A/N: Hello again! Here I am once more to drop my little bastard ideas at your feet and make them your problem now. I love a good rarepair so here we have it: a very, very dysfunctional triad fic with Hermione Granger, Barty Crouch Jr., and Antonin Dolohov. (For those of you waiting on The Sanguine Witch, fear not! I am currently re-uploading on AO3 under the same username and performing minor hand edits. We're back, bby)

I wanted to write a story about repeating cycles and the measures we take to survive...and how they return to haunt us. Please don't hope for a happy ending.

As always, please mind note that I write for adult audiences, so please tailor your content experience accordingly. J.K. Rowling owns everything you recognize, the rest is imagination. I hope I engage yours.

Without further ado:


Hermione still wasn't used to the summer heat in Melbourne.

The café she ducked inside that morning was a large, hip affair with stylish brick walls and gold light fixtures hanging from the lofted ceiling; it wasn't the small, cozy kind of tea shop she was used to back home, but it was serviceable enough to give her quiet shelter from the encroaching humidity. She sat near the door and felt a blanket of hot air swell to greet her as more patrons filtered inside, the collection of wind chimes attached to the inner handle jangling merrily.

Hermione ignored the momentary rise in temperature and instead sipped at her tea, eyes still trained on the open journal in front of her. Her pen hadn't been marking for quite a while now—she had been hopeful that if she stared at the blank page long enough she would be able to gather the courage to jot down the words that had been ringing through her mind like a siren of supreme disappointment all morning. It was necessary to catalog her failures—as numerous as they were—but some conclusions were harder to express than others. All the experiments hadn't yielded results and she was beginning to lose hope that any of her efforts would ever see fruition.

Hemlock Restorative, Hermione wrote tentatively with a tight, even script. Induced vomiting, chills, and caused momentary vision loss. No effect on memory.

Bitter reality stained Hermione's next sip of chamomile. For all of her efforts she hadn't yet been able to restore her parents' memories. She was shamed by her ineffective experimental potions and horrified at the lengths she had taken to secure their cooperation.

The footsteps from the café's new visitors rolled to a stop somewhere behind her. Hermione had just reached her next sentence—it was still strange to hold a pen after so much time using quills—when a voice directly behind her made her drop it in surprise.

"Hermione Granger?" a man's voice asked. The accent, so homey and familiar after spending so much time around those with the typical Australian brogue, nearly caused her to fall from her chair in shock.

She turned, and just a meter from her table was Neville Longbottom.

Within the next breath Hermione had shot out of her chair and had nearly stumbled over her discarded messenger bag leant against it. Hannah Abbott, with her round cheeks and kind smile, stood just to Neville's right with her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow. The pair were dressed in Muggle clothes, short pants and sandals, and judging by the faint sunburn kissing at Neville's cheeks they had been outside for quite some time. His face was thinner, his eyes wearier, and his frame more solid, but there he was. Her friend.

The first of her friends Hermione had laid eyes on in five long years.

"Neville!" Hermione exclaimed. She launched herself toward them and reached out eagerly, each of her palms coming to grasp at one of their own. She was so overcome with emotion at seeing someone she recognized, someone who knew her, that she found herself swallowing around a ball of hard sorrow lodged in her throat. She squeezed their hands and hoped they couldn't feel her tremble. "And Hannah! Oh Merlin, you both have no idea how good it is to see you," she gushed. Hermione had never been one for such outward emotional displays—her usual steady bearing, shaken from the rough morning, left her.

Neville smiled right back and matched her enthusiasm with a gentle measure of his own. "I thought it might be you. Even when it's up I think I'd know all that hair anywhere." The gentle tease in his voice made Hermione's grin stretch impossibly wider—this version of Neville, grown and comfortable with himself, was gratifying to witness. With a pang of chagrin, Hermione thought of how he appeared in her memory; he certainly wasn't a nervous young boy anymore.

