A/N: Ok, ok, I know it's been a while. But I haven't even been in my house for the last month more
than a day or two in a row, so there's that. As usual, thanks go out to Lady Starlight for her work on this
chapter. Yeah, it's a bit short too, but the hammer is starting to fall.
Chapter 41: Peering into the Shadows.
May 17, 2016
Hermione frowned as she adjusted the fit of her cloak and stepped out into the cool night surrounding Godric's Hollow. The soft cry of night birds, Hedwig among them, greeted her ears, along with the howl of an unseen wolf. A brief thought crossed her mind of taking transport as she looked towards the closed garage door before she pulled her cloak around her.
She took a single stride into nothingness and vanished, reappearing in a grassy wooded glen boarding a silver brook on one side of the clearing. Hermione slowly walked across the clearing, the ankle-high, soft grass making quiet sounds against her ankles as she approached closer to the sole other presence in the night. The very fabric of time and space seemed to shiver and move, wavering between strides, as Hermione closed in on the single occupant of the forest glade.
Almost as if the nearly full moon high above were a cosmic spotlight, a silvery glow lit an ethereal vision, sitting on a colorful blanket in the center of the clearing. Long hair glowed in the moonlight, and hung loose over a nude body nearly to her waist. As Hermione walked in front of her, she found the other woman's eyes closed and a serene expression filling her face.
Hermione let her cloak fall to the grass behind her and dropped into a lotus in front of her, facing her sister as Luna let herself search the ether. Nearly visible, at least to one of her power, tendrils of magic and time slipped past her off into nothingness. Hermione sighed very quietly and let her own eyes fall closed as she settled in to wait.
A small doe slipped along the edge of the wood, accompanied by a yearling, and several small animals crept up to them before scampering away. Almost an hour later, Hermione's eyes opened and waited a moment before Luna blinked back to reality. Soft, grey eyes glowed for a moment longer before they slowly gained focus and became lit only by the moonlight. Luna took a deep breath and staggered, falling forward into Hermione's arms, which cradled her for a second before slowly lowering the blonde so that her head rested in Hermione's lap.
Hermione gestured in the air, and a water bottle appeared, and she lowered the spout to Luna's lips, holding it there as Luna took a few long sips from the fortified liquid within. Brushing her fingers through Luna's hair, Hermione pulled at a few waves, as she waited for Luna to speak.
"I couldn't get anything, Hermione," Luna whispered and snuggled closer to her. Hermione continued to stroke her hair without speaking, "I tried, but it's too close."
"It's alright, love," Hermione muttered, "we'll deal with it, like we always have."
Luna swallowed and looked up at Hermione, her eyes glistening in the moonlight, "I failed you before...I don't want to again."
"When?" Hermione asked, genuinely confused.
"Eighteen years ago," Luna muttered, "I should have known what was going to happen, that they were going to strike while we were gone...It cost..."
Hermione shook her head silently as she curled downward to kiss Luna's forehead, "You aren't God nor Merlin; you can't see everything."
Luna sat up, bringing her knees up to her chest as she wrapped her arms around them. Hermione draped her cloak around Luna's shoulders, unnoticed by the blonde, "We have more to lose this time, sis," Luna said almost reasonably after a moment's reflection.
"We do," Hermione agreed as Luna stood quickly and reached down, pulling Hermione to her feet easily. Hermione bemusedly let herself be led to the edge of the clearing with Luna's hand pulling her along until they reached the stream. A small, wooden bridge appeared with a sparkle of light and Luna grinned back at her as they walked over it, crossing through a thin line of trees into an expansive back yard of a moderately large two-and-a-half story house, that spread across the front of the clearing.
Multi-colored fairy lights on white poles lit a white-washed deck, Luna let go of her hand as she climbed a set of stairs and walked across it, to gather a thin, white-silk robe from a deck chair and wrap it around her. "At least they managed to get the house done," Luna commented as she collapsed into a chair. "And it's only a minute's broom ride from the Hollow."
"Five, ten...thousand miles," Hermione shrugged, "Nothing really. Are you ok?"
Luna nodded briskly, "A bit of fluids...Shag Ronnie a couple of times and I'll be back to normal." She shrugged and squirmed deeper into the Cushioning Charms on the chair. She smiled suddenly as a slow, happy expression filled her face, "You know that Sirius asked me if he could marry Harriet?"
Hermione closed her eyes and sighed. "That's two of them, then..."
"You are having another girl, Hermione."
