"Devotion," she said.

She was sitting at the library table for this. No matter how many times he had told her the couch was fine, she insisted on keeping it there. The book had survived the elements for probably hundreds of years but she was still not comfortable with keeping it anywhere but a flat surface for fear of damaging it.

"That's what this one symbol means, Harry," she continued.

"Hermione, I read the bloody spell, I know that's what it says. I completely understand it or I wouldn't have gone through with it."

"Still, I want to be sure," she answered. "And here is the link that makes the pact possible: the volatile, and the change. If it's split, a chain-reaction occurs. A violent chain-reaction. Until it burns itself out."

"Yes, that's kind of the point." He righted himself from his vertical position. "Hermione, you're not having second thoughts are you?"

She looked back angrily, her glinting eyes narrowing. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," she said, flipping back to the book. "Second thoughts…" she muttered, shaking her head.

"What are you hoping to find by reading it for the hundredth time anyway?"

"It just seems like it should work without that one symbol. It makes perfect sense, the magic having to burn itself out, becoming unstable if the two elements are disconnected. And that power is drawn from –"

"The sacrifice," he interrupted.

"The sacrifice. Which is why I'm wondering what the symbol for devotion is used for."

"It binds the whole thing together, Hermione. You take it away and you're just left with a really bad combustion spell. If there are other side-effects, you're not going to find them in there. Believe me, I read it. Many times."

"You think there are side-effects?" she peeped.

"I'd be surprised if there weren't. You know how we fixed my eyesight and now I'm able to see people through walls?" He crouched down next to her, kissing her neck. "The reason you won't find anything in there is that nobody ever has. Devotion is a form of love, and love is the essence of the soul. Nobody has ever pierced that mystery."

"And you are an expert on love?"

"A very specialised one," he said, kissing her. "I have to go."

"Do you have to? You do, don't you?"

"I do, and later on, we're talking."

"We?" she said with a grimace.

"We're elected members of the Wizengamot. She's not holding much over our heads any more. Which means we can see how useful she's trying to be, and how much she cares about what she thinks happened to Ron."

She sighed and crossed her arms. "If it goes wrong?"

He grabbed his cloak and gave her a smile. "Positive thinking, no?"

Walking to the floo, he heard her snort. But it was time to face the music, or rather, the harpy's wail.

#

He stepped into the living room of the Burrow, the smell of gravy and pie filling his nostrils. Molly was there, her face twisting into a sad squint as she saw him.

"Mrs. Weasley."

"Harry," she said, moving up to the table where a steaming pot of tea was sitting. "Sit."

No please, but he still sat down. She wasn't screaming right away, which probably was a bad sign. Everyone knew a rant from Molly was a one-off thing, she wouldn't bring up the subject later on. She was still looking for reconciliation, despite having spoken to Ginny.

"Harry, how can you do this!" she said in an angry whisper. "S – Separating? Divorce? You swore a vow to each other, how can you possible think of that – do that! Without talking to us?" Her hand was trembling on the edge of the cup. "What happened? Is it – Is it because of what happened with Ron?"

"No, it isn't."

"Ginny then? She did something wrong. I always said she was too brash and too – unladylike, so many years I raised her, she never listened. My only daughter!"

"It wasn't."

"Is it because she was unfaithful? I told her it was stupid, a mistake, a scarlet –"

"Enough!" Harry cut through her tirade, feeling acid course through his veins. It died down, and he slowly regained his composure. Molly looked… scared, or frightened by his outburst. This was no good. "I'm sorry. But you need to hear this."

He took a sip of tea, taking the time to think about what he would say. "Ginny and I married too young." She started to protest, but he put up his hand. "We just weren't made for each other. She loves this family, and so do I. So, this is what will happen. Ginny and me, we're not getting back together – ever. It's up to you, Mrs. Weasley – because I'm certain Arthur will be all too happy to let it go – to keep the family together. And if that's without Hermione and me—"

"No, please don't say that. You know you're welcome here, the both of you." The mask of animosity slipped, and all that was left behind was sadness on Mrs. Weasley's face.

