Muggle Summer
Disclaimer: Not my characters, no money being made, etc., etc.
Chapter 43: The Breakfast Club
Monday, July 2, 10:30pm
Queen's Wizard's Quarters
Buckingham Palace, London
Harry Potter was so caught up in the moment that it took Hermione three tries to contact him using their Art Club badges. When he finally noticed that one of the sun rays that decorated his badge was lit, he activated it and said, "Hey, Hermione, what's up?"
"I've finished with Ron and Neville, so I'm looking for a ride home," Hermione replied through the badge. "Where are you?"
Harry took in his surroundings and replied, "Within one of Mad-Eye's more gruesome battlefield memories…Outer Hebrides, I think, but I'm not positive."
"You are inside a pensieved memory and we can still communicate?" Hermione asked incredulously. "When did you discover that we could do that?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders as he watched a much younger Mad-Eye curse out the lifeless body of colleague that hadn't ducked a curse in time. "Just now, when I answered your call….so do you want to join me?"
There was a pause, then Hermione replied, "No thank you, I can wait until rejoin our reality."
Harry nodded to himself. "Shouldn't be that much longer...I'll call when I'm back."
The Queen's Wizard's prediction quickly found confirmation as memory-Mad-Eye banished the unresponsive cadaver into the approaching path of a deadly green curse. Harry watched with fascination as the body burst into flames. That fascination turned bitter when the smell of seared human flesh flooded his olfactory nerves. Harry briefly pocketed his muggle pen and notebook so that he could cast a bubblehead charm. He then retrieved his journal and began to document the successful block of a killing curse (with a note in the margins to add spellcasting to the growing list of things one could do within a pensieved memory).
The end of the memory caught Harry by surprise and within mid-sentence, causing ink to smear across page as his body was swept back into the library of the Queen's Wizard's Quarters. After taking a moment to gather his wits, he returned Hermione's call and gave her the all-clear to badge-jump to his location. He then lost some of those regained wits as Hermione pulled him into a bear-quality embrace.
"Thanks," Harry said, once they pulled back a bit from each other. "After fifteen different battles I needed that."
Hermione gave him a sympathetic look. "You can finite the bubblehead, Harry," she then said. "Unless you think I need a shower of something."
Harry chuckled as he drew his wand and he canceled the spell. "You, my dear, are a scent for sore nose. Not that I wouldn't mind joining you in the shower."
Hermione tsked-tsked him. "Later, lover-boy, and only if you promise not to try and transfigure yourself into a sponge again."
"Hey," Harry objected, "I thought you'd like me being a loofa."
"Oh sure," Hermione snarked back, "Being reminded of that creepy-old blow-hard American news telly commentator always gets me excited." She then took a seat on one of the room's wing-backed chairs and asked, "So your meeting with Mad-Eye went well, then?"
"Why do you ask?" said Harry. "Recon that a recap of my visit to a gay bar would get you more excited than Bill O'Reilly?"
Hermione snorted. "Just about anything would get me more excited than that oaf…I can't imagine why the Palace has him and that horrid station on its satellite reception."
Harry laughed. "They probably added it when the American President paid a visit and forgot to take it off when he left." He then pulled her back into an embrace and said, "And speaking of taking it off…"
Hermione looked down at his journal notes, then gave him a smack on the shoulder. "Not until you've finished your homework, young man," she admonished.
When Harry gave her his best puppy-dog eyes look she softened a bit and said, "Right then, clean up out here then you can finish up in the bedroom while I get set for bed."
"So we're spending the night here, then?"
"I think so," Hermione replied. "It's a bit past Sir Evan's bedtime…wouldn't want to wake him for a badge-ride to Windsor…Wally's here with Steve, the Queen is here for the balance of the week, and mum and dad have the night watch at the Rookery."
"Ah," Harry said suggestively, "so it's just you and me."
"You, me, and that data you promised to send to headquarters tonight," Hermione replied. She then pulled him close by grabbing the front of his shirt and gave him a rather intense kiss. "So finish up and send it out," she said, "because I don't do threesomes."
