A/N: For some reason, writing the middle chapters is always the hardest, but I wanted to get something up for y'all at the end of the weekend like I promised. Umm, stuff of note: the flashbacks are in italics, I purposely haven't gone into detail about Harry's job but it will come up eventually, and I now realize that I should have called Mary something else-since I can now not ever put Harry and Mary into a sentence together. Anyway, please read on, and please enjoy, and please review! ~Ronnie
Disclaimer: Do not own. Yadda yadda yadda…
Chapter 2 Certain Things, Certain Similarities
Harry and Kate managed to emerge from the hordes of train travelers relatively unscathed. Kate had asked Harry if they could "disappear themselves" just as she had seen Hermione do, but Harry suggested that since she would have to come back to Diagon Alley at some point to get her school shopping done, he should show her the entrance from Muggle London.
Though there were some initial awkward silences, Harry thought he'd been doing rather well with the practical stranger who practically never stopped talking. Harry had spent the majority of the train ride describing the entrance through the Leaky Cauldron and what they might expect on a busy Saturday. Fleetingly, he remembered the subdued crowds during the times of Voldemort's rebirth and subsequent rise to power, which weren't anything like the bustling packs that congested the Alley nowadays.
He neglected to prepare Kate for the inevitable onslaught of fan girls, paparazzi, and autograph hounds, nor the more subtle and polite requests for photographs by families and such, hoping naively that if he didn't mention it, they might not encounter them. Also, he was uncertain just what to tell her about why they would followed because, he reasoned, that would be quite a long story and maybe more information than an eleven-year-old could handle so soon after learning about the existence of magic in the first place.
'Just ignore the flashes and gawking, Kate, people are just excited that the Chosen One is out and about,' he imagined telling her, his eyes rolling sardonically. His thoughts went in their usual direction as when he was unsure of something. I need Hermione for this sort of thing, Harry thought to himself, suppressing a sigh. Checking quickly over his shoulder for eavesdroppers he said out loud to Kate, "You remember what we're looking for, right?"
"The entrance to Diagon Alley is concealed behind the Leaky Cauldron, a pub which is hidden from the Muggle eye," she recited promptly, not looking at him but scanning the buildings on each side of the street with her sharp blue eyes. They walked briskly along in a comfortable silence, as Harry had warned her on the train after a rather exuberant outburst (when she learned of the Great Hall's enchanted ceiling) that it was best they keep their voices low in the presence of Muggles. He had explained that it was sort of a duty for all wizards to maintain the secrecy of the wizarding world and had watched as Kate squared her shoulders as if donning that invisible mantle shared with the rest of the magical population.
A minute later they were looking at the grubby and aged sign of the Leaky Cauldron. Harry turned to Kate, expecting the return of her excited grin, but his steps faltered when all he saw was a slight frown and a wrinkled nose of disgust.
"What's the matter?" he asked confusedly, thinking perhaps she was already overwhelmed.
Kate shook her bushy brown head, her eyes darting between Harry's face and the sign. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "Well, I just would have thought that it would be…nicer," she explained. "It's just meant to be such an easily recognized feature. I thought it would be…nicer," Kate repeated helplessly. She stood there tensely only yards away from the door to the pub shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
Harry's mouth formed a silent 'O' in understanding. Unlike when Harry had found out he was a wizard, Kate had had time to adjust and come to terms with the idea. She'd probably conjured up some picture of what she imagined it would all look like too, and knowing how young and fanciful she was, it would have surprised Harry if she had envisioned a filthy wooden sign hanging about a darkened doorway.
"I think you'll find that a lot of things in the wizarding world aren't what they seem," he suggested delicately, knowing that it might be the most important lesson that she would learn that day.
She nodded a little hesitantly, but still trustingly followed Harry into the dimly lit pub. They paused a moment to allow their eyes to adjust to the darkness and Harry took the opportunity to point out the stooped form of Tom the barkeeper. When the wizened old wizard shot him a toothless grin, Harry led Kate up to the bar for an introduction.