"If you want Ginny to be happy, be good to her. And remember," he said, a reassuring hand taking hers, "we're looking out for each other too, despite the divorce."

And she was crying. He hated that, even before everything happened. But he could be a good soldier and placate her, even if it made him want to murder someone – anyone.

"What about Ron?" she whimpered. "He won't come, w—won't talk to me."

"We'll find something, I promise."

Molly was no more steadfast than George appeared to be, she just hid it better. Or maybe she was able to delude herself better. Either way it was an easy favour for Ginny, just a few moments of discomfort and a few (mostly) empty words and she would be appeased. And in return, he would have a war chest.

They had some more tea and he stood to leave.

"I'll go see George now," he said with a smile. "Should I him that we could have a get-together soon, is that all right?"

"I'd like that very much, Harry, dear," she said.

#

He came in from the Leaky Cauldron. It was getting late and a few patrons said hello to him, as well as Hannah who was in. It was going to be tricky. George was no idiot, he'd have to pitch it and Ginny would have to sell it.

George was at the back of the shop, thankfully alone. Harry made his way there, silently, as he was taught, and stood waiting a few feet from the counter. The bereft brother eventually looked up, clearly surprised. Harry wondered what that was about.

"Hello, George."

"Harry. Uh – Hey."

"Could we talk?"

George flipped his wand and the blinds on the Wheezes store went down. Harry followed him to the back. George was apprehensive, and Harry wasn't surprised since the twin had seen the hopes of his family crumble over the past few weeks. They settled in the chairs with a beer, drinking slowly.

"How's Angelina?" Harry asked. "Did you make up?"

"She doesn't like how I mope all the time."

"You know she means well... I talked to your mum."

George frowned.

"She'd like to start having dinners back at the burrow again."

George shook his head in confusion. "Mate, how can it ever be the same? What happened with Ron? Two bloody divorces? Merlin, Harry, we weren't even allowed to say the word inside the house."

"We've faced worse, haven't we?" Harry took a large swig of beer and put down his bottle. "About Ron." George winced as if he'd uttered Voldemort's name ten years ago. "Maybe it's best if he does something to clear his head for a while, where he won't be ashamed to just walk outside."

"What?"

"I'm being selfish here, George," he said with a sad face. "I mean it's going to take time, if we're ever going to go back to… mending things. Give him something to do, somewhere he can meet new people. Look, we've been trying to hold up the shelters but it costs a lot of money. And I know you've been wanting to open a Wheezes branch elsewhere."

"Harry, we invested in research, hired Alex. Now Ron's out of the picture – even if it were possible – we couldn't do that."

"But if you could," Harry said, leaning forward, "if it suddenly became possible? I'd provide the funds to expand into the States, like you've been wanting to, and Ron would be busy with that. Like I said, George, this is selfish of me. Right now I have enough galleons to help you with that, say for a stake in the Wheezes. But next year? Or the year after that?"

Harry took a moment and let out a deep breath. "Would you be willing to do that?"

"You know, it does feel weird, you saying that now," George snorted. "I tried to offer you a share, how many times?"

"Yeah, but now, it would go to a good cause. It's just an idea, you don't have to say yes."

George was thinking it over, and got up to the fridge to get two more beers. He drank slowly.

"And how do I get past the laws?" George asked.

"Hermione and I can take care of that. It's a shite law anyway, voted in during Voldemort's reign just to keep people from running."

George's looked thoughtful. Harry didn't need mind-reading powers to know the words on his lips. Fraud, insider trading, corruption. But the fact Harry had phrased it in conjunction with the shelters prevented him from saying anything.

"Sending Ron away? That would be good?"

Harry shrugged. His half of the ploy was finished. "Ginny told me she talked about it with him."

"She did?" George said incredulously. "So what, you're – don't tell me you're getting back together now?"

