Ok, I'm still here, and I still own nothing....
Chapter 19: The Exile Years Part 2.
************************Kentucky Estate**********************************
December 25, 2017
10:00 am
Hermione smiled as Emilia opened a present, though the smile wasn't quite genuine, not as it should be, not the smile that could light a room when she wanted to or melt a heart into a puddle, Ron noticed absently. He watched from his perch next to Luna on an adjoining couch as Hermione's eyes flicked over to Ginny and Neville where they were sitting, talking to Elliot in soft, laughing tones. A normal wizard, one who had not had years of hard won training under Alastor Moody and later years of harder won experience in the field operations against the Death Eaters and their like might not have caught it. Actually even he might not have caught it, if he didn't know her better than almost anyone save his wife or his own daughter...or his missing brother. Emilia grinned as she held up the present, a copy of Modern Practical Wizardry; the version with chapters by her mother, her grandfather, and most importantly, her missing father.
Emilia grinned as she leaned over to her brother and opened the book to that very chapter. It was one Harry had written a couple of years after they were born, on Familiars and their usages beyond that of carrying the mail. Horatio nodded and pointed to a small sketch of Hedwig. She nudged Hermione and pointed to the picture. Hermione gave her a small, tight smile in response. As Emilia turned back to the book, Hermione excused herself softly and left the room.
With a tiny sound, a great deal like a moan, Ron leaned over to Luna and whispered something to the blond. She nodded as he got up and followed Hermione from the room. Behind them on another couch with Neville and Elliot, Ginny glanced up with an odd expression on her face. It was not quite sadness, or fear, or regret, though it did have all of those emotions in it. She jumped slightly as the door to the kitchen slammed of its own accord as the heavy door slipped out of Ron's hands.
In the kitchen, Hermione was bent over a tea kettle. Ron watched without comment as she filled it with water from the tap and set it on a ceramic coaster. With a wave of her fingers the kettle was whistling and bouncing as the water instantly heated to boiling. She had more or less stopped even pretending she needed a wand for such trivial magic as imparting kinetic energy to water molecules. Hermione poured a cup into a waiting cup and dipped a tea bag into it. Without turning around, "Do you want some Ron?"
"Sure Hermione," Ron replied even though he really didn't want tea right now, privately he thought firewhiskey would be a more suitable drink for this conversation. Or maybe tequila, it really didn't matter in the end.
"Now..." She paused as she turned and looked at him over the rim of her mug. Her eyes were glittering with emotion, as she looked him over.
Her and Harry...both of them, it's always the eyes, I can't read either of them like they can each other, like they always could, but even I can tell she's just barely hanging on. Ron thought distractedly.
"What?" Hermione continued, as she sipped her tea. Her chocolate eyes bored into his, as she leaned forward over the butcher's block counter. He didn't answer for a long moment.
Until, with a soft sigh he did, "Hermione you can't keep on with this. If not for her, then for the kids, yours and mine included. It's bad enough that Em and Horry are definitely cold towards her. It's effecting poor Elliot every time he walks into the middle of this silent war, and my daughter, your goddaughter by the way, is getting stuck in the middle." A slight tic developed at the corner of her eye, but he wasn't done, "and I'm tired of getting stuck in the middle between my sisters damn it." The last words came out more forcefully than he had intended as his fist crashed down on the heavy table, rattling several random dishes that the kids had been using for snacks earlier this morning.
Hermione glared at him for a good minute, and if he didn't care for her so much it would have been enough for him to run, but in the end she broke first. Taking her cup she paced to the bay window in the corner of the kitchen and looked out at the light snow falling over the grounds. "Ron," she said softly, tightly, "I know." She placed her cup carefully in the sink and walked towards the rear stairs, still without looking at him. "I'll be down in the gym Ron."
