A/N: I am so, SO sorry this took so long. School is sucking out my soul with all the efficiency of a dementor. Sigh, it's so nice to say that and know that you guys know what I'm talking about. Or at the very least, I can't see you when you roll your eyes at me. Mmmm to all of my reviewers, I heart you deeply and thank you for sticking with my stuff, despite my unreliability with updating. I also wanted to mention that I don't have any of my HP books with me for reference so if there are any mistakes, my bad, I'm going off of memory.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the shizzle mentioned in any of my fics. Does that cover all the bases? But the typos are mine-MINE!
Chapter 3 Give and Take
Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood walked in customary silence as they entered the Department of Mysteries and meandered through the mazelike corridors to their office. The fair-haired witch maintained her usual serene expression, but the other moved stiffly with her eyes fixed on the point of her office door at the end of the hall.
Hermione only ever allowed herself to be uncomfortable when she first arrived in the Department of Mysteries. After that, she forced herself to focus on her work, rather than the memories associated with her surroundings.
Waving her wand in a movement unique to every door in the Department, Luna unlocked the door to office that she shared with Hermione and the pair simultaneously removed and hung their cloaks. Many who knew Hermione and Luna in school would have scoffed or at the very least raised their eyebrows dubiously at the thought of the bossy Gryffindor and spacey Ravenclaw working together, but none who saw the two in action could deny that their natures in the workplace were very complementary.
Luna picked up the folder on her desk that contained their assignment for the day while Hermione tweaked the positions of the various items on her desk. Suddenly Luna let out a very uncharacteristic groan and wordlessly handed the parchment to her bemused partner.
Hermione took in the words on the page and matched Luna's groan in pitch and feeling. "The Time Room?!" she demanded. "Do you remember what happened the last time we were assigned there?"
Wisely not answering the rhetorical question, Luna shrugged and pointed out, "At least Phillips isn't in there with us this time."
Bartleby Phillips, due to some dumb luck and a twitchy wand arm, was the trainee wizard responsible for Hermione's rapid though fortunately temporary aging of sixty years when she had first become an Unspeakable.
While Hermione was fuming at her reminiscence, Luna coaxed her friend out of her ill humor by saying, "And at least you know you'll still look good when you're eighty."
The older witch smiled begrudgingly and replied, "Thanks, Luna, but I'd rather not have to look up the countercurse again in any case."
"And I'd rather not have to lift the bell jar off you again, that thing was damn weighty," said Luna as she rustled through her desk for the experiment log.
Feeling more light-hearted than when they'd arrived, Hermione and Luna dug out their tool kits and memorized the procedure for the experiment they'd be performing that day. "With any luck, we'll be finished by lunch," said Hermione gleefully, already trying to work out where Harry and Kate were likely to be at that hour.
"And I know how my Ronald loves lunch," added Luna. Hermione suppressed her giggles and held the door open for her friend and co-worker.
~~~#*#~~~
Kate suspected that she had hit a nerve with that last question, since Harry had hurried her out of the ice cream parlor very soon after. Even though she had only been in their combined company a short time, she reasoned that if her cousin and Harry weren't actually together, they were very good at acting the part. But not wanting to dig herself an even deeper hole, Kate kept silent and let herself be shuttled through the crowds of shoppers toward a shop with a busy display and large open doors.
If this was Harry's attempt to distract her from probing deeper into his love life, she was mightily impressed. When they were clear of the throng and in plain view of the greatest sight she had ever laid eyes on-a beautiful shop called Flourish and Blotts-Kate felt her mouth drop open involuntarily. Her eyes flitted from the precariously balanced piles of gold-leafed volumes to the window display of silken-bound books bearing outrageous titles.
A bell tinkled somewhere in the shop when Harry opened the door for her and she came back to reality. She noticed that although he was flattening his bangs for what was probably the thousandth time since they had come to Diagon Alley, he was looking at her in thoughtful amusement. She felt herself color and self-consciously tried to smooth her wayward bushy hair. "What?"
He blinked as though just realizing that he had been staring and said, "Sorry, you just reminded me of something."
Kate followed him inside and was immediately met by a rush of cool air. Looking up she saw that it was coming from two large floating plumes that were waving back and forth. After the warm summer air from outside, she welcomed the fanning and wondered when she would learn how to make feathers float. Remembering Harry's comment, she asked curiously, "What did I remind you of?"
