[A/N:Thank you to Calamity Owl and Darsynia for beta-reading this chapter!]
After Harry left for work, Hermione, Sirius, and Remus went upstairs to remove any Tracking Charms from her possessions. She wasn't sure what she expected to find in the guest room, but she was definitely not expecting to find her clothes neatly folded on the bed and all of the books in a single pyramid in the centre of the floor that stood nearly as tall as she did.
Sirius barked out another laugh as he entered the room. "Merlin, would you look at that? I feel like there ought to be an embalmed pharaoh in there."
"You could probably fit one," Remus said.
"I needed a lot of books for school," Hermione said, heat rising to her cheeks as she spoke. "But now that I know the truth…." She stared at the pile, tears slowly blurring her view of the individual book titles. "I can't tell anyone…but I can't keep researching this and lying about it. This pile of falsehoods, conjectures, and half-truths was my whole life for the last three years." She couldn't see more than the vague outline of the huge pile by that point. "It's all worthless. This work has been my whole life since I was a teenager and it was worthless from the start."
Strong arms pulled her into a tight embrace. "It was never worthless," Remus said, then paused to spit out a bit of bushy hair that he'd inhaled as he spoke. "Your work helped push a muggle field beyond where it would otherwise have been. That there remains far more for them to discover makes your contribution no less valuable than Pythagoras's was to mathematics."
"At least mathematics really exists! All I did…all any of us did was chase shadows. We might as well have never existed for all the good we did humanity," Hermione said.
Sirius came up behind her and put his hand on her right shoulder. "I spent twelve years in prison for a crime I didn't commit," he said. "That didn't do anyone any good, but that doesn't make my life worthless. You can't…don't dwell on what you've lost, please." His voice shook as he spoke. "Your grief can never fill the hole in your life."
Remus let got of Hermione with one arm briefly in order to pull Sirius into his embrace, too.. "Lies stole those years from both of you," Remus said. "Sirius never let that define him, though, and I think he's fought through to become a better man than anyone would have given him credit for back in '81. I know you'll do the same, Hermione, and I can only apologise for the small part we've all played in those lies."
"Thank you," she croaked out, and they all just stood there together for a few minutes until she was ready to face her books again.
"I'm sorry I reacted like that," she said. "I shouldn't have even asked you to bring any of them here."
"It's alright," Remus said. "Your reaction was understandable and Dobby was thrilled to have the work. He loves Harry, but I think he's bored to tears most of the time."
"Ah." Hermione felt heat rising to her cheeks at the memory of Dobby's request to her.
"Besides," Remus added, possibly to save her embarrassment, "this way you get the option to confront them yourself. Now, what would you like to do with them?"
"Never see them again." Hermione shocked herself with the speed and firmness of her response, to say nothing of its content.
"That can be arranged," Sirius said. "Kreacher?"
The old elf popped up next to them. "Master who has at least stopped regularly shaming House Black called Kreacher?"
"Yes," Sirius said. "Please stash this pile of books in the attic."
"Very well, master," Kreacher said, and vanished. The pile vanished in three huge batches over the course of the next twenty seconds.
"Thank you, Kreacher!" Hermione shouted, hoping the elf could hear her.
"Now that those are out of the way," Sirius said, "let's find those damn tracking charms." He and Remus nodded, pulled out their wands, and began muttering the same charm over and over. As they spoke and moved their wands, Hermione's two pairs of dress shoes purse began to glow, followed shortly by the pair of large binders full of her dissertation notes and the sole picture she'd had framed on the wall of her studio: a shot of herself as a girl having a tea party with her father's parents not long before they passed away.
"Interesting," Remus said. "Whoever did this picked some items you were likely to carry daily, but also a few they saw as permanent fixtures in your life. Sirius, you clean the purses and I'll get the rest."
The other man nodded and, with a few waves of their wands, the glowing light around each item almost seemed to be ripped away, disintegrating into wisps of light before vanishing entirely.
