It was Ron who found the broadcast, twisting and turning the knob on a radio so ancient Hermione could barely believe it worked at all, much less that he would find a station. She should have had more faith. The crackle of nothing gave way almost at once to the sound of Luna Lovegood mid-sentence, which seemed about right for Luna.
" – but the lighting is nice."
"I'm not sure the artistic qualities of these photographs is the first thing I noticed about them."
She remembered the co-host from the first time she and Draco had tuned in to the program. Hermione couldn't place the voice, but a quick glance at Draco confirmed what she suspected. He knew who it was. She nudged him with one foot and raised an eyebrow. He mouthed something to her, but she didn't understand. Lip reading had never been one of her talents.
"No," Luna was agreeing. "The subject matter is, of course, the most important thing. But the skill of the photographer takes what would already be horrifying documentation of a government run amok and makes it that much more impactful."
"Well, it certainly had an impact on me," the male voice said with his perfect vowels. If he had been a Muggle, Hermione would have called them public school vowels. She nudged Draco again. Not that it mattered, not really, but she was curious.
He knew her well enough to give in and just tell her who it was, even if it meant talking over the radio. "Theodore Nott," he said. The name was, at best, vaguely familiar. She crossed her arms and waited for him to elaborate and, with a sigh, Draco indulged her. "Friend of mine in Slytherin," Draco said. "Father was a Death Eater. He wasn't on board with that at all, though. Good guy. Smart guy. You'd like him."
"I thought all you snakes loved Voldemort," said Ron.
Draco's tight face relaxed and a sly smile danced across it. Hermione followed his gaze to Harry, who looked confused. "Not Theo. He had a bit of a crush on the Chosen One here." Harry flushed, and Draco's smile got even bigger. "Hard to side against a rebel movement led by a man you want to shag."
The red in Harry's cheeks became more vibrant. "Do you guys think you could keep it down?" he asked querulously. "I think it's a bit more important to find out what's going on rather than list off all our adolescent crushes."
He had a point. They'd missed a bit of the radio conversation. "– pretty outraged, I think."
"Well," Luna said, "I think we should take our rage out for things like this. There are plenty of times you should put anger away, but what happened today at the Ministry?"
"A time for anger," Theo agreed. "A time for rage."
"It's going to echo," Luna said. "I predict the Ministry is going to regret what they did today."
"What is it you like to say about things coming back?" Theodore Nott asked her.
"Everything comes back," Luna said. "In unpredictable ways, but everything always comes back."
"A little less philosophy and a little more news," Ron muttered.
As if she'd heard him, Luna began to recount what had happened after the protest turned riot and they fled. Most people had gotten away. The Ministry was officially asking anyone who knew who the organizers of the event had been to please come forward. So far, no one had. There had been an evening edition of the Daily Prophet with an editorial by Pansy Parkinson where she condemned the protesters as troublemakers and issued a call for law and order.
"She says Antonin Dolohov was seen with the protesters," Luna said. "I certainly wasn't expecting that. Wasn't he a Death Eater?"
"He was," Theodore confirmed. "But I guess war makes for strange bedfellows."
That drove Luna off into a digression about a cat she once owned that insisted on sleeping on her pillow and her fervent belief that interactions with Grindylows during kittenhood had caused this unusual but charming behavior.
Ron groaned. "Can't she stay on topic for more than three sentences?"
Her story about the kittens ended, Luna dutifully returned to sharing the news of the day. The pictures that Percy's girlfriend had taken, the ones that Luna thought had nice lighting, had started appearing at dusk. Within a few hours, they were all anyone was talking about. Aurors appeared from the Ministry and ripped them down, but no sooner had one set of prints been destroyed, another set appeared to take their place. There was no hiding what Yaxley had done. It would not be swept under a rug. It was sitting on the dining room table in most of Wizarding Britain, a toxic and loathsome centerpiece.
Luna wandered off again, this time to the subject of an especially good recipe for spotted dick she'd found recently and, when it became clear that neither she nor Theodore had any intention of returning to the day's events, Harry reached over and clicked the radio off.
The day turned to night. The last time she'd been in this safe house, Hermione had curled up against Ron's side. Now it was Draco's feet she pressed her own against, while Ron tossed fitfully alone. The floor was hard. That was one of the many things she'd forgotten about these wartime safe houses. Everything was uncomfortable. The tea was stale, the food charmed into stasis but still old. Any blankets to be found were musty and moth-eaten. She couldn't sleep. Harry snored away, Ron shifted from one side to the other, and Draco mumbled indistinct bits of phrases too softly to be heard unless you were right next to him, and still her eyes wouldn't shut and her mind wouldn't slow.
At last she gave up, pushed the blanket back, and padded as quietly as she could to the small kitchen. Perhaps tea would help. She had the kettle filled and on when Ron joined her.
"Make me a cup?" he asked quietly.
She pulled down a pot and measured out enough tea. Easy enough to make extra. Easy enough to pour more water. Neither said anything more until they were sitting back at the table in the dark, hands wrapped around steaming mugs.
