This chapter goes to: Dark Lord Tater Tot, Alina Nyx and Reckless Dandelion, whose insight regarding this fic –I've used some of their words in the upgraded version of the summary- encouraged me to keep translating. Dearest reader, you owe this chapter entirely to them.

Disclaimer: You-Know-Who wrote the Harry Potter series. I earn nothing by writing this twist, except perhaps for your reviews.

So enjoy the reading and meet me down there, to let me know if you liked this and what you liked the most.

(As usual, memories are in italics).

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Diplomacy and a den

"You're worth nothing" the instructor barked.

Rows and rows of trainees waited before him, looking forth, not even blinking at the muscle beating in the man's chin.

"Whatever you think of as dreams and perspectives" he added with his falsetto voice "is worth nothing. You don't have a life. But if you're lucky, you might have a Corps and be useful to it…"

'Sometimes I hate him even more than Umbridge' Hermione had told him the night before. Remembering it now didn't bring a smile to Harry's face (it was unthinkable, being as they were in the middle of the nightmare and brainwash they liked to call 'training') but it undoubtedly lightened his mood.

That's until an impersonal voice came from seemingly all around:

"Trainee Potter, you are required in the International Relations Department."

"See what I tell you?" the instructor's crooked smile brought hate to everyone's heart. "Potter, you are dismissed".

The green-eyed wizard unfroze slowly and stepped to the door. Most trainees would think this was a reprieve. He knew it wasn't, and due to overexposure he was slowly but surely developing a seemingly allergic reaction to such calls.

"Trainee Granger…"

Harry's neck turned so quickly it snapped. Hermione had stepped beside him, in fact her hand now brushed his. The shock the trainer's voice betrayed, was no less evident in the other trainees' faces. To move when this trainer hadn't ordered so, was unheard of –and way worse than a dead wish.

"Perhaps your excessive adherence to Potter has made you forget you both are not a sole entity."

"Go back, Hermione!" went Harry's frenzied whisper, intuiting that as much as training currently seemed like hell, this level of torture was nothing to what would come over her if she defied this man. She herself seemed to know so, judging by her shiver.

But their shock was to grow, as she worsened the situation by answering:

"With all due respect, trainer, you are wrong"

"Oh" the man responded at last, after the shock had settled. "You mean you are a sole entity"

Harry could almost see her panic, coming in waves, yet she still gulped and muttered valiantly:

"I mean he's worth everything, and the Ministry has no right to keep using him this way"

He'd rarely felt more precious.

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"Mia!" Duham shouts.

Suddenly everything Hermione sees is brown and thick. 'So this is how Harry feels' the auror thinks, smiling at the memory of so many hugs shared over the years. When Duham steps back, her green eyes sparkle. Hermione's stomach leaps, and she ignores it. She does have practice at that.

"Didn't we say: in front of mom and dad's house?"

"You were late."

Duham is about to protest, but instead she tightens her lips. She's much less punctual than her sister. The subtext? She must have expected it.

The older one looks around, and again she has that impression of déjà vu. Duham's room replicates hers as a maiden: sober, slightly impersonal, same distribution; that underlines the difference: the disorder remains in the brink of tbe unbearable. Books are not concentrated on shelves, there are piles on every surface and even on the floor that can only be held upright by magic. The stack next to the door is topped by a tome of Tom Riddle's biography.

"Let's go" the apprentice suggests.

"Two apparitions one after the other?" the oldest one replies. "I'm too old for that. I'm almost forty, after all"

"Forty wizarding years. That's like twenty-seven muggle years. A war heroine isn't up to that?"

"A war heroine keeps her strength for battle" the veteran wisely answers.

In fact, previous experience makes Hermione anticipate a deep interrogatory on her sister's behalf, leaded by her mother. But that's not the reason why she's insisting in staying. It's just that she's rarely allowed in her sister's sancta sanctorum, and she's thoroughly intrigued. And slightly rebellious.

"Won't you treat me something?"

"But Daddy's waiting for us…" she protests "and I'm starving… I never keep food here. The books, you know..."

An old picture of Harry, Ron, and herself as children -evidently a newspaper clipping- leans against the pile of books on the desk, slightly bent due to the thinness of the paper. Suppressing the disgust she finds in seeing her image replicated and manipulated, she gives the young woman a questioning look. The apprentice shrugs.