"Anything for you today, Mr. Potter?" Tom asked cheerfully as he wrung a wet rag out over the sink.
Harry shook his head and laughed as he deliberately repeated the same words Hagrid once used over a decade before. "Not right now, thanks Tom. I'm on official Hogwarts business."
Both men directed their gaze to Kate, who had been studying everything from the bar stools to the dusty wooden floor to the diverse patrons that milled to and fro. She smiled politely at Tom and offered her name as a greeting.
Tom gave her a gummy smile and Harry explained, "She's Hermione's cousin, just got her letter from Hogwarts."
Tom nodded in a grandfatherly fashion as Kate proudly presented her letter and its accompanying list of necessary purchases. "I'm her first cousin, once removed, actually," Kate said.
Tom let out a wheezy chuckle. "But she's definitely made of the same stuff, ain't she?" he laughed, winking at Harry. Turning to Kate, he said matter-of-factly, "It's lucky for you that Ollivander's has just reopened, as there ain't no finer place to buy wands than Ollivander's." Kate imitated Harry's nod of agreement much to the latter's amusement.
"Well, we'd best head on before the crowds pick up," said Harry.
Tom began the process of wiping down the counter. "Are you sure I can't interest you both in anything before you go?"
"We will definitely have to take you up on two butterbeers on the way out," he said, waving as he and Kate departed to the enclosed alcove behind the pub.
Harry deftly retrieved his wand and found Kate to be regarding the brick wall with an open curiosity. "Watch closely, because you're going to have to do this every time you enter from the Leaky Cauldron," he instructed in a manner fitting to his position. Kate's spine immediately straightened and she obediently observed as he tapped the brick which caused the wall to remold itself into an archway the two could pass under.
Immediately their ears were assaulted by the deafening sound of witches and wizards hurrying quickly past them, too intent on their future and past purchases to spare a glance at the young people who had just seemed to materialize from behind a brick wall.
Harry allowed Kate a moment to register the extent of the chaos before seizing her hand and diving into it. He wasn't sure what she wanted to see but was saved the trouble of asking when she yelled above the din, "So what exactly do wizards do after Hogwarts?"
Pulling her into a small gap between buildings and pausing to regain his breath, he replied, "There are several options for careers, depending on what exams you passed in your fifth and seventh year. Hermione, our friend Ron, and I, received honorary diplomas since we missed our seventh year, so we were somewhat limited. Hermione had to take an entrance exam to become an Unspeakable, Ron went on to play professional Quidditch, and I-"
"What's Quidditch?" Kate interrupted.
Finally understanding how Ron must have felt on their first trip on the Hogwarts Express when he was trying to compress everything worth knowing about the wizarding world into only a couple of hours, Harry did his best to explain the game. When he finished, Kate was still looking confused and he was struck with a sudden inspiration. "Here, I'll show you," he said, dragging her once more into the crowd.
Not a minute later they were standing in front of an old-fashioned shop with the words "Quidditch Quality Supplies" boldly emblazoned over the door and overlarge front windows in which several new broomsticks and snitches were displayed. Harry gazed longingly at one broom in particular-a reincarnated version of the old Silver Arrows that Madam Hooch favored so openly-but was drawn from the window by a tap of his arm.
Kate was smirking at him in that knowing way that Hermione was sometimes wont to do. When they entered the shop and Harry's mind wanted him to split off in all directions at once, Kate kept him firmly near the section featuring golden snitches.
"So this is Quidditch?" she asked.
Harry nodded and began to point out the various key aspects of the game. "Those there are Snitches, they're the ones that the Seeker has to catch to end the match and that's worth 150 points. And over there," he gestured over the heads of several shoppers to the far wall where a case housed dozens of scarlet colored balls, "are the Quaffles, which the Chasers use to score point against the Keeper-that's the position Ron plays, but the season's just finished. These-" he stopped, for Kate had gone slightly pale and her blue gaze was locked on the same Silver Arrow that Harry had just been eyeing.
