Advice 1: The story is prettier on ao3, so I suggest you read it there. Find it via Google or at ao3/works/52246726
Advice 2: I have made this the second entry in a series following "MODEST STILLNESS". It is completely unnecessary to read that story to understand this one. They belong to the same universe, however, and it is hoped that reading the stories together will enrich the experience of each.
Advice 3: Do not fear—there is no Shakespeare.
Disclaimed: Do I think [insert politically objectionable statement here]? Nope! Then you know that I cannot be JKR, and as such this work seeks no profit through the inclusion of Harry Potter or related intellectual property. You will also notice that I've spent way too much time thinking about quidditch to be confused with that sport's creator.
Rating: Somewhat racy for T on account of foul-mouthed sportsmen.
The facilities at Broomfield Park allowed for spectacular views onto Montrose Bay and the cliffs of St Cyrus. Ron Weasley was eyeing the waves, half-listening to his manager review the day's training session. The league opener might still be two weeks out, but Alex Leighton was already in mid-season form. After last season's dramatic finish, which saw Wimbourne finish level with the Magpies but pip them to the title on score difference (and by a mere two goals!), the old Scot was determined that his team come into the year flying like their brooms were on fire. It didn't really make a difference to Ron, who was more concerned with enjoying the salt tang on the wind of the north-east coast, and with thinking about dinner.
They were dismissed, and Ron flew down with his teammates to the gleaming club headquarters. After showering and changing out of his practice kit, Montrose's reserve keeper gave a quick knock to his manager's office. The door swung inward and Ron found Leighton seated behind his desk pouring over what looked like five years' worth of scouting reports on the Magpies' first opponent. Leighton gave an impatient gesture, Ron closed the door behind him, and sat down in the free chair across the desk.
"Right, Weasley," Leighton began in his thick burr, "What's got you in my office?"
Ron hadn't exactly planned what he wanted to say in advance. But as he hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor for nothing, the redhead plunged forward regardless. "I wanted to ask about what I should expect this season. It was hard watching Doohan get the call when Niang went down last year. What sort of minutes am I looking at, do you think?"
"Doohan's been with us longer than you. Couldn't have been too much a surprise he got the call, was it?"
"No, I suppose not. I just thought … I guess I thought I might get a bit of a chance to prove myself."
"You do—it's called training. I had you starting a few matches last year too, as I recall."
"Yeah, I know. I guess really what I'm trying to ask is…" Ron steeled himself. "Am I on the team because I'm good, or because I'm famous?"
Leighton gave a sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't lie to you, it's true. You sell tickets. The only way you're gonna play in an important game is if something really bad happens. Okay, it probably didn't turn out how you envisioned when you came to Montrose. Aye, you've won the league, but it's not like you won the league, y'know? But you still made the right call signing with us. The Cannons offered you all that money and I've seen the interviews where you talk about how big a supporter you were growing up. They would have taught you absolutely nothing. You'd probably have set some sort of record for goals allowed by now."
Ron tried to protest, but Leighton cut him off before he could get started.
"No offence, Weasley, but it's the Cannons. Not even Oliver Wood could save them. They've had the worst chasers and the worst beaters in the league for the past decade. No idea what they're doing down south. It's like they fail on purpose. If they signed all the players they didn't like, they'd probably be in better shape."
"They've done a pretty good job with Gribble, I've always thought."
"That's their keeper. You'd be replacing him in this scenario, remember? Think you're better than Gribble? Four year starter for Hufflepuff, I think it was. Four years in the league. You must have played against him at Hogwarts, right? He missed the goals allowed record by five last season. That's an awfully thin line. Here's the reality. You'd have gotten to play in Chudley for the same reason you got to sign on here—because you'd sell tickets, because of You-Know-Who. People will do stuff for you, with fame like that. But how big are the Victory Balls these days? How often is Potter in the Prophet lately? That's Harry Potter, mind you, the legend himself—and he's already fading a little bit into the background. People've got short memories, Weasley.
"D'you think you'dve been handed the keys to the training ground over at Chudley once you retired? After running up ten seasons bottom of the table, maybe breaking a few goals allowed or missed saves records? Just because, back in the day, you were the sidekick to The Wizard Who Went Into Hiding, during a war that everyone would rather forget? Or because your schoolboy team set a few records? Give me a break. You'd have been out of quidditch. If you were lucky, maybe you'd have gotten a chance to work your way up from some backwater in the Baltics or whatever."
"So you're telling me I wouldn't ever have gotten a fair shake? That I couldn't possibly have succeeded in the league?"
"You're on what, six or seven years with us now? Most would already call that a successful career. But if you're asking if you'dve been signed at all, without the war? The answer's probably no. Maybe Wigtown or Falmouth or Chudley take a flyer on a graduating Hogwarts starter if they have a vacancy at keeper? That's about the limit, I'd think."
"Harry could have done it."
