Disclaimer: Not mine, not now, not ever.
A/N: What is a better word for Sorry? Sorry doesn't really cut it; I have been gone for so so long. As clichéd as it is, life has been killing me. I am working over 60 hours a week, then come home to two kids and NO INTERNET! That has really been the crux of the problem for me unfortunately, but I was able to get some internet connection and decided that it had been long enough and I should post my update, even un-beta'd as it is for the time being. I cannot believe how long it has been since I was able to update, and while I can't guarantee that all updates will be swift, I can tell you that the wait you have suffered shall not be repeated. My new building has internet and I will hopefully be getting a bit more time off work to spend writing. Feel free to throw virtual pies and hexes all you like, they are all deserved. I do however hope you like the latest installment: a peak into the life and mind of Verity Cane.
You are all amazing and fantastic by the way, and any reviews I haven't responded to, I sincerely apologize and grovel; did I mention that I have been without internet access for six months! Please take pity on me! You however all inspire and humble me in your continued response to this story. I hope it continues to be worthy of its readers. I love you all!
~ fresh new lily ~
It didn't take Verity very long to realize that there would be no way to pass Ron, who needed to remember that he was Ray now, off as a seasoned Muggle detective. He couldn't drive; something she would rather not have found out when they rented a car at San Francisco International Airport. And he was pretty clueless when it came to the day to day details of a Muggle life. He at least understood how to use a basic cell phone, thanks mostly to Harry who liked the convenience of the device. While it wouldn't take much Transfiguration to forge documents saying that Ray Wheaton had been detective with the Metropolitan Police in London, England when his newlywed wife had accepted a position with a pharmaceutical company in San Francisco, getting him to play the part convincingly would. But what Verity Cane wants, Verity Cane gets. She wasn't willing to lose out on the life she wanted over something as silly as an inability to drive or fit in.
It had been two days since they had settled into the small hotel they were currently calling home while they decided where to go from there. The hotel was as quaint as the town they had found, just north of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge. Verity thought Sausalito seemed the perfect place to settle down and raise their little family. The small town consisted mainly of small homes and house boats, and while tourists drifted through from the other side of the bridge the residents enjoyed a mostly quiet life of work and fishing. The proximity to the Magical community in the heart of San Francisco was an added bonus they couldn't do without. Verity was in need of potions supplies, and she hoped that soon enough she could establish herself a market of her own. Her laced potions had made her a nice Knut or two and she wasn't ready to give that up. If she could just somehow manage to turn Ron into a passable Muggle police officer she would be a very happy little witch.
Luckily it hadn't taken long for Ron to figure out the telly and discover that American Muggles were obsessed with crime and punishment. Every hour of the day a show could be found that centered around the police, and police investigations. It was just the day before when they had hit the programming jackpot when Ron happened upon a documentary on modern weaponry. That channel had repeated the same programming several times already and it seemed that when the teacher was a talking picture box Ron was actually capable of learning something. Currently he was crouched next to their small bed imitating a move he had seen in the movie he was watching. "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker," he shouted as he pointed an imaginary gun at the chair in the corner, play acting like he was the cop in the movie; taking down terrorists and saving the city.
Verity shook her head at his antics. He was certainly enthusiastic, though she supposed that had just as much to do with the small dosage of amphetamine laced pepper-up she had been giving him since they had arrived in California and she had been able to get a hold of what she needed.
"I can do this baby," he told her as he plopped his bulky frame down on the bed causing its springs to creak in protest. "I could totally be a cop like this guy. Don't you think baby? I mean, a gun can't be all that tricky to figure out. Just bloody aim and shoot. None of this intent and inflection tripe 'Mione always went off about." His enthusiasm was a palpable force as he bounced on the bed like an excited first year before watching his first Quidditch match. Verity wasn't quite as convinced that shooting a gun would be as easy as all that, but she hoped for her sake that he was right and that they would manage to pull this off.
Oh, how she wanted nothing more than to wield her fairy tale life over the Gryffindor Princess and prove what an inferior creature the little bushy headed witch was. If only it was her own father by her side, working with her to bring down the little princess. He would take such pride in breaking her together; in destroying her slowly, from the inside out. Instead she would have to mold the boorish brute into a sharpened tool with which to slice the prideful smirk of the little bitch's ugly face. Together they would have her prostrating at their feet where she belonged, slithering through the muck like a horned slug. Once she was satisfied with her demoralization and utter destruction they would do away with her like the rubbish that she was.
Then she could finally work on molding Ronald/Raymond into a man a worthy of her time, if not a wizard worthy of her adoration. He would never be as darkly gifted as her beloved father, but he could be manipulated. That, she thought darkly, might be just as much a boon to her if not more.