"Oh, just some school stuff," he replied evasively as they walked down one of the many aisles of books. Though she was working on trying to contain her excitement in the site of so many precious tomes, she knew that Harry could tell his answer wasn't satisfactory to her. He continued with his explanation before she had the chance to ask, his eyes taking on a kind of sparkle that Kate was only beginning to notice. "Back in school, Hermione, our friend Ron, and I set up this group to learn Defense, and there was this special room that we used that would take the form of whatever we needed. Anyway, when we opened the door to the room, it had shelves upon shelves of books on Defense, and the look your face when you got here was the same one Hermione had when she saw all those bookcases."
Kate beamed at the indirect compliment. She had always liked Hermione, or rather, Hermione had always intrigued her from when she was a very little girl. There was always something so different about her mother's cousin and now Kate was just beginning to understand and experience it. Kate was just starting to learn of all the things they shared besides the obvious rotten luck in the hair department, and her admiration of Hermione was growing with every anecdote Harry divulged. She filed away the thought to ask Harry more about her from her school days and said, "But why did you have to learn it yourselves? Why isn't that a subject taught at Hogwarts?"
"Umbrage," replied Harry with a scowl on his face. "She was the Ministry-appointed professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts at the time, but you're right, there isn't a professor for that anymore. It was Hermione's idea to learn it on our own. But to answer your question, there is a curse on the position so that no one could teach it for more than a year."
Kate stopped walking and gazed at Harry in astonishment. "Are you telling me that even after there was a war and everything, no one teaches Defense at Hogwarts anymore?" she questioned.
Something like a smirk crossed Harry's face and he responded, "No, I said that there was no professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, but the subject is still taught."
She screwed up her face in puzzlement at his nonsensical reply, but before she could clarify it, she felt herself being jostled from behind by three twittering girls a few years older than her.
This had been happening all day, starting with that family in the Quidditch shop, and frankly, Kate was confused by it all. Already he had been asked to sign things and pose for pictures no less than five times, and although she and Harry never discussed it afterward, she figured this was why he was constantly pushing his fringe over his forehead. Only briefly did she happen to catch a glimpse of a lightning shape on it, which meant nothing to her but clearly must mean something to the wizarding populace.
Taking no notice of her, the three girls alternately dissolved into laughter and elbowed each other until one of them, the tallest of the three, boldly stepped forward and said, "I'm so sorry to bother you, but are you Harry Potter?"
When Harry mustered his polite smile and nodded, the girls recommenced their giggling and Kate rolled her eyes in irritation. To her surprise he continued, "Yes, I am, but if you don't mind, I'm sort of in the middle of a conversation with my friend here." He gestured over to Kate and she found herself blushing as the girls' heads swiveled as one in her direction. Fortunately they were content to merely shake the great Harry Potter's hand before scampering off in fits of giggles.
Harry blew out a breath of relief and she regarded him carefully. She wondered if she had the right to pry into something that could be quite personal or if she should just wait to see if he would talk about it. A moment later, he cleared his throat and excused himself to the loo, first giving her strict orders to stay in the shop.
When he was out of sight, Kate let her eyes wander. Above her a sign denoted that she was standing in the Defense section, which she thought was fitting, given her and Harry's brief conversation. She didn't know how students could possibly learn a subject without a teacher but thought with an apprehensive twinge in her stomach, that maybe they were expected to instruct themselves. With that in mind, Kate scanned the titles of the books on the nearest shelf, hoping to get an idea what she was in for.
One she thought looked particularly interesting was a tome with the thickest binding she had ever seen, even her family dictionary. Checking around to make sure no one was watching, even though she was sure that she wasn't prohibited from looking at books in a bookshop, she lifted it cautiously off the shelf and staggered under its unexpected weight. Blowing the dust that had accumulated on it while it sat unopened on the shelf, she read out "The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, Fifth Edition."
On a whim she opened to the index and looked under P.
"Potter…Potter…" she muttered, one arm supporting the weight of the volume and the other running a finger down the column of subjects beginning with the desired letter. To her amazement, about halfway down, her finger paused on "Potter, Harry. Alias: The Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One, The Vanquisher. Page 567."
With another anxious glance over her shoulder, she flipped quickly to the precise page. She found that her mouth had dropped open again, this time at the sight of a moving picture of Harry, her cousin's best friend Harry, grinning sheepishly at her from the page. Her eyes quickly flitted over to the rather lengthy description of the "Boy-Who-Lived." With every sentence she absorbed, the more Harry's comments and behavior seemed to make sense, not to mention his celebrity treatment all day. Judging by the photograph, Kate guessed that book couldn't possibly be more than four or five years old, and she wondered why it had been collecting dust. She smiled to herself, imagining Harry hiding each of the books about himself on the shelves that no one really noticed.
