Chapter Two

Godric's Hollow

September 2, 2017

Ginny Potter set her coffee cup down onto the wooden breakfast table, absentmindedly stirring it with the repetitive circular movement of her index finger. She read and re-read the letter she had received in the morning post.

Dear Mum,

I've been sorted into Ravenclaw. The food was very good but the train ride was long. James is being an arse as usual (I know, watch my language) and I miss you already (but don't tell anyone.) My bed is very comfortable and I think I'm going to like it here. I got the password into the common rooms right on the first try. It's good that Rose and I have been reading Hogwarts: A History aloud all summer. By the way, Rose is in Slytherin.

I'll write soon,

Albus

After the fourth or fifth time, Ginny set the letter down and slid it back into the envelope, leaving it out for Harry to read when he got home. She sat resting her chin in the palm of her hand staring out the kitchen window for a long while, wondering if she should call on Hermione or pretend that she didn't know anything at all. At last, she sighed. There was no pretending with Hermione. Ginny stood up, walked to her kitchen fireplace, and threw some floo power in to connect to her brother and sister-in-law's residence. She kneeled down and stuck her head in.

"Hermione?"

"Coming!"

As Ginny waited for her best friend to enter the Weasley's living room, Ginny looked around. Ron and Hermione's house was a strange mixture of wizard and muggle. Moving portraits were hung amongst still ones, there was a piano but no ghoul to play it, and a clock that kept time next to a clock with the family's whereabouts. The two worlds of muggle and magic rarely blended seamlessly, and Ron and Hermione were no exception, but everything had its place and that was the important part.

Hermione made her way into the living room and threw a large cushion on the floor in front of the fireplace to sit on. She was already dressed for work in a smart navy pantsuit, but with her came a floating basket of laundry to be folded during their conversation. Ginny smiled.

"Have some work before work, why don't ya?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I'm still playing catch up with the last of the kid's summer laundry. Who knew they had so many clothes?" Hermione sniffed a particularly dingy t-shirt and scrunched her nose. "How do you get the smell of Quidditch out of clothes?"

Ginny shook her head. "You don't. It doesn't make sense that you get so dirty flying around in the air but it's like you've been rolling in sweat and dirt. Before I retired from the Harpies I was buying new practice robes almost every week!"

Hermione smiled and started folding some shorts. "Do you miss it?"

"I adored playing professional Quidditch, you know that, but I've enjoyed my years off with the kids, too."

Hermione nodded. "Isn't it crazy, Gin? We're in our thirties and we've got kids off at Hogwarts and we sit here in the floo with our coffees every morning talking about laundry." Hermione slouched a little bit and shook her head at Ginny. "I mean bloody hell, wasn't it just yesterday that we became friends at Hogwarts?"

Ginny laughed. Hermione hadn't had a quarter-life crisis in a while. She supposed it was time for another.

Hermione shrugged. "I guess I'm just feeling anxious in general. I sent my first off to Hogwarts yesterday! That was rough. I know you've got three out there now, but this is much more difficult than I expected."

Hermione finished the last of the folding and waved them all back into the basket. Why she didn't fold them magically as well, Ginny didn't know, but Hermione had lots of strange housekeeping rules that she supposed came from growing up as a muggle.

Ginny took a sip of her coffee. "Speaking of Rose, has she written you yet?"

Hermione shook her head. "Nope, but the post came in just before you called. Let me go see if there's a letter in there."

Ginny threw back the rest of her coffee while she waited for Hermione to come back, which she did, quickly, and with a letter.

Ginny let out a short breath of laughter. "Hermione! You haven't even opened it yet and you're already teary."

The older witch wiped at her eyes. "I miss her, alright?"

Ginny nodded and waited as Hermione opened and read the letter. Hermione got to the bottom and looked up, her eyes wide.

"Ron's going to be livid."

"I know."

"What do you mean you know? Did she write you too?"

"No, but Albus included it in his letter. He's in Ravenclaw."

"Of course he is. There isn't a mean bone in his body, I don't know why he was so worried."

Ginny squeaked in protest, "Hermione you can't talk like that now! You've got a Slytherin in the family!"

"It's just so strange. I knew she could be rotten sometimes but I didn't know she was cunning."

"Is that the dictionary definition for a Slytherin?" Ginny laughed.

Hermione pretended to swat Ginny with the letter. She sighed and looked at her watch.

"I've got about ten minutes until I've got to be at the ministry. Ron went out on a raid this morning so I think I'll go in early and see if he's still at the office. He probably shouldn't get this bit of news from a letter."