Hermione laughed and let go of him to self-consciously touch at her bushy ponytail. She had secured it back with a wooden pencil, which Hannah was peering at quizzically. "It's so lovely to see you both. Join me for a cuppa?"

The pair agreed. By the time they had secured their own drinks Hermione's frantic heartbeat had slowed into something calmer; the excitement of seeing them was beginning to wane, and the other, darker emotions previously bubbling just under the surface were beginning to make their appearances. Hermione snapped her journal closed and traced the rim of her teacup with an absent finger as she considered Neville and Hannah. Neville was looking at her with a lopsided smile and Hannah was distracting herself with a Muggle cell phone. "What brings you both to Australia?" Hermione finally asked.

Neville's eyebrows rose and he leaned across the table, one arm coming up to brace against it. "I could ask you the same thing, you know. Hannah and I are here celebrating our honeymoon, aren't we?" he replied with relish. The look he passed to the distracted blonde on this left was charmingly exasperated, but the warm hand he reached to tap at Hannah's told a different, and more quietly affectionate story. Something about the gentle physicality made Hermione's throat clog with jealousy, this time.

Hannah looked up with a quick smile from whatever she was doing to the small screen in her palm. The easy, obvious tenderness she felt for Neville sparkled like diamonds when she leaned to bump her shoulder playfully against his. "The trip is coming to an end, but it's been wonderful!" Hannah said to Hermione.

Hermione hadn't known that Neville and Hannah were even dating, let alone that they had gotten married. She wasn't surprised at their union, though; she had fully expected that life would move on without her. That lump of jealousy was poisoning to much more dangerous sadness, but she found her voice regardless. "That's amazing," she said sincerely. "I have so many questions for the both of you, but before anything I'd like to wish you congratulations. I hope you'll both be very happy together."

Neville looked over at his wife and his lopsided smile turned ever warmer. "We are, truly. What about you, Hermione? Have you been in Australia this whole time or are you here on holiday?"

I'm here for my parents. She didn't say that. She didn't want anyone to know. "Something like that. I'm here more for a research project, really, but I think it might be coming to an end soon."

Hannah hummed and stuffed her cell phone into the small purse tucked under her arm. The action caught Hermione's attention and something curious caused a quick furrow to crease at her brow before she could smooth it out. What use would a witch have for muggle technology? Even Hermione, as entrenched in Muggle culture as she was, hadn't succumbed to such exotic pastimes. Hannah's next words, though, reclaimed Hermione's attention easily. "That sounds about right—I remember you were always so studious in school."

"I thought you would have gone back to finish your seventh year," Neville cut in. He lowered his voice and his smile was beginning to slip, but he pressed on. "To Hogwarts, I mean. Everyone has missed you so much…why didn't you go back with us?"

Hermione thought that the air conditioning in the shop was beginning to fail...or maybe her ever-present sense of guilt was causing the sudden blush to stain her cheeks. She found herself avoiding Neville's eyes, attention now turned to her own fingers still nudging at the closed pages of her journal. "I wanted to go back, I swear. I just had some things I needed to take care of first."

"Did you take care of those things, whatever they were?" Neville asked. Hermione knew he wasn't like Harry or Ron, and that knowledge soothed her. Neville wasn't the type to pry, and they hadn't been particularly close in the first place.

This was a difficult question for Hermione to answer all the same. She had tried—tried for half a decade—but she hadn't been able to repair the damage she had wrought on her own family. If she had known that her parents would never recover their memories from the spell she cast before the start of the war..."Yes, I believe I have. Other than getting married, what have you two been up to? How has everyone been?"

Neville and Hannah shared a quick look. "They're fine, just fine. We missed you, you know. Harry and Ron especially," Neville tried gently. He paused, unsure, before finding the courage to continue. "Why didn't you tell anyone you were leaving?"