Harry was too shocked to snark back a witty response, but not too shocked to know what Hermione was suggesting. As she turned and headed towards the bedroom he mad a mad grab for the open vial that was sitting next to his pensieve. He quickly coaxed the smoky strands out of the bowl and into the vial, stoppered it shut with the cork, and then set the vial on a shelf next to all of the others that he had reviewed. After grabbing his notebook and the laptop computer on which he had been transcribing his notes, he made a mad dash to the master bedroom, where he found Hermione inside the walk-in-closet…wearing only her knickers (Yes!, thought Harry)…but with her back turned to the door (Rats!, thought Harry).
As she reached into a built-in chest of drawers for a cotton nightgown Harry said, "Don't feel as if you have to get all dressed up on my account."
Hermione startled, and reflexively dropped the nightgown so that she could cover her chest with her arms. She looked over her shoulder at Harry and said, "I'll be dressing in the other bedroom if you don't finish up your work."
Harry raised his arms up in surrender, and said "Okay, okay, I get your point…no playing with your points until I've finished up."
Hermione pulled the nightgown over her head, then turned and exited the closet (giving Harry a sharp smack on his other shoulder as she passed), and walked into the attached bath. In the time it took her to wash her face, braid her hair and brush her teeth Harry had finished his hand-written notes, fully-transcribed them into a MS-word document, and attached that file to an e-mail to be sent to MI-5 3/4's version of Q Branch. Taking advantage of the Palace's secure wireless network, he was polishing off this last task whilst in bed, wearing only some pajama bottoms.
When Hermione re-entered the bedroom Harry looked up and asked, "What's with the ponytails?"
Hermione smiled demurely and said, "I didn't want my hair to get in the way tonight." And to emphasize her intentions, she flipped the cotton nightgown that she was wearing over her head and tossed it down to the floor.
Harry gulped as he looked down at his laptop screen. "You're making it awfully hard for me to balance this laptop on my lap, you know."
Hermione chuckled as a bit of silk joined the cotton nightie on the bedroom floor. "Am I making it hard for you to send that e-mail, or just making you hard?"
"Both," Harry replied.
With a rather feral growl, Hermione crawled across the king-sized mattress and grabbed the computer from Harry's lap. The click of the "Send" button was quickly followed by the snap of the laptop cover as she rather carelessly dropped the computer onto the nightstand.
"Well, now that I've taking care of one of those problems, perhaps it's time I tackled the other one."
Harry gave her a saucy grin as he flicked the sheets off of his lower body and said, "You know that you have delegated authority to deal with that kind of problem any day…or night."
And as Hermione pounced on him, Harry wondered why all of his other problems couldn't be solved in such a satisfying manner.
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The next morning Hermione woke up (as she usually did) just a few seconds before the alarm clock was set to ring. When she reached across Harry's torso to turn it off before it chimed, he surprised her with an arm that wrapped tightly around her back and a nose that nuzzled tightly against her chest.
"Guess you're up already," she said.
"You could say that, then say it again," he replied impishly.
Hermione shifted her weight back off of Harry's chest so that their eyes could meet. "Let's go, Lord Loofa…PT with the Palace Guard in fifteen."
Harry frowned as he plopped his head back against his pillow. "Can't we sleep in and run later in the morning?"
Hermione shook her head. "We've got Breakfast Club at eight, remember?"
"Well, we could always do that in bed, like yesterday's conference call."
Hermione smirked. "This is a big bed, Harry, but not big enough for all twelve of us…remember we're doing it live today."
"Oh…right," Harry replied with no small amount of disappointment. He then joined Hermione for another trip to their closet, where they dressed in trainers and work-out clothes.
It was the fourth time that Harry and Hermione had joined the muggle Guard for their morning regimen. Fifteen minutes of stretching was followed by a short three-mile run along the Palace's garden paths (with two-and-a-half miles of walkways, they didn't see too many flowers twice). From there it was straight inside the Palace and downstairs to the underground firing range, where Harry and Hermione worked on handgun accuracy under elevated heart rates. They then moved on to an exercise room, where a twenty-minute circuit of weight machines focused on the development of upper-body strength.
During the hour-long program they took every opportunity to meet and chat with the other participants. The group was a mixture of Foot Guard Regiment soldiers (active military that provided photo-ops for tourists and a perimeter guard for Buckingham Palace), Metropolitan Police, and MI-5 security personnel. After the initially cool reception that Harry received from Palace security forces, they had decided that the path to their acceptance as members of the Queen's security detail was from the ground up. And so Harry and Hermione did their best to blend in…joining in training exercises and eating in the Palace Mess as much as their schedules would allow.