"Maybe. He was a prospect but for someone who joined in his first year at Hogwarts, he had an awfully spotty track record. He missed so many matches, between the Triwizard and the suspensions and all. And sure I do remember that team you had your last year, how you set all those Hogwarts records. But everyone put an asterisk on that year. It was completely irregular. No one had any continuity and there were older players on all four teams. Was I supposed to be impressed when an eighteen year old Potter outflew some fifteen year olds to catch the snitch?"
"One of those fifteen year olds is favoured to win next year's Cup! Kitty had the most uncontested catches in the whole league last season!"
"Aye, she's a great player now. But I'd be a lot less fucking worried about Ballycastle if they had the fifteen year old Ní Ghráinne instead of the woman that's got three years' league experience under her broomstick. How many seeker duels did she win her first year with the Bats, Weasley?"
"No idea. Ten? Five?"
"Not enough, that's how many. Really, there's the problem in a nutshell. Potter'dve been too risky for us to make seeker, and you know we would've had to. It was hard enough to sell the punters on making you a reserve. They'd never have stood for the Great Big Hope to sit and watch. Caerphilly would probably have been best for him, so he could have learned from Stahl. She's always working miracles with her seekers. Wish I knew what they did in training. I thank her every time Nyirenda catches the snitch for us. That's where I would have tried to go if I were him, anyway."
"It would have been Puddlemere, I think."
"Or Puddlemere, aye, with Wood and all. At the end of the day, it's like this. The Magpies are the best. Too good for Potter? Honestly? Not even Viktor Krum would have started for us as a rookie. It's just way too much responsibility to turn the seeking over to someone with no experience. Maybe we would have tried to poach him after a few years' seasoning in Caerphilly or with United. If he had lived up to the hype, that is."
"How do you think I would have done if I'd signed on with Puddlemere? They made me an offer after Hogwarts."
"You'd have gotten even less minutes than you've gotten here. Wood is incredible. That man loves quidditch more than life itself. I couldn't tell you the last time he sat out a match. Bigger picture? It would have been a good fit. You could have learned a lot from Wood. And not just about keeping—everyone says he's a fantastic leader."
"We overlapped a little at Hogwarts. My twin brothers played beater for his teams. He taught Harry to play, in fact. Already had a reputation as a maniac for the game."
"That's the thing. Could you be Wood? Not just the way he plays in front of the hoops, but the way he leads his team, the kind of example he sets? He's one of those fiery types, the in-your-face-intensity blokes. Is that you? Is that the kind of leader you think you could become?"
"I don't feel much like any kind of leader, if I'm being honest."
"That's why it's the bigger picture. You'll probably get one more contract. We'll put your name and your picture in the adverts and give you some action in European qualifying, then leave you grounded when it matters. Same as this year and same as last year. But I need you to make it count. Pay attention to everything. I'm gonna let you in on a secret here. We've been planning to recruit you onto our staff once you retire. I think ownership will go for it. So you've got to be fuckin' ready when the time comes. You see, I've been paying attention. To the way you talk about the game, the way you interact with the coaches, how you watch the omniocular recordings and prep for matches. You've got potential. Reminds me of myself, in a lot of ways."
"That's—that's a right honour. I don't know what to say."
"Look, Weasley, you're interesting because of your brain, not your broomstick. I never made it as a regular either. Let your sister fly for England. I have a feeling that you're going to end up being more instrumental to the national team than she ever will. Pretty fuckin' hard to win the Cup without a seeker worth a damn, and you lot haven't had one in decades. Haven't had one good enough since More, to be blunt."
"Harry—"
"—Potter was the first house player in a century, I know. So what? More won every game he ever played at Hogwarts. So did Galvin Gudgeon and Amos Diggory. Maybe they didn't make it on the team first year, but all three still played and won more games than he did. What happened to them after? You've got the last English Cup winner, the laughingstock of Chudley, and a washout who couldn't last three seasons with the Pride. Potter could have been any of those if he'd stuck around. Which he didn't! Maybe he knew he wasn't good enough? Fuck if I know, it's not like I've ever spoken with the lad.
"If you want to get out of Potter's shadow, you have to stop comparing yourself to him. It's worse than that. You have to stop comparing yourself to whatever image or fantasy or myth or whatever you've built up of him. I don't care if he was born with a golden snitch in his mouth! Here's something for you to chew on: You've already passed him in quidditch. Act like it! Make your own fuckin' greatness. Own your own fuckin' fame."
Like most Magpies, Ron Weasley commuted to work via Floo. Montrose was not a particularly exciting place for a young quidditch professional—for most anyone, really—while the magical quarter of Edinburgh had always been a popular destination for recent Hogwarts graduates. Ron had been paging absent-mindedly through the team's new playbook while waiting for the scouting department to filter out from their offices.
Soon enough, a petite witch in sensibly casual robes came striding out into the lobby. Noticing the tall redhead, she called out to him. "Ron! You're here late! Did you wait up for me?"
"I had a meeting with Leighton. Thought I might as well stick around when I saw the time after. Let's talk at home?" He took a handful of Floo powder and tossed it into the grate. "21B Essex Brae!" The flames roared to green life and the pair stepped through.
