"Partnership" the ghost Auror said.

Sitting on thin air and leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, the silver scars on his face were even more evident to the terrified trainees in front of him. Some could not look away from the burned chin, the missing ear. They barely paid attention to what he was saying. There was a great distance between a relatively healthy ghost (saving the distances), and one in pieces. Most, however, struggled more or less successfully to take note (probably more than if they were before a less impressive teacher).

"The fifth use of empathic potion. Companions. To bond an auror to another so intimately, that one perceives the presence of the other through a wall, is able to track him or her by smell, knows if he's bleeding from afar and without looking. Its usefulness in missions can be incalculable. The depth of the interpersonal bond determines variations in the magical bond; Cases that share a source of magic have been described. It's possible to share life force for short periods of time."

A couple crossed looks. A witch smiled tenderly. The auror's expression hardened.

"And let me open a small parenthesis. There is nothing worse for an auror than to associate with another."

The sorceress's smile froze under the ghost's harsh gaze. Michael shrinked in his seat in such a way that actual magic might have been involved.

"Marriage" the ghost continued. "I don't care what you think about it. Aurors don't marry anyway, no time for that. Be parents together? Animals do thattoo. And who brings children to this world knowing exactly how dark the magic is out there? But partnership..."

His gaze seemed to drill into his skulls and yet those accustomed to deal with ghosts would be able to see the clouding of his eyes.

"You go to the rite with that auror -best friend, family, acquaintance, whatever. You pronounce the spell, drink the potion, put on the bracelet. You play with empathy for a while, thinking stupidly that it's cool, magical."

His voice had sharpened, contemptuous, and the transparent burned hand had made a ridiculous flourish towards the end of the sentence. Half of the class avoided his gaze by then, moved uncomfortably in the seat, an anxious wizard peered through the door. The ghost's tone of voice became somewhat nostalgic as he went on:

"Then you spend years fighting with that person by your side. And your partner is your best friend, your confidant, your right arm. Sometimes your lover; and yes, I know you know it happens despite the rules. Then, if they remain aurors long enough -and so it'll be, because when one is ready to retire, the other is so motivated that the former dare not tell-, someone gets irreversibly injured. Or dies a hero. It's one of our worst nightmares. You won't know how excruciating it is until you experience it."

A wizard dropped his hand; he had been holding that of the nearest trainee, who looked at him without rancor.

"But you came back", another recruit pointed out.

The ghost stared at the young man, whose eyes dropped immediately. There was a silence, until the ghost decided to answer.

"Yes, I came back," he murmured, his tone pregnant with sadness. "Having Ieft my partner in a dangerous situation, I couldn't really leave.As a ghost, my magic had no physical effect, but my presence could distract and warn and offer advice. I was ready to move on. I could not. So we were together, but couldn't touch each other. I had no warmth to offer. Do you think we lived happily ever after?"

The tension over the room became unbreathable.

"Those who partner up with a relative are already screwed up, I suppose, partnering won't add much to the burden. It's in those cases that partnership acquires the dimension the department intended it to have: a means to preserve the security of two aurors. But if you're going to mate for life with someone over whom you didn't have to watch in the first place, better for it not to be related to any romantic ideas. Believe me, it's not worth it. Not counting the probability of the link going wrong and driving you both crazy, and having to put a fellow auror to sleep. A tragedy I've seen often enough."

"Autor Granger..."

The ghost's silvery gaze turned to the brave witch up front, the one who had dared speak after so long a hesitation that an entire paragraph had fit in between. Amusement turned up a corner of the inmaterial mouth.

"Yes", he hissed, "she was successfully retrieved. If she hadn't been literally out of the constraints of time, the torture Potter suffered would have lasted less than a year. And believe me, he was in agony. Not knowing what had happened to her, witnessing the loss of hope of everyone around -Mr. Weasley included-, being left alone and literally helpless in his seek and knowing he was impotent and at the same time unable to abandon her himself... I don't recommend asking him about that year. It's an experience just slightly better than mine. And even I consider myself lucky. Others have had a partner taken by the enemy and raped and crucioed all day long, have witnessed from afar as her personality faded, that is beyond nightmarish. That's the very concept of hell".

