The Bat Returns From Hell

A funny thing happened on the way to the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Fifth Element. I was attacked by a vicious plot bunny while watching Devil Wears Prada with my family. This story is a result. It's a crossover, but it also utilized some Fifth Element characters, and some ideas I will be incorporating into that story if I ever get to their Seventh Year.

All my readers know I don't solicit reviews for Fifth Element. My daughter loves that story, and that's all I need. This one is different. My wife thinks that putting Hermione in the Andrea role in Devil Wears Prada is not consistent with Hermione's accomplishments and she doesn't want me to continue this. My daughter is on the fence. She thinks it's “nice” but she doesn't like Harry's (doomed) relationship with Ginny.

That means you, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 1: A Blast From The Past

Pride goeth before a fall.

Ain't it the truth. Just when she thought she was finally getting the hang of things, she let her guard down and screwed up big time.

A despondent Harmony Farmer looked at her Danger Hiptop mobile. Sighing, she opened it, stared at it for a few seconds, and then closed it again. Was any job - especially this job - worth the possible consequences of what she was contemplating?

Just last evening she had been bursting with pride. The Boss from Hell had finally trusted her enough to deliver the mockup book (and the boss' drycleaning) to her townhouse in Manhattan's ritzy SoHo District. That seemingly small feat was achieved only after an agonizing almost two month learning curve in a very foreign environment. The learning curve was much steeper than anything in journalism school, and was probably even worse than … before….

But as always happened before, when she put her mind to it, she did it. Even the Boss from Hell now called her “the smart one.”

Then she screwed it all up. The twins were so adorable. They looked just like the daughter those two might have had - assuming it turned out to be a daughter (she left before even the sex was known, and for almost nine years had resolutely refrained from ever finding out). Those imps encouraged her to venture upstairs, into forbidden territory, where she intruded into her boss' private domestic problems.

Muy bad - very, very bad.

She had violated instructions, intentionally if innocently, and with this boss, there would be a price to pay. But Harmony had no idea how big that price would be. She had never thought that it might change her life - that it might bring her most peculiar past crashing down upon her after all these years.

She opened the mobile again. This time she actually had her fingers poised over the buttons before again putting it away.

Sure enough, the retribution had been just as certain as it was characteristically devious. It happened only an hour ago, after the lack of any immediate dressing down had lulled her into a false sense of security. But then she was called through those glass doors and given a new assignment:

“Harmony, I want you to get the new Harry Potter manuscript for the Twins….”

The mention of that name - by this woman after all these years - hit her like a Stunner to the chest. Her breathing hitched, but she concealed it like the professional she aspired to be. The Boss from Hell did not seem to notice.

“…They're leaving by train to their father's for the weekend, so I need it by four o'clock this afternoon.”

Recovering quickly from the shock, she had responded. “Right Ms. Beastly. I'll drop by the Borders at Rockefeller Center right after lunch and pick up two copies.”

“Harmony, I don't think you understood my instructions,” the boss had said with that soft breathy voice that came from a heart of stone. “They've read all the Harry Potters you can buy in the store. What I want you to get is the unpublished manuscript for Book Six. The Journal has a story this morning that it's finally been finished and delivered….”

“But Ms. Beastly, I'm not sure that will be possible if it's not in the stores….”

“Harmony, if I thought it was easy, I would have had Emily do it. My daughters have asked me for it, and they shall have it. If you can't get it for them, don't bother coming back….”

“But Ms. Beastly….”

“That is all,” the boss pronounced with her customary finality.

Harmony staggered out of the office, almost turning an ankle in her ridiculously high (and ridiculously dear, had she paid for them) stiletto heels, and flopped into her chair. She had remained there ever since - contemplating her fate.

It was obviously retaliation for what she had overheard the night before - being given a task that Ms. Beastly knew full well was impossible to complete successfully. It had been in all the papers for years. The Bloomsbury people always guarded the pre-publication contents of the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series more closely than Saddam Hussein had guarded his weapons of mass destruction. That was always part of the series' mystique…. There was no way in this world or the next that Ms. Beastly actually expected her to obtain a copy of that top secret manuscript - in only five hours.

It all about getting her fired. Only there was one little thing that Ms. Beastly did not know about Harmony Farmer.

Actually, it was not a little thing at all.

Actually, it was a very big thing - a secret every bit as well-hidden as J.K. Rowling's best-selling prose.

It was the key to many, many secrets … to a secret past she had fled in heartbreaking sorrow almost nine long years ago.

And the one small part of that secret that mattered at this moment was that Harmony Farmer was the only person in North America with an absolute right to a copy of that manuscript. All she had to do was ask.

It was her contract - in that contract she had signed only a few months after she had left … the one delivered through an intermediary of an intermediary … the one that had permitted the whole series to be published in the first place.

That contract gave her the right to review and object to any portrayal of her in the Harry Potter series.

Now, if she wanted to keep the job that she had been killing herself to master, it was either invoke those contractual rights or risk becoming indebted to that creepy Gilderoy Lockhart lookalike and his implication that he might just be able to help her with her problem. From the way he had always leered at her from the moment they were introduced, his quid pro quo was obvious.

Harmony Farmer knew something that was not generally known.

She knew that the Harry Potter series was not what it seemed. It was not really fiction all - but rather biographical.

And Harmony Farmer was not what she seemed either. You see, Harmony Farmer was a witch … a witch who had once been Harry Potter's best friend - and more.

That “more” was why she had fled England nine years ago next June and thereafter never looked back. It was why she had never exercised her contractual rights, and indeed had not had any contact at all with anyone in England for two full years

Was saving this hellhole of a job, glamorous as it could be at times, worth the risk of reopening wounds that were as old as they were deep?

- 5 -

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 1 Blast From The Past.doc.doc 12/27/06

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You, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 2: A Toe In The Water

“I am not going to fail at this job,” she told herself after another ten minutes. “I can succeed in this world, just like I can in any other.” Having thus steeled herself, Harmony Farmer did something paradoxical. She punched into her mobile the number of her only remaining contact with that “other” world.

It rang until going to answerphone. She gave the secret code that indicated her need for the most urgent possible response. “Wolfsbane and Homorphus not enough, add silver colloid to save a life and make a human.”

It paraphrased something she had done in her Seventh Year.

Harmony hung up. That was as much as she could do on that end for now. Taking a deep breath, she thought about how to handle the fallout on this end from what she was planning. The last time she had been desperate enough to initiate contact, she had been forced to go on sabbatical for a year - hiding out in the mountains to avoid his people.

She snapped her fingers. She'd come up with something that would work. She dialed another, much more familiar number. “Nigel, it's Harmony. There's been a slight change of plans. I need you to have Ms. Beastley's helicopter fly to Battery Park City Heliport and stand by…. Yes, immediately. You know how she is. Yes, of course this has to do with this afternoon's Staten Island Ferry shoot…. Now do it, please.”

Emily flounced into the room, all high cheekbones and style. The tension between the two was palpable. Before, Emily had been First Assistant and Harmony the Second. That was starting to change as the newcomer became more acclimated to the demands of the job. That new girl had started from zero in so many ways, but she was so clever … once she learned something, she never forgot it.

This time, she informed rather than asked. “Emily, I've been handed an urgent assignment by Ms. Beastly. I might have to take the rest of the afternoon off. Bye….”

As soon as Harmony was alone in the elevator, she Transfigured those engines of torture that Nigel laughingly called “shoes” into something more sensible. Even though she had given up her wand years ago when she fled the Institute for Advanced Magic only hours ahead of his agents, she was very accomplished with wandless magic. Back then … that kind of magic had saved her life more than once. Now, its primary advantage was its untraceability.

Another wave of the hand, and the elevator changed direction, heading for Runway's rooftop penthouse. The heliport was there, but she was not planning on hitching a ride to the Battery. It was just a handy secluded spot to wait for a return call.

She did not have long to wait.

Within ten minutes her mobile's annoying summons began sounding - but not with the distinctive ringtone reserved only for her boss.

“Nymph, is that you?” she said without formality.

“Hermione…? After all this time? Are you in danger?” the breathless voice of Nymphadora Tonks flowed from the mobile phone.

“Relax, Nymph. Yes, it's me and no, I'm not in danger - not like the last time I had to initiate contact. I just need a favor … a huge favor.”

“All right,” the now Senior Auror replied. “For security, tell me something only Hermione Granger would know.”

“On Twelve September, 2001, Harry Potter was with his wife in the Xanadu Pleasure Dome in Tibet.”

“Not good enough Hermione,” Tonks told her. “Harry knows that, and Ginny too, not to mention I don't know how many goblins. And it would be just like Harry, if he learned your passcode, to try to trick me into revealing your whereabouts….”

“But he doesn't know why I tried to reach him…,” Hermione replied. “I needed him to come and play the bloody hero. I wasn't strong enough. I hadn't done wandless magic on that scale in years, if ever. There was nobody else. It had already been fifteen minutes … and you have no idea how big that building was….”

“He knows that too, Hermione,” Tonks admitted. “And it's just the kind of thing he'd try to trick us with.”

“But why, Nymph? Why did you tell him?” she hissed into the mobile.

“I had to. He was going crazy. The pictures were all over the Muggle tellies. The message got garbled by the goblins…. He thought you'd wanted him to rescue you, and that you'd died in there - not that you'd been trying to keep the bloody thing standing. He thought he was seeing you die over and over again. You know he can get…. It was tell him the truth or there'd be an international magical incident. He was set to lead a goblin takeover of Afghanistan all by himself!”

“At least he'd have done that job competently,” Hermione Granger, n/k/a Harmony Farmer, spat. “I know, the fallout forced me to take a year's sabbatical, and then transfer to Brown from Columbia … ironic, given his … well, you know….”

“I have no way of confirming that fact on short notice,” Tonks replied. “If this is urgent, then time's a wasting. Tell me something that I can confirm that only you know.”

“All right,” she said, getting back to the business at hand. “Two years ago … the last time you called me … I became Patient 2203 at the Prairie Pothole Witches' Medical Centre in Thunder Bay. I had tests, and then an operation. As a result, I had a falling out with Parry, and I cut Healer Huxley off my contact list, leaving you as the only one.”

“Hermione, what can I do for you?” Tonks asked.

“Thank you, Nymph,” she said with relief. “As much as I know I'm going to hate it, I need a copy of the advance manuscript of JKR's `Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,' and I need it in the next three hours. It's in my contract that I'm entitled, and you already have my written proxy in such matters.”

Tonks had not been expecting that. Unseen by Hermione, her hair went bright blue in puzzlement. “But why, Hermione? Why that?”

“Don't ask - it would take more time than I have to explain,” she said.

“All right, I'll do it. Give me an hour, then turn on your ring. I'll have the manuscript sent by international fast owl.”

“You're a life saver, Nymph,” Hermione thanked her.

“Well you saved Remus' life - and indeed everyone's,” Tonks replied. “I'm happy to return the favor…. But you know what's going to happen.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “I know,” she replied.

“You know I have to go to Blackie Howe to get this done.”

“I know.”

“You know if I go to Blackie, Harry will find out. He's his biggest client, after all.”

“I know.”

“You know what will happen once Harry finds out.”

“I know.”

“You're prepared for that?”

“Nymph, I'm really good at being a Muggle now. It's a big city, and there are lots and lots of Muggles - and I have a lot more resources at my disposal now then when I was a starving student. He won't be able find me.”

“Okay,” Tonks replied, “but don't say I didn't warn you.”

“Thanks, Nymph. You're the best.”

“Dammit, Hermione, why?”

Every bit of lightness in Hermione's voice vanished. She was deadly serious as she said, “I've already been over this too many times. Harry made his choice. It was the only one he could make, being the honorable man he is, after … what happened. I just couldn't stand it. I made my choice, and I've made a new life. I'm not going to come back and wreck everything for both of us.”

“All right, girl, but I have to tell you something - something that I'd tell you even if Harry Potter never existed…. Something you really need to know.”

“Go ahead, then,” the girl on the New York City rooftop said.

“You'd best be sitting down,” Tonks instructed.

Hermione flopped heavily in a nearby gray, institutional Formica chair. “All right, I'm sitting. This better be good.”

“I think it is,” Tonks hinted. “I don't believe anyone's ever told you why you were asked to be a bone marrow donor after that Magicoencephalogram and the Charmonium testing in Thunder Bay two years ago.”

“I was told - both by you and by Healer Huxley - that it was a matter of absolute life and death for Harry. I trusted the both of you, so that was enough. More, I didn't need to know then, and I don't need to know now, especially after Parry said he couldn't ethically keep my whereabouts confidential anymore. Please don't you go down that road, too!”

Actually Hermione had a pretty good idea why - she just never asked and did not care to be told. There are only so many reasons one is asked to be a bone marrow donor.

“I'm not,” Tonks reassured her. “I'll never betray you. Harry knows that, and as a result, we're barely on speaking terms. But you need to know this, Hermione. Those tests … they showed … well, that you're a mother….”

“What! That's crazy!” Hermione screeched. “If there is one thing that I would necessarily know it would be that. After all, I'd have to be there for that, wouldn't I?!?”

“Hermione, hear me out!” Tonks yelled back. “You know as well as anyone about the unpredictable consequences of that bloody spell - especially with the odd manner that the three of you ultimately carried it out….”

Hermione deflated. “You … you know about that? I thought nobody but….”

“Harry told Remus when the test results confirmed things,” Tonks revealed. “I've waited two years for you to contact me.”

Hermione was flabbergasted, “But … but how…?”

“You were going to be a Healer once, so maybe you'll understand what I'm going to tell you better than I do. Molly … that's Harry's little girl's name, had something life threatening … fulminating magical something-or-other….”

She did not know the name, but the involvement of Harry's child had been pretty easy for her to figure out. It was why she had agreed.

Hermione thought back…. It had been such a long time. She had stood first in her class at the Institute before Harry's people had tracked her down, and she'd fled. “Probably fulminating magical rhabdomylosis…. It's 100% fatal if not treated properly within two lunar cycles of symptoms. But that's a Part-blood's condition.”

“I can't help you with that, so just listen,” Tonks said. “All I know is that Remus said Harry was told that the diagnosis didn't make sense because the little girl was a Pure-blood and the disease, it's - well, I guess you're right…. Anyway the proper treatment was something Muggle-related, but….”

Hermione realized where this was going. “She'd need Charmonium dialysis and a bone marrow transplant,” she said. “But while that would save her life if she was a Part-blood, if she were a Pure-blood, the diagnosis would be erroneous and the treatment would have fatal consequences.”

“That sounds like it,” Tonks agreed. “Parry insisted that both you and Molly be tested. The tests confirmed that - magically speaking - Molly is a Part-blood. They also confirmed that, while Ginny's the birth mother, somehow you're the magical mother of Harry's child….”

She definitely had not deduced this. It was simply beyond her comprehension.

“Oh, dear Merlin,” Hermione groaned. “Nymph, I just can't take any more of this right now…. I have to do a lot of thinking. Just get me the blasted manuscript….”

She terminated the call.

* * * *

Harmony dashed out of the cab at the Battery. She found a relatively out-of-the-way bench under a tree and wandlessly cast a Muggle-Repelling Charm - her first since leaving England. Also for the first time since leaving England, she turned on the locating function of her Auror's ring. Then she waited.

The minutes seemed like hours. Partly it was the deadline set by her Boss from Hell - but the traceability of her locating charm added to her tension. Harry had people just about everywhere in the world.

Finally, she heard a rustle in the tree above her, followed by a soft hooting. She looked up to see a sleek black stealth owl with a large package firmly tied beneath its rear end. More wandless magic loosed the package, which bore the distinctive wand logo of Blackie Howe's law firm.

Now she had to make herself scarce - fast. Fortunately Battery Park City was just across the street. In five minutes she had cut the queue, flashed her ID, and reached the rooftop heliport by express elevator.

“Back to the Runway building - quickly,” Harmony Farmer instructed the helicopter pilot.

“Ms. Beastly's not with you?” the pilot asked, a little surprised. Nevertheless, he goosed the engines and the baby blue Bell jet turbine chopper lifted off.

“No,” she told him over the throbbing engine. “Unfortunately the shoot has to be cancelled. Something's going on down there and everything's all snarled.”

“I'll say” the pilot agreed as he circled the bird around and headed for Midtown. “Whatever's happened looks like it's stopped both traffic and the subway. I wouldn't want to be down there right now.”

“Nor I,” Harmony concurred. She could see what the pilot could not. Scores of goblins were pouring from the subway exits and sewer grates.

As the towers flashed by below, she pulled out her mobile and dialed. “Nigel, it's Harmony. You'll have to cancel the Ferry Shoot. Something's happened at the Battery … nothing's moving….”

“What!” he exclaimed nervously, “That's a half a million dollars down the drain. The dragon lady won't be pleased.”

“It can't be helped,” Harmony said. “Just turn on WCBS.”

- 8 -

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 2 Toe in the Water.doc.doc 12/28/06

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You, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 3: Puissance d'Amour

She'd done it. She'd saved her job and astounded the Boss from Hell. Not even that woman's perfectly coiffed ice queen exterior could conceal her surprise - and a fleeting flash of admiration - when Harmony plopped an “extra copy” of the Book Six manuscript on the desk and informed her that two bound copies had already been delivered to the Twins.

Likewise, Harmony was making Emily seriously uncomfortable. While she still had “coat duty” in the morning, Harmony was receiving progressively more First Assistant's responsibilities. She - an out-of-place, ugly duckling only a few short months ago - now gave orders to the “clackers” (as she called them), and they now obeyed without question.

And the Paris event was looming - now barely over the horizon. Emily was full of plans to go, and Harmony was happy to let her. Paris was in Europe, after all, and Harmony had not been back to Europe since leaving England. Paris was in France, and France was just across the Channel … from him….

Outside of work, Harmony Farmer was hunkering down and doing very little. That was not difficult, since the Boss from Hell was quite content to dominate her life from the wee hours of the morning until late at night - and for now Harmony was content to be dominated. She had no social life to speak of, and had not since Brown…? Columbia…? Pigeon Forge…? The Institute…? Hogwarts…?

Anyway, working constantly and staying indoors otherwise also kept her well away from the Harry's goblin bounty hunters, whom she knew were scouring the Big Apple for her. Just in case, she observed a moratorium on wandless magic at her flat for over two weeks.

She did not think that Harry's minions stood much chance of success, as neither they nor Harry would have any conception of what her life had become. The Bookworm Granger in high fashion? That would simply be inconceivable to them - as it had been to her not so long ago.

It was something challenging in its own way - and it paid the rent. It also kept her well hidden in the anonymous big city.

The trouble was, “long ago” haunted her thoughts. Harmony could not come to grips with what Tonks had told her. It was so … bizarre that she doubted the information's authenticity. Had Harry turned Tonks, too? He could always inspire fierce loyalty in those he was close to. She as much as anyone had burned in that flame. He also had enough money to buy the allegiance of just about anyone else he might need.

But on balance she thought it likely that Tonks had told the truth, as far-fetched as it might seem. One huge weight in that balance had been the manuscript she received. It was brutally frank about how she had screwed things up in Sixth Year. If Harry still harbored any feelings for her of that sort, surely he would have sugarcoated things.

Also the manuscript had been entirely free of any surreptitious locating spells or other hidden magic. She had taken enough care to check. She was very thorough, and the manuscript had checked out clean. Thus, she concluded Tonks was still trustworthy.

She could not stop thinking about Seventh Year - a year that Rowling woman would have to fictionalize extensively if she wanted to keep Harry Potter a children's series. They had defeated Voldemort all right, but only by resorting to very adult magic. That adult magic not only destroyed Voldemort, but the Golden Trio as well. Its consequences had driven her out of the magical world.

They had gone back to school - reluctantly. Headmistress McGonagall had made her and Harry Head Girl and Boy, telling them that if “The Chosen One” did not return to Hogwarts in the wake of Dumbledore's death, very few other students would either. That would mean that after a thousand years, the school would have to close, perhaps permanently.

Still, he had not wanted to go. She convinced him that - with special arrangements - attending school could be compatible with the search for Voldemort's Horcruxes. Harry reluctantly agreed, probably more because he wanted her to be Head Girl than anything else (although he would never admit that to her).

The search had not gone well, and by early spring they had found and destroyed only three of the Horcruxes - the Slytherin locket (Caractacus Burke's brother Raymond had turned out to be R.A.B.), the Hufflepuff goblet, and most terrifyingly the Gryffindor cornerstone. On that occasion, she had almost died at the hands of Lucius Malfoy.

By chance she had survived. Malfoy, his son Draco, and a couple of other Death Eaters ambushed the trio at Godric's Hollow. The trio went there to consider rebuilding the house where Harry's parents had lived - and died.

The Death Eaters used a Disguising Charm that made the house appear intact, as if in a huge snow globe. Their spell included a selective ward around the building. It stopped the two boys while she passed through. The next instant Lucius Malfoy had a wand at her throat.

“This is a murder, not a negotiation,” Malfoy laughed. With that, he began incanting the Killing Curse. Unbeknownst to the Dark Wizard, however, both she and Harry had cultivated Animagus abilities. At that moment, she tried Transforming into a Phoenix, and he into a Golden Griffin.

Still, she would have died, as something obstructed her magic. Ron saved her - pretty much by accident, as with the troll. Firing off the first spell coming into his head, Ron cast an Excavating Charm. He later claimed he hoped to blind Malfoy with flying dirt, but Hermione always suspected random association.

Random or not, Ron's spell worked. Fortuitously, his charm unearthed the cornerstone of the original Godric Gryffindor manor, which at one time stood upon the same spot.

Voldemort had known that. He had converted the cornerstone into a Horcrux after killing James Potter, but before turning his wand on the seemingly helpless Harry.

Ron's spell sent the cornerstone flying through the air. It struck Malfoy's wand and intercepted his Killing Curse. The Horcrux within it was destroyed, she had lived, and an enraged Harry, in his Griffin form, had sunk his leonine teeth into the senior Malfoy's leg just as he had Apparated away.

She never asked Harry exactly what happened after that, but the Order learned from captured Death Eaters that it had not been pretty. A Griffin can tear a man to pieces in a matter of seconds.

That experience took the rebuilding idea off the table. Big time.

While at Hogwarts, Harry more or less renewed things with Ginny, although it was a tentative and rather fragile relationship. Neither of them knew from day to day whether he would awake needing her desperately for some sense of normalcy, or pushing her away from all the danger.

Hermione probably committed an even greater error. After the Godric's Hollow scrape, she was so grateful to Ron that she mistook that emotion for something more and agreed to date him. This relationship was always volatile - outwardly because they were constantly at each other's throats. But a more fundamental reason underlay her long-standing ambivalence towards Ron. Harry's shadow, or more precisely the shadow of what she felt for Harry, loomed over everything, even though it went almost entirely unspoken.

He was with Ginny, after all. And she was more concerned about keeping him alive.

Then Fleur Delacour had her idea - her wonderful, awful, and ultimately successful idea.

They were recuperating at the Burrow, after another of their fruitless Horcrux pursuits.

“Dammit,” Harry cursed. “We'll never get this done at this rate! He'll attack the School while he's still unkillable and everyone will die.”

“Harry, get a grip,” Bill told him. “Things will work out. I got a lead the other day from the Goblins that Hufflepuff's Breastplate might be in Ireland - alongside St. Patrick's in some church in County Cork. I'm going to check it out tomorrow.”

“I hope it's better than the supposed badger collar that had us running all over Cornwall last month,” Fred remarked. “George is still in St. Mungo's.”

“Who am I kidding anyway?” Harry moaned. “There's the snake after that - if it even is the snake - and then something else we have no idea. And I can't kill anyone anyway. I can't even muster a decent Cruciatus. I have no hope of producing a Killing Curse capable of putting an end to Voldemort himself.”

“Don't sell yourself short, Harry,” she gently upbraided him - for what must have been the hundredth time. “You have the power of love. You love so deeply and so much. Voldemort can't even comprehend that.”

“Give it a rest, Hermione,” Ron scoffed. “What Harry needs now is a little more hate. Like it or not, that's what gives the AK its power. Mad-Eye said so himself.”

“Oh Ronald. Fermez … er … please be quiet,” Fleur intervened. “`Arry, I zink she ees right. Zee power of love, eet ees tres strong, especially eef channeled zrough zee act of love eetself…. I have seen zee references een some of my readings on zees subject. Zees is one theeng I know….”

Harry stared at the Frenchwoman like she had live bats coming out of her ears. “Yeah, right,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to do, kiss him to death?”

Hermione reached over from her chair next to his and put her hand on his arm. “What's the harm, Harry? We're in a rut with these Horcruxes and maybe there's another way. It wouldn't be the first time Dumbledore's been wrong, after all. Why don't Fleur and I spend a couple of days in a library to see if there's anything we can use.”

“Oh, all right, Hermione,” he gave in. “Go ahead.”

Fleur turned out to be more right than she knew - although it required Hermione's skill in adapting the Puissance d'Amour (or Power of Love) Curse to battlefield conditions to make everything work. That spell - used in the way they had to use it - was quite tricky and … there was no way to avoid it … physical magic.

From the moment Harry told her the prophecy, Hermione never wavered from her belief that his love was the “power” that Voldemort knew not. The Power of Love Curse provided the means to use that love to put an end to Voldemort. The curse did not involve killing, and that was the key. By making Voldemort's killing unnecessary, the Power of Love Curse rendered his Horcruxes irrelevant. Those Horcruxes existed solely to prevent his death.

The Puissance d'Amour Curse utilized the power of love to overcome evil. Hermione's thought was to take Fleur's idea and convert love into the weapon with which Harry could destroy the evil that was within Voldemort. With his evil eliminated, there was no point in killing whatever was left - assuming anything would remain within Tom Riddle's wrecked soul once all that evil was forcibly evicted.

Fleur, unfortunately, was a blabbermouth. She could not resist telling her husband Bill about her great accomplishment when the two of them were at the Burrow.

Even more unfortunately, both Ginny and Ron had been at loose ends that evening and were using Extendable Ears for some voyeuristic fun at the couple's expense.

The pillow talk they overheard ruined Hermione's life.

Once Ginny learned that the Puissance d'Amour Curse involved shagging, she was absolutely certain about one thing - she would be the witch with whom Harry would perform that spell.

Once Ron had learned that the Puissance d'Amour Curse involved shagging, he was absolutely certain about one thing - Hermione would not be the witch with whom Harry would be performing that spell.

Hermione acquiesced, and helped Harry and Ginny “train.”

In the middle of May Snape left word that Voldemort was indeed planning to attack the School.

Harry came to her one evening while Ron was away on one of his periodic visits to the Burrow. Molly Weasley was very skeptical of Hermione's plan for engaging Voldemort, and he and Bill were trying, once again, to convince her.

Harry was troubled.

She looked up from her parchment when she heard the door to the Heads' suite squeak open. “Come in, Harry. You're back early…. It's not even midnight. I thought you were practicing with Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets.”

“I did, but she's not really comfortable down there, and you had the D.A. training in the Room.” As he spoke, Harry ran his left hand through his hair, a nervous habit of his.

“Well, as you can see, we're done, so you can use the Room if you'd like,” she offered. “It's less private, though - which is why I thought we agreed in the first place that I'd train the D.A. in the Room and you two would have the Chamber.”

“Doesn't matter. I told her I'd gotten a headache,” Harry admitted. “I just don't want to practice … that … anymore right now.”

“Harry!” she reproached him. “What would Ginny say if she knew? That's not the right attitude. To defeat Voldemort you have to train with her. Do you need a Refreshing Draught?”

“What I need….” He stopped and dropped his eyes to the floor. He shuffled his feet. He looked almost like a naughty little boy about to confess to mischief.

“Umm … Hermione? Can I talk to you about … something serious?” he said uncertainly. “It's sort of, about all that?”

She pulled out her wand. “Colloportus. Imperturbatus,” she incanted. “You can always talk to me, Harry. What is it?”

“I think I'm … I'm going to die,” he confessed softly. “I don't think my love is strong enough…. There's just not enough there. I've been trying and trying with Ginny. We use Long, Tall Sally….”

“What?”

“Umm … Slytherin's statue as a target…. But I just don't generate the pink beam how you tell me it's supposed to look. It's there, but … pale…. Like it's an imitation of what it's really supposed to be.”

“Harry, you've got to try harder,” she lectured him. “You love her; you've told me so yourself - and it's been excruciatingly obvious to me for years that she's deeply in love with you. Is it a physical issue? I can get Fleur up to Hogwarts to fix that. She's got a million and one pointers for that kind of thing….”

“It's not physical, it's mental,” Harry mumbled. “The problem is … it's a lie….”

“What's a lie, Harry?” she gasped. “You've told me you're in love with Ginny - and I'm sure you've told her…. You've said it when there's no possible reason for either of you to lie. What's wrong, Harry?”

“I love her, Hermione,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “But I'm not in love with her, and right now that's a crucial difference that could cost all of us our lives. I realized tonight. I did something I'd never done before…. I mentally cheated on Ginny.”

“You … what?” she gasped.

“I … I thought about somebody else while trying to make the spell work with her,” he confessed.

She looked stern. “Who, Harry?”

“Fleur,” he choked out. “I mean she's probably the sexiest woman I've ever met.”

Hermione had felt an odd flutter in her stomach the moment Harry started his confession. That fluttery feeling gave way to a heavier sensation when he mentioned the half-Veela's name. “And…?”

“Not much of an improvement,” he admitted. “Maybe a bit, but nothing that could possibly make a difference.”

“Well, there you go,” she declared. “That's not the answer then. I think you have to concentrate instead on strengthening your feelings for….”

“I didn't stop there,” Harry broke in. He was really wringing his hands now. “I thought about … about you….”

“Oh, my, Harry,” she drew back. “That's really not proper. That could complicate things in so many ways….”

“Er … I'm trying not to die, here,” he told her, and he reached for her hand. “I had to see what would happen….”

She swallowed hard. “And…?”

“It worked, just like I thought it would,” he told her, fixing on her shocked, brown eyes. “In an instant, I singed about a thousand years of moss off old Sally's midsection. Ginny was really pleased.”

She sighed deeply and turned away from him. “Oh, Merlin why…? Why now?” Her shoulders slumped. “Since when, Harry?” she asked.

