Author's Notes: Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing! There is no beta for this chapter. I tried my best. Please consider leaving a review or going to follow me on social- Sarah Jaune since we're nearly done with this and I'll be backing off from fanfics for a while.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Dinner was absolutely insane that evening, but Rose was enjoying every moment of it. Louis had come in holding hands with Lena and her baby brother had brought his tiny blonde haired, blue eyed girlfriend along and she was clearly nervous speaking to everyone. Rose had been about to go over and help, but Lily, who had been in her year, had swooped in with Honor to welcome her and it seemed to be helping her relax.
"Here," Andrew said as he brought over a glass of lemonade for her. He put his arm around her waist and bent in to press a kiss to the nape of her neck. "Gran said food is going to be ready soon, but she has some crackers if your stomach is upset."
"I'm okay right now," Rose promised as she leaned against him, reveling in the knowledge that very soon their baby would be running through this house, screaming and playing with their cousins.
Lorelei and Ireland toddled by them a moment later followed closely by Lorelei's humongous dog, Poppy.
"It's amazing how quickly they're all growing," Andrew murmured into her ear.
"Alright, family," Harry called out in a booming voice which had everyone falling silent. "We have all the security worked out for the World Cup."
The noise stopped his speech and left him grinning as everyone erupted in cheers for James, who grinned as he hooked an arm around Caroline's shoulders. She was starting to show, now, and she glowed with happiness as she beamed up at him. "Thanks, everyone! I can't tell you what it means to have all of your support for this."
"Alright," Harry said as two kids ran by him shrieking. "I'm going to go over the current plan and I need to know if anyone has a problem with it. Right now, I have Caroline, Al, Nat, Wyatt, Ginny and Bill in the car with me for the drive over to the cup the day before. Everyone else is meeting here at Lily's house at noon to get the Portkey, which will leave thirty minutes later. You cannot be late. Is that acceptable so far?"
"Yes," was the general call out.
"Alright, I have these people going," he said and he read off a list of names. "Anyone else?"
Rose glanced over to Andrew and she knew he wanted to go. She also wanted to go, but they'd made the commitment to live a quiet, sheltered life right now with her pregnancy.
"We'll go some time," Andrew said quietly as conversation flowed around them. "Hopefully, we will have many years to go once she's caught."
Rose's smile felt forced, so she nodded quickly and glanced back to her uncle. It felt like it was never going to end.
"I'm seeing Gran signal that the food is ready, so let's eat before the chaos around here gets worse," Harry said with a laugh as Emma ran into his side.
Rose ended up sitting with Catie on one of the tables set up outside while Hugo and Andrew chatted with some of the other men. Moments later, Lily joined them with Lorelei on her lap, her daughter picking at the food on Lily's plate. "I'm so glad you're back, Catie, but I hate that you didn't enjoy your time in Africa."
"I will admit I'm curious as to what happened," Rose told her as she took a bite of the chicken on her plate. "Hugo has been a little… well he's been Hugo, so we don't know much."
Catie's expression was not one of happiness and Rose almost told her that she didn't have to say anything, but Lily reached out a hand to her and said, "It might help to tell us, but if you don't want to, we'll understand."
"I appreciate everyone here being so kind," Catie assured them both and then she smiled for Lorelei when the little girl handed over a strawberry. "When I left I told Hugo if he wanted to break up, we could, but he said no and we've written this whole time… I was led to believe I'd be part of the research, but that… that wasn't what happened." She let out a long sigh and glanced down at her lap. "I was there to cook and clean and that was it. I was the only one who wasn't experienced and I didn't get to go out in the field, at all. I thought if I did my time that I might get some more experience, but after the first year, we had another student come in but he was taken out into the field immediately and I was still stuck cooking and cleaning. I told them that I wanted to leave, but I was told that since they'd paid for my travel expenses and they'd fed me, I had to keep working."
"Are you serious?" Rose blurted out, utterly horrified. "You were kept as a slave?"
Catie closed her eyes and nodded. "I didn't realize that until I was home, but yes. At some point they started reading through my correspondence before I could send it, so I wasn't able to ask for help to get home. Finally, I managed to get something through to Hugo by reminding him of something that hadn't happened at all and he realized something was wrong and he alerted my parents, who came down to get me." She glanced over to Lily. "He told me later that he would have gone to your dad if my parents hadn't been able to intervene, but they have connections. They were able to get the bloke running the whole thing fired because they have friends within the Canadian Ministry."
