Chapter Title: Chapter 74 Part TWO
Author's Notes: Okay, here is part 2. I might split them into two parts and post twice a month for the next few months just to make my life simpler. Thoughts?

Anyway, my head stopped pounding thankfully.

Thanks to Arnel for beta'ing!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

"We have the Americans calling for a meeting," Daniel said after a cursory knock at Harry's office door. "They want you to come to America."

Harry looked up and felt his brow rise at the request. "Did they give any indications as to why?"

"Not for the meeting, only that they need the secrecy. They sent the request through the Minister's office already and she's given the nod to you going. Mrs. Weasley is getting the forms signed now."

"I guess I'm going to America," Harry sighed, not liking the interruption or the prospect of being so far from his family. They'd had a lot of challenges, traumas and upheavals in the last several weeks. First Lily was captured and molested by that foul wench, then she was married, then Andrew's aunt Emma died. Her funeral had only been ten days before and it was still fresh in everyone's mind.

They were finishing up the final touches on making a house secure for Lily. She and Scorpius would be moving in there in the next several days if Bill deemed it done and secure. He was also going to have several of his Aurors go through and try to get in along with Polly, who had just had her baby boy that she'd named Skip. If the house-elf spotted any holes in the security they would go immediately towards fixing them. Polly had, inadvertently, become an expert in secure housing.

He didn't want to go to America, but he had a job to do and the Americans didn't call unless they had a good reason. They didn't like playing together when they could do things on their own if they could help it. Oh, he had a good relationship with the American Head Auror, Louis Kingston. Well, a good relationship would be a stretch. Louis' only son, Samuel, was murdered and Nat had found the body when they'd been on holiday in North Carolina. Louis and his wife had been on their own holiday in North Carolina when someone from the magical mafia had snatched and murdered the boy, leaving him on a beach where they assumed the body would be found months later. Instead, the magical protection around the body hadn't been washed away by a hurricane. The year had been a quiet year for the major storms so it had been Nat who had spotted the body which had been magically hidden. At the time they hadn't questioned him too closely about how the body had been found, but later Louis had asked for a meeting with Harry and he'd questioned how Nat had done it.

Harry hadn't answered, which Louis hadn't liked, but he also didn't push because there was no way that tiny girl who hadn't even been in America at the time he was kidnapped could have killed his son who was five inches over six feet.

But he had a lot of respect for the man who was the head of the American Aurors. After his son's death, he and his wife had adopted three magical orphans from Ethiopia and he had a solid reputation with the Aurors all around the world.

So, he'd go and see what Louis wanted. Harry swung on his cloak and headed for the Floo in the Minister's office which would connect him to America at their main headquarters in New York.

He arrived in the American office and was immediately taken to Louis' office where he greeted the tall man with dark brown skin with a hardy handshake. "It's good to see you again," Harry told the other man. "How is your wife? How are the kids?"

"Hattie is doing well," the man said in his nearly impossibly deep voice as he spoke about the wife he clearly adored. His face held that mixture of grief and joy that only a parent knows when they've lost a child. "She's found her way again after Samuel's death. You know how I told you we couldn't move on without… without having his body, without knowing what happened to him. It was what we needed. Well, she couldn't move on until she had the children to raise. They're all in school now, of course, but she's volunteering at a magical preschool near our home and that's helping her, as well. She's one of those ones who was meant to be a mother."

"How old are the girls, now?" Harry asked, remembering they'd adopted three sisters.

"Desta is sixteen and thinking she wants to be a Healer," Louis said, practically beaming with pride. "Amara is fourteen and she's not sure yet, but she loves animals so I expect she'll focus on magical creatures, and Zuri is almost twelve and right now she says she wants to be a mama just like Mama Hattie."

"I think that's probably what my daughter will end up doing for a while," Harry told him. "She's just married and is expecting her first."