Ron spoke first. "I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?" Hermione couldn't be angry. She was tired, nothing more. "For believing the worst of me? For sleeping around? For getting Gabrielle pregnant when we all know how to do contraception charms?"
Maybe she was a little bit angry.
"All of it?" Ron said. He smiled at her, the same goofy, wide grin that had tugged at her heart from the time they'd been eleven. What a little shite he'd been, calling her a horror because she had trouble making friends. Funny how time made that a fond memory. At the time, she'd thought her heart would break.
He looked down, the dull light from the moon outlining his dark grey shape against the black of the room. "I shouldn't have… but I did, and there's no going back now."
That was true enough. Hermione took a sip of her tea and swallowed. It gave her a moment to think of an answer. I'm better off without you, seemed a little too honest. There was being truthful and then there was being cruel. No need to be the latter.
"Are you happy?" she settled on asking. "You seem happy."
"I am," he said. "But I -."
"Then I'm happy," she said. She reached a hand out to rest across his. He was so solid. Dependable. Most of the time. "Gabrielle is a lucky woman."
"Hermione, I -."
"I," she said, not letting him go on, "am luckier."
"If he -."
"And when this is all over, you and Gabrielle will have to bring the baby to England so I can properly dote on her and buy her expensive baby clothes that are impractical and difficult to launder."
That finally shut him up. She was willing to do a lot of things for Ron. Forgive him, for one. Spoil his child for another. But she was not willing to sit here and listen to him go on about his feelings and how much guilt he felt for betraying her. Whatever she might owe him for the sake of their history, that was not included.
"I'm glad you're happy too," he said. He sounded as if he doubted she really could be and it was that, more than anything, that made the exhaustion become too much. She'd spend the rest of her life having to convince her friends she really was happy with the way this had played out. She was coming out of it with a husband she adored, who adored her, and who, more importantly, understood her. This wasn't a bad thing, even if he had been an utter prat at eleven. She drained her tea.
Ron should be grateful she had a knack for overlooking past sins.
The sleep that had been skittering just out of her reach all night finally seemed willing to drape itself around her. She pressed a kiss to Ron's forehead before settling back on the floor at Draco's side. He turned in his sleep to wrap an arm around her, and that was the last thing she knew before the sun woke them both.
Or perhaps it was the static.
Harry was twisting the dial on the radio, looking for more news on the current state of Wizarding Britain. By the time Draco had fried up some bacon and made toast, they'd found a station. The news that Yaxley had ordered the Aurors to open fire on peaceful protesters was resulting in a spread of rioting and demonstrations across the country. Even small villages were burning him in effigy. Marchers filled the streets in any wizarding community large enough to have multiple streets, and more than one protest spilled out into the Muggle world. Obliviators were working overtime.
And London was a kettle about to boil over. Marchers screamed outside the Ministry. Percy Weasley shouted exhortations at the crowd, leading them in chants. Curses went off.
"He's become the face of the Resistance," Ron said. He let out a low laugh. "Never would have expected that of rule-abiding Percy."
"The trial helped," Hermione said. That had held him up in front of the world as a face they could remember. A martyr.
"Yeah," Ron said. "Bet he never thought when he threw that bomb it would turn out like this."
"I wonder if Moody did," Hermione said without thinking. It would be like him, always trying to set up moves a dozen steps ahead, not caring who got hurt along the way as long as the ultimate objective – freedom – was served. She couldn't quite hate him. Still, he was unscrupulous enough to make her uncomfortable.
"Moody?" Ron asked with a snort. "What does that old blowhard have to do with Percy's idiocy at the press office?"
Hermione had been buttering her toast. Her hand froze, knife hovering above the bread. "Moody told him to do that," she said. Was it possible no one had ever told Ron what had really happened? Had Moody kept that to himself?
"No," Ron said, shaking his head now. "Mum would never let one of us be-."
He stopped before he could say, one of us be sacrificed. Hermione slashed her knife across the toast with far too much vigor. One of us. God. Did he even hear himself? "Well, I don't know whether your mother was consulted," she said, as levelly as she could, "But Percy has informed me he was acting on Moody's orders when he blew that building up."
Harry had put his own breakfast down and was staring at her.
"Moody," she said, "told Percy to do that knowing he'd get caught, knowing I'd have to testify against him. It was all done to cement my position as a spy no one would suspect."
"And it worked," Draco said. He placed a hand on her shoulder. Perhaps he was trying to calm her. She wasn't sure she could be calmed. The rage she'd felt when Dolohov had boxed her into giving evidence against Percy had bubbled up and spilled onto Moody and, with him, the rest of the Order, where they were safe in France. Safe with their mothers and their wives and their newborns while she slunk through halls and stole intelligence and flattered and lied and risked her life so they could come back at the climax and be the heroes.
Fuck them.
Let Percy be the hero. He'd earned it.
"Let's go to London," Hermione said. She was done. "I think we should support your brother."
. . . . . . . . . .
A/N – Thank you to BirdieMing, veiove, and slytherinxbadxgirl for beta reading.
I hope you enjoyed the brief nod to nottpott, a kiss blown to Olivieblake. If you like this fic, you must read her Paradox.