All in all, it was a quiet morning.
Hannah had been going about her business, working the breakfast shift that she'd specifically asked for, knowing that she'd be useless by evening. At first running plates of food and a constant stream of tea out to customers before the sun even rose proved a good distraction from the day. The work was a comfort. Her head might have been a haze of grief and bad memories, but she could distract herself with the menial, steady tasks of the morning. That was, until she noticed that a few tables snickered as she passed. Hannah tried to brush it off, even as her heart began to hammer inside of her chest, because what did they know of her? What could they have been laughing about? It had to be a coincidence. An older witch eating by herself as she read the morning paper shot a sympathetic look her way when Hannah refilled her tea, but that could have just been a show of everyday kindness. The wizard sitting near the hearth did a double-take and whispered something to his companion when Hannah approached to take their orders. She brushed that off too.
She ignored all of it, perhaps because her mind was already so preoccupied. On another day she might have thought about it more, put it together faster, but not that day. Not while the spectre of her mother's memory threatened to knock her down if she didn't carefully avoid it. No, that day it had to hit her square in the face.
"How's the boyfriend Abbott?"
The shout didn't even come from one of her tables. In the area that Sam was covering that morning a small group leered at her, a couple of wizards and a witch. They looked like they might have been in their mid-twenties, only a bit older than herself. Certainly they were young enough that she might have shared some years at Hogwarts with them, although they didn't look familiar. Hannah told herself that she must have just forgotten them, older students in another house most likely. How else could they have known her name?
She swallowed down all of that doubt to approach the table across the room. "Pardon?" she asked, her tone the practiced lightness that she always used with the Leaky Cauldron's patrons.
"You heard him," one of the men said. "How's your Long-bottom?" He drew out Neville's surname, so that the two words in it hung distinctly in the air, and the three of them laughed.
Hannah might have flushed, from embarrassment and indignation both, if she weren't so busy trying to figure out what they were talking about. The delighted sound of their continued laughter rang out in stark contrast to how Hannah suddenly felt. She stared at them, unsure how to proceed when the whole encounter seemed so surreal. It didn't make any sense—what they said, what they knew, what they were implying. Hannah looked down at their table, searching for any way to turn this encounter around, to make it just another part of her shift that would soon be forgotten. That's when she saw it.
A copy of the morning's Daily Prophet lay open on the table. When Hannah looked at it her own image looked back. Not directly, not at the camera, but close enough that anyone could recognize her. She picked up the paper as they continued to laugh. Where everything had just gone fuzzily surreal, the world snapped back into sharp reality. The paper was real, and her picture was in it, and that headline, that awful headline, was there for everyone in the wizarding world to read. Hannah sprinted towards the kitchen.
"Oi! That's mine!" the witch shouted, but Hannah didn't stop.
She crashed into the kitchen, and into Sam who couldn't hold onto the plates he carried through the impact. They shattered on the ground, the sound loud in Hannah's ears even through the rest of the noise in the kitchen—the wireless humming a jazzy tune, Hephesta murmuring to herself, the sizzle of frying food and the crackling fire over which a stew for that night was just beginning its long, slow, simmer.
"Watch it!" Sam said, sighing as he surveyed the mess surrounding them.
Hephesta even turned around from her work, only to let out a loud huff. She shouted, "S'pose I'll start remaking that!"
Hannah looked down at the wreckage too. The plates might not have been so bad—a quick charm would fix those up—but the food couldn't be saved. And more than that, Sam had gotten half of it spilled down his front. A runny yolk oozed down one of his trainers.
"I'm sorry," Hannah said, her voice quiet.
"What were you—" he cut off when he saw her face. "Hannah, what's happened?"
She didn't say anything, she couldn't. Where would she even start? She hardly understood what was happening herself. Her grip on the Prophet tightened.
"Don't just stand around, get to cleaning that up." Tom had appeared too.
Hannah felt his gaze, heavy and serious, on her. Sam's as well, perhaps a bit softer but just as intent. Rather than face them she kneeled and, having tucked the paper snugly under one arm, began picking the ceramic shards out of the mess she'd made, setting them aside to be mended.
"What's the matter?" Tom asked.
Hannah just shook her head. Sam had taken a few steps away and was cleaning the egg off himself, but she could hear him muttering something. She could only imagine how much he wished she hadn't gotten that shift.
