Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling, I am just playing in her world

Becoming an Old Maid

"Okay stop! I am so bloody angry with your pathetic magic world! Between your last comment, and Susan's stupidity that makes her think I would be angry about having to get married on my birthday. How the whole lot of you miss and blithely ignore the important things its, well... It just reinforces how moronic all of you are!

"Because I served you tea doesn't mean I am happy in having to open my house to total strangers, and invite you to walk all over me! Mum, dad can you show them their rooms? Sarah if you want to be with your parents stay, otherwise you're sharing with Susan and Hannah. So two or three of you follow and both or all three of you will be keyed to the fourth floor. Luna, Hermione are you coming?" Heather practically ran from the room and was already half the way to the third floor before Hermione started to leave the drawing room.

They didn't catch up to her until she'd had been waiting beside their new room for a couple of minutes. The five of them arrived on the fourth floor slightly out of breath. She stood impatiently scowling, with folded arms, to the side of an open door. "Ah good, so it is the three of you, and I won't have to get the third bed moved again. Anyway, this is your room. Except the Master Suite, it is the largest room on this floor. Thus you should have plenty of space. Follow me, the bathroom is over here." Heather continued further down the hall and opened a second door.

"The other two doors are a sun room and sitting room. With these two rooms we can study or play up here, and ignore everyone else in the house. You will find that you don't have access to the wing on the other side of the stairs, and also no access to the flight of stairs going up to the attic. The other wing of this floor is ours. The three of us will share the bathroom in the Master suite, and you three can share this bathroom. That is the fairest that I can be."

Heather looked up and noticed that the three new arrivals were looking as uncomfortable as she felt. Even Luna seemed a bit put out, which told her she was doing something wrong. Luna almost never looked put out, and Hermione had the face she wore before she was about to lecture her for something she did incorrectly. Obviously she wasn't going to be able to escape to their room as planned. Hoping to at least keep the telling off on this floor, she asked. "Sitting room?"

"Why, yes Heather, what a great idea to ask your guests to politely sit in the fourth floor's sitting room. So they are comfortable, while informing them of where they will be sleeping. It is so nice to do it so, rather than tearing off, leaving them to blindly follow. It is good mannered to make the guests feel welcomed by keying them politely into your wards, verses yelling follow if you want to, and charging upstairs forcing your friends to key them instead." Hermione informed her and let her know she had possibly over-reacted downstairs a bit.

"If you would be so kind to follow me, the sitting room is this way." Heather laid it on thick while showing the way. The room had a small sofa, that fit three barely a love seat and two chairs. So after a quick mental calculation she grabbed Luna and Hermione with a hand each and squashed them into the sofa with her. Luna giggled, Hermione rolled her eyes and Susan's eyebrows rose beneath the fringe of her red hued brownish hair.

Susan looked to Hannah and Sarah and saw that Hannah was wondering the same thing she was. "Share the love seat, Hannah, Sarah?" she asked.

"No!" Hannah scandalously replied having picked up the implied innuendo from Susan, after the scene already set by how the other three had sat. She hastily sat in a chair causing her sister to do the same.

Susan congratulated herself in reading the situation and getting the love seat to herself. "So you three are an item?" She asked while flopping her legs up over one arm, and sweeping her own arm so she pointed from Luna through Hermione.

"What!" Sarah shrieked, initially surprised by Susan's query.

"No. You're not! You don't," Hannah was suddenly scared that they as three, planned to muscle in on Neville. How could she compete with three girls?

"Don't worry Hannah, Susan is playing with you. It was the choice of seats that made them chose to sit that way. Heather is only twelve. Tell them you're not together." Sarah requested.


Hemera closed the file and re-filed it after adding her latest findings. The meowing and occasional yowl from the cats and kneazles were a steady background noise filtering in from the wired opening between the two rooms. One of the felines chose to exit through their flap from the cat room into the run they had in the yard. Separate from the chimps' area of the 'yard'. Like hundreds of miles, separate. "Come on Roberta it's been four hours and Rob hasn't shown himself, Robertapus has left the building though, four hours ago. It's time for me to return you to your, soon to be confused, parents. They will enjoy having a daughter I'm sure." So saying Hemera held her hand out to the chimp.

Once the chimp had grabbed it she walked beside the chimp to the door that led to the yard, verses her office door that led back into the bowels of the department of mysteries. Opening the door she marveled at the ability to open a door located possibly below London and step onto a completely different continent as you stepped through the door.

