A/N: Harry Potter et al belong to JK Rowling, with my thanks for letting me play with her toys.

Beta'd, thankfully, by Mylady Phoenix

CH8 All it takes

Monday, November 1st, 1993 (continued)

"Hermione," the woman paused, hearing the slight sigh the girl let out at her name. "I'm sorry, it's a beautiful name, but I..."

"No, it's not that." 'Well, that's not the important bit,' she thought, grimacing. "When can we talk about what's being done to find my father?"

Minerva sat back in the chair. She wanted to find out more about the young witch's remarkable ability to overcome – no – ignore the memory charm that had been cast upon her. Still, perhaps... "I know they asked if you knew any place he would go, but has anything else come to mind from last night, anything he may have said, even in passing?"

The look of concentration was obvious as the young woman worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Hermione methodically recalled the night before, detail by detail, all in perfect clarity until she had taken that damnable potion.

Then everything began to turn fuzzy, as though she was looking through a bit of fog just in front of her eyes.

'...all it takes...' Taking a sharp breath, the younger witch stared at the elder. Closing her eyes, she began to dig at that memory. The effort was so frustrating, she Never had this much trouble remembering things! She was Never going to take another potion as long as she lived!

It was right there, right in her grasp, she remembered that she was feeling droopy, sitting on her small bed in the small room; after all the 'nevermind that' her dad was telling her something...

. . .

"Remember when you were a little girl, when you saw me in my uniform?"

Jean sat up a bit, the memory not exactly sluggish, but oddly... fuzzy... in her usually clear mind. "Yes daddy," she answered in what sounded to her like a small voice.

"Do you remember how upset you were when you found out I was going to be gone, and I told you why I had to go?"

The memory seemed to waver, but the stab of remembered fear brought a surge of clarity to her mind. "Yes, daddy. You told me about the Light and the Dark." The memory of that talk was sharp now, and the logical conclusions she was drawing made that remembered fear spark anew, but her thoughts were interrupted as he resumed speaking.

"That's right, the Light, and the Dark, and the Grey."

And as if she were on a long slide, Jean found herself plummeting into the memory of her barely 2 ½-year-old self, staring up at her dad, even though she was in his lap. The crisp Naval uniform so new and different, yet his smile was just as warm, and it reached his eyes, which is why she loved him so. He was telling her the story of the Light, the Dark, and the Grey, where once upon a time, so very long ago that man has lost track of when, there was a time of Light when people lived without anger or pain. They did not call names or hurt one another, they were content and at peace. There was a Darkness, a place which the dwellers of the Light did not go, but it was separated, and no one had any desire to go there.

Then came the Grey, and those who, though they dwelt in the Light, were somehow farther away from the Light, saw the Grey first. The Dark still seemed far away, yet somehow the Grey gradually drew nearer. And in the Grey they saw movement. Shapes twirled and danced and enticed and were calling to them to move a little closer. They were not leaving the light, they were not entering the Dark. They were just... looking at the Grey.

Little by little some of the people moved out of the Light and into the Grey, closer and closer to the Dark, until some could not tell the difference any longer. The others, those still in the Light, were not blind; they could see what the Grey was doing. For those in the Grey were now afraid of the Light. And in the Grey, people used hurtful words and fought and refused to help one another.

Still most people just stood by. And some in the Light turned away and others looked down upon the others and called them 'lost'.

Hermione took these words in with comprehension. Her dad marvelled at his daughter's intellect, but he did not question it and certainly didn't fight it. He spoke to his two and a half year old child this way because he knew he may never have another chance to teach this lesson. "Hermione, you must remember, all it takes for the Dark to win is for good men to do nothing."

. . .

As if surfacing from a depth, Hermione sucked in a deep breath. She let it out as an anguished moan, the memories merging and overlapping, her head pounding with the exertion and her heart with pain. The last words of that memory, as she fought desperately to stay awake, finally made her tears fall:

"If I do not return, it is because I cannot 'do nothing'."

Worse, though she understood the words and she understood his motivation and knew he would do all he could, she still did not know what he may be doing to fulfill his promise.

Looking into the eyes of the woman across from her, she gave voice to her painful thoughts. "He thinks he must do something. He cannot sit by and wait... but I don't know... I don't know what he would do. What would he do?" She still had no idea where her dad had gone or if he was safe. Lost in that helplessness, she wept bitter tears, not even noticing when she was scooped into the arms of the older witch.

. . .

