Hermione
Hermione -
We need to talk. Saturday, my place.
- Harry
Hermione re-read those nine words until she couldn't see anything else. She held the parchment in her hand, crumpled and sweat-stained, for two full days. Since becoming an Auror, Harry had never sent something like this, and it terrified her. She couldn't imagine what discussion needed to be had, since Ginny would know if anything had happened to Ron. Maybe something had happened to Harry himself? But, then, Ginny would likely know that as well, and Ginny wasn't acting strangely at all.
We need to talk.
It struck fear in her heart.
Dawn had barely broken when Hermione threw on her shoes and cloak to walk into Hogsmeade. It wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend, but Professor McGonagall had long since allowed the students over seventeen to travel into town during the weekends as they pleased. Hermione's final destination wasn't Hogsmeade, though. As soon as she was past the castle's wards, she Disapparated.
The front steps of number twelve Grimmauld Place looked the same as ever. She hated it. The last time she'd seen Grimmauld Place, Death Eaters were literally on top of them. Seeing the front door gave Hermione the feeling she needed to run.
Instead, she carefully opened the door so as to not waken Mrs. Black. Once inside, she walked straight for the kitchen to make a cup of tea and settle her nerves.
"It's barely eight a.m., Hermione," came her best friend's voice, followed by a significant yawn. Harry rubbed the back of his head as if daring his hair to stick up in new directions.
"I didn't mean to wake you. But I would have been here earlier, I just didn't want to walk the castle grounds in the dark."
Harry nodded and stifled another yawn before helping himself to the tea kettle. "Smart."
"What did you need to talk to me about, Harry?" Hermione twisted her teacup nervously, running the fingers of one hand along the gold painted rim.
From next to the counter, the black-haired man shook his head. "Not before breakfast."
"Harry—"
"Hermione, trust me on this. Now, give me ten minutes to put on proper clothes and we'll walk to the breakfast place down the street."
Breakfast was tense as Hermione kept trying to draw Harry back to the purpose of their meeting and Harry kept deflecting with questions about schoolwork or students or teachers. Yes, Professor Wainwright was a good teacher. No, Seamus had not set anything on fire recently. Yes, Daphne Greengrass was turning out to be a good friend. No, she never talked about her ex-boyfriend.
By the time Harry and Hermione made it back to Grimmauld Place, she was resigned to waiting for Harry to bring up whatever it was he so urgently needed to tell her before subjecting her to two hours of anything but. They took their places again in the kitchen with a fresh pot of a tea before Harry pulled out a thick folder and set it on the table.
"This goes no further than this room," he said ominously, with one hand splayed on the folder.
"What is it?"
"Hermione..."
She frowned. "Of course I'm not going to tell anyone, Harry. What it is?"
"No one—including Ron—knows I'm telling you this." Harry opened the folder and shuffled through the pages for a moment before settling somewhere about a third of the way through the stack. "On March thirtieth, the Australian Ministry received a tip that a small community near Melbourne was gutted by 'magical means'. Upon investigation, it appears four British wizards with certain radical ideals regarding wizard-Muggle relations moved into the area. They've begun recruiting."
Hermione's heart thundered in her chest. No. No. "Death Eaters are in Australia?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"And they're gaining strength." Harry watched Hermione with a careful expression. "I'm going to ask McDermott to send me."
"What? Harry, no—"
"I need to know—Hermione, I need to know, where do I need McDermott to send me?"
"Where?" Hermione asked. Her thoughts were still reeling and she nearly missed the meaning behind Harry's words.
"We might discover pockets of Death Eaters throughout the country. What I need to know is where I should spend my time looking."
After far too long, Hermione caught on to the double-talk. "Oh! Perth. You need to look in Perth."
"Perth. I'll let McDermott know." Harry dropped a hand to cover Hermione's. "We'll find them and they'll be okay. I promise."
"Just let me know as soon as you can." Hermione twisted the hem of her shirt as she watched Harry. "And please be safe. I can't lose all of you."