"I'd heard about the marriage but not the baby," Louis told him. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you," Harry said as he fought against all of the conflicting emotions yet again. He was so thankful the baby was healthy, Lily was healthy, and the baby was actually Scorpius', but he was also absolutely furious about the fact that the rest of Lily's childhood was stolen from her and she was forced into marriage.

But then again, she'd had Scorpius to marry, hadn't she? She'd had someone who loved her and wanted the best for her. He didn't like to think about his baby girl as a married woman but he was getting over it.

Slowly.

Maybe very slowly.

The British laws had to change and soon. He had Al already telling him if it happens to Nat that he's going to marry her. It didn't surprise him that Al would say such a thing, as he knew his son loved Nat, but it was heart wrenching to know that they had to have a plan in place just in case. But really, with Nat being as fragile as she was, they needed to keep her safe.

"Yes," Harry said, finally managing to speak about Lily and remain calm. "She was, uh… caught up in Crabbe's net."

Instantly, Louis' face took on an ashen hue as he stared at him gravely. "Is she alright?"

"She's alright," Harry said. "She's been healed and her husband is the father of her baby, although he was prepared to be the father even if not by blood. I couldn't have asked for a better son-in-law. He adores Lily and he's good for her. But she was kidnapped from my niece's wedding and poisoned. Crabbe let her go, let our house-elf Polly retrieve her and we were able to heal her as we've been doing with others."

Louis considered him for a long moment before he spoke and even when he spoke, it was in a clearly measured tone. "You have an Augmentum Imaginari working for you."

Harry kept his expression carefully neutral, something he'd worked hard on over the last many years and shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I have no intention of that information leaving this room," Louis told him firmly. "Things started to fall in place when one was located at the school this past year. He's a powerfully magical brute, possibly on the order of Dumbledore himself, but he's still developing. I've worked with him a few times as his interest is in being an Auror, but he's going in his seventh year in September so I have a bit to wait yet. Then he'll need training, but right now he's working for us as a sort of intern and the hospitals have asked for his help with our poisoning. He can see the infection in the people and tell the Healers so they know how to treat the mothers, which means sending them to you."

Harry considered him for a moment. "Can anyone hear into this room?"

"Not possible," Louis told him with finality. "This room is a vault."

"Maybe your newest recruit will only be able to see what is going on," Harry said cautiously, hoping he was making the right call. "Maybe… maybe someone else with the ability could remove the offending poison from the person with their hands."

Louis sat back in his seat, truly thunderstruck. "That's not possible."

"Then consider that this person is small, weak, medically fragile, and is pretty terrible at all defensive magic," Harry said finishing it out. "What would you do?"

Louis' eyes solidified into understanding. "So possibly my kid is just like Dumbledore, or will be one day, but yours is… not. Hypothetically speaking."

"Hypothetically, yeah," Harry agreed. "Powerful, but very powerless at the same time."

Louis scrubbed at his face hard. "I understand. Alright, I fully understand why the women have to come to you and why you're making it so difficult. It isn't your sister-in-law, Audrey Weasley, healing the women."

Harry closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. "Maybe your new Auror will develop the talent. It's possibly it could be taught to him, but I'm betting that's not the case. He ended up with a lot of magical abilities in all of the standard areas along with this one where he could see the magic. He's going to be great, a legend in his own right. With Nat… it's like she missed every single standard talent but has a massive control over the magic that's already been cast. If it's cast, she can see it, undo it, move it, pull it, dissolve it… whatever. She can stop it. She just can't cast it."

"That's absolutely fascinating," Louis said in clear awe. "Of course, it's also terrifying. She is defenseless."

"Yes," Harry agreed and hoped, yet again, he'd made the right call. "But that doesn't answer why I'm here. It can't be just to speak about your Augmentum Imaginari."

"No," Louis said and this time he smiled. "We're about to send a team into Argentina to raid Crabbe's factory."

It was Harry's turn to sit up and pay attention. "You found it?"