"What did the Canadian Ministry have to do with it?" Lily wondered as she cut up a bit of chicken for her daughter.
"Oh, that's where the man running the study was out of," she explained. "He was being funded by the Canadian Ministry. They weren't happy about how he'd treated me."
"That's so unbelievably sad, Catie…" Lily told her, compassion brimming through her eyes. "I'm glad you're out, now."
"Thanks," Catie said with a small smile. "Hugo asked if I wanted to go to the World Cup when I came back and I thought… I haven't heard anything about it since I went down there. They're all too snooty to think about the World Cup."
"Do you want to go?" Rose asked her quickly. "You can go if you want."
"I seriously considered it, because I love Quidditch, but my parents are still a little bit on edge with how things have gone the last few years," Catie explained with a sad smile. "I can't blame them, but they asked me not to go this year. They promised to take me next year."
Rose could completely understand that and nodded, dropping the conversation as others came over to join them.
She was exhausted, but in the best possible way, by the time they made it home that night. "Quick story after you brush your teeth," she told Claire as they headed up the stairs.
"Alright," Claire told her with a grin as she sprinted towards her room.
She followed Andrew into their bedroom and gratefully kicked off her shoes. "I am knackered!"
"Want me to do bedtime alone?" he asked as he circled her in his arms, swaying gently with her.
Rose smiled up as him and shook her head. "No, but I won't say no to a backrub after it's just us."
He pressed a kiss on her forehead and exhaled contentedly. "Absolutely."
She was sorry they wouldn't be able to see James play in the World Cup. It was possible he'd go back, but odds are good he'd retire before England made it in a second time. It wasn't what anyone wanted, but she felt calm about her choice to skip it.
"Ready!" Claire called from down the hall.
Life wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that their family was being targeted, but it was their life and they were living it the best way they knew how.
~*~
Ron hadn't originally been included in the initial trip out to France to set up the tents for the game, but with all the ways he and George had fiddled with the new tents, he'd told Harry he wanted to come along and help with the set up.
It had turned into Ron being the only one required to set them up, while Harry, Rick, and Bill had gone about setting up the wards.
He hadn't seen Fleur's parents in a few years, and he'd caught up with them for several minutes while the others finished with the wards.
"Are we walking over to the stadium?" Ron asked Harry once they were done. "It's only about a ten minute walk from here, right?"
"I think we are going to walk," Harry said as he studied the rolling slope of grass that led down to the huge stadium, which was almost completed. They still had a few days to go before the game, but already people were lined up in tents in the fields beyond. "Honestly, it was a stroke for the Delacour's to get this opportunity. I didn't realize it was their land that was being used."
For the most part, the couple had been leasing the land to several local farmers, but when they'd been asked to host the World Cup this year, they'd made arrangements for the farmers to sit out this year and have the wonderful opportunity to travel aboard. They'd all make a lot of money off the Cup, including the Muggles, so it was good for everyone.
"I didn't know they had this much land," Bill said as he wandered over. "They told us they leased a bit of land to the farmers around them, but they don't talk about it."
The land was likely worth a lot of money, but everyone knew that farmers didn't make a lot and the profits from leasing the land would not amount to much of anything. It would possibly turn a large profit if they sold it, but it had apparently been in the family for a long time, and Fleur's sister had every intention of taking over the land when her parents were ready to step down.
Ron had asked Bill if his wife minded her sister taking the land, but Fleur was practical about it. Her parents had given her money in compensation for not taking it and she'd been able to use that money to stay home with her children, still leaving plenty left to spare for her children's children.
The three brothers stood there watching the construction of the stadium while standing in a bubble that no one, not the crews around them, nor any of the people who were attending would be able to see.
Rick wandered over with some sort of fruit and cheese platter that Fleur's mum, Apolline, had put together for him. "I've never been a World Cup," he told them all. "My parents are not into Quidditch."
Ron shot Rick a curious look. The young man rarely spoke of his parents and he didn't know much except that Rick was from a state near the Muggle capitol and that he was an only child.
