Her daughter was nervously stirring the sugar into her tea. Her almost an adult daughter had been doing this for at least four minutes even as she sipped her properly prepared tea, splash of milk and one sugar only, thank you very much. The silence was comfortable for her. It was grossly uncomfortable for her daughter. She held her silence. It was her favorite parental super-weapon.
"Mom, I need some advice" Hermione Granger blurted out. "Something is going on and I'm not sure what we should be going, and I know that you probably know a lot more about this than I do and I need your advice."
She smiled. Her daughter, her brilliant, and increasingly independent daughter still needed her and was willing to ask for advice. Grant and her had done their jobs well enough as parents for their teenage daughter to still be willing and able to come to them.
"Is it about a boy, hon?"
Her daughter sputtered in indigent embarrassment.
"No, no, no , not really about a boy... but the boys are involved!"
"Is it about a girl, Dad and I just want you to be happy." She was starting to get confused. Her daughter had spent all her time with Harry and Ron over the past couple of years and more than once she had thought her daughter was developing feelings for one of her best friends but feared the moment when platonic intimacy got confused with romantic interest.
Hermione laughed and shook her head. "No mum, girls just don't do it for me...but I appreciate you and Dad being open to me being a lesbian."
"Than what do you need advice on?"
"Well, I know that your sister, Aunt Mary had an extremely interesting life in the 70s. She was on the run for what; eight years despite being one of the Crown's most wanted individuals... How was she able to do that? I need to know. " Hermione finally took a breath.
"Why do you need to know this? Are you planning to fire bomb banks? "
"Unlikely on the last, but Voldemort is back and the Ministry is useless. Me, Harry and Ron are likely some of the Death Easters top targets after what we did at the Ministry last month and I want to make sure that we can go on the run if everything collapses... so how did Aunt Mary do it?"
A long sip of tea hid her thoughts. She knew Hermione was recovering from curse wounds from the middle of June. The healers from St. Mungos had debriefed her and her husband at the last follow-up visit that Hermione had. Her daughter had explained that Dumbledore's vigilante group was about the only group fighting against the xenophobic supremecists and that a bunch of teenagers that were built around her daughter and her two best friends had gotten into a brawl at the government's main building. She also knew that Harry's godfather was killed and almost everyone in the battle had been wounded. The Minister of Magic and most of the security services had seen the last few minutes of the battle and were now on board with the idea that Voldemort and his terrorists were back.
"Why?"
"Mum, the Ministry has a few good people in it. Mr. Weasley is trying his best and working hard, but the Ministry makes Yes Minister look effective and pragmatic. Mr. Fudge is useless, and the entire upper ranks of the Ministry had evolved to meet that uselessness. We're okay as long as Dumbledore is around, but he can't be everywhere and he is OLD."
"Anything else I need to know?"
"Well, there is a prophecy about Harry. That's why we fought last month at the Ministry"
She raised an eyebrow. At times, she still could not rationally accept the magical world; it was too far outside of her experience even though it was core to her daughter's life. Prophecies were just ways to scam gullible out of their earnings - they were almost as effective as a promise of either a double deep cleaning on teeth or a promise that a pill could add an extra two inches and minutes to a man. But given that her daughter had turned her coffee table that she had inherited from her grandmother into a walking tortoise last week, magic played by its own rules.
"So what does this prophecy say?"
Hermione bit her lip and cast her eyes down at the tea cup for three breaths..
"The short version is that Harry is the only one who can potentially kill Voldemort... and Voldemort is the only one who can kill Harry."
"And how does this apply to you?" Her voice was deliberate. Her mind was screaming for the family to run to Australia or even the States. They could start anew there, the passports upstairs for the Wilkins family had never been used and the safety deposit keys for half a dozen banks were waiting to be used.
"I'm in it until the end with Harry."
"Are you doing this because you're in love with him honey?"
"I love him, but I'm not in love love with him. We're targets, and we're in this together and have been ever since we stopped Voldemort from getting the Philosopher's Stone."
She rose. Her arms reached out and pulled her daughter into her as at that moment, she was no longer a child that she had to shelter and keep the monsters away. Her daughter was trying to keep the monsters away from other peoples' children. Her daughter blended her body into hers and both women allowed tears to form at the edge of their eyes as they stood still until the tea was too cold to fully enjoy.
Finally, the two women seperated. The older woman went back to the stove and put the kettle back on as any good planning session required tea. Her daughter had grabbed a notebook and several pens of a variety of colors. Two steaming hot cups were ready as the women sat down across from each other at the breakfast table.
"So there are a couple of key questions that we need to know in order to properly plan on disappearing in plain sight... first, when, second, who, third, who supports you and knows enough to not see or hear things, and fourth, what resources are currently available."
Four hours and five kettles of tea, the skeleton of a plan started to emerge. Hermione had a list of a dozen immediate tasks that she could begin to chase down after she took her potions.
Ellen Granger sighed as her daughter went up the stairs. She had to make a trip down to the bank and then visit her sister in prison.