Luna's strangely aerial voice made its way into the room.

"I'm sorry, professor. MayI interrupt?"

"You tend to interrupt", the lecturer barked, less fiercely than expected.

"Wismartles warned me that you were scaring them off," the blonde commented nonchalantly. "Again."

"Call it experience and I'll agree."

The apprentices looked from one to the other as if watching a tennis match. One of the trainees bowed, as if to verify that Luna's feet actually touched the ground, as she appeared to levitate toward the center of the room. Everyone ignored him.

"They need to learn some truths before going out there", the silver auror warned.

Luna didn't seem to hear him. When she turned to the recruits, she kept staring slightly above their heads, perhaps looking for wrackspurts.

"It's nice to have someone watching over you, but it's scary to watch over someone", she spoke to the ceiling, her voice falling on them like fairy dust. "Almost no one dares take the ÉmPathós, though we often form the same pairs anyway. Ultimately, you'll have to watch over your team. Being partners makes it easier… and sometimes more difficult", she added thoughtfully. "Partnership… It's warmer than marriage. It's thicker than blood. If you come alive out of the Veil, it's because your partner had your back…"

"Yet" the ghost said "you chose not to have a partner."

"As others do. Like I said, the scariest thing..."

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Harry almost collides with the door.

"You're fine?" he asks from outside, terror in his voice.

Hermione's comes muffled from inside the room.

"I'm fine."

His fist, still raised, scratches the wood between them as it slides down; his gaze strives to pierce it.

"Just a nightmare. Really" she assured.

He breathes and rests his forehead against the wood, eyes closed, struggling to control his own fear (an echo of the witch's, multiplied). One knee collides with the door making it vibrate. He stares at his own striped pajamas while concentrating on what he still perceives inside his partner through the solid wall she has raised upon waking -a wall less physical yet stronger than the wooden one between them.

It has been a while since he last experienced Hermione's nightmares. He can't shake the image of a silent battalion, wandless but no less threatening because of it, like a dementors' squad. Voldemort's voice. Those images are not of this nightmare, but of another that they shared a long, long time ago; one that terrified her less than this does. Whatever Hermione was dreaming today, fear and despair poison the air even now.

He takes a deep breath. The urge to open the door and hug his partner, to let the contact vanish the images of both of their minds, persists.

He turns sharply and takes one step, another, hurrying as much as his instinct tells him to stay. He doesn't know where he's going, until he enters the bathroom, opens the shower and goes inside, all dressed. Heat is not a substitute, but it's all he has, now. He lets himself slide down the wall and sinks his head into his arms, on his knees. Water slips down his cheeks like tears.

Time deforms as he remembers the old days, shortly after graduation, when nightmares, from one or the other, made their bond nothing short of toxic until they learned to lift the walls. They had been warned. The oldest and wisest members of the department were radically against two war heroes becoming partners. Living it had been much, much worse.

Though neither regrets.

Once, the auror suddenly woke up hearing Hermione's screams in his mind, and disapparated without even getting up from his bed. After landing painfully on the floor, he climbed to the couch where the auror had been sleeping for a week -it helped with the nightmares- and held her for what seemed like hours, wiping away her tears and muttering meaningless words, just for the effect of his voice. Gradually, and only after Hermione had fallen asleep with her head buried in his shoulder, he realized that he was naked. By then, he might have been watching her sleep for half an hour -her eyelashes fluttering like those of a child, the rise and fall of her chest under the beige silk shirt, soft thighs tangled with his own-. Perhaps he wouldn't have noticed it, perhaps there had been other times when he had also apparated here in similar circumstances; this time it was his own reaction that alerted him, and he only took time to gently disentangle from his partner (holding his breath when she shifted and frowned), before disappearing back into his house. It was dawn, but he woke up Ginny anyway and made love to her almost angrily until his wife trembled for the third time in his arms; holding her and listening her soft laugh -lightness of shared pleasure-, he could almost believe it was her who he had wanted to possess tonight. In retrospect, they might have conceived James that time. He never thought about it again. Part of him decided that it was unbearable, considering the circumstances.

