Othello's disease
Harry summoned his broom. Duham was the first one to hold hers, after him. Her sister just bent down and grabbed one, the muggle way. The brooms still knew, as well as herself, that she did not like to take her feet off the ground.
"Well, who has played Quidditch?"
Several hands were shot to the ceiling. Duham's, included.
"Let me guess: seeker?" his mentor asked discreetly. The girl smiled. Hermione saw little stars in her eyes, and suddenly Azkaban, Parkinson and everything related was forgotten; there are follies worse than others.
"We're looking for maximum speed here" he addressed the class. "I want you to fly as fast as you safely can, and then faster, as you feel more confident. Those hunting you will not pamper you."
He rode his broom and kicked the floor. Duham left a silver wake as she followed him. Hermione flew right behind them, and accelerating. Harry's greeting held a glint of surprise: she never flew beside him. He only took his eyes off her when Duham, with an impressive flip, took the lead.
"Watch out!" they shouted at once.
Harry glanced at Hermione, who nodded, and chased after the newbie, but soon realized that this one knew what she was doing, despite her muggle upbringing. As he had. With a laugh of pure joy, he began to manoeuvre around her, circling, and she sensed his purpose and began to rise and fall in the air in perfect synchrony. The other recruits were engrossed, as if watching gymnastics, until Hermione shouted for them to keep going. They were not about to reach those two, not even at full speed. It was she who stayed behind. She was slightly breathless. Actually, she didn't want to watch the show, herself.
The owl came out of nowhere, almost colliding with the witch, who barely managed to stay on the broom while performing a pirouette to evade it, and even then, the animal began to follow. Cursing under her breath as she watched the group go farther, Hermione let herself be reached. Effectively: mail for her. Confirming attendance to the party.
For Merlin's beards, the party!
The official order comes in one of those moments of absolute dullness when Harry, in his cubicle, charms small objects to evade his grip (and then catches them), while Hermione, as usual, barely pulls her nose off the book.
"Memory-affecting potions and spells," Harry reads, bending to eye the cover. "I never thought there were enough of those to fill a book..."
Hermione ignores him, as usual, and just turns the page. A paper ball comes alive at Harry's charms, flying over his ear; he catches the improvised snitch without much of a challenge and sighs, bored. Absentmindedly, he leans over Hermione's shoulder and reads bits of the page. Cerebral cortex, synapses, axons, are all over the pages. To the left, in large, ornate letters, the subtitle: "Obliviate." Harry skips what he already knows from Hogwarts: its effects on the brain areas where objective data are stored, its advantages, the details of its pronunciation and wand movement. Hermione's wand is highlighting a question: "Where do emotions reside?"
"Limbic system?" he reads aloud interrupting her again.
Hermione snorts and looks up.
"Do you want to borrow it?"
Harry shrugs and keeps reading. His partner glares at him, but eventually turns to the book, a thin finger passing quickly beneath the lines. 'This spell has no known effect on the soul. Its effects on emotions - which at the time of its design were thought to reside in the heart - are unreliable, limited in the spatial and temporal spheres, sometimes leading to behaviours that remain incomprehensible for the ones spelled, though the reported cases of spontaneous return of memories are at most...'
"You're out of the case," Luna sings.
They both turn around, surprised, not having seen her arrive; the explanation is obvious: the woman is levitating above the division, as if everyone did it all the time. Ignoring their surprise, the boss continues.
"For now Max and Sparkie will take over."
"But they were in charge of the press conference this afternoon," Hermione recalls.
Harry looks at her in awe. Bloody brain. Did she keep track of every auror's agenda?
"The rest of the time, you'll be training the newbies, until another appropriate case arrives."
And she floats out of sight, probably to uncover conspiracy theories that, against all odds, are not such, while Harry asks Hermione:
"What's wrong with the conference this afternoon?"
"They were Ron's escort," she says simply, her lips tightened in a line.
Despite the gesture, her words make Harry feel as if he was flying. 'See? She doesn't want to be with you' something in him screams to Ron's memory. Then he makes the voice shut up, and tries not to be that happy, and fails miserably. Nobody holds a key to their feelings. Finally he realizes what they're talking about: press conference, ergo journalists, ergo people like Skeeter, in front of whom the Golden Trio will be present as it hasn't really been for years. Back then, every time they did, some stupid journalist came out with tricky questions about the relationship between them. And that was when Ginny was alive, and a certain professional courtesy restricted them, sometimes. Today is not going to be fun.
"And that's all we know about the case, until now," Ron concludes.
