To continue on with his working day after a moment such as this seemed impossible. He knew he had to do it, but as Harry released Sirius he was glad he had come into the Ministry so very early. It bought him precious time that, for all either of them knew, was as borrowed as the clothes resting on Sirius' back.

They sat side-by-side on the bed. They were not quite touching, but it was as close as possible. Harry kept himself still in the way he had learnt so many years ago during his rushed, impromptu training; Aurors were immovable and unintimidatable. Sirius, eternally emotional, wrung his hands in his lap.

'How did you know?' He asked.

'The Map,' Harry said—Sirius laughed. 'I hope it really doesn't lie, because it showed Dumbledore too.'

There was a pause in which Sirius' head whipped around in the same moment Harry realised his own mistake.

'Dumbledore…?'

'Yes.'

Sirius swallowed. 'Who else?'

'Sorry … I really am … but I can't tell you. It's not the right time. We've got nothing solid yet.' Nodding, his godfather looked at his hands.

'It won't lie. Never has.'

'I know.' Harry agreed. A moment passed between them, somehow fitting itself between the inches of air that hung in the middle of them.

The suddenness of movement to check his wristwatch made Sirius jump again. Harry wondered if he had always been like this… whether he had been too occupied in believing himself possessed by Lord Voldemort to bother thinking about the lives and quirks of those around him.

'I'll have to meet with Kingsley soon.' It was before both their working hours, but therefore the only hope to corner the man was to get to him before the masses.

Sirius perked up. 'Kingsley? He's still in the Auror Office?'

'He's the Minister, Sirius,' Harry laughed deeply, amazed at how things had changed. 'I actually—I'm an Auror now,'

Sirius' hand scrubbed over his face, looking bemused. 'Of course,' he said fondly. He seemed to look off into the middle-distance. Harry imagined he was thinking of a skinny, temperamental fifteen year old boy with a bloody, bandaged hand and a proclivity for temper-tantrums. Harry moved his robe to cover his hand before he could think not to. The last thing he wanted to be faced with at this time was proof that Dolores Umbridge had ever existed.

Hermione arrived before Harry. He did not know she would be present to begin with, and how she had managed to arrive so ridiculously early to something she was not invited to baffled him.

'Work doesn't start for another two hours,' Harry said. He stared at her blankly as she stared back. The door to Kingsley's office loomed between them.

'I thought I might get the chance to talk to you, you know, after what Ron told me last night.' Hermione's eyes flashed. 'Also, Kingsley asked me to come.'

Harry gaped. 'But—I set up a meeting with him.'

Hermione shrugged.

'You know,' Harry began after pausing in a teasing, wheedling sort of voice, 'I actually, sort of, outrank you… are you sure you want to crash a meeting between—'

Kingsley opened the door before he could finish. Harry was pleased with this outcome, because Hermione's eyes were narrowing further and further into slits with every word that left his lips.

'You're early too!' Harry exclaimed, blinking between the pair who, he was beginning to notice, looked considerably fresher than he.

'You booked a meeting with me, Auror Potter,' Kingsley said drolly. 'And I thought I might save you before you say something you regret to my best Wizengamot Administration and Affairs Officer.'

'I'm sorry to say you're too late for that, Minister,' Hermione said breezily as she side-stepped around Kingsley in the threshold to his office. Kingsley smirked at Harry as he too turned, leaving him to find his way to the notoriously less comfortable guest chair Kingsley kept for those he didn't like—Dawlish, especially.

Once the teacups had floated in and Harry was hanging onto his for dear life (so was Hermione—perhaps all her effort had gone into looking presentable rather than actually waking herself up), Kingsley leaned back in a way that was obliquely reminiscent of Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office.

'Hermione told me about what you asked her,' he began, eyes flickering. 'I'm not even going to question it. I don't want to know why you're digging up Death Eater blood magic records, and I certainly don't want to discuss why you've lead one of our key welfare legislators away from a very important agreement with the Bulgarian Ministry. But, Harry… can you at least promise me that there's a point to this? That you're not following some obscure hunch?'

Harry exchanged a look with Hermione. They were having two different conversations at once. Kingsley thought Harry had gotten Hermione to look into Voldemort's shady blood magic practices for the reason he truly went to her in the first place—disproving identities. Meanwhile Hermione, Harry thought, was considering the possibilities of using it to prove beyond doubt that the dead (the dead!) were back and breathing among them. It was subject to what Ron had passed on to her, of course, which Harry thought would be just about everything… Hermione had a talent for eking out all the vital little details from her husband.

Harry straightened, unsure if he should prepare to fight to justify himself. 'Kingsley… I can't explain it to you until I've got proof. Proper, irrevocable proof. You just—you've got to trust me on this. I'm sorry—'

'Harry,' Kingsley said, 'of course I trust you. Do you think I would be holding back with anyone else? If it were anyone else, even in your own department, or mine, I would be seriously concerned you were trying to stir up something from the war. I'd assume you were in league with whoever's masquerading as Dumbledore. As it is, it's you. Which, thank god, is a very different matter.'

'Kingsley,' said Hermione, 'there is a point to this. A very good one.'

'I should have known you would know the details.' Kingsley said wryly. 'What one of your three knows, the others, well…'

'Harry didn't tell me,' she said tartly, 'Ron did. And Ron worked it out himself, really. Harry insisted it was kept quiet.'

'Good. This can't get out, for obvious reasons. Can you imagine? The Prophet would have a field day if they knew something like this existed.' All three of them paused, and Harry wondered if they were also thinking about possible Rita Skeeter headlines.

'The blood magic won't get out until we find a way to make it work.' Harry said firmly. Both Kingsley and Hermione stared at him.

'You're awfully confident about it working,' Hermione said.