"There you go," Sirius said. "Good as new."
"Thank you," Hermione said. "This will make me a lot safer."
"No trouble at all." Sirius paused. "Those are your bras? Merlin, woman, I have more interesting bras than that."
Hermione blushed bright red and hurriedly gathered her bras into her arms in a mostly vain attempt to hide them from view. "I do not need your approval or evaluation of my undergarments!" she said. "And why do–"
Remus cut her off. "Don't, Hermione. He's just trying to bait you into asking."
"Oh, you're no fun," Sirius grumbled as he walked out of the room.
"I think she's been traumatised enough today," Remus replied. "Let's just go to the library and forget this conversation ever occurred."
Hermione took a deep breath and decided she could put off this particular conversation no longer. "Actually," she said, "could we sit in the drawing room for a moment?"
"Of course," Sirius said. He was clearly surprised, but led them into the drawing room with alacrity.
"I'm sorry I was so intense yesterday," Hermione said to them after they'd sat down. "Harry talked with me after he came home and I'll try to be more relaxed about it from now on."
"It was no trouble," Remus said. "I understand this must be hard for you to take in all at once."
"Hard? More like bloody terrifying," Sirius muttered. Remus elbowed him.
"Anyway," Remus continued, "we'd be happy to keep helping you."
"Thank you," Hermione said. "Anyway, regarding today's research, I think I got a good sense of the basic contents of most of the books you both pulled out yesterday. Since you two have the background to understand those books better than I do, I'd like to ask you to start reviewing some of the texts I've identified as having the highest likelihood of containing spells or rituals related to core bindings or wardings. As you go through them, please list the ones you've reviewed and leave some notes on what, if anything, you found in each volume that might be relevant. Once we've winnowed down the book list, we can do more detailed research in the books we've identified as promising. Does that sound good?"
Remus stared at her for a moment before jumping to his feet and hurrying from the room. Hermione gasped. "I'm so sorry," she said to Sirius. "Did I say something wrong? I didn't mean–"
He waved away her concerns as he rose to his feet. "It's not your fault. You…reminded us of a mutual friend just then, someone we lost decades ago. She was closer to Remus than she was to me, so I think it hit him harder. I'll go check on him and we'll be back momentarily."
Sirius strode out of the room and left Hermione alone with her thoughts. For as light-hearted as her unexpected housemates seemed, she was starting to understand how much pain and loss haunted their home.
Sirius returned a moment later, one arm wrapped around Remus's shoulders and holding the scarred man's hand with his other.
"I apologise, my dear," Remus said as he returned to his seat. "The last time someone laid out a study plan to me in such careful detail was when we were eighteen years old and studying for our Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests, or NEWTs. For just a moment, it was like she was there in front of me again and that hit me harder than I thought."
"I'm sorry," Hermione said.
"Don't be, please," Remus said. "It hurt, but it was worth it to remember another facet of her I feared I'd forgotten."
"Then I'm sorry for your loss," Hermione said. An uncomfortable silence descended on the room before she continued. "While we're on such a subject, may I ask you a question about Harry?"
Sirius nodded, but she couldn't miss the guarded look that came over both men's eyes. Since neither of them struck her as overprotective (Harry was in law enforcement, for goodness' sake!), she had a feeling such protectiveness was warranted and that worried her even more. "I ran across some mentions of 'Unforgivable Curses' in my research yesterday, and I remember Harry said he'd been hit with all three. What are they?"
Sirius shuddered. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I think it's my turn to bugger off. Can you tell her this story?"
"I will," Remus said. "Go have a drink."
"Thank you." Sirius hurried off.
"He…blames himself for part of this," Remus said. "It's not true, but he'd still rather not relive it any more than necessary."
"I didn't mean to pry," Hermione said. "You don't have to tell me."
"You have a right to know about the curses," Remus replied, "and what happened to Harry is a matter of public record in the Wizarding World. He even earned an Order of Merlin, Third Class, for the second incident."