He spoke very quietly, but she could tell from his tone that he meant every word. “I first used the moment you slipped the Time-Turner around the two of us in Third Year. I saw an immediate improvement in pinkishness….”

“Pinkishness?”

“You know, in the Curse I was trying to cast,” he explained.

“Oh, I've never actually seen it,” she remarked.

“You need to,” he responded.

“Harry!” she squeaked, sounding scandalized.

“Sorry,” he said. “But I'm not going to be able to do this if I don't admit the truth. Then I used the kiss you gave me before the First Task. With that, I noticed some real sizzle. So I tried the time you came to my room in Grimmauld after you'd broken off your vacation. The beam went solid fuchsia then. After that I used Neville telling me you were still alive in the Department of Mysteries; the time we both abandoned our dates at that Slug Club party and went off and talked until two a.m., and finally learning you were still alive when Malfoy tried to AK you….”

“And?” she repeated. She doubted she really wanted to know the answer. Or maybe she did.

“Burnt the bugger clean with that one,” Harry said, chuckling just a bit. “Then I stopped, because I felt guilty about it. So I came down with that headache.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and tried to turn her around in her swivel chair. She resisted, but he persisted, and she finally allowed him to spin her towards him.

“Tell me … please,” he asked her. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me there's nothing there … inside you, I mean.”

Hermione felt like she was facing a firing squad. She was damned if she did and damned if she did not.

“Harry … to be honest, I've … I've been … in love with you since First Year - since you went through the flames to face him for the first time. That's why I went with you to the Ministry even though I knew it was a trap. That's why I looked for a way to defeat Voldemort without killing him - because you're a lover, not a killer.”

“I love you, Hermione,” Harry told her. “I've never told anybody that before. I've never said it to Ginny.”

“I love you too, Harry,” she confessed. “It just … always seemed safer being friends…. That and you never really seemed interested … that way … in me.”

He reached for her.

She pushed him away. “We can't do this Harry, not now. Ginny will murder me.”

“Voldemort will murder me,” Harry countered, “and you, and Ginny, and everyone else….”

He tried to embrace her again, and again she pulled away. “Harry Potter, we cannot be together this way. Ron will go crazy, and we need him to general the troops. He will kill the both of us.

“Voldemort will kill the both of us,” Harry repeated. “And a lot more nastily than Ron.”

He persisted “Please, Hermione, I don't want us all to die.”

She persisted. “My parents will disown me; the Weasleys will disown the both of us, and the Order will be torn apart,” she protested.

“Sirius and my parents left me more than I can ever use,” he told her, “And I know you've never really cared about that, anyway….” He moved in to try to kiss her again.

“I've run out of excuses,” she said. Squelching noises ensued as their lips met.

One final time, she tried. “Harry, this is a very bad idea.”

“I know,” he agreed. “But I can't stop - not if I want us all to live….”

- 12 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 4: The Settlement

The still young man opened the door to the whitewashed, one-storey house in the woods on the outskirts of the little town of Godric's Hollow. He looked the distinguished, older man on his stoop up and down, as he took a step back to allow him to enter

“Hello Blackie, glad you could make the trip,” Harry Potter greeted his long-time solicitor and the closest thing he had left to personal counsellor. “Now tell me something that only you would know about me.”

“Umm” … the pinstripe clad man thought for a second. “That little glitch in that Muggle algorithm that Hermione Granger fixed just before she left made you an awful lot of money….”

“Well, I don't know if that will do,” Harry said thoughtfully. “Hermione knows all about that, and Dennis did, too.”

“One's been gone for nine years and the other's dead, Harry,” Blackie Howe, parried. “I think that right well qualifies.”

“Oh, Hell, sure it does,” Harry said with a mirthless laugh. “Come in and tell me if I'll be parting with an even larger amount.”

“That depends on whether you agree to the terms I've worked out or whether you'd rather run the gauntlet of extended litigation. I'm confident you'll prevail in the end. After all, you weren't the one throwing her out.”

“But I knew,” Harry smiled sadly. “I knew what had gone on, and I never told her. I deserved her showing me the door.”

“Yes, you knew what had transpired, but not what it meant, Harry.” We've been over and over this. As your counsellor, I'm telling you that's your position. “Nobody did. Not until Molly got sick.”

“And I'm telling you as a friend, that I damn sure did appreciate it - and even before nine-eleven,” Harry said with squared jaw. “I just couldn't admit, even to myself, how badly I'd cocked everything up. That's why I think I'm ready to do this and get it over with.”

“It's an awful, awful lot of money, Harry,” Howe reminded him.

“I grew up with nothing; I found the best friends in the world with nothing, and with all the money in the world - I bollixed the lot of it royally,” Harry smiled ruefully as he slumped into a chair and willed a cool glass of pumpkin juice to appear in his other hand. “Besides, I'm sure she'll use it well - set up more orphanages with it, or something….”

“It wasn't your doing, Harry - it all goes back to Voldemort. If you hadn't destroyed him…, well nothing else would have been possible.” Howe knew he sounded like a broken record.

“But there was another way to do that,” Harry reminisced. “The missing Horcrux was staring us in the face all the time. It melted half the trophy case when it disintegrated after I'd done the deed - so to speak. Hah, hah, hah.” Harry shook his head with every feigned laugh.

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Harry,” the solicitor replied.

“Okay, but even putting that aside…,” Harry continued. Howe let him ramble. After all, he had heard all this from his young client many times before. “…There was still another way. I suggested it, but she wouldn't hear of it. It would have hacked Ron off, but at least the blighter wouldn't have died that night if he'd sulked in a tent someplace.”

“Are you sure you still could have done it, without all three of you present?” Howe questioned.

“Not a doubt in my mind,” Harry fiercely reaffirmed. “Probably would have been a lot quicker - and certainly cleaner, without the Lynch to Moran to Mullet aspect of it. She was too damn honourable; always was, that woman.”

“You were honourable, too,” Howe added. “Even more so, since to this day we'll never know whether she really did it because she thought you needed the extra edge….”

“It doesn't matter now - and I love Molly with all my heart…. Oh, I needed an extra edge all right,” Harry admitted, wiping his brow with his left hand. “Just not that one. It's because of all those edges that we're here - ready to slice my fortune in half…. So I gather she's agreed?”

They were down to business. “In principle, yes.” Howe affirmed.

“I get primary custody of Molly, and the right to control her magical education and upbringing?” Harry asked.

“Agreed to,” Howe told him, while looking at the notes he had fished from his attaché case. “And she gets two months a year, and two weekends a month, as her right - and whatever more the two of you agree upon at any particular moment.”

“Of course,” Harry replied. “That didn't even need to be in there. I'd never keep her from Molly - she loves her too, I know that…”

“Better safe than sorry, Harry,” Howe responded. “It's better to have and not need, than to need and not have. I even agree with Beasley on that.”

“All right,” Harry conceded. “It's just…. Well, to me it implies that I'm untrustworthy. Anyway, I get to amend the Muggle birth certificate and the birthing talisman to update the parental information?”

“The talisman, yes.” Howe affirmed. “As for the Muggles, I'm not sure they'll know what to make of the request. There will be no legal opposition, however.”

“I get the right to change Molly's middle name to whatever I please?” Harry asked.

“Oddly, that little demand was the hardest, but yes, Beasley conceded it yesterday,” Howe remarked. “Frankly, I think your ex knows what you have in mind.”

“And, of course, I get the divorce?” Harry finished with his terms.

“Actually, she's consented to an annulment,” Howe informed his client. “That way it's as if the marriage never happened at all. That's how she thinks it should be. She believes that you never really loved her in the first place, and that you simply did the honourable thing.”

“She's wrong about that,” Harry remarked. “She's right about everything else, but wrong on that. I did love her. I'll always love her in a way. I just could never love her … in the way a husband is supposed to love a wife. It was a mistake - an honourable mistake, but the worst I've ever made. And now I'm going to make it right.”

“Will this make it right?” Howe asked, more rhetorically than anything else.

“No, but it's a necessary first step.”

Howe got out the papers. “Before we do this, I think we should go over not only your terms, but hers as well….”

“All right, but they're only money, right?” Harry sighed.

“Not entirely,” Howe reminded him. “Remember, there's the stipulation that all the Black Estate's house-elves must be manumitted upon her death, if not freed before that point.”

“Right, I'd forgotten that one,” Harry admitted. “Okay, go through them.”

“She gets all the real property and the magical assets that comprise what once was the estate of Sirius Black,” Howe started.

“Good riddance to it,” Harry spat. “Except that doesn't include the bank shares, right?”

“That's correct, Harry,” Howe confirmed. “It's the next item. You will retain, pursuant to your codicil to the Goblin Treaty of 1996, the six blocking shares in Gringotts' bank. You also keep the motorcycle.”

“All right, next,” Harry said.

“She gets one-half of your interest in the Muggle Google Corporation - a one-sixth interest in the whole - that being the half you put up as bounty after nine-eleven for anyone who provided you with information leading to your reuniting with the Granger girl….”

“She's a woman now, remember that,” Harry reminded. “Ginny understands that she can't get the other half of that interest?”

“I've explained that you have put it in irrevocable trust for the benefit of the Granger … er … woman, and she accepts that.”

“Good riddance to that, too,” Harry agreed. “I've concluded that Tonks and everyone else were right, anyway. The bounty never worked…. Just drove her deeper. Another blasted mistake.”

“We all make them,” Howe commented vaguely. He agreed wholeheartedly with those sentiments, and had tried to stop him then - but his client could be headstrong, especially when the subject was Hermione Granger.

“Those Muggles wouldn't have been anything if she hadn't fixed their glitch; she deserves the benefit,” Harry said flatly.

Howe ignored that comment as he continued ticking items off. “She gets one half of your one-third of the book royalties on the Rowling series….”

“With Ron's family getting one-third, one-third in trust for Hermione, and the last sixth to me,” Harry added.

“Correct,” Howe affirmed. “And finally, she relinquishes all right, title, and interest in the Potter inheritance, the minor trusts and life estate bequests, and the supplemental list of other Muggle assets.”

Harry made a hand motion, and a quill shot from his desk into his hand. He had it poised above the documents that would finalize his divorce - no annulment - from Ginevra Weasley Potter. He let out a breath he had very consciously been holding and brought the quill down to his side. He looked over to his long-time solicitor.

“Any more news about the recent sighting?” he asked.

“Do you really want to discuss that before you've signed those papers?” Howe replied.

“Yes,” he said. “It might affect my willingness to sign. If it's as hopeless as it seemed until recently, I might fight her original divorce demand.”

“Harry, I don't want to go into this until the papers are finalized because I don't want you thinking I'm trying to increase my firm's fees….”

That little speech brought a very thoughtful look to Harry's face. “Go on,” he demanded, “get to the bloody point. Is there something there?”

“Yes,” Howe told him. That news produced the first real smile he had seen on his client's face in quite some time. “It wasn't just a sighting. It was an intentional contact. I don't know why, but she wanted a copy of the Book Six Rowling manuscript. She contacted my office through the Auror Nymphadora Tonks. Auror Tonks produced a legally valid proxy, so I turned over the manuscript. As you no doubt understand, Auror Tonks was extremely circumspect in her dealings with me. She did, however, accept use of one of my overseas owls, as apparently there was some urgency to the matter, and my owls are quite a bit faster than what the Ministry has on hand. Her spellwork was good, but not perfect. I engaged one of my services, and determined that a delivery was made somewhere in New York City - that's in the United….”

“I know where bleeping New York City is,” Harry cut him off. “I once Apparated there from halfway around the world … remember?” Howe said nothing, and heard the scratching of quill upon parchment. He turned and saw Harry frantically signing everything he could lay his hands on that had one of the D'Israeli firm's sticky arrows. His eyes shone with intensity that the solicitor had not seen since Healer Huxley's announcement that Molly was out of danger and would make a complete recovery.

“She's been in contact with Tonks,” Harry declared as he collected the papers and handed them to Howe. “I always suspected that those two kept some means of communication. Do you think Tonks told her about Molly? Merlin, I hope so.”

“I have no idea, although I recommended it,” Howe told him. “I told her that Miss Granger deserved to know - for her own sake, not yours.”

“You're a genius, you know that?” Harry chirped as he grabbed a traveling cape. “That's exactly the line that Tonks would buy. I'm going over there….”

“Do you think it wise?” Howe cautioned. “I don't know if she'll talk to you about this. Money won't buy her, you know.”

“Money never bought Hermione either,” Harry replied quickly. “She'll talk to me all right. She has to. I need to set up a play date with Tommy for Molly anyway. They'll be going to Hogwarts together in a couple of years, and it's quite likely that they'll eventually be Head Boy and Girl, so it's a good idea for them to get to know each other. That'll get my foot in the door. After that, I'll just have to do what comes naturally.”

- 7 -

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 4 Settlement.doc.doc 12/28/06

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You, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 5: Nightmares And The Defeat Of Voldemort

“Aarrgh,” Harmony Farmer flopped on her bed in her tastefully appointed, but anonymous, Muggle flat in an equally tony, but anonymous, West Side neighborhood. Her boss had driven her crazy again, at the very last minute demanding Harmony's presence at another huge bash. The worst was having to memorize an entire two-volume guest list in less than twelve hours.

She did it, of course.

Wandless magic once again saved the day. All she had to do was read the entry closely, circle it with her right index finger (she had always been right-wanded, and when going wandless, saw no need to change), and tap that finger twice against her temple. It was magic - both the information and the image were inputted directly into her brain.

The shindig was excruciatingly boring. Harmony was on her feet for three hours, hovering constantly in the background while wearing excruciatingly high heels. Emily had been sick as a dog and nowhere near the top of her game. That earned Harmony that look from the Boss from Hell about an hour into the event - one that let her know she had just been promoted, and was expected to handle the lead role.

No words were spoken; none were necessary. Her job was to make the boss look good - to make it appear as if she remembered everything about every guest at the event.

Now she had been promoted. Poor Emily, it was not her fault.

But fault never mattered with Ms. Beastly. It never did, unless it was yours.

She had done a good job - but one could never tell with Ms. Beastly. No good deed, it seemed, went unpunished.

The evening was long - at once both stressful and monotonous. The topper came just as she left. She was wincing her way down MOMA's front steps in those horrible shoes when who should she encounter but Gilderoy (all right, his real name was Christian).

He had been playing hurt that she had not gotten back to him about the Harry Potter manuscript, suggesting that he knew someone who knew someone who could have obtained what she needed. She was sorely tempted to pry for details - to turn over the culprit to the tender mercies of Blackie Howe - but she cut the conversation abruptly short at the first sign of Christian's angling to go out with her, or at least trying to get into her pants.

That was so not going to happen. She never let that happen.

Once home, she never undressed and was asleep within seconds of her head hitting the pillow. That meant, however, that she had not practiced her Occlumency.

Voldemort had somehow gained control of the wards.

In the dark, starless night, the towers of Hogwarts Castle loomed in the background - some holed clean through or with smoke pouring from gaping windows. Only a few lights remained, and duelers hurled curses right and left. Frequent sharp reports sounded as spells crashed into the Castle's ancient stone walls.

She was there, with Harry, Ron, and a few others, trying desperately, and not altogether successfully, to keep Voldemort away from Harry and the rest of the Death Eaters away from Voldemort. Something had gone badly astray; Ginny was nowhere to be found when the alarm signalling the attack sounded. Neville went missing as well, having been assigned responsibility for escorting Ginny and getting her where she needed to be when she needed to be there.

Hermione and Ron fought off Death Eaters while Harry and Voldemort exchanged curses. After their one enchanted evening, Hermione had resolutely refused to replace Ginny. But she did “help” him (a little; she never let him have his way again) every so often to make sure that his memories of the two of them together stayed sharp and were readily accessible when the time came.

During one of those sessions, Harry had ended a kiss by promising Hermione that “when everything was over,” he would end it with Ginny and be with her. She did not encourage him; nor did she discourage him. She stayed focused on one thing - making sure that The Boy Who Lived did. Whatever else happened; would happen.

Her single-mindedness required a major sacrifice - one she was prepared to make, but would be kept absolutely and forever to herself. She could only suspect how Harry would have reacted. He probably would have banished her to France to “keep her safe.”

His initial confession of love had been so unexpected, and so overwhelming, that she was unprepared. When Hermione tested positive, she used her status as Madame Pomfrey's star pre-Healer student to slip into the Hospital Wing, steal a dose of Professor Snape's Abortifacient Potion, and end the pregnancy. Irony of irony - all the while she prepared Contraceptive Potions for Ginny, who continued her “training” with Harry none the wiser that his improved performance had little or nothing to do with her.

She often thought about that, given what later happened with Ginny. But if she kept it, Harry would never have allowed her on the battlefield, there would have been an irreparable rupture with the Weasleys, and Voldemort would have won. Thus, Hermione convinced herself that she had done the only thing she could do.

Harry would never, ever know of her sacrifice. If he told Ginny about the rest of it - that was his business.

But when push came to shove, Ginny was not there - and Voldemort was. Harry was weakening. She and Ron circled closer to him, protecting him from lurking Death Eaters, and even firing an occasional curse at the red-eyed monster himself, although to little apparent effect.

Then it happened. Voldemort slipped an Expelliarmus through a crack in Harry's now battered Protego shield. Harry flew one way and his wand another. His back rammed a tree and although he rolled this way and that, he did not scramble to his feet.

“I tire of this sport,” Voldemort hissed. “You have fought … acceptably … but like your father, the time has come for you to die. Say goodbye to this world, Harry James Potter….”

The Dark Lord raised his wand and started to pronounce the Killing Curse.

“Noooo!” Hermione screamed. Finishing off the Death Eater dueling her with a clipped “Sectumsempra,” she sprinted to Harry and made herself a human shield between him and that monster.

“Expelliarmus!” Sectumsempra!” Reducto!” she screamed curses in rapid succession, but each of them bounced impotently off of Voldemort's silver shield - the ringing noise echoing through the darkness.

“Away with you, pathetic Mudblood!” the Dark Lord dismissed her. “I have no interest in anything not fit to scrape off my shoes.” Voldemort generated a gust of wind from his wand, trying to blow her out of the way. She silently cast a Weighting Charm on herself, countering that attempt.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Luna dart forward, put a phial to Harry's lips, and fish out his other wand. Knowing Luna, it was a Replenishing Draught. Standing there, facing Voldemort, she was prepared to do anything to keep Harry alive, since he was their only hope.

“Say anything you want, you sorry excuse for a Dark Lord,” she challenged him. “I beat your O.W.L. score, and by a handy margin. You'll forever be second best to me - a Muggle-born.”

She saw wandlight coming in the other direction as well. “Look out, Ron,” she cried. “Behind you!”

The Dark Lord roared again. “Do you think I care about trivialities such as O.W.L.s? I have achieved immortality. Out of my way, Mudblood.” Chains shot out of his wand.

“Lilaceous,” she incanted. The chains Transfigured into lilies and fell harmlessly to the ground.

“Hermione,” he heard Harry's gravelly voice call from behind. “It's got to be you. We can't wait any longer. The real thing will be more effective, anyway….”

He felt him touch the back of her shirt.

She knew it would never work. Even magically, she could not possibly undress fast enough. The Dark Lord would kill them both first.

Ron had whirled around at her warning - and almost hexed Neville. Then, still facing Neville, he heard Harry's exchange with Hermione, and Ron's jaw dropped.

“No,” Neville called out. “We're ready now.”

Hermione knew what that meant. Ginny had finally arrived, suitably dressed - or undressed - beneath Harry's Invisibility Cloak. All the redhead had to do now was get into position.

“For the last time, stand aside,” Voldemort commanded, his red eyes flashing malevolently. “If you value your insignificant little life.”

He said some curse she had never heard before, and a burning orange bolt flashed from his wand.

Not knowing what else to do, Hermione conjured a mirror. As she did, she felt something she could not see brush behind her. It had to be Ginny. That meant she only had to buy them a little more time….

Voldemort's spell slammed into the mirror, staggering her - but it reflected back and crashed into the Dark Lord's own leg. For the first time in the entire battle he had obviously been hurt. Voldemort stumbled backwards a couple of steps and almost fell.

“You'll have to kill me get to Harry,” she screamed at Voldemort.

“Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it,” the evil wizard howled as all around them more curses flashed. Another troupe of Death Eaters, led by Draco Malfoy, stormed into the clearing.

At the same instant a group of D.A. members rushed from the other side, firing their own volley of hexes. They called to Harry and Hermione - something about goblins and Hogsmeade.

Hermione could not move. The Killing Curse was unblockable. If she moved it would hit Harry or Ginny.

“Avada….”

“Do your damnedest…. And be damned!” she yelled what she fully expected were her last words on this Earth.

But the Dark Lord never completed the Killing Curse. Instead he hissed, “Oh, no you don't, Mudblood….” His burning eyes regarded her as she squeezed off yet another ineffective curse of her own. Just a split second before, a randomly misdirected bolt of magic flashed into the ground between them, kicking up dirt - and some of the lilies she had conjured. “I remember Lily Potter. Oh, how well I remember her…. I won't be fooled again.”

With that, the Dark Lord limped to one side, trying to get her out of his line of fire. She realized immediately why she had been spared and took a step sideways, making sure that she stayed between Harry and Voldemort.

“Hermione - down! We're ready!” She heard Harry's command and instantly dropped to the ground.

“Puissance d'Amour Totalus!” She heard him scream out - adding Hermione's own embellishment to the spell. Rolling over, she saw Harry furiously pumping into a stark naked Ginny Weasley, who held onto him for dear life.

A bright pink beam shot out of Harry's wand, to which Ginny's hand was also clinging (another of Hermione's improvements). The solid beam of light found Voldemort and seemed to pin the Dark Wizard where he stood.

Harry was not even looking at his mortal enemy. He certainly did not look at the girl he was having sex with. No, his piercing green eyes stared over Ginny's right shoulder straight and unwaveringly at her. As surely as his magic had fixed the Dark Lord in place, his eyes captured hers.

She could not look away. She knew that made her useless in the furious firefight going on all around them, but she knew from the ferocity in his eyes that maintaining eye contact with him was all that mattered.

Somewhere behind her - in the direction of the Castle - she heard some huge explosion.

Also behind her, she heard Voldemort roar out a Killing Curse. The pink glow illuminating the Whomping Willow and other trees in the vicinity mixed with the evil green light of the Dark Lord's spell.

Another few seconds passed with Hermione remaining transfixed. The pinkishness seemed to flutter. Then she heard his voice, Legilimencing into her head like so many other times they had needed to have a private conversation in public.

He was panting from all the strain. `Hermione … it's not holding…. I need your help…. Please tell me … that you … love me…. Please mean it.'

She Legilimenced back, `I love you, Harry. You have to know that. I've always loved you. I think since I first met you. I want you. I want you to win, Harry. You're my inspiration….'

The Pink light grew stronger, and the green light retreated, but only for a bit. Harry started to weaken again.

`Say it again, please…,' he groaned. He was plainly tiring.

`I love you; I have always loved you; and I will always love you!'

He seemed to get a second wind. The pink light gained again. She thought she heard Voldemort screaming….

His voice came to her a third time. `Hermione, if we get through this alive…. Will you marry me?'

`Harry, if that's what you really want, of course I will…'

A stray Blasting Curse smashed into a rock next to Harry, shattering it and sending shards in all directions. Harry's Protego shield only protected against magic - since he had to cast an outgoing spell. The shrapnel sliced into Harry's legs and into Ginny's arse. He staggered and she screamed.

The pink light that only a moment before was on the verge of overpowering the Dark Lord's evil flickered. The opposing green light flared.

Once again Hermione did the only thing she could think of. She pointed her wand directly at Harry and Ginny. “Puissance d'Amour Totalus,” she incanted loudly. A pink beam shot from Hermione's wand and enveloped the two. Then she called out to him in what she hoped was a similarly loud voice, “Hold on! I love you Harry!”

Through her wand all Hermione's magical energy began draining from her body. Harry and Ginny appeared to absorb the pink beam she maintained. Hermione saw it reform, merge with their magic, and rocket from Harry's wand in what resembled a horizontal tornado.

Everything went quiet and seemed to happen in slow motion. All she could hear was the sound of her own blood roaring in her ears.

Ron circled around behind Harry, his wand hanging limply from his hand, his eyes wide in wonderment. He was gawking at either her, Harry, or them both.

A tremendous pink flash erupted behind her, in the direction of Voldemort. A shock wave knocked Hermione over, and she rolled on the grass fighting to keep her focus, and to keep her wand, on Harry and Ginny. The branches of the Whomping Willow swayed wildly with an unseen force - a wind of hurricane strength.

Black flowers started blossoming throughout her vision. Swimming into view were the malevolent gray eyes of Draco Malfoy, his face etched with rage, his mouth howling a curse.

She tried to scream a warning, but no sound emerged from her throat

The green flash from Malfoy's wand hit Ron squarely in the back, dropping him limply to the ground.

Dirty blonde hair flashed through Hermione's rapidly narrowing field of vision. Luna did something with her wand that Hermione could barely see, and Malfoy's face exploded in blood. He, too, fell out of sight.

Hermione's eyes rolled back, but just before she passed into whatever state lay beyond where she was, the she saw the ominous yellow eyes and bloodstained teeth of Fenrir Greyback crouching over her. For the second time that night, she felt the rushing wings of death - but the werewolf unaccountably hesitated, distracted by something.

She screamed and screamed and screamed some more. A pounding noise rung in her ears that would not go away….

The door to her flat gave way with a crash. Six of New York's finest piled in. They found one very disturbed young lady and one very smoky and quite wrecked apartment.

- 10 -

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 5 Nightmare Trio to Defeat Voldemort.doc.doc 12/28/06

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You, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 6: Endings and Beginnings

The police were puzzled, but had no grounds to take Harmony into custody. There was no contraband - no unregistered weapons - not even any fire to account for the scorch marks all over the woman's bedroom.

Nor did anything explain why several neighbors would simultaneously report loud noises and odd lights - and why the police thought they had seen the same thing.

Only a young woman having a nightmare.

Once the young lady calmed down, she was not much more help. She answered their questions only in the vaguest terms. She was pleasant - thankful even - but there seemed nothing to investigate. After fifteen frustrating minutes, the police left.

By then Harmony Farmer's landlord arrived. Unlike the police, he was unconstrained by the niceties of due process - the terms of his form lease had seen to that. Five minutes after the police departed, Harmony found herself evicted.

Not that she really minded - it was less messy that way, since she had to get out of there pronto. She had not had this kind of nightmare, generating spontaneous magical emissions, since she had gone Muggle after leaving the Institute.

Those emissions would be noticed, and would send the damned goblin bounty hunters after her again.

Fortunately, she was on her boss' good side at the moment. The magazine would help her.

It did. Within minutes of ringing up Emily on her mobile, a messenger was on his way - bringing keys to one of the visiting model flats that Runway maintained in the Village for out-of-town girls attending shoots. Those apartments were considerably more posh than the one-bedroom walkup that her Personal Assistant's salary allowed.

On her way out, she wandlessly Obliviated the landlord, and erased all traces of her existence from his records.

Nobody thought to ask why Harmony had not requested movers to help with her things.

* * * *

By mid-afternoon Harry was standing on their flagstone walk knocking at their green-painted door.

“Remus, I know you're in there,” he called out. “I need to talk to you - and Tonks too.”

He heard footsteps inside. A small part of the door briefly turned transparent. Harry heard the appropriate spell being uttered, and the door clicked open.

“Hi, Uncle Harry,” the little black-haired boy greeted. “They'll be down in a bit - at least Daddy will. They were … playing.”

Harry grinned. After almost nine years of marriage, Remus and Tonks still could not keep their hands off of one another. “Thanks, Tommy. Can I come in?”

The little boy hesitated - knowing that his uncle and his mum were not on the best of terms. “Umm … yeah.”

Harry tousled the boy's hair as he entered the cozy house. It was perfect for that family. He knew, because he had helped them buy it when Luna wanted to sell and go off to chase her will-o-wisps.… Before nine-eleven.… Before he had gone nuts….

“Would you like to play with Molly?” he asked the boy.

The tyke's eyes lit up. “Yeah,” he burbled. “That would be great! We could ride Auntie Gin's peggy ponies!”

Harry smiled crookedly. “Sure Tommy, if that's what you want to do….” That would be at their - no, now Ginny's - country place, where they kept a pair of young Pegasi - a baby blue one (Molly's favorite colour) for her, and a hybrid (that could turn white or pink at will) for his daughter's little friends.

“Hello, Harry.”

Harry turned and saw a rather sloppily dressed Remus Lupin clomping down the stairs.

“Afternoon, Remus,” he addressed the older man neutrally.

“Tommy, why don't you go see Mum. She'll read you a book….”

“Okay, Daddy. Can it be the one about Uncle Harry? Cousin Ronnie says it's really cool,” Tommy asked in that whiny voice he used when he thought that what he wanted might not be allowed.

“I don't know about that…. You know what Mum says…,” Remus replied.

“Aawww … Daddy.”

“Go on…. Uncle Harry and I have to discuss boring grown-up stuff.”

The outwardly nine-year-old boy nodded and scampered up the stairs.

“So what brings you around, Harry?” Remus remarked as he summoned a Butterbeer. “Not the playdate, surely. That could have done by Floo.”

“It's done,” Harry told him. “I need to talk to you … and Tonks too. I know she's been in touch with her….”

“So you cut the knot,” Remus mused. “For the best, I guess. You were gentle about it, I assume.”

“Of course,” Harry responded. “Ginny deserved no less. She was always good to me … and she loves Molly as much as I do. It was always going to be amicable.”

“You were always an honourable man, Harry,” Remus said with a sad smile. “You made an honest woman of her, and spared Molly all that stigma…. Even though I know now it must have killed you inside.”

Harry shook his head. “That's why I had to end it. It became a lie. A beautiful, bright, shining lie, but a lie nonetheless. Can I talk to Tonks…?”

“You know her conditions, Harry,” Remus reminded. “And you know I agree with them.”

“That's done too,” Harry said softly. “As soon as Gin files the papers, the Google stock belongs to her and the bounty ceases.”

“Good,” Remus grunted. “That was a bad idea from the moment go, Harry. You can't force someone to come back … not someone like Hermione, anyway.”