Ginny agreed. "I'll talk to you later on then. Tell Ron I said hello! Are we still on for dinner?"

"Absolutely, I'll expect everyone around six."

"I'll see you, then."

Hermione stood in her kitchen after she got home from work. She slid her heels underneath the kitchen island and flung her jacket and purse onto the hooks behind their back door. It had been a long day. A lot of paperwork, a lot of interruptions from her husband. Each time she had been close to closing an argument with her boss on a statute providing preferential treatment to pureblooded witches and wizards in regard to who could be the executor of an estate, Ron had run in with his hands flying through the air.

"I just – Slytherin, Hermione! Our Rosie, a Slytherin. This is too much. I warned you! It's all that reading she does! If you had let me drag her out to more Quidditch matches, maybe we wouldn't be in this predicament!"

Hermione had handed out more death glares to her husband in one day than she probably had done in an entire school year back at Hogwarts.

Hermione leaned against the kitchen counter and rolled her head around her shoulders. She wasn't worried about Rose at all, to be honest, and it frustrated her to no end that Ron was making such a big deal out of it. She glanced at her watch and then at the clock on the wall. Ron's spoon had shifted from "work" to "traveling" and within seconds it arrived and settled on "home."

"Hermione?" Ron called as he walked in the back door. "Oh, there you are." He walked to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. After drying, he loosened his tie and leaned his back against the sink. Hermione gave him a small, tired smile before closing her eyes and resting her head against his chest. He pulled her closer and clasped his hands together against the small of her back.

"My mum's changed her mind again." Ron said, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

Hermione's icy reply was muffled against his body. "What?"

"She and Dad have decided they will come tonight after all."

Hermione groaned, and without looking, flicked her wand towards their refrigerator. Out came frozen chicken breasts and vegetables and other ingredients for their dinner. "Don't say a word. I'm cheating." She looked up at Ron, who rolled his eyes.

"Using magic isn't cheating, Hermione. I know very few wizards who use magic as sparingly as you do."

She shrugged, standing up straight and pulling her apron from the shelving underneath the island. "Magic shouldn't be a crutch!"

"I know, I know." Ron said as he began unbuttoning his shirt on the walk upstairs to change.

Two hours later, Hermione opened the door to their arriving guests. Molly Weasley came in first carrying two pies and bag of presents, followed by Arthur, Ginny, Harry, and Lily. Hugo, Hermione's youngest, grabbed Lily by the hand and the two of them sprinted out into the back yard.

"Hi Hermione." Harry said with a grin, clasping her on the shoulder. She greeted Harry and Ginny with a kiss on the cheek before rushing back to the kitchen, yelling something about a burning rue. Molly, Harry, and Ginny joined her in the kitchen while Arthur and Ron took a bottle of scotch and a newspaper out to the back deck. For Christmas, Hermione and Ron had given Arthur a subscription to various "monthly" muggle clubs. There was a "Dinner and a Movie a Month" club that took him and Molly out on the muggle town once a month as well as a "Scotch of the Month" club, deciding to tell Arthur that knowledge of dark liquors was the mark of a fine muggle man. Arthur brought one of his monthly bottles to every social event he attended.

"Do you need any help, dear?" Molly asked, already checking in on the roasted potatoes in the oven.

Hermione shook her head, "We're all good, Molly, everything's about done."

"Are you sure? Those potatoes look a bit pale…"

"Mum!" Ginny scolded. "Let Hermione alone in her own kitchen!"

Molly moved to start setting places at the table. "Oh, Ginny, she knows I didn't mean– Hermione, I'm sorry if I offended you, dear."

Hermione laughed and shook her head as she scooped gravy into a dish. "Don't worry about it."

Everyone carried their dinners out to the back porch and called Lily and Hugo up from the yard, where they were playing near the pond.

"Hugo levitated a rock," Lily announced as she sat down in her chair and speared a roast carrot with her fork. "but then he dropped it on a squirrel. It was a big rock."

"Hugo!" Hermione spun around to scowl at her youngest son. "Why on earth-

"I'm sure he didn't mean to, 'Mione." Ron said, his mouth full of chicken.

"Alright, you do some parenting for a change! Go on, let's see it then!" Hermione said as she sat down, accepting the water that the pitcher had poured into her glass.

Ron finished chewing his chicken, and, still gripping a fork and knife, rested his forearms against the table and turned to his son. "Hugo,"

"Dad,"

"Your mother and I would rather you not do magic on purpose quite yet, or harm any animals in the process."