All of the ire had drained from her boss's voice when Tom asked, "What've you got there, then?"
"It's nothing." Her lie was quickly followed by a loud swear as she fumbled a piece of the ruined plates, slicing her palm in the process.
"Sam, get the Dittany," Tom called. He bent over heavily, his old joints making his movements slow, so that his wizened face loomed before Hannah's. He looked her in the eye. "Now, what is the matter?"
She handed over the paper. It could explain better than she could what was happening, why her mind was racing, why the world suddenly felt twice as small but ten times meaner than it had when she'd woken up that morning.
Love with Longbottom Five Years After Mother's Murder!
Tom glanced down to where it was still opened, on that page, that article. He read it—it occurred to Hannah that she hadn't even done that yet, that she didn't even know how bad it got. That headline was enough, though. Even without the picture, it would've been awful, but now there was the worst truth of her life printed with a lie and with her face there too, plain as day and available to everyone. She'd never been more exposed, more vulnerable. None of this was right.
"Hmm," Tom said, drawing Hannah back out of her thoughts. He'd stood up straight again and held the paper out, squinting down at it like he was having difficulty seeing the words before him.
Hannah stood as well, cradling her now bloodied hand against her stomach. It stung, and Hannah tried to focus on that, on the immediacy of that sensation, rather than think about all of the possibilities, the damage, that that damned article might have already put into motion.
Tom's eyes flicked from the paper to Hannah's face and back again, almost as if he were trying to gauge her response before forming his own.
"It isn't even true," she said, her voice sounding defeated even to her own ears. "Just...for whatever it's worth."
"About you and Longbottom?" Tom asked, his focus still on the paper.
Hannah nodded.
Sam reappeared, the small vial of essence of Dittany in hand. He pulled out the dropper, full of the brown liquid, and Hannah wordlessly offered her palm. He let a couple of drops fall onto the wound and, after a small puff of green smoke, the skin sealed shut. There was still blood that needed to be washed off, and the pale, shiny stretch of a new scar that stood out starkly, but the pain had gone and the bleeding had stopped.
"Thank you," she said, flexing her fingers.
Sam just nodded before heading back to put the Dittany away in the supply room.
"The rest of it's true enough, though," Tom said, as if there'd never been a pause.
Hannah shrugged. She didn't know what all he was talking about, after all. "My mum," she began to explain, but her breath caught in her throat. If she spoke anymore there'd be tears.
"It's alright," Tom said, his face holding a sad, toothless smile. "I know."
Of course he did. He knew very well who Hannah was, who her family was, and what happened had been big news at the time. Although, there'd been so much big news then, so many horrible stories flooding the papers day after day. Her mother's story hadn't held public attention for very long, and for the most part Hannah had been glad of it. Maybe she should have been hurt that the wizarding world didn't seem to care about her mother's life or her loss, but everyone had lost someone in the war. Besides, it was a sick relief that she could go about her life and not be recognized for something so awful. That she could introduce herself to someone new and not have them instantly know what had happened to her family. It dawned on her, with a sickening emptiness in her stomach, that those days were now behind her again.
Tom held the paper out for Hannah who took it back wordlessly. She thought absently that she should return it to the witch in the dining room.
"Go home," Tom said. "Stay with your family while we wait for this to subside."
Hannah shook her head, not quite believing that he would order her away. "No, I have to stay here, I need to work. Maybe I could just stay here in the kitchen for a few days? Help Hephesta with the cooking? Honestly, how many people read the Prophet's society section anyway?"
She knew the answer as well as Tom did without him ever needing to say it: enough. Enough people that word would spread. Any story about one of Harry Potter's closest friends would be a hot topic no matter how deep in the paper it hid. Add in that intoxicating, revolting mix of tragedy and romance and there'd be no stopping the gossip.
"If it's about the money, you have holiday time, loads of it," Tom said, his bushy eyebrows drawn close together in concern.
Hannah shook her head. "No, it's not that."
She couldn't tell him that she was worried if she didn't have work to distract her from this that she would go mad. She couldn't explain to her boss, to kind and generous and upstanding Tom, that it wasn't a holiday with her family that she needed—that in fact that only sounded like piling more strain onto this already ridiculous situation. She couldn't say any of that and she certainly couldn't just run away from this, as much as she wanted to, so Hannah turned to the only option that seemed available. She gave in.