"Anything good?" came Harry's voice from right behind her.
Kate jumped a let out a girlish shriek, slamming the book shut and coughing at the sudden expulsion of dust that hit her face. Carefully fitting the book into its original location and moving to block the title, she hitched an innocent grin on her face and answered as impassively as she could, "It was enlightening."
After several minutes of him pointing out the books that she would need to get if she came back with her mum, and her trying to stealthily sneak a peek at the lightning bolt on his forehead, he suggested they drop into Ollivander's before calling it a day.
"I'd take you to Ron's brothers' joke shop," he said as they exited the bookstore, "but Hermione'd probably kill me if you came back with any Weasley Wizarding Wheezes merchandise. Your mum might not be too wild about it either."
She readily agreed to her chaperone's suggestion and her curiosity about Harry's past became overshadowed by her excitement at visiting the finest wandmaker in England. By now she was fairly adept at navigating through the other shoppers and she didn't lose Harry once between the bookshop and Ollivander's.
She noticed that while the other shops' displays had bursts of color and intricate signs, this window was more subdued. A single wand lay on a purple silk pillow and a simple sign above the door read the name of the shop in faded gold lettering. Again a tinkle accompanied her and Harry's entrance into the shop, but the sudden silence that followed once Harry had closed the door compared to the lively bustling outside was deafening.
"Just wait," whispered Harry. Kate nodded in silence, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the dusty clutter of the room and on the front desk.
"Ah ha, Mr. Potter, I wondered if I might be seeing you again, though I admit that I thought it might not be so soon," came a disembodied voice from the dimness of one of the aisles between shelves. A pale man with piercing eyes like Kate's stepped into the light so that his wispy white hair and shabby robes were visible. He smiled kindly at Kate, obviously mistaking her identity.
"No no, she's not my daughter, Mr. Ollivander," explained Harry hastily. The wizened wizard turned his gaze toward Harry in polite puzzlement. Harry went on, "Actually, she's Hermione Granger's cousin, you know Hermione Gr-"
"Yes, Hermione Granger, of course. Vine and dragon heartstring, fourteen inches, of course I rememeber. And what may I ask is your name?" he asked, his eyes trained now on Kate.
She swallowed, for some reason uncomfortable by the man whose silver eyes seemed to look right past her. "K-Katharine, Katharine Moore," she said finally.
Mr. Ollivander nodded as though he had expected her to say this, and immediately went to one of his shelves and peered into a drawer as though searching for something. "I remember every wand I've ever sold, Miss Moore, and let me tell you, the wand chooses the wizard, young lady.
"Here now," he said, approaching her and opening a narrow box. Nestled on the felt was a long piece of wood like the one she had seen Hermione wave to change her mother's tea cup into a toad. Kate reached out cautiously as though the wand was going to jump at her and grasped it tightly.
Nothing happened. She wasn't sure what she had expected--maybe a light would shine down on her while a choir sung and a wind whipped through her hair, but definitely not this. Before she could do anything else with it, Mr. Ollivander snatched it from her hand and replaced it with another. Immediately a warmth spread first throughout her arm and then down her body. She looked up at the old wizard with a radiant grin which he returned in kind.
Kate barely listened when Mr. Ollivander began rattling off the details of her wand's components, so encompassed with the feeling of raw power in her little piece of seemingly ordinary wood. She felt as though as she had found a part of herself amongst the many stacks of dusty wand boxes and she only protested faintly when Harry offered his own seven galleons for its purchase.
~~~#*#~~~
"Willow and dragon heartstring, eleven inches," Kate repeated yet again a quarter of an hour later when she and Harry were seated at a table in the Leaky Cauldron.
Harry smiled kindly, catching some of her enthusiasm, and Kate noted that this smile was more genuine than the one he had worn in his photograph. She decided that now was as good a time as any to ask him about it, since he seemed to be in such a good mood. Though, if it was a tricky subject, the last thing she wanted to do was offend her chaperone.
She carefully stowed her wand in her pocket, having nowhere else to put it. The pair stared at the menu for several minutes and after Tom came by to take their order, Kate seized on the last thing she had heard Harry say in order to begin a conversation.
"Butterbeer?" she queried.
Harry's smile widened and nodded earnestly. "It's the greatest drink the wizarding world has to offer," he explained. "You'll love it. Of course, it's better when it's cold outside, but-"
Kate couldn't stand it any longer. "When were you going to tell me you're the Boy-Who-Lived?" she asked bluntly, keeping her voice low so that no one else would hear. They had sat near the back again, but Kate didn't want to risk being overheard and interrupted while she was trying to talk to him.
