(A/N: My thanks to MirielleGrey, my beta for this story, who read it over and found my errors. Any still left are my fault, and mine alone.
A couple of lines here are from Edmund Burke and T.E. Brown, and ten points to the reader who spots them first. The chapter's title is taken from an old PBS science documentary by James Burke, which I found too appropriate not to use.)
(Disclaimer: Jo Rowling created the Potterverse, and it is hers… but she quite obviously doesn't understand it at all.)
*
"Coming Back Late"
by Paracelsus
*
V: The Day The Universe Changed
*
"Dearly beloved," intoned the Officiant, the tufty-haired wizard who'd presided over Bill and Fleur's wedding, "we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony…" He was staying with the C of E ceremony, at the request of the bride's parents, and Hermione felt a thrill as she heard the words course over her. She squeezed her bridegroom's hand, and smiled broadly as Ron squeezed her hand in return.
Now the Officiant had come to the most dreaded line in the marriage ceremony. "Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why these two may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace."
Hermione turned her head, ostensibly to face Ron, but in reality to survey the crowd out of the corner of her eye. She could think of at least three people who might find it amusing to ominously clear their throat at this point, or shyly raise a hand - George Weasley being foremost on the list - and she was determined to glare each into submission before the thought even crossed their minds.
But no one even pretended to raise an objection - they were all too happy for the lucky couple. Hermione brought her attention back to her fiancé Ron, and his best man Neville. Both were watching her, one with affection, the other with amusement, as though both had guessed what was going through her mind.
And then someone did clear his throat. "Er… well…"
It was the Officiant! Horrified, she turned to face him, only to find it was no longer the tufty-haired wizard - it was Harry. He looked from Ron to Hermione apologetically. "I'm sorry, guys, but I had to live with your rows for too many years. And I mean, face it, the things that interest each of you bore the other to tears! Are you sure you aren't, y'know, rushing into this?"
He stepped between them, forcing them to let go their clasped hands, and faced Ron. "Mate, her working habits drive you crazy, and she'll always be pushing you more than you like. Plus, in a few years, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with at the Ministry. Are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life being known only as 'Hermione Granger's husband'?"
He turned to face Hermione. "Luv, he'll always prefer the easy road and the quick fix, and he'll try to get you to slow down more than you like. In a few years, he'll be an easy-going bloke while you'll have worked yourself to a frazzle - are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life frustrated that he's not trying to do the same?"
She wanted to argue, she wanted to refute his words - she wanted to list, categorically, all the wonderful, happy things she and Ron shared in common…
But the thing she and Ron shared in common… was standing between them.
Hermione woke up with a gasp.
She spent a moment lying motionless in her bed… the bed in which, despite all the years of separation, she still slept on the side away from the window. Hermione didn't usually have dreams like this one, or at least, she didn't remember them on waking. Now she remembered the vision with painful clarity, clarity that left an ache in her breast, somewhere deep where she couldn't dismiss it.
For the dream had been a lie, an awful lie sent solely to torment her. After all, Harry had not interrupted her wedding to Ron and told them to call it off. Harry hadn't been there.
Harry was dead.
He had been dead fifteen years. Four months. And, since it was now just before dawn, nine days.
And by this time, she occasionally had days when she did not miss him terribly. Such days were rare, and she felt guilty the day after.
Things would have been different, she was sure… so different… if Harry had lived.
Perhaps he would have been a moderating influence on Hermione and Ron: keeping their squabbles mild, intervening when necessary. They might have dated longer, had a chance to grow more used to one another, married later. (Of course, at the same time, Harry might have continued to date Ginny… but if her actual behavior after his death was any indication, they would probably have split up quickly.)
Yes… Harry would have come with Hermione to finish their seventh year at Hogwarts. Harry would have supported her as she strove to rise in the Ministry, where she could make a difference for all magical races. Harry would…
…wouldn't have left her, any more than she had never left him.
She seized one of the pillows and hugged it tightly to her chest as she curled over on her side. Maybe if she hugged it hard enough, it would dull the ache that throbbed there and refused to die for five thousand, six hundred and eleven days.
*
Today she couldn't quite keep her eyes off the resplendent Potter Memorial as she made her way through the atrium, but she only spared it a brief glance. No one in the lift seemed inclined to engage her in small talk, for which she was thankful. She arrived at her office to find Sylvia chatting with Dennis Creevey. Dennis looked up as she entered. "'G'morning, Hermione. I have an update on our Mr. Clayman…"
"Ah. Give me a moment, then, and we'll review what you've got." She entered her chambers… and stopped abruptly. "Canby, what are you doing here?"