"You're right," she heard herself say as she pulled her spine straighter and plastered a smile on her face. "I should go home for a bit, right away."
"You can use the floo out of my office, whenever you're ready," Tom said.
"Now's fine," Hannah said. What was the use in delaying the inevitable, anyway?
They went into the cramped, dark office and Tom offered a jam jar of floo powder to Hannah.
"It'll all work out alright, you'll see," he told her warmly.
Hannah didn't respond, just kept that smile steady on her face and shouted the address of her grandparents' house, before the floo network whisked her away.
She heard her grandparents before they heard her. As soon as her feet were planted firmly on their hearth Hannah could hear their hushed voices from the kitchen. Low, serious, a bit on edge. It was as if she'd been transported back five years, when that was the only way anyone seemed to talk in that house.
It meant they'd seen it. Of course they'd seen it. As dismissive as Hannah had been about the Prophet's society section she couldn't deny that its readership often included her own grandparents. She turned to look at the clock on the mantle—it was just past eight. Her father would head to work soon, what would happen when he found out about the article? Hannah knew that was probably the main topic of whatever discussion was happening on the other side of the kitchen door.
Her fingers tightened on the paper in her hands. She'd practically forgotten that Tom had given it back to her, but she looked down at it again now. That headline, bold and dishonest in all but the most hurtful way, she couldn't imagine what kind of person would surmise all that from a hug. The picture cycled through its motions, over and over again, and Hannah's stomach churned at the idea that perhaps her face did reveal how she'd been feeling in that moment, the rush of emotion she'd gotten from Neville's words and his steady gaze. But no, she couldn't even bring herself to give a name to it, surely no one else could see.
She walked to the sofa on numb legs, sinking onto the firm cushion where her grandad usually sat. There were so many reasons why she needed to actually read the article and none supporting her desire not to. On that side there was only fear. She had to find out what people would now think about herself and Neville, about her mother. And yet every nerve in her body seemed to scream at her not to do it, as if by not reading the damned thing she could pretend that it wasn't really there, that it had never actually happened.
She straightened the paper in her hands, letting the flap unfurl so she could see the article in its entirety. She began to read.
Later, Hannah would regard it as a victory that she got to the end of the story before any of the hot tears that pricked her eyes fell. Still, they came. She wiped them away angrily. Anger felt like the way to go. They'd had no right to publish this filth after all, no grounds for any of the claims they made about her personal life. They had no reason to drudge up the murky details of what had happened to her mother nor the much clearer and just as horrific minutia of the crimes against Neville's own parents. She should be mad, she had every right to be livid. Anger always seemed like the stronger route. Anger sparked action, it had drive, perhaps even a bit of righteousness. Anger, for whatever reason, commanded respect.
But whatever anger Hannah could drudge up, no matter how strong it was, would never stand a chance compared to her sadness.
"Hannah?"
Her grandparents stood just a few steps out of the kitchen doorway, apparently stopped dead in their tracks by the sight of her. Hannah almost could have laughed at the sight of them. Miriam and Cyril both stood stock still in their dressing gowns yet their faces looked hyper-aware and extra awake, the way only a shock can provoke. With the day going as it had been, though, it was panic, not laughter, that overtook Hannah. She quickly tucked the paper underneath her arm, as if she could keep it from them by doing so. As if they didn't already know.
"What are you doing here, dear?" Miriam asked, her tone giving nothing away.
"Tom wanted me to come," Hannah said. It sounded so odd, but it was the truth. She kicked herself for phrasing it that way, though. The last thing she needed was her grandparents feeling hurt that she hadn't come running to them purely of her own volition.
Her grandad smiled sadly at her. His eyes were wet. "That was very kind of him," he said, leading his wife further into the room.
Hannah stood so that they could take their regular seats and when she did her grandmother gasped.
"Where has that blood come from? Are you hurt?"
Glancing down, Hannah spotted the red smudge on her top. "It's nothing," she said. She held out her hand for her grandmother to inspect, "Just a little accident with a broken dish."
Miriam clutched at her granddaughter with strong, slender fingers. She ran a cool touch along the shiny stretch of scar tissue, tutting as she did so.