"We have found it," Louis assured him. "We have a couple of Potions Masters who are quite gifted. It's a husband and wife duo who work nearly non-stop and I asked them if there was any way they could use the poison Healer Weasley had given us to analyze where the ingredients were coming from. That's not usually possible but sometimes they're able to use a Muggle technology, along with the magic, to find the region where a plant was grown. We had hit after hit come from a region in Argentina but we've been struggling to narrow it down. We've had Healer Weasley continuing to send us samples and we were finally able to narrow it down to about a ten-mile area. From there we put in Aurors to monitor the activity around the farms."

"Wait," Harry held up a hand. "I've had nothing but trouble with the Argentine government! They won't let us into the country!"

"Well, we have an in with their Head of Magical Law Enforcement," Louis told him with a grin. "She's my wife's brother's wife."

"That's… well." Harry felt himself grin. "Maybe you can stop production of this stuff for a little while. She'll set up some place else, of course, but we'll get a small break."

Nat could get a small break. That would be a relief for everyone, not just for Nat. So many people were being poisoned that there was no way the girl could possibly keep up to heal them all and it was definitely weighing on her.

"We've asked for and received permission for you to be a part of the raid, after the fact of course, but you'll be allowed into the country to inspect what is found," Louis told him and Harry could tell he knew how much that meant to him.

"Thank you," Harry said as he tried not to choke up. "This means… she nearly killed my grandson, Alex, and she could have killed my children. I appreciate that you pulled strings to get me in."

Louis nodded and didn't add that Harry was part of the reason he and his wife had closure of their son's death. They both knew and it didn't need to be said.

Louis had Harry wait in one of the conference rooms with him and a few others from their ministry while the raid happened. They had real-time feedback from one of the Aurors as they breached the security and arrested everyone. As far as raids went, this one went shockingly smoothly. It helped that Crabbe's poison factory was being run by intellectuals and not fighters. She had security in place but only three men and they were all neutralized in the first few moments. The potions students she had mixing up the brew were easier to take as they all gave up immediately.

Within seconds of the raid happening, it came out that they were students who had been kidnapped by Crabbe and were being forced to work for her to create the evil brew.

By the time Harry arrived in the lab in Argentina, the American Aurors had everything under control.

Crabbe was not there and she hadn't been there in weeks. They were being held and forced to work, but she didn't need to be on hand to keep it going. Her goons were able to make that happen. It was frustrating not to have her captured, but it was heartening to know they'd closed down her factory.

Or it was until one of the students said they had heard her speaking about other locations making the poison, although no one ever mentioned where the other locations were.

Harry wanted to hit something. They weren't going to stop the poison being distributed. They had only slowed it down for a short time.

The best part was knowing the kidnapped students, all of whom were from India, would be returned to their families and their families would be offered protection to keep the teenagers from being taken again.

"I wish we had more," Harry said to Louis as they spoke later that afternoon back in his office. "I am grateful for this small victory, but we're not close to catching her."

"We will catch her, though," Louis said confidently. "We have a lot of people looking out for her and she won't be able to hide forever. We need to continue to work together and we will bring her down. She's attempting to destroy the whole world."

Harry could only nod as his throat was suddenly tight.

"I'm going to speak to the student about his Augmentum Imaginari skills, see what we think he can do. If we think he can be trained to heal people, we're going to push for that. We need it and he's not helpless, plus we'd be able to protect him."

"Keep me posted," Harry said as he stood and extended his hand. It was difficult thinking about opening up his world and trusting more people but frankly, they didn't have much of a choice.

~*~

"Why don't you tell me what's bothering you?" Ron asked his wife as they squared off, not for the first time, in the kitchen. She had always had a tendency of closing herself off when she was upset, which was partly what doomed their marriage, but things had been steadily improving. With Rose's marriage and the death of Andrew's aunt, they had pulled together more to help Rose with her new family. Not to mention they'd had Hugo home for the summer, even if he was going to be heading back to school soon.

Of course, Hugo was hanging out with Al and Louis at the moment, right when Ron could have used the buffer to keep Hermione from reverting back to old type.

