I need some fine wine...

Chapter One - And I will always be Your Soldier

And I will always be your soldier
I'll be marching by your side
I'm not deserting
I'll be there for you
Oh please please believe in this oath of allegiance

Oh, I will be strong for you, I will belong to you
Carry you, bleed for you
Run for miles

*********

It was quiet. Not say, recently-cleaned-church-quiet, it was more like an eerie stillness. A silence, perhaps that seemed to keep them silent too. Them being around four thousand witches and wizards, with centaurs, hippogriffs and giants mixed among them, bringing the total to around 4800 living creatures.

During gatherings like these one may think many things. The only question in Harry's mind was: I wonder how many will be left standing? He stood, dressed in grey, wind blowing on him like a cleansing breeze across his face. His eyes closed for just a moment. Enjoying the silence and the peace. So different to the chaos and noise which was inevitably to come.

A tap on his shoulder woke him from his thoughts.

“Are you ready?” Hermione said. The wind was stroking her face, making the loose strands of her hair fly across the honey brown eyes that he had seen so many times during the last eight years.

“Well, not really. But I suppose it's too late to run home and eat Mrs. Weasley´s minced pies.” he told her, ignoring the insecurity the thousands of warriors behind him just started to sense. If their leader was uncertain, how should they feel?

“Harry…” she said with the most sensitivity and concern he had ever heard. “You will defeat this. You are powerful, you are brave, you are our leader -“ she motioned to the beings behind them.

“- I know you'll survive”.

Harry smiled at her.

“Do you know how much I love you?” he asked as he hugged her. The crowd behind them started stirring and the silence was broken.

“No, I don't. Tell me!” Hermione replied teasingly. She looked up at him only to find him staring out into the valley. The hilltop that the thousands of creatures were standing on had a magnificent view of the valley below. In the midst of hills and mountains a camp was set. It belonged to Voldemort and his followers. It had been quiet for some time now, but Harry had heard a shout from below.

`Hermione…' he started. `I know. I'll prepare it' she instantly replied and dashed of to her tent to get his wand.

`WIZARDS, WITCHES, CREATURES, GIANTS, SOLDIERS. IT IS TIME! VOLDEMORT WILL NOT COME OUT OF THIS BATTLE AS A HUMAN. HE WILL NOT COME OUT OF THIS BATTLE AS A DEAD MAN. HE WILL NOT COME OUT AT ALL. HE WILL BE VANQUISHED. HE WILL NOT PREVAIL. HE WILL PERISH!

Harry was met by thousands of screams, shouts and grunts.

“GO FRIENDS, FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO LIVE, FOR THE RIGHTS OF WIZARDKIND. FIGHT FOR YOURSELVES!”

^^^^~~~***~~~^^^^

“Miss Granger”

…

“Miss Granger”

…

“MISS-“

“I'm here Pricilla! For goodness sakes, shouting is completely unnecessary and I expect you never to raise your voice again.” Hermione Granger answered.

“At least when you're addressing me. I fully comprehend that fact that you might lose your temper when speaking to Peter Hollowed. But don't tell him I said that.”

“Sorry Miss, but your three o'clock meeting has been cancelled by Mr. Willow. He said that he's free on the 24^th next month. Is that alright with you?” Pricilla Clearwater who was sitting on the other end of the speakerphone was eagerly anticipating an answer.

Monsieur Jacques Willow (pronounced Will-awe) was a very stubborn man and Miss Granger was an equally stubborn woman. If she owled Mr. Willow's secretary to tell him that Miss Granger had said `non' then the `delightful' (delightful as in mouldy cheese on a platter of carcass) Mr. Willow would blame her for everything. And tonight, the third date with the oh-so-handsome Marques was not a night she'd want interrupted by…well, anything really. But least of all, a bad-tempered Frenchman.

“Pricilla-“

“Yes Miss”

“-Did I ask for a meeting on the 24^th of next month?”

“No Miss”

“Well then, I don't want a meeting on the 24^th of next month. I want a meeting on the 5^th of this month; that is to say, today.”

How Hermione Granger managed to keep her voice calm and yet unbelievably domineering, livid, frustrated and authorial all at the same time was simply beyond Pricilla.

“Yes Miss Granger. I'll owl his secretary”

^^^^~~~**~~~^^^^

Her elbows were on her desk. She held her hands over her face while she put her shoes back on.

Hermione had fallen asleep and dreamt about the last battle. The memory of her standing on a hilltop, knowing that she might not get away alive made her want to fall down and die right then and there. But knowing that she had to fight, and knowing that others relied on her made her strong. Knowing that `others' was more or less Harry Potter made her even stronger.