"I'm sorry for just turning up with no notice," Hannah said.
Her grandmother's hands moved to cradle her face. "No notice needed," she said. Miriam's look might have been stern, but her lips still trembled despite being pressed firmly together.
Cyril sighed from his seat on the sofa. Hannah turned her attention to him and her grandmother's hands fell away as Miriam did the same. He had a handkerchief out and was dabbing at his eyes as they leaked a few stray tears.
"Grandad, I'm fine, I promise." She said it without thinking.
"Fine?" he asked. His round face looked stricken and he began twisting the thin fabric of the handkerchief between his fingers. "So it's true?"
Hannah's mind caught up to where her grandfather's had raced and she wanted to kick herself. "No, no, the Prophet—I didn't mean it about that."
Miriam moved to sit beside her husband, placing a comforting hand on his arm. She aimed a sharp look at her granddaughter. "Hannah, dear, tell us what's happening. All of our names are littered throughout that article—"
"And you've never even mentioned Neville Longbottom to us!" Cyril broke in. He frowned down at the carpet. "At least, you haven't since you were in school with him. Why wouldn't you tell us something so—"
"There's nothing to tell." Hannah crossed her arms and turned away from her grandparents. She couldn't take the weight of their emotions on top of her own. "I'm not dating Neville, we're friends that's all. I don't tell you about him just like I don't tell you every time that Susan and I go out to eat together."
"Susan's name is not the one printed alongside yours in the paper," Miriam said. Her voice wasn't snappish exactly, but it carried the same measured forcefulness that Hannah could remember being scolded with as a child.
"Not to mention poor Norah, today of all days," Cyril added. In contrast to his wife, his voice wavered while he talked, right on the edge of tears that Hannah could feel pricking her eyes as well.
Hannah balled her hands into fists so tight that her fingernails bit into her palms. "Don't let Dad hear you." She looked to the clock again, he should've been down to leave for work by then. "Where is he anyway?" she asked, "Or did he take the day off?"
"He went in early, before we woke up."
"What?" Hannah asked, rounding on her grandmother before she'd even finished her sentence.
"He left a note," Miriam said, as if that made it okay.
"Had your paper been touched yet?"
"No." The word came out brusquely. Coupled with the way that Miriam's head inclined as her posture went more rigid, it was clear that she wanted no more of this conversation.
Hannah couldn't hold her tongue, though. Not about this, not on top of everything else. "So he's out there hearing about this from Merlin knows who? And you're both just sitting here letting it happen?"
Her grandmother sighed. "Darling, I know that this day is always hard for you, and now—"
"And we all know that every day has been hard for him!" Hannah said, "Even if you don't want to talk about it."
"What would you have liked us to do? Force him to take a day off when he simply does not want to? Track him down like a criminal and drag him home because his daughter was careless?"
Hannah's reply caught in her throat. Miriam hadn't moved a centimeter, but Hannah's face bloomed with color as if she'd been slapped. It felt like she had. Her eyes went to her grandfather. Cyril didn't meet her gaze.
"I went to a quidditch game," she said, trying and failing to keep her voice from wavering. "I went to see my friends and I hugged one of them. Was that careless?"
They remained silent, but their eyes met just briefly. Cyril's arm went around Miriam's shoulders and they sat there, a united front in rebuke of Hannah's response, no words of their own needed.
"Fine," she said.
She turned back toward the fireplace, ready to reach for the Floo powder, to go any place other than there. She stopped short though. There were enough lies about her floating around already. If they were going to brand her careless anyway Hannah could make it true for once.
She turned back. "You don't actually know that he went to work." Her grandparents' heads both snapped up to look at her. "Dad wrote what you would want to hear so that you wouldn't worry about him today, and you both bought it so simply. He may be upset, he may be lost in some fog of mourning for the rest of his life, but he's not stupid. Just because the both of you would rather tiptoe around every touchy subject instead of actually addressing it doesn't mean that you've been subtle. Anyone could see that you act as if every small difficulty will break him, even him. And now that there's something out there that may very well break him you're both just going to let it happen and blame me for it even though I've done nothing.