It was with such twisted thoughts brewing inside her that she announced to the bumbling idiot on the couch that she had shopping to do. "I need ingredients, and some potions. Some things I can't be bothered waiting on to brew. And your hair, mine for that matter too, needs to be changed. You stand out far too keenly with that mop of orange you call hair," she went on, ignoring his indignant "Hey!" as she insulted his hair, which he was strangely proud of, scraggly mess that it had become. "Of course, some basic supplies wouldn't go amiss. We simply cannot keep eating that tripe you insist is food. How on earth you can devour that 'Taco Bell' as if it was one of your mothers famed Weasley feasts is beyond even my level of comprehension. I can however tell you that the babies and I need something more of substance," she rubbed her growing belly in a gesture mocking that of mothers love, a practiced pout growing on her face. "You do want the babies healthy, don't you baby?" she whined, never one to pass on an opportunity to remind him why he was fighting for her, for their growing family.
Ronald bounded off the bed and wrapped his arms around her loosely; looking down on her slowly growing bump with a pride he hadn't taken in anything for years. "Awwww, now Verity, you know I want you and the babies to have the best of it all. You'll see. I'm going to pull this off. You'll be so proud of me. And then we'll get the bitch together. Take her down a few pegs. Go do your shopping, love. The bitch was good for one thing, there was more than just a few Galleons in that vault!" he proclaimed happily as he bent and kissed her hard on the mouth.
Verity wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, not bothering to hide the gesture as Ron bounced back to the bed to watch more of his program. "Yes, well, thank Morgana for small miracles," she crowed as she wandlessly summoned her pocketbook, blessedly full with money that wasn't hers; Muggle money and Galleons alike. "I'm off. Do your best to stay out of trouble and keep studying. We don't have much more time before we need to have you firmly established in the police department so we can get out of this hovel and get settled in a real home fit for our babies." Verity wasn't the least bit surprised to find that he had already tuned her out as an explosion rocked the imaginary little world on the telly. Sighing in pointless frustration she tucked her wand up her sleeve and slipped out the door, deciding to navigate the nearby Muggle streets on foot. She wanted to learn this place she would call home.
Three blocks down the road she came across a Walgreens. Its storefront signs promised to provide for all her pharmaceutical needs and advertised a sale on cosmetics. It was just the place for starters. She grabbed a blue plastic basket after walking through the doors so that she could hold her purchases and made her way towards the cosmetics isles, which were easy enough to spot from the door. Carefully she chose products to enhance her own features without the use of magic, not wanting to be noticed wearing any glamour's should she run into Aurors while in the underground of San Francisco. She was sure that glamours weren't likely to draw much in the way of attention, but any extra notice taken of a pregnant witch with a blossoming bump could make someone look a little bit closer than she cared for. She found concealer creams for the bags under her eyes and jet black pencil to trace around them. It was the berry coloured gloss that she decided would be enough to suffice in making her feel more at ease in her skin without her beauty charms for a while. She knew though that it would do little to disguise her should her photo be printed in the papers here so she would have to work on something more to disguise herself as well. Ronald wouldn't be the only one whose hair needed managing, though she was reluctant to cut any of hers off.
The next isle over found her fretting over hair colours for the both of them. Five minutes spent looking over various shades of blonde, holding boxes up next to her face to look in the dingy scratched mirror on the end of the isle had her positive that blonde was not her colour at all. She didn't even want to contemplate what the Muggle blonde-in-a-box would do to the resilient Weasley hue. Slowly she moved down the aisle, turning her nose up at the cartoonish shades that some Muggles preferred. Not even having been raised in the Muggle world had given her an understanding of some of the outlandish fashion tastes her generation seemed so taken with. She snorted to herself as the thought that Fred would have been ecstatic and desperate to know how the little bottles could turn your hair blue. Once that fleeting thought had thankfully passed she noticed a box with the image of a strikingly beautiful woman with stick straight hair and the most wondrously dark red hair with vibrant highlights. It wasn't red like the Weasley's whose hair was more of a burnished orange than actual red, or even the vibrant true red of an Expelliarmus, though if she had been so inclined a ghastly shade such as that could be found in a bottle right next to the blue. No, this was a red so deep and dark and sultry it brought to mind instantly the colors of blood. The deep violet tinged hue on blood long since spilt. The highlights though reminded her of streaks of freshly spilt blood, slowly dripping down. She didn't realize how long she had been staring at the box until a voice behind her startled her from her musings.
"Oh you could hella pull that off. You've never colored your hair though, I can tell," the girl suddenly too close behind her was saying, her voice managing to be annoyingly high and gruff at the same time. "Those kits are super easy to use though, even on your own," she went on as Verity turned around to look at the girl.
She couldn't have been more than 17, she was dreadfully thin, even by Wizarding standards, and her pants looked to have been painted onto her body, disappearing into a pair of heeled boots. Her top fell off her left shoulder, the neckline having been torn away to leave a wide a jagged edge. Her own hair was a striking combination of white blonde, not unlike that of the Malfoys, but mixed with a startling shade of pink that would have surely set the elder Death Eater into fits having seen it. But none of that was what had a predatory smile breaking out onto Verity's face. No, her delight came in the form of the track marks visible on the girls arm.
"Do you really think I could?" she asked with false sweetness.
The girl squealed upon hearing Verity's obvious accent. "Oh. My. God. I love your voice! And yes! You should do it; it would totally be killer with your skin."