"I am curious" the girl replies, "about the changes in all of you. And that's how I study my teachers. 'Know your enemy', right?"

Hermione ruffles her hair with a little more force than necessary, and the girl pushes her hand away, laughing. The oldest holds the picture. She's surprised by the brightness of her own smile. The teen in black and white, negligently holding her book ("Mapuche names", she thinks she remembers, because of the characteristic cover of ancestral design), leans towards Harry, who, lying beside her on the grass, hands behind his neck, seems just happy; Ron, on his other side, clowns characteristically.

"Colin must have taken it," she remembers aloud, her heart in a knot of nostalgia, before placing the clipping back on the ancient cult book at the top of that particular pile.

"Have you had enough rest, old woman?" the girl jokes.

"Patience is a virtue that might just save your life, apprentice," the auror answers jokingly.

The trainee grabs a book from the nearest pile and tries to hit her on the head; a book on dreams, no less.

"I hope you don't believe in those things," Hermione points out, effortlessly summoning another book to block the attack; dragons, this time. "Maybe you could spend your energy… I don't know… helping me comb my hair".

"What's that about?"

"For old times' sake?"

"Back then it was you who combed my hair."

"Darn right you are" Hermione answered, "time to reciprocate"

Duham looks a bit more than irritated, but suddenly furniture and stacks of books are lifted and rearranged, a chair presses Hermione behind her knees making her drop sitting on it, and a mirror rests in front of her; in it, she sees a comb land sweetly in the palm of her little sister's hand. Hermione whistles.

"Someone's been practicing wandless"

"Let's see what I do to you..."

The methodical study of the protégé's room is abruptly interrupted when all of the veteran's hair is snapped up and twisted into a French wig hairstyle.

"Hey!"

"Let the expert improvise..."

And the hair twists again. Some hairs find it difficult to change their disposition with respect to others.

"That hurts!"

"I'm sure the curse I'll put on you if you don't let me will hurt more..."

"Just detangle it!"

It's actually funny, but she's not telling her.

"Just untangle your hair, huh?" She casts a smoothing spell.

"I don't like magic on this."

"Mom and Dad didn't like it on the teeth, and look how well it turned out for you in fourth year."

"I've told you too many stories," the auror whispers.

The contact of the comb with her hair calms her down a bit. Forgetting the purpose of the delay, the auror relaxes and concentrates on the sensation, on the nostalgia.

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The water felt just perfect. If their bodies felt its brush it was barely and due to density, more than temperature. Harry, clad only in the standard black trousers the aurors used for water missions, stood in the pool, holding her hands as Hermione tried to teach herself to swim as she used to, before.

His amusement had reached her, or maybe it was the situation that exasperated her so. He sure took care of not showing anything, not wanting her to be mad(der). The silence was tense and humorous, and tense.

Oh, how she hated the role of damsel in distress.

They couldn't have picked worse to put under the Sleeping Beauty curse. Not that the attackers intended to be nice, much less pick a heroine with whom she identified, and the sequels were the least of their worries but had they cared, they would have done way worse than trauma or inactivity. (Do muscles atrophy in timeless bubbles? She wondered)

And after all, Hermione was lucky to have left it all behind.

But had she?

The kicking was hypnotic: One… two… Warm waves crashed against Harry's skin, making it bristle. Now knowing where to look, he watched the bits of Hermione coming out of the water: her hair, the back of her shoulders, her bum and one or the other of her infamous legs. Under pressure, he'd admit what all men in her department whispered: she was a hell of a woman. His admission would be truer and deeper than that of anyone else. Not that he could reflect upon it, and much less in their current situation.

Then Hermione reached the bottom with her feet in a fluid motion that brought her a little too close to her sparring partner. Silent, eyes narrowed, her lips meeting in a thin, pale line.

"Wanna rest?" he asked, hoping she hadn't peeked on his thoughts.

She shook her head before correcting:

"But you certainly should"

"It's early"

"It's one o'clock in the morning, and while I have all the time in the world to 'recover' you have a case to handle five hours from now"

He was checking the clock. 'Spooky how the time flies when one's having fun'

Don't wanna be a burden.

"I can't believe you're thinking that," he protested.

Hermione blinked then realized she had forgotten to lift the barrier between their minds, (just as he grasped she hadn't said that aloud). That irritated her more. Going so quickly from irritation, to insecurity, to guilt, and back again was most infuriating. That the curse had left her mind this exposed was worse.