"My privacy was invaded, my face is under a false headline, and you both still want to blame me?" A humorless laugh spilled from Hannah's lips, "Maybe you're right, but you can't pretend that if anything happens to him you're not to blame too. I've done everything you've asked of me. I haven't pushed, I've been patient and careful and quiet. And where has that gotten us?"
"That's not fair, young lady," Miriam said.
"It's not fair that I haven't had a father for five years!" Hannah brushed tears away from her eyes with her fists, unsure when they'd started falling. "It's not fair that Mum died! But I've done what you've wanted, I've been good."
Miriam's face twisted. "Running off to Belfast—"
"That was years ago! If anything Dad's gotten worse since I came back. He can't bear to hear me mention Mum, not even in passing. Apparently he can't even stand to see a picture of us all together, not that either of you have noticed!"
Her grandparents shared another look, but Hannah didn't care anymore what it might mean.
"If your aim in ignoring what's happened to Dad was to give him the time to work it out himself I can understand that. But it's been years of this and whether you like it or not time's up." She pulled the paper out from under her arm and brandished it at them. "This guarantees it! We all know that it already should have been anyway, even if you won't admit that."
"Hannah," Cyril called as she started for the front door, "Wait just a moment, please."
Hannah kept walking.
Her grandparents didn't follow.
It wasn't until she was past the garden gate that Hannah stopped to wipe at her damp cheeks again. A jagged breath ripped from her lungs as she tried to hold in a sob and she glanced up to make sure that there was no one around to see her. She could have been more cautious, she could have gone somewhere less likely to be in sight of Muggles, but every nerve in Hannah's body seemed to surge with the need to get away.
Careless, she thought.
Gripping her wand in her pocket, Hannah turned on her heel and disapparated.
Her childhood home wasn't far from Godric's Hollow, only in the neighboring county, but Hannah hadn't seen it in ages. Five years, almost. The 30s detached house wasn't very large by any means, but it loomed over Hannah as she walked up the gravel drive. It looked sick, somehow, and much older than it ought to. The ivy that used to flourish had died. The shriveled tendrils still framed the stacked, two-storied bay windows, but they languished in the unseasonable lingering heat of that early autumn. Still, the brick and plaster had held strong at least. Hannah stepped into the portico that held the front door and retrieved her wand to let herself in.
The inside looked better, though the air had a stale taste to it. At some point Cyril and Miriam had hired a woman to come by weekly and manage any bits of upkeep that might pop up in addition to regular cleaning. Hannah was grateful that they'd done it, she loved this house and wanted it taken care of, but if anything the cleanliness of the place made it even eerier than it might have otherwise been. It gave the distinct sensation of an abandoned place, only it didn't look the part. It would have been ghostly regardless. Each room held Hannah's earliest and happiest memories, the ones she used to revisit so often when she felt homesick at Hogwarts, the same ones that she sometimes couldn't bear to think of anymore but which still came to her in dreams.
She walked through the house as if an invisible track lay within the unblemished hardwood, guiding her steps and pulling her deeper. After tracing her way through the entire ground floor, Hannah circled back to the living room. She slipped off her shoes and sat on the dark blue, corduroy sofa. Tucked safely into the corner, with her bare feet perched on the edge of the deep cushion, Hannah hugged her knees. Paper crumpled loudly, sending her heart into a fit—she'd forgotten the Daily Prophet that was still tucked under one arm.
Hannah's startled laugh broke the deathly stillness of the house, and she smiled in spite of herself. Holding the paper out, the now crinkled picture still cycled through its motions. Hannah laughed again, this time in earnest, at the scrunched distortion that had overtaken her and Neville's faces. She let the paper fall to her lap and smoothed her thumb over Neville's profile.
How had Neville made it through the press after the battle at Hogwarts? She would never ask him. Maybe that had been easier, after all that was true, that was about something honorable and heroic—something to make his family proud. It had also drudged up everything about his parents, though. And now his involvement with her, no matter how innocuous it actually was, had done that again.
She thought of Harry, of the stories, true and untrue, frivolous and vicious, that had followed him his whole life. How pathetic, in comparison, to have such a severe reaction to one stupid article. The spotlight on Harry had always been so harsh, and it had only ever narrowed during their years at school. Hannah shuddered, remembering the particular cruelty that had surrounded his involvement in the Triwizard Tournament. Her involvement in that cruelty. Not that she ever would have seen it that way at the time, her entire house was so wrapped up in supporting Cedric that everything got out of hand so easily. It was shameful and scary, thinking of the way that she'd slipped into that spiteful taunting. She'd worn that insipid "Potter Stinks" badge without ever considering the damage it would cause to him, an innocent fourteen year old, her future friend.