And so the two girls continued to talk, keeping the topics superficial for the most part. The girl, who Verity learned went by the name Tiffy, asked her about the pregnancy and who the dad was. She asked her what they were doing in the little town of Sausalito. Verity practiced her cover story with the girl, making sure to play up her role in the pharmaceuticals industry to see if the girl would bite. The girl didn't disappoint, and after convincing Verity to try the bold colour she scribbled her number down on Verity's hand with a pen she snatched off a shelf a few isles over.
"We should uh, hang out sometime. Maybe party a little after the babies are born, ya?" the girl supplied.
Verity grinned wickedly. "Of course. I could really use a good girl friend out here to show me the ropes," she told Tiffy before the girl ran off to meet someone. And just like that the pieces of the plan were starting to fall together she thought as she picked out a chocolate brown color for Ron's hair and went off to browse the rest of the store.
It was two days later, her hair coloured and styled up in a funky twist that she decided to brave the Wizarding markets in San Francisco. The Mermaid's Tale was a small bar in the Height Ashbury district that had a similar doorway in the back, opening only to those who could wield magic. The thrum of magic flowing through the marketplace felt something like home to the witch as she strolled along looking for the Apothecary. She skillfully avoided eye contact as she slipped between witched and wizards milling about the little square in the center of Biddleton Lane. Her pewter cloak helped to hide her growing bump somewhat and helped her to feel more confident in her simple disguise, though the longer she walked the cobblestone road the more she thought it foolish to be worried about anyone looking for her here in the sea of faces.
She eventually found Lizzie's Fizzies, a tragically named, though well respected and well stocked Apothecary shop where she was able to stock up on a multitude of potions and ingredients, though she was a little dismayed that she was going to have to search harder to find some of the darker things she would require. She left the shop and continued walking about, keeping to herself as she wondered where an entrance might be to a slightly seedier part of the lane, somewhere she could find more of the things she was looking for. She was just a little further down when a news stand caught her eye. There on the front page of several different papers stood a brightly dressed Kingsley Shacklebolt. One paper, the 'Bay Brew' had added their own tiara to the top of his head as he held a press conference in London, the Headline read "British Minister for Magic – Secretly a Queen!" But it was the small photo, caught in the fold that drew her eye. There was no mistaking the photo. It had graced every paper and magazine in Wizarding Europe after it was taken. It was an unmistakable image of the 'Golden Trio' taken at the Press Conference held right after the fall of the Dark Lord. Slowly she reached her hand out and grabbed the paper from the stand. She tossed a Galleon down on the counter and slowly made her way to a small bench across the way where she could sit and read.
One she was seated Verity opened the paper and began to read. 'British Minister of Magic confirms reports that none other than their Golden Trio are embroiled in a scandal so dark and twisted it is hard to believe. The tale begins years ago when the Trio, just school children at the time, were working to bring down the Darkest Lord to have threatened Europe in a Century. While no confirmations were ever made as to the extent the three young people suffered on their crusade it comes as no surprise that they faced an exorbitant amount of darkness as they brought down the self-proclaimed Dark Lord and his army. The darkness that touched them effected them all in different ways, and while the Minister was brief in his statement to the press when concerning what brought on this tragic turn of events he did have this to say: "Hermione Granger, who has been a dear friend and trusted advisor to me these many years has indeed suffered a loss that many Witches and Wizards here could understand, but the reasons behind the loss have rocked me to my core. It is with much regret that I stand here today to confirm reports that Hermione Granger has suffered the loss of her child at the hands of Ex-Auror Ronald Weasley. Ronald, like his brother Percival, was heavily under the influence of a new brand of hybrid mind-altering potions created and supplied by the fugitive known to many as Verity Cane. In his altered state Mr. Weasley attempted to murder his wife Hermione Granger in their home, using Magical and Muggle means of torture to accomplish his sadistic goals. It was a lucky twist of fate, for which I thank Merlin, that Master Severus Snape found Miss Granger and rushed her to St. Mungo's where she was treated for her injuries. It was a devastating loss to her, and to her family to learn of the loss of her child, a daughter. I ask that you respect their privacy in this time of mourning."
Other than her name there was no description of her given, no photograph of her, just the one of Ronald some years earlier. Her own pregnancy wasn't mentioned, though she was sure that the boy wonder had noticed during their little duel in Vegas. But there was blessedly nothing, not even a mention in the paper that they might be in the States hiding. There was nothing that would give her away. Verity would have more than enough anonymity to fulfill her plans and then live out her life by the sea. Oh yes, Verity was decidedly pleased as she continued along down Biddleton Lane; she even stopped and got sweets for Ronald before apparating back to the hotel. Life would be good indeed.
A/N: Hopefully this chapter was worth it (and not just a product of the copious amounts of cold medicine I am on) The next chapter promises Hermione, Severus, and The 'Queen' er the Minister for Magic.
I love you all like crazy. Reviews as always are a little jolt, in this case of cold meds to hopefully kick this damn thing! This story would be nothing without all of you. :)
Oh, and I have been thinking ever since I have come back to the light that cover art would be fantastic! Any ideas?
~ fresh new lily ~