**********************Southern Florida, the Keys**********************
September 19, 2014
Hermione looked out over the waves from the porch of yet another of the various houses Dumbledore had acquired in his almost one hundred and sixty years. The gentle breezes coming off the Atlantic caused a little shiver as she was only wearing an emerald green bikini top over a pair of khaki shorts. She had just gotten back from taking the kids to swim, and had yet to change into something else. Of course the fact that she had been hit on, on the beach, by some local was causing more than a little heartburn as well. It was not the actual proposition, per say, but the circumstances. She had been approached many, many times on both assignments and in real life, but the fact that Harry wasn't there to turn them into a newt...that was the problem, as it always was.
She sighed and kicked her feet absently, causing the whitewashed porch swing she was currently occupying to dance gently back and forth. Her eyes cut sideways for a moment, "Hello, Albus." She said into the breeze. Albus Dumbledore padded over from the door into the main house and sat down next to her. "I'm glad you came, the sprogs missed you."
"As am I." Dumbledore replied. "I am heartened in how well they are doing." He half turned to her. "Hermione, my dear, I..." Dumbledore trailed off, even with all his experience, he really couldn't think of what to say. "I wish I could be with them more often. But I..."
"Am needed, I know, grandfather, and they do too." Hermione reassured him. She stood and leaned against the railing of the porch, watching absently as gulls fluttered about in the air over the beach. "Have you any news on your front?" She asked hopefully.
"No." Dumbledore replied bitterly, they both knew his tone wasn't directed at her, but at the situation. "The resistance has no idea where Malfoy might have hidden the caldron. We do know he does not have it with him or in his palace. If he had I would have risked a direct confrontation to retrieve it. However without it?" The ancient wizard shrugged. He groaned a bit, exaggerated enough to cause a ghost of a smile to flit across Hermione's lips before it vanished again. "We will find a way, Hermione." Dumbledore briefly placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.
"I already know a way..." Hermione turned and leaned back against the rail. "But the path may be worse than the cure." Dumbledore nodded minutely, but let her continue, let her get it out. "If Harry and I wanted to, we could put what Malfoy did to our children to rights...we would have to sacrifice other children to do it. But..." Her chocolate eyes begged Dumbledore for a solution. "Albus, if it comes down to it, if there is no other way, I hope you can stop both Harry and I." Her eyes dropped from his, and gazed at her clenched hands. "If I have to become the next Dark Mistress, and Harry the next Dark Lord, we will to save our children. Albus, God help me I don't want to, but I can't do this much longer. I want, I need to discover the potion that will counteract Malfoy's poison, but if I can't," Hermione paused and took a breath, and her next words were almost lost to the wind, "I will perform the transference ritual."
Without another word, Dumbledore swept his granddaughter-in-law into a powerful hug. Hermione's sudden tears stained his floral print shirt and his long, silvery beard. "I need Harry back..." she whispered hoarsely, "more than anything else. More than my honor, more than my conscience, more than my self-respect. And I will have him back." Hermione pulled back and stared him in the eyes, and the 6'5" wizard stepped back from the 5'9" witch in the bikini as a terrible fire glowed harshly in her eyes. "If he dies there in that damn fucking hole, if some goddamn little two-bit wanna-be Death Eater kills him because he can't fight back for fear of harming his children...Albus, know that before the bonding takes me to be with him, I will kill every Death Eater, and every creature under Malfoy's command. And God help me, I won't stop there...
*******************Training Rooms, Marauder's Haven*************
December 25, 2017
1:00 pm (3 hours later.)
What Hermione had blithely tossed off, as the "gym," was a training facility equivalent to the best the Ministry and Hogwarts had had to offer. Years ago, Dumbledore had prepared several facilities for them to run to and regroup in relative safety if the worst happened. The old house had evidentially been built on a series of caverns and caves, and immediately on exploring them; they had found that the stories of this plantation dating back to the American Civil War were true. From old documents they found in the caves, they seemed to have been part of the Underground Railroad, a fact that Hermione had briefly stated to Ron with a smidgen of her old joy at the new knowledge, before retreating back within her walls. In addition, Ron had been extremely grateful to find several casks of a very old whiskey and had shared one with the twins and Sirius already.