Ron unfolded himself from the fireplace of 21B Essex Brae and cast a quick cleaning charm over the soot he'd acquired on his trip through the green flames. Cho Chang gave him an appraising look, and cast another cleaning charm at his shoes. "Missed a spot."
He and Cho had moved into this beautiful house together only in the last year, having spent the previous two saving money in a small flat closer to the city centre. Quidditch players were well-paid, and Ron had smartly used much of his first signing-on fee to invest in his brother George's business. The endorsement opportunities he'd received by virtue of his wartime heroics further bolstered his income. Ron had not known this sort of casual luxury at the Burrow growing up in a family of nine. Now it was comfortable for him, even normal. He settled into an armchair beside the smouldering fire to sort the post, while Cho put on the wireless at a low volume.
"Nothing interesting, I presume?"
"For the most part," Ron confirmed, "though I think this one for you is from your sister."
Cho took the parchment from his outstretched hand and sat herself on the couch to read it. "Says she wants to invite us for tea sometime soon. You have Tutshill in what, three weeks? We could pop over to Bristol after the game, before heading back home?"
"Sounds nice. Let's do it."
"I'll send a reply later. How was training today? You said Leighton kept you?"
"Training was the same as always. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate flying the short shuttle? We do both lateral and vertical drills every single time. Doohan always wants to race, it's so annoying. He times everyone no matter how much you tell him to fuck off."
"The dreaded shuttle drill … oh, how you suffer! Did they have you doing quaffle drop races too, poor thing?"
"Quaffle drops are way better than shuttles. Coach lets go, you give one surge of the broom, grab the ball, and you're done. No one's ever spewed their lunch after a quaffle drop. Not that I ever beat the other guys in that either. Actually, that's what Leighton and I talked about."
"Leighton kept you to talk about how bad you are at quaffle drop races?"
"Not exactly. It was really me that stayed back to talk with him. Wanted to ask about my place on the team, what I'm doing here."
"What brought this on?"
"Don't properly know, to be honest. Probably a bunch of things." Harry's return to England principal among them, though Ron thought he'd keep that to himself, at least for now. "I'd been hoping to get some more minutes with Niang injured. I guess it's gotten me thinking about whether I really belong, you know? If I'm good enough."
"You've been with the club for a while. If they weren't happy with you, you'd think they'd have said something, surely?"
"For most guys, yeah, probably. It's just, I can never totally shake the idea that I'm just here because of Voldemort. Because of Harry."
"You're too hard to grade on our metrics because you don't play enough. But I find it hard to believe that the Magpies are keeping you just for what you did in the war. Everyone in the office takes player evaluation one hundred percent seriously whenever we look into potential transfers."
"Leighton pretty much confirmed it, actually. Says I help sell tickets. I dunno Cho, he was trying to cheer me up. He's apparently got plans to hire me on as a coach. Wants me to 'pay attention'—learn how we do things, I guess, how to see the game. How he sees the game."
"But that's fabulous news! Isn't it? Wasn't that the whole idea, to go into coaching once you were finished playing?"
"Yeah, it is. We had a little moment, to be honest, me and Leighton. Could be, things are going in the right direction. It's always been tough for me. I've never been a natural at this stuff, not like Harry." Ron considered for a moment, then pressed on. "Do you ever think about him? You know, 'what could have been?', that sort of thing?"
"What do you mean? Like, 'could he have outflown Krum and led us to glory in the '02 Cup?' Or do you mean, like, 'romantically' or something?"
"Both, I guess."
"Well, we know better than anyone just how good Harry was on a broom. But Krum was simply the best. I wouldn't have bet on anyone to beat Bulgaria that year, not even Harry Potter. Besides, it's obvious his heart wasn't into it, the way he left the country."
"Okay, and the other thing?"
"Not really. I was fifteen, sixteen. A kid. Merlin, it would have been a horrible match. Does he even like quidditch? Does he follow the league at all? I'm not sure he'd even heard of the Tornadoes back when we were at Hogwarts."
"I spent ages trying to get him interested in the league. Some people just don't understand what it means to be a fan. The beauty of the struggle, the real glory of the Cannons. You need poetry in your soul…"
"No, I think that's literally just you. Pretty sure, actually."
"No, no, no. Trust me, I've seen it—the future. Hold on." He pulled out his wand and gave it a wave. A book popped into existence on the table.
Cho opened it. "Some future you've got here. It's blank."
"Give me a second." He waved his wand again, and words began imprinting themselves on the cover.
Cho read this new addition in the most sardonic tone she could manage. "Devon's Own: How the Cannons' Greatest Fan Became Their Greatest Manager and Led Them To Their Greatest Victory. I see. Still blank, though."
Ron gave her a look of proud satisfaction. "Ginny's going to write it. She told me she's planning to join the Prophet's quidditch staff after she retires, so it all fits. Guaranteed best-seller."
"In your dreams, maybe."