"And this is all played on broomsticks," she stated with a small quiver in her voice.
"Well, yes," he answered, uncertain as to why this seemed to trouble to girl so much.
She looked away from the window and shivered slightly. "I don't like heights," she told him, giving a wavering smile to cover her apparent embarrassment.
He nodded in sympathy. "Well, flying on a broomstick is probably quite different than anything else you've ever done. You might end up liking it," he shrugged, but Kate looked resolute. "Don't feel bad about it, Hermione doesn't like flying either. In fact, the one time I remember flying with her was on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak and she nearly severed my midsection with how tight she was gripping me. We must've been a few hundred at least…" He stopped, thinking he probably wasn't helping, but Kate merely stared at him, intrigue written all over her face.
"A hippogriff, really? I've read about those, but I never thought-that's amazing!" she gushed. "Why were you riding one?"
Harry found her enthusiasm to be contagious. Soon, he had launched into the story of that fateful night. "And all Hermione kept saying was 'We can't be seen,' when I was just trying to figure out how it was even daylight again! Eventually we figured out how to spend those three hours, and I found out that it wasn't my dad who had conjured the Patronus, but me from the other side of the lake! She was so upset when she saw what I had done, thinking that I had interfered and just broken the most important law of time travel by letting my past self see me. It still confuses me how it all happened, but somehow we were flying above Hogwarts, Hermione was going spare and I was just trying to count windows to find Flitwick's office like Dumbledore had said."
Kate stood raptly, her eyebrows high on her forehead and her mouth open enough to reveal her large front teeth. "But you got Sirius out in the end, right?" she asked worriedly.
"Yeah, we got him out," he replied, smiling inwardly at the memory of Sirius' silhouette against the bright full moon. Kate visibly relaxed though she was now gazing at Harry with profound adoration.
There was movement on his right and Harry's wand hand twitched compulsively. "Excuse me," said a middle-aged woman with two children a little younger than Kate by her side. "I'm so sorry to bother you, but are you Harry Potter?"
Harry smiled and nodded at the woman though inside he was heavily sighing. Years of occasions such as these had taught him the social grace necessary to hide the resignation of his fame from those who admired him. Soon after the Victory he and Hermione had had an impromptu conversation regarding their probable future with the public and the press. Hermione had concluded that the day they stopped being uncomfortable with their fame would be the day they lost sight of what had gotten them there in the first place, and Harry was quick to agree.
Now in the presence of this woman, whose eyes were welling up as she graciously shook his hand again and again, he obliged to her requests for an autograph and a photograph with her two children with as much humility as was genuine. When the family made their goodbyes, he turned from them and met the intense gaze of Kate, but the onslaught of questions never came. Despite having known her for less than a day, Harry thought it was a bit odd that she only quirked one of her eyebrows in puzzlement and remained silent.
Meanwhile, on the other side of London, Hermione Granger joined the queue of wizards in line for the security check. The line was remarkably long given that it was Saturday and most Ministry employees were probably enjoying the summer sunshine. She surmised that she wasn't the only one not too thrilled to be there.
The wizard behind her was giving her strange looks and she realized that she had actually been grumbling about the injustice of being called in during the weekend aloud. She smiled apologetically at him and her gaze was caught by a long mane of dirty blond hair attached to the head of one of the most vague visages Hermione had ever seen.
"Luna!" she called, sticking her hand up to hail one of her dearest female friends.
A moment later Luna Lovegood joined Hermione in line, much to the annoyance of the wizard behind them, though he said nothing once Hermione shot him a challenging glare and adjusted her Ministry badge so that the title "Unspeakable" was discernible. She remembered a conversation she had had with her present companion some time ago about how Unspeakables were undeniably the Ministry elite-either that or they were so strange that most people just avoided them on principle. She was jarred from her reminiscing by the blond beside her.
"So it looks like all us underlings have been called in," Luna said conversationally. Her eyes were wide in that permanently surprised look and Hermione thought she looked rather untroubled by the whole thing.
