Muggle entrance to the Leaky Cauldron
To Hermione's relief, the bricks parted but her nerves remained on edge. What would she find? A world ravaged by war? Her friends dead and gone? That noseless snake Voldemort and his revolting cronies in charge?
Her knees buckled, and she very nearly ran away.
But –
She had to know. It would drive her mad, not knowing.
So, she squared her shoulders and stepped inside.
The Leaky Cauldron
The first thing Hermione noticed when she entered the high-ceilinged room, was how much cleaner it looked. Centuries of soot had finally been cleaned off the walls, and their white bricks gleamed. The dusty wall of pictures now sported bright portraits of various sizes, displaying the heads and shoulders of wizards and witches drinking, chatting with their neighbours, or snoring from an excess of inebriation. The room was half-full of somnolent patrons slurping soup or nursing their drinks.
Hannah Longbottom, always with an ear turned to new arrivals, noticed Hermione first from her station behind the bar. She looked; blinked, rubbed her eyes and looked again.
"B-blimey!" Hannah stuttered. "Surely it's not – but it is – it's Hermione Granger!"
Patrons looked up as Hannah practically vaulted over the bar to welcome the pretty, petite young woman who looked vaguely familiar. After enveloping Hermione in a bone-cracking hug, she glared at the silent drinkers and slurpers. "What's wrong with you?" she asked indignantly. "Don't you recognise one the of the Golden Trio? It's Hermione Granger, you lummoxes, home at last!"
Whispers rustled around the room and the portrait figures peered down from their lofty positions. Whispers metamorphosed into exclamations of excitement as they saw for themselves that it was, indeed, the young Granger miss, standing in the middle of the Leaky Cauldron as if she hadn't been missing for well over a year - and then some.
"This calls for a celebration! Drinks are on the house!" Hannah announced, and the pub rang with enthusiastic cheers. Witches, wizards and creatures, many of whom Hermione had never met, crowded around her, wide-eyed and tongue-tied.
Hannah soon extricated Hermione from the knot of well-wishers and plonked her at the bar. A tall mug of beer materialised in front of her.
"I'll send some owls out to your friends!" Hannah shouted over the hubbub while she engaged her wand in the important job of freshening everyone's drinks.
"Oh, please, I don't want any fuss!" Hermione shouted back. She'd planned on finding them one by one, if they were still around, and if it was safe to do so. Also, after all her time in Muggle England interacting with one or two people at a time, the noise and rush of the pub was proving to be a bit overwhelming.
"Nonsense!" Hannah bellowed back. "Everyone will be desperate to see you. Ha! Won't their faces be a sight?"
Probably, Hermione thought. She sipped the beer and asked for a whisky.
She had a feeling she would need it.
The first to greet Hermione was a lovely young red-haired lady, who flew into the pub like a whirling dervish and pulled Hermione around and out of a conversation an elderly witch. Ignoring the offended old biddy, Ginny gaped speechlessly at Hermione before bursting into tears and enveloping her in a death-grip hug.
"You're here! You're truly here!" she wailed and cried even harder, if such a thing were possible.
Hermione hugged her back, tears falling onto her own cheeks. Had she lived without this love all this time?
Another hand pulled Ginny's hair away from Hermione's face, revealing familiar green eyes behind a pair of spectacles. "Gin, take deep breaths," Harry said before joining in the hug. "I knew you'd come back," he whispered to Hermione fiercely. "Every night I'd pray that you'd come back and" – he swallowed hard.
"Harry…" Hermione whispered. She couldn't say another word.
Ginny's hold on Hermione had lessened somewhat and it was then Hermione noticed a firmness to Ginny's stomach. She gasped. "Gin, are you pregnant?"
Ginny wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Hermione heard an exasperated cluck of disappointment coming from somewhere. The eyes at the back of Molly Weasley's head were still deadly accurate. It was then that Hermione saw the wedding bands on Ginny and Harry's fingers.
"We were going to name the baby Hermione, in your memory," Ginny stuttered, then burst into tears again.
"It's perfectly normal for pregnant witches to get a bit emotional," Molly whispered said to Harry, patting a comforting hand on Harry's arm.
Harry rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Give over, weepy woman, and stop hogging Hermione!" came an impatient, familiar voice. "And besides, the baby is going to be a boy, not a girl! Haven't you counted the number of older brothers you've got?"
In a trice, Ginny disappeared and Hermione was lifted into an enormous hug by Ron, who twirled her round and round.
"All right Ron, that's enough!" Hermione laughed. "You're making me giddy!"
Ron put her down, then stared at her. "Your hair's short."
Always one for speaking the obvious, Hermione thought. "Yes, Ron, it is."
"I think I like your long hair better."
Arthur and Molly Weasley politely shoved Ron away and welcomed Hermione back with a properly mumsy and dadsy hug. "My dear, we were so worried!" Molly warbled, her eyes suspiciously shiny.
Arthur knew just what to say. "She's here now, dear, that's the most important thing."
They've grown older, Hermione thought sadly. Their heads were a mix of silver and gold and their faces were lined. In fact, everyone looked different in some way or form. Just like she herself looked different. But there was no time to dwell on that as there were so many people to greet, including Bill and Fleur, Percy, Luna, the Patils, an enormously tall Neville, and George, who'd grown his hair long so his missing ear wasn't immediately noticeable.
After George hugged Hermione hard, she looked over his shoulder for Fred. But no one was there.
"Where's Fred?" she called out, looking around.
The boisterous chatter lulled.