"It's nothing," Hermione said as she finished up the dish of stew she'd been preparing. "Just some things at work."

Ron wanted to rage at her. The urge was simply overwhelming at some points. She was closing off again, had been for a few days, and now it looked to be complete. "You know this is why we would have divorced if we'd been able to," he bit out before he could stop himself. "You and your crappy attitude."

Hermione froze where she was and then very slowly and deliberately went back to stirring the pot. "Well, if it's so crappy, you can leave."

"No," he said and knew he had to push on. "You're going to tell me what's bothering you so that you can get out of your terrible mood so we can enjoy the last few weeks we have with Hugo at home. We will soon have no children living in our house and frankly I don't want to live with you if you can't stop behaving like this."

"I'm not the one who picked this fight!" Hermione shouted back, her face going blotchy from temper. She nearly threw her wand as she slammed it to the counter. "I just want to eat and be left alone!"

"This," he said pointing at her. "This is why we don't work!"

"We never worked, Ron!" she hollered back and then to his utter shock she broke down in tears, sank to the floor and hugged her knees.

Ron stared down at her, completely baffled. She never cried or broke down like this! "Hey," he said, feeling very wrong-footed as he stepped towards her and sank down to his knees. "Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't… I didn't mean to shout at you and make you cry. I'm a stupid arse, you know that."

She shook her head but held up a hand, indicating he should be quiet, so he sat down next to her and waited for her to find her composure again. Every minute of waiting felt like an absolute eternity as she pulled herself together. Finally, she reached up behind her to the counter and groped until she found her wand. She conjured a handkerchief first to mop up her eyes and then a glass of water. "We have the statistics in for the birth and death rates," she said finally. "I'm not supposed to talk to anyone about them."

Ron didn't completely understand what that would have to do with anything but he nodded like he understood. "I won't say anything to anyone, Hermione. You can count on that, if nothing else."

Her eyes brimmed and spilled over again but the wracking sobs seemed to be gone. "We've lost tens of thousands of women and babies, maybe as many as eighty thousand women and probably just as many babies… to Crabbe."

Ron physically couldn't hold himself up and he fell back into the cabinet behind him as he gaped at her. "Come again?!"

"If she's not stopped," Hermione went on as the tears continued to rain down, "she'll kill about two hundred thousand people by the end of this year. Nat simply can't keep up healing them and some don't have the resources to get here even if she could. The magical community is being decimated!"

He found that he simply had no words. The magical world was not large, not by any meals. They only had roughly five million witches and wizards in the world and losing that many… well, losing even that many Muggles to one deranged psychopath was completely insane! "I didn't realize it was so many."

"We didn't know until we figured out how to detect the deaths and now the magical officials in most of the world have gone back to investigate and we're getting better numbers," she said as she thumped her head back against the wood. "Some of those women were forcefully impregnated and might have wanted an abortion anyway, but she seems to have learned from that. In counties where abortion is legal, she only targets the women in relationships and forces them to get pregnant by the men they already love. It's only in countries like England that she resorts to rape and other vile methods." She reached over to grab Ron's arm. "You can't tell anyone about this! We are in serious trouble for a lot of reasons over this."

His confusion must have showed on his face because she went on without him having to explain.

"We were already in a demographic spiral down," Hermione told him softly. "We need women have somewhere in the average of 2.1 children in order to keep the population stable, but in almost every country we're averaging less than two. That was alright while we were still dealing with the overall population being large, but now it's starting to get serious. China and Japan are in freefall and they don't have enough young workers to come in and run their government! They don't have enough people to fill out the Aurors that they need. We have less than four thousand magical people in the British community and we need a good five hundred of them to keep the Ministry going and keep up with the school."

Finally, the pieces clicked into place. "You're saying that we have too many people who will be retiring soon and not enough people to take over the jobs needed."

"Yes," she said gravely. "America and France are about the only first world nations who have enough babies being born, but with the way Crabbe is killing them, that's not going to be the case."