And there it was—the question that had been looming over their table like an executioner's guillotine. The blade came down swift just like Hermione knew it would. "If I told anyone I was leaving they would try to stop me. Especially Harry and Ron...I thought this would be easier. My mind was made up and I had something important to finish." It was a concise, practiced response; Hermione had recited it to herself many times before in her own bathroom mirror. No matter how she said it, how she stressed the syllables, how she pleaded and cried—she hadn't been able to bring herself to believe it. The real reason, tucked safely into her chest where no one could find it, burned like a match below the movement of her treacherous tongue. It shamed her to lie, but oh, she had learned to do it so well.

Neville's smile had morphed into a frown and the anger on his face made Hermione cringe with regret. "The letters you sent after the fact didn't do much to comfort anyone, you know. Harry thought one of the escaped Death Eaters got their hands on you and forced you to write them so no one would search. He looked for you for weeks."

"I'm sorry. I really am," Hermione urged. "It was never my intention to leave permanently..."

"Are you going to return to the wizarding world?" This time it was Hannah's question that made Hermione pause.

The look Hannah and Neville quickly exchanged after her question made her still ever further. "That had been the plan," Hermione answered carefully. "Why? Is something wrong?"

Remembering the war wasn't something Hermione liked to do; after the Ministry of Magic had begun making moves to repair the damage it had suffered, Hermione found a moment to slip away as seamlessly as possible into the resulting fray. Kingsley Shacklebolt at the Ministry's helm would surely guide society back on track, and with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at his back, surely no one would miss Hermione in the resulting victory. A lie, she reminded herself. She knew she was missed—the stack of unanswered letters back in her rented flat told that story plainly—but the emotional fallout of her actions wasn't something she had wanted to face head-on. For once she wanted to be cowardly, to hide. The thought that something had gone wrong in her absence filled her with even more compounding survivor's guilt.

"Nothing is...wrong," Neville hedged. He fluttered his hands ineffectually over the tabletop as if their motion could soothe Hermione. "Things are just different. It will take time for things to return to the way they were, really."

Hermione frowned in response. "But we don't want things to go back to the usual status quo, do we? That's what got us into that whole mess in the first place." That whole mess. Inadequate, she knew; but how could she so eloquently sum up the last decade-plus of their shared lifetime in a way that wouldn't seem woefully paltry?

Neville shrugged. "Fair. Don't get me wrong—there has been rebuilding—but not all of the Ministry's measures have been popular. Things are much better than they were, though, and that's what matters."

"What 'measures' haven't been popular?" Hermione asked. She had been aware of some of Kingsley's plans after the war: to reform Azkaban, to give more voting power to the populace, and to restructure some of the current funding avenues to support social welfare. At least at the time of her departure from the British Isles those ideas had a lot of support.

This time it was Hannah who answered her. The blonde woman's hair brushed forward off her shoulder and skimmed at the tabletop as she leaned forward, head canted, and eyes locked on Hermione's. Something about her subtle lean encouraged whispers, and Hermione found herself drawing closer. "You haven't heard?" Hannah asked incredulously. Neville was avoiding Hermione's questioning eyes, instead turning to inspect the baked parking lot just beyond the window.

"Haven't heard what?" Hermione pressed. Anxiety, her ever-present companion, was twisting a knot in her gut.

Hannah's blue eyes darted hesitantly around the cafe. When she turned back to Hermione her voice was even lower. "You know...the reparation movement?"

"She hasn't heard," Neville cut in. He still wouldn't look at Hermione. "I don't think she's been keeping up with the wizarding world since she left."

Hannah's pale eyebrows had shot up in surprise. She inclined her head toward Hermione as if to ask if it were true.

Hermione's mounting nerves were beginning to wad into anger—exactly what reparations? "Neville, I'd kindly ask that you tell me what's been going on. You're both making me worried by not just saying it," she said.

Heaviness was pulling at Neville's posture when he finally turned back to meet her eyes. "It's why we left," Neville finally confided. "Hannah and I made our way out just after our wedding. We figured we'd immigrate to America, or maybe even here...the politics would be different, at least, even if other wizarding communities have their own problems."