'It's got to,' Harry replied. Kingsley shook his head as he spoke.

'Just get to the bottom of who these people really are.' He sounded tired. 'Why did you need to meet me this morning?'

'I need some wizards stationed at Hogwarts,' Harry began. 'Not Aurors; I don't think there's need for it considering there's been no violence. And I don't have any to spare, besides. Perhaps an Enforcement Patrol, or Hit Wizards if we can manage it.'

Kingsley's eyebrows raised high up on his forehead. Nevertheless, he nodded. 'I'll see what I can do. I'll talk it through with Everglade. He's usually quite amenable.'

Hermione thumped her teacup down at the edge of Kingsley's desk. She didn't look particularly sorry. Harry could see a slight quiver in the hand closest to him as it retreated from the cup and folded into her lap.

'If you don't mind, Kingsley,' she said, 'I would like a chat with Harry about this. There's been no developments on my part so far, but I will let you know as soon as I get anywhere.'

'Of course,' Kingsley looked concerned at Harry. 'I'll let you know what Everglade says when I talk to him. And—Harry, try not to get me in this early again. I'm getting rather old for it.'

Harry and Hermione returned Kingsley's grin. Theirs, however, were significantly weaker. Harry was concerned about Hermione… about what she could have unearthed in her research, perhaps. They tried not to rush off, but it was a difficult thing especially when faced with the freedom and anonymity of empty Ministry halls. It was Harry that followed Hermione; an unconventional arrangement for them as he was usually the one charging off without a glance behind him. Hermione and Ron, of course, always followed him anyway.

She led him without a word wearing a grim, immovable expression to the Records Room that Hugo had been to yesterday. They wound through the stacks, each taller than the last, dust clogging their lungs and stinging at the corners of their eyes. Harry knew why Hermione liked this place, and perhaps why Hugo did too—some obscure hereditary love of the Hogwarts library.

Harry nearly landed atop Hermione when she halted by a stack of sketchbooks that emitted a low humming sound. He looked around them in question.

'Nobody comes in here,' she said, voice hushed despite the privacy. 'Harry, It's not about the magic tests, either,'

'Then what—'

'Sirius?'

'Oh—'

'Sirius and Dumbledore! About them! Ron told me—who else Harry?' She had a wild look in her eyes. Harry reeled off the other names as she pressed herself against the sketchbook stack. It wobbled precariously.

'That means it's from the first war too,' Hermione said weakly. 'All the way back to the seventies… Marlene McKinnon and, god, Molly's brother…'

'What if it goes back to before? Like Grindlewald?' Harry asked suddenly. Hermione buried her face in her hands and groaned.

'Don't, Harry,'

They stood for a moment, wrapped in decades of friendship and hardship and shared incredulity. The dust still stung, and Harry would have coughed if it weren't for the certainty that he would create some sort of avalanche in doing so.

'What are we going to do,' Hermione muttered.

'We'll have to figure out Voldemort's blood magic,' Harry said softly.

'We?' Hermione said, 'You mean me. And I'm not certain I can. That kind of magic is complicated to begin with, let alone trying to find a way to make it more acceptable to actually use on people. And I doubt there's much on the subject that isn't in a book that curses you as soon as you open it…'

'Hermione, you're brilliant.' Harry smiled. 'You'll find a way, just like you always do.'

'That's what Ron said too,' she said with a fond look passing over her face.

'Well,' Harry said after an overdrawn sigh, 'I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.'

'Oh, stop,' Hermione smacked his arm hard enough to bruise, but still laughed along with him.

Harry spent the rest of his working day avoiding staring at the doors that held Sirius, Marlene, Dumbledore and Fabian Prewett. He sent a memorandum to Kingsley, a crumpled and sorry-looking piece of parchment, asking for a couple of Hit Wizards to be made available for Saint Mungo's in light of Scrimgeour's presence. Privately, it was so he could be alerted to any more appearances of dead people looking for help for injuries they might have collected. He wished it was not so much of a waiting game, both the returning people and scrabbling around for something he could do about the situation.

His thoughts revolved around the same cast of characters throughout the day. There was the Weasleys being faced with their uncle and perhaps, Harry dared to think, even their brother. There was Ginny, who would join them in the same shock. Dennis Creevey appeared somewhat randomly in the same string of thought as those like Amos Diggory, both of whom ashamedly barely passed through Harry's mind anymore.

Mostly, he dwelt on Teddy and what it might mean for him if his parents appeared, not much older than him and used to a small, happy child. It was a train of thought that was more in the realm of daydreams than planning for an actual eventuality, and one that inevitably led to Harry's own parents. How would he ever tackle knowing them as people rather than mere figments, with the all the substance of a mirage? How could he know them as parents or people when they were closer in age to their grandchildren than their son? His identity, whether he liked it or not, was built on foundations of tragedy. Who would he be if that tragedy was simply erased?

Shocked he was entertaining such thoughts, Harry left at three in the afternoon, running away from the work he was meant to be doing and the thoughts he should have probably tackled head on. He ran from the guilt of leaving confused, hurt people in cells or hospital beds, and from leaving Kingsley, Teddy, and everyone else in the dark.

Harry was thankful that running from work meant running to Ginny. She left her own work immediately to ask kindly about how Sirius was, what it was like to see him, and let Harry pause to gather himself too many times to not find it frustrating inside. She held his hand and stroked it with her thumb, tracing over his wedding ring. She cried when he spoke about Sirius' tears, and scolded him gently for calling himself just an Auror, and not the youngest ever head of the Office.

'If Hermione can't figure it out, then nobody can,' she said resolutely. Harry felt intense thankfulness and joy that Ginny was there as she always was, and simply knew exactly what to say.

AN: Sorry for the late update. I've been studying like mad, and was unsure how to write these next developments! I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless.