Hermione had come to cherish being the first non-adult to wake. If she was quiet, she could read, or work on her summer assignments, before Mrs. Weasley gave them their cleaning tasks to do. Once Ron and the others woke up, they were put to work as soon as breakfast was consumed, and she was tired of waging a losing war against a house that clearly did not want them there.

The underage magic rules were stupid. With all of the adults around, surely they could get away with the first year charms that Flitwick taught for cleaning and tidying?

Tiptoeing down the stairs, she was surprised to see that the dining room doors were open. Despite the fact that it was right by the front door and the Floo in the entry, the Order had never used it for their meetings. Probably due to the fact that Mrs. Black's portrait would start screeching at the slightest hint of noise.

Which was why it was even more strange that there was a soft hum of voices coming from the dining room. Normally even that much noise was enough to trigger the portrait and resulting screaming match between mother and son. Automatically, she glanced over to where the portrait hung, and found only a darker square of unfaded wallpaper instead of the ragged curtains installed to try and deal with the matter.

Looking around further, she saw bits of parchment stuck to various places around the room. The troll leg had one that said Vault, and there was one above a table that read Mirror?. Something about the handwriting seemed familiar, but Hermione couldn't place it.

"I don't understand why you're hexing the flatware." An unfamiliar man was saying as she stopped by the ajar dining room doors. "Inventorying the linens, yes. Inventorying the flatware, absolutely. But hexing it?"

"There are visitors to this house who do not respect the property of others," a voice replied, sounded irritated. "I would prefer not to purchase my family heirlooms from the black market. Again."

Much like the handwriting, the voice felt familiar, but the accent was strange. Taking a deep breath, Hermione peered around the doorway.

To her surprise, three people were gathered at the end of the room, where the big china closet was. One of them, a woman, was holding up linens as if she was examining them. As Hermione watched, she refolded the one she had and put it in one of the stacks forming on the table. The man she had heard was holding a stack of plates in one hand, clearly passing it to the second woman, who was a head shorter than her companions. Something about her profile looked familiar, and Hermione squinted, trying to figure out who the woman reminded her of.

"Kreacher, how are those curtains looking?" the woman asked, taking a dish from her companion.

"Full of doxies, but Kreacher has managed," came the voice of the house elf Hermione had learned to avoid. As she watched, he shuffled out from the curtains with a frown on his face. "Kreacher thinks Mistresses will not like them though."

"They'll do well enough until we choose new ones," the woman sorting through a stack of napkins said.

The shorter woman glanced over her shoulder to smile at her, and Hermione couldn't breathe for a moment, her breath trapped in her lungs at the first sight of the woman's face.

She seemed to be eighteen and eighty all at the same time, carrying herself with a level of self-assurance rarely found in any of Hermione's schoolmates. Viktor and Fleur had been the exceptions, but both of them had their own reasons for maturity beyond their years. But the eyes, the eyes were what Hermione focused on, a shade of green nobody had ever been able to precisely define other than telling an orphan that she had her mother's eyes. And above them, an infamous scar bloomed on her forehead, making it impossible for her to be anyone else.

Several things were clear to Hermione. Her friend had somehow arrived at Grimmauld Place without telling Ron or Hermione. Yet, the girl who had shared her dorm room and gossiped with her about Viktor Krum and complained about homework and Ron Weasley and obsessed with Ginny about quidditch was gone forever.

Without knowing it, she must have made some sound, and all three turned to her. "Hermione," Harry said. "I-"

"What happened?" Hermione blurted out, unable to reconcile how her friend had changed in the short period of time since they'd waved goodbye to each other at King's Cross at the end of June. "I mean, it's only been a month and-" you're not who you used to be.

Confusion, and then an achingly sad expression flickered over Harry's face, and she handed the plate back to the man. "You might want to sit down," she said, pulling out a chair for Hermione and taking one for herself. "I had thought that they would have told you last night."

"Who would have told us?" Hermione demanded as she took a seat, head spinning. "Last night?"

"We arrived last night, and explained the situation to Molly, Professor McGonagall, Tonks, Sirius, and Remus," Harry said, and that was just another difference between what Hermione was fast considering old-Harry and new-Harry. Old-Harry had always been painfully polite to adults she had respected, and here New-Harry was using first names, as if they were equals.

The man snorted. "You explained little enough," he said, when Harry looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "It's the truth, craba."

"You're hardly one to talk about too-short explanations, Strider," Harry retorted with a half-smile, as if this was an old joke of theirs. "But I suppose I will explain now, at least a little."

"If it's secret, you don't have to tell me," Hermione said loyally, knowing that if Harry had been doing some top-secret training for the Order, Dumbledore may have forbidden her to tell anyone.

"It's not secret, just sensitive," Harry sighed. She glanced at Hermione for a moment. "It's been a long time."

Sometimes, Hermione found that her brain had been processing small details in the background, only to present her with a fully formed theory when she least expected it. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out: "You've been time-traveling!"

Harry laughed. "Dimension and time-traveling," she said, clearly understanding that Hermione didn't mean it as the accusation it had sounded like.

"How many years?" she had so many questions, and Harry seemed to know that, but this one was the one she needed the answer to right away.

Harry glanced at both of the strangers, seeming to do math in her head. "Almost two hundred," she said, and the man nodded. "I lost track after a while."

"When did you dimension hop?" Hermione had never been exceedingly interested in science fiction, but her father was, and the entire family dissolved into debates over dinner periodically, usually when he'd finished reading something new.

Once again she seemed to be doing mental math. "Maybe twenty-five years from now," Harry said slowly, clearly mulling it over. "I didn't want to go back then, because…"

She took a deep breath, and Hermione found herself bracing for impact. Two hundred years, and her best friend still made the same expression when she was about to say something that made her extremely vulnerable yet was highly important and insightful.

"…because in three years, something is going to happen that, while it brought me happiness, also condemned me to misery," Harry murmured, both of the strangers looking solemn behind her. The woman reached out to rest a hand on Harry's shoulder, and Harry accepted the comforting touch in a way Hermione hadn't seen her friend manage. There was no flinch, there was no bewilderment, just simple acceptance, going so far as to reach up and brush her fingers across the hand in return. "Some people, they would want what happened. It would be…useful…to them." Her mouth twisted in disgust, and then she lifted her eyes to meet Hermione's.

"I choose to be happy."

The conviction in her friend's voice was earth-shattering, and that, more than anything cemented Hermione's belief that she was going to support this new, changed version of her friend. All of their acquaintance, Harry had been so awfully tentative at accepting anything that made her happy. It wasn't ever something she had said, and Hermione suspected that the girl hadn't ever realized it, but Hermione noticed things. She knew that the Dursley's didn't make even a pretense that they loved their niece, she knew that life there was no better than life in prison. She knew that nobody had ever told Harry that it was okay to be what she wanted, to like things, to want something and be grateful when you got it.

She didn't understand it, but how could she? Hermione had grown up the only child of a pair of dentists, loved despite her accidental magic, supported and nurtured as best as her parents could. When she got her Hogwarts letter, her parents took her school shopping and bought her as many books as she wanted and wrote her weekly letters to make sure she knew that they loved Hermione the witch as much as they had loved Hermione the slightly odd child. Harry had none of that, and while Hermione could sympathize, she couldn't empathize, not completely.

So if Harry said that she wanted this particular change because she wanted to be happy?

Hermione was going to burn down London to make it happen if it proved necessary.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked simply, knowing that Harry wouldn't accept any grandiose declarations of loyalty, mostly because she wouldn't understand that someone else was willing to fight alongside her, for her.

Even then, Harry looked a bit bewildered by her simple acceptance and lack of further questions. "There's not much that can be done right now," she said slowly, as if waiting for a dam to burst. "One or two things can be done, and at least one other started, before we go back to school. I need to consult with Bill on something, but the biggest thing I need to accomplish before September first is to establish their legal identities."

Harry gestured at the pair of strangers, and Hermione finally remembered her manners.

"I'm Hermione Granger," she said, smiling at them. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

They hadn't said it, but Hermione suspected that they were this other dimension's Ron-and-Hermione. Not Ron and Hermione, but the two people Harry allowed herself to trust, to get close to. That alone made them worth knowing.

All three seemed to be having an intense, silent conversation in the manner that Hermione was most familiar with her parents using to discuss something privately without being so obvious as to leave the room or dismiss her. Harry raised an eyebrow, and then Hermione caught what could only be some sort of sign language flickering between the three of them. Fascinated, she realized that it wasn't just the married-couple-telepathy at play, but an entire language of gestures, expressions, and hand signs.

Finally, Harry nodded, almost imperceptibly. "I'd prefer if this stayed between us, at least for the moment," she said, and with a flick of her hand, the dining room door closed softly. "It is nothing harmful, but somewhat unbelievable and not something I intend to make public knowledge."

"Do you want me to swear an oath?" Hermione offered, having spent most of last year quietly looking up ways Harry could have proven she hadn't entered herself in the tournament. Magical oaths had come up, but by the time she'd discovered them, it was nearly June and would have been fairly worthless. And while she'd tried to mention them to Mrs. Weasley, as a way Harry could prove that You-Know-Who was back, the woman had brushed her off, saying that the adults were handling it and she was too young.

With a startled look, Harry shook her head. "No, that won't be necessary. But I do ask that if you find yourself alone with the headmaster, you do your best not to look him in the eye."

Hermione blinked. "The headmaster knows Legilimancy?"

It was Harry's turn to blink. "You know about that?"

"It came up in my research when I was looking for ways to stop your weird dreams last year," Hermione said. "Madam Pince nearly revoked my library access when I asked about it. I couldn't find more than a passing reference to Legilimancy and Occlumancy in any book outside the Restricted Section, and Professor McGonagall refused to give me a pass for unspecified research. They're supposed to be mental arts dealing with the ability to access or safeguard thoughts and memories."

Harry looked dumbfounded for a moment, and then chuckled. "I should have known," she murmured, half to herself. "Yes, the headmaster is an accomplished legilimans. As is Professor Snape, though his greater strength is in Occlumancy."

"Because he's a spy," Hermione said, the pieces clicking. "That makes sense. Do you know them?"

Something about the question made Harry sad. No, Hermione thought, watching her friend's almost imperceptible reactions. A memory associated with this house and with Occlumancy or Legilimancy is painful. She probably wouldn't have caught it is she wasn't so practiced in deciphering her friend. It was harder now, Harry had changed some of her behaviors and gotten even better at controlling her emotional displays, but her core self hadn't truly changed that much, and Hermione had always been good at the fine details.

"I learned, at least a little," Harry said after a pause. "I do not think I could teach them. It is intensely personal, and the way I learned was not…ideal. There are books in the Black Library I could share with you, if you kept them a secret."

She almost foamed at the mouth. Weeks she'd been here, and nobody had mentioned a library.

The chuckle that slipped from Harry, and the fond expression, proved more than anything that her friend had remembered her through two centuries of separation. "It's currently hidden from anyone not the Head of the House of Black," she explained with a shrug. "And also, if I recall correctly, reasonably cursed so that non-family can't access it."

"Fair enough," Hermione said, already accustomed to the old families hoarding knowledge more preciously than they hoarded their gold. "So, should I wait to hear what you were going to tell me until I've read the books?"

"The headmaster, if he keeps to his past behavior, will not spend any time with you this summer," Harry said with a shrug. "It should be simple enough to keep this secret from him."

With a soft smile, she gestured at the man standing on her right, behind her chair. "Hermione Granger, may I make known to you Elessar of the House of Telcontar, King of Gondor and Arnor, High King of the Dúnedain, and his Queen, Arwen Undómiel of Imladris, Elrenniel."

Kings and Queens, Harry what life did you lead? Hermione wondered, taken aback. She'd never heard of Gondor, Arnor, or Imladris, let alone the Dúnedain, which meant that Harry's dimension hopping took her farther afield than an alternate timeline of their own universe. "It is an honor to meet you," she said, wondering if she should curtsy. "How should I address you?"

"Aragorn and Arwen Telcontar," Harry said. "Elessar was his regnal name," she added, clearly watching Hermione try and reconcile that with the formal introduction.

That at least made more sense. Then a thought occurred to her. "Did you change your name?"

For some reason, that made the Telcontars laugh.

"When didn't she?" the queen said with a smile.

"You bore three names in the year that I met you," added the king.

"Only two," Harry protested with a scowl.

"They added your epessë after the Pelennor," the king said mildly. "That brought us to three."

"I'm going to murder your brothers," Harry grumbled, glancing at the queen, who smiled serenely, clearly unconcerned by the threat against her family.

"Holly, Thuri, Ruinil," the king counted them off on his fingers. "That's three in less than six months. Then…Craba…do we count Cennaniel and Baurion as a single incidence, or separately, considering you were both independently?"

"We call her Bronach," the queen smiled at Hermione. "It is the name that she received from her adopted people, and the one she says she returns to most often."

"You can still call me Harry," her friend assured her with a quicksilver smile. "I don't intend to go public with the time-travel."

It didn't sit right with Hermione. Her parents had once mentioned a patient at their surgery who had adopted a new name, and how they had to make sure that all the records were updated and the staff instructed to use the new name. If Harry had been renamed as Bronach, Hermione would use that name, even if the rest of the Wizarding World refused to.

Her elbows already ached with the thought of how many times Ron would get it wrong, but she knew he'd come around. "If you don't mind," Hermione said, watching her friend's reaction carefully, "I think I'll use Bronach, in private like this."

There was pleasure in Har-Bronach's eyes as she nodded. "Whatever makes you most comfortable."

In the awkward pause, they heard Mrs. Weasley slipping up the stairs, clearly not noticing the missing portrait. Bronach glanced at the door. "You should go downstairs and eat," she urged gently. "Molly is…adapting to things slowly. She likely has prepared breakfast for you, but Kreacher has also laid out food for those not of the Weasley family. I will not be offended if you eat none of it, but the dishes on the kitchen table are Kreacher's."

Hermione suspected that there was far more to the story than that, but somehow Bronach had learned diplomacy. "Thank you," she said, the words feeling inadequate. "Um, I'll see you later?"

Bronach smiled. "We'll be around."

"So that was your Hermione," Aragorn said as the girl slipped out of the room. "She is as intelligent as you said she was."

"That was surprisingly fewer questions than I had anticipated," Bronach admitted, resting her face in her palm for a moment. "She picked up on…a lot. But I'm sure she'll be far more academic about it soon enough."

Idly, she took the dish that Aragorn handed her and hexed it. They were almost done ensuring that nobody could remove the flatware or silver from the cabinet without her express permission lest they suffer an increasingly severe punishment based on knowledge and intent. It was something she'd dreamed up during one of her many recoveries, still sulking over how the house had been stripped of its heirlooms and legacy decades later.

The Potter ancestral home, she'd learned from the Gringotts account manager stuck dealing with her after the war, had been decimated and the land cursed by the Death Eaters who had slaughtered her grandparents. Nothing that had been in the house had survived, and precious little had been kept in Gringotts. Grimmauld Place had been emptied of much of its contents, first by Molly and Mundungus, then by the Death Eaters who had ransacked the ground and first floors. By the time Bronach had fully moved in, there was nothing of the family left that hadn't been stored in the library or the study.

"Well, we're well equipped with table linen," Arwen reported, glancing at the piles she'd sorted. "Most of it is serviceable, but that pile is just ghastly."

She had to agree, taking in some of the patterns that were in that pile. "Kreacher, put this wherever we're going to store things for Gringotts," she told the house elf, indicating the pile. Some of it may have had traditional significance, but she wasn't going to waste useful storage space on it in the meantime. "At least none of it was hexed, cursed, or poisoned."

"What next?" Aragorn said, glancing around the room. "The table and chairs are serviceable enough, I suppose."

Bronach laughed, rapping her knuckles against the table. "That's polite for hulking and absolutely overcompensating for something."

Arwen's eyes sparkled with mirth. "The walnut is nice though."

"Absolutely," Bronach agreed, making a note on her list of things needing to be done to refurbish the dining room. "It can be transfigured into something less ostentatious though."

"New curtains, transfigured table," Aragorn said, glancing around the room. "The silver is appropriate, as is the flatware…"

"I refuse to dine in a room that resembles a stuffy tomb," Bronach said flatly, making another note. "The wallpaper and carpet need to go, and Kreacher has a point about the curtains."

"They are of a very fine weave," Arwen commented, lifting one to get a better look at it. "I have not seen the like before."

"Non-magical," Bronach said, amused at the cheek of some shopkeeper in years past. "Whoever sold them must have purchased material in the nonmagical world and used magic to construct them. Enterprising soul."

"You once had a dress," Arwen murmured, turning to her. "A dress of blue linen. You wore it in Dol Amroth in the summer."

"I bought the undyed cloth and dyed it," Bronach caught on after a moment. "It might take me a bit to obtain all of the materials I need, but I could certainly replicate it. There's linen enough for the entire room."

"White walls, if you are against a tomb," Aragorn mused, tapping the fading wallpaper. "Plaster, perhaps?"

"I'm sure we can find a nice pattern in predominately light colors," Bronach replied, making another note. Kreacher had brought back an initial stack of catalogs, waiting for them at the end of the table, and there would be more brought by owl before the day was out. "The rug though…we may need to wait until I get the curtains dyed, so we can submit that to a weaver I know." She grimaced. "If they're in business yet."

"How very…domestic," said a voice from the doorway, and chills ran up her spine.

"Don't pretend that you have any attachment to this house," she commented, proud that her voice was steady. "If you had your way, you'd burn it to the ground."

As she turned, she spotted Sirius in the doorway, leaning against it as if he hadn't a care in the world, scruffy, unshaven, and if her instincts were right, smelling of stale alcohol. He looked much as she remembered herself to appear, after a night in which she'd done her best to put a dent in the house's wine cellar.

Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself to do something about the cellar. She'd been mostly good ever since Ron, Hermione, Andromeda…those that she had left to call family had sat her down and told her that they loved her too much to see her drowning herself in the numbing haze of alcohol and whatever else she could find in her attempts to just stop.

Stop feeling. Stop living. Either one would have sufficed at that point.

"Going to bring me to heel?" he bristled, clearly sensing some of her observation. "Rein me in like a disobedient whelp?"

"Hardly," she drawled, leaning back against the table. "It's not worth the effort to teach an old dog new tricks."

Something eased in him. "So," he said, running his hand through his hair. "Head, eh? Hope you'll be better than the last one."

"Like that's hard?" Bronach felt the words tumble out before she could stop them. Thankfully, Sirius just snorted.

"You're a Potter, it's a low bar." He hesitated, and then said: "If I could ask for something…"

"I'm going to try and get you a proper trial," she assured him, scowling at the reminder of Ministry mismanagement. Crouch died too quickly for his callous disregard for justice, though it was tempered by Junior's poetic revenge. "Of course, that will have to depend on the rat."

"I was going to ask about Andy," Sirius said, clearly taken aback by her jumping straight to his situation. "Bring her back into the family?"

"Of course," she said, waving it away. "I've got to write to the goblins today, I'll add that in. And look up how to disown Bellatrix."

"Not Narcissa?"

Bronach sighed. She'd mulled it over, and the list of reasons why and why not were just about equal. "Not yet."

"Even though her husband showed up in June?" Sirius's eyes were stormy.

"They've not been charged with Death Eater activity since Lucius's acquittal in 1981," she reminded him. "If I disown her now, with no viable heir, there will be talk. Talk we can't afford right now. And Narcissa is not her husband, and while her son does an excellent impression of his father, he's still young enough to learn better."

Draco had never become her friend. He'd honestly not moved the needle far past enemy either. He had dropped the Death Eater cause, but hadn't changed much beyond it, supporting traditional pureblood political positions, either deliberately or unknowingly causing the same old conflicts to fester in their society. But right now he was fifteen, and she couldn't help but wonder if Narcissa had a safe place to flee to after the Department of Mysteries affair, would the witch have decamped to save her son?

Remembering the fear and desperation in the witch's voice as she had leaned over Bronach in the Forest, she couldn't help but suspect she might have.

"Leopards don't change their spots," Sirius scoffed.

"You did," she pointed out.

"Who're they?"

It was an obvious subject change, but she allowed it. "Aragorn Telcontar, and his wife Arwen," she introduced, gesturing to each in turn. "Aragorn, Arwen, this is Sirius Black."

"Her godfather," Arwen said with a brief smile. "I am glad to meet you."

"Mmmm," Sirius said, peering closely at them. "Yes, but no." Footsteps on the stairs made him turn, and he called: "Moony, get your arse in here. I want an opinion."

"Did you even notice that your mother's portrait is missing, or did you just not care?" Remus said, coming into the room. It made her heart ache, knowing that Teddy had never gotten to meet his father, never gotten to hear him and Sirius banter like this.

"Eh, she hasn't been screeching for the last half hour, so I figured it was fine." Sirius brushed off the concern, gesturing at Aragorn and Arwen. "Hey Moony, ask Harry who she brought home with her."

"I don't think we've been introduced yet," Remus glanced at Aragorn and Arwen, seeming to only notice them once they'd been pointed out, but she suspected he'd taken in the entire room as he was chastising Sirius. "I'm Remus Lupin, an old school friend of Harry's parents."

"Remus Lupin, may I introduce to you Aragorn Telcontar and his wife Arwen," Bronach said, knowing that she was being more formal than strictly necessary, but it was vastly more informal than introductions at court. "Remus was also my professor when I was thirteen."

Remus let out a put-upon sigh, exchanging a long suffering glance with Sirius.

"It's hereditary," he said, taking a seat at the table.

"Totally hereditary," Sirius said with a nod. "Did Mr. Potter ever tell you about meeting Mrs. Potter?"

"No, I missed that story," Remus said after a moment's thought. "Was it as bad as getting slapped on the first night of school because he declared his eternal devotion?"

"Went arse over teakettle in an attempt to help carry her books," Sirius's voice was filled with humor, and Bronach found herself listening intently, wanting to hear every detail. She knew few enough stories about her parents, let alone her grandparents.

"We really should have known better," groaned Remus. "The hair, the flying, and now the sap. I'd hoped she'd take after Lily." He glanced at Aragorn and Arwen, who had moved slightly closer to Bronach, all three of them confused at the direction this conversation had taken. "Which one, do you think?"

"Both," Sirius said, grinning at Bronach, though she could see wistful grief in his eyes. "James would be so proud."

"So," Remus said, addressing Aragorn, who raised an eyebrow at him. "Was it love at first sight, or what?"

"I'm sorry," Aragorn said politely, years of reigning clearly helping to keep his face clear of any indication that he was startled by their perceptiveness. Bronach knew that her face would be burning if she was any inch less disciplined in hiding her reactions, particularly relating to her partners. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"Very good, very good," Sirius said, waving away the denial. "If you weren't talking to the Mauraders, that might have worked."

"Sirius, they're friends of mine who offered to come back and help deal with the Voldemort," Bronach kept her tone flat, not wanting to offer any encouragement. "They're also married."

"So?" Sirius shrugged. "Triad marriages are a thing. Rare, but a thing."

"There's no point in denying it," Remus told her gently. "Your father, James, he fell in love with Lily the moment he saw her. Six years of mooning after her until she finally agreed to give him the time of day. With front row seats to that, it's impossible not to recognize it in his daughter."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped. "There's nothing between us beyond friendship and hard-won loyalty." Aragorn snorted, clearly remembering their initial meeting.

Remus glanced between them, and held up his hand to stop whatever Sirius was about to say. "Is it because you're technically underage right now?" he asked, sympathetically. She wondered if he was considering the age difference between himself and Tonks right now, even though she was legal.

Clearly, they weren't going to let this go. Bronach looked to Arwen, who signaled her approval by straightening her sleeve, and then to Aragorn, who flashed the Ranger sign for your lead. With a sigh, she glared at her godfather and the father of her godchild. "Yes. It is."

"I don't particularly care," Sirius said nonchalantly. "Clearly you've time traveled back from a time when you were of age, so it doesn't matter. And you don't look like you did a month ago, so you're probably not physically fifteen anymore either. Was that what I felt this morning, you introducing them to the wardstone?"

She scowled at the memory. "Moody was here."

Remus sobered up quickly, glancing between them. "Who did he try to hex?"

Sirius looked positively feral. "Whatever it was had to be bad if the family magic reacted like that. Woke me up, felt like electricity crawling over my skin."

Bronach had felt that it was more akin to fire. "Them," she gritted out, fury rising up in her once more.

"And he isn't a smear on the hearth?" Sirius's knuckles were practically white from how hard he was gripping the table. "If you had the restraint to choke back the house, no wonder it spilled over to me."

Black blood within Black wards, she thought, feeling the man's connection to the house. He was more present than Remus, but not as present as Aragorn or Arwen.

The house remembered the child it had sheltered, but it also remembered the rejection of the man.

"Magically recognized bonds," Remus whistled softly. "You don't do anything by half, do you?"

"She vaulted a table," Aragorn commented idly, as if he were conversing about the weather. "I haven't seen her do that in a while."

"You haven't seen me start a bar fight in a while," Bronach muttered.

"I want to hear those stories," Sirius said, some of the fury clearing away.

"You were sparking," Arwen said, voice tinged with concern. "The last time there were reports of your magic manifesting visibly was…"

"Probably Carn Dûm, but nobody survived to talk about it," Bronach said after a moment of thought. "Maybe Minas Morgul. Officially? Pelennor."

"You slept for a month after the Pelennor," Aragorn eyed her as if he was considering shuffling her back to their bed. "And it was two months before you could get out of bed after Carn Dûm…"

"Different magics, different dimensions," she hurried to say as Sirius and Remus exchanged concerned glances. "I wasn't actively working magic, just keeping the house from striking him down where he stood. Plus, especially after sleeping, I'm acclimating well to the house and its ambient magic."

"All of this is very interesting and I want to hear all of it," Sirius said, looking torn. "But please: love at first sight, or was it a full seven years like your mother?"

When she looked at Aragorn and Arwen, neither of them were any help in diverting Sirius's request for gossip. In fact, they both looked intrigued.

"You implied I was a propositioning you, the first time we spoke," she reminded Aragorn.

Arwen covered her mouth to stifle laughter. "Bree?" she asked Aragorn, who nodded ruefully.

"The Prancing Pony," Bronach added. Clearly, he had the luck of many Rangers stopping at the inn. Without fail, one of the town's unattached women usually attempted to bed them, and succeeded often enough that it encouraged more attempts.

"If I can say something in my defense," Aragorn said pointedly, "I had no idea that there was anyone stationed in Bree." He paused for a moment, and added. "I also had no idea that Thuri was a woman. Or still alive."

"So if he thought she was…" Sirius broke down laughing. "What about you?" he asked Arwen.

"I did not meet her for another eleven years or so," Arwen said serenely. A thought seemed to occur to her. "When you were presented at Annúminas, was it you or Kreacher who was Baurion?"

"Me," Bronach rubbed at her forehead, wondering if she could get stress lines this early in life. "Kreacher was Cennaniel, since we figured nobody would ask much of Cennaniel that day."

"She was cross-dressing as a man," Arwen told Sirius and Remus, who looked startled for a moment, and then broke down laughing.

"Still though," Sirius asked, regaining control. "I want to know who she takes after."

"Dunharrow," Bronach muttered, wondering if it would be immature to bury her face in her hands and hope they all stopped asking questions.

"The muster at Dunharrow, or some other visit to Dunharrow?" Aragorn asked, sounding as if he suspected he knew the answer.

"Did you often go to Dunharrow with me?" she retorted. "I've only been twice, once to disable the Doors of the Dead, and once for the muster. I could not sleep that night, knowing the road ahead, and in my wandering, I crossed paths with Éowyn."

"Who I had just rejected," Aragorn said, the final pieces clearly filling in for him. Then, he looked startled. "That was after the Hornburg. You'd been avoiding me…"

"Look, I never claimed to be sensible in my pining," Bronach snapped. "You'd clearly forgotten that I wasn't a man, since you easily offered to share your bed with me, and by that point in time I was wholly aware of your epic romance where there was no place for me!" With a gesture, she included Arwen in the last statement. "Hence, once I knew that there was a future for any of us, I took myself off to a place where I could be useful and get over what I would never see."

"Clearly, you didn't," Remus said dryly. "I can't believe you lasted eleven years. James couldn't last ten days."

"James couldn't last ten minutes," Sirius corrected.

"It's worse," Arwen murmured, eyes sparkling with mischief and Bronach dropped her head into her hands, wondering why she hadn't just left the room ten minutes ago. "It took her eleven years to stop hiding from us, and then another seven before you would allow us to claim you as our own."

"I should have left when Daervunn told me what he needed," she grumbled as Sirius and Remus laughed. "Ten years of careful work and planning, and then he has to go and ruin it all."

"You were the best for the assignment," Aragorn grasped Arwen's hand. "I do not know what we would have done, had you not been at Rushingdale that night."

"Arwen wouldn't have been in danger if not for me," Bronach pointed out. "Daervunn's people in the south practically wrapped everything up without my assistance, and it was the presumption of a relationship between us that inspired the attack at Rushingdale."

"And you think you would have been better placed on the hunt, instead of with Arwen?" Aragorn said. It was an old debate between them, and she truly couldn't argue in good faith anymore. In the end, Daervunn's meddling had brought her to her partners, and she couldn't bring herself to regret it.

"He still ruined my exit strategy," she muttered half-heartedly. "To the day he died, he never said why he told you where I was."