She thought she would soon love where she worked. Growing up as a young child she had always wanted to be a vet, having read several of the James Herriot book's when nine and ten and she was bitten. Then of course her Hogwarts letter had arrived and magic eclipsed her childish dream. The hat had debated between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and she had been initially miffed when it made her a 'puff. Was she not smart enough? Was it due to not being from the magical world that she was thought intellectually lacking? If only they had told her about magic earlier, she knew she could have learned enough to be eligible to enter the house of the intelligent and wise.

However, later she came to love being a 'puff. There were more muggleborns there, and the way the house stood against the junior death eaters. Their house provided solidarity and mentoring. The older years and the magically raised explained what to be careful to not run a fowl of, and how the magic world really worked. Even though 'the boy who lived' saved them in the beginning of her fifth year, so she thankfully was not out of Hogwarts during the war, the muggleborns she knew in Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had all died except one. Only four muggleborn 'puffs that she knew had died, all at least a year older than her. It was as if the enemy didn't take them as a serious threat. Sure they could end up collateral damage but it was rare for a 'puff to be directly targeted.

Upon completing her education she began to find the corruption within the magical world. Fed up with being a glorified secretary for an older wizard that thought her job duties included ones unwritten in the employment contract. She fled back into the muggle world where she could get a better position even though appearing uneducated. She studied at night school and took eight GSCE's and then four A' levels and then started an Open University course that enabled her entry into a small University to become a veterinarian. Her initial dream having been delayed nearly five years thanks to wasting time at Hogwarts, she thought she had washed her hands of life in the magical world.

It was with trepidation that she accepted this job yesterday. It paid off all her student debt and had offered a huge salary, four times the next best offer in the real world. It provided her paperwork that made her appear a half-blood. She was not coming back into this world a muggleborn with the war restarting, and this way if she chose to have children they wouldn't go through what she had gone through. The only things she had to give up were any job that was classified medium high or higher in the ministry and her name.

Working for the ministry? Like hell she would ever want to work for them. The name if she could remember it, she knew she would miss. She missed that she had a name that she now couldn't even remember. She was concerned that she might have had a muggle family, parents that would have no clue where she was. Surely she only chose this option because there was no one in the muggle world she was close to. So that condition was not a problem, right.

She had no recollection of anyone in the muggle world. If there had been someone, wouldn't she have run to them? Not just found a muggle job and studied in the evenings. It was the loss of her original name that Hemera Croaker worried about. She willingly chose to do this right? She willingly accepted being declared the get of Saul Croaker and a muggle, Jane Smith, who died unmarried in child birth?


"Fine, we are not together." Heather replied. It was kind of ruined when Luna leaned in and kissed her. "Luna, you left Hermione out." Heather said when her lips were released from the kiss, because she wanted to deflect the attention off her.

"Oh bother!" was Luna's reply then she swung a leg over the other four legs so her knees were on the sofa and arm of sofa with her feet and back facing the new girls. While sitting obliquely across her girlfriends' laps she proceeded to kiss Hermione. It created an image of near nice symmetry of smaller blond hugging identical brunets one to each of her sides. The symmetry was slightly broken as they were skewed to the one side of the sofa and she was currently kissing one of the two twins. She then sprouted a tail.

"Luna!" Heather yelled as Hermione's mouth was otherwise occupied and unable to voice an opinion.

Luna looked toward Heather. "What I thought we were doing the big reveal." She innocently replied. "You two are going to show them your tails too, aren't you?"

"Heather, what does this mean with Neville?" Hannah asked stumbling on the words in a couple of places.

"Neville is all yours Hannah. Didn't you two tell her?"

"We were kind of busy chasing after you when you threw the whole plan out the window and went off in a huff." Hermione informed her.

"So Neville doesn't know?"

"Really Heather, how did you expect him to find out?" Hermione asked. "By the way you didn't kiss me."

"I didn't kiss Luna either?"

"I have to disagree with you Heather, you may not have started, but you definitely kissed Luna." Susan told her. "So I got from earlier that you are mad with their mum and me. What exactly did I say wrong?"

"You haven't worked it out? You think I will get angry that I have to get married on my birthday, ignoring the bigger reason of being forced to get married as if it isn't something to fuss over. Being forced to get married is so much more annoying than being forced to marry on ones birthday, that it is bloody stupid to even ask if marrying on the birthday is troubling you.

"See, even Susan agrees you need to kiss me, Heather." Hermione stated. Rescuing Susan whose mouth was slowly opening and closing trying to grasp what Heather had just thrown at her.