"You won't and I will." He pushed the folder closer to her. "Now, do you have any interest in helping us catch these bastards? Because I could use some help going over all of this."
Hermione stood up and began fanning out the pages. "Just tell me what we're looking for."
Breakfast became torturous as Hermione waited and waited to see Harry's new snowy owl, Reg (short for Regulus), arrive with a message about her parents. It was almost two weeks before Reg landed in front of her with a hoot Hermione could only identify as apologetic. She ripped off the letter while Ginny fed the owl a piece of bacon.
At your earliest convenience. - Harry
Hermione launched to her feet, grabbed her bag, and ran out of the Great Hall before anyone had time to register what she was doing. She ignored the fact it was a Friday and that she had class in twenty minutes. She pelted across the grounds, not stopping even as her legs burned and her back ached from the awkward weight of her bouncing bag.
"Hermione!"
She spared one glance to see Ginny chasing after her before she passed into Hogsmeade and Disapparated.
"That was faster than I'd expected. Did you run out in the middle of breakfast?" Harry asked as Hermione rushed into the kitchen. He frowned as he took in her school uniform and her heavy breathing. "Blimey, you really did run out in the middle of breakfast."
"You said to come at my earliest convenience. I'm here."
"Shouldn't you be in class?"
"Shouldn't you be at work?" she shot back. "Do you have news about my parents or not?"
"We got in around two this morning, so McDermott's giving us the day off."
"Harry!"
He sighed and motioned for her to sit down. Hermione dropped her bag to the floor and sat ramrod straight in the chair with her hands fisted in her robes. Upon inspection, Harry looked worn out and old. Far older than his eighteen years. The last time he'd looked like this tired, they were hunting Horcruxes.
"Harry?"
"The Australian Ministry has four of our citizens in custody, thanks in no small part to the pieces you put together that suggested where their next target might be. They're currently working to shut down the rest of the uprising. The good news is, it was all centralized near Melbourne."
The look in his eyes and his tone suggested there was more. "If there's good news, it stands to reason there's also bad news," she said quietly.
"There are no records of a Dr. Wilkins anywhere in Perth," Harry said gently. Hermione's heart clenched with a mixture of confusion, terror, and grief. "Are you sure that's where they would have gone?"
She nodded. "Absolutely. That's where they would have gone. What do you mean there's no—Harry, they had to have made it. They must have made it to Perth. I would have known otherwise."
"We were on the run, Hermione. You had no way of keeping track or knowing."
"But they moved before we left! I knew they arrived in Perth—I called the airline to make sure they'd landed, so I know they got there." She buried her head in her hands. "Where did they go, Harry?"
"The only thing I could find was a Wilkins Family Bakery, but it closed in August. Currently, there's only two families named Wilkins in Perth, and neither of them include Wendell and Monica."
The world felt like it slowed to a halt, and Hermione swerved to the side, unsteady in her chair. Harry sprung up and caught her before she hit the ground. "What if they got to them?" she whispered. "What if they've been dead since August and I didn't know because I've been so focused on finishing school? I should have gone to them this summer. I should have protected them. Harry, what if I made a mistake?"
Harry knelt to the floor and gave Hermione a stern but calm look that he must have learned during his Auror training. "There is no evidence that they're dead. We don't even know where they lived. Once we figure that out, we can work from there. Don't jump to the worst conclusions, Hermione. You did what you thought was best, and there's still a chance it was the right choice."
"You're going to find out where they lived?"
"There has to be rental agreements or something somewhere. We'll find them."
Hermione took several deep breaths and fought to let Harry's logic take root in her mind. He was right, of course he was right. She was jumping to conclusions because she was stressed out over finishing her N.E.W.T.s. If they had been discovered by the Death Eaters, there would be evidence and there was no evidence. She was, after all, Hermione Granger, and if someone killed her parents, they would make sure she knew.