"Exactly. Oneo-, Onieye-, Owni—" Ron cleared his throat. "Dream reading is a legitimate form of magic!"
"Remind me how you scored in your O.W.L. for Divination, would you?"
"I'd, uh, rather not say"
"I scraped an Exceeds. Good enough to remember oneiromancy doesn't really work like that."
"'Scraped by with an Exceeds,' she says. Sometimes I think Ravenclaw is another species of human."
"It's Divination. Every single third year Ravenclaw is suggested to take it for a soft O. Not that any of them had a chance in your year, of course, but everyone in the tower is shooting for the highest average."
"Whatever you need to tell yourself. My owneyewo—fuck, I already forgot how to say it—my dream thing is gonna come true. You heard it here first. Chudley will win the league, on the back of my managerial genius."
"And said genius will be…"
"… built on the back of your secret research, naturally."
Cho was right to tease him about her role in his managerial success, both past and future. Ron had fancied himself a student of the game of quidditch all his life. A tactician. Wizard's chess had been a competitive outlet and allowed him to hone his strategic thinking when he'd been too young for brooms. He'd listened to the wireless and watched his brothers fly over the pasture, memorising the patterns of their flight. He had spent years reciting Cannons rosters to fend off sleep, as Professor Binns droned endlessly about completely useless trivia; in his favourite dreams he saw chaser plays of fantastical beauty. Cho Chang would force him to reconsider his every assumption about the greatest game.
People sometimes wondered why Cho had been sent to Ravenclaw. She was pretty and popular and didn't spend eighteen hours a day in the library, like some others Ron could name. It turned out that Cho had also been thinking a lot about quidditch. But not quite in the same way that Ron had been. She cared less for beauty and more for winning. Between direct observation and conventional wisdom, she preferred to trust herself and her own conclusions. Ron had Harry to thank for their introduction, of course. Cho had approached him looking for an opportunity to test her theories—she had been turned down across the league—and he had passed her along to his keeper, who after all ran his team. She hadn't been turned down the second time around.
It all came back to Harry Potter. Wasn't that the story of Ron's life? Hadn't he cropped up inevitably and incessantly in that chat after training? 'The Wizard Who Went Into Hiding,' Leighton had called him. Yes, that was the Prophet's latest barb. Ron understood the impulse. He had often, in darker moments, bitterly appended his own spin on Harry's unwanted titles: 'The Wizard Who Won Her Hand', 'The Man Who Triumphed Over His Best Mate'. He knew better than this. It had always been her choice, he had always been her choice.
Ron forced himself to break out of these reflections. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Sure? What's going on?"
"Why do you think I wanted to go out with you in the first place?"
"I never thought about it too much. I mean, I was pretty and sporty and into quidditch. Am I a bitch for saying that it wasn't a big shock?" She gave a little shrug. "I never exactly struggled for dates." She hesitated for a moment. "Um, please don't tell Marietta I said that…"
Ron laughed. "You're still pretty and sporty and into quidditch! Admirable qualities, those. Harder to find than you'd think."
"That's sweet of you, but is that really all you wanted to say?"
"You were also Harry Potter's first girlfriend."
Cho emitted a small "Oh" of surprise.
Ron gave her a moment. He realised this could be bad.
"I'm not offended! Just a little confused, I guess? I mean 'girlfriend', really? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? We had one bad kiss and one bad date!"
"Hmm, maybe. No, you're right." Ron, greatly relieved at how she seemed to be taking this disclosure, felt he could talk freely again. "It's different in my head, like I can still remember how he was all embarrassed about having a crush on the prettiest older girl, and then getting shot down for the Yule Ball, but then also obviously—it seemed at the time obvious—eventually you were gonna come 'round. Which you did, sort of. So like, not 'girlfriend' if you like, but surely at least 'first romantic interest' or whatever?"
"Alright, I'm a footnote in history. One of those pretenders felled by Queen Hermione."
"I'll have you know that in my forthcoming best-seller, the world's most brilliant quidditch analyst will get a star turn as the only one that's ever managed to topple Queen Hermione from her throne."
"Amazing: The one man she ever broke up with, eventually got over her. Mostly, I think? I can see the reviews now. 'What an extraordinary woman she must have been, this Cho Chang, to get him to move on from Hermione Granger…' I should make sure my Witch Weekly subscription is up to date."
"See, now you're starting to get the picture. Think of it this way. Hermione might have defeated the most infamous dark wizard in centuries and achieved the highest average N.E.W.T. ever recorded—but what has she ever done for quidditch? The people prefer heroes they can relate to!"
"Your Divination N.E.W.T. must have been even worse than your O.W.L. if you think this is going to come true."
"I dropped Divination before the N.E.W.T."
"It's remarkable how good you are at proving my points, Ron."
"Very funny. I don't suppose you 'scraped' an E in your Divination N.E.W.T. as well?"
"Divination is not a serious subject."
Long experience with his brothers had taught Ron to recognise an evasive answer when he heard one. "Yikes. So was it a Dreadful you got, then?"