She sighed, "I suppose, though to be honest, I'd really rather be elsewhere."
If possible, Luna's eyes widened even more when she turned to look at Hermione. "I believe the Daily Prophet would pay big galleons to hear you, Hermione Head Girl Granger, admit to wanting to skive off from work. You and Ron have lived together for too long; he's rubbing off on you."
Hermione laughed at Luna's take on her desire to play hooky now when she never intentionally missed a class in her life and replied, "Honorary Head Girl, you mean. Not quite the same thing."
Luna shrugged, her face still serene. The line shifted forward a few steps but still stretched almost the entire length of the Atrium. "Ron said you and Harry left early this morning," Luna said.
The brunette sighed again, and shuffled along morosely with the queue. "Yeah, my cousin's daughter just got an acceptance letter to Hogwarts, and since none of her family is magical, the task sort of fell to me to show her around."
"And Harry was helping you? That's very sweet of him," said Luna, twisting the chain of butterbeer corks around her neck absently.
"I know," agreed Hermione glumly. "And now I've left him to do it just to come here and make observations for a few hours. I'm such a horrible friend!" she cried passionately.
Luna laid a calming hand on her arm and Hermione was reminded that she was in a public place. "I don't think you're a horrible friend, Hermione. And Harry doesn't either."
Hermione nodded and relaxed and they gained another ten feet in the line. She stopped twirling the ring around her finger in agitation-she needed to focus on the task at hand once she arrived in the bowels of the Ministry, and give each experiment its due; otherwise, she'd have shoddy results at best and would end up staying there until the dead of night. With a new air of determination, she turned to Luna and asked, "So what were you doing before your quill went off?"
"Ron," Luna replied simply.
Hermione gagged on air. "Excuse me?" she asked.
Luna shrugged again and her expression became more wistful. "You asked what I was doing and I said-"
"NEXT!" shouted the security clerk. Hermione rushed forward and presented her wand at once, banishing any and all mental images from her head. Now Ron wasn't always the most considerate flatmate, but he never forgot the Silencing Charm, for which both Hermione and Harry were immensely grateful. It wasn't as though the rest of them hadn't had their fair share of dates either, so Hermione was not sure why the idea of considering her best mates in any sexual way was crossing some sort of line. I'd certainly done it back in Hogwarts, she reasoned, but she doubted that she would ever pursue the age-old question of boxers or briefs either of them. At least, she would never ask them, but you tend to learn more than you could care to know about people when you do laundry together for a couple of years.
"I'm sure he's fine, Hermione," said Luna, misinterpreting the emotions playing across her face.
Hermione started and colored guiltily at the turn her thoughts had taken. Evidently Luna thought she was simply worried about Harry, which, she conceded wasn't a far leap where she was concerned. "Thanks, Luna. I just wish I could be there with him." She missed Luna's growing smile.
"Don't worry, what's the worse that can happen? Besides stumbling into a nest of gulping plimpies, that would be awful-"
Hermione cut her off, suddenly serious. "Are you kidding? We're talking about the same Harry Potter right? Trouble just follows that boy around…"
"What's next?" Kate demanded eagerly.
Harry looked at her in disbelief-they had already toured the rest of the Quidditch shop, the apothecary, and Harry's Gringotts vault and Kate's seemingly boundless energy had surpassed Harry's long before his long description of goblins and their nature. Though Kate had been aquiver with excitement during the trip beneath the bank and found the currency fascinating, Harry had been reluctant to set her loose in the bookstore just yet. He decided that he needed to refuel before continuing with their excursion.
"How about we stop for an ice cream first? I know a place not too far away and they have virtually every flavor created," he suggested. Kate nodded and followed closely as he weaved through the other shoppers, still trying to take in as much as possible.
On the approach to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, Harry turned to check that Kate was still with and panicked when all he met was the annoyed glare of a man who had been right behind him.
