Love is Hope: Life after fifth year

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The only thought ringing in Hermione’s head over and over again was: ‘This can’t be happening!’

Two days ago she arrived at the Burrow by Portkey with Professor McGonagall. Though everyone was acting happy to see her, she felt the tension hanging in the air. The twins took turns in watching their business and staying at the Burrow. Bill was spending his nights in his old room, instead of at the Order’s Headquarters. Charlie had wanted to be there for his family, too, but Mr. Weasley had forbidden him to jeopardise his mission by abandoning Romania.

Hermione had told the Weasleys the truth on her where-abouts this summer, but had not yet said anything about her conversation with McGonagall. To Ginny and Ron she had confessed that she’d been to see Harry. While Ginny had been anxious to hear how he was, Ron had been a little grouchy at first. She felt irritated at Ron’s jalousie, Harry was her friend, too. But it had been quickly forgotten in favour for a good rant about Percy’s arrogance.

The day before had been Harry’s birthday. She knew it must have stung Harry to hear them all on the phone together, while he was alone in that house. Hermione was surprised to find neither Ron nor Ginny had told him yet about Percy, but she supposed that was best since he could do without that piece of bad information for now. All in all it had been an ok day; nothing could have prepared them for what the end of it would bring.

The Daily Prophet was on the kitchen table in front of her, tears streaming from her eyes. Ginny sat next her, blowing her nose in a tissue, Ron had retreated to his room, pale in the face. Mr. Weasley and Bill had left for Headquarters, there had been no news from either of the twins yet, and Mrs. Weasley was making a lot of noise preparing food to distract herself.

// Massive Dementor attack on Muggle hospitals!

Last night the Dementor rebellion took a destructive turn. What is by some believed to be only the start of a destructive campaign organized by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named put the Muggle community in deep mourning. Hospitals in Muggle London were hit yesterday evening.

What Muggles call the ‘maternity ward’ was attacked by what they have named the ‘Touch of Death’. This ward is where Muggles put their new-borns to check their health and surviving chances. Dementors administered the Kiss on several of these defenceless creatures. Soulless humans can not survive, and the babies died within hours.

The Ministry was unable to help these innocents, and while the Muggle world is in a useless frenzy to find a cure, already 16 infants have died. Investigations are still on-going, but it seems to be safe to say that no other baby was kissed during this attack.

Unconfirmed sources claimed to find it very peculiar that all victims had been not even a day old. It is common knowledge that untamed Dementors rarely take the soul of one so young, since the dark creature feeds on happy memories.//

Several articles were dedicated on the attack: from what possessed Muggles to keep newborns into a ward in a hospital, to the habits of a dementor. Nothing was spoken of the real reason of the attack.

The babies had all been born the day of Harry’s birthday, sixteen had been kissed on his sixteenth birthday... It didn’t take a huge leap to conclude that this was Voldemort’s twisted idea of a birthday present.

They had tried to phone Harry, but his Uncle had answered and not let his nephew to the phone. Or maybe Harry didn’t want to... She wanted to go there, to *do* something, instead of crying like a useless girl. She couldn’t help the fresh tears when she thought of the little newborns, and their families.

“Can we go to the village, mum?”

Mrs. Weasley seemed too surprised to react instantly, so Ginny continued: “Look, mum, we’ll drag Ron with us to defend *us*, little girls. Besides, we have the Portkeys. I... I just want to know what the Muggles are thinking...”

Mrs. Weasley looked twenty years older then when Hermione had first met her: “We’ll all go”

Though Hermione hadn’t even shown any interest of going, she watched Ginny bolt up the stairs, and Mrs. Weasley floo to let her husband know where they would be, without saying anything.

During the long walk to St. Ottery Catchpole nothing was said. The Weasleys seemed unsure of where to go, once they arrived at the first home, so Hermione led the way, to what she hoped would be the centre of the little village. A couple of streets later, they indeed found ‘the shop street’. A bakery, a butcher’s shop, a newspaper shop and a pub.

Leading the party, she went to the stand with the newspapers. None of them had headlines of what had happened. Apparently some trouble in Isreal-Palestina had been more sensational. Opening one the London Times she looked for the report.

// 16 dead babies, coincidence or not?

Last night 16 newborns in several London hospitals died of cot death approximately at the same hour. Rumours had it that these happenings could not be just coincidence. The police however is not encouraging those rumours, since no evidence of a crime was found. The doctors from the several hospitals collaborate the story of this incident to be a tragic whim of nature.//

Ron almost exploded when Hermione had read the piece: “That’s it? A tragic whim of nature! I’ll show them a tragic whim of nature”

“Ron!” Mrs. Weasley shushed her son sternly.