"They gave me an Acceptable," Cho ground out. "My examiner must have been some moron relative of Trelawney's. I can still remember how he sniffed at my tarot reading. Practical divination, on demand! What a joke."
"Uh-huh."
"I'll admit it's possible your fame could overtake Hermione's one day. The most I can hope for is the odd aside in the Prophet, probably inaccurate. Their reporters can barely keep track of possession time, I shudder to think what they'd do to an interview where I tried to teach them about possession value. The public is definitely not interested in tactical specifics, as you well know. I've got a better chance through the society pages."
"We do live a glamorous life," Ron agreed with a waggish grin. "Everyone knows London is old news, that the real culture is up north!"
"Joking aside, you have made something of yourself. A solid professional career, on the fast track into the highest coaching circles—not a bad way to make your name."
"It could have gone much worse. I try not to think on it too much."
"I certainly didn't think you'd get this far when we got back in touch after the war. I mean, I was thinking about quidditch and I was thinking about Harry Potter. I remembered you as the weirdly tall sidekick who had some unaccountable grudge against the Tornadoes."
"Thinking about Harry…?"
"Hey, he defeated You-Know-Who in single combat! Imagine you had spent the war watching from afar as Hermione went and saved the world. Don't tell me the thought 'we had a little thing once, I wonder if there's still something there?' wouldn't ever have crossed your mind. You should know all about what that sort of thing does for your sexual and romantic prospects!"
"We weren't together yet!"
"Obviously! And then we were! Do you think that's a complete coincidence? Like, sure, clearly, it's not a big deal now. But at first? Yeah, of course it made me curious, of course it made me more interested. Then I got to know you for you, just as I would have gotten to know Harry for Harry. If he had been interested, which he wasn't."
"Even if he had been, you'd have soon discovered that he wanted to spend more time working on potions than on the pitch." Ron laughed, if a bit uneasily. Then he gave a more honest chuckle. "That reminds me of something. You know the whole 'It's all about me and the broom and flying and the wind in my face, I don't care about the game or the snitch or the money or any of the rest' line? We're always taking the piss out of Nyirenda for this in the locker room. Seekers are such poseurs. Because you know they never mean it, they just want to sound cool."
"Hey! Proud former Ravenclaw seeker here?!"
"Come on, you can admit it, your secret's safe with me. The thing is, Harry actually might be a true believer. He passed the captaincy off to me like five separate times. I'm positive there were practices where he'd spot the snitch and fly the other direction, just to stay in the air longer. Wouldn't shock me at all if he did it in games too."
Cho rolled her eyes at him. "I admit nothing. To be a seeker is to join a sacred order. Francis Nyirenda is the best in the world, he doesn't deserve this slander! But about Harry, I mean, it's like I said before. He was a terrible date! Suppose we had tried it on. What would we ever have talked about? The latest issue of Modern Charmancy?"
"You're making that up."
"No, it's real. My sister leaves them lying around her sitting room. As far as I can tell, the only charm involved is somnius. Puts me to sleep the moment I open one."
"Harry and Hermione had me over to their place once, a couple years ago. The whole thing was a library. I've no idea why they didn't get a bigger flat. Or, like, a house or something. I couldn't even pronounce the titles of half the books they had. I'm only talking about the ones in English, mind you."
"I always knew Hermione was nuts, but everything I hear tells me that Harry's just as bad. Maybe they really are ideally suited for each other. Still took them long enough to figure things out."
Ron didn't love being reminded of it, but Cho was right. "We thought that eighth year would be easy, with Voldemort gone. Hard to believe we were so innocent. Or that we were so, so stupid."
"That's just how things were back then. Did anyone in our generation have a perfect storybook romance? Your brother Bill? Veela are sort of cheating, though."
"I wouldn't say that was entirely smooth sailing either. Ginny and I used to call her 'Phlegm'."
"You didn't!" Ron hung his head in mock shame while Cho continued. "Like, please don't sign me up for your ex's ingenious 'I fell hopelessly in love forever at twelve years old, and nearly suffered in silence for my whole life without telling anyone' drama!"
"That was hard to be a part of."
"It's all terribly romantic. With an emphasis on the terrible, at least for the rest of us. And you know what, Ron? If I helped you get over it, I'm glad. From all accounts, you've become a better person since you were a heartbroken teenager. Imagine Hermione had kept it all bottled up and never told anyone. Stayed with you through your whole last year at Hogwarts. What would you have done next? Followed her to Vienna? How's your German?"
"Harry did say they mostly speak English there…"
"Not the point, Ron!" Cho stood up, looking for her wand. "What's the time? Past six already? We should get moving, then. Can you help me with my muggle outfit? I never quite remember how it's supposed to go."
"Sounds like you should have gone for the soft O in Muggle Studies instead of Divination."
Cho glared at Ron. "Very funny. Now let's go get changed? We don't want to keep Harry and Hermione waiting, and I don't trust either of us to correctly follow their instructions on how to get there."