"Kate!" he yelled, his voice hardly enough to overpower the noise of those around him. "Katharine!" he tried, a little louder. Then suddenly he caught sight of her distinctive bushy hair outside the front windows of a shop they had just passed. He rushed over to her at once, not noticing as he bumped past several people.
"Don't just wander off like that!" he scolded when he reached her, breathing heavily.
She looked at him apologetically. "I'm sorry, I just got distracted," she explained, gesturing to the contents of the display that she had been studying.
Harry's eyebrows lifted in surprise. Kate seemed so similar to Hermione that Harry had been unconsciously basing his conjectures of what would interest the girl on the sorts of things he and Hermione did on their trips to Diagon Alley. And now that he had found Kate drooling over the ornate jewelry in the window the same way that he had been with the broomstick, he recalled a years-old conversation with Hermione that almost disproved his presumption that Kate and Hermione were practically the same person.
He, Hermione, and Ron had just returned to their flat after a particularly long Victory ball and all three were dead on their feet…
"So why was that witch assaulting you there in the end, Hermione?" asked Ron as he collapsed beside her on the couch and began to remove his dress shoes.
She waved her hand impatiently and Harry wasn't sure if it was to dismiss the question or to ward off the stench that now pervaded the room. He ruled out the former when she spoke exasperatedly, "That was the assistant to the jeweler that kept sending all those owls requesting that I wear his merchandise tonight. She was offended that I declined to show off their best jewel-the Eye of the Snake."
Harry thought that Ron was nodding in understanding, but his head had drooped to reveal that he had actually nodded off to sleep. Hermione sighed warily and continued to Harry, "As if I could wear such a dreadful, heavy thing. Do you know what the Eye of the Snake is?"
Shrugging, he leaned farther back into the armchair and replied sarcastically, "I can venture a guess."
Hermione nodded and rolled her eyes, removing the pins from her hair one by one and releasing each curly tendril. "Slytherin," she confirmed. "Meant to be worn by the highest of the nobility-the purebloods. What a sham, wasting it on a Muggle-born like me," she spat.
Instantly Harry leaned toward her. "Don't be ridiculous, Hermione. You've done more to erase the dividers between the so-called blood hierarchy than anyone before, and someday the rest of the wizarding world will catch on."
"Thank you, Harry," she said quietly but with conviction. "I'm sorry I'm so out of sorts lately, but the things that woman said-"
"We're all a little tired," Harry said quickly, effectively distracting her from further abuse of herself or the jeweler. They both looked at Ron, who was now contentedly snoring away. Hermione reached up to rub tiredly at her face and a glint off one of her fingers had Harry saying, "I thought you weren't big on jewelry, Hermione."
She looked confused for a moment before following his gaze to the ring finger on her right hand. "Oh, this," she said, holding up her hand so that Harry could see the ring. "It's the only thing I can't really go without. I've been wearing it for years, I'm surprised you hadn't noticed."
Harry laughed. "Well, I am the most observant bloke around, you know," he joked. "What is it?"
She held her hand palm down at arm's length so that he could make out the design. "I got it from my nana before she died," she explained. "It's a Celtic clauddagh ring, see? There's the crown for loyalty, the hands for friendship, and the heart for love."
He gestured for her to bring the ring closer to where he could see it better. She rose from the couch (the shift in weight causing Ron to slouch over to the other side) and perched herself on the arm of Harry's chair. Harry held her hand to his face as he identified each of the ring elements that Hermione had mentioned. "But why are you wearing it upside down?"
At this, Hermione pulled her hand from his grasp and turned faintly pink. Harry stared at her bewildered as she voiced a vague answer, "The ring's orientation denotes your relationship status."
If Harry remembered correctly, his reply had been something along the lines of "Oh," and soon after that Hermione had made her goodnights and he had turned to the task and levitating their best friend to his room. But if he was honest with himself, he noticed Hermione's ring every day from then and her evasive explanation still baffled him.
Coming back to reality, he met the vivid blue of Kate's eyes, which were still widened in sincere apology. "It's all right," he said, clapping her on the shoulder and steering her away toward Fortescue's parlor, "Just don't do it again."