"Okay." Hugo replied, licking his spoon.

"Don't lick your spoon." Hermione snapped, glaring at Ron who simply smiled in return.

"So have you heard from Albus or Rose yet?" Arthur asked.

Ron dropped his silverware onto his plate and leaned back in his chair, groaning. "Oh, Rose."

Harry snorted. "Ignore him, he's just sore because Rose got sorted into Slythern, is all."

Arthur looked up from his plate wide-eyed before cutting into his chicken. "Did she really? Our Rose, a Slytherin?"

Hermione nodded. "That's right, and Albus a Ravenclaw."

Molly nodded "Well we all saw that one coming, we did."

"But Rose, a Slytherin! Honestly, you lot, I don't know how I'm going to face it! Not once in my entire Hogwarts career did I meet a Slytherin who was worth something. Not once."

Harry shook his head. "You can never say that to Rose, mate. Not even once. Besides, you know that's where the sorting hat almost put me."

"And you had enough sense to tell it no!"

Hermione stood up from the table, grabbing her plate before marching into the house. "Honestly, Ron, I don't know how you see at all with your head stuck so far up your own arse."

A thiry-seven year old Ronald Weasley slumped back in his chair, pouting and blushing as if he were his ten-year-old son that sat beside him.

Later that evening as the group sat chatting in Hermione and Ron's modest living room, after Molly had given presents to Lily and Hugo ("Honestly, Mum, you spoil them." "Honestly, Ginny, it's my grandmotherly right."), Ron looked up from the paper he had spent the better part of the evening sulking behind.

"Does anyone know what it is they're talking about with the Chinese Magical Authority and the International Confederation of Wizards?"

"Oh are they at it again?" Arthur asked, keeping a steady pace in his rocking chair.

"Again?" Ginny asked from the hearth where she sat braiding Lily's hair.

Arthur nodded. "What was it, Molly, late seventies would you say? When some of the eastern powers decided they wanted to wage a war with the members of the ICW?"

Molly, who was getting a head start on her knitting for Christmas (the numbers of sweaters in demand each Christmas had multiplied exponentially in the last decade), nodded in agreement. "That sounds right. A year or so before Ron was born, if I remember correctly. Thank goodness they called it off when they did, Merlin knows the Order was stretched thin enough just then."

"Why'd they call it off?" Harry asked.

Arthur shrugged. "I suppose it had something to do with Voldemort's rise to power. It was strange, though. It ended as quickly as it began. We sent intelligence over there and within weeks they were useless because the masses of witches and wizards that had been gathering all over the continent just dispersed."

Molly's knitting paused. "You know, I think Fabian and Gideon had just gotten back from Japan the day they were ambushed."

Lily twisted her head around to look at her aunt. "Who's Fabian and Gideon?"

Ginny put a hairband around the end of Lily's braid. "My uncles. They were heroes in the first Voldemort war. I never met them, I wasn't even born yet." Ginny softly popped her niece on the head. "Pretty sure your mum said it was bedtime, sweets."

"Ooh." Lily hopped up, kissing her aunt on the cheek and then making her way around the room to say goodnight to everyone.

"We'd best head out as well," Arthur got up to help Molly up from the couch. "we've got an early start tomorrow, off for a visit at Shell Cottage."

"Give Bill and Fleur our love." Hermione said, walking her mother and father-in-law to the door and hugging them both.

"Thank you for dinner, Hermione. It was delicious." Molly said as they walked out the door. The couple gave a quick wave and apparated from the sidewalk. Harry and Ginny soon followed, a sleeping Hugo slung over Harry's shoulders.

"Goodbye, Hermione!" Ginny called as they made their way down the pebbled walkway. "Floo over for tea any time next week."

Hermione and Ron stood waving in the doorway until all that was left of their company was a soft crack and the faintest of winds.

"As you'll remember, the International Confederation of Wizards sees its roots in the Medieval Assembly of European Wizards, which still exists today but it's capacity as the largest and most important wizarding intergovernmental organization, or WIGO, has been taken over by the ICW. At the International Warlock Convention of 1289 delegates from the Medieval Assembly of European Wizards, the Wizarding Society of the Gobi Desert, The Egyptian Coven, Manco Capac, and a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers met to discuss how global wizarding laws should be written and applied. Soon after the International Confederation of Wizards was formed, and finally in 1689 they signed their first major law, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, though it was not established until 1692. At the Warlock's Convention of 1709, hosted by the International Confederation of Wizards but not within their official session, participants decided to outlaw artificial dragon breeding, both because dragons could not be tamed and because wizards with pet dragons would easily be detected by muggles. This was a direct effect of both the International Warlock Convention of 1289 and the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, despite the fact that those two events have around 400 years separating them."