"I used to think everyone was fanatical about Quidditch," Bill told him with an amused grin, "But the older I've become, the more I see that it's just a lot of very loud fans drowning out everyone else."
"When are we going to meet your parents?" Harry asked him curiously, and Ron had to admit he wanted to know the answer to that, as well. They all felt like Honor was now part of their family, especially as she and Caroline were orphans without any other family, and Rick was set on marrying her at some point.
But Rick shifted uncomfortably and only shrugged. "They haven't said when they will come. I haven't spoken to them in a few months."
Ron glanced to Harry and saw his best mate's expression and read his own concern mirrored there.
Bill clapped him on the shoulder. "Why not?" he asked bluntly.
Rick shrugged, but didn't shrug Bill off. "They're not super involved parents. They had me in the middle of a difficult time in their careers and hired a nanny for me. When I left for school, I typically stayed on at the school for the breaks. They weren't mean," he assured the others. "They just weren't home. If I'd gone home, it would have been to a babysitter or to my grandmother, but she died when I was fifteen."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Harry told him quietly. "That had to be rough."
"It wasn't the best, but I think," Rick said as a grin for Harry, "That coming here and seeing how your family works helped me to understand that it was them and not me. I write them once a month. Sometimes they write back and sometimes they don't."
"What do they do?" Ron asked, now more curious than ever.
Rick let out a snorting laugh. "They study ants."
All of them were silent for a long moment before Ron blurted out, "Ants? Ants as in the annoying bugs crawling on the ground at our feet?"
"Yeah," Rick confirmed with a barely contained chuckle.
"How…" Bill cleared his throat, "How does one have a very difficult time in their career when one studies ants?"
Rick let out a long sigh and shook his head. "The colony they were studying was invaded by another magical colony that was accidentally transported to the Americas by a cargo ship and it decimated their numbers and killed off the queen."
Ron opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it again and finally said, "I didn't even know there were magical ants, let alone more than one type! Who the bloody hell makes an entire career on studying ants and how on earth does that get paid for?!"
The younger man held out his hands, palms spread wide. "It's family money on my mother's side. They pay for it themselves and publish books that no one reads or cares about."
"Merlin's…" Bill's voice trailed off and he shook his head. "Well, you're part of our family now."
"I hate to say this, mate, but that's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Ron told him, still flummoxed. "Not the ants part, because… well that is stupid, but people study odd things all the time for a job. It's you being left behind for that… that's just asinine."
"Agreed," Harry and Bill said in unison.
He arrived home later that night to find Hermione sitting at the table with a cup of tea and a bit of toast, reading through the evening's paper. It had a picture of the sun and some headline about the World Cup and the eclipse which was happening late in the day. It was supposed to make the game more interesting, but they wouldn't be under where the total eclipse was taking place. "Hey," he said as he came over and kissed her cheek. They weren't exactly close, not like a husband and a wife should be, but they'd settled back into being good friends and Ron was content with that, especially now that Hugo had moved out to share the flat over the shop with Rick.
Since it was just the two of them, they needed to get along. They didn't have a buffer anymore.
"Hey," she glanced up and smiled. "I didn't feel up to supper, so I only made some toast for myself, since you said you were having dinner with Fleur's parents."
"That's fine, we were well fed," Ron told her as he went to grab a beer. "Did you know that Rick's parents study ants?"
"Hmm?" she looked over distractedly as he popped the top on the drink. "Ants? Oh, yes, they're… well they're not exactly…" Hermione let her voice trail off and she let out a long sigh. "I'll be honest, when I heard his last name, I knew I'd heard something of them before so I dug more. They're some of those snooty intellectuals who think only their area of study is worth knowing. I can't imagine Rick had a pleasant childhood, but he's such a nice, young man."
Ron sat across from her and laid out what Rick had told them and Hermione didn't look in the least surprised.
"I don't want to throw stones," she said with a self-conscious smile, "as I haven't always been the best of mothers, but that doesn't seem like they even tried." She shifted in her seat and then sat back. "I went to Rose's today to visit and it was good. We talked through a lot of what happened when she was younger. It's not healed, but I think it's a step in the right direction."