"Look, it isn't like it once was," Hannah added. "Things are fine, really, but not everyone is happy."

Neville snorted. "I certainly wasn't."

"First they banished the dementors from Azkaban," Hannah continued to Hermione's mounting horror. "Shortly after Kingsley died the new minister began a policy of reparations and much of Pureblood culture has been eroded entirely. A lot of families were displaced and there's been some economic troubles."

"Kingsley is dead?" Hermione asked with shock. Her hands, now flat to the table and sweating horribly, left slick impressions on the frosted plastic surface.

Hannah ignored her question. Come to think of it, both of them were reluctant to give her any answers. "The thing with the Death Eaters was the last straw for us. I'm all for restorative justice...but after what happened to Neville's parents we just couldn't let one of those monsters into our home. There was some...pressure, you know, for us to agree. We didn't want to hear any more of it so we left."

"The thing with the Death Eaters?" Hermione asked again. The conversation had gone decidedly left of where she thought it would lead—she hadn't felt this confused and frustrated in a long while. "Neville," she urged her friend. "Please spit it out already." To the last of Hermione's recollection, the captured Death Eaters after the battle at Hogwarts had been sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban; she couldn't imagine what unpopular measures the Ministry would have taken with them. They should have been sentenced to death, Hermione thought gravely. Her classic mean streak flared at the thought of breathing the same air as those awful blood supremacists; she hadn't been a fan of the comparatively inhumane Dementor's Kiss, but she had no qualms about the practitioners of the Dark Arts being put down like sick dogs. To Hermione that's what they were—even if others hadn't agreed with her.

Neville knocked back the rest of his drink and patted Hannah soundly on the forearm. His wife, seemingly haven taken the noticeable cue, tossed a small smile to Hermione. "It's been lovely seeing you, really," Hannah said. The blonde reached across the table and squeezed lightly at the top of one of Hermione's hands; the action was just the sort of feminine insincerity she had hated back at Hogwarts, but she allowed it, too dumbfounded to do much else other than stare. She hadn't remembered Neville being so cagey, but then again, she had been away from him almost as long as she had known him in the first place. The man before her had morphed into an avoidant stranger.

Her drink companions rose to their feet and Neville paused as he pushed in his chair. "Be careful, Hermione," he bid her. His half-smile was back to being easy and lopsided, but Hermione could sense the tension that he was trying so hard to dissipate with his warm goodbye. "Next time I write, you'll send an owl back, yeah?"

Hermione swallowed back the endless questions she wanted to pour—and her furious misgivings—and gave a small nod. "Yeah, I will." I won't. "Take care, the both of you."

Hannah lingered behind her vacated chair while Neville made for the shop's door. More patrons had come in and the volume was rising; Hermione almost didn't hear Hannah's parting words because of it. "If you're as smart as you once were, you'll stay out of the wizarding world. You did the right thing by getting out early."

Hermione stared after her with wide eyes as Hannah followed her husband through the exit. Seconds passed and she was alone yet again.


Later that week Hermione made herself dinner the muggle way and thought hard about the conversation she had with Neville and Hannah from the days prior. Her wand was still at her bedside in the room yonder and she had barely touched it since.

Hermione dropped bay leaves into the bubbling stew and considered what she had learned. Kingsley Shacklebolt was dead—that one had been a shock. Immediately after she left the café she had rushed to the nearest magical hub and combed through the back catalog of the Melbourne Mystic to confirm what she had heard. Australia had its own wizarding government, but political news from communities adjacent would still be reported on if notable enough. Sure as day, there it had been—Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister of Magic to the Western European territories, murdered in his London home. No suspects, no leads. No reports of any updates to the case after the initial story, either.