So the Muggle world isn’t even suspicious about the accident? Why would the Daily Prophet make that up?

Hermione walked into the shop in search for tabloids. When Ginny asked her what she was doing, Hermione answered: “I’m looking for the Muggle variants of the Quibbler”

Mrs. Weasley stayed outside while Hermione, Ginny and Ron were leafing through the tabloids.

Ginny: “Hey, they talk about it in here! They say that it were terrorists using a ge-ne-tically manufactured vi-rus... What does that mean, Hermione?”

“Basically that some bad people made some disease to kill newborns for political reasons. This one says it was the government testing a new lethal gas”

“I have something about UFO’s. Whatever that is. Hey, at least they talk about feeling the dementors a few hours before they started to die!”

“Keep your voice down, Ron! And it’s Unidentified Flying Objects!” Upon seeing the confused faces she quickly explained some Muggles believed in extra-terrestrial life forms experimenting on humans.

“I *have* to tell Luna this one sometime!” was Ginny’s reaction.

***

Hermione was beyond irritated. Why did Harry have to stay at the Dursleys? Didn’t they understand, whatever reason he had to say there, it wasn’t worth it: he was going to get worse all by himself there with those Muggles!? This news, combined with the fact that the Muggle world couldn’t care less that 16 babies had died, while the Daily Prophet had spoken about them calling it the ‘Touch of Death’, made Hermione’s nerves a little more sensitive than other days.

Mr. Weasley had come home for lunch with the news that they were to stay at the Burrow, and not leave again under no circumstances, to great annoyance of Ron and Ginny. After a lot of yelling on both parties, since the kids had figured they would all immediately go to Grimmauld Place to be with Harry like last summer, they at least knew part of the reason why that wasn’t going to happen.

Though the possibility of Percy getting his way in the custody-case was very small, with all the chaos at the Ministry it was going to take a long time to get a clear ruling on his request. This meant that, in the meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were not going to do anything to play into the cards of Percy. Bringing Ron and Ginny to the Headquarters could be seen as willfully putting them in danger, as well as an attempt to hide them in case custody would be granted to their older brother.

The fact that this didn’t apply to Hermione wasn’t mentioned by any of the children and turned moot when it became clear that Harry wasn’t even at the Grimmauld Place.

To great annoyance of Ron, Hermione had retreated to do some homework to sooth her nerves. Of course the fact that they hadn’t any homework assignments, since they weren’t even sure what classes they would be taking next year, hadn’t stopped Hermione from studying. Not that it did any good, since she was too tense to pay the needed attention to her books.

Finally she had managed to get her mind focused on the Ancient Runes text, when she was startled by a familiar owl. Opening the window she was mentally berating herself for forgetting to write to him all summer. Viktor Krum had not been pleased when he heard she wasn’t allowed to come to Bulgaria last summer, but she had promised to write him as often as possible.

But she hadn’t written him since the whole thing at the Ministry, since Sirius’ death. The last letter she’d had from him had just been before the OWLs started, to wish her luck on the exams. Feeling a little guilty she opened the letter. At least his written English was better than his pronunciation.

//My dear Hermione,

I have been waiting for news from you! Have you forgotten about me? I read that they officially recognize He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back. Is it true that your friend Potter was at your Ministry while he was supposed to be at school? I hope you weren’t there with him, too!/

‘What does he mean by that?’

/I also read about your OWL results, I cut the little article about you from our newspaper and put it with this letter. If you don’t understand all the words you can use the dictionary I bought you for your birthday. But I’m sure you’ve been practising and are already fluently speaking my language. It just says that you achieved the highest scores of OWLs in this century./

‘Why does he pester me about the translation, when he’s going to write it down, anyway?’ Hermione asked herself when she was looking at the minuscule printing of the one-sentence-article.

/Will you be able to visit me? I’m sure it will be far more safe here for you than in your country, since you are Muggleborn. I do not think my team will be going to England anytime soon, so you’ll just have to come here. I’m willing to pay for the trip if you want.

What have you been studying lately? Have you been thinking what courses you will be taking next year? Tell me all about it.

Anyway I have been training with my team and we’ve had some matches, of course not one as important as the one of World Cup, but we won them all./

There was a list of all the matches he had won since the last time she’d written, with a detailed report on how he’d caught the snitch, which Hermione skipped.