But whatever the original purpose of the cavern had been, the extensive caves, magically and physically, structurally reinforced, had become a very well equipped training and operations facility almost as good as their old headquarters in the dungeons of Hogwarts. A large gym, complete with mats, practice dummies and racked, bladed weapons and staves stood to one side. Next to that, a full weight and exercise room took up a corner of the main cave, while stuck over in a nearby, heavily soundproofed and ventilated cavern, a firing range stretched for almost five hundred meters in the Kentucky limestone.
That area was mostly Fred and George's when they were here. Every one of them was fully qualified with the Muggle weaponry, but they just thought it cool. Even though they did keep blowing up stuff, trying to improve it. The firearms had proven to be the most efficient way to battle the werewolves that Malfoy occasionally sent in after them as a great deal of silver darts or bullets could be sent down range very quickly, unlike the bows the old Ministry had tried to make the Aurors and agents use. A dirty, current American military issue pulse rifle sat, smoking slightly, on a range table, with many, many shattered targets down range.
Ginny noticed all of this as she came down the spiral stairs from the basement of the manor and passed the entrance to the range. I do need to get in some range time myself. She thought distractedly as she continued on towards the dojo and the sounds she heard coming from that area.
She stopped as she reached it and looked on, silently watching as Hermione stood in the center of the mat, as four slightly ghostly images surrounded her. Hermione was just dressed in a black sports bra over a pair of black workout pants, with the SG-1 logo down one leg. Her hair was pulled back from her face as she waited, not moving, breathing slowly and deeply. In addition to the physical targets and training aides scattered about, the area could, to a degree act much like the currently lost to them, Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, as evidenced by the "ghosts".
In a rush they attacked her. All four of the attackers were moving much faster than a human should have been able to do so, but when they reached Hermione...she wasn't there. Ginny watched with a slightly slack jaw as Hermione spun away from a roundhouse kick launched by the first one. Her outline was slightly blurred as she moved, fading to solidity as she stopped, briefly, between movements. Hermione's right leg came up with the motion of the spin, hammering the first on the back of the head and knocking him, spinning through the air. Two and Three launched punches at her simultaneously as Four swept at her legs. Flipping backwards, she dodged away from them. Four dove forward at her, only to meet her right heel as it came around in a high kick. He fell as if poleaxed and did not move. An instant later the ghost vanished as if he weren't ever there.
The other three retreated slightly, One having gotten up and rejoined the others. They stood slightly apart and visibly gathered themselves. Hermione glared at them, then as her eyes flicked over to visibly notice Ginny, she MOVED. A dark blur spun to the left and One crumpled, his head at an odd angle as he lay for a second before vanishing. Two and Three reached behind themselves and pulled weapons from nowhere, Two a dark, twisted wand and a long curved knife, Three a pair of small axes. They quickly moved to either side of her, and a green bolt shot out from Two; it passed though a blurred patch to strike Three. He slowly slid to the floor, but Hermione was already moving. She rolled forward and bounced up, leading with her elbow. It landed with a sickening crunch on its nose. A twist and a left handed blow later; the wand was shattered. Two stepped back, thrust its knife forward, and with a flicker of movement the knife was in Hermione's hand and back in its chest a half a heartbeat later. Two and Three flickered out together. As she was standing looking at the space where the pair had been, a fifth figure faded silently into view. Ginny opened her mouth to scream a warning, she knew the safeties were off, but it was too late.
A hated shimmering green beam shot out from the newcomer's wand directly for the center of Hermione's back accompanied by a terrible rushing sound. But right before it could strike, she flipped out of the way as if she were expecting it and spun in mid air, "Diffindo Pentratus." A four-inch hole suddenly appeared in the exact center of the newest attacker's chest. It took one step and collapsed, only to vanish a beat later. Hermione replaced her wand in the back of her pants and stood, looking at Ginny all the while. She sighed and walked over to her, "Hello Ginny."