The tall, low-voiced wizard had been such a sturdy presence in the Order…capable, protective even. He hadn't been terribly hurt at the end of the final battle, but years of constant stress would have dulled his reflexes, weakened him. He might have even been an easy target if he believed himself safe. Hermione didn't know his cause of death for certain, but she would be shocked if his murder wasn't fallout from supporters of Lord Voldemort that had managed to escape after their defeat. It was a tragedy and a great loss, but Hermione hadn't exactly known Kingsley all that well to mourn him any deeper than with passing sadness. The mounting losses that had befallen her after the war had slightly numbed her to the reality of losing her loved ones.

The question still stood—who had killed him? The list of potential suspects was too long to narrow down definitively…from Hermione's last recollection, less than a dozen of the Inner Circle had managed to evade capture, but many others, fence-sitting passives who agreed with his ideology but still didn't actively fight, could be the culprit. She had encountered several Death Eaters who had never taken the Dark Mark, either, and they couldn't be identified as easily.

The second piece of information, the new Minister of Magic—that had been a given, then. Kingsley's short campaign after the conclusion of the war had been rushed, she knew, but he had been a popular candidate and he had held a certain amount of political clout for over a decade at that point. Hermione couldn't imagine who they would appoint in his place, but given that Voldemort was gone and the Death Eaters were no longer in control of wizarding Europe, the new Minister couldn't be any worse than, say, Cornelius Fudge. Fudge had been image-obsessed and slightly ineffectual, but he hadn't been malicious. Whoever took Kingsley's place would most likely get a lukewarm reception, but they certainly wouldn't face blatant animosity.

Or maybe they would. Reparations. The concept of reparations after a war wasn't foreign to Hermione; in the Muggle word, entire countries had been made to yield economically following certain world events and losses; they were never popular with the people having to pay them, but given what Hermione now knew about pureblood culture (all but gone, if her friends were to be believed) who would oppose such a thing, and how vocal could they really be? The abolishment of Azkaban's terrifying creature wardens was frightening to consider…where would the Death Eaters go, if not contained by the dementors? Surely their ordered executions wouldn't be that heavily pushed back against, would they?

We aren't them, Hermione. Harry's words to her, said so long ago, echoed through the passage of time and rang through her small flat. Hermione had never liked the idea of the Dementor's Kiss being used as a punishment, but death was something she grimly wished upon the surviving Dark. She had suggested the idea multiple times to the other, older members of the surviving Order, but no one had paid much mind to her then. She had been nineteen and rightfully angry, and so her suggestions had been dismissed. Harry didn't like the idea of sentencing the Death Eaters, especially the younger ones like Draco Malfoy, to death because in his mind that made him no better than Tom Riddle. Even Ron, for all of his righteous fire in the wake of the battle, hadn't agreed with her on that one.

It was a shame that Hermione hadn't been able to find any information about the reparations in the Mystic.

Hermione stared hard into the stockpot and tried to remember the last time she had thought about her friends. It was a lie to say she never missed them—she missed them so ardently she could barely take a breath without remembering the sound of Ron's laugh, or the mischief ever-present in Harry's eyes—but until running into Neville she hadn't truly desired to return to them. A part of her, small and hurt, thought that they wouldn't want her anymore. Ron certainly hadn't after the acrimonious end to their short relationship and Harry always took Ron's side…but Hermione's fear was for a different reason. She had been cowardly. She had stolen away one day to Australia and gave no notice but a few well-placed, terse letters. They had written to her prolifically but she never even opened the envelopes…a part of her recognized that she might have never returned to the wizarding world. Hermione had been a coward and had discarded nearly a decade of friendship because her pride had been bruised, and even she knew that it was something so craven she might not be able to apologize for it.

But who did she have, if not Harry and Ron? The bond between she and Ron had been irrevocably strained by their ill-fated romantic endeavor and many of the Weasleys, her surrogate magical family, hadn't survived the war. Harry was practically an honorary Weasley himself, and she, alone on the outskirts, had felt childishly abandoned. Stung when Ginny didn't return her letters. Offended when Harry wouldn't offer her the same forgiving grace he gave Ron.