What gave her the right, then, to get so worked up over the article? It was stomach churning that they'd splashed her mother's name and murder into the papers again, but the things about Hannah herself? It was just one lie, a harmless one really. Compared to everything that had happened to so many of her friends, well, it didn't matter.
She spent the rest of the morning, and much of the afternoon, hidden away in the house. Overwhelmed and half dazed, she moved from room to room. This place had scared her off for so long. Hannah hadn't wanted to know what being surrounded by mementos of her mother's life would do to her. When she'd last been there, on a hurried trip to retrieve some of her and her father's belongings, it was still the heady, gray days immediately following her mother's death. She'd cried the whole time. Softly, not the heaving sobs that had still wracked most of her days then, but it had still kept her from really considering what she gathered to join the contents of her school trunk at her grandparents house.
In the soft, pink-tinted light that filtered through the gauzy curtains her mother had loved so much, though, it wasn't quite so bad. Hannah visited her mother's trinkets that lay throughout the house like they were old friends. The glass figurine of a carousel horse, the porcelain tortoise with a harp hand painted onto its shell, the old wooden music box whose once normal, spinning ballerina figure her father had charmed to perform more elaborate leaps and pirouettes. She was in the upstairs hallway, considering taking the music box back to her room at the Leaky Cauldron, when out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something moving.
Hannah looked up at the flutter of silvery light, coming nose to nose with a corporeal patronus. It was an otter, all sleek fur and sinuous body that bobbed up and down as if it floated in water instead of thin air. The otter cocked its head at her. It began to speak with Hermione Granger's voice.
"Hi, Hannah. Hopefully this doesn't take you by too much of a surprise—I'm sure it's already been a stressful day, so I'd hate to make it any more horrible. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that Susan and I are coming by the Leaky Cauldron. We've done some digging and might have a spot of good news for you. We can discuss more once we're there together. See you soon."
With that, the silver otter twisted and seemed to dissolve before it even reached the end of the hall.
Hannah didn't think of anything other than the need to get back to the Leaky Cauldron before her friends arrived. Depending on how long it had taken Hermione's message to find her, they might have already been there, and that wouldn't do. Hannah needed to clean up her room, to clean up herself, before seeing them. Susan would take one look at her and know what a wreck she'd been. Her friends would already be worried, the last thing she needed was to make that concern even worse. So, with the house secured again, she apparated to the inn.
The carelessness of that move didn't dawn on her until she stepped back inside of the Leaky Cauldron. People stared immediately. Hannah wanted to believe that it was just because she must have looked like a proper wreck, with tear tracks dried on her face and her shirt still stained, but there was no use in denying the fact that it was because of the article. Especially not when an older witch suddenly appeared before her, quill and notepad in hand.
Luckily, Tom was there too. Before the reporter could even get her question out he had appeared at Hannah's side. And then Susan and Hermione were there as well. The three of them fended off the sudden throng of people that had moved to surround Hannah and guided her back towards the bar and then into the kitchen safely.
Hannah couldn't even say anything to her friends before Tom spoke.
"Perhaps it would be best for you to avoid the dining room, for now," he said, sounding more tired than anything else.
Hannah took a shaky breath and nodded. "I won't cause anymore trouble," she said. Her voice shook but there wasn't anything to do that would stop it. "I'll stay in my room, I swear, and—"
"It's not a problem Hannah," Tom said.
She nodded now, as if she believed him. She tried not to flinch when Susan rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Why don't you three head upstairs? Apparate, please, if you will."
"Okay," she said. She should have thanked him, but Hannah didn't trust herself not to cry if she tried to.
Luckily, her friends covered for her deficiency, both thanking Tom in turn before they disappeared with three loud pops.
The hall outside of her room was empty, but Hannah didn't want to waste any time. She unlocked the door quickly and rushed Hermione and Susan inside. Hannah didn't even speak to them until she had closed the door firmly and locked it with the most powerful charm she knew for the job. Suddenly, the state of her room and her appearance didn't matter. The only thing that did was to suppress the panic that clenched at her throat.