Harry stiffened. “I had to try,” he began. Then he stopped. Rehashing those arguments was pointless - particularly since he now conceded he was wrong. “Forget it, that's over….”

“Maybe for you, Harry, but not for her, you know.” Remus chided.

“Yeah…, you're right,” Harry nodded. “Now the real work begins … and I'm starting from less than zero.”

“I doubt that,” Remus told him. “She's still out there - still hiding - and if she's hiding, rather than just telling you to pound sand, there's a reason. I think it's still there…. Surrounded by a lot of scar tissue, no doubt, but still there….”

“Remus, is that Harry I hear?” came the familiar voice from upstairs.

“Yes, Luv,” he called back. “He's just leaving….”

“No, I'm not,” Harry declared loudly enough that she had to hear. “I'm not leaving until I talk to you. The divorce is final; the bounty's gone. I know you've been in touch with her.”

“I know you know, Harry,” Tonks said from upstairs. He heard movement, and a little boy's protest. Tonks give Tommy his Pygmy Puff to keep him company.

“Please talk to me,” Harry asked urgently. “Is she all right? Does she need anything … anything that she'll accept, anyway?”

Tonks descended the stairs in a nondescript gray robe, wearing her hair conservatively (for her) in mid-shoulder length black, with a few metallic red stripes. Harry had not seen her face to face since Molly nearly died.

“So, you're coming to your senses after all this time?” she asked with more than a touch of sarcasm.

Harry ignored the barb, which was deserved. “I know she contacted you for the manuscript…,” he began.

She cut him off. “So, she was entitled.”

“I don't care about that,” Harry soldiered on. “All I care about is did you tell her … about Molly?”

Tonks paused and took a breath. “Yes, Harry. I told her … not for your sake, but because I thought she needed to know.”

“What did she say?”

“She hung up on me. Haven't heard from her since.”

* * * *

The red-haired woman stared morosely at the fully executed set of legal papers. All she had to do was file them, and she was single again. She had not envisioned this ending. Since she was ten years old, she had seen herself with Harry for life.

Such irony - as ironic as stepping into the footsteps of the most notoriously Pure-blood family in Britain, as the next Lady Black.

She sighed. “Oh, Harry…,” she murmured to a man no longer there. “Did you ever really love me?”

She knew why he asked her to marry him.

That was another issue. She also envisioned herself with a brood of children like her mum - not the single daughter she had after all these years. She loved Molly more than anything, more than herself and more even than Harry, but Molly's only-child status was another of life's not-so-little ironies.

The Healers finally concluded that both she and Harry were adversely affected by that spell. Harry had gone from almost radioactively fertile (he was tested before they started training) to out of phase with every female in the world except her.

She, however, was rendered incapable of having any more children.

At least that's what the Healers said. She somehow lost her eggs - permanently. Harry remained in phase solely with her, due to their evident conception of Molly moments before whatever happened to him … that night. They said that she and Harry were very lucky to have Molly. No prior conception, no being in phase. No phase; no chance for children. Simple as that.

So they had done it. Destroyed Voldemort - or at least destroyed the evil in him. But that weird, wonderful spell … nobody, not even Hermione, could have predicted the ultimate outcome.

It turned out to be a newborn baby. The spell returned Tom Riddle to a state of innocence, returned him to what he was before his mistreatment in that horrible orphanage.

At Minerva's suggestion Remus and Tonks adopted him, with a cover story that Tonks had just become pregnant. With nobody the wiser, this time Tommy was growing up loved, like all children should be.

Unable to conceive and not having to work, Ginny started a string of lovingly run orphanages for wizard children all over the British Isles. “Every child a wanted child,” was her slogan. She whole-heartedly threw herself into this endeavor, and Harry cheerfully funded it.

Harry had been wonderful - and she had wronged him so.

All three of them were unconscious due to magical depletion after Voldemort had been destroyed. Ginny awakened first, after about ten days. Dutifully, she helped nurse the other two.

Thankfully, neither of them were conscious for the funeral when her family buried Ron - and Bill, also killed in the final battle while fighting with the goblins to liberate Hogsmeade.

Hermione came to after almost a month. By then Ginny knew she was pregnant with Harry's child. Ginny was a smart girl. Harry did not fancy stupid witches. She could tell what that news did to Hermione.

Hermione was still in the Hospital wing, only two days after regaining consciousness, when Ginny announced, “Hermione, I need to tell you something.”

“Go ahead Gin,” she said with a weak smile. “You know you can tell me anything.”

That was the truth. Even though it had become painfully obvious to her that Hermione must have loved Harry for quite some time, Hermione had supported her relationship with him, and, after some hesitation, backed her insistence upon performing the Puissance d'Amour Curse with Harry. Hermione brewed her potions and helped talk her through the many rough spots of that training.

But that horrible night, when she and Harry had faltered, Hermione had cast the curse herself, adding her power to theirs and putting them all over the top.

But in doing that Hermione also revealed - to Ginny, and certainly to Harry - the depth of her love for him. They both felt it.

“I'm pregnant … with Harry's child,” she told Hermione.

Hermione gasped, Ginny saw the pained look come over the older girl's face. Hermione lowered her head into her hands and started to shake.

“I'm sorry, Hermione, I thought you'd be happy for us,” she said when Hermione stayed speechless.

That had some effect. Hermione tensed and appeared to be fighting for control of her emotions. She raised her head. “I - I am,” she said quietly, without real feeling in her voice. “Congratulations … really. That's wonderful. I assume you told him….”

“He's still unconscious, Hermione.”

“No, I meant, you did tell him … beforehand … that you would take the antidote to the Contraceptive Potion so he'd have that extra edge we talked about with Fleur.”

“Umm… No, I didn't,” she confessed. “It would have distracted him. He had so much to go on with. He was really … difficult … those last few days - after we got Snape's message. He had trouble concentrating. I didn't want to make him worry about anything else.”

That was the truth.

But it was not the whole truth.

She had done it to give him every chance she possibly could to destroy Voldemort. But she also did it because of Hermione.

Even though Ginny was Harry's girlfriend - and then his lover after Fleur and Hermione uncovered the Puissance D'Amour Curse - she envied Hermione. Those two had deep conversations that Ginny could never hope to match. Ginny had seen the way Harry looked at Hermione, even while Hermione advised him about how best to shag Ginny. Ginny also saw how she started looking back at him when she was certain he would not see it.

That scared Ginny. She lived in fear that at any moment - especially with Voldemort gone - Harry would end their relationship and take up with Hermione.

Sometimes she thought the only thing holding those two back was their friendship with Ron, Hermione's ostensible boyfriend.

Harry had the strongest sense of honour she had ever seen in a boy. Ginny could predict how he would act if he got her pregnant. Ginny knew Hermione knew that too.

Ginny loved Harry more than anything.

That was a second reason she took the antidote.

Harry remained unconscious for another two weeks. Hermione concluded that he must have feared another, better-known adverse effect of that curse - its capacity to consume the very love that powered it and leave the former lovers without feelings for one another.

Hermione discussed Harry's condition with one of Harry's many trainers, an old Chinese Wizard. He taught Hermione a special Legilimency that allowed her to enter Harry's mind, find his consciousness, and convince him this was not true - that the love that vanquished Voldemort also survived the Dark wizard's demise.

She thought Hermione would insist upon performing this rather dangerous magic alone. But the girl studiously included her - if she wanted to go along - because of the pregnancy.

She did not really want to go. The risk scared her. But because her baby deserved a father, she swallowed her fears and participated.

The Chinese Legilimency worked, and they brought Harry back.

When finally he was conscious again, after they exchanged greetings, Hermione uttered what must have been the most difficult sentences of her life:

“Harry, you and Ginny need to talk. I believe she has something she needs to tell you.”

Then she left the two of them alone in Harry's sickroom.

By the time Harry and Ginny left that room, Ginny was his fiancée.

Hermione distanced herself from Harry after that. She was alone a lot, because Ron was dead. She said she was sad because she never “got closure,” with his funeral occurring while both Hermione and Harry were still in comas.

Ginny sensed, however, that she was actually pining for someone still alive.

She tried to include her. She asked Hermione to be her maid of honour. She accepted.

Typically, Harry did even better. He asked Hermione to stand for him in place of the parents he had never known.

Three days later Hermione had disappeared.

Harry was never the same after that. The wedding went ahead, of course, and Molly was born. But then came the discovery that, between the two of them, they could not conceive again. He threw himself into becoming an Auror - although he could have had any position he wanted, just for the asking, after destroying Voldemort.

She threw herself into her charity work.

They grew apart.

They tried to “rekindle their love” several times. One of those was a two-week getaway to Xanadu in Tibet. Nine-eleven happened, and for a few horrific hours Harry thought Hermione died when the second tower collapsed. He left abruptly and Apparated all the way to New York.

He was wrong. His Gobbledegook was never the best. Her distress call sought help, not rescue. He never found Hermione - the Muggles must have collected her. He did get his name in Guinness Magical Records for the longest non-stop Apparition to a previously unvisited point.

Although she suspected it for years, she knew at that point she was playing second fiddle to someone not even there.

Then Molly nearly died. Nothing made sense until Hlr. Huxley convinced Harry to ask Hermione to be tested. Harry only told Ginny about that later. Somehow Hermione was located. All Ginny knew was that Tonks was involved.

She would never forget Harry telling her the results.

“Ginny!” he called breathlessly as he burst into Molly's room at St. Mungo's. The previous evening Molly went into what they feared was an irreversible coma. “Healer Huxley thinks she can save Molly!”

She threw herself in his arms and wept - too overcome for words. Finally, she got out, “How?”

“He says she needs Muggle dialysis and a bone marrow transplant,” Harry told her.

“But … but … that's impossible … we've been over that. Molly's too much of a Pure-blood….”

“Umm … I'm afraid that's not quite so,” he told her, his own face teetering on the edge of tears.

He was always the strong one, though, and kept his composure - with Molly's life at stake. “Healer Huxley had a hunch that something odd happened when she was conceived. He was right. It wasn't … just the two of us….”

Harry struggled for words, but Ginny had a premonition.

“What was it, Harry?” she asked seriously. “Was it her … Hermione?”

“Yes,” Harry replied. “Somehow, she's … she's … Molly's magical mother. You're the birth mother, and she's the Charmonial mother. Healer Huxley never saw anything like it.”

“The way we cast that spell to destroy Voldemort that night was unique,” she said as she felt her life go up in smoke. She would have broken down - except for Molly; they had to save Molly.

“Er … should I prepare myself?” she asked her husband. “For bone marrow donation?”

The look on Harry's face would stay with her as long as she lived. “No,” he choked out. “Healer Huxley says it can't be you. They need the Charmonium. It has to be Hermione…. She's apparently a perfect match.”

“And … she'll do this?” she asked robotically. Without it, she knew Molly would die in less than a fortnight - and they could never have another child.

“Yes,” Harry told her.

Harry married her because she was the mother of his child - not because he really loved her. And now she knew, even that was not entirely true. Not long after that, she first asked him if he wanted a divorce.

- 5 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 7: Unusual Information

Harmony Farmer was pleased - and impressed. Despite Manhattan's perpetual severe housing shortage, an inevitable product of decades of rent control, the power of Runway once again manifested itself. Less than twenty-four hours after being evicted, she was in a nearly new, three-bedroom flat in the heart of the Village.

The place was a bit of a mess when she moved in, but that could not be helped. After all, beggars cannot be choosers. Besides, she badly needed to calm herself and refocus. Cleaning the place helped do that. She did it strictly Muggle-style. After all, those accursed goblins might well still be about, searching for her.

Damn that obsessive Harry Potter.

From cleaning up their leavings, she gained an odd acquaintance with the flat's prior residents. There were four of them, all from France. They stayed for approximately two weeks - judging from the dates on discarded envelopes. Their names were Julie, Claire, Cécile and Brielle. They were relatively new to the business. It was apparently their first trip to New York.

Harmony was just finishing, moving a stack of French newspapers and magazines to the trash bin, when she tripped over a minivac left carelessly in the hallway and dropped the whole lot. Cursing her inattention, Harmony started to retrieve the mess when she gasped, and came to a complete stop.

She stared at the masthead of Le Monde Magical, wizarding France's leading publication. That could mean only one thing - at least one of these models was a witch. After an initial surge of adrenaline from this discovery, Harmony reminded herself that it was really none of her business. Who was she to intrude upon a witch trying to make a go of it in the Muggle world? She was doing exactly the same thing.

Harmony shrugged. She gathered the scattered papers and took them to the same chute through which all the prior occupants' other remnants had vanished. But before consigning this lot to some New Jersey landfill, curiosity got the better of her. She had not seen a wizarding publication in many years…. Nobody knew she had it. It was an accident….

She saved it out, made herself a cappuccino, sat down, and started leafing through it. It was dated the previous month, meaning it had been brought over when these models first came to New York. This was the only one - everything else was Muggle.

The fare was mostly standard - comings and goings of the French Ministry, EU broom standardization, whether or not Turkish wizardry was ready for accession, the latest staff appointment at Beauxbatons, promotions, obituaries…. Fleur's mother had died. Too bad. Apparently her father was some big muckety-muck in the French Ministry.

Then she saw it. “Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” He had really done it. She had wondered if he might do something like that.

It appeared on the lower half of the society page, in the non-French items: Harry Potter had gotten an annulment, not just a divorce. Apparently it was amicable enough. Only “irreconcilable differences” were mentioned - no hint of infidelity on either side. Not that she thought there would be. Harry was too honest and honourable, and he was Ginny's whole life. A huge settlement was apparently involved. Ginny was the new Lady Black; Harry kept the Potter inheritance; and unspecified “other assets” were divided. Harmony knew that meant at least the Google stock and the book royalties

Still she was astounded. How in the world had those two not been able to make things work? What had happened to wreck the marriage of the century - as it was called at the time? Why had they chosen an annulment? That implied that their entire marriage was doomed from the beginning.

After musing futilely for some time, Harmony shook her head. Harry's affairs were none of her business. She had seen to that nine years earlier, when she left England rather than endure the emotional torture of giving Harry away - not just emotionally, but actually at their wedding.

She had work to do - page proofs to review and schedules to sort out. This was the busiest time of the year. She had to do whatever Ms. Beastly and Emily wanted to prepare for the Paris show, high fashion's biggest annual event. For months, Emily blatantly looked forward to that trip.

After an evening of swotting, and a disturbed night's sleep with dreams featuring memories from long ago, Harmony Farmer was in the Boss from Hell's office bright and early the next morning, making everything ready.

Suddenly, fifteen minutes early, the great lady swept in.

“Ms. Beastly, I'm sorry, I'll have everything ready in a couple of minutes…. You're early,” Harmony said obsequiously.

“Don't worry about it,” the boss replied in surprising friendly tones, “and close the door.”

“Yes, Ms. Beastly,” Harmony hurried to the door and started letting herself out.

“No, Harmony,” the boss corrected. “Close the door with you on this side.”

“Oh,” was all the younger woman said. She shut the door and nervously faced her boss, uncertain of what was to come.

“You were excellent at the party. You took over admirably when Emily proved herself … unprepared. After a rather … untidy … beginning, you've also cleaned yourself up nicely…. You're actually been looking quite … acceptable lately.”

“Thank you, Ms. Beastly.”

“Thus I want you to make plans to come to Paris with me next month,” the boss declared.

Harmony had to restrain herself from jumping up and down. She had made it! She made the cut. Nobody on the Runway staff could claim the boss' true acceptance until selected to accompany her on the annual Paris trip. Some employees were still waiting after years. She had proven worthy in her first year.

“Yes, Ms. Beastly, I'll make the arrangements immediately,” she agreed, willing her voice to remain even. “I think I should be able to stay with Emily.”

“That won't be necessary,” Ms. Beastly stopped her. “You can just take over her accommodations. I also need you to tell Emily that she will be holding down the fort here.”

“But Ms. Beastly, she was….”

“That is all.”

* * * *

Little Molly was positively bubbling when, after her play date with Tommy, she returned from her mother's estate.

“Tell me Pumpkin, did you have fun with Tommy?” Harry the proud papa asked. He went back to cooking his daughter her this week's to-die-for favorite dinner - Muggle SpaghettiOs out of a can.

“Oh, yes!” she squealed happily. “We flew on the Peggies, and swam in the lake, and Tommy showed me his Pygmy Puff, and Mummy read to us, and we ate the new peanut butter-filled Chocolate Frogs, and Tommy got your card, and I showed Tommy how to feed the fish, and - oh Daddy, Tommy is so silly…!”

Harry smiled indulgently at the girl who was the apple of his eye and the reason that his messed-up life was worth continuing. “And how was Tommy being silly this time, Pumpkin? He didn't try to get you to do flips on the Pegasus again, did he?”

“Oh, no … nothing like that,” she responded happily. “He said I've got two Mummies. I told him to stop, of course I only had one. He said he had overheard….”

CRASH!

“Daddy - are you all right?”

Harry stared at Molly like he'd seen a ghost (and this house had no ghosts, except when Nearly Headless Nick came to visit). The bowl of hot SpaghettiOs lay shattered on the floor.

Quickly Harry drove away the cold sensation of a dagger to the heart that had sliced through him at the sound of Molly's words.

“I'm sorry, Pumpkin,” Harry spoke robotically, “I accidentally dropped your dinner. I'll make you another can. He promptly did so, after Scourgifying the mess he made.

Children have very short attention spans, and after Harry's accident interrupted her train of thought, Molly quite forgot about Tommy's unusual “two Mummies” comment.

Harry could think about nothing else.

He returned to it when he tucked Molly in for the night.

“Molly dear,” he said very softly to her while sitting next to her on her bed. “When Tommy said what he did about you having two Mummies, why did you think it was so silly?”

“Because nobody has two Mummies,” Molly said. “I've got one Mummy, Ginny, and she loves me very much….”

“…Yes she does,” Harry agreed.

“I wish you still loved her too,” Molly added somewhat sadly.

“I do, just not like a Daddy should love a Mummy,” Harry tried to explain to his eight-year-old. “There's more than one kind of love.”

“That's fine Daddy, don't cry,” Molly said as she gave Harry one of her sweet smiles. “Mummies love their kids; that's why I know I've only one….”

“How's that, Pumpkin?” Harry asked.

“Because if I had a second Mummy, she'd love me too. Since I've never seen her - she can't love me. If she loved me, she'd come….”

“Molly dear,” Harry said with difficulty. He was all choked up.

“Daddy, what's wrong?” Molly squeaked, crawling out from under her sheets, and over to give her father a much-needed hug.

“It's just … I've got to tell you something,” Harry said as he struggled to maintain some semblance of composure. He stroked Molly's dark red hair absent-mindedly. “Daddy's done some very dumb things. Tommy's right. You do have a second Mummy. She's who saved your life back when you were so sick….”

“But where is she, then?” Molly asked, her wide little eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Why doesn't she love me…?”

“I-I … I don't know where she lives,” Harry confessed. “Nobody does. But I'm sure she loves you - or would if I'd let her….”

“Can't you find her?” Molly requested. “Tommy says you can do anything.”

“I wish I could, but with her, I'm afraid I can't do anything,” Harry replied sadly, but by now more or less under control. “Let me tell you about her. She's an amazing woman…. Her name's Hermione….”

“That's the new middle name you're giving me,” Molly observed.

“It is, and now you know why I want to do that,” Harry told her. “Here's a true story from when Daddy was growing up….”

* * * *

Harry Potter's very annoyed head popped into Remus Lupin's Floo late the next morning.

“Remus, I know you're there. I need to talk to you,” Harry demanded.

“Hold your Hippogriffs, I'm coming,” Remus Lupin replied. “Just let me finish shaving, will you. It's still bad around the Full Moon.”

Maybe thirty seconds later, the ex-werewolf's face came into view and he sat on the ottoman opposite the fireplace. “What is it, Harry?”

“Are Tonks or Tommy around?” the younger man asked.

“Nope, sorry,” Remus replied. “Tonks took him out to buy some new clothes. I'm afraid you missed them.”

“Good, because I didn't want to talk about this with them around,” Harry said testily. “One or both of you've been right big blabbermouths, and now I've got a real problem.”

He had Remus' full attention now. “What happened?” the older man sighed.

“Tommy overheard you talking about Hermione, that's what,” Harry revealed. “He understood that to mean that Molly has two Mums….”

“…Oh, we'll just tell him it was a joke or something,” Remus offered.

“Too bloody late,” Harry scowled at him. “He's already told Molly. Because of that, I had to tell Molly the truth about Hermione last night. Now you have to help me…”

“Help you do what?”

“Arrange a reunion with Hermione, that's what,” Harry declared. “If she doesn't want to … to see me…. Well, I'm afraid … I'll just have to accept that. But I want her to give Molly a chance…. I don't want Molly thinking Hermione's a bad person.”

“I don't know if we can do that, Harry,” Remus told him.

“If you don't, then I'll tell Molly you know where her other mum is,” Harry threatened. “And I'll sic her on you two. You know how determined she can be….”

“Just like Hermione,” Remus remarked, a sad smile on his face.

“Damn straight,” Harry growled. “I mean it.”

“Well I have something at the Ministry today that can't be put off, so why don't you come over tomorrow?” Remus offered. “We'll arrange for Tommy to have a session with his tutor….”

“Dammit,” Harry swore. “I can't. I have to try talking some sense into Gabby and old man Delacour. Fleur owled me this morning. There's been another fight. Apparently, I'm the only one in the world that both magical-chauvinist father and Muggle-crazy daughter respect enough to try to resolve their damn fights. I'll talk to you once I get back from France. Molly's going to be at…. Oh, double shite!”

“What is it, Harry?” Remus inquired.

“I have to tell Ginny that Molly knows,” Harry realized. “She's not going to be happy about that. Not one little bit.”

- 7 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 8: Drawn To The Lights

She had not wanted anything like this - really. Unfortunately, accidents happen. Emily, now reduced to running the types of errands that Harmony was assigned when first hired, was juggling too many things at once when she took Harmony's call.

Harmony knew that feeling.

But Harmony was out of practice in gently breaking bad news to others - bad news that she had gotten something the other person wanted probably more than anything in the world.

Her experience was on the receiving end of such news. Precisely that brought her to America.

When it happened to her, Harmony felt like she wanted to die.

When it happened to Emily, she almost did.

Emily had just released her unmistakable crie de cour of comprehension when, glued to her mobile on the other end, Harmony heard a sudden horn blaring, a squeal of tires, and the sickening thud of something solid hitting something fleshy. Emily's mobile must have gone flying, as the connection produced a loud, harsh cracking sound, and then a far-away babble of voices and sirens. With a final pop and hiss, the line went dead.

Although beside herself when that happened, Harmony could do nothing. Preparations for the Paris trip and show were in full swing, and suddenly Emily was no longer there to help. That meant one thing - as hard as Harmony was working, she would have to work even harder.

One of Harmony's many new responsibilities was “the Football.” As Ms. Beastly's top aide on an overseas trip, Harmony was responsible for the special Daytimer containing all the information that her boss might need should a sudden business emergency occur. Many top business executives had something similar, but Ms. Beastly needed it more than most. She had no peers at Runway - no presumptive successor. Ms. Beastly trusted nobody in upper management to watch her back. That Daytimer was her lifeline.

Only half jokingly did the “Football” share its nickname with the nuclear attack codes that accompanied the President of the United States. Ms. Beastly's version collected names and contact information for everyone from reporters, to attorneys - from fashion designers to venture capitalists. It included access codes for ten figures worth of bank accounts and lines of credit.

In New York, Harmony simply checked the Football to ensure it was complete and current. In Paris, she would be responsible for having it with her at all times when she and Ms. Beastly were out and about.

* * * *

Harry felt like a ping pong ball bashed from one side of the table to the other. Fleur's imperious father, his lengthy military career accustoming him to absolute command, had put his foot down firmly. No daughter of his would ever do that, especially in front of all those leering Muggles.

“They did it for cigarettes,” he declared contemptuously. It sounded almost like a curse.

He had known that sort of woman during the War of Liberation, and in the lean years that followed - before he had met Fleur's and Gabby's mother. Under his breath he muttered about “les putains.”

He led Harry to believe that he did so with good reason.

For her part, Gabby was set to tell her father to sod off for good. All her life, up to and through her graduation with honours from Beauxbatons, she had been the dutiful one. Unlike Fleur - whom (Gabby claimed) the old man had indulged as if she were the son he never had - she had toed the family line and never done anything impetuous like moving to England and taking up with a goblin-employed curse breaker.

But after graduation, Gabby made up for lost time. She decided she wanted to see the world and make her own way.

It certainly helped that, like her sister, Gabby was one-quarter Veela.

It also helped that as she matured Gabby grew into every bit as much a beauty as her older sister - only without the harsh edges Fleur sometimes displayed from the war and Bill Weasley's tragic death within an hour of Voldemort's final defeat. Not that Gabby and Fleur could be mistaken for another; far from it. While Fleur was arrestingly buxom, Gabby always tended to the slender side.

Gabby thus entered the Muggle world, became a model, and had traveled the globe in that capacity for the better part of two years.

But just as Gabby's possible career-making big break arrived, she received awful news.

Her mother - who had always smoothed Gabby's relations with her straight-laced father - was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Within weeks she was dead.

Gabby was suddenly forced to strike her own balance between career and family.

She failed miserably. Within another few weeks, she and her father were at each other's throats about life in general, and in particular about Gabby's upcoming appearance in the biggest event in the fashion world - the fall L'Oreal fashion week in Paris.

Enter Harry Potter.

Maréchal Delacour deeply respected Harry for his personal role in defeating Voldemort, since France's alliance with the anti-Voldemort English came at significant cost. Even more profoundly, Gabby viewed Harry as a personal hero. He had rescued her from Hogwarts Lake when Fleur (she never tired of reminding her older sister) failed during the Triwizard Tournament.

Fleur called in Harry as a last-ditch attempt to prevent an irreparable breach.

It was no easy task.

“I do not care!” the old man exploded. “It is improper! No daughter of mine will parade about in front of hundreds of men - Muggle men - half clothed in risqué outfits designed by perverts and homosexuals! I will not allow it!”

“Open your eyes, Daddy!” Gabby screamed right back. “This isn't fifty years ago. I don't live in some cesspool. Twenty-first century models are upstanding, moral people!”

“Maréchal … Jules … I have to agree, at least initially, with Gabby. You're condemning her life sight unseen. Sixty years is a long time - more than twice my life. Things change and get better. Surely you've seen that the Muggles live much better now than right after Liberation, when everything was wrecked. Why shouldn't fashion modeling do the same? Gabby's hardly starving. You and I both saw the cool Mercedes coupe she's driving.”

The old man scowled and looked ready to unloose another angry tirade, probably about how she financed that car. But Harry raised his hand, and to both Fleur's and Gabby's amazement, Papa held his tongue.

A fleeting frown crossed Harry's face. An idea came to him, but it would delay the unavoidable task he set for himself when he decided to accept annulment. No, he thought, that was wrong - his task became inevitable the moment he discovered Molly's true parentage.

But the detour would only take a few days, and the Delacours were Harry's first real friends outside Hogwarts.

“Look, I don't know any more about this than you. But I can't believe that the Gabby I've known since she was a little girl would choose fashion modeling if things were as tawdry and disreputable as you say,” Harry went on. “All I'm saying is let's see for ourselves what she's doing before we do anything we might regret. Keep an open mind. Let's go to this show together, and then you can decide…. It's what Jacqueline would have wanted you to do.”

Harry laid it on pretty thick - even invoking Jules Delacour's late wife (and Gabby's Mum). But it achieved the desired effect. After a nerve-wracking pause, the old man sighed in acquiescence and nodded his head.

“Oh merci, Papa! Merci!” Gabby pushed past Harry and flung herself into her father's arms. “You will not be disappointed. I promise!” Harry relaxed in satisfaction as he saw the Marèchal's craggy face blossom with probably the broadest smile it had borne since his wife's death.

Now for the other side of the coin.

Suppressing his smile, he addressed Gabby with practiced gravity learned during his years as an Auror. “Don't get the wrong impression, Gabby. I share many of your father's concerns. I'll watch how this show is conducted very carefully, and you know I have my ways. If I find anything - I mean anything - indicating that you or these other umm … girls have to resort to … er … casting couch methods, I won't hesitate to put a stop to this, even if I close the whole thing down. Understand?”

“Don't worry, Harry,” Gabrielle Delacour replied faintly, still sitting on her father's lap. “It's not anything like he thinks. Fashion modeling is a real business. It has professional standards. Why, there's even a fashion press to make sure the kinds of things Papa worries about don't happen. You couldn't begin to imagine the scandal….”

That essentially ended Harry's visit with the Delacours. Gabby had to leave to do the million and one things necessary to prepare for the main event and the satellite happenings accompanying it. The Delacour patriarch almost immediately retired to bed.

Fleur walked Harry to the edge of the château's anti-Apparition wards.

“Damn,” Harry muttered. “That's the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I saw no other way to back those two away from a permanent breach. I'm in the middle again, and worse, I have to waste my time on some stupid clothes exhibition that I couldn't care less about…. Er … you won't tell Gabby that, I hope.”

Fleur emphatically shook her head, her extravagant blonde curls bouncing in the night air. “Of course not `Arry. I can't zank you enough for your time…. `Ave you ever seen Paris?”

“Sure,” Harry replied. “I've been there loads. The French Auror Department's there.”

“But `ave you ever really seen Paris - for pleasure, razzer zan for business?” Fleur pursued.

“Umm … don't think so,” Harry answered as he felt a subtle frisson indicating he passed through the protective wards - at least he told himself that.

“Would you fancy some companionsheep, zen?” Fleur offered. “Papa would surely be `appy for zee both of us to accompany heem. `E really likes you, you know. And `e knows `ow lonely I've been weeth Beell dead nine years now…. Zee clock teeks on.”

Had the temperature of that autumn evening suddenly risen five degrees? “Umm … Fleur…. Thanks, I mean, but I don't think I should.”

Fleur would not accept his answer without protest. “Eez zere somezeeng wrong, `Arry?” she huffed, her lips pouty. “I read zee papers. I know zat you are no longer married. Eez zere somezeeng about me zat's … unacceptable?” Her hand slipped onto his sleeve, and she gave Harry's wrist a little squeeze.

“Fleur, this isn't about you … although in a way you started it,” Harry tried to explain. “It's about me. My annulment isn't what you think. Not at all. It all goes back…. Do you remember that spell you taught us to beat Voldemort?”

“'Ow could I not `Arry?” Fleur answered. “I could show you `ow it works again, eef you've forgotten.” Her delicate hand unmistakably squeezed his wrist again.

Again Harry ignored her invitation. “Do you have any idea how that spell should work if performed by three people?”

“Ugh. A threesome?” Fleur wrinkled her nose in displeasure, if not disgust. “I don't know eef zat would even be possible - and I would not care to find out.”

“Well's that's how I actually destroyed Voldemort,” Harry told her flatly. “That's why my marriage both started and ended … and why I can't accept your otherwise most attractive proposal.”

Fleur glanced around, her eyes falling on a delicate whitewashed gazebo back inside the wards. “Come,” she said. “Eef you want me to understand, you must tell me quite a beet more.

Harry allowed himself to be led. They sat in the gazebo and for the next half hour Harry told her all about how he, Ginny, and Hermione had used the Puissance d'Amour Curse in a quite novel way - how, at the moment of truth, the addition of Hermione's love and the strength of her magic carried them all to victory. He explained the pregnancy that followed, his marriage to Ginny and subsequent annulment, Hermione's disappearance, Molly's near fatal illness, and his learning after all those years that Hermione was Molly's actual magical mother.

“Mon dieu!” Fleur exclaimed at that last point. “Does she know? Eet was obvious to me at zee time zat she loved you very much.”

“Tonks told her not long ago,” Harry replied in a very dispirited voice. “Tonks said Hermione hung up on her when she heard the news.”

“I `ave trouble believing zat,” Fleur replied. “Zat ees not like zee `Ermione zat I knew.”

Even more downcast, he replied, “The Hermione you knew's been gone a long time. If she hates me, so be it, but I'm hoping she'll at least see Molly. Molly found out enough of it … mostly by accident. She worries if she did something to make one of her mums not love her. She's like me; she blames herself….”

Fleur stood up, and pulled Harry to his feet along with her. “Go zen. You must find `er. What needs doing can only be done in person.” She kissed him on both cheeks. “Au revoir.”

Harry took two big steps towards the ward boundary, stopped, and asked Fleur a final question. “Was I…? Was I just as obvious as her?”

Fleur shook her head. “Not to me, but zen I worked almost always with zee girls. But Beell … `e saw eet. At one point, `ee worried zat zee spell would fail because the pairings were wrong. But zeengs improved, so we kept eet to ourselves. J'en suis desolée, `Arry.”

“So am I,” Harry replied. He Disapparated.

* * * *

Another exhausting, troubling day passed, filled with too many details and too many last-minute problems either to correct or prevent. It reminded Harmony of the frantic last few hours before the final battle, after Snape's message but before the Death Eaters arrived - only without constant fear of imminent, violent death (professional death being something else entirely).

She pushed such memories from her mind. Otherwise she would obsess about Tonks' bombshell. Harmony could not afford to go to pieces; she had too many more immediate responsibilities.

Over lunch she went to see Emily. That visit did not go well.

“Not well” was an understatement.

Just out of surgery - Muggle surgeons put some sort of metal rod into her thighbone to stabilize really serious fractures - Emily was still rather doped up with anesthetic.

But she was not so far under the influence to forget what she and Harmony were discussing the moment she had stepped in front of that taxi.

Harmony repeatedly tried apologizing - telling Emily (not entirely truthfully) that she could care less about Paris, that it all was entirely Ms. Beastly's doing, and that she had been surprised to learn she was even being considered.

She would gladly decline the honor if possible - but both she and Emily knew that was not an option. Harmony could only avoid going to the City of Lights by quitting, and she would not do that, not after all she had invested.

It hardly mattered, anyway, as Emily credited none of her excuses. The two women's half-hour long argument went around and around, with Harmony's apologies met at every turn by Emily's accusations of betrayal and backstabbing.

Finally, their conversation became so heated that one of the nurses asked Harmony to leave.

But it was not a total loss. When she first came to America, Hermione trained as a Healer at the Institute. Wizards and Muggles were both susceptible to infections - although wizard Healers could more easily detect them. Immediately upon entering Emily's room Hermione sensed that something about her was off. Her freshly casted leg was disrupting Emily's aura. An incipient staph infection around Emily's implant was the cause.

Once upon a time, Hermione Granger was known as a witch who never forgot a spell. That was still true. Wandlessly, Harmony healed the infection, all the while being screamed at by the very person she saved from a long and nasty complication.

Emily would never know what happened. It was one of many things Hermione gave up when she became Harmony.

Nigel was handing out free passes to the opening of a new private gallery in Chelsea. Ties between haute couture fashion and avant guard art were many and varied. Thinking she could use a breather, Harmony took a ticket. She was pleasantly surprised when the artist, Lily Langdon, turned out to be someone she knew. Friendly with some of the models, Lily had introduced herself during a post-shoot gathering at some sushi bar. Lily was smart, opinionated, and about Harmony's age. The two hit it off.

So she attended the opening.

Once there, Harmony and Lily naturally gravitated to one another. Harmony was listening to Lily expounding upon the President's many sins, real or imagined, when the artist abruptly changed the subject and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Don't look now, but a man's behind you, checking you out, and not being at all shy about it,” Lily whispered. “I don't much like him.”

“Who? Do I know him?” Harmony asked.

“I don't know. I think his name's Christian,” Lily continued. “He's dated, or tried to date, some of my model friends, especially the younger ones. The word is he's interested in only one thing.”

“We'll see about that, then,” Harmony answered with a knowing smirk. “I do believe I've got to freshen up.”

Acting like she had to use the facilities, Harmony pivoted and locked eyes with the Guilderoy Lockhart clone. She acknowledged him, and received an appreciative nod in return.

A few minutes later, Harmony was in the back gallery ostensibly trying to make heads or tails of Lily's sculptures. She heard a familiar voice over her left shoulder.

“A little bird told me that someone's going to Paris as the Dragon Lady's new chief assistant.”

“Just what type of bird would that be, Christian?” Harmony played along.

“I do believe it was a long-legged clacker,” he replied.

“What do you want?” Harmony asked bluntly, before realizing that a less broadly phrased question might have been preferable.

“What I want, I'd best not say,” Christian took his chance. “What I've come to ask is whether you'd share a drink to celebrate your promotion. I've followed Runway for years, and never seen any newcomer do what you've done so quickly, much less someone who, frankly, started with no clue about fashion.”

Harmony figuratively took the bull by the horns. Putting her hands on her hips, she gave him an appraising once over. “I'll have you know, Christian, that I'm nothing like those air-headed girls you go through like so many bottles of beer on the wall.”

“I know,” he conceded, seemingly unfazed. “That's why we're having this conversation. You're older, stronger, and infinitely smarter than the lot of them thrown together. Predictably, you know my reputation. I'd like you to know more about me than that.”

Harmony's mind calculated. A cad he was, but a smooth one. “All right,” she said, as haughtily as she knew how, “tell me about yourself.”

Christian smiled. But beneath his winning smile, he looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Christian Zevon Donaldson. University of Chicago, class of 2000, Harvard Business School, class of 2002. I'm a senior analyst at the Carnegie-Livingston Group, investment bankers. I specialize in the fashion industry. I know almost as much about Runway's finances as your boss does. There, that's me in a nutshell. It's all true. You can Google me right now from your cell phone for confirmation.”

The Google reference brought back wistful memories. Without her, that verb would never have been coined.

She thought about doing what he said, but instead decided to slam him again - something akin to kicking the tires. “So you date all these girls to fish for inside information, then? A perk of your profession, I suppose?”

Christian winced. Acting less sure of himself, he took his time before responding. “Absolutely not. That's neither legal nor ethical. If I tried to profit from pillow talk, I'd probably be in prison by now. You know those girls - half of them couldn't keep a secret if their lives depended upon it…. I won't deny that the … extracurricular benefits … figured in my choosing my area of expertise, but I know enough to keep business and pleasure separate.”

“So what do you want with me, then?” Harmony asked, seriously this time. “Is it business or pleasure?”

“I'll tell you exactly what I want,” Christian dropped all pretence. “I'm almost thirty. I've got more money than I need - and unlike some, it's in the bank, not up my nose. I've sown all the wild oats any man could possibly want. It's frankly gotten boring. I'm looking for an equal, if not someone my better. You're so different from anyone I've ever met in this business. To tell the truth, I think you're extraordinary.”

He seemed honest enough - for a man, anyway. Harmony pulled her claws back a bit. “That's rather extravagant praise, Christian. I'm not one to be swayed by flattery.”

“I'd be disappointed if you were,” he quickly agreed. “Look, let me buy you dinner - or lunch if you'd rather. Some place neutral, and no further obligation. I'll do my best to keep all my come-on lines to myself.”

“Oh, all right,” she agreed. “After I get back from Paris, we can….”

“I was thinking more like in Paris,” Christian interrupted.

“You're going to Paris?” she asked.

“Of course,” he told her. “It's only the biggest show of the year. To stay on top of the industry, it's mandatory that I go. So are you and your boss staying at the Plaza Athenee as usual…?”

- 12 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 9: A Face In The Crowd

The encrypted VoIP transoceanic call took little more than a minute. “Twenty-love,” the initiating caller said.

“Twenty-all,” said the other.

“Game, set, and match,” the first replied.

“So you've got it, then,” the second caller's low gravelly voice inquired. “Excellent. If all goes as planned, we can flip this to your proposed buyer and make more money than we can spend in a lifetime.”

“I've got the key to neutralizing the Dragon Lady,” the first voice revealed. “Be ready to move when I tell you. It will be sometime this week. Your window of opportunity will be twelve hours - maybe eighteen.”

“That'll be enough. Did you see Runway Holding was down another three-quarter point on the Big Board today?” the lower voice asked.

“Yes, your doing?” the higher voice responded.

“What do you think?” low voice answered with a chuckle. “Just trying to maximize profit. Have you given more thought to afterwards?”

“Yes, but I still have to firm that up,” higher voice answered.

“It's not my concern,” lower voice continued, “but you would do well to choose the new management carefully…. I have to go. I will be ready … and no screw ups, if you value your future.”

* * * *

A familiar voice left an unfamiliar message on a little-used answering machine.

“Hermione, this is Nymph. I want you to know that because I'm going to say some things that won't sound like me. I'm sorry how our last call ended, but I hope you've had to think about what it means that you're really a mother - and that Harry's the father.”

“I'm telling you. Harry's a changed man. He willingly gave up the entire Black fortune to finish things with Ginny, even though she requested the divorce. He's ended the bounty, so you needn't worry about goblins and other riffraff. Don't get me wrong. He still wants you back, more than ever, I think. But he's accepted that he can't force it. He wouldn't be Harry if he just stopped trying, but he won't try to make you do anything. It's finally through that thick skull of his that forcing you doesn't work.”

“Hermione, I'll tell you straight out. I think you should come back - if not to reconcile, then at least to end things properly, so he can move on. You also should see Molly, at least once. You're her mum, and that means something. And, yes, Harry did ask me to call. But he didn't … he can't tell me what to say. All he wanted was to tell you what I really think.”

“Oh, and he said something else, too. He said he's ready to redeem every promise he ever made to you. He seemed to think that might mean something. It makes me wonder, too, if there might be more to your leaving than you've even told me.”

“I hope to see or hear from you soon. You know my number.”

* * * *

A nattily dressed Harry cheerfully paid the taxi driver twice the number of euros on the meter. On the other side Monsieur Delacour exited, also elegantly dressed - but for a haute couture attendee, he was hardly fashionable. Indeed, the older man's attire made Harry wince. It was, there was no way to sugarcoat it, old-fashioned. Entirely ignorant of Muggle trends, Monsieur Delacour dressed in an Edwardian three-piece, pin-striped suit (complete with detachable, starched collar and watch fob), and topped it off with his vintage pre-war marshal's dress kepi.

Still, on the whole, Harry was upbeat, not because anything was happening that night, but because once done, it would be over. He had more important business than shepherding Monsieur Delacour around Muggle Paris, as he had for the past three days - even though the old man enjoyed it more than Harry could have hoped.

Shortly before Gabby's family spat sidetracked him, Harry had gone to Blackie Howe with a new approach to his nine-year mission - horribly and repeatedly bollixed - to find Hermione and bring her back. Force and compulsion had failed.

Now he would beg.

Or as close to it as publicly possible.

Harry knew only two things about Hermione's current circumstances: first, she lived as a Muggle; and second, she was somewhere in or around New York City. Since more people lived in metropolitan New York than in metropolitan London, that did not exactly narrow things down very much.

So he would do what any Muggle with sufficient funds would in that situation.

Advertise.

Blackie rattled off the names of a number of publications, some Harry knew, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal; and some he did not, such as The New York Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, the Village Voice, and (just to make sure) USA Today.

When some big company had to apologize or explain itself, full page ads were a common means of penance. Harry would do the same.

They had considered other media, but Harry was stretching magical secrecy as it was. In any event, Blackie thought the ads would probably attract the networks' curiosity anyway - and generate free publicity.

Over the past week, Harry spent every free moment, writing, editing, reworking, and just plain fussing over the content of his planned ads. He brought a copy with him to Paris, where he wordsmithed in the middle of the night after turning in. That copy was in his pocket this very moment.

Harry needed less than a day's research to convince himself that the Muggle modeling business Gabby had entered was on the up and up. It did have press watchdogs - several glossy magazines, the most prestigious being something called Runway. After a few calls, Harry knew that Fleur's star struck younger sister was in no danger.

Even though Harry conveyed these sentiments to Gabby, she continued being a perfectionist. She had to live with the consequences, not him. One way she outdid herself was the seats she procured. They were beyond excellent. Harry and Monsieur Delacour were front and center, smack in the middle of the “seen and be seen” section. Just a couple of rows separated them from the movers and shakers section at the very front, which accommodated those actually running this show. Throughout the show, the silhouettes of pretty go-fers passed between Harry and the spotlit runway.

Harry's only bad luck was that the collection Gabby modeled was at the end of the show - although for her that was quite the opposite. The most prestigious collections debuted last.

Harry would have been bored, except his finely honed Auror senses detected, on more than one occasion, someone using magic somewhere in the vicinity. That was odd for a Muggle event, and Harry was a bit on edge. Still, the last episode was some time before, and Harry could convince himself that Gabby must have spilt something on herself or some such.

* * * *

The big night had arrived. Harmony busied herself with everything that made the show ran flawlessly. Runway co-promoted the show - a singular honor for an American publication - along with the primary French haute couture trade association. Hermione met many European fashion VIPs over the past few days. Ms. Beastly's initial reluctance to make introductions quickly vanished as she appreciated Harmony's fluent French (oddly, spoken with a British accent) and gift for making intelligent conversation.

Harmony felt her personal life was looking up too. Christian not only took her out for the promised dinner - to the famous Maxim's - but served as her male escort during the whirlwind of parties, dinners, and open houses supplemental to the big show.

True to his word, Christian acted the perfect gentleman. Not once had he tried to inveigle her to sleep with him. Indeed, she did not even know where he was staying. Only once did he even try to kiss her, and when she told him to desist, he had - in good humor, no less.

The evening of the main event was the pinnacle of her trip in every way. Everything she and everyone else had practiced and rehearsed for weeks would come to fruition. That evening was incomparably nerve-wracking for exactly the same reason. Harmony had a seat in the front row - theoretically the best in the house - at Ms. Beastly's right hand.

She barely used it.

Such front-row seats were not dear just for looking up the skirts of a parade of striking women. They were in demand for their easy access and egress to the backstage area through doors beneath the runway itself. Harmony used that door many times that evening.

Carefully, she stashed her personalized Versace strapless leather purse containing the “football” underneath her chair. She anticipated a most unsettling evening's work

It exceeded her expectations in every way.

Harmony served as Ms. Beastly's right hand girl - which meant doing anything and everything she demanded. But on her first trip backstage, Nigel pulled her aside and informed her that there were “issues” relating to the New York office that he had to leave and deal with. Nigel asked her to assume his customary role as informal major domo, general factotum, and all around show night troubleshooter.

Harmony could not possibly refuse - if Ms. Beastly allowed it. The boss did, albeit with her customary poor grace. Whenever away from her boss' side, Harmony was to keep her cell phone on so she could be summoned.

Nigel had served as the informal backstage manager for these big productions for well over a decade.

A year ago, Harmony could not tell Pierre Cardin from Emanuel Ungaro. Tonight she directed the staging of both collections.

Harmony was backstage amongst the lined up “clackers” waiting for their big moments. Immaculately dressed in a chiffon evening gown and matching stiletto shoes, she bustled down the corridor seeking a Frenchman she knew only as “Alain” to replace a malfunctioning spotlight when….

“Oof….”

Without warning a model from the Adeline André collection lurched heavily sideways and fell right into Harmony. Like an immaculately clad domino, Harmony would have toppled over too, except that….

“Whoa, gotcha there,” a familiar voice with unfamiliarly strong arms caught Harmony. “I say, you're more … substantial than I would have thought….”

The unfortunate clacker flopped to the floor.

“Well thank you, Christian,” Harmony fake growled at the man who had just saved her a nasty spill. “With another remark like that, you might just wear out that welcome. What are you doing here?”

He flashed the plasticized pass he wore around his neck. From the distinctive color and pattern, she saw he was seconded by the Lacroix combine.

“Christian and Christian … it figures….” Harmony was interrupted by the wails (in French) of the poor young woman who set off the chain reaction.

The heel of her shoe had snapped clean away, and she bemoaned her fate - she was due to take her strut along the runway in less than ten minutes.

Of course, certain people backstage were paid specifically to deal with any and all sorts of wardrobe malfunctions.

Of course, those people are never available when really needed.

Harmony shifted into her “I'm in charge here” mode. “Donnez-les moi. J'essayerai de les réparer pour vous,” she instructed the sobbing model. After days on-site as Ms. Beastly's second, all the clackers knew who Harmony was. Meekly, she complied.

Harmony turned to Christian. “Help her up, and get her to the makeup room. We have beauticians standing by for emergencies like this.”

Christian gave Harmony a questioning “what are you going to do now?” look as she stood with the offending shoe in one hand and the heel in the other.

“I'm better with my hands than you might think,” she hissed at him. “Now, go.”

“That's something I'd like to see,” he flirted.

“Get moving or you never will,” she snapped at him.

Christian moved the stricken young lady away. Harmony ducked around the corner, slipped into a now-empty dressing room, and eased the door shut. `It's an emergency,' she rationalized. Besides, Tonks told her that Harry had repented of his obsessive pursuit of her. She no longer needed to be as careful.

“Reparo,” she incanted with a wave of her hand. The sheared off heel jumped into place and adhered itself tightly. To test it, she whacked the heel against the countertop. She found no reason to doubt her abilities.

Still, her thought process unearthed painful memories. Harry! What to do about Harry - and her magical daughter by him that she had never seen … although she saved the little girl's life? Because Tonks' information came at precisely the wrong moment, Hermione had put it off and out of her head for the duration. But the show ended tonight…. She now had to confront the consequences of her past.

Harmony knew what she wanted. But Hermione did not. That was the root of her problem.

Despite everything, she thought she still loved him - romantically, if not logically. Although almost a decade gone, Harry put every man she ever met in his shadow. None came close to him; none made her feel so alive … so involved.

That was why she cherished that one and only time with him … and had done nothing to sully that memory in almost a decade.

But now there was Christian….

Christian!

Harmony threw herself back into her stage manager persona and stalked to the make-up room with the reconstructed shoe.

She found the unfortunate young lady and returned her shoe just in time - rewarded with an adoring look.

“Merci…. Merci beaucoup.”

Harmony was ready to resume her troubleshooting when Christian spoke, “Umm … Harmony, before going out there, you'd best take a look in the mirror.”

Hesitating, she did. The cause for Christian's comment was immediately obvious. A long red streak marred the right side of her lovely light-colored dress. Harmony now knew how the girl's lipstick and makeup had been spoilt.

“Oh, damn,” she blurted and almost ran for the ladies' room. The counter held some pretty powerful makeup removers, but when used on fabric rather than skin all they did was smear.

Harmony hid away in a stall and whispered “Scourgify.” It was her second use of magic in half an hour - her first time since going Muggle after fleeing the Institute two steps ahead of Harry's agents.

Again, she rationalized - had Tonks not told her there would be no more agents?

More hectic mayhem followed. Ms. Beastly summoned her three times for small errands. A dog got loose back stage. Stefano Gabbana mislaid his PDA and had to borrow hers. It was one thing after another all evening long.

With everything she was handling, Harmony hardly thought twice as she set about shooing away a group of done-for-the-evening clackers from the closed-circuit television screens. The public relations people used those monitors to scan crowd reaction to the more outré of the designers' concoctions. Harmony considered them worse than useless.

“Quel drôle….” “Look at him, how quaint....”

“All right, all right,” Harmony said loudly as she came up behind. “These are for business purposes….” In truth, Harmony thought such spying on the crowd was an invasion of privacy, but it had been done for years. Anybody knowing anything about the shows would know about that. So in that way, the attendees had no expectation of privacy….

They all liked to show themselves off, anyway.

Having cleared away the kibitzing gawkers, Harmony glanced at the monitor before addressing other, more pressing business. The clackers had been giggling over an older man who looked quite out of place - a cross, she thought, between Charles deGaulle and an banker with a stiffly formal suit right out of Mary Poppins.

Now the younger, rather bored looking man in the next seat was something else altogether, she thought, he was….

“Oh shite!” Harmony exclaimed loud enough that several passersby turned and stared. She could only conclude that Nymphadora Tonks - her last, most trusted contact with the magical world - must have betrayed her.

That man was Harry Potter!

- 10 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 10: Stalker And Stalked

The color drained from Harmony's face as dozens of frantic thoughts and memories swirled chaotically. Harry was here! In the audience. Does he know I'm here? Doubt it - he seemed too relaxed. I will never speak to Tonks again. Oh dear, I used magic, twice. Were the walls between them enough to dilute her magical signature? I need to get away. But it would ruin….

“Harmony, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

She whirled around, almost falling between her mental maelstrom and those dratted three-inch heels. Christian was braced; arms open wide, in case Harmony took her second tumble of the evening. She wobbled, but stayed vertical.

“Whoa, girl! If I didn't know you better, I'd say you're working too hard.” Christian joked.

“It's just … it's just…. Could you drive me home immediately once the show's over?” Harmony asked tensely, her voice almost pleading.

Christian went instantly serious, “Of course, but there'll be more parties than you can count … people you ought to meet - and who'd want to meet you … I was hoping….”

“No,” Harmony squealed tightly. “I just need to get away.”

“Something's really off here,” Christian worried. “What's going on?”

Harmony had to give an explanation, and did. “I'm … I'm afraid I'm being stalked…”

“Goddamit,” Christian swore. “Oh … sorry, Harmony. It's just upsetting … that sort of thing. I'll do anything you need, of course, but … but I don't think you should go to your hotel. This stalker, who knows how long he's been following you? He might just know where you're staying….”

Harry would do just that, she thought. She shook her head at her own stupidity. “You're right, but where can I go? I need to get back there. I'm going to London tomorrow.”

“London?” Christian inquired, giving her an odd look. “Not that I haven't noticed your delightful accent.”

“Well, I…. Scratch that,” she changed her mind. “I guess not. Probably don't need to go after all….”

“Are you all right?” Christian asked, quite confused.

“As well as could be expected,” Harmony recovered. “It's just this stalker business. I need to decide what to do.”

“Well, for starters, you can escape to my townhouse,” Christian suggested. “You've never been there, so your stalker won't know about it. Then, once you've pulled yourself together, we can think about everything else. I've been wanting to talk to you, anyway….”

“Just talk?” Harmony replied skeptically. She knew that Christian had wanted to do more than “just talk” for weeks.

He looked thoughtful. “Yeah, just talk … for now. About us, though, and about your career. Your performance here - and not just tonight - has impressed a lot of people.”

Harmony was intrigued, and her fluttering stomach calmed a bit. It helped that, throughout their conversation, she kept one eye on the monitor. Harry seemed quite bored - the last thing in the world he would be if really stalking her.

“All right, then,” she agreed.

“I need to make a couple of calls,” Christian told her, “what with the change in plans, and all. And I'll have my car brought round.” He added pointedly, “Make sure not to leave anything important behind.”

“Oh,” Harmony squeaked. “You know about that?”

“Of course, you're the one she trusts most,” Christian answered. “First assistant always has `football' duty. I'll be back shortly.” He turned on his heel and quickly strode away.

* * * *

Thankfully, the show was almost over, and all appeared well on the Delacour front. The Maréchal had nothing but praise for the show from the moment it started, and had yet to see Gabby.

Another intermission between collections neared - and Gabby's was next. Through some weird free association, thinking about Gabby got Harry thinking about daughters - his own daughter - and that led to an idea to modify the text of the advert he wanted to place in the New York newspapers.

He pulled the parchment and Muggle ink and highlighter pens from an inside pocket of his 5000-galleon, Italian cut convertible robes-almost tuxedo. “Bugger,” Harry muttered. It was too dark to see until the house lights came up.

Just then, a bit of light caught Harry's eye. A service door beneath the runway opened and an assistant to one of the front row muckety-mucks cautiously entered. The one in the light yellow gown, he realized. Her boss was the middle-aged woman seated almost directly in front of him. Stunning women abounded, but something about that one's walk attracted his attention.

He'd only seen her silhouette against the runway lights before. Now he was in luck….

The house lights brightened.

Like the others, she moved stylishly and virtually effortlessly despite a tight fitting evening gown. But she was indescribably different - more real perhaps - from the almost ethereal beauty of the models onstage. Somehow this one was more complex; less born-to-be-in-heels than the rest.

She hesitated when the lighting brightened. She had this curve to her cheeks and chin that….

At that moment, she lifted her eyes, hitherto kept resolutely to the floor.

At that moment, their eyes locked.

As long as he lived, Harry would never, ever forget those luminous, chestnut colored-eyes. Those very eyes had saved his life - and the Wizarding World - all those years ago. Now, those same eyes contained an ineffable melancholy glint that, Harry realized, he must have put there….

It was Hermione. For the first time in a decade, he had set eyes on Hermione.

For a long instant, they simply stared at one another - each too paralyzed to do anything else.

Hermione broke off, shook her head forcefully, turned, and fled the way she came. She was gone; the service door closed behind her.

Harry sat there. For once in his life, he truly had no idea what to do. All these years he had pursued her, but mere months ago he had sworn to himself, and to Tonks, that those days were over. He knew that the only way forward was to induce her, somehow, to come to him. To pursue her now would be hypocritical, and a breach of faith.

But she had run away again.

Physically, he could not pursue her without making a scene, and disrupting the Maréchal's hitherto delightful evening. At a loss, Harry simply stared at where she had been - thinking how he needed her more than anything in the world, and how he had bollixed everything so badly.

One thing was certain. The draft of his newspaper adverts would require drastic alteration. Nervously, he folded the parchment.

Soon enough, the house lights dimmed.

Harry paid not the slightest attention to the runway. He simply stared at where Hermione - after all these years - had appeared, like magic.

Staring helped him notice that, once the lights went down, the same door cracked open. A sliver of a chiffon-clad arm and leg emerged.

Harry tensed.

The hand made the recognizable motion of a Summoning Spell. His wand was ready before she finished. “Accio” he muttered under his breath, pointing where Hermione aimed her spell.

Harry's and Hermione's magic collided at the same object - located under her seat next to her unsuspecting boss. The result was no contest. Almost immediately, Harry's much more powerful, wand-aided spell prevailed. A small stylish, white handbag soared through the dark, right into his lap.

“Harmony Farmer,” he mouthed, reading the personalized inscription. “Harmony - Hermione … Farmer - Granger.”

Sweet Merlin! What had he just done? He had seized her purse, a woman's most private possession. He was acting the same way he had promised never to do again.

He had to return it, and pray she would forgive him. He was ready to banish the handbag to its original location, when another less-than-innocent idea came to him.

Should he put a Tracking Charm on the handbag? That way, he could follow her, wherever she ran, and finally try to plead his case - to beg her forgiveness, if not for his sake, then at least for Molly's.

But charming her purse was also what he had promised not to do.

After transient indecision, Harry compromised. He jammed the highlighter pen in his breast pocket, and put a Tracking Charm on the draft advertisement. With the ink pen, he signed it, “Please, hear me out just once. I'm sorry. Harry.” He stuffed the parchment into her purse.

He restored Hermione's purse to its original location.

* * * *

The telephone rang too early. Nigel anxiously he picked up the receiver. “Donaldson residence,” he laboriously answered in what he hoped was a sufficiently garbled voice.

“Goddammit, call off the frigging droogs!” Christian's voice demanded. “She's seen at least one of them. If she bolts, it'll screw everything up irreparably!”

“Begging your pardon, sir?” Nigel replied perplexedly.

“Come off it, dammit. You know it's me,” Christian roared into the phone. “Call the droogs and get them out of sight - now. I've got things under control.”

“I don't think they were out tonight. Not yet anyway,” Nigel maintained.

“Maybe they stupidly took it on themselves,” Christian responded less loudly. “All I know is I just talked to Harmony. She thinks she's being stalked. I've convinced her to let me bring her back there. We'll have the football without any rough stuff, and … and ….”

“You've decided to go ahead with it, then,” Nigel picked up where Christian left off.

“Yes, I have,” Christian confirmed, his voice growing steadier. “You said it yourself more than once that she'd be invaluable. She might even take the Beast's place one day.”

“And I gather she's `invaluable,' to you as well,” Nigel asked.

“Umm … yes,” Christian admitted. “I don't deny what I feel for her, but don't worry, I'm committed to … our enterprise … no matter what.”

“So, if she refuses, then?” Nigel posed the question.

Silence fell on the other end of the line. Finally Christian stated. “Then it would be time for the droogs.”

The show was almost over. Christian had everything in readiness as he entered the back (technically, below) stage area, looking for Harmony. Soon enough he found her - more distressed than ever.

He rushed to her. “Harmony, what's happened now?”