Hermione smiled and nodded without opening her eyes, "Don't tell Harry or Ron, I haven't told him yet..."
"I hope he was there to try..."
Hermione reached over from the chair next to Luna's and pushed on her shoulder, "Watch it, or I'll let Ron know that you are having twins."
"Oh, please no, it'll take me days to calm him down, and he's just no good riled up. He gets all rushed, and really loses all rhythm-"
"I didn't need to know that."
"I know."
Luna sat up and leaned forward, "I can see everything else, or everythings, Hermione. I can tell you that tomorrow Dobby is going to spill a kilo of sugar and try to iron his hands, and only stop himself cause Harry said he couldn't. I can see that my daughter will get detention Thursday, cause she and Sirius will get caught snogging in the Library-"
"That is a nice table," Hermione mused.
"Isn't it?" Luna agreed. "I can even tell you that Minerva is currently sitting next to Albus' bedside crying, but I can not tell you what is coming for us. And something is..." She licked her lips before taking another drink from the water bottle that had followed them here. "Do you want to go shopping Saturday, I need to find something to wear to Draco and Ginny's dinner party."
"You can borrow something," Hermione waved towards her own house, a few miles away, practically next-door by Wizarding standards.
"I know, but I want something to show off my legs...before I have to use a mirror to see them," Luna sighed, and looked back towards her house, "Do you think I can borrow Dobby this weekend, I would like his help decorating the nursery, Ron is such pants at painting."
"I'm sure he would be glad to help." Hermione leaned back in her chair, "So do you know what Ginny wants to talk to us about?"
"No, I could try to look again?"
Hermione looked as if she were considering it, "No, you don't need to do that again for a while...promise me, Luna?" Luna nodded. "I'm sure it's nothing, and at least Ginny inherited Molly's cooking talents."
********************The Feisty Goat, Oxfordshire, England*******************
May 18, 2016
8:35 pm
Ron took a long pull on a beer, and slammed the brown glass bottle down on the table as he leaned forward towards Harry. "I don't know, Harry," he said loudly over the conversations in the bar, even though the various spells in the around the table would have allowed the others to hear him and the bar was not really crowded in the middle of the week. "Luna is up to something, Harry."
"They are always up to something, mate," Seamus put in from his place between Harry and Ron. He took a drink and looked back over his shoulder almost guiltily, at Padma as she talked with a few of his regular female customers, a pair of witches working on their graduate degrees at nearby Stonehenge.
"You three are going to get me in trouble," Neville sighed. "You know Padma will talk to her sister. And then I will be on the couch again....and that couch really sucks."
"You do own a house, Neville," Seamus said with a shrug, "I've been there, you don't have to sleep on the one in your quarters."
"Only because Pad kicked you out and made you sleep there when you forgot her birthday...by going to a Harpies game," Neville shot back.
"Well, it was a playoff game," Seamus reasoned. He looked up and back as Padma walked up behind him and kissed the top of his head.
She brushed a night-black lock back behind one ear, "Behave, dear." The rest of the men at the table chuckled knowingly as they watched Seamus nod silently, even as she sauntered back through the tables to the bar, several people moving out of her way without knowing why, even though she looked like for the all the world, except those in the know, like a just another grad student working a night job.
Harry took a sip of beer, sighing quietly as he glanced at his watch and then back at the rest, "I don't know, Ron. She is a bloody seer; she probably saw something. Hell if I know. I do know that her and Mione were over at your new house until late last night. And Hermione did look rather smug about something when she got back."
"I thought there was no secrets between you two?" Neville asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the small, round table set in a dim corner.
"Yes...and no," Harry took another sip of his beer. He frowned, even though everyone here had known him almost his entire life and almost every bit of it that was worth actually remembering, "There are no secrets that we will or even can keep from each other permanently. But we do have corners of our minds where the other doesn't normally go. Where we hide little things that we don't want the other to know...Christmas presents, the fact that I burnt her favorite shoes with a magical discharge...the usual really."
Harry grinned around the neck of the bottle as he took a drink, "Ronnie's just a mite concerned that Luna might use him to test if Finnish Grenpops are really produced by too much caloric intake."
"That's American Slingcraws, actually, mate," Ron retorted without a pause as he munched on a plate of chips set in the center of he table.
"Better you than me, mate," Seamus laughed, "at least Padma usually just talks over my head, she doesn't make up shit..."
"I'm not really sure she does," Ron shrugged, "don't care really, she's happy, so I am..."