Acceptance at Buckingham Palace was slower than what they'd faced at Windsor Castle. Hermione thought it had something to do with their status…not as Lord Gryffindor and Dame Hermione, necessarily, but rather as credentialed teen-aged MI-5 agents that barely knew how to shoot (a gun) straight (since MI-5 3/4 and their status as witch and wizard were state secrets, Harry and Hermione's official "cover" was as members of MI-5). While the two had shown no signs of "airs" or pretense, their living arrangements within the Palace had only accentuated their unique status…few members of the Royal staff actually lived at Buckingham Palace, and none of them had accommodations like the Queen's Wizard's Quarters.
It was to these Quarters that Harry and Hermione returned after their work-out, with barely enough time for (necessarily separate) showers before breakfast. Staff from the Palace kitchens arrived precisely five minutes before eight bearing carts and trays filled with a variety of breakfast dishes (ranging from heavy traditional English fare to lighter, healthier dishes). With swift efficiency, they set up the food buffet-style on the dining room's side table, After thanking them for their assistance, Harry showed the staff out with all of thirty seconds to spare before the appointed meeting time.
Not that this punctuality turned out to be necessary, mind you…while most of the Art Club arrived by badge-jumping spot-on eight, Fred and George had to be called more than a few times before one of them was roused from their beds. With a tight-schedule for many of the other Art Clubbers, Harry insisted that the Twins join the group in their bathrobes, if need be. His decisiveness was rewarded by a glaring vision of twin brothers dressed in garishly charmed pajamas that would have made Dumbledore proud. Except, maybe for the animated characterizations…Fred's hot pink pajamas sported a dirty-old-wizard who was creating wind gusts to lift the robes of unsuspecting witches, while George's lime-green outfit hosted a herd of satyrs on the prowl.
"Oi, you two…since when am I the responsible one?" demanded Ron, who was busy balancing a plate full of food on the way from buffet-line to table.
"Since your promotion, little brother," replied Fred.
"Promotion?" asked Emily Granger with a yawn (as she had just come off of working the night shift). "But didn't you just start your job yesterday?"
"That he did," Harry interjected. "But perhaps he can talk about that during his two minutes."
And with that gentle prod, Harry moved the Art Club through the buffet line and to their seats around the dining room table. Hermione gave Harry an approving nod when he sat at the head of the table; not so much because he was entitled to be there, as the fact that Harry recognized that he needed to be there (despite his reticence).
"Alright folks," he said, trying to quiet the group down, "thanks to Fred and George's late arrival we're already a bit behind schedule." He nodded towards the twins and added, "You two will be sharing time as a result."
"If that's our punishment we'll make it a point to be late more often," Fred quipped.
Over top of the chuckling that Fred's comment provoked Harry said, "So just to review…yesterday's conference call went a bit long, so we're limiting everybody's oral reports to two minutes or less, and Hermione's got something to help keep to schedule."
When Harry gave her a nod, Hermione cast a mist-producing spell down the length of the table. When the smoke cleared, everyone found that they had an egg suspended eighteen inches above their heads.
"These are egg timers," Hermione explained. "If you don't finish your report in time then your egg will drop, thereby making you aware of the fact."
The announcement brought a mixture of laughter and mild protests (that would have been far stronger had each and everyone in the room known that magical cleaning spells were available to take care of any inadvertent mess). It turned out to be incentive enough, though, for everyone to provide timely and concise reports. It was during these updates that several bits of interesting and important information was shared.
Lupin informed the group that the goblin engineers were still hard at work shoring up the tunnels that surrounded the Chamber of Secrets. They estimated two more days time before it would be safe to enter the Chamber, which actually worked well given everyone's schedule. Meanwhile, Slughorn was back inside Hogwarts brewing the wolvesbane potion that was needed by week's end.
Tonks gave a brief report…things were relatively quiet within the MLE. There still hadn't been any detected Death Eater activity since Ascot, and Mad-Eye Moody had been a right pain in the arse whining about the new interns that he'd been forced to train.
Roger Granger reported no unusual activity at the Rookery, with only the usual patriarchal perverts making use of the facility. The only patron to have used the building's street entrance hadn't been under a glamour, but would have been easy enough to track had they wanted to based on his rather flamboyant attire.