"Nice work there," Ginny replied awkwardly. She looked down at her hands, her manner timid, like a kitten begging forgiveness from its mother.
"Yeah" Hermione replied softly. Behind her the training room, shifted, the training dummies dropping away, a pair of couches rising in their place. Hermione walked over to them and sat, motioning to Ginny to take the opposite one, she did. Hermione took the proffered glass of water the room provided and sat back.
"Hermione, we need to, ahh, talk, I'm..."
"No Ginny," Hermione replied softly, and with those muted words, Ginny felt more afraid than if she had screamed at her. "You need to listen, then, maybe we'll talk." Ginny nodded slowly as if a presence other than her own was controlling her body. "Logically, Ginny" Hermione began, her voice tight, "I know that I shouldn't blame you. I know it, Ron knows it, hell, my sprogs probably know it. I know that and still I can't help remembering every time that I look at you, especially when you are with Neville, that Harry is not here, and it's your fault." Ginny looked away, and Hermione's tone became edged with steel. "No look at me Ginny." Slowly Ginny turned back to her. "It's just that you made a choice, Ginny. A choice that maybe I would have made in the same place, would I have chosen Harry over almost anything else? Yeah I would have. Over almost anything else, but honestly Ginny that choice wasn't necessary."
"What should I have done then?" Ginny spat back, "Lucius was ripping into my mind, he is a Dark Lord damn it Herms, he found out about Neville, and once they brought him..."
Hermione raised an eyebrow, took a deep breath and replied softly, "You should have died then Ginny, it was your oath. I could argue that you broke a Wizard's Debt to Harry, when you let Lucius use you to uncover the kids. The use of the kids was the only thing that he had to stop us. We would have never negotiated for anything else. Harry has spent the last five years in Azkaban because of that and my children...and Ron's and Luna's and Tonks' and Remus' have spent those same five years with the very sword of Damocles hanging over their heads."
Ginny looked incredulously at Hermione, "Do you honestly think I made a fucking deal with Lucius Malfoy, not to poison Elliot? And to poison the rest Hermione...do you really think I am that evil?"
Hermione gave her a small shrug, "I don't know," she paused a moment for reflection, "but you better hope that I never decide that you are." She left without another word, leaving Ginny standing in the cool, slightly damp cave under the house, staring after her.
**********************Kentucky, exile years********************************
*Here by me. Three Doors Down
Hermione moodily shoved a stray lock of hair out of her eyes and looked back at the large text in her lap. Her eyes were dark and tired as she looked up towards an end table across the room. The hilt of her wand stuck off the edge of the table and with an annoyed sigh, she decided it wasn't worth it. Instead, her eyes went a bit unfocused and she snapped her fingers. In a brief flash of light, a steaming pot of tea appeared. She poured herself a mug and returned to the book.
Across the sitting room, Ron sat with Luna; she was leaning back against him on the couch. He was absently playing chess with himself by alternately moving both sides with flicks of his wand, while she was reading Reginald Catright's treatise on unconventional dueling, upside down and backwards.
After another long, silent minute, Hermione suddenly flung the cup against the wall, it shattered and tea trickled down, staining the eggshell paint. Not even looking at the devastation, Hermione jumped up, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her with a flick of her hand. After another minute, long enough for Hermione to leave earshot, Ron turned to Luna, "Do you want to handle this one...honey?"
"No, dear" Luna replied softly, "I did last time...besides, I need to still look for the Black-Tailed Squeagles out back, they should be up and about soon." Luna stood easily and leaning over him, kissed Ron firmly. She let out a small giggle at this expression and walked out of the room humming 'Weasley is our King' under her breath. Ron managed to notice, barely, through her sudden distraction that she left in the opposite direction of that Hermione had taken.