"Damn, you can learn," Neville laughed, and sighed suddenly as a soft chime came from his pocket. He flipped open his pocket mirror and talked softly into it. A frown, and he stood, flipping it closed as he dropped it into a pocket of his jeans. "I need to go, slight discipline problem with one of...mine."
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head; "Mine?"
"Maybe, seems someone transfigured the door to the Slytherin common room into a large cat's mouth. The tongue seems to lick every Slytherin to death as they try to get into their dungeon."
Neville finished his beer and headed towards the WC with a shrug and a wave, and a beat later, a quiet POP carried to the table.
Harry stood as well, "I suppose that's a night then, see you lot next week?"
"Sure, Harry," Seamus replied as Harry put his arm around Ron's shoulders and started to guide the slightly inebriated redhead towards the bathrooms. "You got him?"
"Yeah, I'm good to pop," Harry said under his breath and shook his head as Ron started to sing lowly. He waved again as he took Ron to the back and vanished away to drop Ron at Hogwarts, before tracking down Hermione.
******************************Hogwarts**********************************
Only if someone just happened to look just right into the deepest shadows in the dungeons, would the faintest trace of emerald be visible to an observer. A quiet cat snort did not carry to the half dozen wizards that were trying, and failing, to reverse the effects of one of the newest Weasleys' Wheezes products, the Perplexing Portal.
Sirius clamped cat jaws shut to keep from laughter, as he shook a furred head and padded off, staying in the shadows, a second night-black cat followed at his side, and then another at his other side. The three of them emerged from the deep shadows at the staircase up and the pair of black lions and a panther shimmered and transformed in mid-stride and headed for the stairs upward and out of the dungeons.
"So what did George owe us for this?" Rain asked as she started to jog up the stairs. Her trainers made as little sound as her paws did on the flagstones, as they started to jog down the third floor hallway.
"Fifty galleons for product testing...he wanted to make sure that Flitwick and Neville couldn't break the enchantment. He thinks if they can't, then the general public can't," Sirius explained, "That and he promised to get us a shipment of the Immobilization Spheres from the black part of the company. They haven't even gone out to Mum and Dad yet."
"I'd rather have had all our suits," Emilia griped, "but maybe we can find a use for them. Work them into something, Rain." A nod, and the trio froze as they heard footsteps slowly approaching from in front of them. Less than a breath passed before all three vanished into the darkness behind several of the untold number of armored suits guarding the castle.
Three pairs of cat-slitted eyes, two green and one blue, watched from near the floor, the faint flickering light of torches, catching the back of retinas as Maraisah walked past them, moving quickly towards where the Professors were still trying to un...mouth the entrance to Slytherin dorms.
They waited until she had moved out of sight and earshot before they emerged, tails twitching idly as ears swiveled on their own, before the girls transformed together. Sirius waited a moment longer as Emilia worked at fixing her jumper before SHIFTING to stand at her shoulder, "I wonder why she was coming from the shortcut to Ravenclaw?"
"Probably giving someone an incurable disease," Rain spat lowly, "it doesn't really matter; she will get detention for being out this late."
"I'm the one who's supposed to hate her," Sirius smiled faintly as they followed Emilia into a secret passage behind a rather incomprehensible sculpture that was supposedly the result of the eighth Headmaster's passion for eclectic art. "Why is it that you two are so hateful of her?" he asked, grinning at the pair as they scowled in unison.
"Cause she's a slag, whore, slut, who needs to have her head cut off," Emilia growled, and started to climb a tight set of spiral stairs, that creaked and groaned noisily with every step. She looked back down at her brother, walking between her and Rain. She smiled faintly, "So, brother, when are you going to ask her?"
He flushed as Rain sniggered behind him. "Ask her what?"
"Um," Rain laughed, "To shack up with you, to put up with your snoring every night...to eventually make cute little babies with bad hair."
"OI," both Potters snapped, and Rain laughed again.
"I'm thinking about it, alright, leave me the heck alone." Sirius pushed past Emilia and transformed in mid-stride. The black lion rapidly outdistanced the girls, vanishing into the darkness.
"He's scared enough, Rain," Emilia sighed, "and you know Harriet is still a bit...off."
"I'm sorry, it's just that--"
"He will, he already has, he's in that scared place right now they get where he's convincing himself they will be rejected out of hand, even though they share damn near every emotion and thought."
A/N: Ok, there you go, I hope that will hold ya'll for at least a little bit.