/As you know I have been trying to find other work next to my Seeker position in my national team. I regretfully still haven’t found the job that suited me, although I have received many offers of course. But do not worry, it is not like I really need the money, and I have my intellectual pass-times to keep my mind sharp./

Now there was a whole list of books he had read with comments on the ones that had been worth his time, and the ones that hadn’t./

I expect an answer soon,

All my affection,

Your Viktor//

Hermione frowned, the tone of the letter didn’t feel right to her. He wrote about her learning his language before, but to her knowledge he had never written he expected her to have learned to speak it fluently. And the way ‘I am certain you will agree with me on the arrogance of Aduur Miofar in the fortieth chapter of “Magical Bulgarian History, seen by an outsider”’ sounded, didn’t rub her the right way either. She was supposed to read the book *and* agree with him? Like she hadn’t anything better to do with her time?

She rummaged through her papers to find the letters she’d kept from him. Maybe it was because of her state of mind, or because she didn’t believe it any more that some inclinations in sentences came from lack of knowledge of the English language, but with every letter she reread, she saw an evolution.

The more she’d listened to his suggestions, and thanked him for it, the more the tone of the letters changed from friendly advice, to slight manipulation. She wasn’t pleased to have realised this only now. Though she knew he was a good man, she had enough attempted coaxing from Ron in her life. She was tempted to write him a heated response, but decided against it.

Trying to calm down, she thought defeated that Ginny had been right all along about Viktor being a bit arrogant. She remembered her first impression about him, thinking he looked really grumpy, and then his shy attempt of asking her to the Ball. Though she refused to be star-struck, it was quite flattering to have been asked by him. Especially since she had been feeling worthless during that period, since neither of her male best friends seemed to notice that they could’ve asked her.

She was quite put out when she had been his Second Task, though. Though flattered also, she had been jealous of Ron being Harry’s. Especially since it hadn’t been long that Ron had been mad at Harry over nothing, and she’d always been there for Harry. It was then also that she started to realise Viktor may want something more than friendship.

She wasn’t sure how to deal with that, she felt too young to be dating a three year older bloke, or even felt too preoccupied to date at all, and lastly the chances of long-distance relationships to work out are slim to none. So the day he left when he took her aside, she’d explained to him she wanted to be friends for now.

He had said he understood, but had always left that little something in his letters to remind her that if she was ready, he wanted to be more then a friend. Maybe she had mistaken his behaviour to be similar to Harry’s. Both being famous and a bit shy at the same time. The more she thought about it, the more she realised Viktor wasn’t really shy. He was just grumpy towards people he believed to be a waste of his time.

She had always toyed with the idea of dating him, but now she was starting to see that maybe she was keeping him hanging as a back-up choice. She didn’t want to be that sort of girl, and decided then and there she was going to keep him as a friend only, and maybe risk loosing him completely.

Sighing she grabbed a quill and started writing, playing the same game he was trying to pull with her. Though normally she wasn’t the kind of person to play mind games, she wanted to put him subtly in his place for trying to control her, even if it was just a little.

//Dear Viktor,

I’m sorry I haven’t written before, but things have been quite hectic around here. I can assure you I’m quite safe where I am at the moment, so don’t you worry about me! I know you’ll understand that I can’t go to Bulgaria right now.

I have to take care of Harry, he needs me. And I will have a really full study program this year and since you know I can’t wait for term to start, I will be very busy during the summer studying. I hope I will find enough time to write you during the next couple of years, but I’m sure you understand that I will not have a lot of free time.

I have been thinking about the future a lot lately, and I believe I’d like to be a teacher here at Hogwarts, or maybe work at our Ministry, preferably something to do with writing new laws, or maybe taking SPEW further. But for now I want to study as much as I can.

I have to end this letter now

Cordially,

Your friend Hermione//

There, Hermione knew her letter was exceptionally short, and she hadn’t written any flattery about his Quidditch achievements, nor given any mention about the books he wanted her to read. Now she just had to wait for his response, to see how she’d continue her relationship with him.

Before she could put the letter in an envelope, Ginny entered the room. Recognizing the owl she lifted an eyebrow. Hermione gave her both letters. Though she wasn’t one to be very open, Ginny was the only one who knew everything that was going on with Viktor. The only rule about Ginny getting all details about Viktor, were her complete silence, especially towards Ron, since he would pester Hermione about it endlessly, and no comments or girly talk about him with Hermione.

True to the arrangement, the only thing coming from Ginny was a scowl when she read Viktor’s letter, and a proud smile when she read Hermione’s. Handing them back Ginny watched silently when Hermione gave the letter to Viktor’s owl.

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