?" he asks again.
She shrugs.
"Not close ones. Besides, the victims were too young to be death eaters themselves. Nevertheless, you know, everything regarding the wizarding war make everyone's hair stand on end. So we have to check."
She feels his distress subside slowly as he supports his body against the wall beside an antique window –the only one in the room, and probably more ventilation than the prisoners have access to-. Azkaban sure must be a much happier place since dementors has been vanished from it, but it keeps being the worst prison ever. The greyness of the walls and the melancholic sound of the waves breaking against the rocks keep them quiet as they wait for the officers. A moment later, Harry perches on the window. The view is amazing, the sea giving them a taste of infinity… and of their own insignificancy. Not that the prisoners would enjoy it, in any case. It's bearable just because they are heading home tonight.
Hermione stares at him, instead.
She tries not to admire the view of him cut against the grey sky. She's honestly trying not to see how his head leans forth in a thinking posture that makes him look poetic yet real, his male scarred hands grasping the stony ledge, his green eyes almost grey as they take in the view. She wonders how the wizard of the story managed to get out his own heart. She kind of needs the same spell right now.
His voice gets her out of her dreamy state.
"Hermione…" he turns his eyes to her, piercing. "About yesterday…"
"What about it?"
Her walls are raised instantly. He looks baffled.
"Oh, I just… thought… I hope you don't mind…"
She sighs and tries to be more open.
"You can ask, Harry" she encourages him.
She can't think of anything she did yesterday that would prompt uncomfortable questions. Not that she ever does anything that would.
"It's just… Yesterday, when Ron spoke about your sister… well, I thought I felt… I might be wrong" it isn't probable, but he has learned to leave ways out of itchy questions, "I thought I felt fear in you. I hope it's not me causing it."
She freezes. Hell, she sometimes still forgets. Actions, she can control; feelings, just mask, and that's so tricky…
She hopes he hasn't picked on her latest moods.
She realizes he'll notice if she lies.
"Actually, I think it is" she sighs.
He just blinks.
"I'm sorry, Harry. I guess…" She hasn't given it a lot of thought since the previous day, so she makes and tests her conclusions at the same time by speaking them aloud. "I guess it's just my own middle-age crisis. Duham is young and talented and beautiful and not even in a different way, she's practically me, eighteen years younger! And being replaced…"
"But you are too, 'Mione."
She stares at him, tilting her head to one side. He seems lost for a moment, as if it had slipped from his lips without him wanting it to.
"I mean… you speak as if you weren't beautiful or talented or… well, I guess you don't have her age but why would it matter?"
She smiles brightly, and for a moment he remembers a very similar conversation they held twenty-three years ago. Funny, how he remembers things that happened a lifetime ago. As long as they have something to do with her.
"Thank you for that, Harry. But you know? Men tend to love us more the younger we are… and they aren't wrong: Ron's arguments are solid…"
"So you were worried about me not loving you…?"
Her smile freezes and she frantically explores his feelings through their bond. After a second, she breathes: he has stated the obvious conclusion, but he hasn't really weighted it or he wouldn't be so casual. She almost lost the rest of his speech while panicking.
"… or preoccupied about being replaced by her as an Auror, or as a friend? What does one thing have to do with the other? And with me?"
Hermione is still wondering what part of his statement describes her better. And worried that it might be the first. After what seemed an eternity, she answers.
"I honestly don't know, Harry. Maybe I'm scared that if you get a new girl you'll forget about your old friends…"
"Did you feel that way with Ginny?"
'Now that you mention it…' she thinks.
"It would be worst with a new girl" she answers tentatively. "At least Ginny grew up with us… fought by our side… But by no means I want to be a burden, Harry! I mean… if you are ready to restart your life… love life, that is… I'll be all right. Nothing has to change because of it."
But she sounds lots sadder than she meant.
The man's hand closes in a fist just before grasping the phone.
"Speaking" he greets.
"Your hounds are here."
His office has a great view, but it does nothing to distract him from the words.
"You know someone would get that call. I can't stop it from happening."