Harry and Hermione, behind him, continue to scrutinize comings and goings, the nervous movement of the journalists, their hands up. Harry is bored. He would like to be on a broom. He would like to be training his apprentice, though at the same time the prospect makes him uncomfortable. When he begins to wish to be in the silence of a library, he smiles; sometimes Hermione's emotions still slip surreptitiously towards him. He has just isolated himself again, when his bracelet freezes, and suddenly starts to boil. Complaining behind teeth, he listens to the rest of the question Ron is being asked. The auror doesn't even see anything particular about it. Apparently, Ron either. But Hermione is furious and the journalists, very quiet; some carry cynical smiles, but that goes with the work, right?
"How does this relate to the case?" Ron asks.
The reporter who asked has the longest nails he has seen since Skeeter, and a bright dress, and heart-shaped glasses. Her smile widens, and Harry looks at her pen suspiciously. The escort sets his microphone on the private line and asks his partner about the intervention. Another flash makes him blink. Stepping forward, Hermione puts a hand on Ron's shoulder and speaks to his ear. The minister's shoulders freeze a bit.
"Our private life is not the purpose of this press conference," Ron begins, "nor is the reason why my best friend - he emphasizes - is staying with us at this time. But since public curiosity is so hard to please, I'll point out, again, that any inappropriate relationship between the aurors behind me would have more than disciplinary consequences. As the public often forgets (since it really does not matter, we fought a war for it after all), I am a pureblood male. There are ceremonies that, although available to everyone, are more traditional in cases like mine. My wife and I had the most traditional of marriages. It means that we took the Vow.
Furious tear of feathers against parchment throughout the room. The youngest journalists take out their magically-equipped mobile devices, opening the Wizarding Wide Web. Some of them prefer to question their neighbours.
"Hoping that this issue does not arise again at least in the next year, I clarify that in this variety of marriage between sorcerers, any activity that may lead to the conception of a heir who is not sired by the spouse in question, involves sickness and death in the following seventy-two hours of the act, whether or not there is conception. As my wife shows an enviable state of health, I suppose it's not necessary to clarify that the relationship between her and the Savior of the Wizarding World involves pure friendship, deep and hardened by more than twenty years of fighting together. The list of cases they have solved, and I mean after vanishing Voldemort" he spits with difficulty, still finding hard to use the name, yet knowing that as Minister he has no choice but to show courage, "would have made either of them Chief of Aurors or Minister, had they held any interest at all, and in general would fill a parchment longer than this room. I'd think they deserve your respect."
Harry's mind keeps replaying what Ron himself, with very different voice, told him back in the office, or how he pulled Hermione away from her partner at the station, a few days ago. The auror assumes he must feel, once again, that warmth he experienced when his friends stood by him, the one that allowed him to survive Hogwarts; but in fact he's rather confused.
"It's not your fault," Hermione whispers, her voice distorted by the hearing device. "You know that they have been looking for scandal in the Trio for years. They'd take advantage of anything."
"She wouldn't by chance be another animagus, would she?" Harry asks quietly, staring at the reporter.
Hermione chuckles discreetly, warming him inside.
"We aren't finding out today, and it really doesn't matter. They are like cockroaches. There will always be another one."
Harry decides that after all Hermione's house wasn't so small as to not accommodate his friends. They shouldn't have used the ballroom of their own home, so large that the scarcity of guests is evident, and so gray. "Few but good" his consciousness whispers in Hermione's voice, as he looks at Neville, who came from Hogwarts. The professor has already given him news of his children (who incidentally haven't written this year). Anyway, it hurts to realize that, after a lifetime, the only friends he made were those made in school (especially members of the DA), along with a few Aurors, and both groups have been decimated in the war against dark magic, before or after the Final Battle. It hurts him, too, to be alone in a corner of his own ballroom, while his friends are with their spouses, with whom they are more or less happy, but always accompanied.
He wonders if his partner is still in that meeting where she has been called at the last minute to help translate among the various languages she speaks.
The place isn't beautiful or decorated. The only one interested in this event was Hermione, who disposed, for the arrangements, exactly of one hour. So aside from fighting with Kreacher until he agreed to take care of the food, and enchanting the glasses of a variety of drinks to float over the room (effectively filling it with multicolored candlelight), she couldn't do much more. The music can be heard without silencing the guests' voices. Harry hopes it's not all as dreadful as feared.
He doesn't notice the girl's approach until she stands by him; only her insistent look makes him turn towards her. Duham.
"Hello," he whispers, trying to smile.
She hesitates for a moment.
"I'm not sure of how to call you, now that we aren't at the Ministry. Auror Potter?"
"'Harry' will do.