“I … I couldn't get … my handbag … the - you know,” she told him in a cracking voice. “I went out there … but I couldn't….”

Christian was alarmed. “Harmony, what's gotten into you? I've never seen you this way. You're always such a pillar of strength.”

“He's … he's out there,” she confessed, in a hoarse whisper. “I-I-I went out there, and, he saw me - I know it. I couldn't get my purse. I had to come back. I don't know what he might do … or try to do….”

Christian was genuinely befuddled. Whatever else they might be up to, those thugs he hired “just in case” could not possibly be in the audience. “You mean - your stalker … he's watching the show?”

“Y-y-yes.”

“This is someone from your mysterious past, isn't it?” he interrogated.

“What?!? What did you do?” a stunned Harmony answered.

“Later. Let's just say I can Google, too.” Christian told her firmly. “For now, just show him to me, and I'll take care of….”

“No!” Harmony screeched. “He … he … well, he's trained in martial arts. You wouldn't stand a chance. Just, go get my purse, please.”

Christian immediately backed down. The last thing he needed a physical confrontation throwing a monkey wrench into everything. “Whatever you want, Harmony.”

As carefully and inconspicuously as possible he slipped through the door and made his way to Harmony's vacant chair. Christian knelt down and found Harmony's purse, right where she said it should be. This mystery person, whoever he was, surely had Harmony psyched out….

“Mister Donaldson, what are you intending with Miss Farmer's handbag?” a familiar voice hissed, as cold and calculating as a snake's.

“Ms. Beastly, I'm taking it to Miss Farmer,” Christian said evenly. “She told me to get it, and when she gives an order, I don't ask questions. You should see her back there.”

His answer satisfied the grande dame. “Quite,” she pronounced. “I can imagine. Well … be off with you, then.”

Harry's eyes followed the man as he left. Something was going on, and he had to find out what. One furtive spell, and his mobile mirror glowed red.

“Maréchal Delacour, I'm afraid I have to step out a bit,” Harry lied through his teeth. “I've been in touch with your Ministry about … er … it's rather delicate and involves industrial espionage. Here's a Muggle mobile phone and Gabby's number. Just punch it in, and she'll meet you after the show. If I don't see you again tonight, I hope you've had a good time.”

“Yes, Harry, I have,” the old man smiled back. “Simply smashing. I'm so pleased you suggested this. Do what you have to do, then.”

Harry hurried out. Once in the lobby, he ducked into a men's room and activated the Tracking Charm. He suspected that man had stolen Hermione's purse.

The moment the last collection's presentation was finished, Christian and Harmony bolted for the exits. Harmony was slowed by numerous backstage well-wishers congratulating her on bringing off a flawless show. The side lobby was swirling with elegantly dressed people leaving the show when the two of them emerged. As quickly as the crowd permitted, they made for the sanctuary of the Parisian night.

Then it happened.

Briefly the crowd parted and there, not five metres away, Hermione saw Harry, looking directly at her.

Finally, after all these years, he had her cornered.

There was nothing else to do.

“Christian?” she mumbled, her tongue thick with trepidation.

He turned towards her from battling the crowd. “Yes, Harmony, wha…? Mpfh….”

She kissed him - hard - square on the lips, with as much emotion as she could muster.

Harry's eyes went big. He felt like Hermione had shoved a giant hook down his throat and yanked his guts inside out. His head swam. His eyes watered.

He was too late. She had found someone else. Not only that, she was bound and determined that he know she had found someone else.

It was over - whatever “it” was.

Barely able to stand, Harry stumbled away, jostled this way and that by the crowd, until reaching a wall. Steadying himself, he inched along until encountering an unlocked door. It only led to a small janitor's closet, but that was enough.

Closing the door, Harry Disapparated with a loud “pop.”

* * * *

Neither Harmony nor Christian said much on the drive to his rented townhouse.

Finally, Christian broke the silence. “Harmony … back there … I don't know whether to say `thank you' or `you're welcome.' I don't know what I did, but if you'll tell me, I'll do it again.”

“Christian, umm … it's not what you think, not yet,” Harmony replied from the passenger seat of his rented Jaguar XK. “Harry … er … the stalker. I saw him. That's why I kissed you like that. I hope you're not offended. Because, I think … I really do like you….”

“You mean that skinny guy with the messy black hair and green eyes?” Christian dismissed, a bit miffed. “He doesn't look like much. I'm just surprised … surprised such a runt could throw you for a loop like that.”

“You don't know Harry,” Harmony replied.

“Don't care to, either,” Christian responded with Muggle disdain. “But I would like to know you better.”

“That's a distinct possibility,” Harmony allowed, with a shy smile spreading across her face. “But I need to get back to New York first.”

“Right,” Christian said, again backing off.

They pulled into a reserved parking spot in front of an elegant, Second Empire townhouse in Montmartre. Christian practically leapt out of the car to open Harmony's door for her.

He guided her inside, through the sumptuously appointed living and dining rooms, until they reached the kitchen. She stopped short, surprised to see Nigel seated at one of several white-painted wooden chairs around a plastic-covered table.

“Nigel, what are you doing here?” Harmony asked. “I thought you were on your way back to New York.”

“Long story,” he said.

“This is what I want to talk to you about,” Christian began. “Things aren't as they seem. Runway hasn't done as well as the financial market thinks it should. It's ripe for a takeover.”

“Well, that's all for the good,” Harmony allowed, “as long as Ms. Beastly runs the content, new ownership could be a good idea.”

“Umm … Harmony, Ms. Beastly is part of the problem, not the solution.” Christian intoned. “We want you to be part of the solution.”

Harmony's jaw dropped. “Without Ms. Beastly?”

“Yes, that's how it has to be,” Christian continued. “You see, I've put together this syndicate. A hostile takeover starts tomorrow morning with a stock run in both London and New York. If you just sit tight for twenty-four hours and….”

“But, Ms. Beastly…,” Harmony protested.

“Ms. Beastly has a golden parachute ensuring she'll never have to work another day in her life,” Nigel broke in. “She'll be well taken care of.”

“Harmony,” Christian continued, an emotional edge creeping into his voice. “The syndicate … they envision me running Runway, at least for a while. I want you to be at my right hand. Later, probably not all that much later, I see you running the magazine…. I see you as the next Ms. Beastly, only you're a much nicer….”

Harmony stood her ground. “I'm sorry, Christian, I can't. This isn't right. Ms. Beastly gave me a chance when nobody else would. She's given me her trust, I can't betray it….”

Harmony's Hiptop mobile began ringing, with that distinctive tone - “That's Ms. Beastly now, I'm sorry Christian but I can't, and you can't….”

She opened her purse to retrieve the phone.

“Harmony, don't….”

“Sorry, Christian.”

THUNK!!!

Something hard and heavy smacked into the back of Harmony's skull. She dropped to the floor, unconscious. Nigel stood over her, a blackjack in hand. “Too bad,” he said. “She was such a clever girl.”

“Damn, what a waste,” Christian shook his head sadly. “I thought for sure…. She kissed me tonight.”

“You've kissed a lot of pretty girls,” Nigel replied testily, scowling at his sentiment.

“No, I don't mean that, dammit,” Christian reiterated. “I didn't come on to her. She kissed me. I was so sure. That's why I let….”

“Don't start thinking with the wrong head,” Nigel warned. “You know what's at stake.”

“Believe me, I do,” Christian shuddered. “Plan B it is. He pulled a cheap, throw-away cellular phone from a kitchen drawer and dialed a preset number.

“Droog one, this is base. Are you there?”

“Read yeh, guv'ner,” came the voice over the static laden connection. “What's up?”

With sadness furrowing his brow, Christian told them, “We have a job for you. There's been a complication. We've … well we have something that needs disposal….”

“Shite,” growled the voice on the other end. “Well, for how long?”

“Umm … we need a permanent solution, with no trace at all for at least 48 hours. Also, because this was … unexpected … you'll get a sizable bonus.”

“We'll be there, guv'ner.”

Christian ended the call and disgustedly tossed the phone into the sink. It shattered into several pieces. Muttering, Nigel collected the larger bits, took them to the dining room fireplace, and turned on the gas.

He came back to find Christian, head in his hands, looking down at the limp woman. Aware of the older man's presence, Christian looked up at him and shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “You know, I would have married her if things turned out differently.”

“No use crying over spilt milk,” Nigel replied stoically, “not when there's more money than you could spend in a lifetime at stake. There's clear book binding tape in the pantry. Let's get this over with.”

* * * *

“Whaddya mean still alive?” the slovenly, strongly built man complained to his mate when shown the body they were told to “dispose” of.

“That's your job, not ours,” Nigel told the three coldly. “She's unconscious now, and should stay that way, since we've given her chloroform. She's bound mouth to toe in heavy tape, so she shouldn't be hard to move. We found this old carpet in the basement, so you can wrap her in that to get her out of here….”

“You said there'd be a bonus,” the leader of the three men reminded.

“So I did,” Nigel agreed. He extracted a roll of cash from a roll-top desk in the sitting room. “There's fifty thousand euros here, all untraceable bills. It's yours.” He tossed the roll to the leader, who caught it with one hand.

“Right yeh are, guv'ner,” the leader responded. “Now where's yer friend?”

“He's upstairs. He wishes it didn't have to end this way, but knows that life's life - or death's death, as the case may be.” Nigel answered, making a joke of Christian's funk.

“Oh, it's one o' those,” the third man, built wirier than the other, remarked. “Would `e mind too much iffn we `as a spot o' fun with `er afore we does the deed?”

Nigel blanched. “I didn't hear that. It's up to you. All we want is the corpse not to be found for at least two days. If you want to make it look like a common rape/murder, so be it. Just get out, and don't come back. You'll find the rest of your money in the usual place.”

“Righto, guv'ner.”

The three men hefted the heavy rolled carpet out the front door and down the steep front steps. Their beat up, dull green Atego delivery van was double parked next to the Jaguar. As they reached the bottom of the steps, something slid from the carpet and crashed to the sidewalk, spilling its contents.

“Blimey, what's that?” the man holding the rear end asked.

“Effin' `andbag,” the one in front grunted. He knelt to pick up the mess, leaving the other two to muscle the carpet into the back of the van. He had retrieved almost everything when Harmony's mobile phone went off again, with its distinctive ring. It lay on the walk about a meter away.

“Fuck that,” he muttered. He kicked the phone into a nearby sewer, turned, and joined his mates.

- 6 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 11: Death Be Not Proud

Harmony's mobile skidded towards the sewer, slowing noticeably as it slid. It clattered against the slightly raised grating, teetered on the edge and … flew straight up three stories….

…Into the grasp of a disembodied hand.

His Invisibility Cloak slipped part way off as Harry examined the mobile, tastefully monogrammed “H.F.” Below him the three men in the old van were almost ready to depart - leaving Harry uncertain. Should he follow the van, where Hermione's purse surely was? Or should he have a look inside the house, where she probably would be if separated from her purse?

With his earlier Tracking Charm, following the van was no trouble, but once he Disapparated in pursuit, he would surely destroy the mobile's electronics.

That is, if not already fried by his Summoning Charm. But it just rang….

Harry flipped the mobile open. It seemed to work. He needed some back up. He only had his wand and the Cloak. He had planned on nothing save talking to Hermione - no matter what; he had not intended to defend himself. She could hex him into oblivion if she wanted, or more likely, empty a can of Muggle mace into his face.

He had not anticipated walking into a … situation. All his magical communication devices were back at the house.

Trying to decide what to do, Harry absent-mindedly scrolled through the contacts programmed into Hermione's mobile.

Amongst all the meaningless names, he recognized one.

That cinched it. The chief difference between houses and vans was that houses did not move - not Muggle ones, anyway.

* * * *

The Muggle telephone rang, startling the inhabitants. Almost nobody they knew used such devices. Before Remus could move, Tonks leapt for the console. She immediately recognized the number on caller ID.

“Hermione!” she croaked breathlessly. “I'm so relieved you called. Did you take my advice about Harry? Please don't hang up….”

Almost the last voice in the world the no-longer-so-young Auror expected to hear answered. “Actually, this is Harry….”

She gasped aloud. Getting her voice back, she chirped, “Harry! Congratulations! I guess she did….”

“Actually, not,” Harry interrupted. “I haven't time to explain, but I think Hermione's in trouble. I know for sure her purse has been stolen. I need your help right away. There's nobody else….”

Tonks was immediately suspicious. “How do I know this isn't another of your tricks, Harry?”

“Umm … you don't. Either you trust me or not,” he stated flatly.” “This is serious. I need some Aurors here right away to search the house where I think Hermione was robbed….”

Tonks made the split second decision her occupation demanded. “All right, I trust you, Harry. Where's here?”

“Paris, 54 Passage des Cloÿs. It's a townhouse. There's a silver Jaguar parked out front.”

“France?” Tonks spluttered. “But I don't have jurisdiction.”

“You didn't let it stop you before,” Harry persisted. “Remember Rome?”

“That was a life or death situation,” Tonks countered.

“This might be too,” Harry hissed into the mobile. “I've a very bad feeling about this….”

“How will we recognize you?” Tonks asked, implicitly conceding the jurisdictional point.

“You won't,” Harry replied quickly. “I have to follow a car. Just … please come, quickly. Bye.”

The van turned onto a larger street. Harry closed the mobile and shoved it into an inside pocket of his robes. It clicked against something else that was hard, flat, and solid.

That something had brought Harry back to Paris.

* * * *

A couple of hours before, Harry had Apparated into a pitch black room. Blinded - as much by his mental state as by darkness - Harry lurched forward, tripped over something, and slammed into some furniture, badly bruising his thigh. He was a raging mass of emotions, all of them bad, and was on the verge of pulling out his wand and bellowing out random Reductor curses.

But Harry stopped himself. As devastated as he was, he had to maintain control. Molly was doubtlessly asleep upstairs.

Breathing hard; trying to keep from bursting into bitter tears, Harry performed a Lumos Charm. He had landed in Potter Manor's informal dining area, and he had collided with a table. Deegie, his head house elf, popped in within seconds.

“Mister Potter, sir - can I help?” the uniformed elf (all Harry's elves had clothes) squeaked. “You's … you's looking awful.”

“Believe me, I feel twice as bad,” he muttered, “but there's nothing you can do…. Nothing anybody can do….”

“I is sorry, sir,” Deegie replied. It took years, but finally she was not calling him “master.” He had kept at it because he thought Hermione would approve.

Now, she would never know - and worse, she no longer cared to know.

“How's Molly?” Harry switched to the only happy subject he knew.

“Asleep, as you `xpected,” reported Deegie. “The former mistress brungs her back early. Not sure why. She be upset.”

“Why was Molly upset?” Harry worriedly inquired.

“No, I means the former mistress,” Deegie corrected. “Maybe because Molly, she's a-writing again.”

Harry knew Deegie meant Molly was writing more poetry. His brilliant little daughter started creating verse when she first got sick. Some of it was surprisingly good - for a girl who yet to turn ten.

Deegie excused herself and popped out. Harry noticed a sheet of ruled paper on the table, filled with Molly's handwriting. He read her latest:

Why?

Although they tried, the doctor said I would die.

I don't know why.

Nothing they could do, I was through.

I don't know why.

Then someone found a way around.

I don't know why.

A lady gave and I was saved.

I don't know why.

Dad says she's my Mum, but she won't come.

I don't know why.

Strange behavior from my savior.

I don't know why.

She never came, but I've got her name.

I don't know why.

First one mother, now another

I don't know why.

My real Mum's sad. It must be bad.

I don't know why.

Know in my heart I drove them apart.

I don't know why.

Her daughter's scrawls brought home what, in his turmoil, Harry was overlooking. Finding Hermione was not just about him. Now it was not remotely about him. Even if Hermione would never see him again - realistically, he deserved that after pursuing her like a fugitive for years - he needed her to see Molly.

Both Molly and Hermione deserved closure.

At least.

Then and there, Harry knew he had to try again. He had to go back and be a Gryffindor - to face the inevitable consequences of his obsessions. If anything were salvable from the wreck of the most profound friendship in his life, he had to try.

For Molly. Neither his dreams, nor his follies, mattered anymore.

Feeling at once condemned and liberated, Harry took from his desk drawer something else that would have upset Ginny. The week before, at another play date (a phrase almost outgrown) at the Lupins, Molly and Tommy had decorated plates - the kind you ate from. Tonks bought a kit.

Since assuming custody, Harry had shown Molly pictures of Hermione. Tonks evidently had a similar picture available, because Molly drew a surprisingly good likeness - for a nine-year-old, meaning it was identifiable - of Hermione on the plate.

Harry planned to show Molly's plate to Hermione, should he ever be fortunate enough to meet her again. With a sigh he took the plate from hiding, cast an Unbreakability Charm, and for good measure affixed Molly's little poem to the back side with a Sticking Charm.

He slipped the plate inside his robes, took a deep breath, and Apparated back to Paris, guided by the Tracking Charm he had slipped into Hermione's purse.

* * * *

Pursuing the van, Harry noisily Apparated to the street's end. He could Apparate quietly, of course - a skill learned in his accelerated Auror training program … back when he thought Hermione might come back if he locked up enough Death Eaters to make the British Isles safe. Silent Apparition, however, took time. Besides, he Apparated to another roof, and he was unlikely to encounter a Muggle in such an odd place well after midnight.

Spotting the target vehicle, Harry Apparated again, to a deserted street corner up ahead. Unfortunately, the traffic signal turned green, and the van barreled through. He Apparated to the next street corner. This time, luck was with him; a red light halted the van.

Donning his Invisibility Cloak, Harry Apparated - this time quietly - atop the van itself. Pressing against the roof of the moving vehicle, Harry strained to hear what the occupants said. It was a bad job. He was trained in apprehension, not reconnaissance, and did not know any Surveillance Charm that could amplify voices enough to hear them over the road noise. Nor had he brought any Extendable Ears.

He still had no idea whether Hermione was in the van, the house, or somewhere else. He only knew her purse was in the van. That was insufficient to justify breaking Wizard law and confronting these Muggles with magic.

The van accelerated, forcing Harry to abandon eavesdropping and to apply a Sticking Charm to himself to avoid being bounced off.

With horror, Harry realized that these Muggles were making for the Boulevard Périphérique. He redoubled his Sticking Charm, gathered the Cloak around himself, and held on for dear life.

The next few minutes felt like hours as 130 kilometer-per-hour gusts buffeted Harry while the van cruised the almost deserted six-lane motorway in the early morning hours.

Maybe it was his imagination, but during moments between wind blasts he thought he might have heard an argument going on inside.

But for the vast majority of the ride, the air howled so loudly as to convince Harry he was hearing things.

He might have been seeing things, as well, for all he knew. It seemed darker.

Suddenly, the van lurched to one side and slowed. It exited down a ramp to a relatively small cross street. Reaching the intersection, the van abruptly stopped, without any signal. Caught by surprise, Harry almost hurtled onto the van's bonnet.

The scene was most un-Parisian. Instead of the City of Lights, Harry felt somehow transported into the midst of the Forbidden Forest. If he could make out a street sign….

Harry heard a sliding noise, and a thud. A man exited the vehicle, obviously angry. “Sorry mates … can't do that. Take my bloody share then…,” the unidentified man growled at unseen companions. “Yeah, I'm a thief, an' a bloody robber too. But I ain't no rapist and I sure as hell ain't no murderer….”

Inside the van another rough voice replied, “Go ahead then. Get lost. Bloody poofter, ya are….”

Harry's blood ran cold. They could only be talking about Hermione. She was in this van - and in mortal danger.

With a roar, the van started up again.

Adrenalin pouring through every capillary, Harry Apparated from the moving van's roof into the middle of the road just around the next curve. He had barely turned around and drawn his wand when the harsh light of the onrushing vehicle illuminated him.

Harry threw up out his arms, signaling the van to stop. For a moment, it seemed to comply. But when barely ten meters distant, the driver stomped the accelerator instead and bolted straight for him.

Harry's wand slashed through the night. “Munire lapideus parietinarum!” he yelled. Darkness instantly bathed Harry, shadowed by a stout stone wall that appeared from nothing.

He heard the squealing of brakes as, with a loud crash, the van collided with the wall.

Harry vanished the wall and made for the crumpled and smoking vehicle.

But the Muggle driver had worn his seat belt. Through the shattered windscreen he pointed some sort of firearm at Harry.

The Muggle never had the chance to use it.

Never in his life had Harry intentionally tried to kill anyone (even Bellatrix Lestrange), except once - at least not in his human form. Tonight, that changed. These Muggles intended to rape and murder Hermione. “Inflammare!” Harry howled.

The van's cab burst into intense flame, engulfing the still-buckled Muggle.

Ignoring the Muggle's screams, Harry Apparated to the rear of the vehicle.

“Alohomora!” Harry cried. He lunged and wrenched the rear door open.

The sight shocked Harry. The other Muggle - who had earlier kicked Hermione's mobile into the sewer - stood there, not quite facing him. His trousers were around his ankles, but Harry's attention was elsewhere. The same hand that grabbed at his belt held a long bone-handled knife.

The blade of that knife dripped with blood.

The horrific scene gave Harry pause, and that pause very nearly cost his life.

Strapped over the Muggle's right shoulder, cradled in his right arm, was an Uzi submachine gun. The gun only came into Harry's view as the man whirled around. It's barrel blazed as Harry's wand slashed across.

Harry felt the white hot burning of a bullet through his side as he screamed, in pain and rage, “SECTUMSEMPRA!!”

The firing instantly stopped as the force of Harry's magic literally cut the man in half. Blood spurted everywhere as he began falling - in two pieces.

By then Harry paid him no more attention. His wand flashed back upwards, and a Banishing Charm flung the still partly standing corpse against the far wall of the van.

“Mobilicorpus,” Harry incanted much more gently, aiming his wand at the high-heeled feet on the floor of the wrecked Atego.

Harry nearly passed out at what he next saw. His first close look in a decade at Hermione's face was marred by a gaping slash across her throat - from one ear to the other. Blood was all over, her blood, and every second more of it spurted from a severed artery in her neck.

Hermione was dying. She would bleed to death in a couple of minutes.

Harry caught a flicker of recognition in her rapidly fading eyes. At least she would die knowing he had tried….

- 9 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 12: When Trying Is Not Enough

A nasty bounce jarred her half awake. She moaned. Damn, she had a splitting headache, and everything was pitch black. She could not move. Was this some bad dream?

Another jolt brought her to full wakefulness. How she got here, wherever “here” was, was a mystery, but it was no nightmare - it was worse. She had far more immediate problems.

Like being bound hand and foot.

From the movement, the dull engine roar, and the tires' rumble, she deduced she was in some vehicle. Total darkness enveloped her, and something else, something physical. It smelt old and musty.

Worst, she could not move a muscle. Her legs felt glued together, so tightly she could not bend either her knees or ankles. Likewise her arms were pinioned to her side. This was no rope. She knew what being tied up felt like. That happened during the war, but….

This time, she had no hope of rescue. She had seen to that herself.

`No, Hermione,' she urged herself. `Don't go to pieces. You have to try.'

She concluded she was encased in plastic. Trying desperately to squirm, she could barely budge - not even come close to turning over.

Could she transform? She saved her life that way during the war. But she had not assumed that form for over a decade, and it was advanced magic requiring practice. She tried. Nothing happened. Maybe the cocoon imprisoning her was too tight - or maybe she simply forgot how.

Over the constant roar of the road, she thought she heard angry voices - male voices.

Her mouth was covered. She couldn't speak. Her nose and forehead were free. She could furrow her brow. She tried moving her head, and pulled her own hair. She had to be wrapped up in something sticky - but why?

With great effort she found that a couple of her smaller fingers could move a bit. Concentrating on that, she tried wandless magic. Could she burn through this tape, or whatever it was? She had never tried magic in any remotely similar situation.

She let out a smothered “Ouch.” All she accomplished was burning herself. Her fingers could not move enough to avoid her own legs.

More incoherent yelling. Were they fighting over her?

She felt the vehicle swerve and decelerate. A door slammed. Footsteps. Then, suddenly, a faint light.

Oof!

Someone kicked her chest, and whatever covered her fell away. A bright ceiling light temporarily blinded her. When her eyes adjusted, some huge man loomed over her - at least he looked huge from her angle.

Worse, he held a knife in one hand, and the other had some sort of gun.

Her breath hitched. He was going to kill her!

“Yer awake,” he growled in threatening monotone. “So much the bettah….”

She had almost died before - several times - but back during the war she at least had a fighting chance…. She could not resist now. Hermione held her breath, awaiting the fatal blow.

Instead, he stepped over her and lowered the knife. She felt it at her feet. The knife slit through whatever was binding her with a crinkly unzipping sort of sound.

The material binding her legs closed began to release. The pressure lessened. She could even bend her knees a bit.

She exhaled hugely through her nose. She felt on fire. Her heart pumped madly. Was it possible? She allowed herself hope that maybe, just maybe, he was preparing to let her loose.

No such luck.

The next second she realized he was undoing his pants.

She trembled madly as realization hit her like a ton of bricks. `Oh, fucking Hell! I'm about to be raped,' she thought. With her mouth still covered, she could not even scream. Her arms remained stuck to her sides.

She started thrashing randomly, kicking ineffectively with partially freed legs.

She received a sharp kick in the side for her troubles. The rapist brandished his knife, “Yeh want this up yer cunt…?” he rumbled, his voice like gravel down a garbage chute.

She had no doubt he would do it.

But before he could do anything more, she felt the vehicle abruptly slow. It threw her attacker off balance. “Shit!” he roared. His trousers around his knees, he stumbled forward, planting one of his heavy boots squarely on the side of her waist. Her eyes bugged out as a wave of intense pain rolled through her.

Even more abruptly, the vehicle accelerated again. The would-be rapist staggered backwards, slamming hard into the metal wall of her mobile prison. That gun he carried clattered loudly but did not fall. It must have some kind of strap.

She had no time to think. A huge crash brought the vehicle to an immediate, complete halt. The collision was violent enough that her entire body and whatever she was on shot forward. The top of her head slammed painfully into something she could not see.

“Goddamn, bloody, fuckin' Hell,” she heard him curse.

It came without warning.

The silver knife blade passed before her eyes, glinting in the harsh lamplight. …The same unzipping sound….

That knife was every bit as sharp as it looked.

Having ones throat cut was surprisingly painless. It hurt much less than being trodden on. Her neck just seemed to … fall apart … as the blade passed through. Air began entering her throat where it shouldn't. Despite the extra air, she started choking. A squirt of something warm and sticky spattered her right cheek, then another, and another….

So this was what it was like to die…. She had enough medical training to know she would bleed out - exsanguinate - in maybe three minutes….

According to an old wives tale, on the eve of death, ones life passed before ones eyes.

Those old wives were liars.

She saw something from her past, but only one image - and it was very recent. Her ebbing mind remembered Harry's face … how it looked the very last time she would ever see him. He was dressed in a fashionable Muggle suit, but his eyes were wide, his mouth hung open, and every line of his face was etched with shock, pain, and despair.

He was the only one she had ever really loved….

Things were getting fuzzy. She vaguely felt an inrushing blast of cool night air; sensed flashes and pops as something, maybe the man's gun, discharged. Something flashed an angry orange….

A great deal of warm sticky liquid splattered her, but it only warmed her for an instant.

Inside, she felt cold, everywhere, save her right cheek, which was bathed in her own lifeblood….

Darkness closed in. The light faded away….

She felt like she was floating….

Only the vision remained - Harry's face, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, every line etched with shock, pain and despair….

Was she dead yet…?

* * * *

One look at her and Harry knew he was way, way over his head - fatally for her. He was no Healer. Auror first aid mended cuts and bruises, maybe even a broken ankle. But this was something else entirely. He had no idea how to go about Healing a major artery cut clean through. All he remembered about arteries was to use a tourniquet. Even if he knew how, that was impossible.

He needed help - from somebody, anybody, and everybody - fast.

Screaming with despair, Harry hurled his wand arm heavenward and sent an International Auror Assist into the dark sky - then another, and another. A volley of blood-red crisscrossed sparks erupted high over his position.

This was no time to worry about secrecy. If Muggles could get to her faster, he would take Muggles. “Inflammare!” he screamed again, flames leapt from his wand, setting the surrounding forest alight.

Who was he kidding? Everything was pointless and futile. Nobody could get there fast enough. Hermione was lying there, her life spurting out of her - bleeding to death before his very eyes, and he had not raised a finger to stop it.

Harry had no idea what to do.

The only other Healing concept in his reeling mind was that direct pressure stopped some bleeding. He had to try something - anything….

He reached for the entirely inadequate handkerchief in the front pocket of his Muggle suit coat. He winced, and remembered he had been shot in the side. A flesh wound it seemed and utterly insignificant compared to Hermione's injury.

Ignoring his pain, he reached again.

He found nothing.

His breast pocket was almost obliterated, along with his robes directly atop it. The felt-tipped highlighter pen clipped to his pocket came off in his hand, the bottom half gone - blown to pieces.

Cursing his lack of even that one insignificant thing, Harry decided to tear off his shirt and use that. He threw off what remained of his jacket. Something flat hit his wrist and clattered off to one side. He raised his arm to fling the remnant highlighter pen after it, but….

The remnants of the highlighter's bottom dropped out of their own accord. They fell at Harry's feet, leaving him holding only the top. An instant before casting it aside in disgust, his face flushed warm as perhaps the most brilliant idea of his entire life came to him….

Not bothering with his wand, Harry neatly sheared away the very top with a motion of his left hand. A second pass of his hand vanished the fabric clip. He was left with a small yellow plastic tube, less than ten centimeters long and perhaps one and a half wide.

Struggling to keep his hands from trembling, he reached into the gory mess that was Hermione's throat. Her blood, the one part of her he never, ever, wanted to see, feel, or smell was all over his hands. Grimly Harry kept aiming for the squirting end of her severed artery. Finding it, he shoved one end of the little tube into the pulsing hole in the side of her neck.

It worked. The next spurt passed through the end of the tube. Immediately, Harry cast a Sticking Charm to fix it in place.

That was the easy part.

Squinting into the unsteady firelight that illuminated the scene, he looked for her artery's other end. Everything looked so deadly red…. That had to be it….