"I refused to order an end to searching Nenuial for you," Aragorn's eyes were solemn.

She looked at him in shock. "That was what made him tell you? I was possibly stabbed, swept over a waterfall, and out into the lake! What mortal would have survived that?"

"We could not bear to think of you trapped beneath the waters," Arwen's hand settled on her shoulder. "Not with your condition."

"You were pregnant?" Sirius asked, clearly torn between being upset about her description of her injuries and absolutely dumbfounded by the idea that she might have lost a child.

"No." All three of them said emphatically.

"That was…illuminating and yet makes no sense," Remus muttered.

"I could not be," Bronach said with a shrug. "Physically impossible."

"Pureblood curse?" Sirius asked quietly.

"I was cursed during the war, and one of the effects was barrenness," she explained. "That damage should be fully healed now, so children might be an option, sometime in the future."

"Who cast it?" Remus said, reaching out to clamp down on Sirius's shoulder. "None of the Death Eaters would have dared throw something like that around, just in case it hit one of theirs."

"I handled a set of cursed objects," she said vaguely. "I know better now, and there's very little chance of anyone else coming across the entire set."

"How can you be so sure?" Sirius challenged.

"Because I already have one of them, and I'm not going to share it," she snapped. "It's harmless on its own, and certainly can't cause infertility. If it did, I wouldn't be here."

Remus seemed to be thinking something over, reaching a conclusion he didn't seem to like.

"Do you know if there's a copy of Nature's Nobility in the house?" he asked Sirius and Bronach.

"Remus no," she warned.

"Yeah, there should be," Sirius said, confused. "Drawing room, I think."

"Not for long," Bronach muttered, already up an out of her chair.

Remus had the advantage, being closer to the door, but she stepped lightly up onto her chair and then onto the table, leaping down and gaining a few seconds with the distance she covered. But Remus was already out in the entry, racing up the stairs.

She tried to remember where the damned book would be in the drawing room, but it hadn't been there when she'd inherited the house. Kreacher had secreted it away in his cupboard, but she didn't know when that had happened. Hopefully it had already happened, but knowing her luck…

Bursting into the drawing room, she tried to summon the book out of Remus's hands, but he dodged the spell, rifling through pages until he got towards the back. Desperate, she lunged for him, sweeping him off his feet with a swift kick and sending them both grappling to the ground.

They rolled around on the carpet for a moment, clouds of choking dust making it hard to breathe, and then Remus managed to pin her in place, the book falling from his hands as they pulled her wrists above her head so she couldn't scratch at him. She drove her knee upwards, almost striking her target, but he shifted, using his weight to press her legs down into the carpet. There was amber in his eyes as they locked with hers, and she realized that the full moon was a week away, and Remus's strength would be growing.

"What the hell?" Sirius said from the vicinity of the doorway. "Why do you two look like a pair of muggle wrestlers?"

"Do me a favor, Pads," Remus said as Bronach tried to squirm out of his hold. She'd been very good at grappling, but his extra strength, and the fact that she didn't actually want to hurt him made it difficult to worm free. "Look up Peverell for me."

Footsteps, and Sirius bent down to pick up the book. Pages rustled, and Sirius announced: "Found 'em. Who're you looking for?"

"Did one of them marry a Potter?"

"Don't," Bronach muttered, glaring up at Remus. "Really, you don't want to ask these questions."

"Yeah," Sirius said before Remus could reply. "Iolanthe Peverall. Married Hardwin Potter."

"Any relation to Ignotus Peverell?" Remus tightened his grip as she wriggled.

"Grandkid." Sirius sounded thoughtful. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"Ignotus and his brothers," Remus grunted as Bronach heaved up and managed to flip them. "Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus. Three brothers."

"Wait," Sirius said. "You were looking into this during the war. We made that side trip to the graveyard in Godric's Hollow after visiting James and Lily. You wanted to see…"

"The sign of the Deathly Hollows on Ignotus's grave," Remus said as Bronach got to her feet. "James laughed it off, but his cloak was old. Too old to be a standard invisibility cloak."

"You were such a nutter," Sirius said, still holding the book. "I mean, did you really think that James's cloak was the cloak? Death's Cloak?"

"An Invisibility Cloak that gets passed down through at least three generations without showing a hint of damage, even through two wars?" Remus sat up from where he'd landed on the dusty carpet. "It certainly wasn't a normal one."