"Hermione's very thorough instructions on how to get there, you mean."
"Yes, her very thoroughly confusing instructions. How much time have you spent in muggle Edinburgh?"
"Basically none. It'll be fine! An adventure, even!"
"We're so sorry we're late. It was an adventure."
"It's no problem." Harry pulled Ron into a manful hug. "We've only just gotten here ourselves." Separating, he tipped his head thoughtfully toward Cho. "Lovely to see you as well, it's been ages."
A genuine smile came across her lips. "The same to you, Harry." She noticed the other woman, and nodded in her direction as well. "Hermione."
"Shall we go in?" proposed the latter. "The reservation is for eight, we're actually a bit early. It looks like there are free tables, so maybe they'll be able to seat us right away."
"You told us to be here at half seven!"
"And now, instead of being late, you're early. It's like I know you, Ronald Weasley."
Ron Weasley gave his old friends an offended huff (which they understood to signify the opposite, of course), pulled the door open, and followed them into the restaurant.
"You haven't been here then, Ron? Cho? I did some research and this seemed the place to go. 'The future is bright, the future is blue,' one review said, which I thought highly appropriate. It's local, Scottish food."
"Like we had at Hogwarts," Harry added, with some irony, "but for fancy adults."
"Well, I'm looking forward to it, and Ron has never said no to a good meal."
The foursome was quickly seated in a quiet corner of the candlelit space and made small talk about safe topics while the kitchen prepared their orders. Once food and drink arrived, Hermione gave a discreet wave of her wand, casting a variety of muggle-repelling and anti-surveillance charms. "Okay, it should be safe to talk freely now. Thanks for your patience. Let's eat."
"A toast first, maybe?" Harry raised his glass, and the others followed suit. "To the reunion of old friends."
They clinked and sipped and took their first bites. Then Cho reopened the conversation with an amateur mistake. "There's something I've been wondering. What did you two study over there?" Ron berated himself internally for failing to warn her. He should really have seen this coming.
Hermione, of course, launched instantly into a passionate speech that she'd doubtless made a thousand times. "The main contribution of my thesis is a proof that the memory kernel can be described equivalently in terms of its spectral magihomology. Then I go on to propose some applications of this theory for clinical practice. Harry was a lot more ambitious. He showed how to obtain purity for anima encodings. Using emotional resonance to tag residual curse damage is already an unbelievable breakthrough, but what's really exciting is that it should work for all non-monochromatic deformation bundles…"
"Basically," Harry summarised, "I worked on the patronus charm and she worked on obliviation. I mean we collaborated on pretty much everything. Except the magihomology stuff, that sort of pure arithmantic theory is way over my head."
Hermione tried to cut in. "Don't let him pretend he wasn't—"
But Harry was already speaking over her. "Did you know people actually study ghosts? It's insane. I mean, when you think about it, it makes sense. That ghosts and memories would be connected. But proving it? Who would have thought you could use the Fisher-Becker fibre sequence to map the projective cokernel? That's why she's the genius. There's still a long way to go before we can actually bring it into practice, of course, but the theories synergise so perfectly that I feel confident we're on the right track. It's pretty exciting."
Ron and Cho shared a look of vaguely terrified incomprehension.
"As I was saying, don't let him pretend he's not a little genius himself."
Ron knew he needed to save this conversation before it could deteriorate further. "Did you play any quidditch? They do play quidditch in Austria, don't they?"
"Of course they do, though I never really had the time for Sunday league or anything like that. Don't you guys have to travel for the European Cup? Where did you think Klagenfurt or Ohlsdorf were? Au won the German league last year!"
"The German league?"
"Yeah? HSV was second? Iron Berlin third? Gmünd fourth? Ring a bell?"
Ron was still confused. "What do you mean? They play in the German league? Why?"
"Sponsors, probably," Cho guessed. "Marketing. Austria isn't that big. It's like how we've got Irish teams here in the British league."
"Austria is an amazing place to fly though. Would you be able to stick around for a few days if you're drawn against a German league side this season?"
"Probably not. Leighton's big on the whole 'spirit of the team' thing. 'All triumphs together, all defeats in common,' he likes to say. We like to say: 'Too much travel together, too many hotel rooms in common.' Not where he can hear, obviously."
"That's too bad. You two should definitely come and tour with your brooms in the offseason then. I had no idea about the mountains before we moved to Vienna. The Highlands are nothing like the Alps. Like, Ben Nevis would be completely anonymous. The terrain and the light and the colours—it's just … powerful." Ron caught Cho's eye and knew she was thinking the same thing he was: seekers are such poseurs. Harry, naturally, was too caught up in his rhapsody to notice. "You can touch the sky there. I had to reassess everything I thought I knew about flying. It was that good. Even Hermione joined."
"I joined sometimes."
"Sometimes," Harry agreed contentedly, only to resume with more passion. "It was only fair! After you forced me to make a fool of myself skiing."