They're alive, she repeated to herself. They're alive, and we'll find them. We'll find them.
"Hermione, what the hell? Where did you disappear to?" Ginny demanded when she walked into the common room and found Hermione curled up in an armchair.
Hermione looked at her friend and wiped the evidence of tears from her face. "My parents are missing. Har—I've been trying to find them and they're not where they're supposed to be."
Ginny sat down in front of the armchair with her legs crossed and frowned. Her red-and-gold tie was loose around her neck and her robes were completely unbuttoned to reveal Muggle clothes beneath. "I thought you were going to wait until you were done with school to find them."
"I got impatient," Hermione lied. "Now I don't know if I wish I'd waited or if I feel like it's time for me to go and find them."
"You don't know that anything's wrong, Hermione. Maybe you're just looking in the wrong place."
Hermione gave a bitter snort. Ginny sounded exactly like her boyfriend. "I know that, but...it's not in my nature to sit and do nothing. I have to find them, Gin."
"And you will, after you sit your N.E.W.T.s. You didn't choose to come back just to leave before you finish the game. Besides, you have two options: one, your parents are dead and there's nothing you can do about it—" Hermione whimpered at the thought, but Ginny continued, "—and they wouldn't want their daughter to sacrifice everything she's worked for over the last eight years to run off and find them. Option two: your parents are perfectly happy in their own little world and they would still be upset to find out you threw away the last eight years because you panicked."
Ginny scooted closer to the armchair and gave Hermione an imperious look worthy of Molly Weasley. "Either way, your parents want what's best for you, and that is finishing your education. I know you, and I know you can throw yourself into your schoolwork until nothing else exists. That's what you need to do. You can run off to Australia in June, and I promise you, they'll be fine." She grinned deviously. "D'you think Fred can travel overseas?"
This time, Hermione gave an honest giggle at the thought of Fred floating through the streets of Perth, scaring Muggles into telling him where her parents went. "Ghosts can't travel all that quickly, and it would be hard to keep from getting spotted."
"Bah, the Muggles will just think they're seeing things." Ginny's face turned suddenly serious and she whipped out her wand. "Come any closer and I'll hex you until your own mother can't tell who you are," she snapped. Hermione gingerly turned her head to see a third-year scurrying off to the other side of the room.
"You didn't have to do that."
"If people see you crying, they'll ask why and that's how rumours get started. Now he just thinks I'm scary, and let's be honest, that's completely true." Ginny returned her wand to her pocket. "Come on. Chin up. You have revising to do and Zabini handed off another round of parchments for you to look over. What's with that, anyway?"
"He decided to use me as his own personal tutor. The man's such a perfectionist that he's almost psychotic. He gives me two different versions of almost every assignment so I can assess which ones he should turn in. I honestly don't know how he manages to function." Hermione sighed and sat upright in the chair. "He's clearly brilliant, although he did slip for awhile. I admit, it's nice reading someone's completed work rather than helping write it, especially during our N.E.W.T. year." A tiny smile slipped over her features. "He's an absolute genius at Potions, which I should have figured since Slughorn has him doing special assignments, but he makes connections I would have never considered. I almost feel like I learn more from him than I do reading actual textbooks."
Ginny smirked. "Well, well, Miss Granger. You almost sound as if you admire him. Do my brothers have competition?"
A hot blush took over Hermione's face. "No! He's just—intellectually intriguing."
"I see. Well, Neville has your next intellectually intriguing assignments. Do yourself a favour and bury yourself in those for a bit. It'll clear your mind." The ginger stood and held out her hands. "Up, up, up."
After clearing the last signs of distress from her face, Hermione did exactly as Ginny recommended and lost herself in her studies. In the back of her mind, she knew Ginny was right: regardless of what the truth of their whereabouts turned out to be, her parents would never forgive her if she gave up now. With that in mind, she unrolled Zabini's latest, probably perfect, Ancient Runes translations with a half-grin. It really was nice to review homework that someone took seriously.