She blinked. "He's…been knighted?"
"Not exactly," Remus said. "It's more like a Commander of the Order of the British Empire."
"Oh. He's only a magical CBE. Why didn't anyone tell me? Is there a proper form of address for a CBE? Should I–"
"It's fine, really," Remus cut her off gently. "He hates it when people make a fuss about him. Anyway, there are three Unforgivable Curses. None of them can be shielded by magical means, and each one requires some level of corruption in the caster's soul before they can cast it. The first is the Killing Curse. It severs the soul from the body, killing a person instantly. When Harry was one and a half, a Dark Wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort murdered his parents, our dear friends James and Lily, and then cast that curse on Harry. James had the biggest heart of any man I've ever met, though, and Lily was the smartest witch of her age. Together, they did something to turn their sacrifice into protection for Harry, and that curse rebounded on Voldemort, instead, leaving only a scar on Harry's forehead."
"That's how his parents died?" Hermione said. "That's awful!"
Remus nodded. "It was. Sadly, it wasn't the only time someone used an Unforgivable Curse on him. During his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a contingent of exchange students from Ilvermorny in the United States came to study there. A few months later, one of Harry's classmates was brutally murdered. Harry and several of his friends guessed the culprit was one of the exchange students possessed by a spirit called a 'Wendigo.'"
"What's that?" Hermione asked.
"It's a magical monster from the woodlands of northern North America whose main characteristic is a completely insatiable desire for human flesh," Remus said. "Their physical form resembles a twenty-foot tall emaciated man, with sunken eyes and sores all over their body and lips. They can lure people into the woods with fake cries for help and eat them, but their hunger is cursed and they can never eat enough to be satisfied. Wendigos also have the ability to forsake their physical form and possess a human, driving their host mad with cannibalistic hunger in the process."
Hermione sat back in shock. "One of those was in Harry's school?"
"Yes," Remus said, "and only Harry and his friends realised that's what it was. Unfortunately, they guessed the wrong student. The student who was actually possessed lured them into a trap and tortured them to…change the taste of their meat, Harry said. It used the Imperius Curse to take over Harry's mind and force him to torture his friend Susan with the Cruciatus Curse, a horrible spell whose effects I can only describe as a combination of the pain of an Iron Maiden and electrocution. At first, he couldn't torture her properly, so it used that curse on him, instead, before reinstating its control and ordering him to try again. He broke the mind control, though."
Remus paused. "Just to emphasise, only a handful of adult witches and wizards in the entire country could throw off an Imperius Curse. Harry did so at fifteen. Then, he convinced Susan to pretend he was torturing her, and when the Wendigo shifted its attention to her 'suffering,' he disarmed it and proceeded to use Cutting and Banishing Charms to pummel and dismember its host body until even that spirit could no longer keep it alive. He's never forgiven himself for being unable to save its host body, but the Americans said that would have been impossible."
Hermione could only stare at Remus in horror. "He was a child," she finally said. "He was a child and he had to basically beat another child to death after being tortured and mind-raped. What is wrong with your world?"
He sighed. "A great many things, I fear. Sirius and I grew up around magic our whole lives, but Harry was raised as a muggle like you. That's why we reacted badly when he claimed magic was horrifying that night we met you, but on reflection I'm not sure he's wrong. It's just…those monsters I'm describing, Dark Creatures and Dark Wizards, they don't go away if people stop believing in them. Without people like Harry, muggles would be just another prey animal, like deer or sheep."
"This…" she took a deep breath, "I loved my research, but this makes it all seem so inconsequential. The work I'm doing now is so much more high-stakes than just me, isn't it?"
"I suspect so," Remus said. "There's almost certainly a Dark Witch or Wizard behind this, and I promise you that we're not going to let them hurt you or anyone else again once we find them."
"Thank you," Hermione said. "I suppose we should get to it, then."
"Yes…" Remus trailed off as he rose from his chair.
"Is something wrong?"