"No, that ship has sailed," Harry said sadly. "But that doesn't mean we can't get along. She's important to me. So are you…" It took a herculean effort to put his pride aside to say those last words. "So is Ron."

George chuckled drily. "Gonna have to think about this, talk with him."

"Yeah, of course." Harry smiled. "So what do you think this year? Puddlemere is looking good, Harpies too. You missed all the drama with Katie last time."

Quidditch talk was an easy way to lighten the mood. "No wonder I never got anywhere with her," George laughed. "How was she?"

"Pretty heartbroken, but you know Katie. I wouldn't worry too much, soon she'll be too busy with Oliver's insane quidditch-mania to think about anything else."

"They're playing first this season? We should catch the game."

"Seeing them fly the Tornadoes into the dirt could be fun."

They laughed together, and had a few more beers talking about the league.

#

Two days later, he found himself waiting in the Grimmauld Place parlour for Ginny. Hermione had considerably warmed up to the idea of Ginny lending them a hand with their funding problem, but it was strange even for him.

She stepped out of the floo, dusting herself off and went to the table straight away to sit down, Kreacher serving her a cup of tea.

"He's going to do it," she said, taking a sip, "so that should put you in the black in the future."

"Really?" Hermione asked.

"And Ron?" said Harry.

"Leaving on Friday. A vacation is what he's calling it, but he'll be looking for property and writing to George about business."

"That's brilliant," Harry blurted out. "You got that sorted in just two days?"

She didn't smile, but shrugged. "I know my brothers. George will send you the contract in a few days, when he's had time to meet with his lawyer."

It was silent for a while, until Hermione spoke up. "Why are you even blackmailing us? You know your threat isn't going to –"

"Hermione," Harry stopped her calmly, and looked at her. She had questions and so did he, but there was a way of asking. It would do no good to show they didn't fear her blackmail as much. He got up and walked up to Ginny, placing two hands on the table to face her. She looked as if she didn't care if a blade came down on her at that moment.

"What do you want, Ginny?"

Her eyes flickered momentarily, but she regained her composure. "I can't have what I want."

"The second best thing then," Harry said.

She took another gulp of tea before answering, and his arms relaxed.

"If I had told you what I wanted before you would have looked at me like I was barmy." She smiled emptily. "But now, I don't think you will."

"Say it then."

She took a breath and looked at Hermione, and back to Harry. "I want justice for the Malfoys, and for those that stood by and let my brother get killed."

"Justice. I take it not the Ministry's justice?"

"No."

Harry looked back to Hermione, who was watching on with crossed arms.

"Say you got your hands on Malfoy, what would you do?"

Ginny got up and mimicked his stance, both hands on the table. Her eyes filled with fire as she fixed him. "I would make him pay for every bit of suffering him and his family put me though. George barely smiles any more. So that's two brothers that inbred spawn owes me."

"And the others?"

"Greengrass? Rowle? Burke? Flint? They can all rot. But Draco Malfoy in particular, I want to see him suffer. Same goes for his bitch of a mother and her husband locked up in Azkaban."

Harry smiled at Hermione.

"Good," he said, "how are you doing with Alfred?"

She laughed and leaned back. "What, he doesn't tell you?"

Harry went back to sit next to Hermione. "I doubt he would, he's discrete about that, especially when it comes to his superior's ex-wife."

"It's going well," she said with a shrug. "But yeah, he's honourable like that. Maybe you should give him the go-ahead."

"And you can just do that," Hermione flared up, "seduce a man you barely know?"

He should probably intervene, but he was curious to see where this would lead.

"Hm," Ginny hummed. "Let's see, there was Krum… then Corner, and let's not forget about Ron. You should know all about seducing someone you don't love." Ginny chuckled. "Of course those are only those you told me about."

There was a gust of something icy wet dripping down Harry's spine, for a moment. And it passed. Hermione looked at him with the most loving, yearning look he had ever seen. The argument was over. Hermione was confident in Harry and his commitment to her.