"How are you holding up?" Susan asked. She still wore her formal, business robe and had her hair pulled into an elegant updo.
Hannah shrugged. "Fine."
Susan frowned but she didn't push. She did, however, embrace Hannah in a tight hug.
Hermione offered a small smile in Hannah's direction but didn't say anything. She wore the same sort of work attire, though her hair was down and bushy as ever.
"Were you off work today?" Susan asked as they separated.
Hannah almost resented having to shatter her friend's optimism. "I took the earliest shift," she said. She perched on the end of her bed and recounted how she'd found out about the article and then taken refuge at her old house, omitting the trip to Godric's Hollow.
"That's horrid," Hermione said when Hannah had finished.
"It's nothing in comparison to what you've dealt with."
Hermione frowned, leaning against the back of the desk chair where she sat. "Most things they've printed about me, especially lately, aren't lies, though. And when they have lied it's been the sort I could laugh at. They're never embellished with something as serious as what happened to your mother."
Susan, on the bed next to Hannah, bumped their shoulders together. "I'm sorry that you have to go through this."
"It's not your fault," Hannah said.
"I know, I know, it's just…" Susan stood and began pacing. "It would have been despicable enough, breaking into the suite, printing that picture and that story, but the fact that they waited for today? That they planned it out so deliberately? It's like they wanted to hurt you as much as possible and—"
"And there's nothing to be done about it now," Hannah said.
"Actually," Hermione cut in, "We've got some leads on what you and Neville could do to proceed."
"What?"
"You can fight this," Hermione said, smiling brightly.
"That's the good news," Susan added.
"We spent a bit of time at work today asking advice of some colleagues, even a few members of the Wizengamot pitched in. They all think that you and Neville could pursue charges against the Prophet, what they did was libelous. And as a start, of course, you could demand a retraction, that likely wouldn't even need any sort of trial to happen. You could also seek damages, especially if it's forcing you to miss work. And then there's always a counternarrative strategy."
Susan beamed at Hannah. "This part's brilliant."
Hermione's cheeks went pink. "It did work quite well for Harry during fifth year," she said. "And I'm sure Luna and Mr. Lovegood wouldn't mind sparing us some space in an edition of The Quibbler soon. What we could do is have an article of our own written up, one that not only lets you clear up the truth, but to stand up against the Prophet and the way that they've done this. The story could focus on how they broke into the suite, how they manipulated everything just to get a headline."
"And obviously since they made you and Neville topics of interest," Susan said, "loads of people will want to hear what you have to say. It's using the focus they put on you against them!"
Hannah sighed. "I don't want to fight, though."
Susan and Hermione stared at her in twin expressions of shock.
"I appreciate all the work you've already done, really, thank you so much, both of you, but I just…" Hannah searched for the right words. "I don't know that it would be worth it."
"What do you mean?" Susan asked. She regarded Hannah as if she'd transfigured herself into someone else entirely. "This isn't fair, what they did. It's not right. Of course it'd be worth it."
Hermione's voice was quiet and kind when she added, "You wouldn't have to do this on your own, you know. Plenty of us have things to add to a story about the Prophet and the damage they've caused."
"I just want to put this behind me," Hannah said. She couldn't meet their eyes, staring down at her hands instead. She ran her finger along the new scar on her palm. "I want things to go back to normal. A retraction would be nice, to have it on the record at least, and of course I'll listen to whatever Neville wants to do too. But to make this a big fight would just draw it out and bring even more attention. That's not what I want."
If her friends had any other arguments to make, Hannah never heard them. Just as she finished speaking, a knock broke through the room.
Hannah reached for her wand on instinct, her heart hammering in her chest, but foolishness washed over her as soon as she saw the owl at the window. It was a pretty thing, clearly well cared for with its tidy feathers and strong stature. The owl tapped its beak against the glass again, impatient, and Susan went to let it in. With the window unlatched, sounds from Diagon Alley swelled up into the room, nearly overwhelming Hannah's senses like a flash from another world after her tense hours of solitude.