At least it was Harry who was reading it.

She felt him smile, and realizing he had done it again, she slammed the barrier up. The wizard took a step back, confused. A second later, his partner was going through the guilt phase again.

"Sorry," she said.

She was.

Harry watched her, remembering how much worse it had been not to be re-training her, that couple of years in which she had not existed. He chose not to think about it. The third part of human life was spent sleeping, as she herself had once pointed out; Harry had included that entire period in a single nightmare, and proceeded to forget it.

Weeks of double kidnapping: in frozen time, and deep in the forest, unreachable. Hundreds of days of not knowing of her; of their connection, severed; of hearing from everyone that she must have died. Months of seeing everyone (Ron, the last) put hope aside, go on with their lives, while he kept looking for her by himself, with increasingly less help, with increasingly less credibility, until having been the Child Who Lived could no longer turn off the irritation or pity in the eyes of the others, every time he asked them for one more information, one more favor, another area to explore. More than the isolation, it hurt him that their lack of collaboration inadvertently reduced the chances of reaching her. Her chances of surviving.

"Harry?" He came out of the nightmare he was reluctant to relive, with a shudder.

Without realizing it, he had pulled her closer to himself, and his knuckles were white from clenching.

"Sorry."

He forced his muscles to relax as she stared at him, the comforting caress of her hands to his naked chest helping divert his attention. The nightmare faded into the pool and into a pair of brown eyes.

"Guess we both are tired?" she compromised.

As they approached the edge of the pool, the woman's movements were still uncoordinated, much like those of his children; Harry attributed to that the way he felt, as if he didn't have enough oxygen, though his lungs were full, as if he had a balloon in his chest. Something much like tenderness. She was his miracle, and he was still sometimes surprised that he could touch her, like now, warm and alive, and beside him. 'You're a year younger than me now' had been the first thing he'd said to his partner, as soon as her eyes had focused, waking for the first time since disappearing. He had told her so because the other option was to cry like a child.

'You didn't give up' she would tell him long after recovery, after a few missions in which she had proven to be better than ever. He would look at her, and remember a time, long before that nightmare, when it had been him in the hospital; him with that injured, useless left leg. Yes he had given up, until she had appeared, splendid over the pathetic image of his nearly lost extremity, calling him by all his first and last names; and she had done so every day along months of recovery, until that glorious moment in which he had looked into her warm proud eyes at the end of their next mission together.

Yes, he had given up. She was the one who hadn't given up, for both of them. But he didn't tell her.

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Others have dealt with her hair in three moments of her life: first, when she was a child and her mother used to comb her hair without magic -an exhausting and painful process-; the second, when Duham, at age three, decided that it was not fair to always be the one they combed, if her hairdresser also had a hair, a torture that lasted because Rose drew the same conclusion when it was her turn; the third, after the curse, when she was in the hospital, roughly as functional as a short-circuited robot.

This time, it was Harry who sometimes combed her hair. Her mother hadn't gotten used to magic hospitals, nor did she know how overworked the nurses were, despite magic (or perhaps because it was the perfect excuse to keep less personnel and the reason why there was always a shortage of staff). Ron still felt inhibited from having lost hope in his own wife, and, with the excuse of the children, he hardly ever went to St. Mungo's. It was Harry who stayed, despite the rage and tears from his own wife, who, nonetheless, by then had spent a couple of years getting used to losing to the simple ghost of his friend. Hermione still doesn't know too much about this.

"I think your hair is still lighter than mine after all," Duham comments.

"Really?"

Hermione stares at the mirror image, which nods, parting individual hairs. She's numb. Perhaps that is why she isn't so surprised.

"Yellow, beige, brown; your hair goes through the entire scale. Mine never gets lighter than beige, and reaches black."

That small detail makes Hermione unease.

"It's not noticeable."

"Not much," the girl acknowledges.

The oldest's hair slips through her hands.

"Come on," Hermione says jokingly. "I don't want to damage your books any more than I have."

As she turns to leave, her gaze falls on the powerful pen design next to the door. Duham must have friends with extraordinary talents.