She nodded her head earnestly and didn't say another word until they were in the line for ordering. She tapped Harry on the shoulder and beckoned him to lean closer. "I haven't any money, Harry, how am I to pay?" she asked in concern, flashing the ten-pound note that her mum had given her that morning.
"Don't worry about it, I got this," he said, smiling at how she had basically just repeated his same qualms when he first came to Diagon Alley with Hagrid almost a decade before.
A few minutes later the pair were ensconced in a booth near the back where they could remain relatively hidden. Kate had wanted to sit outside in the sun but didn't protest when Harry suggested the inconspicuous table. And so they sat happily consuming their sundaes, Kate having ordered the same toppings that Hermione usually did.
"So what does Hermione do as an Unspeakable?" she inquired curiously, broaching the topic for which Harry had very little information.
He frowned and thought out his answer, then decided to just stick with bare honesty. "I've no idea," he said and Kate raised both of her eyebrows in surprise. "What I mean is, she's not allowed to say, so I usually don't even ask. But I do know that sometimes she comes home speaking only Esperanto and one time after she had just started with the other new Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries she had somehow aged herself thirty years, which I admit was pretty amusing once I figured out that it was her."
"Is it hard to become one, an Unspeakable?" asked Kate, keeping her eyes on her spoon as she stirred the remains of her sundae into a kind of soup.
Harry considered this. "Yeah, I'd say it's about as competitive to become an Unspeakable as it is to become an Auror," he reasoned. "They catch Dark wizards," he said at Kate's quizzical expression.
Kate did not probe further and Harry didn't mind; his choice against becoming an Auror after the war was still something he questioned from time to time, but he was still quite satisfied with his present occupation. His spoon clanged a little loudly as he scooped up spoonfuls of ice cream and it took him a moment to realize that Kate had spoken.
"Sorry, what was that?" he asked, resting his spoon in the bowl.
"Nothing," she said quietly before letting out an aggravated sigh. "No, not nothing. I just, well, I wish I knew her better."
"Hermione?" asked Harry, not expecting this change of topic.
The girl nodded gloomily. "She's seems very nice, not at all like Mum had described her. I only remember her a little bit from when I was younger, and all she used to do was stand alone at family parties. Mum said she was sulking, but I just thought she looked like she needed someone to talk to."
Harry pictured Hermione off to the side while Mary was toasted by the rest of the family, unable to confide in them the truth about what was happening in her world. How lonely she must have been… And where was I during all of this? Pining away for Ginny or stalking Malfoy…he thought angrily.
Kate ended his self-deprecating thoughts with a cheerful subject change. "So when are you and Hermione going to get married?" She waited patiently with a slight smile as he recovered from the sudden choking fit.
Finally, he wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin and spluttered, "W-what makes you ask that?" having forgotten that Kate had eavesdropped on that morning's conversation with her mum.
Her grin widened playfully. "Well, you said that you were boyfriend-girlfriend," she pointed out logically.
He shook his vehemently. "No, that was just a misunderstanding. We're just friends," he said. Kate leveled her dubious gaze upon him. "Best friends," he corrected, but Kate still did not seem satisfied.
She finished her sundae and pushed the bowl away from her so that she could rest her arms on the table in a manner that made Harry feel like he was going to be interrogated. Fortunately for him she was too short to reach the lamp, otherwise she would have undoubtedly aimed it at his face. "But you like her though, don't you?" she said.
Harry shrugged his shoulders, mistaking the meaning of her question. "Of course I like her, we've been through a lot together."
With a barely noticeable eye roll, Kate persisted, "No, Harry, do you like like her? You know, do you fancy her?"
He swallowed with difficulty, though in the back of his mind he wondered at his discomfort. "Wha-I-er, no. Like I said, we're just best friends."
But even as he said it, the words "best friend" didn't seem accurate enough to describe everything that Hermione had come to mean to him over the years. Harry Potter was in trouble indeed.
A/N: So? Review!