"There's one more thing you should probably know about all of that," Remus said. "Remember how Harry's parents died protecting him and somehow setting up Voldemort to die? Well, he was fighting a civil war at the time, and we…we were losing. I can't tell you how many died. Sirius's girlfriend and her whole family were murdered. Harry's parents saved us all, and popular opinion made him a hero. To this day, he's known around Wizarding Britain as 'The Boy Who Lived.'"
Hermione stared at him in shock. "People call him, to his face, an epithet semantically equivalent to 'The Boy With Dead Parents'?"
Remus blinked, reminding Hermione that just because she had a sizable vocabulary didn't mean she had to use all of it. "Exactly," he said after a moment. "I'm glad you see why he hates that."
She nodded. "Now I understand why he told me he fights so hard to protect his mother's memory. It sounds like people gave him the credit for her genius."
"She would have been so proud of him," Remus said. "He's a better man than any of us deserved."
The regret in Remus's eyes spoke far more than his words, and as she followed him downstairs to check on Sirius, Hermione thought carefully about what he'd said. As horrific as Remus's story had been, she had a bad feeling he still wasn't telling her everything. After all, Remus said Harry hadn't been raised by wizards (thus ruling out him or Sirius) and never, not once, had Harry ever mentioned anything about his childhood before he'd gone to his "boarding school."
The fire in Harry's eyes at the thought of risk to her flashed into her mind. Was anyone watching out for him like that?
Hermione set her jaw. There was now.
"The only good thing about magic," Harry thought as he liberally applied cleaning charms to his Auror robes, "is that it makes cleaning up after chasing a Merlin-damned robber through the mud of the Thames estuary straightforward." He paused. "Well, that and speeding up your commute. I wonder why Sirius sent an owl to ask when I would be home."
With the usual gut-wrenching twist, he apparated back to the entrance hall of 12 Grimmauld Place. "Welcome back!" came a chorus from upstairs.
"Hi!" Harry shouted back. That was a pleasant surprise, especially after his greeting the night before.
A moment later, Hermione, Remus, and Sirius all came down. "How'd it go?" Sirius asked.
Harry shrugged. "Paperwork and chasing some idiot across the Thames Estuary who thought he could corner the market on murtlap via theft."
"Ugh. Did you get him?"
"Eventually. It turns out all of that Quidditch practice makes you pretty darn good at running down suspects. He tried to hex me when I got close, though."
"Are you alright?" Remus asked.
"I'm fine." Harry grinned.
"And the other guy?" Sirius asked.
"He's going to need some murtlap."
Sirius barked out a laugh and Remus just rolled his eyes. "You've been waiting to say that, haven't you?"
Harry grinned wider. "You bet. But I thought I'd have to wait till tomorrow."
Sirius glanced at Hermione's confused expression. "I'll take Hermione to get supper set up and explain that joke to her," he said. "Why don't you change into something more comfortable?"
"Thanks," Harry said, now thoroughly surprised. Remus followed him upstairs, which was both concerning and hopefully meant an explanation was forthcoming.
"Hermione," Remus said as soon as they were on the second floor and thoroughly out of her earshot, "strongly suggested to us that we consider reorganising our lives a bit to spend more time with you while you were staying with us. She said you ought not to have to eat alone, and that she'd always envied the families who ate together." He paused. "She also said not to tell you we were going out of our way, but I'm ignoring her because you'd probably be as confused as a Niffler in a pyrite mine without an explanation."
Harry had to chuckle. "Yes, I suppose I was. That's very nice, but you really don't have to."
"I know," Remus said, "but I thought about it today and realised she was right. Neither Sirius nor I ever really got the hang of having a family, and with you off at Hogwarts most of each year we never really got much practice. Maybe we haven't always done a great job so far, but that doesn't mean we can't start doing better."
"Oh." Harry was far too tired to put together a coherent response to that statement. "That…sounds nice. I'd like that."
"Good." Remus clapped him on the shoulder. "Get changed and let's get some supper."