She briefly wondered if he dreamed the same dreams she did.

Hermione stood up with her shoes on making her look tall (even more so than she already was) and made her way over to the bay window of her office. “Paris is a beautiful city” she thought.

Three years after the war's end, she had decided to get on with her life as everyone around her was. The twins re-opened their shop (which became even more successful than before) and Lee Jordan pursued his commentating career within a year after the war. Harry finished his NEWT's, much to Hermione's pleasure; Ron never did though but instead went directly into Healer training.

When asked how he got in without NEWT's he simply answered “Charm”.

Fred said that no one really cared about grades and such so briefly after the war. All they knew is that they needed more healers and anyone who fought on Harry Potter's right side was more than welcome.

“I do feel sorry for the bloke who gets Ron as their healer. He'll probably have a bloody nose and Ron will give the poor man some skele-gro instead. Poor chap will end up looking like Hagrid jr. before Ron's done anything about it!” he added before everyone at the dinner table last Christmas bust out laughing.

A smile spread across Hermione's face.

Ginny and Luna went back to school as well. The former just graduated a year after the war's end and had for the first year worked in 16 different places, travelled all across Europe briefly perusing a modelling career and eventually settled to become a teacher.

The education required to become a teacher in the wizarding world is six years long. Not only do you have to have a fundamental training that lasts for two years, but then you had to specialize yourself in what you want to teach. This process takes another two years and Ginny had just finished that education.

Potions is the thing that really fascinates her, so after a specialisation, two more years are required to learn all recipes, instructions and Merlin knows what else. Most students found that time inadequate since over 50 000 of them exist.

Ginny was becoming a potions professor mainly to `ease the suffering of poor first years and also brighten the dungeons up after Snape's reign of terror'.

The previous sentence was actually a part of her application letter to `Bilebrary' - `Teaching teachers how to teach since 1606'

The latter (Luna) had easily passed her NEWT's, scoring just three NEWT's under Hermione. Luna had fought strongly with them in the war but unfortunately had her left leg amputated.

Bright and as optimistic as ever she overcame her handicap and excelled in a division of wizarding sports invented in Sweden called Forestrampaging.

Taken from the Vikings, it basically involved sprinting through a thick forest, avoiding nargles, centaurs and whatnot while collecting diverse species of insects and flora from the woodland. She became a celebrated athlete in England and after studying journalism for two years she recently became the editor of the Daily Prophet, thus taking over from Barnabas Cuffe who retired due to a severe case of black boils in-between his right forefinger and thumb.

Seven years since the war ended and so many people had become successful young citizens. Not all had that pleasure. Most of the boys in Harry's year had ended up injured or worse. Justin Flinch-Fletchety, Dean Thomas, Crabbe and Goyle, Hannah Abbott and Zabini among others perished in the war. Most of the younger ones also died.

Hermione was at Harry's side throughout the entire ordeal and lead the group of soldiers when Harry was unavailable.

“Whether I'm in the loo or duelling with Voldemort, I'm still classified as unavailable” he told her.

It was probably this which caused her to be portrayed as a strong, powerful and influential woman in the media. It made Hermione want to crawl further into the ground, hiding from the fame and the attention, but she soon realized that she could use it to her advantage.

She raised awareness of S.P.E.W. and donations of large amounts of money were given to her in interest of helping her build a company which would undoubtedly grow and flourish. It represented rights, justice and humanity; and after the war, the idea bloomed.

S.P.E.W. enlightened the public about the mistreatment of elves. At least in its first year as a business. The next few years it collected donations form the public to provide houselves with better accommodation in households, belongings (like soap, which the entire public agreed was well-needed) and education (there were classes that taught houselves how to best clean, sweep and wash and there were also newly added classes in anger management and cooking - taught by Hogwarts elves).

Lately Hermione had been thinking of expanding the business to not only help elves, but goblins, squibs and perhaps in the future, even fellow wizards.

As she stared out of the window lost in her thoughts, a knock was made on the door.

She turned around and with some wandless magic opened the door. It was Pricilla.

“Yes Pricilla?”

“Vladimir down in Research thought you might want to see this Miss Granger” Pricilla stated, handing out a newspaper.

Hermione strode over to her desk filling a crystal glass with water. She cooled it with her wandless magic again and asked:

“What is it?” while taking a few clunks of water.

“It's the Daily Prophet Miss. From today. Apparently there's something about Mr. Potter in here” Pricilla said and put the paper down on Hermione's desk.

“Harry Potter?” Hermione said, taking another drink.

“Yes.”