That left her parents. The parents she had stolen the memories of. The parents who no longer remembered that they had a daughter named Hermione.

Hermione covered the pot of stew and found her appetite absent. A quick turn of the knob sent the gas flame down to a simmer and she wandered back into her bedroom to fetch her wand. Her immersive experience as an adult in the Muggle world had been enlightening for sure, but she would never tire of the quick, easy flow of magic she could produce with just a bare flick of her wand. She would always be a witch, even if she had no one to share that fantastical experience with.

Wand in hand, Hermione opened her bedroom window and pointed the tip towards the cloudless night sky. Here on the fifth floor of the building Hermione could just see the stretch of downtown in the distance, streetlights and muggle signs twinkling in the dim twilight like jewels. She cast a quick summons in that direction and waited—an owl from the Melbourne Mystic would be at her window by morning.

Neville had been correct when he guessed Hermione hadn't been keeping up with the wizarding world; she had been so worried about her parents that her head hadn't had room for much else, and each failure to restore them took up more mental space that she had to spare. The trip into Vertick Alley from the magical entrance through Princes Park after the café had been quick and anxious—it had been the first time since Hermione came to Melbourne that she forayed into wizarding spaces. The secret street hidden within the park had reminded her so much of Diagon Alley that it nearly made her weep, but true to form, she had managed to locate a library within minutes. The copies of the Mystic they had in the public archives were scattered and incomplete, so if Hermione wanted to really find out what was going on that Neville wouldn't tell her about, she would have to request the catalog from the source herself. The Daily Prophet wasn't available here, but she could get her hands on it, too. There was no such thing as a written work Hermione Granger couldn't get her hands on.

Resolved to be patient until dawn, Hermione returned to her small kitchen and tucked her wand into the twist of her messy bun for safekeeping. She had never been good at waiting, but if the last five years had taught her anything, it was that she could do almost anything—almost—if she kept the resolve.


Travelling back to London was a fraught experience.

Three weeks later, Hermione Granger stood breathless in a wide clearing somewhere just outside of the city, her insides jolting uncomfortably and her legs wobbling from the hard portkey landing. It had been horribly expensive to procure a portkey capable of crossing such long distances, but she would have paid any amount to secure passage back home after what she had learned in the papers. It had taken her too long to source a powerful portkey, but she didn't have the patience to navigate muggle transportation. She wasn't sure how she would take her wand onto an airplane and it would take too long by boat. The frayed knot of circled rope, clutched hard in her white-knuckled fist, was hard-won and dear after the lengths she had taken to get it.

As it turned out, such long-distance portkeys were considered illegal by the Australian Ministry of Magic. Hermione understood why—smuggling of magical creatures was a real problem for the continent—but it was still a pain in her arse to find the equivalent of Knockturn Alley and source a discrete mage competent enough to charm an object for her.

The information Hermione had managed to glean from the Melbourne Mystic back catalog of daily papers had been horrifying and enlightening in equal measure—whatever she might have expected for the Ministry of the Western European territories to enact, it hadn't been Death Eater enslavement. Originally Hermione had brushed off the knowledge that Neville and Hannah had willfully left the wizarding world; the idea hadn't seemed so horrid, when she considered that she had done the same. But Neville was a pureblood, even if the Longbottoms were blood traitors by reputation…how awful were these reparations, and what could they be to make him leave? Finding out had been a punch to the gut.

Just years before her friends had admonished her for wanting to behave like the enemy. How was this better?

Hermione started across the clearing toward the city and decided to have a pint or seven at The Leaky Cauldron. She could secure a room for the night and decide what to do; her long-term plan was unclear, but she knew for certain what she needed to do in the morning.

Hermione hadn't read his letters, but she hoped Harry Potter wouldn't slam his door in her face just the same.


A/N: we're just getting started - feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think^^