A smug grin lit up Hermione's face. "That was fun." Then she switched to an exaggerated pout. "Except now you're too good at it and I can hardly make fun of you anymore."
"Oh, you love it, come on. Plus you're still better than me. You might not say anything, but don't think I miss that look of triumph every time you beat me to the bottom."
Hermione was still pouting a little, but now cutely. She sipped her wine. "Yes, well. Be that as it may."
Ron figured they were talking about muggle stuff, and a glance at Cho confirmed she was just as lost as he was.
"Say, what do you think Arthur would make of skiing?"
"Arthur would certainly die, at least if he somehow got his equipment on."
"I know!" Harry replied jovially. "We'll have to bring him along. Your mum would love to teach him, it would be so perfect."
"Now that I think about it, he would be transfixed by the lifts. You're right, that does sound hysterical."
"There are lifts at the Ministry," Ron broke in, having finally grasped something in this strange turn of conversation. "Dad's been using them for like fifty years!"
Harry gave a bark of laughter. "Not like these there aren't!"
Hermione took it upon herself to explain. "Sorry, we got carried away there. 'Skiing' is a type of muggle sport where you race down a mountain on a pair of thin planks made from wood and plastic. Over the snow, I mean. I learned when I was a little girl—my family took vacations to France and Switzerland pretty much every winter before I started Hogwarts. I swear it's fun. Of course, to go down the mountain you have to go up the mountain first. Hiking is way too hard, so muggles got the idea of suspending a seat from a big loop of cable, and pulling it in a circuit between two stations at the base and summit of the mountain. Slightly different from the lifts at the Ministry."
"Are muggles … how to put this … a little bit crazy?" Cho shook her head. "How do they come up with this stuff? Is it dangerous?"
"When you can't do magic, you have to be creative." Hermione shrugged. "Going down the mountain is dangerous—or can be dangerous—but going up on the lifts is almost totally safe. Even if it is rather scary to be sitting fifteen metres or more above the ground…"
"But less scary than it used to be!" Harry teased. Hermione gave him an ineffectual shove. "Hey! You just admitted you've finally come around on brooms!"
Ron was still imagining his father's reaction to this information. "I think this could be even worse than dad's old car."
"Old car? What do you mean, Ron?"
Harry and Hermione reacted together. "You don't know?!"
"Okay," Ron turned to Cho. "Swear yourself to secrecy, cross your heart, and mote it be. Got it? This stays between us."
Cho looked moderately uncomfortable, but took a drink and nodded her head regardless. "Is this one of those legendary Hogwarts exploits that hasn't yet reached the public?"
"It was legendarily stupid," Hermione confirmed dryly, "that's for sure."
Ron felt the need to defend himself. "Give us a break, Hermione! What were we supposed to do?"
"Hmm, I wonder… How about telling your mum? Owling McGonagall? Literally anything else?!"
"Yeah, yeah, easy for you to say. Hindsight is 50/50 and all that. We were twelve! Left behind! Harry would have had to go back to his relatives!"
Harry gave him a sharp look. Ron hoped Cho had missed that last bit.
"Anyway, what happened was that Harry and I got locked out of Platform 9¾. It was Malfoy's fault, for the record."
"As much as I'd usually like to blame Malfoy," Harry sighed, "I don't think we can rightly hang this one on him. Unfortunately."
"Fine, it was Malfoy's house elf's fault," Ron chanced a look toward Hermione, "acting on his own orders." He decided it wouldn't hurt to play it safe, and further clarified. "In a misguided attempt to help Harry. He did something to the barrier and we couldn't get through before the Express left. Obviously, we still had to get to Hogwarts."
Ron paused and Harry picked up the thread. "It's true. We weren't thinking clearly. I barely knew anything about magic back then, so it was pretty scary. Then we remembered about Ron's dad's car."
"It was a little project of his. He'd confiscated it for work and brought it home. Remember Cho, sworn to secrecy here. While he was tinkering with it, he might have made a few modifications to how it worked."
Hermione put this more bluntly: "He enchanted the car."
Cho laughed. "Arthur Weasley, head of Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, enchanted a car? That he'd confiscated for the Ministry and taken home? This is way too good. What did he do to the car? Please tell me he made it fly."
"What's the point of an enchanted car if it doesn't fly?" Harry was grinning too now, as he continued the story. "Or fit ten people instead of five?"
"How did you avoid being seen?"
"Give my dad some credit! What's the point of an enchanted flying car if it can't also turn invisible?"
"No way. Incredible."
"In theory." Hermione had some sort of compulsion to spell out details. It was like she didn't understand how to let a story breathe!
"What do you mean, 'in theory'? Don't tell me…"
Harry tried to put it delicately. "We might have been spotted by a few muggles when the invisibility booster failed over the A9."
"It was really only a few muggles. This was basically in the middle of nowhere! Who's ever heard of Killiecrankie?"
"Oh, I don't know, Ron. Probably the seven muggles that the Ministry had to mindwipe? Since they probably lived there?"