Hermione, on the other hand, could not come to comfort him when his personal hell drowned him in sleep. Ginny was there. Both knew without real need for words, that there was a line that must not be crossed. So if Ginny didn't notice his nightmares, he disapparated quietly, and Hermione was waiting for him, lips pale and arms ready to cradle his head against her chest. Unfortunately, most of the time he woke up screaming, and Ginny held him, muttering words of comfort, as he trembled, eyes fixed on the wall, feeling Hermione shake on the other side. She was terrified too, and despite the on and off relationship she apparently kept with Ron –something so vague it sometimes seemed mere appearance-, she had no one. That's why it was almost a relief when she started actually going with the redhead when Harry himself didn't arrive. The idea materialized in the minds of both of them without having to discuss it. Ron had also endured persecution and the power of the horcruxes, if anyone could remotely understand her pain, other than Harry, that was Ron. After the first time, she regularly apparated at Ron's place in the middle of the night and he held her, eyes veiled with sleep, uncomfortably patting her on the back.

Perhaps this was even what had brought them to the path of marriage.

Harry closes his eyes, feeling the familiar weight on his chest that he doesn't want to name. He doesn't want to remember that time, but his very resolve not to remember reminds him of it.

By then, the very certainty that the partner would be there, had quieted the nightmares of them both for months. Their training as partners seemed to have been a success after all.

That (or perhaps the copious amount of firewhiskey he had drunk) might be why this time her panic attack took him off guard, made him disapparate before even remembering that it was three o'clock in the morning of her wedding night. That time, she was not alone. His partner's nakedness violently threw in his face what he had spent the night trying to drown in alcohol, without admitting it; Ron's made him show his teeth. And the worst: he had nothing to do here. He drew back in the shadows and murmured a disillusioning charm, not willing to disapparate just yet. His gaze could have burned Ron's hand on his wife's bare side. For a moment he seemed to cross glances with his mate over the witch's head. An illusion, probably. He wasn't even visible by then. Hermione would have noticed his presence, but in her confused and terrified state, she was not consciously aware of it, though her anxiety levels plummeted, responding viscerally and primarily to his proximity. That Ron could not incite a remotely similar response was poor comfort as Harry looked hungrily to the woman he could never even dream of having. Finally, Ron made Hermione lie back on the bed, her eyes still open and fixed in the distance. Harry vanished before seeing the husband cover the wife with his body. He couldn't have endured it.

The nightmares, since that night and for a while, were worse. He never dared go to her again in the middle of the night.

"Harry?" he heard from the distance of the present.

"Here."

His voice sounds hoarse, even to him.

He closes the shower and looks for his wand; cursing under his breath, he remembers that he left it in the room. He'll have to drip all over the floor and dry it later. Or undress and finish bathing and towel dry, like everyone else.

"Harry?"

He opens the door with exhausted gestures. Immediately his visual field is filled with brown hair.

"I'm wet."

She ignores it, and Harry closes his eyes and slowly surrounds her with his arms, soaking her even more.

"I'm sorry," she says, like a mantra. "I'm so, so sorry."

She does not say: "Ron woke up with me," but he tenses anyway, and now there is space between them, where there was none. Hermione only half understands. For a moment she struggles to hold him tighter with a despair that she doesn't bother to hide; and suddenly she remembers the dream, freezes, her shoulders fall, she passively lets him set the distance.

"You fine?" the wizard asks; there's warmth in his voice, but the distance persists.

"It was just a nightmare," she deflects.

It was not. Not quite, in any case. She has seen him in bed, bare chested, a sheet covering his hips, and his scars, sweetly traced by a finger that was not his, nor hers. She has heard his deep voice lightly telling auror stories, and has heard a laugh that she knows well. So, so young. No scars, no missions, no years. Hermione loves that laugh. This time, in this dream, she couldn't stand it. The witch doesn't believe in divination, but she knows that it'd be possible. Something is terribly wrong with it. Two layers of evil. Hermione doesn't know about one, and doesn't want to recognize the other. It's scary not to know yourself. Duham's skin contrasts beautifully with that of her mentor.