"Bloody chicken," Ron muttered after his wife, smiling all the while. He groaned a little bit as his smile faded. The lights were soft in this room, even though they were electric. This hideaway, half a planet away from the land of their birth was thoroughly modern, unlike the ancient stone castle they had truly grown up in, or even Grimmauld Place, where they had spent so much time, both as young students in their final three years at Hogwarts and off and on in the years after. Ron turned off a wall screen with a remote on the table, it had been showing the news, though with the sound muted. He followed Hermione out onto the porch.
He found her outside staring up at the stars. Silver tracks of tears lined her cheeks in the moonlight as an errant meteor crossed the heavens. Hermione was sitting on a porch swing, her knees pulled into her chest as she rocked back and forth. She didn't look up as he approached, but she could have probably felt his presence in Lexington. Without a word, Ron sat next to her, and pulled her into his arms. Sobbing, she whispered, "I can't do it anymore Ron. My husband is gone, my kids and yours are poisoned and only a potion from a madman keeps them alive..." She bit her lip as she rocked in his arms, "Mum, Dad, Alastor...everyone's gone."
Ron frowned slightly, "Hermione, we just have to figure out the counter potion...if they are cured, we are free to act..." Ron tried to reassure her, but his words drove her sobs to a crescendo. After another long minute, Hermione had cried herself out, more or less.
Shakily she looked at him and whispered, "Ron...I figured out the potion two years ago..."
"WHAT..."
"It does us no good Ron, damn it." Her soft interruption silenced his exclamation, she nodded, "There's a key ingredient in the counter...essence of Star Dragon blood...the last Star Dragon died at Camelot in 587AD."
"Star Dragon, I never heard...Hagrid never mentioned..."
A pair of the estate's unicorns wandered past the porch, the mare in the lead, bowing its head to them as it passed. Hermione shook herself free from Ron. She stood and walked a bit away, until she was almost swallowed by the darkness. Leaning against a column, she glared into the night, "Draconus Astralus, the great Star Dragon." Hermione said softly, unconsciously adapting her teaching tone, the one she had used for her six years teaching at Hogwarts while under cover, or the seven years before when she was teaching mostly Ron and Harry.
"The last one died in the time of Merlin, Ron. Star Dragons were completely impervious to hostile magics. Even Merlin could not directly affect them. He finally stopped the one sent to destroy him by transfiguring a castle tower into a giant sword, sort of like Dumbledore did at Hogsmeade. It's the only substance that has ever been mentioned that could counter the Draught of Nefrati, and that was only in an old theoretical potions textbook, that no one except me has probably read in a hundred years because the crazy old coot who wrote it, alternated between high Latin and Celtic runes...in the same sentence, mind you."
Hermione spun back to Ron and leaned back, her hands on the porch rail. "Ron I received the second highest recorded cumulative NEWT score; ever," Ron's eyes widened at that fact, but she went on anyway, "I have four doctorates in various magical disciplines, and every one except the first one was obtained as a side product of trying to find a cure for my kids, so I could free my husband without killing them. At seventeen, in the middle of the bloody night while I couldn't sleep because I was worried that my best friend might not survive the week, let alone finally love me...I developed the basis for the theorems that sent the lifeboats to the stars; that allowed the Americans to combine science and magic, and so much more. And on any given day, I am one of the three or four most powerful and lethal light wizards alive in the world today," Her right hand clenched suddenly, and the wood under it splintered. The blue glow faded from her hand as she looked back up at Ron, "For two fucking years I have been trying to discover something that would substitute, with absolutely no success."
Ron shook his head as he joined her at the rail, "Why can't we use other dragon blood, concentrate it up somehow? What was so special about these Star Dragons, did they look different, what?"
Hermione shrugged, "According to the descriptions found in Legendary Beasts of Avalon, they looked like an oversized Norwegian Ridgeback, except they had ice blue eyes and shot a weird lighting plasma like this...Laflamare Draconus." Hermione whispered and a crackling, sizzling ball of plasma hovered over her outstretched hand, the sudden blue light from the energy ball lighting up the entire area. With another shrug, she reabsorbed the energy, automatically changing it to a safe form as she rechanneled the magic.