Victoire Weasley yawned into the palm of her hand while the Quick-Notes Quill that her Uncle George had designed specifically for her took notes from Professor Binn's lecture. As one of only two seventh-years sitting for the NEWT level History of Magic exams, it was even more difficult to sit through the class without falling asleep than it had been in years past when there were more people to provide entertainment. As of now, it was impossible for Victoire and the other student to even attempt communication since Professor Binns had decided to create, in this small class, an "environment to better foster discussion" by sitting the three of them at a small, round table in his office rather than in the usual classroom. This was the only encouragement he provided, however, because other than forcing his students to sit knee to knee with a rather chilling spectre, Professor Binns lectured at his usual monotonous pace without breaking for questions.

Glancing at the other student across the small coffee table, Victoire rolled her eyes. It wasn't as if she wanted to have any communication with Kip Sawley anyway.

Kip Sawley was a gawking monstrosity of a boy and always had been. He wasn't unattractive, but he used his broad, square frame to his advantage in every situation possible, and was in fact quite rude and nasty. His mother, Lynette Sawley, had grown up with Victoire's aunts and uncles at Hogwarts and they had small pleasant conversations in passing, but their small niceties had no influence on Victoire's negative feelings towards Lynette's son.

"The International Confederation of Wizards was at the core of the Wizarding Hemispheric Conflict of 1979. "Hemispheric" is a misnomer, as the conflict was mainly between Asiatic wizarding powers and the other members of the International Confederation of Wizards. Specifically, the Chinese Magical Authority and the Ministry of Indian Wizardry found major fault and offense in sanctions placed on them regarding their involvement in muggle's creation of nuclear weapons. The muggle's nuclear arms race was a wizarding concern as well as muggle, as many wizards took part in the creation of the first atomic bomb and the creation of legislation that followed afterwards. After very punishing sanctions were placed on wizarding China and India, they planned a physical response, amassing thousands of wizards in under a week's time in locations such as Kyoto, Beijing, and Kolkata. The dark lord Voldemort's rising, however, quickly stunted their growth as he and his followers showed an unmerciful growth of power in their weeks of planning. War was adverted." Professor Binns performed a shallow bow, signaling the end of his lecture.

At the end of the first week's last History of Magic class, Victoire stood and hurried out of the classroom, almost knocking her Professor off of his feet, or she would have, had the laws of gravity applied to ghosts.

"Sorry, Professor!" Victoire called over her shoulder as she sputtered and dusted the feeling of ghost-chill off her am.

Professor Binns gave a short wave and disappeared through the back wall of his office.

"Vicky, wait!"

"Sawley," Victoire grunted as she hoisted her heavy leather shoulder bag higher onto her shoulder. "I do not, and will never, reply to a name as common as Vicky."

Kip grinned, catching up to her easily with his long strides. "Whatever you say, Vicky."

"No!" Victoire quickly swung around, pulling out her wand and pressing it firmly into Kips's chest as he backed away. "Do not. Call me that. Ever. Again."

"Ms. Weasley."

Victoire sighed and released Kip from her wand's vice grip. "Hullo, Professor Longbottom."

Neville sighed. "You can leave, Mr. Sawley."

Kip grunted and continued down the hallway, glancing back at the two more than once on his retreat.

"Walk with me, Victoire." Neville said, gesturing in the direction that would take them to the Great Hall.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Neville, but he's a great git and I wouldn't care if he-

"I know, Victoire, and as someone who knows you as a friend I applaud your response to the 'great git', as you called him. But as your professor…"

"I know, I know." Victoire huffed and fixed her shoulder bag once more. She really should have picked a lighter load this morning.

Neville clasped her shoulder as they stood at the doors of the Great Hall. "It's your last year, Victoire, and as your Uncle, your Professor, your Head of House, and the Deputy Headmaster of Hogwarts, I'm proud of you. But please, for Merlin's sake, let's have it be a peaceful one, alright?"

Victoire nodded. She hadn't proved to be a rotten student yet, and she wasn't going to start now, as long as no one gave her any reason to.

Hello everyone! Hope you're enjoying it so far.