The owl swooped forward until it rested on the back of the desk chair, which Hermione swiftly vacated. Hannah moved forward and the owl offered a leg bearing two pieces of parchment. One was addressed to Hannah and the other read "Gran" in the same narrow, slanting scrawl. Neville, she thought, and a bit of rigidity eased out of her shoulders.
"Thank you," Hannah told the owl as she removed the note from its leg.
It hooted softly but retreated as soon as Hannah was done, taking flight over the busy lane below. Susan shut the window again, and the room fell silent.
It was a small scrap of parchment, most likely grabbed in haste, yet Hannah still sighed when she saw how little writing there was.
Away for work right now but I'll be back in London as soon as possible.
They can't get away with lying like that. I'm so sorry, Hannah, you don't deserve any of this.
–Neville
She read it over again, and again. How could that be all he had to say? Then again, what else could he say? He'd been thrown into this just as suddenly as she had. He didn't owe her anything, Hannah reminded herself.
She gave the note to Susan, who scanned it quickly and then passed it to Hermione.
"Oh that's right," Hermione said, shaking her head as she looked down at the note. "I'd forgotten in all this, he's in France."
"France?" Susan asked. She looked to Hannah with her eyes wide.
"Yes, doing some sort of research. I completely put it out of my mind after Ginny said she was going to go check on him. She'd stopped by and—oh!" Hermione gave the parchment back to Hannah and began digging through her bag. "I really did let myself get sidetracked once I was focused on what sort of recourse…" Still searching, she trailed off, and soon procured two envelopes, which she handed to Susan and Hannah. "Ginny asked me to deliver these, since I'd be seeing you anyway."
Hannah turned the heavy, cream colored envelope over. Her name shimmered in an elegant, golden script.
"Wedding invitations," Hermione said by way of explanation. "They've invited the whole D.A., of course." Securing her bag again, Hermione hitched its strap higher on her shoulder and said, "I should probably be going." She began to cross to the door, but stopped in front of Hannah. "I understand where you're coming from, about everything with the Prophet, and I know you might want to wait to talk to Neville, but give me the word and I'll get cracking on anything that we've discussed."
"Thank you," Hannah said, and she hoped that the other girl knew how much she meant it.
Hermione smiled and nodded at Hannah like she understood perfectly. "See you tomorrow," she said to Susan over her shoulder as she slipped out the door.
As soon as the latch clicked, Hannah brought her wand back out and reinforced the door with more locking charms.
Susan rested a hand on Hannah's wand-arm. She didn't actually tell her to stop, but Hannah understood.
"Would you feel more comfortable at mine?"
Hannah shook her head. "As nice as that sounds, I don't think I would. And I wouldn't want to be a bother—"
"You're never a bother," Susan said, her voice forceful. She stared hard at her friend until Hannah met her eyes. "You are not a bother," she repeated.
"You'll be the first to know if I change my mind," Hannah said.
"Good. I love you."
"I love you too."
"I'm sorry that this happened."
"I know."
Susan cracked a smile. "At least it's a nice photo."
Hannah rolled her eyes. "Trust you to always find a bright side," she said.
That night, Susan stayed late. They ate dinner together, which Susan retrieved from the ground floor for them, and drank wine, and talked about nothing in particular. Hannah could almost liken it to memories from their school days. There had been so many late nights passed together in the common room, studying and joking and finding any excuse to stay up just a bit later because they were far too punch-drunk to sleep, anyway. As they'd grown, the number of things decidedly not discussed on those nights grew as well. Disappearances, prison breaks, killings. Voldemort, when it came down to it. Echoes of those nights rang through Hannah's head as it got later, and she felt another flush of foolishness. Wasn't it lucky, if they had to dance around subjects again, that what they avoided that evening held so much less menace?
After Susan went home, Hannah drew herself a bath. The heat of the water steamed up the whole room and Hannah added enough soap to hope that the bubbles and the honeyed scent might be able to occupy her mind. That was where she remained, long after the water had grown cold. She dragged her fingers near the side of the tub. The motion left clear tracks in the foamy, fallen remains of bubbles that persisted on the water's surface. Hannah slid her body deeper, ducking her head under the water.
She stayed there until her lungs burned.
Author's Note: So, long time no post, I know. I'm sorry! Maybe this extra long chapter will make up for it a bit? I hope you're all staying safe and healthy. Thank you for reading! Comments and critiques are welcome as always!