Harry's eyes became slightly cloudy and his smile faded. "Where did you hear that?" he asked, though not angrily.
Relaxing somewhat at his calm tone, she told him the truth. "In a book in Flourish and Blotts. While you were in the loo."
He let out a heavy sigh and looked to be carefully forming his reply. Leaning forward onto the table, he asked, "How much did you read?"
"Just about that," she said quietly, pointing to scar. "You came back before I could read anything else."
He frowned thoughtfully and stared at his folded hands a while before looking back up at her. "I wasn't going to tell you who I am because it would probably lead to a lot of explaining. It's not something I like to talk about much," he said finally. "But your Hermione's family, I knew you'd figure it out eventually." He laughed ironically, and had a faraway look in his eyes as though remembering something.
Kate kicked herself for giving in to her curiosity instead of listening to her intuition. "I'm sorry for asking, Harry, I can't imagine it would be interesting for you to talk about the war and Voldemort," she said honestly.
Her last word seemed to sober him at once. She stiffened, thinking that maybe she had just committed some kind of wizarding faux pas, but instead his face broke out into a grin. "You said it, his name," he said simply.
Kate looked at him confusedly. "Whose name? Voldemort's? Should I not have said it?"
He shook his head and lead back into his chair, still wearing a grin. "No, it's just-nevermind. Not a lot of people say it, even now. I'm surprised they even wrote it down in the book," he said, now beginning to laugh at the absurdity of it. Kate began to laugh too until Harry suddenly stopped. "All right, I'll tell you, but only because I think you'll understand what it took to get the wizarding world where it is today. But just remember, it's not some cute little bedtime story, this stuff actually happened. And since you already know about the 'Boy-Who-Lived'…"
Kate's smile dissolved into a grim expression and she patiently waited for Harry to begin.
"Hermione and Ron were…great. They were always there for me from the very beginning, especially Hermione. In my fifth year, Voldemort set a trap for us and some of our friends, making me think that my godfather, you remember-"
"Sirius, yes," she said promptly, recalling Harry's story about the hippogriff and his godfather's escape.
"Sirius," he said, voicing each syllable reverently as though lost in thought. His eyes snapped back to hers and he continued, "Voldemort sent me visions showing Sirius being tortured and when we all got there we realized it was a trap. Sirius really hadn't been there at all, but Voldemort needed me to retrieve a prophecy that had been made about us. When word about the prophecy got out, that's when everyone started calling me 'The Chosen One,' because it named as the only person who could defeat him.
"The next year I learned how to do it. It was the same year Dumbledore, the headmaster, was-killed-and I think he knew it was going to happen, because he made me understand what I had to do. Instead of going back to school for my final year, Hermione, Ron, and I went into hiding so that we could figure out how to destroy Voldemort once and for all. Dumbledore had told me that Voldemort, in order to stay alive forever, had split up his soul into pieces. The three of us had to find and get rid of all the pieces before we could even try to kill him.
It wasn't easy. The pieces had been well hidden and we had little to go on. It took nearly a year, but we did it, and then it was time to go after Voldemort. In the end, it took all of Ron, Hermione, and I to do it, but the newspapers only called me 'The Vanquisher.' They weren't creative with their naming schemes, you see," he finished, chuckling.
Kate sat, staring at the young man who was younger than her own mum but who had already been through so much. And yet, he seemed so normal. Her mind, so quick in arithmetic and reciting historical facts, struggled through all of the information that was just thrown at her. And through her bemusement her admiration for Harry Potter grew-not the "Boy-Who-Lived" or anything else, but just Harry Potter.
"It's a lot to take in at once, isn't it," he said sympathetically.
She was saved from having to answer by the arrival of the food. The mood gradually lightened as she tasted her first butterbeer and admitted that it was better than any other drink on Earth. Of course, Harry wouldn't change the subject until she said it, but it was beside the point. She had him laughing again and that's all she cared about at the moment.
She did not regret asking him about it because the smiling Harry in front of her seemed more buoyant than the one that had avoided the crowds and shown her around all morning. He literally seemed as though a weight had been lifted from him and he could talk freely with her without having to watch his tongue.
"I'm sorry about wandering off earlier," she said, still feeling guilty for her pleasure for shiny things.
Harry waved a hand and took another sip from his glass. "Don't worry about it," he said. "What were you looking at anyway, besides just jewelry?"
She shrugged and replied, "They had a really nice collection of antique clauddagh rings."