The girl wears a beige dress, not revealing but certainly favoring her beauty and youth. She's halfway between the Hermione who attended the Yule Ball with Krum, and the one who stood beside him receiving the Order of Merlin. Innocent yet mature. Thinking of his partner put him at ease at once. The dress looks nice on her.
"I hope you're enjoying the training", he says.
"Well, I guess you can't go easy on us if we must be prepared for being tortured by the kind of villain you faced when you were younger than me."
"Very thoughtful of you" he comments, smiling.
He decides he likes the girl.
"Hermione invited you?" he wonders.
"Well, she did mention a party, but it was Ronald who really called me. I don't think he had fully realized that this was for you and your old class."
Harry chuckled.
"Yes, you must think we are all antiques."
The wizard looks around, finding a bunch of responsible adults that will surely be gone by ten thirty, having important family duties to attend to. Where and when did those years of youth and freedom go?
"You did well today", he adds.
The girl smiles at him (Hermione's smile) and his own joy pales. He must be reaching his middle-age crisis. That smile has devastating effects on him.
Hermione apparates from work (late, arriving very late to her own party) and without even changing clothes or putting on makeup, goes right into the ballroom. The first thing she notices is Harry, talking to Duham. Who suddenly isn't her sister anymore, but a gorgeous girl flirting with her partner. "Why did I even look over there anyway?" she thinks, biting her lip; the place is rather hidden. She does not like. The hiding, or the smiling. Resolutely she walks in the opposite direction, greeting friends and colleagues.
"And how are the kids?" Seamus asks. "Sometimes I envy them: Hogwarts, you know..."
"Firenze has seen them from afar," Luna smiles, dreamily. "He has studied their stars and..."
The auror smiles politely, but without focusing. She's trying so hard not to look to that damn corner, that she has made the entire group turn around to face her. "
"And Ron? I haven't seen him... You both are still married, right?"
If she had a galleon for every time she has heard that, she would be as rich as the Malfoys.
"Well, if being here means you're with Harry now," Dean steps in.
"Oh no! Ron and I" she emphasizes the names "planned the party so he wouldn't feel lonely, now that Lily left too... He's staying at our house."
Seamus, who has elbowed Dean, laughs nervously.
"Yes, that would be real weird, right?"
Hermione sips from the blue liquid and eyes Harry, still on the corner, still with that gorgeous-looking twenty-years-old witch.
The others have apparently noticed her lack of attention, because the next thing she hears is the word 'quidditch'.
"Not in front of Harry," she interrupts in a whisper.
They all turn to her, a paralyzed smile on Dean's face.
"Ginny, you know."
Seamus looks embarrassed as Dean swallows hard. They both sure know about the accident. The Harpies were fashionable, back then.
"It's okay, guys. Do not get upset. It's just... I'd rather save him the pain…
And her eyes return to her partner, who doesn't look pained at all. She should feel good about that. 'You'll go there eventually' her consciousness says and, with a sigh, she admits it's right. Her apology sounds weak as she turns, her mind already going through the room, her body following, gaze fixed on the girl, who laughs once more by when she reaches them and greets them.
"Hi"
Harry turns suddenly and his gaze goes from one to the other. People tend to find their similarities alarming, mainly because they can't be considered twins, given the age. But he seems disturbed. Hermione notices. Her own smile fades, and she wonders, pain in her chest, if she should just ask if she's interrupting something. She finds she can't stand the thought -of asking, of being right, of showing how much it matters to her-. Instead, she goes all professional.
"Harry, we really need to discuss something" and turning to her sister, she asks. "Do you mind?"
The girl shakes her head, suddenly serious, eyeing her big sister with bewilderment, and after a second she walks away.
"Sorry about that, Harry," she whispers honestly, "but I just heard about the situation in France..."
"France?" he asks, just as professional. "It's quite far from our precinct..."
"Yes, but... You know that the Minister of Magic there died suddenly, leaving us all wondering about the timing. But from what I learned today, it turns out that it was not only unexpected, but also the only suspicious death that has reached the news. There have been several, Harry. Unexplainable. No questions asked.
Their eyes meet, and she knows that he understood. It's not hard to link this situation with their fifth year in Hogwarts. She wonders how something this serious has evaded her, who always kept up with the international affairs. But of course, keeping Harry safe and emotionally stable while preparing for the boys for Hogwarts –not to mention, Ron-, has really filled her schedule recently.
Harry's hand went to his scar.
"What's happening?" she asks.
Suddenly she has remembered that this is not the first time she has seen him do that these days. Faced with his lack of response, she precises:
"Have you felt anything at all in your scar?"