Sirius Black arrived at his family home with a sigh that was part relief and part exhaustion. He had checked in with the other safe houses and ensured all were well supplied. Operating outside the notice of the Ministry was expensive and difficult – it required obtaining even basic supplies in round-about ways because of the quantities. It was common knowledge that the Ministry was infiltrated by, well, by whoever it was that had finally declared open war last night.

But that wasn't exactly right. No 'real wizards or witches' were hurt. Just the muggleborns. That was a common enough sentiment among purebloods, and even spoken of in the wizengamot. Another sigh forced its way out of his throat as he stepped onto the steep stair to his ancestral home.

Walking in the front door he was greeted by the only child who seemed able to overcome the heavy magical restrictions of the House of Black. Anna bounded up to him and gave him a hug, then asked, in her typical, direct approach, "Where have you been?"

"Out, why aren't you outside playing with the others?"

"I wanted to play with Herminny but she was crying on the old lady in the li-bary."

Frowning, Sirius shooed the oddly exuberant child toward the backyard and turned down the hall to the library. As he approached the door he could hear quiet sobbing. Stopping in his tracks, the grown man grimaced his discomfort. Consoling a grieving girl was hardly his strong suit. A series of small sounds reached his ears and his grimace shifted to a look of disbelief. Edging down the hall he peeked around the corner into the library.

There, half turned from him, was the stately form of Professor Minerva McGonagall with a young woman curled in her lap. The normally reserved older woman was murmuring some sort of tune full of brogues as she rocked her charge gently back and forth. Sirius couldn't make out much about the girl since her mass of bushy curls obscured much of her form, fanning out over her hunched-over body. He only needed to take that glance to both identify the young Granger witch as well as to decide on beating a quiet retreat. He found himself unsure whether he could even use the scene to tease the old Professor because of its tenderness. 'Merlin, I'm going soft!' Sirius mused to himself as he went in search of a late breakfast.

. . .

It was some minutes later that Hermione realized that she was wrapped in the arms of another near-stranger, another older woman upon whom she was crying her eyes out. Crying as she had not allowed herself to with her own mother.

Shaking away the new but still melancholy thought, the young woman looked up at the Professor she had thought so stern, and yet offered ready comfort. "I'm sorry."

Smiling kindly, Professor McGonagall waved her hand and offered the girl an embroidered kerchief. The move was eerily similar to that of Sarah, the woman who had held her as she cried at the bus stop, and a moment passed as Hermione just stared at the pretty cloth.

Mistaking the girl's hesitation, Minerva spoke, "Tosh, there's no reason for apologies," voice choked with her own restrained emotions. "Ye've had a lot of hurts piled on ye one on t'other in a short time, lass." She let the girl right herself and offered the kerchief again. "Go'on, it's just a bit of cloth, magic doesn't change the fact that you need it."

Taking the kerchief with tired hands, Hermione cleaned herself up mechanically. Her mind was numb, she could not stop the thoughts that were whirring through her mind. Eventually it was the silence which broke the cycle. She looked up to see the professor staring at the floor, her long fingers picking at hem of her robes.

Realizing that she had to get control or she'd just go on crying all day, Hermione tucked her legs under herself as she leaned back in her own plush chair. This seemed to allow the older woman to settle back into her seat, their eyes meeting with a mutual understanding of helplessness.

"Let's..." she cleared her throat, swallowing the lump that had formed, "What did you want to know about my memories?"

.o0o.

There was not even a wisp of smoke, though ashes seemed to swirl in blackened remains at the edge of the property. Muted sounds came from within the ruin, as though the half walls and collapsed sections of roof were settling. Then a small cough broke the early morning silence, though it too was restrained.

A man, dressed in ash-blackened, wet clothing, was using a prybar to dislodge a section of wall. He worked carefully, mindful of the jagged edges of charred wood. Though he seemed nervous, as he was looking around quite often, the man worked methodically, going from crack to joint to crease and gradually the blackened, leaning wall slowly came down with a dull, "squish-thump" sound.

Stopping to wipe his brow, the man cast another worried glance around. The outer walls had not been burned completely, so he was somewhat sheltered from view from the outside. Still, he had reason to fear: last night his house was set alight on purpose and those that did it had wanted him and his little girl to have been inside! If they had found out otherwise...

He had been warned about all of this, he knew it was dangerous. And yet he could not abide by sitting still and doing nothing, not again.

For years he had sat by and watched his wife slip away in fits and starts of agony and drug-addled 'peace'.