Harry twisted the tube in the bloody, slippery, sticky wound to align it with the opposite side. But he could not fit the tube into the hole. It was too damn slick, too damn floppy and blood constantly spurted out, filling the other end and blocking his already difficult view.

He had one chance. Moving around beside her, he rested the back of her head on his knee and reached in with both hands. He pinched off her artery just below the tube, and tried again.

It fit. The moment it did, he raised his knee, which pushed her head forward and closed the wound somewhat.

He immediately performed another wandless Sticking Charm.

Harry nearly fainted with relief.

He saw the flaccid end of the artery, just above the blood smeared yellow bit of plastic, start pulsing again. He had stopped the one most immediately fatal aspect of her condition - with a bit of Muggle highlighter pen and some second-year magic.

Now he was immobilized. If he relaxed his knee her head would flop back, reopening the gaping wound, and possibly tearing the artery either above or below the charmed tube.

Why move, anyway? Holding Hermione in his arms … there was nothing he would rather do.

But the Hermione in his arms was unconscious, in shock, drenched in her own blood - and probably dying slowly.

What he wanted, needed, to do was give Hermione his life - or as much of it as she needed to live. But again, Harry was no Healer and had no idea how to do that.

She was still alive, though. Every time she breathed, the gash in her neck burbled where her trachea had been slit.

For how long?

Dammit, where was anybody?

Harry pushed back Hermione's eyelids and looked deeply into her eyes, searching for some glimmer of consciousness. He needed to give her something - even if only hope. For the first time in a decade, he used the Legilimenced speech technique Dumbledore had taught them. Silently he spoke to her, `Hermione, it's Harry; I'm here. I'll never let you go again. I love you. I've always loved you, even though I've been a complete git about showing it. I swear, if you get through this alive, I'll….”

He stopped. It was no longer his place to offer to marry her. He had made that declaration before, when….

That was it! One thing Hermione had taught him was that spells could be modified for new, related uses. At that, she was the best he had ever seen - from the Protean Charm she adapted in their Fifth Year at Hogwarts, to the Power of Love Curse that destroyed Voldemort.

He could cast the Power of Love Curse. If he willed his magic strongly enough, perhaps he could alter it so that, instead of making love into a weapon, he could use it to sustain her life.

It was a long shot. He had never cast it except in the throes of sexual intercourse. That was absolutely out. Still, there were things more intimate than sex. Long ago, he and Hermione had shared such things.

One side effect of the spell could be to destroy his love entirely, leaving nothing in its wake. But his love would not matter if she died.

He knew no other spell that stood the slightest chance of working.

Harry took a very deep breath to calm himself as much as possible. Then he summoned his wand.

Her head in his lap, he tried to envision her as she had been before - without the obscene amounts of blood soaking both of them. Gently, he placed his wand along the length of her neck, across her wound. Cradling her with one hand, he flattened his other across his wand and directly over her injury.

“Puissance d'Amour Totalus,” he incanted her spell; she had adapted it. Harry concentrated with everything he had left, trying to will his love - and his life - into her so that she might survive.

The wand, and his hand, glowed softly pink, as Harry shut out the rest of the world.

He never heard the sirens approaching.

- 8 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 13: White Rooms And Black Feelings

The room was white - arrestingly white with undecorated white-painted walls. White fluorescent lights shown from recesses in the stark white ceiling. The white linoleum floor was waxed to a high sheen. A line of white Formica cabinets had white plastic handles. White cotton sheets made the bed. Everything in the bathroom, from the tiles to the toilet to the towels, was white.

Only two exceptions broke this pallid monotony. The first was a window, with a view of the early morning sun, birds singing in the trees, and streets full of Parisians headed to work. The second exception was a quiet young man dressed in a pale green hospital gown. His vacant green eyes stared through the barred windows - seeing but not really comprehending the scene. He felt only disbelief - disbelief that life all around him could go on with such normalcy, when his own life had completely imploded.

Harry was under arrest. He had spent the last several hours in the secure wing of a Parisian Muggle hospital.

That suited Harry as well as anything.

Ever since the Muggle hélicoptère de sauvetage had taken Hermione away, and even before, Harry simply abandoned himself to the hands of fate. He had done everything he possibly could. Either was enough, or….

Harry did not go there. Down that road lay madness - or worse. If absolutely necessary he supposed he would somehow cope, but for now he deadened his mind to keep the very real prospect of her death at bay.

Step one was slamming shut the gates of Occlumency. The war and its immediate aftermath had provided plenty of practice. Harry had not loosed spontaneous magic since … since the last time he thought Hermione died - when Muggle terrorists took down those Yank skyscrapers.

That was not pretty.

He had to avoid a repeat performance for the Muggle gendarmerie.

Thus, Harry followed standard Auror procedures. Be polite. Do not resist in any way. Tell as much truth as possible without violating Wizard secrecy standards. Engage Muggle police in his native tongue, not theirs.

The Muggles had been quite perplexed - and Harry did precious little to enlighten them.

Harry had just surrendered Hermione to Muggle EMTs. His forlorn healing attempt had not seemed to accomplish anything, anyway. Her awful neck wound gaped, mocking him. He doubted he would ever touch her - alive - again. Haunted by that thought, he deadened his mind with Occlumency.

“Celui qui que vous êtes, vous a eu mieux pour s'expliquer,” an older, uniformed policeman demanded.

He answered in flat monotone. “My name is Harry Potter. I'm from London. There's identification in my wallet - in my back pocket. Two men tried to murder the woman you just took away. I killed them.”

The policeman's face twitched, startled by Harry's frank admission. He leaned to extract Harry's wallet from the indicated pocket.

Harry knew enough to keep his hands within the officer's sight. Leaning sideways to facilitate removal of his wallet, he staggered in pain. “Aaahh…! I've been shot….”

The policeman switched to English. “So you have, but it does not seem … serious.” Signalling for a medic, the officer continued his interrogation. “You say you killed two people - how? You are not armed….”

“The driver tried to shoot me,” Harry recounted. “The other, in the rear, he … cut her throat … then shot me. I killed him with the knife still in his hands.”

“Interesting … but I asked, how?” the policeman pursued.

Harry followed procedures - never reveal oneself to Muggles. “With fire and sword,” he stated mysteriously.

“I see the fire. Where's this … sword?” the policeman haltingly asked.

“Don't know,” Harry answered politely. “If you can't find it, I can't. It was of no interest. I was only interested in her….”

Sensing no immediate answers as to Harry's mode of killing, the policeman pursued a new line of questioning. “Ah yes … and the woman…?”

“She is Hermi … er … Harmony Farmer. She's a good … er … old friend from England, but she's in the States now….” Guiltily Harry realized he ceased being her “good” friend years ago - when he decided to move heaven and earth to find her whether she wanted finding or not.

“You seem … hesitant,” the policeman observed. “How long since you last saw her?”

“Nine years, three months, and twenty three days,” Harry rattled off.

“Very precise,” the officer observed. “How did you meet?”

“On a train when I was eleven years old,” Harry said softly.

“I meant … umm … after the nine years, and whatever,” he clarified.

“Umm … didn't really, except when I tried to save her life,” Harry stated.

The French -speaking officer was very confused. “How did you get here … if you had not met?”

“She was unconscious. I saw them put her in there,” he indicated the wrecked and burning van. I followed. I figured out what they planned to do. I tried stopping them,” Harry explained. “I failed….”

“Follow … how?” the officer tried to understand. “I see neither a car nor a motorbike.”

“I hid on top of the van,” Harry told him truthfully.

“On that? For how long?” inquired the officer.

“No idea,” Harry confessed. “Seemed like forever. They drove fast.”

“What stopped them?” the officer asked, still puzzled. He gestured at the smoldering van. “That vehicle … it clearly hit something, but what?”

“I can't say,” Harry dissembled. “I don't see anything.”

The perplexed officer shook his head and moved on. “All right. Next of kin?”

“My parents died when I was a baby,” Harry revealed.

“I meant Ms. Farmer's,” the officer said curtly. “You're not likely to die tonight.”

Harry redoubled his Occlumency. He did not want to think about that. “Her Mum … lives in Perth, Australia, I believe.” Harry knew that full well - the goblins watched her 24 hours a day for years. “She's a dentist … name's Eva….” Again Harry paused, not wanting to explain the different last name. “Her father's been a wanted fugitive for well over a decade now. Nobody knows where he went.”

“Umm … Please explain how, after nine years apart, you magically reappear and find Ms. Farmer.”

Harry sighed and answered more truthfully than it appeared, “I still can't believe it myself…. You said it - magic, I guess.”

The officer wanted no cheek from this unstintingly polite, but infuriatingly unfathomable young man. He switched from inquisitive to accusative. “Mister Potter, I've probably been a detective longer than you've lived. Don't you find it strange, as I do, that after nine years apart, and Ms. Farmer with a spotless Interpol record, you reappear, by `magic' if you will, and minutes later her throat is cut?”

“Oh … blast,” Harry tried to stay calm. “You don't think … this is … my fault...?”

Then he collapsed.

Whether from stress, loss of blood, or sheer exhaustion - he Occlumenced himself into unconsciousness.

So Harry arrived at the prison wing of this large Muggle hospital. He admitted killing two. While the incident had the hallmarks of self-defense, many inexplicable things needed investigating. The young man's story about the gravely injured woman had a ring of truth, but parts seemed incredible. With a bullet wound in the side, Harry needed medical treatment.

The officer placed the unconscious man under arrest, and transferred him to a secure hospital facility.

A Muggle doctor injected Harry with some unknown drug, and he woke up. Disoriented, he asked after Hermione. The young Muggle knew nothing - not even why Harry was being held. All he could say was that Harry was under arrest.

Harry waited. Hours passed. A nurse came to check on him and change the bandages on his wound. It was treated while he was unconscious. It was more than a flesh wound - one rib was shattered.

But still not particularly serious, she told him.

Harry had ceased caring about himself.

Nobody came. Harry could easily have escaped using wandless magic, but that would just make him a fugitive and cast more Muggle suspicion on him. He had no idea where Hermione might be - if she still was.

As long as he stayed, at least some Muggles somewhere knew where both he and Hermione, or Harmony as they called her, were.

Eventually, someone from the Ministry would collect him as was standard Auror procedure. If nobody else, Tonks would eventually alert the proper authorities. He had cast a distress signal - several….

So where the Hell were they?

Were they outside, debating how to tell him the bad news?

So Harry sat, silently begging deities he did not believe existed to spare her and, if they demanded a sacrifice, to take him instead….

The sun rose, seemingly mocking him. Harry's head drooped. He was wrung out - exhausted, getting drowsy. Even Occlumency could not help how he felt. His face contorted in grief, Harry released himself to his heartbreak.

His cheeks moistened as tears began to flow. Unable, even unwilling, to bottle himself up any longer, Harry allowed himself to cry. He continued sobbing, softly to avoid unwanted attention, until mercifully he fell asleep.

The last time Harry Potter cried himself to sleep was in a cupboard beneath a staircase.

He slept fitfully, disjointed bits of unpleasant dreams rattling around inside his skull, until he heard a key turning in the door to his room. The young doctor shuffled in. Harry noticed that his eyes appeared strangely unfocussed.

Before Harry could react, several more people - familiar people - entered. Maréchal Delacour led the group, his face craggy with lines of deep concern. A couple of steps behind followed Jacques Lemaître, whom Harry had met during the war, but now knew only as the recently appointed Commander of the French equivalent of the Auror Corps.

Tonks appeared behind the two Frenchmen. Her expression was grim and her hair a flyaway grayish brown. Her hand clutched an Auror communication mirror.

Last in, and looking very out of place, was Gabrielle Delacour. She still wore an elegant midnight blue Muggle evening gown, and in any other setting would have been outrageously attractive. But her face was pale with shock. She had obviously been crying.

After they entered, Maréchal Delacour pulled his wand, muttered something, and the obviously Confunded Muggle doctor wandered away.

Seeing the group of wizards, Harry's throat went so dry he could hardly speak. “Umm … is she … still…?” he rasped out before the Maréchal mercifully raised his hand for quiet.

“All I can tell you, Harry, is she still lived when our Healers took over her care. My Muggle countrymen did well - stabilizing her, transfusing her several times, and above all not making things worse by interfering with what they did not understand…”

Harry understood the Maréchal to mean they did not disturb the tube that magically connected Hermione's severed artery.

“…We have arranged the best possible care,” the Maréchal continued. “Your friend Healer Huxley is with her. He was on alert much of the night.”

“Thank you.” Then Harry stopped, realizing the import of the Maréchal's words. “What do you mean, `much of the night,' and how did the Muggles…? Several transfusions? How long was it?”

The old man winced at being found out so quickly. He turned to Msr. Lemaître and told him, coldly, “Perhaps you should explain last night's events.”

“Mister Potter,” the younger French wizard began, “I am deeply sorry, but Miss Granger only came into our custody some 45 minutes ago. There was … confusion. The Muggles took her under an assumed name. Only when Auror Tonks clarified that could we locate her.”

Tonks took this opportunity to fiddle with the communication mirror.

Harry was stunned. Hermione had been in Muggle care for hours. “But - but … I … Auror distress signals. Certainly you saw….”

Extremely tight lipped, Msr. Lemaître continued, “Once again, I apologize for our performance last night. We had a large operation against potions smugglers in the northern faubourgs, and knew of no operatives in the Bois de Boulogne. Your signals - there were so many of them. The duty officer thought them a prank, or worse, a diversion. We delayed responding until after the operation….”

Maréchal Delacour's eyes narrowed almost to invisibility during the Chief Auror's explanation. Finally, he had enough.

“Harry, to be blunt, we dropped the ball,” the old man admitted. “Without Ms. Tonks' assistance, we still might not know what happened. Still, she lives. She must have a very strong will.”

Harry turned to Tonks. “What happened?”

“I grabbed a couple of Aurors who were available. We went to the address you gave us. Found a couple of Muggles. One confessed to everything. He seemed almost relieved at being caught. I think he….” Tonks paused and changed direction. “Well, never mind that. The other said nothing. They're both with the gendarmerie. Then - well, you can thank your ex….”

“You mean Ginny?” Harry's mouth dropped. Her name was almost the last thing he expected to hear.

Tonks again glanced at the mirror. She was checking it every minute or so.

“Yes, that's exactly who I mean,” Tonks confirmed. “She's a good woman, Harry, whatever happened back then…. Arthur and Molly never took Hermione off their clock, and after almost a decade her hand moved from “lost” - to “mortal peril.” They Flooed her. She Flooed you, but your house-elves didn't know where you'd gone….”

“Dammit,” Harry swore. “I should have left word.”

Tonks glanced at the mirror again. “Yes, you should,” Tonks said more sharply. “But save that for later. Then your hand - yes they've left you on the clock too, despite the annulment - also went to “mortal peril.” Ginny got a second message, and at that point Flooed Merlin knows how many places looking for you. Eventually she reached Remus. He got me by mirror just as we were finishing up those Muggles.”

“As you know, I've been Hermione's one contact with our world all these years. After talking to Arthur, I mirrored the French Aurors. I told them to look for Harmony Farmer - and for you. They mentioned the odd Auror Assist signals, so I tagged along with their investigative party.

She took another look at the mirror.

“Tonks, what are you expecting?” Harry finally asked.

The ashen-haired Auror exhaled loudly. “A message I hope I never receive,” she sighed. “I had Remus go to the Burrow. He's promised to contact me … well, if Hermione's hand drops off the Weasleys' clock…. That would mean….”

“…That she's dead,” Harry broke in. “Like when Ron and Bill died in the war.”

“Well, it hasn't happened yet today,” Tonks said hotly. “You can't give up, Harry.”

“I - I haven't,” Harry maintained. “I couldn't live with myself. You know, there's more than enough Muggle sedatives in those cabinets.”

“Well, you can forget about that,” Tonks said stoutly. “Here, I believe this is yours”

She tossed Harry his wand.

“And this is yours, too.”

She tossed him his Invisibility Cloak.

“You really shouldn't leave things like this lying around a place like that,” she lectured. “No telling who could have found them.”

“Thanks,” Harry replied weakly. He was still trying to compose himself when Tonks pulled out something else.

“You also left this behind. You're lucky I was there, since the French Aurors would have missed it.”

She produced the plate that bore Molly's drawing of Hermione.

Harry reached for it. “Thanks again, Tonks. I've been doing that a lot….”

Tonks cut him off.

“Don't thank me,” she told him. “You should thank whoever inspired you to bring this along.”

She flipped the plate over. On the back side, Molly's little poem was nearly obliterated, disfigured by two ugly, blackened marks.

“What…?”

“I reckon this plate took two bullets for you, Harry,” Tonks told him.

Harry gasped audibly. He remembered his breast pocket handkerchief, and the pocket, being missing. Reflexively, he touched that spot on his chest. “It saved my life,” Harry said almost inaudibly. “And if I did save her, then it saved her life too - I hope….”

There was silence. Tonks' hair started losing its ashy colour, becoming black again.

“The - the poem,” Harry murmured. “I saw it tonight at the manor. It's what turned me around. What made me come back after….” He realized none of them knew what transpired in the lobby. “…after, I'd left in despair.”

“So we come full circle,” Tonks observed, ignoring his last comment. “Hermione saved Molly's life. Now Molly's saved yours. If we get some luck, maybe you've completed it….”

“Harry, do you want to go to her?” the Maréchal asked.

“Molly will….” Then Harry realized he was answering the wrong question. “Yes,” he declared. “Even if it might … not turn out well…. If it does, then I need to be there for her … to let her know I've changed.”

“Then, allez,” Maréchal Delacour directed in the command voice that was second nature to him.

“Msr. Lemaître looked at the wall clock. “If we hurry, we can catch the nine o'clock shuttle.”

“Won't it be quicker to Apparate?” Harry asked, surprised.

“Non,” the head Auror declared. “As it happens, she's in the other wing of this hospital. She's in too serious a condition to be moved, so our Healers have taken over here.”

- 7 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 14: Almost But Not Quite

Harry sat, slumped and miserable, in one of a row of uncomfortable, institutional plastic chairs - waiting…. Waiting for a verdict - life or death - completely out of his hands.

When they led him in, he almost lost it. The wizard party had commandeered a V.I.P waiting room adjacent to the most intensive section of Intensive Care at the largest Muggle hospital in Paris.

Harry immediately realized he had been there before, years earlier, during the last stages of the War.

Death won that round.

Now, Harry feared he would go 0-2.

Mostly to pass the time while waiting in antiseptic purgatory, Maréchal Delacour told Harry everything he knew about what had happened.

When the show ended, Gabby had been most unhappy at Harry being called away. Still, daughter treated father to dinner at a fancy Muggle restaurant that stayed open late to cater to the fashion crowd. There they celebrated both Gabby's modeling career and his reconciliation to it. Ironically, they just finished a toast to Harry - “who had given” each of them “back to” the other - when things went to Hell.

The Maréchal received an urgent mirror call amongst all those Muggles.

Fleur relayed an urgent message to call Tonks. From Tonks, the Maréchal learned that - violating a half-dozen Anglo-French Auror protocols - she had just searched this Paris townhouse Harry had identified.

Breathlessly Tonks told the Maréchal about catching this Muggle, Christian. He confessed to ordering Hermione's murder, a murder probably taking place as they spoke.

By then, not just Hermione, but Harry, had disappeared.

An immediate call to his former subordinate laid bare the whole sorry tale of French Auror incompetence.

Increasingly furious, the Maréchal went straight to the top. At around 2 a.m., he rousted the French Ministry's most highly placed contract with the Muggle Paris Prefecture from bed. Within fifteen minutes the two of them repeated that process with the Muggle Préfet de Police.

While finding Harry was important, their critical demand was for information about a possible Muggle crime victim named Harmony Farmer. That was easier said than done - even with the Préfet's assistance.

Harmony/Hermione had almost immediately been transferred from the Prefecture's jurisdiction to la Pitié-Salpêtrière….

That hospital…. A decade before, a witch (Hufflepuff '78) - more famous among Muggles than Harry was to wizards - was brought there after a Death Eater attack. She and Harry had just agreed to collaborate on a wide range of issues: both magical ones like Voldemort and sentient being rights, and Muggle ones like landmines and AIDS. Threatened, Voldemort acted immediately, and Muggle security was no match. The Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee passed it off as a car crash. Muggle conspiracy buffs had a field day; rightly suspecting a cover-up. They had no idea how much was covered up.

Then, Harry arrived just in time to say goodbye. Would history repeat?

Hospitals are horrible places for waiting - worse than horrible when waiting to find out whether somebody will die.

But when the person whose life hangs in the balance is someone you have loved almost all your life - loved but lost….

…Lost to a series of events that seemed not only logical, but necessary, at the time….

…Lost to a series of events that seem perfectly absurd in retrospect….

How much second-guessing can one man do before going crazy?

Coming from the prison wing, Harry tried to call ahead. He knew, and been a patient of, Healer Paracelsus Huxley for over a decade. Healer Huxley would tell him the truth.

Instead of the Healer, Harry managed only a fifteen-second conversation with some harried Healer Practitioner. She curtly informed him that Healer Huxley “could not possibly be disturbed” as he was “attending a patient in grave condition.”

That was over an hour ago.

* * * *

Ever since entering their own little patch of Hell, she watched him carefully, but stealthily. As an Auror, this was second nature.

This wreck of a man slumped a couple of worn polyurethane seats away, staring blankly at nothing in particular. Occasionally, he would shake his head and run his hands nervously through his hair. The longer this agony stretched, the less communicative Harry became.

Tonks wondered how Harry could be so different from - yet so alike - the boy she first met so many years before, when her own career just begun. In many ways, he was a wreck then, too. But with a crucial difference….

At Hogwarts he still had hope.

Then, his life was ruled by something beyond his control - a prophecy made before he was even born. But Harry at least could hope that if, somehow, he defeated Voldemort, his life could be his own to do what he wanted.

Tonks sighed knowingly. She spent so much time protecting and encouraging the Trio during the war's final year and a half. Tonks had the distinct sense that what Harry really wanted in life involved Hermione….

She kept mum. Anybody else would have thought her daft. After all, Harry was shagging Ginny - not Hermione - regularly with an eye towards using love to defeat Voldemort. How could he possibly not be in love with Ginny?

But those private looks Harry and Hermione gave each other when they thought nobody was watching…. Even then Tonks had mastered clumsiness as a façade to conceal her watchfulness. It came in handy….

Before the final battle, Tonks was convinced that something had happened between those two - what, she did not know….

But she was certain that Harry and Hermione shared something far more profound than his relationship with his ostensible girlfriend and lover.

She said nothing, and learned the whole story only when it was too late.

After Hermione disappeared - while everyone was still searching - she finally pried the real story of Voldemort's destruction from her then fiancé Remus.

He was there; she had been elsewhere, busy dispatching a certain obnoxious aunt.

Remus was very reluctant with those facts, but her plea that they were essential to any chance of finding Hermione hit home. She found out that Harry and Ginny could not beat Voldemort by themselves….

Before they even tried, Hermione, as Lily once had, offered herself as a human shield for Harry. Fearing a repeat, Voldemort had thought better of killing her….

Without intimacy - or even physical contact - Hermione had managed to join the Puissance d'Amour Curse…. Her love for him was that strong.

When she did, Hermione cried out that love so Harry could hear, confirming what Tonks had suspected all along….

Thus, Voldemort passed from the scene.

Thus, Remus confessed, her example helped him find the strength to rip out the throat of an alpha werewolf when, moments later, Hermione's life was again at stake.

And thus, Harry's life never became his own. Prophecy led seamlessly to pregnancy, as both Harry and Hermione allowed what was right to happen, instead of what would have been so easy. Or had they?

Only then, once it was too late, did Tonks understand why Hermione left. The girl could not bear giving Harry away, and could not even refuse Harry's request. Had she, their prior relationship would have been exposed, and Harry, Ginny, and the unborn child everyone thought was theirs would all have been ruined.

So Hermione had run….

From that moment forward, Tonks became unalterably opposed to Harry's increasingly obsessive efforts to locate Hermione - because she, alone, understood why Hermione did not want to be found.

A loud buzzing noise interrupted Tonks' thoughts and her watch over Harry.

Her mirror - she was not expecting any social calls.

There was news.

Everyone looked at her.

Everyone save Harry. At the sound, he jumped to his feet and strode resolutely to the (thankfully) barred window, where just as resolutely he looked away.

“Tonks?” came a very weak sounding voice.

“Remus,” Tonks' whispered. “What's happened…?”

“It's … it's over…. The clock … Hermione's hand … it … it just … fell off….”

Too busy holding her breath - and trying to hold herself together - Tonks said nothing. For all his wealth and fame, Harry now had lost everyone, except Molly, who meant anything to him. True, he was to blame for a lot of it….

Remus continued, “Tonks … please … I know you've been angry with him for what he did … but please … be gentle when you tell him…. He'll be fragile…. I don't want her … dying to be followed by….”

“I know, Remus….”

“No you don't, not with Harry, you don't. Let me … give you some … tips on how to do this….”

* * * *

Poor Harry. She could barely comprehend what he must be feeling. When Maman had passed, she was devastated, but Maman … she had been terminal for weeks….

Gabrielle Delacour - professionally, Brielle - worshipped the ground under Harry's feet since she was eight years old. Harry saved her, symbolized the wartime alliance, beat Voldemort, and had just managed to reconcile her and her father.

What had she ever done for him?

A harsh buzz startled Gabrielle, but her reaction was nothing compared to Harry's. He bolted from his chair as if hit by an electric shock. He stalked to the window, put both hands on the sill, and stared into infinity.

Gabrielle's first thought was how utterly alone Harry was.

Her second thought was how cosmically unfair that was.

Her third thought was that, if she did nothing, sooner or later (probably sooner) her sister probably would.

Tonks was in whispered conversation over the mirror…. Papa received similar news the same way.

Uncertainly, Gabrielle rose and approached the man at the window.

“Harry,” she said, placing one of her hands on one of his, “I'm sorry I never got a chance to thank you for what you did….”

He flinched at her touch, but did not pull away.

“…you gave my Papa back to me….”

Harry turned slightly to the part-Veela-turned-supermodel, and with the saddest wisp of a smile she had ever seen in her life, shook his head slightly. “I should thank you,” he said sotto voce. “At least you gave me a chance … to try one last time…. To see her one last time, before….”

“Harry, don't feel you're alone,” she said, her almost whispered voice belying the most forward thing the young witch had ever done. “You don't have to be. I'm here … if you need me … for anything….”

Her proposition did not seem to register with Harry. “It's - it's bad … isn't it?”

He was determined not to look at Tonks. He had no illusion what that mirror page probably meant. Tonks would have to tell him. He would not help make it real.

Gabrielle shot a sideways glance at Tonks, still talking in the mirror too softly to be overheard. “Her hair … it's turned … completely grey….”

Harry swallowed hard, nodded to Gabrielle, and stared distantly out the window.

He did not pull his hand away.

She squeezed it. “Harry, promise me you won't do anything fool….

Tonks' loud whoop drew everyone's attention. It was so out of character; out of place; out of everything….

Even Harry whirled around.

Tonks activated the mirror's speaker function. A disembodied, instantly recognizable, voice yelled, “…DON'T EFFING BELIEVE IT!! IT'S A MERLIN-BE-DAMNED MIRACLE!!”

Tonks practically screamed into the mirror, “Remus, you're on speaker, say what happened, will you!?”

“…I CAN'T … I'VE NEVER … THE RUDDY HAND, HERMIONE'S HAND…. JUST JUMPED OFF THE FLOOR AND BACK ON THE CLOCK!!! IT'S A MIRACLE!!! SHE DIED - NOW SHE'S NOT…!!!”

Tonks whooped again. Other answering whoops came over the mirror from unidentified Weasleys. Maréchal Delacour spoke rapid-fire French that used the word “dieu” several times. The French Chief Auror, whom the Maréchal had refused to dismiss, yelled something about “justice” and tossed his hat in the air.

Harry's eyes went huge. An almost otherworldly smile blossomed. In one motion he enveloped Gabrielle in the most emotion-packed hug that she had ever experienced - and the French were a tactile people.

Gabrielle was overjoyed for Harry - and sadly realistic for herself.

She understood that, no matter what she, Fleur, or any other of her sex might do or say, Harry's heart belonged completely, utterly, and irrevocably to that woman who had just refused to die.

* * * *

Hermione had not died.

Her virtual resurrection only restored the status quo.

As Remus reported, her hand on the Weasley clock still pointed to “mortal peril.”

The wait resumed. Glaciers moved faster than time passed in the ICU waiting room at la Pitié-Salpêtrière.

Harry tried either making small talk with Gabrielle or, more often, reverting to blank stares out the window. He struggled over how to tell Molly about what had happened to Hermione. His unseeing stare overlooked the afternoon sun's slanting rays that dappled the trees when, at last, an angel invaded their little corner of Hell.

Harry looked up to see Parry (known to the others simply as Healer Huxley) enter the room. The Healer looked haggard, unshaven, and his pale blue gown had all-too-obviously just been changed.

He had forgotten to replace his head cap. From that Harry could tell just how bloody the operation (or operations) had been.

Healer Huxley's tired eyes found Harry. Almost involuntarily Harry rose; face chalky white, full of trepidation. Only the absence of another mirror call from the Burrow gave him hope. Still, the sum of his life's experiences left Harry a confirmed pessimist about anyone he loved. He anticipated Healer Huxley's first words, `Harry, I'm sorry…. We tried everything, but some things just can't be fixed … she was unconscious though ... she didn't suffer….'

Even those thoughts vanished as the two men met, and Healer Huxley put his arm on Harry's shoulder. The touch seemingly drained everything from the younger man's mind, leaving quivering, vacant mush. “What…? How…? Did she…?”

Healer Huxley's gaunt visage betrayed a narrow smile. “She's made it, Harry. She should recover without permanent injury.”

Pessimism - fear of crushing disappointment - had not allowed Harry even to contemplate that result. For a long moment, he stood there, dumbfounded. “What…? Parry, are you … sure?”

Healer Huxley explained, “Yes, it was a protracted, difficult procedure. We had a setback. She had to be resuscitated on the table, but everything seems okay now….”