She turned back to Ginny and smiled. "I hope it works out with you and Alfred. You did well, helping us with George." Her lip curled up in a sadistic sneer. "And we'll get Malfoy, of course. He'll wish Voldemort had ended his whole family. Maybe we can start discussing things once Alfred is on our side."

Harry chuckled. "All we need now is a hideout, and I don't particularly feel like using the old Order's headquarters."

Ginny shook her head and looked away. "So when are you going to change those laws so George can do his business across the pond?"

"Soon, but it will take weeks, if not months," Hermione said. "I guess that puts an end to our feigning stupidity to the Wizengamot, and we've only been to two sessions so far."

"So much for planning," said Harry.

#

As if planning was something they could avoid. Nothing ever went to plan so they needed to get out there with something big, something daring that leveraged everything they had built up so far. The first December session would have to do, and it would take a gargantuan amount of work. They enlisted Augusta Longbottom and Pertitus Fawley to help them out with the legal jargon and precedents. Long nights, long days, long weekends were the norm.

"This is ridiculous even for what I know of the two of you," Augusta had commented. And it was. Harry was more often than not completely out of his depth. Paperwork of all things. He spent much time collecting whatever information he could on the Wizengamot members. Ninety names, minus those they knew were on their side, minus them, leaving still a lot of names. Their 'collection' came in handy, they would make use of their trove of memories but it would allow them to make one big move.

In the end, it was the right thing to do. Subtlety had never been his style – hers neither. And on a positive note, they went to the Burrow twice in the meantime. Ron had left on his grand adventure to find himself in the States and the Weasleys minus one Weasley returned to a semblance of normality. Even George had gotten better, and made up with Angelina.

Puddlemere lost their first match against all odds, and Katie had one more thing to feel shitty about. They went out for drinks with the team, who got a kick out of seeing Harry again. He had seen them once before, when he went with Wood. Back then, he was still trying to recruit Harry, but not any more. "You go into politics, you don't come back to quidditch," he said accusingly. Harry thought it was a bit offensive. He was still in good shape, not anywhere near the ballooning form of Ludo Bagman.

Things were looking up, for them at least. Their last visit to Pansy's safehouse had made clear that the cooped up women were not doing well. Marcy had been found passed out in the bath, thankfully unharmed. Frankly, once they made their move, they would have to find a solution. Harry asked Hermione if she could perform a fidelius charm, but she wisely noted that even if she could, it would be too easy to breach as there were many women still leaving the place for errands.

Winter was a good season and it had started early with heavy frost in the first week of December. Time spent inside mostly, with hot chocolate, warm blankets and the wireless or some reading. The papers had been slightly confused at his breakup with Ginny. There was so little to go on, wild stories had appeared. 'Harry Potter elopes with Magpies beater.' And there were obviously a few articles implying that Harry was starting a relationship with his political partner.

Hermione had picked out a book and settled in the sofa of the living room, while Harry munched on a leftover bit of quiche. He watched her as he popped the last bite of steaming pastry into his mouth and downed it with some water.

"Anything interesting?" he asked.

"Not to you I don't think," she said, trailing her finger over the pages. She didn't mind him asking what she worked on, any excuse to regurgitate what she was studying. "It's a book on magical constructs."

Harry thought back to his education and remembered the term from his charms NEWT. "Like portraits and enchanted mirrors and such?"

"It's more general than that, but yes. They use crushed beetles to add to the paint of magical portraits – something I read in Arcane Artistry: Tools of the Trade – and it's not just for colouring. The live beetles let some spiritual essence into the paint, this book says in a roundabout way, which is one of the two components to creating something magically aware."

He took place beside her and she bookmarked her page with a cloth lint and put it down to face him. "The other component to tie it together is, in the case of portraits, memory. The charm put on the paintings makes the portraits learn from whoever they talk to. That's why Snape's portrait is so silent, he was never properly taught by his real life counterpart."

"But he still sort of acts like Snape," Harry noted.