"Good!" Ron said, and was thankful he truly meant it. At one point, he'd been so angry with Hermione that he'd have liked to completely turn his back on her, but she was one of his oldest friends and he really did love her. Loving her meant wanting the best for her. He also knew that Rose being at odds with her mother wasn't good for their child, either. Fences still needed mending there, so he was thankful to hear that more progress was being made.
"I told Rose that I'd help with anything she wanted, and we're talking about what that might look like," she went on as she picked at a corner of her bit of toast. "I spoke with Allison today, as well," Hermione said, referring to the Minister of Magic. "She said… she said she's thinking of retiring after this year and asked if I was going to run."
Ron's whole body froze as he stared at the top of his wife's head and wondered if his whole world was about to change. But when she looked up, he realized with shock that it wasn't.
"I told her no," Hermione said quietly. "I said I liked my job, and that I want a second assistant so I can work a little less, but that someone else would be better for it."
His breath left his body in a hard rush. "Hermione… this is what you always wanted."
She shrugged, but her eyes were sad as they were fixed on his. "I gave up the most important people in my life for a job that doesn't love me and won't take care of me when I'm old and sick. If I've learned anything in the last few years, it's that pouring myself into something for some sort of validation doesn't give me worth. I don't want my grandkids looking at Ginny and seeing her as their grandmother and me as just some distant aunt that is tolerated."
It was, not to put to fine a point on it, close to how Rose and Hugo viewed their mother now. Ginny was more of a mum to them than Hermione and she always had been. "Wow," was all Ron was able to say.
"If we'd never had kids," Hermione went on in a small voice, "Or you and I hadn't married and I was still single, then devoting my life to a job would have made perfect sense. I would have that, and no people, relying on me. But that's not what happened, so I'm going to make a different choice for my grandchildren and that's starting with Claire. I asked Rose if we could take Claire to the beach house for a few days this summer and she agreed. It will give us time with her, to spoil her a bit, and give Rose and Andrew a few days alone."
Ron reached over and grasped her hand. "Just tell me when, and I'll clear my schedule. Well," he said with a short laugh, "After the World Cup. We're all hands on for that."
"Yeah," Hermione agreed with an answering smile. "After the game."
~*~
"I've lost track of her," Kingsly told Harry three days before the World Cup as the older man sat across from him in Harry's office. "I had her in Africa, but she's slipped and I have no clues to tell me where she's gone from there."
Harry let out a long sigh as he studied his old mentor. He'd been tracking Crabbe for years now, working under the radar, partially funded by the Ministry and partially funded by private interest groups… namely Andrew. "I'm mostly concerned she's going to turn up in France for the game and we'll have utter chaos."
"I don't have any good intel to say one way or the other," Kingsley admitted with a long, weary sigh. "I'm going to take a few days back here at home, cuddle a couple of my honorary grandchildren, and help with security while you're at the Cup. Once I've had a few days to clear my head, I'll get back to tracking her."
"At this point, it feels like we're chasing our tails and getting nowhere," Harry told him, but without the heat he'd have had even a year before. "I have to keep my family under guard at all time and we aren't getting anywhere. Nat wants to go to the game, and I can't say I blame her. She's been sheltered for so long, and after the childhood she led and the places she's seen… she speaks fluent French, but she hasn't been in France in years."
"I don't know if I'd agree to her going if I were in your shoes, but she's a grown women now and you have to let her make her own choices," Kingsley said with a long sigh. "Well, I'm off for now. I've been invited to dinner at Lily's and I haven't seen Lorelei in months."
"She's getting bigger," Harry said with a fond smile. "They all are."
And wasn't that the biggest problem? The children of his children were about to go out into the world and they'd be faced with the same problem of Crabbe and her stupid vendetta.
He made it home on time that night and greeted Ginny with a big hug and a long, slow kiss. "Everything is set," he told her preemptively, as he knew she was very worried about their trip to France. "Nat said if anything feels off, she'll stay back at Claude and Apolline's place with Wyatt."
"I know I'm worrying too much, but I can't help it," Ginny told him as she tightened her arms around his chest. "It's just been one thing after another and I feel like I can't catch my breath. I should be able to celebrate James' major accomplishment, but it feels like she's ruining everything."
"She's not going to ruin this," Harry told her. "Even if something happens, we'll deal with it. He made it to the top of his game and we get to celebrate. She can't take that from us."
"I hope you're right," Ginny whispered.