Emily Granger used her time to report on the Summer Institute at Cumberland Lodge. The teaching area was nearly ready, and class lists finalized. With Mad-Eye Moody agreeing to help with DADA instruction, their staffing was complete, so long as they could find a way to ferry Firenze the centaur back and forth between Hogwarts. The most pressing issue was getting the names of incoming muggle-born students, and she enlisted Remus's help in working the Headmistress McGonagall to work out those details.
Sir Evan informed the group that he had spent the most delightful day with his Muses, and that hadn't much to do otherwise with the Queen back at the Palace.
When the elderly muggle failed to speak much past thirty seconds, Ron asked if he could have the extra time (he was refused). He then proceeded in turn, with news that upon his first day as an intern within the Goblin Liaison Office that Ragnock himself had sent word that they would only deal with the Potter Clan Champion. As a result, he'd been made active Head of the office, effectively re-retiring Cuthbert Mockridge, who had been asked to step into that role when Dirk Cresswell (the well-liked and respected muggleborn who had held that position) had been killed during the battle inside the Ministry. Mindful of the egg, he failed to mention anything about the Peanut Butter Brigade.
Which left it to Hermione to fill in the details on the first day of the Ministry of Magic's intern program. Based on the reports of their network of friends and sympathetic Ministry employees, nothing much happened beyond the goblin ultimatum. There was a fair bit of "orientation" (which, from the sounds of things, consisted of boring speeches and propaganda from the likes of Umbridge and Percy). The network had been given orders to lay low, for at least the first few weeks, and to do nothing more than to blend in and observe how things played out.
Fred and George next used twin-speak to describe their day within MI-5 3/4's Q Branch as "guest researchers." While much of their day had been spent dancing around the Magical Secrecy Laws (under Harry and Hermione's stern supervision), there had been a few opportunities to meet and get to know some R & D-wonky kindred spirits. They had hammered out an agreement to jointly develop AK-resistant body armor, and had also started talking about supply chains and mass-production for some of their product line.
Wally and Steve followed with a joint report of their own, passing out the Royal Family's schedule for the day. They mentioned that the Queen and Prince Phillip had plans to visit Canada and a few of the Caribbean Commonwealth countries in two-weeks time, and asked whether something should be done in terms of magical security. When asked, Tonks told the group that the MLE only watched over the PM, and not the Royal Family. She said that other muggle sovereigns and leaders weren't normally provided magical security coverage while in Britain, but that they suspected many brought magical security on their own (either knowingly or unknowingly). She didn't know if this was always the case, or due to the fact that Voldemort was running rampant within Magical Britain.
Feeling some responsibility for the safety of the Royal Family as Queen's Wizard, Harry stated that he would discuss the matter with Head Auror Robards at their next meeting. He then used this decision to transition into his own report. He described (in very circumspect terms) his meeting with Mad-Eye at The Stag, and noted that he had already catalogued fifteen different objects that the retired Auror had used to block the killing curse. He ended by noting that Hermione and he were meeting with the Prime Minister later in the day, in advance of the next day's meeting with Scrimgeour.
And with that, the Breakfast Club concluded. Cars were waiting to ferry individual Art Club members out beyond the protective wards. Ron and Tonks were driven directly to the Ministry of Magic, while Fred, George and Remus were delivered to the Leaky Cauldron (where the Hogwarts Castellan floo'ed to Hogsmeade and the Twins walked into the Alley and their shop). Sir Evan and Wally shared a ride out to Windsor Castle, while Steve walked from Queen's Wizard Quarters to the Palace's Security Command Center.
This left Harry and Hermione in their quarters with two very tired parents. While Hermione and Harry had been switching back and forth between living in the Round Tower and the Palace, Mr. And Mrs. Granger had become quite settled within their Windsor apartment. But with the prospect of an hour's commute out to the Castle they were happy to accept Harry and Hermione's offer for them to use their guest bedroom. So grateful, in fact, that Hermione's parents either didn't recognize or didn't care about the fact that their daughter referred to it as the "guest" bedroom, rather than hers.
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A/N: I caught some flak last chapter for implying that spiders have souls, but pigs don't. I could honestly say that this is my mistake, or cover my butt with use of a suggestion by Ishtar, who suggested that a spider could have been both magical and sentient (and perhaps bearing some sort of life-force or soul). Pigs, on the other hand…..
Not that it will be important to the rest of the story, mind you.
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