They apparate directly to their parents' front door. At the faint pop the two muggles also seem to appear from thin air, tears in their eyes and everything. While mom hugs Duham, muttering protests about the postponed family reunion, dad kisses the older sister on the forehead. The girl puts an arm around her sister's waist and leans over to pass under her father's arm:

"What did you make us for dinner?"

Dad's cooking is invariably delicious. Something about being a dentist has given him a cultivated sense of taste and (Hermione suspects) an urge to disobey his own professional recommendations with guilty pleasure. As always, half the dinner goes by in a silence that is not at all uncomfortable, broken only by questions from the mother and complacent monosyllables both daughters manage to utter between a bite and the others. It's towards desserts that the real talk starts.

"Tell them how good I am," the youngest asks before doing it herself. "Last week I stepped into an interrogation room and the man confessed, simple as that! Apparently he thought I was a valuable witness ..."

"You have to train anyway," the oldest cut firmly.

In her mind, the memory of Harry in his early days as an apprentice: same eyes, shining as when he had first flown on a broomstick; he was unable, despite his DADA O.W.L.S., to believe he was that good at this. And like then, now Hermione must hide the tender smile, to be the ground wire. Confidence is good, but an excess of it has fatal result in their field of work.

"Yes, and I have the best of mentors."

The present welcomes Hermione with all the smoothness of concrete, and she turns, searching her little sister's eyes for the source of that tone of voice before slowly, cautiously answering:

"Yeah, Harry is the best there is."

The veteran's honest: she still remembers her fifth year at Hogwarts. But Duham doesn't, and her voice shouldn't have that quality. She doesn't like Duham's change of expression, either. Should they have discussed this particular topic in the security of her maiden den?

"I still can't stand the idea of both of you facing criminals with superpowers," dad protest. "What did we do wrong to deserve to raise two witches, and on top of that, lionesses all two?"

They avoid the topic. Dad's only half joking, and this wouldn't be the first time this has triggered a scene.

"You haven't brought your husband in a while, Hermione," mom intervenes, lifesaving as always. "And to think that I left the message with him."

"I met him too," Duham offers, her mouth full, earning a scowl, so she swallows before continuing. "They were throwing a party and he invited me..."

"Ah! So it was him..."

Mrs. Granger eyes her eldest, probably hearing the relief in her voice.

"Yeah. I bet that among the three of you he was the only one excited about it" the young woman prods. "He's the funny kind. Always talking about Quidditch..."

"And he shouldn't…" Hermione reprimands, "not around Harry, anyway… I bet he forgets about his own sister's death most of the time."

There's a bit of an uncomfortable silence until Hermione adds:

"I don't get what you all see in it... "

"It's fun," Duham argues. "And he's fun. Wonder how you two ended up together... It's not like you can discuss the latest readings..."

The girl means no offence, so Hermione takes none. Deep down, she wonders the same thing.

"And you, Duham," the mother interrupts again, "when are you bringing me a boy?" I'm getting desperate here..."

"Mom, had I already brought you someone, you'd be frantic," touché. "Besides, who knows-.. I might bring someone soon."

Something hot and bitter runs down Hermione's throat.

"Anyone I know?"

"Well, I'm meeting new guys at work after all, now that I'm a trainee..."

Yep, she apparently has reason to feel so, but bites her tongue as they all clear the dishes. Her gaze follows Duham into the kitchen and her ears struggle to listen her there, as the girl jokes with dad.

"Hermione," her mother whispers.

The auror turns to her and smiles absently, heart beating in her throat as she waits in hope and fear for anything revealing coming from beyond the wall.

"You must keep an eye on your sister, dear. I'm worried about her. She is so not herself these days…"

Duham is telling Dad about her training with Harry. The tone of her voice is unmistakable.

"She doesn't even come home anymore..."

"Neither do I, Mama," the witch dismisses, irritated. "You are just noticing it more now because of your early retreat..."

"Hermione Jean Granger!" the daughter's attention swiftly shifts to her mother. Not because the volume is low, the tone is less mandatory. "Listen when your mother speaks to you!"

"Sorry," she grudgingly excuses herself.

The mother looks into the witch's eyes, shakes her head and stands up to disappear into the kitchen. A few minutes of deceptively happy chitchat, and Duham comes out wiping her hands, a dreamy smile plastered in her face.

Hermione waits until she's seated before putting an end to her own turture:

"Duham… What you spoke about sooner… About the man you hoped to bring…?