"I didn' …" Susan began then gave up as the last pair of the triple proceeded to wrestle tongues in front of her. Throwing her hands up in the air, she looked to Hannah. "So what do you think of the sitting room?" Sarah was just starring open mouthed at the making out witches, so it was pointless to try to converse with her.

"Um, sorry, what, err it's a bit crowded."

"Yeah let's go look at the sun room. See if we should leave them this room to 'study in' and claim the other, ours." Susan said getting up.

"I'm not doing that Susan!" Hannah blurted out. Face bright red and hand pointing to the three girls that were doing 'that'.

"I didn't say we were?" Susan replied unsure where Hannah's response came from.

"Well them, and you offering to share the love seat."

"I was actually only doing that to get the love seat for myself. I didn't even really think there was a 'them' at that point in time." Susan told her best friend using air quotes on 'them'. "Heather is only twelve. I wasn't doing 'that' at twelve."

"I am not even doing 'that' now, and I'm seventeen, and I have a fiancée, and I'm getting married in three months!" Hannah exclaimed. "Also, Heather is going to be my sister wife. I think I should stop them."

"Wait! Heather has to tell Hannah, why Neville is only hers." Luna said. "And don't say it is for us to tell her. As Hermione stated, you threw that plan out the window. You'll notice no mum and dad are here to enable you to get your way. I count two votes saying you have to, against your one. So you lose, Heather."

"Fine my sometimes wonderful girlfriends have found a way to ensure the contract doesn't force me to be with your fiancé. It involves you taking polyjuice to be me, and then placing a glamour to make you appear yourself. My hair will need to be plucked from me when I am most fertile. You will then provide to Neville the baby that the dowager tried to get from me."

"You are fine with that?" Hannah asked, trying to work out what Heather had said, and so her response was biased by knowing she wouldn't want to not have Neville, and the stated method seemed to prevent Heather the joy of having it with him.

"I have two girlfriends and don't think I will ever be interested in a wizard. Not that I have anything against Neville. I just have no interest in him that way." Heather informed Hannah.

"Hermione you're with Ron." Susan said suddenly realizing that she had forgotten that in the surprise.

"Why does Luna have a tail?" Sarah asked. She couldn't understand why neither Hannah nor Susan had commented on it. Did witches grow tails when they started kissing other witches she was wondering? The tail seemed far more important than the other things being discussed.

"They have them too. Come on girls show your tails and furry ears." Luna stated while standing and pulling her girlfriends up to. Her statement made Sarah believe that turning half cat was what happened when witches kissed each other. She especially thought so when the other two did truly turn part cat. One benefit she thought was that this way she would be able to keep track of who Heather was, as the identical twins were furred a different colour. The three cat girls fell back onto the sofa when Luna forced her two lovers to fall back onto the sofa, by pushing them backwards so their legs buckled on the edge of the sofa. She continued falling on top of them.

"Ah you're in here. Luna please get off my daughters. That behavior is not appropriate around others. Have you explained about the polyjuice solution for the contract?" Mrs. Granger asked upon entering the room. Upon getting a nod and no queries she continued. "Well Susan's aunt filled in Neville, and the adults. I hadn't informed about the part kneazle, but you obviously have shown the girls both that, and that the three of you are in a relationship so I don't need to worry about letting something slip.

"Are the six of you coming downstairs?"

"We have a few more things we want to talk about mum." Hermione stated.

"Fine just remember that Neville is down there on his own." Having said her piece she left.

Heather looked over to the exit and tried to work out where they were in the general conversation. "Right so um…

"Harry!" Susan interrupted her. "Look Hannah has Neville, and you three have each other. I am not being a third or I guess fourth wheel in this house. I want to see Harry. The reason he is probably not here is you three have scared him off. I want to see Harry."

"Perhaps Harry doesn't want to see you, Susan." Heather said and Luna cruelly laughed, while Hermione choked. "This is not some dating house where the residents date each other, and the last two become a couple just because they're the last two standing."

"I don't mean I'm expecting a relationship to occur just because. I want someone to hang out with that is not in a relationship. You know friendship." Susan replied, while thinking how great it would be if the friendship evolved into something more.

"Hey I'm here to." Sarah said feeling she had been ignored long enough. "So if I kiss Susan we can both grow cat tails and ears?" She felt that she could possibly kiss a witch if she got to turn part cat from the process. It was Susan too. She'd known her all her life. She was sort of a second big sister. There was no way she was going to end up the old maid. If pairing was happening, she wasn't going to be last. As the youngest she was fed up of always being last. Hey maybe if she was with Susan the two of them together could capture the boy who lived.