A lump formed in Hermione's throat. Not Fred. Surely not? Please God, no…
George answered. "He didn't make it," he said clearly, but a pulse ticked along his jawline. "Bought it in the Battle of Hogwarts."
Hermione's breath left her. She felt like someone had punched her in the stomach.
"The world's changed," Harry said quietly. "Some of our friends and family lost their lives trying to save the world us survivors would still die to protect. But their sacrifices weren't in vain, as you'll soon see."
"I – I need some time to process this," Hermione whispered.
"Of course you do," Molly soothed. "This must be such a big shock for you. Now, how about we get of Hannah's hair and have a big, slap-up meal at The Burrow? Why, none of us have heard what happened to you, yet!"
Everyone cheered. Molly's cooking was sublime, and Weasley parties were the stuff of legends. Maybe even Charlie could Floo in for a few hours!
The Burrow
The Burrow was, of course, the haven Crookshanks was sent to during the pointy end of the war. Their reunion, however, wasn't quite what Hermione was expecting. He ambled into the kitchen as Hermione emerged from the Floo, stared at her; then, just as Hermione reached out to pick him up, he emitted a massive growl that morphed into a hiss; then he stomped off into the garden to sulk.
"He'll get over it," Molly assured a disappointed Hermione. "Just you see. He'll be kneading and dribbling on your lap before you know it." She checked that her spells were working their magic on dinner, and brightly added "He's such a help in the garden, you know! The gnomes are terrified of him."
When everyone took their seats around the Weasley's magically-extended kitchen table and tucked in, Hermione told her story in fits and starts. It was pretty boring, she thought. Except for her time in Malfoy Manor's dungeons. That was a bit dramatic.
People gasped and Weasley tempers rose when recalled, with irritating gaps, what she could remember of her time in the dungeons; overhearing that she was to be killed, then waking up in a Muggle hospital with no memory of her life.
"How did you escape, being surrounded by every Death Eater in existence?" Pavarti wondered.
"I wish I knew," Hermione shrugged. "Hopefully I will, one day."
"Someone must have apparated you," Bill mused. "Whoever it was must have had balls of" –
"Bill!" Molly admonished.
Bill's ears went red. "Whoever saved Hermione would have been killed afterwards. So it was a pretty ba-gutsy move on their part."
"Who would have done such a thing?" Neville asked. "Even if they were a Death Eater, I feel almost obliged to posthumously thank them for getting Hermione to safety."
"Snape?" Charlie suggested.
"Not unless he managed to convince Voldemort not to kill him, seeing as he died during the Battle of Hogwarts."
There was a short silence while people mulled the situation over and ate delicious food. Hermione noticed Crookshanks sitting at her ankle, as he usually did when he wanted something from the table. She took a small piece of meat and placed it in front of him; and her to relief, he accepted the offering.
It was never going to be a good time to ask this question, Hermione realised, but she needed to know, all the same. "Does anyone know," she ventured tentatively, "what happened to Lucius Malfoy?"
Ron's lip curled. "Died in the Final Battle. Good bloody riddance."
Hermione felt a tendril of tension unfurl from around her chest.
"And his piece of shit son, too," Ron added, dodging Molly's admonitory fork.
"What?" Hermione's cup froze at her lips. Colour drained from her face.
"Killed in a duel over some witch, or so we heard," George said.
Hermione put her cup on the brightly-checked table with a trembling hand. "Are you sure?" she prodded.
"Well, to be honest," Harry said, "no-one really knows how, when or why he died. But it's been confirmed that he is dead." He caught her eye and smiled. "He definitely won't be able to hurt you anymore."
Hermione tried to smile back, but her stomach lurched alarmingly. She bolted from the table and ran to the loo and was sadly, hopelessly, sick.
The Afterlife, chess version
A notable scrum of beings were gathered around a scrying screen, which was elaborately shaped like a wizarding chess piece. Cedric, Fred and Lucy were watching the party at The Burrow, joined by Dumbledore with Slytherin lurking and complaining in the rear.
The group, although large by scrying screen standards, was noticeably absent of a key player: one Draco Lucius Malfoy. Not for want of Lucy's trying.
"Right! Well, all's well that ends well, eh?" Slytherin's drink was running dry and it was making him tetchy (he believed that concocting drinks was a servant's job and therefore beneath his dignity to conjure one up for himself).
"Hermione's throwing up her dinner in the loo," Fred pointed out. "That's hardly the definition of 'well,' old man."
"Isn't that normal?" Slytherin asked, surprised. "Girl were always being sick around me when I was alive."
Lucy stared at him. He leered a wink back.
"It appears that Ms Granger's memories are well on the way to recovery, and she is safe with her friends and loved ones," Dumbledore summarised. "From that perspective, I believe we may satisfy ourselves that a positive result has been achieved at last."
The group slowly broke up and while Fred stayed to watch the party, the others went off in different directions to amuse themselves. Dumbledore, looking chic in a black turtleneck, black flannel trousers, beret and Windsor glasses, fell into step next to Lucy, who was looking divine in a white off-the-shoulder Roman gown with her hair piled into impossible curls on top of her head. "How goes young Mr Malfoy, my dear?" he asked, twirling his beard in his fingers.
"Not good," Lucy said sadly. "He won't leave his room at all. If I get him to talk through the door, his replies are monosyllabic and… hopeless. I don't know what to do."
"Hmm," Dumbledore pondered. "Perhaps it's time to summon the artillery."
"What does that mean?" Lucy asked.
"I'm not altogether sure," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "It's a phrase I picked up upon speaking to a military chap called Napoleon."