She don't know what to add, how to face the subject. She hopes she's wrong, but… if Duham has someone specific in mind how could it be anyone but Harry? To her twenty-years-old self -to anyone, in fact-, he is a war hero, a living legend, a mature man, handsome, drowned in state secrets, loyal, brave… frankly a dream come true.

"I hope it's not your mentor."

Duham opens her mouth, frowning. Hermione's too troubled to read her accurately.

"That's not yours to decide, 'Mia."

"'m worried about you… both of you. He is old enough to be your father, Duham..."

"That's none of your business…"

"... and a widow," Hermione continues, raising her voice. "And I don't know who I'm most worried about: you, as a substitute for some other woman... "

"He's as old as you, and I'm already an adult!"

"… or him. You can't possibly understand the depth of the hurt you could cause to him simply by being immature…!"

"That's enough!"

Both sisters hush and stare to their mother, now beside them, whose authority is not to be defied.

"I don't know what's going on, but you are going to be polite with each other at least under this roof. And be happy that you aren't children anymore and I can't lock you up under the stairs until you start to thinking like sisters…"

Suddenly the woman looks up, eyes wide, a hand to her chest. Auror and apprentice turn to see a huge silver deer step forward. "I'm sorry to interrupt," the animal says, in atypically human movement of the lips; Harry's voice. "Hermione, we need you at the Ministry right now."

"I'm going with you," Duham says.

Hermione ignores her. With the same gesture she strokes the deer and climbs on top of the apparently ethereal figure. Without losing an iota of elegance, the animal takes a turn and gradually fades, along with its rider.

"Was that a Patronus?" the Muggle asks, having learned more than what's convenient in recent years. "I didn't know they could be mounted...

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The Ministry is a mess. Memos keep flying in and out of elevators and bureaucrats keep stamping signatures on meaningless papers, as windows show a distant tornado, as usual. But there is tension on the faces of too many bureaucrats, and the conference room is sealed since morning. And it's Sunday. In the Auror Headquarters air's thick with strange unease: those inside remain inactive, or moving like headless chickens.

"What happened?" Hermione asks upon arrival, as the deer below her vanishes into a cloud of light, gracefully setting her down.

It's one of the apprentices who answers. As usual, it's the closest, and not the most suitable, who responded to the call.

"Auror Granger!" the boy answers, scared; he looks from side to side before understanding he's the one to answer his superior's question, whether he's well informed or not. "We don't know, auror. Some situation with the United States. There might be war" he adds in a hysterical whisper.

Unable to get more information out of the young man, the auror purses her lips in a line.

"A nice device," someone behind her says; she turns around and, indeed, it's William, in undeniably good humor. "Mass distribution weapon, sure... like the one we saw in Iraq last year, but more developed... It released a spell on the New York subway. It cursed muggles, they keep attacking each other like beasts... Muggle cops think it's a bioweapon, but they keep wondering what disease it is...

Hermione takes a deep breath, distracted from William's stark discrimination by the enormity of the problem. Her powerful mind traces the spider web of the possible causes and repercussions, including exposure of the American wizarding world and its consequences for the rest of the globalized world that wizards and muggles inevitably share (it has been nightmare enough to avoid sights with all the vigilance devices there are these days). American magicians will ask for heads, and it won't be out of proportion to the damage. Why British heads, she doesn't know still.

Pain filling her heart, she makes peace with the fact that Harry, once again, must serve them as flag.

"Harry?"

Sparkie raise bloodshot eyes.

"At the meeting. He just came out to call you."

"Auror Granger, they're waiting for you."

They all turn to the breathless secretary who just ran in and now shrinks under the looks as her eyes wander from one to the other.

Hermione is gone, running through the long corridors when no one sees her: right, left; up and down stairs (too impatient for elevators).

The International Relations Department welcomes her with cold foreign eyes.

Ron makes her sit next to him. Harry makes a point of not looking.

The entire Golden Trio is in charge of the case. The irregularity does not escape her: this is not in the Minister of Magic contract.

Relations with the American power must be even worse than she suspected.

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Author's Note: Duham doesn't like invasion of her privacy, you sure know why :)

As usual, you make me immensely happy with your reviews. The response to chapter 27 of the Spanish version (dozens of reviews, really!) still fills me with awe. Please keep the encouragement coming, it makes this worth the effort of translating.