Hermione took another large gulp of the water and with the glass in her hand made her way around the desk to get a better look of the front page:

POLTERGEISTS IN AZKABAN PEEVING THE HELL OUT OF PRISONERS

Hermione looked up at Pricilla with a questionable look on her face. Since Luna became the editor, really big news appeared only after pace 11. The first 11 pages included the latest on sightings of yet undiscovered species of animal and plants and gossip. Luna's prioritising was very peculiar indeed.

When something really interested Luna, she usually put it on the front page. Like when a huge amount of Death Eaters escaped from the ministry and one of the Prophet's reporters just happened to be stationed there and took magnificent and exclusive photographs of Aurors working their magic on feeble Death Eaters. One of them showed a Death Eater getting stunned three times by an Auror (most likely Kingsley Shacklebolt) and that photograph spread like wildfire over the country. Sweet and innocent she may seem (although a bit unusual) Luna really likes a bit of clean violence. If violence ever is clean…oh well Hermione thought.

She turned to page ten:

`SOMEONE TOOK A PISS ON THE WALL LEADING INTO THE LEAKY CAULDRON'

And then to page 11.

In the centre of page 11 she found Harry Potter in a circular picture smiling into the camera while fiddling with his tie and straightening his glasses. The headline overhead read:

HANDSOME HARRY TO BECOME MINISTER? ANSWER: YES!

She didn't care what the text around him said, for Hermione could simply not stop staring at Harry's picture. He had grown since the last time she saw him. It sounded silly, she knew. `Twenty five-year-old men don't grow over three months' she said to herself.

Somehow Harry seemed to stand tall and proud, and with a bit of a five o'clock shadow on his face he looked at least five years older. His glasses were smaller and suited his face better than the round ones he had though his childhood. The suit also added age, but a sense of class filled him in it and the green tie he was wearing brought his magnificent eyes out (The Prophet started printing photographs in colour a few months or so after Luna's overtaking).

She finally drew her eyes away from the picture and turned towards Pricilla.

“What is it Vladimir wanted me to know?”

“Well, apparently Harry-“

“That's Mr. Potter to you Pricilla. Your brother-in-lay may be a Weasley but it's Percy Weasley. Harry'll have nothing to do with him” Hermione shortly stated. She put the paper down onto her desk and filled her glass with more water. Once again cooling it with wandless and non-verbal magic.

“Yes Miss Granger” Pricilla said. She was really getting annoyed now. Percy is sort of nice, in that way when there's been a heat-wave for two weeks and they're followed by three weeks of thunder and rain.

“Anyway,” Pricilla continued but was once again interrupted by her boss.

“If you're going to inform me that Harry is running for Minister of Magic save your breath. Harry hates the Ministry, he wants nothing to do with it and I wouldn't be surprised if this is all just a rumour that some group of devoted fans posing as ministry officials called the Prophet and told them to write”.

Hermione put the glass down and took off her black jacket to reveal a white shirt underneath, tucked into a midnight blue pencil skirt. She picked up the glass again, taking a small sip.

“Well, with all due respect Miss Granger. It is most definitely not a rumour. All the newspapers in Britain are reporting the same thing; the French newspapers have contacted the British Wizarding Embassy and received confirmation and press conferences have been booked for two weeks onward”

The glass Hermione held in her hand was made of the very finest crystal from the hills of Switzerland. It cost thirty galleons per glass and a set of six was given to her as going-away present from Neville Longbottom. The set now consisted of five as the one Hermione was holding fell to the floor and she didn't bother repair it.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, no characters, no songs; no rights to songs, no names and places….you get the idea.

Author's Note: This is my very first fanfic and I got the idea while travelling on a train (Haha, ironic, JKR and me, both thought of a story on a train!) from England to Paris. I liked the idea of all the Harry Potter characters being all grown up sand dealing with real things, like work problems and such, but in a magical way. Also, I wanted to bring back elegance and class to stories so expect to read about balls and galas and cocktail parties. I've only written two and a half chapters so far so don't expect updates all that often.

Here comes the cool part. Since I've only written about three chapters, and I still have no idea how long this story will be or how it will end, I want suggestions from you, the readers. I've always wanted to do that, as a reader on portkey myself, but authors always seem to have their stories planned. I want you, the readers to give me ideas and inspirations. You can write a few words like: Harry, Hermione, Parisian café, night, he spills wine on her etc. or Harry owls Ron, telling him he lost his job, etc. I don't care how you do it, just as long as you do, do it. Haha. So thank you, please leave a review at the end, and enjoy I need some fine wine… I think I'll go get some now!

Song by:

(Marit Bergman - I will always be your Soldier)