“Oh Merlin,” Harry groaned. Exhausted, he flung his arms around the man who had been his personal Healer for over a decade - who dropped everything and stayed on call for agonizing hours to answer Harry's implicit plea for help. Harry's legs went flabby, and Healer Huxley staggered a bit under the younger man's weight.

Except for Harry and Healer Huxley, everyone else stayed deathly silent, trying to overhear their soft-spoken conversation. Seeing the embrace, they erupted in exultation and sobs of relief. Tonks' hair turned bright pink as triumphantly she mirrored the news to Remus at the Burrow.

“Parry, I can never repay you,” Harry mumbled. “I owe you so much … a Wizard debt can't begin….”

“You owe me nothing,” Healer Huxley tried to tell Harry. “This is my profession. I'm relieved she made it. She did it, Harry. At several points, a weaker witch….”

“No more thinking about that,” Harry shushed him. “The last few hours were enough for a lifetime….” Harry grabbed both Healer Huxley's hands as all around them a quiet celebration was underway. “I need to see her. Is she awake?”

Healer Huxley shook his head. “I'm afraid not. I placed her in magically induced coma. She's survived incredible trauma….”

A frown crossed Harry's face.

“You may see her,” the Healer added, “but she won't know you're there, and you can't touch anything. She's still on an artificial lung while her own heal.”

“Fine - no problem - anything,” Harry began, then took what he said. “Lungs? What happened? I thought…”

“Come. Walk with me to the recovery area,” Healer Huxley beckoned.

They left through the same door. While Harry changed into sterile scrubs, the Healer briefly explained what had happened.

The Muggles behaved quite competently. They properly treated Hermione's shock, provided necessary blood transfusions, and above all had good sense not to meddle with things beyond their comprehension. Thus, their doctors did not disturb the bit of plastic that magically bridged Hermione's severed carotid artery. The Muggles could not have ultimately saved Hermione's life, however. The large amount of blood inhaled during her ordeal mortally damaged her lungs.

By the time Healer Huxley finally began attending to Hermione, she was drowning in fluids oozing from her damaged lung tissue. Removal of the fluid was little more than a palliative, the damage was so extensive. Healer Huxley had one choice - filling her lungs with healing potion - that required hooking her to a magical artificial lung while the potion worked its magic.

The lung device arrived by emergency Floo from St. Mungo's just as Hermione's blood oxygen levels went critical. In his haste, Healer Huxley failed to notice that someone at St. Mungo's cast one of the spells incorrectly. When he Ennervated the magical lung, the errant spell caused some sort of override.

Hermione's heart abruptly stopped.

In essence, she died on the operating table.

Magical and Muggle defibrillation failed. In desperation Healer Huxley resorted - successfully - to direct heart massage. Even Harry was too squeamish to ask how that was accomplished.

Hence, the Weasley clock's bizarre behavior.

Healer Huxley's explanation lasted until, changed and sterilized, they reached the door to Hermione's station - not really a “room” - as she required so much equipment and constant monitoring that walls would have been an impediment. Before magicking the curtains aside, Healer Huxley warned Harry, “Steady yourself, this won't look pretty. Fortunately it shouldn't be needed for much more than the next six hours; less if her vitals continue as strong as they're reading….”

Harry took a deep breath. The curtains fluttered aside, and he saw Hermione.

Except Harry could barely see her. A mask with a large tube covered most of her face. Her hair was all shaved off. Her neck wound remained open, with two more large tubes extruding from it. Still other tubes entered her chest. These pulsed with blood - and connected her to what looked like an overly large, glowing, set of bagpipes.

“That's the artificial lung,” Healer Huxley volunteered, watching Harry's eyes. “The mask ventilates her facial cavities. The throat tubes circulate the potion in her lungs. She's healing as we speak.”

Harry looked at Hermione, virtually submerged under a forest of tubes, talismans, and monitoring devices. “Only six hours?” he asked.

“Probably less,” the Healer reassured. “See all the crystals glowing green.”

Harry nodded.

Healer Huxley stepped forward and levitated a small glass jar, maybe ten centimeters in diameter, and slightly more than that tall, from the head of Hermione's bed.

Inside the jar, floating in a clear liquid, was the piece of yellow plastic with which Harry saved Hermione's life.

“That was a brilliant and desperate gamble,” Healer Huxley congratulated as he handed Harry the jar. “Fortunately for her, you didn't have any Healer training.”

“I didn't have any choice,” Harry replied. “She was bleeding to death in front of me.”

“A Healer would have been too afraid of an air embolism to do that,” the Healer explained.

Harry hardly cared. Hermione lived. Nothing else mattered. “I was too afraid of her dying not to try something.”

Healer Huxley shrugged. “You'll probably want this as a souvenir. But for now it's best to leave it here.”

“Why?” Harry asked. “It's serving no purpose anymore.”

“It'll serve as a useful prop,” Healer Huxley answered in a more serious tone of voice. He shifted into his “bedside manner.” “To show her what you had to do. You see, Harry, in one sense saving her life was the easy part - you've always been good at that. But now, you'll have a Hell of a lot of explaining to do if you want her to stay….”

Harry floated the jar back to Hermione's headboard. “I'll say,” he sighed thoughtfully.

“Let me give you some advice, then,” Healer Huxley intoned, looking Harry straight in the eye. “You're a wreck right now. Go home. Get some rest. Clean yourself up. She doesn't need you right now, or for the next several hours. But she will need you - and you, her - once I end the spells. Think about what you're going to say ... whether want Molly here … that kind of thing. Prepare yourself. Both of you will benefit.”

Harry looked almost like a little boy as he nodded. “You'll mirror me, then?”

“You have my word.”

- 12 -

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 15: Miss Farmer I Presume?

Harry immediately took Hlr. Huxley's advice. He slipped into the waiting room, gathered his meager things, and looked for a private Apparition point back to Potter Manor. Just before he vanished, Tonks called on him to wait.

Harry was exhausted. “What is it?” he grumbled.

“Harry,” Tonks addressed him, “you know I haven't agreed with many of your choices about her…. But you're … you're still the best friend anybody in the world could hope for. You saved her life last night, again, while risking your own….”

“Some friend I've been,” Harry scoffed. “I broke just about every promise I ever made to her. Even tonight I put a Tracking Charm on her handbag. That helped save her, but was one more broken promise….”

“You saved her life. That's all that matters, Harry,” Tonks insisted.

“Not anymore,” Harry sighed. “It's over for me. She's found someone else. I only hope she'll agree to see Molly….”

Tonks' hair abruptly became a forest of dark red spikes, as she remembered that Muggle's confession. Hermione had never mentioned seeing anyone. “That `someone else,' did you happen to see him last night?”

“Yes.”

“Well that `someone else' was one of those Muggles I caught at the address you gave me,” Tonks revealed. “He confessed to ordering her murder.”

Harry's tired face reddened and grew hard. Magic crackled between his fingertips. “I'll kill him,” he declared coldly.

“No you won't. He's in Muggle custody, and they'll deal with him. He's confessed, after all. You need to worry about what's important,” Tonks all but ordered him.

Harry clenched his jaw and said nothing. He kept his options open.

“Forget him. You ought to see something,” Tonks changed the subject. “That's why I came after you.”

“What?”

“The Muggle police inventoried everything they found near that van that they thought was Hermione's,” Tonks told him. She held out a piece of plain white paper containing what looked like a list.

“So?”

“Quit moping and read it, dammit,” Tonks upbraided Harry.

He did. “So wha….?” he started to complain, but stopped. He pronounced a word silently twice before saying it aloud. “Eurostar?”

“She sure hadn't told me she was dropping by,” Tonks responded. “I'd wager Galleons to Knuts she planned to see you today, if all this hadn't happened…. I told her she should.”

Harry realized he still had a chance. If, for once, he managed not to blow it….

“Thanks, Tonks.”

“Anytime, Harry.”

* * * *

It was almost time.

Hlr. Huxley palmed his hand mirror, and uttered, “Harry Potter.”

Eventually, Harry's groggy features appeared.

“I'm ready to start bringing her out of her coma,” the Healer informed Harry. “You have at least fifteen minutes.”

“Where do you want me?” he replied, instantly awake.

“In the same waiting room,” he instructed. “First, she must agree to see you. Are you bringing Molly?”

“Not now,” Harry told Hlr. Huxley. “I won't have her feelings crushed if Hermione refuses to see her, and I don't want Hermione thinking that I'm pressuring her. Molly's staying with Ginny until this gets sorted out.”

“A wise choice.”

Hlr. Huxley had spent several hours preparing. After confirming full restoration of Hermione's lung function, he restored her power to breathe independently. One by one, he dismantled the jungle of tubes that kept the young lady alive. Finally, he Healed her neck once and for all. Once survived, her injuries had a fortunate aspect. A single clean slash from an extremely sharp non-magical object would Heal readily. After a few weeks, virtually no scar would remain.

Attended only by a Healer Practitioner, Hlr. Huxley performed magic that gradually ended Hermione's induced coma. His major concern was to ensure an orderly increase of her body temperature some ten degrees back to normal.

Hermione began stirring. Hlr. Huxley saw her shiver - a good sign of her vital systems functioning entirely independently of magic. He had the practitioner cover her with another blanket. One by one, he dialed down the last spells that had maintained her life during her recovery. All the glowing indicators stayed green.

“C-c-cold….” Hermione stammered her first word.

Hlr. Huxley placed a warm water bottle in her hands. She clutched it. He stood back.

Her eyes fluttered. “Where…? Where … am I?” she mumbled barely audibly. “Am I … still alive…?”

“Harmony Farmer, I presume?” Hlr. Huxley spoke slowly, but loudly, to ensure she heard.

Her eyes instantly popped fully open. “What…? Who…? Hea … Healer Huxley?”

He heaved a sigh of relief. She seemed mentally and physically normal in every respect.

“I've been treating you for several hours,” he began. “You're fortunate indeed still to be with us, but rest assured you are quite alive. I shall explain everything, but first, should I call you Harmony or Hermione?”

“Hermione, I suppose,” she sighed.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, trying to get up.

“Please stay still. You've had quite an ordeal.” She paused as Hlr. Huxley rattled off some necessary information. “You're still in Paris - at a Muggle hospital. The Muggles brought you here and tried treating you. Your friend Tonks called me in. Your throat was cut and you'd aspirated a lot of blood. The Muggles tried, but I had to magick you to an artificial lung for several hours. You've been here about fourteen hours. You should recover with no permanent injury - thanks to a timely rescue that saved your life.”

Hermione tried taking all this in, but was still very weak. She groaned and asked a key question omitted from the Healer's synopsis. “I suppose you'll have to tell Harry about this?”

Hlr. Huxley replied, “I don't have to tell Harry anything….”

Hermione relaxed.

“…since he's why you didn't die last night.”

Hermione recalled the last image she saw before losing consciousness. “You mean … that was real?”

Familiar enough with near death experiences, Hlr. Huxley could guess what Hermione was thinking. “I assure you, Harry's rescue was very, very real.”

Hermione flopped bonelessly on the bed. “I … I … don't believe it…. Even after what I did….” She shook her head and fell into thoughtful silence. Hlr. Huxley was about to move things along, when Hermione asked, “Is he … here…?”

Hlr. Huxley smiled. “You know him as well as I. What do you think?”

Hermione returned his smile wanly. “I'm so relieved he wasn't hurt. That man had a gun….”

Opting not to mention Harry being shot, Hlr. Huxley brought up the most important topic, now that Hermione was out of danger. “Harry's in the waiting room, and wants very much to see you. I won't allow it without your consent. Will you see him?”

Hermione stared at the ceiling. She had no idea how Harry had found her, but had none of this happened, she probably would be meeting him this very moment. She had bought a ticket to England to try working something out about Molly….

She sighed. “Yes, of course…. I owe him my life - again. I certainly owe him that much….”

“Practitioner Clarisse, please watch the patient for a moment. I'll be right back.”

* * * *

For over a half-hour, Harry waited - trepidation building. He was still clueless about what to say to her. Tonks and Remus both tried to help. Remus left the Burrow for Paris the moment Hermione was out of danger. Tonks spent some time telling Harry everything she knew (which was not very much) about the last nine years of Hermione's life.

The door to the ICU swung open, and Hlr. Huxley emerged. Harry rose, fixing the Healer with an anguished, questioning gaze.

Hlr. Huxley responded with a nod and a broad smile. “She's awake, perfectly well it seems … and she wants to see you….”

Hearing those words, Harry almost went limp - so much accumulated tension left his body. An almost stupid grin remained on his face as he followed Hlr. Huxley inside.

That grin evaporated by the time Harry put on sterile scrubs over his Muggle clothing (for other patients, not Hermione, Hlr. Huxley reassured him) and followed the Healer to her.

He still had no idea what to say. Seeking inspiration, he reviewed what he had written for those newspaper ads, but after what just happened, it all seemed so trite….

Reaching the entrance, Hlr. Huxley told Harry, “She's in fine shape and doesn't require constant monitoring. I'll leave you to it.” With a pat on Harry's shoulder, and a signal to the Healer Practitioner to follow him out, the Healer turned and left Harry alone.

Harry's mind raced - thinking only of her - as he felt magnetically drawn to her presence. He would be talking to Hermione for the first time in over nine years - since…. Oh, Merlin, had he really so foolish for that long?

Hermione saw him appear in the doorway.

“Harry … I….”

“Hermione, I'm … I'm … I don't know….”

“I wish we were doing this under better circumstances….”

Harry dropped to his knees before getting halfway across the room. For a brief, awful moment she thought … she would have to tell him “no,” but instead….

“I'm sorry, Hermione - so sorry, I don't know what else to say. I tried to do the right, not the easy, thing and failed at both…. If you can't forgive me, can you at least…?”

Hermione tried staying neutral through Harry's outburst. Finally, she cut him off. “I swear, Harry, some things about you never change, do they….?”

“What? I'm trying…. Please, you have to believe me….”

“I believe you, Harry,” Hermione continued in a voice so soft it was like music to his ears. “Only you could save someone's life and still feel compelled to apologize…. I forgive you, not that you need it. I probably would have anyway, but to do that after how I'd treated you….”

Harry gathered himself and uncertainly regained his feet. “Hermione, I … Molly needs to meet … to know you…,” he continued floundering.

“Harry, come here,” Hermione directed despite being supine on her hospital bed. She pushed a button, and with a whirr the top part of the bed pivoted her into a sitting position.

As he complied, Harry got a better look at her. She extended her hand as he approached.

He took it greedily. “You're healed…. And you look amazing….” He said nothing about her hair.

Harry was right. Due to her job, Hermione paid far more attention to her appearance (and lost fifteen pounds) than ever before. She was now a mature twenty six, not the mere teenager she had been when she disappeared.

“I'd look better with hair,” she made light of his comment. “But the Muggles cut it all off….” She paused. “Harry, thank you for saving my life….”

Tentatively, she squeezed his hand.

His whole hand felt warm, and his mind numb. “I … that's what saved your life,” Harry said, pointing to the yellow tube in the jar at the head of her bed. He explained what he had done and why.

“You … you were incredible,” Hermione praised when he was done.

Harry resorted to tried-and-true self-deprecation. “I was desperate, and … and, well, it's … I had to, after messing up your life for the last decade,” he started.

“It's still incredible,” she said softly. “Especially right after I deliberately tried driving you away…. So stupid….”

He was so determined to make amends for his obsessive pursuit that he talked past her. “Still, I'm hoping you can please forgive….”

Hermione parried his apology with one of her own. “Harry, what you did wasn't nice, but I should never have run away to begin with.” She had agonized over that decision for weeks, since learning about Molly. “It wasn't the Gryffindor way; to leave without telling you why … not even afterwards. Do you know why I ran?”

“You were scared of something,” Harry answered. “Something really bad….”

Hermione gaped at how resolutely clueless Harry still was. “I suppose you could say that. I left because I realized I just couldn't give you away - when you wanted me to replace your parents at your wedding. I couldn't say why, and I couldn't refuse, because either way would have exposed what really happened…. So like an idiot, I gave up and fled.”

“Hermione, don't….”

“But I could have told you afterwards,” she sighed. “I'm afraid I'm not a very nice person sometimes….”

“But will…? Will you stay … now …?” More than anything, Harry needed that question answered. The rest of his life - and his daughter's life - depended on it.

Hermione could not answer. For weeks, she had tried, but could not make up her mind.

Could she be the mother of a nine-year-old girl she had never met?

Could she refuse to mother her own (magically, at least) daughter?

“Honestly, Harry, I don't know. I have this really excellent job in America, and everyone, even my boss, tells me how well…. Oh, shit!”

Until Hermione's outburst, Harry felt his heart going to pieces all over again. “What's wrong?”

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” she swore, looking around nervously. “Everything's screwed. I need to call Ms. Beastly immediately. She must think I've let her down horribly…. Harry, do you have a phone?”

Instinctively, Harry felt his pockets. Maréchal Delacour still had his Muggle mobile, and Merlin knows where hers ended up. “No, but I'll get one,” he promised and hurried from the room.

Soon Harry was back. Hlr. Huxley borrowed a very high powered mobile from a Muggle colleague. Completely business-like, Hermione punched in an international number she knew by heart.

Harry held his breath.

“Ms. Beastly, this is Harmony.”

Harry heard some voice on the other end, but the volume was too low to overhear anything that other person said.

“Yes … I know. I'm sorry … I was mugged.”

“Well … right now, I'm in a hospital in Paris.”

“I'm dreadfully sorry, but I don't know where it is. It was stolen when I was mugged.”

“Yes, I know you trusted me…. I hope you still do.”

“You're sure I can't do anything to help?”

“Well, I could try….”

“No, I'm not trying to make a joke….”

“But, Ms. Beastly.”

With a totally frustrated grimace, Hermione set down the mobile while muttering, “That bitch.”

“You didn't tell her you almost died,” Harry pointed out. “What happened?”

“Wouldn't have mattered,” Hermione dismissed Harry's comment. “Anyway, I've probably just been fired … er, sacked….”

“Does that mean you'll stay?” Harry asked hopefully.

Hermione seemed not to hear him.

“…Unless I magically produce a billion and a half dollars really fast,” she went on. “They're in the midst of some takeover battle for the magazine I work for, and she sounds like her side's losing…. I wonder…?”

Harry could almost hear the wheels turning in Hermione's brain. Nine plus years ago he had loved her cleverness almost as much as anything. Now, he hoped she would forget those Muggle things and agree to stay.

A quick nod of her head confirmed that she had a plan.

“Harry, can you help me?” she asked.

“Hermione, stay with me and I'll give you everything I've got. I'm single now. I've gotten an annulment….”

“I don't want your money, Harry,” she told him. “If I can just get at it, I should have enough of my own.”

“Do you want me?” he followed without thinking.

“I … I don't know yet. This has all been such a shock,” she answered frankly. “I can't think that far ahead. Please, help me solve this immediate problem. We can discuss everything else somewhere besides a hospital room.”

Harry teetered between resignation and elation. She could have used the question that slipped out to crush him utterly. Despite his having pursued her like a fugitive for most of a decade, she left things open. He chose to consider that progress.

“I'll do whatever I can,” he told her. “Ask me to jump; just say how high.”

“Thanks, Harry,” Hermione sighed, her eyes growing brighter by the moment. “I need Larry and Sergey's private direct dial lines. I assume you still have them.”

“Wha … I think I do, but I haven't talked to them in months … not since they helped me transfer a large block of shares to Ginny,” Harry recovered quickly. “The number's at the manor. I'll go find it.”

“Please hurry, Harry,” Hermione urged. “That's exactly my plan - sell my stake. Ms. Beastly sounded like time was running out. Maybe I can still come through.”

“She doesn't deserve you,” Harry declared as left.

The unspoken premise was, did he?

Harry returned within five minutes, with a mobile that, courtesy of the Weasley Twins, was magic hardened. He brought several numbers, and he hit paydirt with the second.

He flashed her a thumbs up. “Larry, this is Harry Potter…. Yeah, I know it's a bit late there, but you'll never guess who's here - Hermione Granger…. That's right, I said Hermione. Finally found her after all these years. She wants to talk to you. Sure, I'll put her on….”

Harry handed the mobile to Hermione, whispering, “Okay, it's all yours - and it's a secure line, so no worries.”

“Larry, this is Hermione … er … Granger,” she began.

“You don't need a surname with me, but is it really you, after all this time?” Larry asked.

“It is. I've had an … well, let's just say, some life changing experiences over the last couple of days, and I'm back together with Harry,” Hermione told him.

Hearing that, Harry could have flown to England without a broom.

Larry continued, “It's about time. He never should have let you get away the first time. I'm sure I'm going to love to hearing about this….”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Hermione replied.

“…But first things first. Since it's been so long, tell me something only Hermione would know,” Larry challenged.

Hermione paused, but only for a few seconds. Then she rattled off a stream of words and numbers that, to Harry - indeed, to anyone but Larry and his partner - sounded like gibberish.

“You still remember,” Larry piped up when she finished. “That's the fix … that made Google happen. For the millionth time I thank you for inventing it. What can I do for you, Hermione? Name it….”

“I need to sell my shares, at least some of them. I've a pretty good idea what they're worth,” she told him. “I hope you'll either buy them or….”

Larry cut her off. “Why on earth do that? You must know our results have been excellent. That should continue. I hope you still have faith in Sergey, Eric and myself.”

“I do, but I need money right away - about a billion and a half - right away, to help buy a company,” Hermione told him.

“What company?” Larry asked. “Have I heard of it?”

“I don't know. It's Runway Holdings,” she told him.

She heard Larry snort on the other end of the line. “You want into that takeover fight that's on the front page of this morning's Journal? You, in fashion…?”

“Actually, yes,” Hermione replied, a little offended. “I work for the magazine, actually. I'm the administrative assistant to the managing editor….”

“Well, how about that,” Larry pronounced, all ears. “According to the Journal, she's part of the problem - although that could just be hostile takeover propaganda. Hermione, you don't have to sell anything.”

“Yes I do,” Hermione maintained. “Ms. Beastly's at least a billion and a quarter short, and … well, I - I … don't think much of the group trying to take over Runway.”

“No you don't have to,” Larry instructed. “I'll stake you - for everything, not just a slice. And I'm sure Sergey will, too, once I reach him. He's skiing in Patagonia at the moment.”

Hermione gaped. “You'll give me a billion and a half dollars!?”

“No, I'll invest however much it takes for you to finance whatever corporate entity you create to succeed Runway Holdings,” Larry told her, “on one condition….”

“What's that?!” Hermione said excitedly. She grinned at Harry, who had been floating in his own warm and fuzzy world ever since she used the words “back together” in the same sentence as “Harry.”

“You're the most brilliant woman I've ever met, Hermione,” Larry said. “The condition is the same you held the two of us to when you invested in us - before there was much to invest in. I trust your judgment implicitly….”

Hermione recalled perfectly that conversation from her 1997 visit. “You want me to be the hands-on chief executive officer of Runway?”

Observing, Harry gasped. Hermione would not be returning to Britain to stay.

“Exactly,” Larry confirmed. “You're right, you need to hurry. These things move fast. I'll contact an investment banker for you to get things going. And I'll put you in touch with my London counsel. He's with a transatlantic firm … and his daughter's the spitting image of you at her age. Maybe that's why I use him….”

They talked details for another ten minutes before a jubilant, if rather overwhelmed, Hermione ended the call.

She turned to Harry with a huge smile. “I can't believe it. I'll be Ms. Beastly's boss!”

“Congratulations, Hermione,” an unsmiling Harry said tightly. “I can't believe it, either. I'm losing you again.”

“Poppycock,” Hermione spat. “Tonks told me you Apparated all the way from Tibet to New York on nine-eleven, thinking you had to save me. Apparating across the Atlantic should be child's play.”

“You mean … you actually want me to…?”

Hermione reached from her spot on her hospital bed and took his hand. “I'm not leaving you again, Harry,” Hermione told him. “And I do want to meet Molly. Beyond that, I'm not exactly sure what to do, but give me a few days to straighten out my Muggle life, and we'll talk … about us. Okay?”

From the depths to the heights…. Harry felt light as a feather. “Just tell me how high to jump,” he repeated his earlier offer. “But could I ask one little favour?”

“I'll try, Harry,” Hermione agreed. “Just don't overstep your bounds - I've got a lot of adjusting to do.”

“Same here,” Harry concurred. “But for … for old time's sake, could I have one … one little kiss?”

“No, Harry,” Hermione regarded him sternly. “No little kisses for old time's sake….”

Harry's smile crumpled.

But Hermione's smile beckoned.

“…but I'll give you a kiss for new time's sake … and not a little one, either.”

“Hermione, I'm….”

She cut him off. “You're entirely too far away, that's what you are. C'mere.”

- 15 -

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 6 Endings and Beginnings.doc.doc 12/28/06

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The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 16: Working Things Out

Miranda Beastly was not accustomed to losing - at anything, at anytime.

But now, she was losing the biggest fight of her life … for control of the magazine that was her life.

The surprise takeover bid for Runway Holdings caught her flat-footed, overseas, and due to the extremely untimely and equally unexplained disappearance of one personal assistant (who, henceforth, would be nameless) - bereft of her usual resources.

Even the Concorde was too slow to catch her up with the whirlwind events.

Back in her office, Ms. Beastly frantically worked the telephones, using every scrap of thirty years of wiles in her increasingly desperate effort to thwart the hostile bid.

Outmaneuvered at every turn, she was down to one last, possibly best, stratagem. An unexpected White Knight had emerged; its backers' identities obscure. Some people she trusted (as much as she trusted anyone) suggested Google, but Ms. Beastly though that absurd. That company had no reason to involve itself in something as foreign as high fashion.

Literally for the first time in years, Ms. Beastly found herself on pins and needles. The White Knight's representatives were due at any time.

Unannounced, someone knocked on her frosted glass door. Before Ms. Beastly could do anything, the door cracked open and a familiar, if not exactly welcome, face emerged.

“Miss Farmer,” she hissed with frank distaste, “what brings you here? Even if you've brought my Daytimer, I'm afraid you're a little too late.”

The visitor began explaining, “I'm sorry Ms. Beastly, I couldn't get here any faster….”

“My impression was that you lost my Daytimer because you were at death's door in some French hospital after being robbed,” Ms. Beastly cut her off.

“I was….”

The younger girl could not get a word in edgewise. “Well you seem to have recovered most remarkably.”

“I have….”

“Which raises the question of how seriously injured you were in the first place,” she said acidly.

Without another word, Hermione rolled down the collar of her turtleneck sweater, revealing an angry red slash extending virtually from ear to ear.

Momentarily, Ms. Beastly was taken aback. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed, before recovering her poise. “While it's nice that you're up and about, I've no time to chat. I'm expecting a very important person any moment … more important than you could possibly imagine. So if you would kindly excuse yourself, I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks if there's still a place….”

“Ms. Beastly, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm your important visitor,” Hermione revealed.

“Oh, come now, this is hardly a time for humor….”

Hermione cut her off for once. “Ms. Beastly, I assure you this is no joke. My lawyers are waiting in your outer office.”

“You…? Buy Runway…?”

“Well, Runway Holdings, to be precise,” Hermione pressed her advantage. She began producing papers from her valise. “My formal proposal … for three point four five billion, U.S. - three dollars a share more than the current bid. Here's a certified statement, from RIT Capital Partners, of funds on deposit. An outline of agreement…. If your lawyers are ready to talk to mine, perhaps we can get down to business….”

* * * *

Harry paced back and forth like a caged tiger, seemingly determined to wear out the expensive, deep pile carpet. Part of him was bored out of his mind. Another part was in a cold sweat. Every day he went walking. Every day he took the same route - the same eight blocks to the same store. Every day he looked, but never bought.

It would be presumptuous.

A few days became a week, and then ten days. Hermione was immersed in that Muggle deal to buy the company she worked for.

During this latest disappearance, their contact was limited to occasional hurried telephone chats. Each time it was: The deal is more complicated than anticipated. The other side (whether her former boss, other bidders, or whatever; he did not care) did something. We are making progress. I will call when this is over.

Between boredom and stress, critical questions rarely left Harry's mind:

“What if she likes being a Muggle better than being a witch?”

“What if she wants more excitement than I can give her?”

Or, even worse:

“What if she wants children I can't give her?”

He sat heavily on the freshly made bed and thought of everything he still needed to tell her. Aimlessly, he fiddled with the television's remote control.

It fell from his hands when he heard his mobile's tinny ring.

“Harry, it's me. It's over. I'm ready to go home.”

Harry froze. What had she just said?

“Hermione,” Harry choked out. “Where…? Where do you want to go? You mean the … the deal's done, right?”

“It finally is…. Where are you, Harry?”

Relief flooded over him. He and Hermione were not “over.”

“Umm … I'm pretty close, I expect. I'm in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, suite T42-C,” Harry told her.

Her voice betrayed her surprise. “You mean … you're here in New York, not England? For how long?”

“More than a week. I wanted to surprise you,” he revealed.

“Oh, I'm so sorry it took this bloody long,” Hermione tried consoling. “It's just … lawyers! They're awful! Anyway at least you did it.”

“Did what?”

“You surprised me. I'm coming over. I'm only ten blocks away - just a few minutes by cab. Leave word with the desk so they'll let me up.”

Harry did that, and more.

Ringing chimes heralded her arrival. The door opened. Hermione slipped the bellman a ten-dollar bill and stepped into Harry's suite. She looked resplendent, yet understated, in a grey business skirtsuit with big black buttons on the coat, and elbow-length red gloves. As soon as they were alone, she kicked off her matching high-heeled shoes and dropped her matching handbag in a nearby chair.

She looked about. “Very nice, Harry. You didn't say you'd rented a tower suite.”

“Didn't think it mattered,” Harry replied nervously. What should he do? Hug her? Kiss her? Bed her? He settled for a handshake. “It's so good to see you again….”

She looked oddly at the proffered hand. “Harry, I know I've done stupid things over the years, but I'm still Hermione - at least to you….”

“Umm … what does that mean?” Harry dumbly asked. She was still Hermione, her mind racing far beyond his.

In stocking feet, she took two running steps and leapt into his arms - giving him a bone crushing hug. Breaking into tears, she told him, “I'm so thankful … that even after all I'd done … you came for me one last time….”