The terror in him echoes hers. For the first time she hears what he has asked for the third time, shaking her shoulders:

"Hermione, what's happening?!"

"I'll be fine", she replies, absent.

It is more a desire than a certainty, but she closes the portal between their respective magic auras, and probes her partner's spirit. Caring for him diverts her attention from herself. "As long as he's fine..." Harry examines her too. She hears him sigh, relieved. This time the wizard really parts. Hermione doesn't dare say: "hug me", but her eyes fill with tears. Looking away so he doesn't see, she pulls out his wand to dry him.

"You'll catch a cold..."

"I'll take a shower", he interrupts, pushing the wand aside. "I'll be fine."

However, the door hasn't closed, and he already misses her. He knows she's outside the room, back to the door. He thinks she's crying. Hermione has, once again, hidden what she feels behind concrete walls. Harry wants to scream. Instead, he takes a step inside the shower.

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Drying his hair, he enters the dining room and finds a mop of brown hair on a firm body, sitting on a bench before the plateau. In front of the figure, a book resting on a cup. The television, likely source of the voice that attracted him, remains ignored on a corner.

"Hermione, I..."

But the eyes that turn in welcome, are green.

"Hello, Harry."

He blinks, and wonders when going to the mentor's house has become so frequent among newbies. Especially at this time of morning.

"Hello. It's weekend, shouldn't you be sleeping?"

But of course, Hermione has always been a morning person, unlike the boys. Why not Duham?

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I wake you up?" the girl asks looking at her wristwatch and back to the mentor. "I had a book to return to Hermione. She doesn't let me do it in the ministry. Not mixing family with work. You know how she is" she smiles, it's a private joke after all.

Neither of them has noticed the chimney crackling, nor the head spinning in it, and they don't do so until the voice is heard.

"That has to be the best rejuvenating potion in the world", it says vehemently.

They both turn back simultaneously, finding a redheaded head not as familiar as others in the fireplace. It's Hermione who, suddenly entering the room, identifies him:

"Charlie!"

Harry follows her with his eyes as the woman approaches the fireplace, without looking at them. The eyes in the fire turn from one witch to the other.

"She's my sister," Hermione says.

"Well, you and Harry must share blood after all," Charlie comments thoughtlessly. "Aren't those the Evans' eyes?

Working with dragons doesn't tend to develop social skills, on the other hand almost nonexistent in certain Weasleys. The rest have nothing to answer, and finally it's Hermione who breaks the silence:

"I hear you're in Hogwarts, teaching 'Magic creatures', right?

"Just as a substitute." Charlie shrugs. "There have been reports of a species of dragon that was believed extinct, and I came to see if there's some true to the myth. That leaves me a lot, but a lot of free time. Listen, guys" his gaze shifts to Harry almost with shame, "I know this isn't among your duties but… the vocational speech of San Mungo's staff was cancelled at the last minute, and we have a classroom full of seventh year students, waiting for a professional to talk about his career..."

"No" Harry utters vehemently.

Everyone turns to him.

Actually, he has answered without thinking. He remembers very well his first years as an auror, how they freely manipulated his figure, sending him here and there more as a symbol than as a soldier. He remembers those motivational speeches at Hogwarts, all those bright-looking boys who three years later were in pre-auror and six years later, dead. He went to the funeral of each one of them, sat down with their mothers, listened to their thanks, and it was increasingly difficult to suppress the self-destructive comment: "Did you know that it was me who encouraged him/her to be an auror?" He wonders if, had someone else gone, they would have chosen another career. If they would still be alive.

He doesn't see Duham look at the empty space on his other side and nod before volunteering:

"Can I go in your place? I miss Hogwarts."

Hermione keeps looking at her partner, who avoids her gaze, as she replies:

"Duham and me must suffice. We represent two different generations. I think it's better this way."

Harry stares but doesn't protest.

"Great, I'm going to inform McGonagall. You can use this fireplace."

When Charlie disappears, Hermione is already reaching for her own flu powder. She doesn't turn back, not even to verify that Duham follows her.