Ron winced. Obliviated muggles were a sore point with Hermione, for good reason.
"This was your second year, you said? When do muggles learn to drive? How long did it take you to learn, Harry?"
"I'm not actually sure, Cho. Seventeen, I think? Maybe sixteen?" Harry gave a small chuckle. "I, uh, I never learned."
"It's seventeen." Hermione.
"They really have to wait until seventeen? It was surprisingly easy. Maybe I should get tested for a muggle license sometime."
Ron could tell that Hermione was horrified by this suggestion—a joke!–but thankfully Harry took advantage of her speechlessness to cut in before she could read him the riot act. "You'll find it's a lot less fun without your dad's Anglia. Trust me, mate, we're much better off with brooms. Save yourself the hassle."
Cho was still curious about their story. "So what happened to the car?"
"Ron made a brilliant landing, of course. The muggle driving instructors would have passed you for sure, right?"
"I'll have you know that it would have been perfectly fine if it wasn't for the Whomping Willow deciding it had it out for me."
"In other words, they crashed. And survived by the grace of god alone."
"Hermione's underselling it. Did you ever tell Cho about the acromantula colony, Ron?
Cho looked aghast at all three of them. "Acromantula colony…?!"
"Yeah, in the Forbidden Forest. Dumbledore wasn't joking when he told us to stay out every year at the Welcome Feast, believe it or not. Harry and I found it while we were investigating the petrifications later that year."
"I, uh… I—I'm glad you guys are okay? Also what the fuck?"
"Wizarding Britain," Hermione complained, "is inconceivably incompetent."
Harry shrugged this diversion off. "You're better off not knowing on this one, I think, Cho. But yeah, Ron and I would have been acromantula food without the car. It had been lost in the Forest all year, and then out of nowhere it roared into the nest with its horn blaring and its headlamps on maximum, let us get in and drive away. The grace of god and Merlin combined."
"Then once we got back to the grounds, it turned around and drove right back into the forest."
"Our guardian angel."
"To recap here, Cho. I was stuck in the Hospital Wing petrified, and they ended up relying on a sentient enchanted car to save their lives. When the answer was literally in my hand the entire time. Have you ever seen a better example of how lost men would be without us?"
Cho had lifted her hands to her mouth, too astonished to laugh. Harry had slung his arm around Hermione's narrow shoulders, smiling into her hair and whispering into her ear. She whispered back, nodding to him, in a brief private conference. They shifted in their seats to face Ron and Cho, beaming identically, and Hermione placed her arm on the table. As far as Ron knew, she kept it glamoured in public at all times, and he would guess no more than a dozen living people had ever seen what was hid beneath that illusion. Hermione looked again at Harry, who pulled her closer to his side, and there was a tiny rush of magic.
No matter how fast she turned her wrist to present her outstretched fingers, the violent scar etched into the pale skin of Hermione's left forearm was impossible to miss. Ron, who had put his foot in his mouth enough already, caught Cho's eyes going wide and frantically grasped her thigh in warning. He had no idea what a 'deformation bundle' might be, but he was in no rush for Harry to demonstrate. On him. Hermione might go straight for Cho, even. It wasn't like either needed their wands to respond to threats. Or imagined threats.
Fortunately, the look of abhorrence on Cho's face had already shifted into wonder. The moment of real danger had passed without comment or conflagration. Ron relaxed his grip on her thigh, giving a brief apologetic rub with his thumb as he removed his hand. Together, they bent their heads to take a closer look. Hermione's ring was a graceful line of faded gold, from which rose a lone oak leaf, in elegant miniature, bowed as if in a mountain wind. Half-hidden beneath the arch of the leaf was set a single splendid diamond. The craftsmanship was obviously exquisite—probably Goblin-forged, if he were to guess—and the demure setting made his heart ache with an indescribable something between love and pity. She looked at him with a shy question in her shining eyes.
"Merlin, it's incredible. Where did you get it? Harry's vault or something?"
"Harry made it himself. We're getting married. We thought—" Hermione had already dissolved into the joyous tears of her continuing disbelief. "—thought you should be the first to know."
Cho Chang watched how Ron Weasley pushed his way past the table and pulled the weeping Hermione Granger into an embrace, and then how Harry Potter rose from his seat and embraced them both together.
Now that, she thought, that man is a keeper.
Broomfield Park and Essex Brae are real places in Montrose and Edinburgh, and I quote a real review of a real Edinburgh restaurant.
I try to completely respect the pre-epilogue book canon (in fact, I stopped watching the films after OotP) but the mudblood scar is an actually great invention, and it seemed absolutely perfect for what I wanted here. I've also been a bit free with the flying car incident, which is to some extent public knowledge in canon (having been written up in the Prophet). It fits best as a 'secret' here, so bear in mind that Cho probably didn't read the story, and if she did, that she probably doesn't remember anymore 10+ years later.
This is a sharper and pricklier story, with a thrum of irony mostly absent from "MODEST STILLNESS". I hope you've liked it! I love to hear from readers…