Then she kissed him, properly.

The next few minutes were a blur. In nearly nine years of marriage, Harry never felt such passion within him. The only thing that exceeded it … back at Hogwarts….

They pawed at one another atop a wine-colored velvet sofa in the suite's main room - when their higher mental functions reasserted themselves.

“Hermione … what do you want to do?” Harry whispered in her ear.

“I think that's obvious,” she started saying breezily, but her voice trailed off. “…but seriously, I can't say I'm sure…. It's been so long….”

“Do you … want to … stay here tonight?” Harry asked tentatively. “I'd like that, a whole lot.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “Umm … I think I'd like that, too, Harry.” She put her hand on his chest. “Just, be gentle, it's been a very long time since I … we … well, you know….”

Harry's eyes went wide. “You mean, in nine years you never…?”

“That's right….”

“But you're … you're so beautiful,” Harry goggled. “I can't believe…. You mean; nobody…?”

“I tried, Harry,” Hermione confessed. “I tried to forget you … that you ever existed. But none of the men I met … they couldn't compare…. I guess I never could get over you.”

He took her hands and helped her to her feet. “Come with me. I'll show you the rest of the suite, and I'll be gentle…. That's one promise I know I'll keep.”

The outside world interfered. The chimes rang again.

“To Hell with it…. Ignore it,” Harry said.

“But Harry….”

The chimes rang again, with the announcement, “Room service.”

“Oh, shit, I did….” Harry sighed. “Just … wait a minute.”

Harry threw on a hotel bathrobe to hide his rather disheveled appearance and let the man in. The waiter methodically arranged Harry's order, pocketed a substantial tip, and left Harry with a knowing smile.

Harry had forgotten - Hermione 2.0 wore lipstick.

“My, Harry … that smells good. What is it?” came her voice from the next room.

“I've got the stroganoff,” he told her. “For you there's prime rib, medium rare, French onion soup, endive and leek salad, and cheesecake with raspberries. There's also a selection of soda.”

“That's excellent,” she purred as she returned to the main room. “I've had the same law firm menu for five days, now. But how did you know my favorite?”

“Umm … it's exactly what you had the last time we were together…. You remember, at the Hungry Hippogriff? That was where….”

“…You asked me to stand for your parents at your wedding. I could never forget,” Hermione finished his sentence for him. “That's … what I ate when I broke. Maybe I should eat the same thing to mend.”

Harry looked into her intense brown eyes. “You see, I've tried to remember everything about you…. That's all I had … memories.”

They tucked in. Later, as Hermione finished off her cheesecake, a sliver of it stuck to the corner of her mouth. Inspired, Harry came around behind her and licked it off. Hermione's fork clattered to her plate as she turned and dove into another passionate kiss.

“It's time, Harry,” she murmured as they broke for air. He guided her to the suite's bedroom. There were actually two, but he saw no need to mention that.

They eyed each other tentatively. Hermione was unsure how to begin, and Harry…. He was afraid of doing something wrong, and what still seemed a dream would somehow vanish in a puff of smoke.

During their previous activities, Hermione's wine-colored blouse came loose from her skirt. She fingered the bottom button nervously. “Well, Harry,” she tried making light, “what's the etiquette these days? Should I do this or you…?”

Harry smiled. His own voice trilled with anxiety, “Hermione, I'd be honored.” He moved towards her, took her in his arms, and began kissing her cheek, then her chin, then her neck….

The tip of his tongue brushing the sensitivity of her now fading scar took her breath away.

His hands kept busy, undoing each button in turn - allowing his roving tongue more access.

Almost immediately, they switched from vertical to horizontal. When Harry finished with her blouse, he carried on with what was left. Eventually he got there….

Hermione's world shrank to just Harry and his amazing tongue and fingers. She felt like she was floating, careening breathlessly through time and space, as he did wonderful things to her. She felt warm, she felt full, she felt a hundred different feelings unknown for a decade - or forever.

Most of all, she felt loved.

Reflexively she pulled her hands through Harry's black hair - still unruly after all these years - and clutched it wildly as he took her over the top. She bucked, kicked, jerked and but for Harry stopping her … would have bounced herself off the king-sized hotel bed altogether.

“Harry, that was wonderful,” she panted upon regaining the power of speech. “I'm sorry. I don't know how … umm … to do that to you. I'd probably mess everything up….”

“Hermione, don't do anything you don't want,” Harry reassured her. “But before we continue, I … some things I … I need to tell you….” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “You see, I took a walk around town this morning. I came to a place I'd heard of … called Tiffany's. I couldn't help myself. I went inside….”

“Harry, don't,” Hermione heard herself plead. “It's too soon. I haven't even met Molly yet….”

“I didn't,” he answered - not going where she feared he might. “I'd done the same thing all week … but couldn't. You see … I don't … I can't … I'm not capable of giving you what I should. Since beating Voldemort … I'm not really a man anymore….”

He looked so pale he might faint.

“Harry!” she said, aghast. “You're more man than anyone I've ever met.” Her own most uncomfortable memory stirred, unsettling her further. More than anyone, save Ginny, Hermione knew precisely how much a man Harry was.

Harry rushed on before losing his nerve. “I'm impotent, sterile; I'm afraid I could never give you children….”

She was, if possible, even more shocked by that revelation. It went against everything she knew.

“But, I … I felt you. Earlier tonight…. You seemed plenty damn capable…. And what about Molly?”

“Oh, the parts still work.” Harry hastened to explain. “It's just … well the Healers call it `out of phase….' It's a knock-on effect of how we finished Voldemort…. Nobody really understands it, but it put my … well, reproductive system….” Harry grimaced, speaking the phrase like a high-school health teacher. “…out of sync with everyone except Ginny…. But it hurt her too….”

He started tearing up. Harry rarely cried.

“Oh, no, my poor Harry,” she moaned. She threw her arms around him protectively. He was clothed (somewhat), she was not, but nothing mattered at that moment. “That's so sad…. What happened to Ginny?”

“The spell screwed up her own system … destroyed her remaining eggs, somehow” he explained. “She had conceived moments before - with your help, we know now - so I stayed in phase with her. But life sucks, I guess. Her injuries prevented me from having any more children by the one woman in the world that I could … well, you know…. And that's why I know … I'd be a lousy … husband for you….”

Confession complete, Harry slumped bonelessly. Silently, Hermione rocked him in her arms.

Time passed. His breathing slowed and regularized as he fell asleep in her embrace. Silently she laid him on the bed and climbed in next to him, snuggling along his left side.

“My poor, poor tortured love,” she whispered in the darkness. “And now I have to torture you some more….”

His confession raised an obstacle - a huge one - to their reconciliation.

But not at all what Harry thought.

In the middle of the night, Hermione awoke. Shifting in his sleep, Harry spooned her. His equipment was, ahem, evidently in quite good working order.

His arousal brought with it unpleasant thoughts - she faced an equally momentous confession before she could ethically allow his into hers.

She tried shifting him a bit to minimize the poking, but as she did, he awoke with a snort.

Her hand was still against his … umm…..

“Hello beautiful,” Harry said warmly. “Glad to see my condition hasn't scared you off. If you want to continue, you'll make me happier than I think I've ever been….”

“I do,” she consented, “but I have to ask a question first….”

“No, it had nothing to do with the annulment. That was Ginny's idea. She realized I loved you more….”

“That wasn't the question, Harry.”

“Okay,” Harry sighed. “Try me.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “Whatever happens over the next five minutes, please don't hate me….”

“I could never hate you, Hermione,” Harry immediately responded. Suddenly worried, his eyes almost palpably bored into hers.

“No Legilimency,” she warned. “I'll tell you everything. I have to.”

“Now I'm thoroughly alarmed,” he said truthfully. “Why are you saying such things?”

“Harry … was your staying `in phase,' as you call it, uniquely with Ginny, a result of Molly's conception?” she asked slowly and precisely.

This was the real Hermione - making some logical connection that totally eluded him. “I know only what the Healers told me. Yes. Because we conceived … a child … we stayed in phase despite everything else. But then the spell affected her in another….”

He stopped as Hermione abruptly rolled out of bed and moved to a chair by the opposite wall. The bedroom was unlit. The only illumination was through the door. Was it symbolic that Hermione chose the darkest corner?

Her voice cracked. “Then … I can't … make love with you … without you knowing…. No, don't get up … stay,” she demanded as he started to stir.

“What is it, Hermione?” Harry replied plaintively. Something had her spooked - and very little could do that.

“I … we … conceived, too,” her halting words flowed across the darkness. “The one time we … back at Hogwarts … during the war….”

“What!” Harry's voice was worthy of a castrati choir. “You don't mean…?”

“Harry, sit and calm down.” Hermione ordered, obviously regaining at least part of her composure. “When I'm finished, if you want me to go, I will. But you have to know.”

“Yes, dear,” he replied as he had so many times when Ginny was in one of her moods.

“The one time we … made love, after you told me your feelings…. It was so sudden, and I didn't use any protection. I got pregnant. I never told you because you would have sent me away to keep me safe, and beating Voldemort was far more important. I used Snape's potion and aborted it. I thought that was it … that you'd never need to know … until now.”

“Oh Merlin, Hermione!” Harry gasped, anguish evident in his voice. “You mean…?”

Sounding defeated, she confirmed, “Yes, Harry, I killed our child - for the greater good. Now, if you want me to go, I will. Just … just don't try to hit me, Harry. I know how men can get….”

Harry rose and began walking around the side of the bed.

“Harry, please don't!” she almost begged.

But he did not approach, not right away. Instead, Harry retreated into the next room.

Hermione was forlornly gathering her clothes when he returned. He sat back down on the bed, and she shrank into her prior chair.

He cleared his throat slowly. “Hermione, first of all, I would sooner kill myself than ever hurt you. I've hurt you far too much already. Second, and tell me if I'm wrong, I'm guessing that you've told me this because you didn't want us making love under false pretenses … the way I'm sure you think Ginny did.”

“That's … that's right, Harry,” she mumbled. “The one time before, I got pregnant. I wouldn't ever want you thinking that I tried to entrap you, since apparently I'm the only one in the world …..”

“Hermione, you could never entrap me,” he instantly affirmed. He cautiously edged around the bed until facing her - less than a meter separating them. “You can't entrap me. You already have me…. You've owned my heart since … well, since forever….”

It seemed too good to be true. “Oh, Harry, you're not furious?”

“It was for the greater good,” he echoed her in flat monotone. “The greater bloody good.” Harry stopped and exhaled loudly. “Heck … the only reason I was ever with Ginny was for the greater good…. I needed her … and Ron, remember him? I couldn't do it alone…. But everything got so out of kilter…. And I ended up losing you, the one person I wanted most in the whole world….”

Hermione felt her unreasoning fear of his reaction melt away. She put her head in her hands to stop crying. “I love you, Harry,” she murmured. “Even though we….”

Suddenly, catlike, he was before her, bent low, clutching her hand. “Hermione,” he rasped huskily, his eyes gazing into hers in the half-light. “What you've just told me only cinches what I'd pretty well decided. Will you marry me?”

“Harry!” she squeaked. “Didn't I tell you…?” Then she realized everything was different - finally honest. Gathering herself, she started over. “Yes, I will be delighted to marry you - provided Molly approves.”

“You've made me the happiest man on the face of the earth,” he blubbered.

She felt him pressing something hard onto her finger. Had he lied about leaving Tiffany's empty-handed?

“Hermione, I know this isn't much, but for now it'll do. I could Transfigure it, I suppose, but I'd much rather see if Tiffany's is open all night….”

She looked down. Her finger bore the top of an aluminum room service soda can.

“… I mean they do say this city never sleeps….”

“It can wait till morning, Harry,” she interrupted. “There are things I'd much rather do with you than shop - right damn now.” She slithered off the chair and into his arms. “And you need to lose those clothes. They'll only get in the way.”

Harry immediately complied. Festivities resumed on the Waldorf-Astoria's king-size bed.

“Hermione, will you do the honors?” Harry asked. Their sweaty grappling was rapidly moving towards their mutually desired objective. “I haven't learnt how … with my medical condition, and all.”

Hermione breathlessly told him, “I haven't cast those spells since teaching Ginny, and I don't have a wand.”

Harry smiled. “Forget the second part. I reclaimed your wand from Ministry custody before coming here. Had to pull some strings….”

“Who cares, anyway?”

Harry sounded a bit hurt. “I … I thought you'd like your wand back….”

“I meant, who cares about Contraceptive Charms?” she clarified.

He grinned. “I don't, if you don't.”

- 12 -

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Here is the final chapter of “Bat Returns From Hell” - unless I decide to write an epilogue.

The Bat Returns From Hell

- Chapter 17: Going Back

After almost a decade, the moment had arrived. Finally, Harry was going home and Hermione was coming - if not home - then at least back to England. Her Apparition was so rusty that she feared Splinching herself in an overly ambitious trans-oceanic try, even side-alonging with Harry. Harry was fine with Muggle airplanes, and quite content to leave arrangements to Hermione's greater familiarity.

Harry checked them out of the Waldorf. Expecting her to be at the curb with one of New York's innumerable taxis, Harry did a double-take when, instead, he saw her chatting with the driver of a black stretch Lincoln Town Car limousine with “RUNWAY” vanity plates.

“Being the new owner of Runway has its share of perks,” she told him, with a flirtatious wink.

Without another word, the driver took the luggage trolley from the hotel bellman and began putting their things in the trunk. Harry thought he'd been traveling light - only two bags - but Hermione had but one.

“That's all?” he questioned.

She leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Yes. I'm out of practice with plenty of things, but I still know my Shrinking Charms…. Now get in.”

Harry ducked into the limousine while Hermione gave the driver instructions, “McArthur Airport in Islip.”

Hermione entered, offering Harry her hand - now bearing a 24- (or, by another measure, 35-) carat Tiffany's souvenir. They snogged all the way to the airport.

When the limo's momentum slowed, they broke apart and quickly made themselves presentable. “Not long now,” Hermione remarked as the vehicle slowly approached a boxy, bright white sheet-metal building.

“Umm … where's the terminal?” Harry asked.

“We don't need one,” she answered. “Look!”

The limo around the side of the building, and Harry saw “RUNWAY,” stenciled in meter-high letters.

“Your own hanger…,” he said appreciatively.

Hermione pushed the button that lowered the tinted glass window next to her. A loud, whiny noise flooded in, forcing her to raise it again. Taxiing from the hanger was a Boeing business jet with the same RUNWAY logo on its tail.

“And a plane to go with it,” Hermione added. “It's too big, even for our annual Paris excursions. I'll downsize it, but for now, it's all we have with trans-Atlantic range. I'm sure you'll like it. Ms. Beastly has private sleeping quarters.”

“How can you stand that woman?” Harry hissed faintly so the driver (a Runway employee) could not overhear. “Everything I've read about her, or that you've told me, says she's an insufferable … well, it rhymes with `witch'.''

“She gave me a chance, Harry,” Hermione explained in a whisper of her own. “For all her faults, she let me rise as far as my talent would take me. And she … she helped me at the end….”

“Why would she help you become her boss?” Harry mumbled. “That's not like her….”

“It is so,” Hermione said so softly that Harry could barely hear. “She appreciates loyalty. I told her at the outset of the negotiations that I needed her to stay on - even though my lawyers wanted that as a bargaining chip. Well, all the problems we had in the negotiations … none involved her. The holdouts, her own people, ironically - were just angling for more money…. I thought I'd have to pay it until she showed me something….”

Harry broke in. “To get more for herself, I'd wager….”

“Not at all,” Hermione disagreed, a little more loudly than intended. The driver, still waiting for the plane to turn about, glanced back.

Harry held up a hand, signaling Hermione to stay silent. His wand was in his other hand, hidden from the Muggle. “Imperturbatus,” he spelled. “I hoped not to do that. I might have damaged something in this car, but it can't be helped….”

“Don't worry, Harry. Anything I want can be fixed,” she reassured. “As I was saying, Ms. Beastly saved me considerable time and money by telling me that the holdouts held backdated stock options, which I guess is illegal. Less than 24 hours after I told my lawyers to look for that in the due diligence materials, they caved and we had our deal….”

“And then I got you back, right?” Harry asked.

“That's right,” Hermione confirmed.

“Then I like Ms. Beastly,” Harry smiled, “no matter what anybody says.”

The jet - the size of a small airliner - finished circling around, and its boarding steps deployed. “Come on, Harry, it's time to go back,” Hermione said as she took his arm and led him forward.

The pilot emerged to meet his passengers. “Miss Farmer,” he greeted her avuncularly, in that vaguely southern accent common to American flyers. “Traveling alone, this time?” Harry emerged a split second later. “Evidently not…. Ms. Beastly, she has approved…?”

Hermione's persona switched instantly to Harmony Farmer. “Oh, thank you, Seth, and yes you needn't worry about Ms. Beastly. I trust we'll be having a smooth ride to London.”

“It's your funeral, ma'am,” Seth the pilot began, “and yes, weather's nominal. Should be a perfect ride to England.”

“What was that all about?” Harry asked when they were alone.

“We're having a gradual transition,” Hermione explained. “The buy out, takeover, or whatever one calls it, was in my real name - used as sparingly as possible. Gradually, Harmony Farmer will be phased out. But for now, as Harmony, I'm still working for Ms. Beastly, not vice versa.”

Once airborne, Hermione gave Harry a tour of the largest existing general aviation jet. The couple ended in Ms. Beastly's erstwhile private rear cabin, and did not soon reappear.

They did what now came quite naturally.

Harry half dozed in dim light, Hermione resting comfortably in the crook of his arm, as he let the muted roar of the plane's engines lull him asleep. He never expected the question she - oh, so hesitantly - posed.

“Harry … you're sure … you want to do this?” she almost whispered. “If I'm … not who you thought I was, I'd under….”

“Nonsense, Hermione,” Harry perished the thought. “I've wanted this so long I can hardly remember when I didn't. I love you, Hermione. I think I always have, and there's nothing holding me back anymore.”

“But you couldn't have known…. Your child - the one I aborted…. You've taken that so calmly,” Hermione responded anxiously.

Harry snuggled behind her on the plane's queen-sized bed. “The only thing you're right about is that I didn't know. But consider what I did know…. Hermione, for years, every Healer told me I was out of phase with every woman in the world - effectively sterile. After all that, your confession was a godsend…. I felt so lucky just to have Molly, and now….”

Hermione needed more reassurance. “You're not furious that I kept from you…?”

“Not hardly,” Harry murmured while stroking her hair in the semi-darkness. They passed into nightfall somewhere east of Newfoundland. “You're absolutely right. I know how I was. I surely would have sent you away for safety had I known….”

Harry sighed as another thought flitted by. “You know? I told Ginny the exact same thing….”

“I do know, she mentioned it several times,” Hermione replied. “You may or may not know that I brewed her Contraceptive Potions….”

“Another of life's not-so-little ironies,” Harry answered, shaking his head sadly. “You told her about the antidote, and we know how that turned out.”

“I did no such thing,” Hermione responded rather sharply. Harry felt her body tighten. “I'm no fool. That certainly wasn't in my interest. You did it, didn't you? It did give you a bit of an edge … we knew that.”

“I couldn't have told her if I'd wanted to,” Harry resisted, “because I didn't know about any antidote until it was over. I was your typical clod. I left all that to you two - and Fleur.”

“Then how in Hades did she find…? Oh, damn….” Desolation crept into her voice.

“What's wrong, Hermione?”

“I told … Ron….”

“Why him, but not me?”

“Simple, he asked,” Hermione groaned. “About two weeks before - well, you know - he said he worried about Ginny harming herself, her child-bearing ability, by doing what she was doing….”

“The big brother routine,” Harry commented.

“Or so I thought,” Hermione said somewhat grimly. “I told him not to worry - it was reversible, and I kept antidote in Madam Pomfrey's office. He must have told her.”

“If he did, then Ron should have been sorted into Slytherin,” Harry growled. “I wouldn't put it past him, though.”

“You think he did it on purpose?” Hermione asked tightly.

“We'll never know, I suppose,” Harry said equally tensely. “But we both know how jealous he was where you were concerned.”

Hermione sighed. “Ron's dead. It's no use speculating.”

“We lost almost a decade, Hermione.”

“And you gained Molly,” she reminded him. “A fair trade, I suspect.”

“For me, yes,” Harry grunted. “You're who suffered.”

* * * *

Once they left the Runway jet at Gatwick, the positions of leader and led switched. England was Harry's home turf, not Hermione's.

They took a short drive in a hired car to a secure location. From there they Flooed to Potter Manor.

“Molly will love you,” Harry encouraged her as they departed. “No doubt in my mind.”

Still, Hermione was tense, almost agitated. “I wish I shared your confidence,” she fretted. “What kind of mother meets her only daughter at age nine?”

“Hermione, neither of us could have known,” Harry reassured.

“You're sure we'll have privacy?” she raised another concern. “I'll die if I have an audience for this.”

“I called ahead from the airport,” Harry explained the arrangements for seemingly the twentieth time. “Tonks has everything under control. Sure, everyone can't wait to see you again after all these years, but they understand that Molly's more important. Only Molly and Deegie, her elf nanny, will be in the house when we arrive.”

Green flames flared in the sitting room fireplace of Potter Manor. In a puff of soot, Harry popped out.

He looked around. The room was dark, meaning that Molly had not yet noticed his return - but not for long.

Molly's soprano voice questioned, “Daddy?”

“In here, Pumpkin,” Harry called - producing a delighted squeal from his daughter.

Fwoosh!

Harry sensed the fireplace behind him flare as Hermione arrived. She was badly out of practice with the Floo system and tripped as she was expelled. She would have gone sprawling but for crashing headlong into Harry.

Hermione's impact caught Harry half turned around. He staggered, grabbed her to prevent her from falling, but lost his own balance. Harry landed not too badly in a sitting position, still holding Hermione. She sprawled partway across his lap.

The patter of not-so-little feet got louder. “Daddy!” the girl trilled, ready for her customary welcoming dive into his arms. She skittered to a halt after turning the last corner, seeing her father with a strange woman in those arms she considered hers.

“Daddy?”

By then Harry was standing, and Hermione nearly so. “Hi cutie, I'm back.”

For once, Molly paid him no mind. “Is that her … Hermione?”

“Yes it is,” Harry answered happily.

Hermione started introducing herself. “That's me, I'm….”

“She's prettier than the photos,” Molly pronounced.

So she was. Harry's photographs were a decade old - before Hermione had vanished from his life … before his wedding … before Molly was born. Today's Hermione Granger was also Harmony Farmer, erstwhile administrative assistant to the Executive Editor of Runway Magazine. She looked the part.

Her auburn-brown hair, no longer bushy, untamable, and uncut, hung in gentle shoulder-length waves, ending in an even cut. On either side of her lightly made up face, those waves merged into understated curls. Harry thought she looked like every day was Yule Ball day.

Hermione was also at least an inch taller than Harry's pictures - genuine growth - and more in heels. Yet she weighed several kilos less, a testament to the demands of her job. She also wore nylons, not Hogwarts knee-socks, although the left had a large run, courtesy of her tumbling entrance.

In place of shapeless Hogwarts robes and nondescript student togs, Hermione wore a casually elegant sleeveless terracotta dress with silver highlights. Cinched with a decorative silver chain belt, the dress flared and ended just above her knees.

“She is prettier than in the pictures,” Harry agreed.

“Will you stay?” Molly cut to the chase, her eyes intense.

The girl was rather more forward than Hermione expected, “I would like to stay here … with you and Harry, but I won't do anything you don't want. You were here first, after all.”

Hermione stopped. Asking whether Molly wanted her to stay was harder than anticipated - because Molly, with her orange-red hair and emerald eyes, was every bit Harry and Ginny's child.

Hermione still feared intruding. In the back of her mind, she saw herself doing exactly what she originally left to prevent - coming between Harry and Ginny….

It was easier to ask him. “Harry. Do you want me to stay? Really?”

“Hermione,” Harry rumbled in the low voice he used when holding nothing back. “I want you with me forever … and I think Molly does to, do you cutie?”

Harry rescued Hermione once again - articulating the question that stuck in her throat.

Molly frowned, not in sadness but thought. “Would … would you be my Mummy, then? She's left.”

Hermione's smile seemed to light her from within. “Molly dear, I-I … I am your mother, and I'd be honored to be your Mummy.”

The red-haired girl took a tentative step towards Hermione, and Hermione did the same. Then Harry intervened, scooped up the child, and whisked her to their eye level. “I love you, Pumpkin,” he declared, uttering both a statement and a vow. His tears glistened as he continued. “Hermione, she'll love you too … as much as she loves me…. Just give her a chance….”

“Oh, Daddy…! Oh, Mummy!”

A group hug ensued. Lowering his daughter slightly, Harry turned towards Hermione and gave her a slow, lingering kiss. “Will you put it back on?” he murmured.

“Of course,” she whispered back.

* * * *

Harry, Hermione, and Molly shared their first family dinner together in Potter Manor's small dining room. They had one last night's privacy before it was off to London. After a meeting with Ginny - something both women wanted - Harry had booked a live interview on WWN hosted by Luna Lovegood. Like it or not, he remained the Chosen One. They would explain things, announce Hermione's return, their engagement, and take a few call-in questions.

That was tomorrow.

Tonight was still the three of them, enjoying excellent broiled haddock, endive salad, and tiramisu for the two adults prepared by Harry's free elf staff - and SpagettiOs for Molly, prepared by Hermione, under Molly's watchful supervision.

The little family ate together at the intimate, linen-covered table, nothing but the clink of silverware to be heard, when Molly inquired, “Why did you go?”

Hermione knew the query was directed to her. It was inevitable - according to Harry, she was extremely clever.

Hermione struggled with her answer. How to explain those kind of feelings to a nine year old? “Because I couldn't stay. I-I loved Harry. He also loved me, but Ginny was pregnant with you, and everybody thought she was your only Mum….”

“But she wasn't?” Molly always had more questions.

“No, but nobody knew,” Hermione explained, while cutting herself another piece of fish. “Harry was your Daddy, and it was only right that he and your Mummy get married. But I … I couldn't just give him up. I wasn't that strong. I was afraid, if I stayed, I would do something hurtful - bad - either to him, to Mummy Ginny, to myself, or to everyone. So I went to America without telling anyone.”

Hermione popped the morsel in her mouth, signifying she was through.

“You didn't know about me?” Molly asked.

“I knew about you … I just didn't know about me and you,” Hermione said sadly, as she contemplated her fork. “I didn't think there was, or could possibly be, any me and you.”

“But, but … why not come back when you found out I was sick?” Molly bore in. “What did I do that was…?”

“You didn't do anything,” Hermione immediately reacted, dropping her fork and giving the child her full attention. “It was always my fault … well mine and Harry's….”

“Why?”

“Because Harry tried to make come back before I was ready,” Hermione tried to explain in words a child could understand. “I can be very stubborn. When somebody tries to make me do what I don't want, I tend to do just the opposite. Only after you got sick and nearly died did I know. But Harry was still trying to make me come back, and I wanted….”

“Why?”

Hermione was in a quandary, not wanting to interpret Harry's actions to his own daughter. That was his job. “Because Harry … well he's also stubborn. And while I wanted to hide, Harry was a very good seeker, so…”

“Why?”

“Because….”

“Because I think I've always loved Hermione,” Harry took over. “You needed a Mummy and a Daddy, so I married Ginny. I thought - everybody did - she was your only Mummy. But even then, I still loved Hermione, so I tried very hard … too hard … to find her. And when we found out, even Mummy Ginny knew what we had to do….”

“You had to get Mummy Hermione back,” Molly declared.

“I had to get Mummy Hermione back,” Harry echoed, his glance sliding from his daughter to Hermione. “So I could make things right.”

“And he did,” Hermione added. The Tiffany ring glinted on her finger.

That finally satisfied the precocious child. They turned back to their meals.

Molly did not care for tiramisu. After very messily finishing off some strawberry shortcake (with colour-changing whipped cream, courtesy of the elves), she turned to Hermione.

“Daddy says you know more magic than anybody,” Molly declared without pretense. “Will you teach me magic?”

“Molly, I'd love to,” Hermione began, taken somewhat by surprise, “but Daddy knew me a long time ago. When I went away, one of the things I stopped doing was magic. I'm not sure I know much anymore….”

Harry stopped her with a hand gesture. “Wait a minute. Twersky!” he summoned a younger elf hovering in the background.

The elf moved immediately to Harry's side. “Yes, Harry Potter sir,” Twersky chirped. “What is it that you wants, oh kind sir?”

Harry whispered something in the elf's ear. He instantly popped off.

“Dobby's son,” Harry told Hermione. “Long story, but Winky was pregnant when Dobby died. Ginny found out….”

Twersky popped back, grinning ear-to-ear. He brought an old, rather battered book.

Wearing his own contagious grin, Harry levitated the book to Hermione. Molly, who kept her peace as long as she could, could restrain her curiosity no longer. “What is it?”

“Why it's the Standard Book of Spells - Level One.” Hermione answered. “Where did…?”

“Open it,” Harry urged.

Hermione gave Harry a look, but complied. “Why it's … it's mine.” She showed Molly. “See, `Property of Hermione Granger.'”

“Harry, where did you get this?”

“When you left, I collected, and saved, all your things,” he admitted. “I had no idea I'd have them for so long, but they're here.”

Hermione smiled and turned her attention back to Molly. “Molly, how would you like learning magic together?”

Molly clapped her hands and bounced up and down in her chair. “Yeah!”

Hermione finished dinner. She rose, holding her serviette, and moved to Molly. “Well, let's get you cleaned up. Wouldn't do to get our book all sticky….” She continued while cleaning her up. “…Let's go to your room. Harry tells me you have real goosedown pillows….”

“I have a wand, too,” Molly said brightly. She hopped from her chair. “Harry got it for me special.”

Hermione mouthed `see you later' to Harry as she and Molly left the room. “…There's this spell. Maybe I can still do it and show it to you. It goes, `Wingardium leviosa,' and you twist your wand like this….”

Harry sighed happily as he watched his daughter and his daughter's mother stroll out of sight, each lost in the other.

For the first time, Harry thought he could look into the Mirror of Erised and see himself exactly as he was. His war was finally over. His bat had returned from Hell.

- 13 -

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