The thought of sitting in that old, decrepit house, listening to the whispers of how many families had been killed for how long? How long until they were discovered in that ancient fire trap? He could see the fear in the eyes of the nurses. He wouldn't go through that kind waiting, this time waiting until death came for his daughter.

So he had spent hours scouring that magically huge manor while people slept in rows of bunk-beds. On the third floor he finally found an open window.

They had drugged his little girl, of that he was certain, so he had had to go alone. He'd slipped out of the window onto the ornate edge of an outside decoration and found it solid enough. From there he'd made it to ground with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises and begun his way through the cold night to his home.

Initially Daniel Granger had approached his street with the idea of slipping into his ruined home under the cover of darkness, but then those warnings had seemed to get louder in his mind as he approached through the neighbor's small back yard.

Despair had filled him at the sight of it. The dream that he and his wife had been saving for. Had poured years of work into. The place they had planned to leave to their daughter some day. The place where instead, his wife had slowly died.

The initial shock at seeing that his house was truly gone shook him from his reckless zeal, finally giving over to caution.

So he had waited, crouching in the bushes. Watching the remains for an hour in the darkness of pre-dawn for some sign that it was being watched, that he might be walking into a trap. With legs cramping and the cold seeping into his bones he felt he'd waited long enough, he saw no sign to raise his suspicion.

Still, he had spent another agonizing half hour moving quietly along the shrubs, up to the wide open back door; carefully stepping through what had been his living room and into the corner of what had just yesterday been his sanctuary, the den.

Finally he had found the right place, though an interior wall had collapsed upon his goal. The cold, wet, difficult work had brought the sun fully up, though it was hidden behind leaden clouds. Still, every move had been cautious, quiet, careful.

Hours later, after straddling that line between hard, physical work and desperation to remain unheard, he was stopped cold. Standing ankle deep in the slurry of wet ash and the ruined remains of his life, Daniel Granger tried not to focus on the bit of china he had just uncovered; tried, and failed.

His memories came unbidden, of him and his young, beautiful, healthy wife shopping for the first substantial gift he had given her. They had discussed the pattern, the color, the meanings of owning their very own 'stop it!' He clamped down on the memory.

Biting back a curse, he allowed himself a small groan when his back protested the strain as he pushed the wall completely off his reason for returning to... well, for returning. He allowed no more thoughts past working on the next obstacle to his goal.

It took a bit more work, more careful prying and quiet levering. He finally had to use the remains of the china cabinet to prop up a fallen support beam, but he had done it. After fishing the key out of his grimy clothes he pulled open the heavy door of the safe. His breath caught as the door swung open, his eyes widening as they read the gilded writing on the large old album, 'Memories'.

Daniel was positive that his wife had been working on that book in their bedroom; he glanced up reflexively, feeling like a fool. There was no longer an upstairs, let alone the room he had shared with his wife.

Shaking his head, he reached past the precious treasure and took hold of the much more practical object of this part of his quest.

Closing his hand on the pistol grip, Daniel closed his eyes. His stomach was churning in a harsh mixture of relief and disgust. Pulling the Browning semi-automatic out of the safe, he realized he hadn't even trained with the weapon since just after he left the service, when Hermione was three years old.

Clearing the weapon, he loaded a clip and pulled the slide, cocking the single action pistol with an increasingly shaky hand. He wasn't nervous because of the weapon; having grown up in the country guns didn't bother him as they did many of his fellow countrymen.

He was shaking because he had heard someone behind him.

Daniel thought about his tired body, and hoped the noises were from the imagination of his equally tired mind. But he couldn't take any chances.

Spinning on his heel, the pistol was already swinging up and forward as he caught sight of the black robed man who had been standing just a few meters behind him.

The man's hand was already pointing at him, his lips moving silently. Daniel Granger cursed his slowness as he realized that the man had one of those damned sticks pointed right at him.

Even as he was ready to fire he found to his horror that he could not, that he couldn't even twitch.

Daniel would have groaned in defeat, but he lacked even that much self-control. He felt so stupid!

The man before him had very dark eyes and seemed to be boring into his mind the way he stared so intently. Somehow he had cast a spell upon Daniel in the moment before he could bring his pistol to bear.

.o0o.

A/N: Recommended reading is The Trial of Dolores Jane Umbridge by apAidan.

Thanks to all of you who have reviewed chapters 1-7! My muse is always hungry for reviews, and a sated muse is a productive muse!

A special thanks to Tellur, librarywitch, EmilyWoods, nikyta, beege and my wonderful daughter archaicwords for the reviews of chapter 7.

Blessings
Majerus