"Then I can't stop the rest from happening" the voice claims darkly. "Your time is limited. Call them back. "
The intermittent sound of the device informes him that he's no longer heard. Not that his fears and hopes would get a welcoming ear from the man to whom that voice belong.
"Hermione, stop!" Harry cries desperately, trying to get past her shield.
His spell bounces, again, making reverberate the powerful energy she has summoned, through which can barely hear her screams. The expression of the guard before her wand is easy enough to interpret. Even with their image so distorted.
"Hermione!"
The wizard has cast a muffliato over the scene, covering her back, but sound or no sound, the officers must be about to come, he can maintain an illusion just for so long, and he doesn't know if this kind of behavior would be accepted, even from her, who has the cleanest file in the entire Force. And seeing how impeccable she has been until now, he can't quite grasp the change, when or why. It isn't as if the dribbling woman on wheelchair, eyes lost and mark fading on her wrinkled forearm, should have shocked her so; for Merlin's beard, she deserves what happened to her! That, quite probably, have been an enormous amount of Crucios received from her master's hand, though Harry agrees twenty years is quite a long time for such sequels to appear.
But this is serious. Hermione is attacking a guard, and all of a sudden he is confusedly aware that, of all the rules she would have chosen to break, this is the one that would have her kicked from the Auror Force. He can't quite grasp the idea of losing his partner. He simply fights with all he has.
There, her shield cracks. He forces his way through it, holding his breath as he manages to pass through what seems frozen jell-o, then pulls her hands to her back to stop her wand from pointing at the man, simultaneously immobilizing her. The man fells from the height she put him to, sit on the floor, and immediately starts panting and crying something about crazy witches and demands. Harry registers his friend is shaking violently. Without thinking, he points his own wands towards the guard and obliviates him. Hermione no longer seems about to jump on anyone, Harry lets her go slowly to put the man in a magically induced sleep.
Breathing in sync with his partner, he allows the momentary peace to settle. The dribbling woman near the corner is now clearly visible; the shield has disappeared. With the death eater's mutter, bubbles of saliva come from her mouth.
"Hermione?" at last he asks.
The sorcerer leans back, on his chest, dropping her head. The essence of pumpkin and treacle tart surrounds him now, mixed with that unique aroma of her that only surfaces with adrenaline, and he closes his eyes. Plenty of times, she has taken him out of the frontline, bleeding and in excruciating pain; that smell means safety, and comfort, and thrill. Even now.
"Hermione?" he gently makes her turn, hands on her shoulders. "What was this?"
"You shouldn't have obliviated him, Harry" she pants. "You can be in serious trouble."
"We'll be in trouble together, then" he answers. "Not that it's new. I just want to know what happened. This is beyond good cop – bad cop. It's clear that you were interrogating him, but that's not the prisoner we came to interview."
The woman shakes her head.
"He put the prisoner in this state."
"Wasn't she sick before?"
"Her chart didn't mention anything like this" Hermione argued. "The judge decided to deprive her from her freedom, not from her health. And from what I'm seeing, a dementor could have been called to her."
Harry stares at the woman, and agrees.
"What, do you want to investigate the treatment they give to prisoners?" it would be just her, to pick another cause to defend. "Does this go beyond the case? And why are you blaming him?"
Hermione closes her eyes, breathes in, deeply. All she sees, is the Lefaye heir, his skin turned inside out even as he lies in his baby blue sheet. She can't answer to his latest question. She doesn't know. Hers is logic, not instinct. The guard didn't reveal a thing, scary as she had been. But she watches the unconscious man, and sees a tiger mask over his features.
"To interrogate her will be useless now" she answers instead.
"Obliviate him you too" Harry asks. "Just in case."
This time, there is a tiny smile in her lips as she turns towards him.
"I trust your spell, Harry" she says. "I'll add some memories, though. Let's put everything as we found it."
Hermione takes care of the man, as he moves the woman's wheelchair towards the table. "Knight" she was muttering with a weird smile. "Walpurgis". He doesn't pay attention to any of it.
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