"And it won't matter for twenty years because we're talking about these children that should have been there to take a job, but now they're not," he said slowly, feeling his way through the problem. "We could have entire classes at Hogwarts that aren't there. A whole dorm with no students because they couldn't survive the poison and even if they did, she makes them unmagical."

"Not only that, but the mothers who would have worked are no longer going to be in the workforce because they've died," Hermione finished, her eyes red and her expression raw. "And really, it doesn't matter about the workforce, it truly doesn't! People are losing their family and that's what counts most, but if she keeps going…"

"We die out as a species," Ron said as it finally sunk in. "The magical community will be wiped out."

She nodded, pressing her lips together hard. "We won't be able to recover from this. We'll lose all our best teachers, our knowledge, everything. We won't be able to keep going as we have been."

Ron blew out a breath and shook his head. "I'm glad you told me."

"You can't tell anyone," she said urgently. "Harry doesn't know and I don't want him to! He holds enough guilt over what that beast has done."

"I won't say anything," he promised. "But you need to keep talking to me. I know I can't fix it, but I can help you by making sure you're not carrying the burden alone."

Hermione reached out her hand and he took it, squeezing her fingers. "Thanks. I'm sorry for… well, for everything. Thanks."

~*~

They didn't go to a pub, which is what they'd have done before Louis stopped drinking. It was something that would have seemed natural and normal, Al thought. He'd go out with his mates to a pub and they'd have a pint and they would hang out. That's what blokes did. Only now, they didn't, and now that he looked at it from the eyes of Louis' sobriety, he realized their whole society put a lot of unnecessary pressure around what someone put in their mouth.

When they'd gone to America all those years before, when they'd been in North Carolina, they'd gone out to a Muggle restaurant and Nat had ordered an omelet and the woman had asked her if she'd wanted pancakes or waffles with the omelet. Nat had told the woman that she didn't eat those and she only wanted the eggs. The woman then told her the pancakes were free so she should take them, but Nat had said again that she didn't eat pancakes.

The woman had exclaimed in frustration, "Who doesn't eat pancakes?!"

It was the same around alcohol. If he were to go to someone's house for dinner they would automatically offer wine. All parties included alcohol. It was what was done.

But now that he looked at it from Louis' perspective, he realized just how insane that was and that they didn't need to be pushing addictive substances on people at every turn.

In any case, they were out for a run which was definitely better for them than pub food and beer.

"It's been good," Louis said as he, Al, Scorpius, James, and Hugo ran along through the woods on the rutted trails. "Therapy has helped a lot. Lena's been great, too," he said as he glanced over to Al.

Al knew Lena had been continuing to help his cousin, but after he'd overheard what he had, he hadn't tried to step into it again. It wasn't his business. "That's good."

"How is Caroline?" Louis asked James as they sprinted up a hill.

Al didn't have any idea why running through the woods at five in the morning while it was drizzling was fun, but this had come to be one of the best things he did in the week.

"Throwing up some," James said as he jumped over an exposed root and kept going down the hill. "Nat knows if the baby is a boy or a girl but Caroline doesn't want to know and has forbidden me from finding out."

Al knew all about that because Nat, who was very amused by the whole thing, had told him. Teddy and Victoire were, unsurprisingly, having another girl, but she was sworn to keep quiet about what Caroline was having. It was driving his mother batty as she wanted to know, but Nat was a vault.

"I can't believe I go back to school in two weeks… without Lily," Hugo said suddenly, clearly bewildered. "I haven't been without Lily in… well, forever."

They all glanced to Scorpius, but he simply shrugged and kept running. Al had tried to talk to his mate about it, but they all knew it was a touchy subject. Lily was alright, their baby was alright, but she was quite young and this had all been a big shock.

Scorpius wasn't talking about it and they all had to respect that.

"Come on, let's pick up the pace," Al told them. "I want to fall over and die when we hit the end of the trail."

James smacked him on the shoulder and took off running. "Loser buys breakfast!"