"Yes," she nodded, "because professor Mcgonagall has been teaching the portrait to act like it, but even someone who didn't know him too well can tell he's nothing like the real one, because McGonagall's memories of Snape are biased. Besides, the charm was never meant to be used that way, so it takes longer for the painting to use the interactions for a cogent personality."

"Hm," Harry grunted, "reminds me about Phineas. He's been pretty quiet since he told us about Trelawney dying. What caught your interest in this book?"

"Well, I was getting nowhere with reading the spell in the Liber Agape, so I decided to continue with Oril's collection. Magical constructs are very limited, and then I thought back to what we found in Oril's bunker."

"That big, stone thing with the pipe leading upwards?"

"I've researched what it could be – even went to a muggle library with a drawing. It's a kiln, Harry."

"A kiln… you're joking? You mean to make pottery?"

She laughed. "Yes, to make pottery. Except it's magical – you remember the runes covering everything? The symbols in silver on the ground? Now, what does a kiln do, and how does it relate to what I was just talking about?"

"I have no bloody idea. You're really not having a go at me?"

"No," she said, forcing a smile down, "I promise. But pottery is an art form too, like painting? And who's to say you couldn't apply those principles to for example – a clay doll? Have you heard of the Terracotta Army?" He opened his mouth to answer, but she continued. "It's this huge collection of life-sized soldier statues they found in a mausoleum in Shaanxi. There were footsoldiers, chariots, even horses. Now, imagine if you could have a spell to make those as life-like as magical portraits."

"Wait," said Harry, tapping a finger on his lips, "McGonagall did something similar, with the suits of armour in the castle."

"I know what you mean, and it's not the same. That charm is tied to Hogwarts and uses the magic of the castle to make the spell work. Those suits of armour don't act independent of the castle. I mean, it is an incredible bit of magic, and Hogwarts is another one of those mysteries, but they're not like portraits who can act on their own."

"So, why do you think Oril didn't have an army of clay men back there?"

She sighed and brought her legs up to the couch. "He was obviously missing something." With a smile, she leaned against Harry and moved onto his lap. She kissed his neck and put her head on his shoulder.

"I want to tell you something," she said, in a way Harry very well knew could only be followed by something she wanted to get off her chest. "Before Hogwarts, I didn't have many friends. I mean, I didn't have any, just one girl who sort of tolerated my company. I was first in my class for a while, but everyone kept making fun of me for always being first." She sniffed angrily. "I didn't even like studying that much."

"Then on my 11th birthday, McGonagall came to my house – they sent a letter to tell my parents I was a witch. It's like I was being told I had a second chance at life, I was so happy. We went to buy my school supplies, and my parents saw how happy I was so they gave me some extra money to buy more books. I learned all our course material by heart and barely studied anything from primary school so my grades took a plunge.

"But I really thought that this time things would be different, that I'd make tons of friends and they all would like me because I knew so much." She laughed. "Well as you know, I didn't make much friends at first. Even Neville only stuck around me because he was too scared to say something, I think. That's when I discovered the portraits, and I started having these long conversations with them. Sir Cadogan, Berthold the Bold, the girl in the prairie – she didn't even have a name, or didn't remember.

"But I knew something was missing. Whenever they laughed, it wasn't like a friend laughed with you – I knew enough from seeing you, Ron and Lavender and Parvati. So when Ron made that comment, it sort of all came tumbling down for me. I didn't have any real friends – again. But on Hallow'ene everything changed. To think I have a troll to thank for making my first real friends."

It was silent for a while. Hermione didn't seem distraught retelling the story. "So us making an army of clay men isn't enough," he said.

"Like the portraits," she said. "You were right about Ginny and you were the one who included Mathilda."

"Gregorovitch said something like that, about not being able to do things alone."

"It's a good thing to keep in mind." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "We'll be making a lot of enemies in the future."

AN: I'm trying out scrivener, so formatting might change depending on the website uploaded to. The new act of the story has started and I'm still fleshing out a good portion of it. Thanks for reading.