Flint's intended took them to Perth. Hermione had a port-key aligned to the bushland park at the end of her parents' street. It was deserted just after five o'clock and blessedly the sea breeze had come in to moderate the heat. The witch and the wizard paused to transfigure their clothes into something cooler before emerging from the trees.
"Why Australia?" Marcus strode along the footpath in his 'tropical' kit; white shirt, khaki shorts and loafers. He was poor at transfiguration, as McGonagall had dourly assessed, but he could manage a specific set of changes with practise. If he wished to dress differently, he packed something.
"My parents had always wanted to visit. One of my grandmother's brothers emigrated here after the Second World War. I have cousins somewhere. We lost touch when my gran died." Hermione had opted for capri pants and a loose cotton blouse with a broad hat as she sunburned almost as easily as Ron.
"How do you lose a cousin?" He had a few cousins he would like to misplace. Millicent was tolerable but the Gamp shrews spent far too much of their time on his private affairs.
"Great-Uncle Simon didn't write much. Gran kept in touch with his widow but her kids moved around a lot. Three sons, I think. Mum would know." She shrugged, walking up the driveway of a nice bungalow to knock on the front door. "Not everyone has tapestries of their lineage."
No one answered. Hermione waited, knocked again then waited again. There was no car on the drive but her father preferred to keep it in the garage. Palming her wand, she tapped the door and murmured an unlocking charm.
After a quick survey of the empty house, Hermione consulted the calendar on the fridge. There was nothing written in for today though yesterday was a golfing day and on New Year's Eve there was a note for fireworks on the foreshore. She expected her parents had probably gone out for an early dinner but checked the answering machine in the study just in case.
There were six unanswered messages. Hermione pressed play and listened, growing more numb as she did. The first call was from one of her father's golfing friends about her dad missing a tee-off. The second call was from the police. So was the third. The last three were from the registrar of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital asking to speak with next of kin.
Marcus said nothing, did nothing other than check the garage as she requested while she called the hospital. He reported no car, got a nod then listened as the witch lied quite fluently to the person on the other end of the Muggle device. And watched her fingers tighten whiter and whiter on the cord.
Hermione hung up, took a deep breath then called a cab. While they waited, she went to the safe. Her parents always had a safe the same as they always had locks on the windows. Their dental practice had been broken into many times by drug-seekers so the security was simply habit. She retrieved their passports, insurance details and the emergency credit card.
When the taxi cab arrived, Hermione gave the hospital's address then sat staring out the window. Marcus folded himself into the seat beside her and glared at the driver when he tried to banter. They drove in silence. Once they got to the Emergency Department, the witch realised she did not have any Australian currency on her and the cab had no facility for her to use a card.
"Go. I will handle this." Marcus leaned across Hermione, opened the door and almost pushed her out. Sufficiently rattled, she went without asking questions. He got his wallet out and rifled through it until he found some of the colourful slippery notes the Australian Muggles used. Marcus gave the driver a green one. The man did not argue at all when he said to keep the change.
He found Hermione speaking with a short man behind a tall desk in a large room full of stupid people. That was Marcus's impression of the variously crying, moaning or tooth-gritting Muggles sitting in ugly chairs. Fast moving people in navy blue did things that needed doing. There was a lot of beeping and form filling.
Marcus took position a pace behind Hermione as she signed multi-coloured pieces of paper. A tired woman in a smock joined them at the desk. She and Hermione talked, using words the wizard had never heard before to explain something about an accident.
They went to a set of metal doors that opened into a tiny room that moved. It took them to a floor that had rooms with glass walls and curtains along a central corridor. It smelled of alcohol but Marcus expected they cleaned with it rather than drank it as everything was scrubbed bare.
The smock woman, a Healer he guessed, took them into one of the rooms where an older woman lay on a high bed. She had a mask on that had a tube that ran to a box with lights on it. There were a lot of tubes.
"Mum?" Hermione sat by the bed and held her mother's hand. Her cold and unresponsive hand. "Mum, it'll be okay. I'll make it all okay." She started to cry and Marcus took himself out of the room to give her some privacy.
He stood in the corridor watching Healers walk briskly past. There seemed to be a hierarchy. He thought the navy blue people were the middle rank, with the smock people and the ones with the oddly bagged shoes higher in authority. The ones wearing shirts with embroidered badges that pushed the wheeled beds around were probably servants.
And then there were the people who stood in hallways or sat in the room with sofas. They did not rush about. They waited. Periodically one of the bagged shoe people came to talk to them. There was crying. Sometimes good crying. Mostly not. Marcus came to the conclusion that this floor was for patients who were not coming home.
"Excuse me."
He turned in surprise when the Healer who had brought them here addressed him. She had a clipboard, like his team's Muggle-born assistant coach used. This one had a broad metal piece on the back so it could hook over the end of the wheeled beds.
"Yes?" Marcus looked her in the eye. That usually got people talking fast. The Healer did not seem to be intimidated and drew him away from the door so they could speak quietly.
"Ms. Granger's father has been moved to the morgue." The woman spoke calmly, accustomed to giving this sort of news. "The body needs to be formally identified. Is it possible you could do it? I think it might be best for Ms. Granger to have as much time with her mother as she can right now."
"How long?" If he had been anywhere else, Marcus would have laughed at the incongruity. Muggles and wizards were very different. He treasured those differences. But the coded phrase the Healer had used sounded so very like what the Medi-witch had said to him when he visited his mother for the last time.
"Mrs Wilkins is on life-support. There's minimal brain activity. What happens now is up to her next of kin."
Marcus thought about lying. He could wave his wand and make the smock woman go away convinced everything was sorted. And he thought about how much Granger would hate him for it. This was her world. These were her parents. Her heritage. Her right. He shook his head.
"I have never met her family. I cannot spare her this." He must have said the right thing because the Healer put a hand on his arm sympathetically before going back into the room. Marcus stood on the threshold like a gargoyle, feeling as useless as he usually did off a Quidditch pitch.