To her dismay, he doesn't answer right away, and when he does, it's not with a direct answer:
"Why would you ask?" he asks instead.
"You have."
Hermione's legs falter, and he grabs her, his hands on her elbows. There's silence, as green eyes scrutinize her, worried.
"Well?" she insists defiantly.
He hesitates again before answering.
"It's more of an itch, really…"
"And you didn't thought of mentioning it to your partner…"
"I didn't comment it with myself, Hermione. I thought it was my skin, aging."
"Your skin" she puff. "You have a scar drawn by dark magic, and it stings, but you think you must see a muggle dermatologist. "Are you an Auror?"
He clenches his teeth.
"What now? Do you want me to believe that my so-called arch nemesis is back, after twenty years?"
"Last time it took him eleven years, Harry…"
"I refuse to believe it on an itch of my scar…"
"And now you seriously remind me of Cornelius Fudge…"
The people around them are starting to notice the quarrel, thought they hold it in low voice. Aware of their gazes, Harry represses the urge to look around and, biting the inside of his cheek, he takes her hand to guide her. He tries to look relaxed, and when he looks at her, he notices she's following his lead in that sense as well, smiling to their friends, albeit coldly. Good. The small walk serves to cool their tempers, but he still waits until they have gone through several doors to turn around. They were now in a closet, so one way in and no way of sharing the room with other people.
"What's really disturbing you?" he askes. "You are the logical one. You know that it's too much to assume, that you are presenting me with too little proof."
She's asking herself the same question. Looking into his eyes, she breathes and opens her lips, but they simply shake, and no word comes out.
"Is it about work? Azkaban?" he asks. "Is it even about the thing in France?"
Is it? The witch doesn't know. Maybe she has been on edge ever since she walked into that ballroom.
He looks into her eyes and hesitates.
"Maybe it brought back memories far too harsh to leave you cool?"
She nods, relieved that he would accept that version, though not sure if it's true. Then, she lets him wrap his arms around her.
"We'll get out of this, partner. Really. Regarding France, they can take care, I'm sure.
Hermione closes her eyes and lets herself be enveloped by the smell of fresh grass under which she can still perceive that of Harry himself, unrepeatable. The bracelet hums, slightly warmer than before.
Harry is remembering what Ron has revealed to him, about this woman's devotion of years, which in itself goes beyond that of others. A mystery. He sticks his nose in her hair, remembering everything they have faced together, all the times she has been the only thing between him and death (literally and figuratively), all the times he has returned from it because she was calling him. "My guardian angel" he thinks, and he holds her tighter, tilting his head over Hermione's shoulder (so fresh and warm, so small and so powerful at the same time). Reluctantly he lets go, and watches her frown.
"That tunic does need to be ironed".
Harry snorts.
"Kreacher is so cranky these days... I tried to do it myself."
Hermione is already casting the corresponding spell, her wand barely touching his tunic. A soothing warmth fills the thickness of the fabric after the brief contact.
She herself is obviously wearing the same outfit she worn at work; practical stuff, fit to her figure, slightly dusty and filled with her smell –treacle and pumpkin and leather and spring-, which now impregnates the restricted space. He thinks that, even in those clothes, she looks stunning, his heart beating so fast that he finds there's no enough air.
"You're ready" She smiles before walking out of the closet.
He holds her back by her hand, and she turns, looks at her scar next to his, then into his eyes -questioning, maybe a little hopeful? He lets her go. When she does, he still breathes deeply -a mistake, since the space still smells of her -and follows. As soon as he's back in the ballroom, he finds a glass of pumpkin juice hovering near his head. He grabs it and drinks it without breathing, as if he had just come out of years walking through the desert.
Ron has arrived, casting him a suspicious look before putting Hermione's hand on his own arm and leading her to the dance floor, where in fact there are two couples, despite the shortage of people.
The smell of pumpkin and leather intensifies, along with a somewhat different mixture of flowers. Harry turns to the girl who has once again stood beside him, and stares at the same couple. Hermione is trying to guide a very clumsy Ron who half-heartedly fights her advice, just for the sake of tradition. The redhead laughs and she frowns at him, her lips pressed together. Harry notices that his partner is trying to suppress a laugh. Without fully realizing it, he's grasping the female hand that's so near to his own, and guides the girl to the dance floor as well.
Longer than usual. Don't I deserve some love? Or hate, whatever. You can review down there. Please let me know what do you think about said Vow (not that original, I know, but once applied). Or about what ever you want. I promise, he won't do a thing to the girl, we all know they wouldn't work anyway :)