She looked over at Ron, but amazingly he hadn't even looked at the display of magic, his eyes instead looked deep in thought. Slowly he turned and looked at his second best friend, and his sister for one way or another for years. "Hermione" Ron said softly, "you just described Norbert."
A sudden stillness filled the night, as if even the crickets were afraid of uttering a sound. Hermione took a deep breath before she replied to Ron, "Ron, what did you say?"
"Just that Norbert seems to be a lot like those Star Dragons, but you said they had all died out, so it must be he's just special." Ron retorted, but Hermione shook her head disbelievingly, her eyes widening slowly. Pushing past Ron, she almost ran back into the house and directly up to her second floor study.
Every inch of the wall space was covered with bookshelves, with the exception of one large, wooden chest along the shortest wall. That chest, inscribed with the Gryffindor lion sat locked, and silent. Hermione dropped into her chair and pushed the LCD monitor out of the way on her desk. The computer might help with research, it was amazing how much Wizarding lore had leaked into the Muggle world, but what she was looking for was not posted on any website. Looking around the room, she held out a hand, and a tattered, torn copy of Legendary Beasts of Avalon flew into her hand; a second gesture and Merlin's Perils joined the first tome. Opening Legendary Beasts of Avalon to the proper chapter, she noted that the description fitted Norbert perfectly. Can it be, oh please God, please...
Opening Merlin's Perils, Hermione quickly turned to the chapter on bestial combat. She read:
Merlin faced many creatures in both his travels and later in his position as the Guardian of the early British throne. Perhaps the greatest of these was his encounter with the last known Draconus Astralus or Star Dragon. Unlike most dragons these particularly intelligent great dragons were known to side exclusively with the powers of light, this tendency was broken with the encounter in 587AD outside of the keep of Camelot, however. On this occasion, through means never discovered, Morgana Le Fay managed to bind this Star Dragon to her service against the light. The possession of this Dragon was particularly damaging, as even Merlin's magic seemed to be unable to directly affect this creature. Eventually after almost five hundred deaths at the hand of this controlled beast, Merlin was able to kill the creature by the transfiguration of the North Tower of the keep into a forty-foot sword, which he used to kill the Dragon.
Modern anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that the Star Dragon is not a separate species, but rather a random mutation of the Norwegian Ridgeback, that should, if one of these creatures is found alive, breed true.
Ron, who had been looking over her shoulder, gave out a whoop... "Yes, we just get a sample of Norbert's blood, he should obey you Hermione, you are an Heir, and..."
"Ron, we don't even know if Norbert survived..." Hermione objected, trying to put the discovery into perspective.
"He did." A soft, deep voice came from the entrance to the study. Standing there, tired, worn, and with a bandage around his left arm stood Albus Dumbledore. Instantly both of his former students leapt to their feet and assisted him to a couch. Tolerantly, he let them, and let Hermione summon him a mug of chocolate before he continued.
"I had planned to stay a bit, however, I will return in the morning to get a sample of Norbert's blood." He looked at Hermione, expectantly, "if this works, you know what must happen and how." Hermione did not look as if she particularly liked that permeation but she eventually nodded and waved off Ron's attempts to glean an answer. "Now, if I may...I will retire. Hermione, I would like to see Horatio and Emilia before I leave again in the morning, I had planned on staying with them for a bit..." Dumbledore did not finish his thought, for if this succeeded, he would be able to spend much more time with them. They would start to come into their powers soon, and he would training them to fight among many other things.
End of Part 1, the Fall of Night....
A/N: There's the end of the first half...next chapter, which will start part two, has werewolves, vampires, a grim, some Death Eaters learning just what their choices cost, and oh yeah, some little bit with Harry and Hermione reuniting.