A turn in the chimney, a step out of it and she can finally breathe. It smells like Hogwarts - a mixture of parchment and fire and moisture, an acquired taste - she automatically feels like belonging. Not that she has been in this room much, but these are the same gray aged walls, the same strange and familiar pattern, the same magic beating in the cracks of the walls.

Duham takes the lead.

"So many memories, right?" the girl asks.

Hermione strives to swallow the remnants of her nightmares. It feels like fiendfyre: evil and devouring. The atmosphere helps. Enough memories of everyone laughing in front of the fireplace at the common room, planning at the girls' abandoned bathrooms, afternoons at the library, nights walking these same halls, with Harry's breath on her neck and Ron's elbow digging into her ribs under the increasingly narrow layer. Of Harry leaving to risk his life but also returning. Returning.

She doesn't know how Duham spent so many years in this school without friends. Of course, Hermione herself would have faced that destiny, had it not been for the blessed troll.

"Ma! Shouts a familiar voice."

Hermione has barely turned around when Rose collides with her. As much fan of hugs as her mother.

"Rose!?"

"McGonagall m'a dit d'être son aidante!" the girl announces, without further greeting.

Now both are red with excitement and smiling broadly, and Duham knows right away that during the next 10 minutes they won't notice her absence, too busy with Rose telling in French what would take a lot less time to tell in English. So she slides discreetly to the corner, shaking her head but smiling all the same.

"I wish they had offered me something like that," she mentions to the bald boy next to her. "Not even Mia received the honor."

"It doesn't matter," he replies, looking at mother and daughter coldly. "There's no use for McGonagall at this point."

Then, another figure collides with her back: a boy so similar to her own mentor that Duham is left speechless.

"Hello," he pants. "Who are you?"

Green eyes meet others equally coloured, and just then another boy, with dishevelled blond hair, comes running to stop abruptly in front of them, hands on knees, panting:

"I hate... when you leave me behind..."

"Duham" she reaches out to the first newcomer. "You're Harry's son, aren't you?"

"Al," he introduces himself, not asking how she knows her father, and grimacing instead.

"Scorpius" the other one greets without looking at her. "Malfoy."

"What are you doing here all alone? I thought who had come was... Hermione!"

Al's gaze has traveled the room until finding her, and now the boy catapults into the auror, almost making her fall to the floor, though Hermione laughs while greeting him in German. The boy's answer is far more hesitant than those of Rose in French. They start chatting, everyone in a different language. Duham, having received lessons from his sister, can follow it quite closely until something more urgent appears.

"Draco dormiens ..." the whisper from her side comes.

Duham shudders and turns in time to see young Malfoy furtively draw a claw over his heart. He's a child, his intended impassivity involves too much pride and anyone could see through his secrets.

"... nunquam titillandus" she completes, anyway. "How did you recognize me?"

"My father's first name was not chosen at random," the boy says.

Duham likes him. It's the other boy who points his reddish brown eyes towards the newcomer, with a rictus on his lips.

"It's a weakness," he points out.

The apprentice shivers. She heard the order perfectly: "Kill him." She agrees that such secrets are not to be told to eleven-year-olds, but if Scorpius were to give them away, Albus would know something, he's his best friend. It doesn't seem to be the case. In any case it's no reason to make him disappear. She likes Scorpius, with his hair perfectly combed and his book under his arm.

She also likes Albus. She knows that, like her, he has a lot of problems because of his parents.

"Being the link is my mission," Scorpius says.

That clears things up. While she doesn't understand why such a young student, almost without influence, has been chosen for this.

"How's it going?"

"The director has discovered the existence of the club. Knowing that students from other countries are not admitted, she has banned it instantly. The Ministry's intervention has made her tolerate it, but hardly. She might complain to Rose's mother" the boy warns, staring at Hermione. "My father fears the Minister's reaction."

"Weasley is weak," the older boy judges.

"He'll hold on," Duham resolves. "He knows what he bets on it."

His interlocutor fixes reddish eyes on the girl. He was her first mentor. The witch knows what he's thinking: "too many loose ends". In addition: "you are also weak." For a second, she's afraid, but by now she knows that if he hasn't disposed of her, it's because he cannot.