Harry's eyes seemed to go out of focus and Kate checked behind her to see if he had seen someone, but he came back to himself and apologized, "Sorry, got distracted. So, er, do you know a lot about them-clauddagh rings I mean?"
This was not the response Kate had been expecting, but she decided to answer him truthfully. "A fair bit, yeah. I know my mum's nana had one, but I don't know where it went."
"But do you know anything about how it's worn?" Harry asked in a voice that he was clearly trying to make sound casual.
Kate frowned thoughtfully at his behavior and said, "How it's worn? Well, what my mum told me was that if it's worn on the right hand with the tip of the heart pointing to the end of your finger, that means that your heart is free to be claimed, or some such nonsense," she shrugged indifferently. "And if the tip of the heart points toward your right wrist, that means that you have feelings for someone. If you wear it with the heart pointing toward your left wrist, that is, on your left hand, then your love is requited."
Harry even looked at his hands in puzzlement as though trying to work something out.
"Do you know someone with a clauddagh?" Kate asked innocently, though she knew he wouldn't tell her if she was right about the identity of the wearer. The only question now was why he had asked about them. Smirking to herself she asked in a determinedly relaxed tone, "So can you tell me more about Hermione?"
Harry jumped ever so slightly and visibly gulped. "Hermione? Why do you want to know about Hermione?"
Kate swallowed her giggle and said as though it was the most obvious reason in the world, "Well, she's my cousin and I feel like I hardly know her at all." This was partly true of course and she really was keen to know more about the only other witch in her family, but she was quite enjoying watching Harry squirm over her cousin.
His eyes took on that same sparkle as before as he began to try to explain the concept of 'Hermione' in a few sentences. He began speaking slowly but his voice gained strength and speed as he went on. "Well, er, she's a-a girl-woman. With brown hair and brown eyes…. Well, they're not really brown because they have these flecks of gold in them that you can see when she's out in the sun. And sometimes she bites her lip when she's thinking or smoothes down her hair when she's nervous. She's the hardest worker I know and she always sees things through to the end, no matter how hard it seems. But she's also the most loyal person I've ever known and one of the few people who will put me in my place if I need it. She's just-Hermione," he said, furrowing his eye brows as though his answer lacked something.
Kate grinned widely, for standing behind Harry Potter throughout the majority of his heartfelt quasi-speech was none other than Hermione Granger. The older witch, having Apparated from work so quickly that she had forgotten to remove her Unspeakable badge, put a finger to her lips and paused a moment to compose herself before plopping down on the seat next to Harry.
"Well it looks like you're still in one piece," she said to Kate as they shared a secret smile. Harry went through four shades of red before adequately greeting his best friend. And while the two were busy taking it in turns to stare at the other out of corner of their eye, Kate rolled her eyes to herself and thought, Honestly, how daft can you get?
~~~#*#~~~
Several minutes and three more butterbeers later, Hermione waited a respectful distance away on the curb while Kate said goodbye to Harry. She smiled wistfully at the silly grins on their faces and Kate's stammered thanks for her wand which she fingered lovingly before hiding it once again in her back pocket. And she watched as Harry's face became serious when Kate leaned up and muttered something too quietly for her to hear.
With a quick wave and promise to bring dinner when she came back from returning Kate home, Hermione and her young cousin began the walk to the train station. Once they were seated in a sun-filled compartment, Hermione said, "So what did you two do today?"
Immediately Kate launched into a description of all the places and things she'd seen, even pulling out her wand and boasting about how it was only the second that she had tried. Hermione smiled indulgently and tried to follow along but her thoughts resided on her raven-haired best friend, the one who had said such nice things about her when he thought she couldn't hear.
"Why don't you just tell him?" suggested Kate with true concern.
"Wha-oh no, I couldn't possibly-"
"You could possibly," interrupted Kate, effectively ceasing Hermione's stuttering. "Look," she continued, leaning over and seizing the older witch's right hand, "you obviously have feelings for him. And after everything the pair of you have been through, admitting them can't be more serious than that."
Hermione let her gaze drop to the ring on her right hand, where the tip of her heart pointed toward her wrist. She smiled at her cousin sadly, "Oh, but it is-his friendship is more important to me than anything. And if that's all he can give me, then that's all I'll take."
~~~#*#~~~
A/N: I played around a bit with the pov in this chapter, though I dunno how apparent that was. Originally I had planned to just crank out the whole last chapter in one big glob to make up for my lack of updating, but I wanted to know what you guys thought about this bit before getting into the home stretch. So? Review!