Canby was an elf, a free elf, who had come to Hermione some years before and begged for employment. (He would never say, but Hermione always suspected he'd belonged to a borderline Dark family who'd fallen on hard times following Voldemort's fall.) Hermione would not hire Canby for her household, but she'd made sure the Wizengamot legal staff hired him for clerical work. Since then, he'd proven his worth many times over… but never more so than during the investigation for the Swivingham case.
He stood now in Hermione's chambers, wearing a sleeveless tabard of the style that all well-dressed house-elves wore these days, and an expression of mortification.
"Forgive Canby, Miss Hermione," said the elf, "but we're having a problem with the… the witnesses."
"Problem?" asked Hermione in alarm.
He nodded regretfully and delivered the bad news. "They… they are refusing to testify."
"WHAT!?" The elf winced at Hermione's sharp tone, and she immediately softened it. "But… but they can't refuse, Canby! Their testimony is the key to our entire case!"
"Hermione?" Dennis and Sheryl come to the door in response to her shout. She looked stricken, while he looked confused. "Hermione, what's the problem?"
She whirled to face him. "Dennis, you must've heard we've been pursuing Jack Swivingham for months now. You know who I'm talking about?"
"Well, yeah, they say he's been running the sleaze that's been cropping up in Knockturn Alley. They say he's got his hand in all sorts of dodgy pies: drugs, muscle-for-hire…"
"And the sex trade." Hermione glanced at Canby, but thankfully the elf was showing no sign of punishing himself. "Only he's not a procurer of witches. He procures female elves."
"Oh, Merlin! I hadn't heard that." Dennis looked properly shocked… if anything, slightly nauseous. "Sex with house-elves? And he… he actually found customers?"
"You're such a naïf, Dennis," snorted Sheryl. "There's no activity so slimy that some men won't pay good Galleons for it."
Dennis blushed, but he kept his eyes on Hermione. She could see the wheels turning in his head, and waited to see if he reached the right conclusion.
"You're prosecuting Swivingham under the prostitution laws," he said slowly. "But historically, those laws didn't apply when the sex-slave was… literally a slave. Chattel. Property. The laws only applied in cases of involuntary indenture or…" He stopped, and an admiring smile spread over his face. "So if you could convict Swivingham of organized prostitution, you'd set the legal precedent that the elves were…"
"Were free beings by right, whose freedom was unjustly stolen." Hermione nodded, impressed. "Very good, Dennis. A fair few of our upper management still haven't sussed that out." She paused and scowled. "But evidently someone has. The 'depositions' last week… I doubt now they were any such thing. They were an excuse for intimidating witnesses."
"The girls… uh, elves in question?"
Hermione nodded curtly as she turned to Canby. "Canby, we need to schedule a counter-deposition for those witnesses, at once. I believe we're allowed that, by the rules of the court."
"We can schedule, and we can summon," said Canby doubtfully. "But they will not talk, Miss Hermione. They would not even tell Canby why they will not talk, although Canby can guess." He looked steadily into Hermione's face. "Loyalty to masters. Desire to please masters. House-elves keep masters' secrets, even after leaving service."
"Not always," responded Hermione. "I can think of one exception… hmm." She paced a moment, lost in thought, before she looked up again. "An idea. Sheryl, please send an owl to Shell Cottage, and ask Fleur if I can bring some guests to Dobbywatch today."
*
She was sure she must present an unusual sight, even to Fleur Weasley, who had seen many unusual sights in her life. Hermione walked up the flagstone path to the front door of Shell Cottage, with half a dozen elves around her huddling close to one another… and, as they drew nearer the door, to her as well. They were all female, and young by elven standards - but their ears, noses, and other features were less pronounced than for many of their kind, which by human standards made them, well, not unattractive. They kept glancing nervously, furtively, around them, and hunched down as though afraid of being noticed.
Fleur opened the door before Hermione could knock. "Bonjour, Hermione! I'm glad you could come… we've missed you." She gave Hermione a Continental peck on each cheek before stepping back and smiling at her entourage. "And I see you brought…?"
"These are Whimsy, Briony, Sylph, Brillig, Fatima, and Chalice," Hermione introduced them, lightly touching one or two of them as she did so (quickly removing her hand before they had a chance to flinch).
"Well, any friends of The Witch Who Won are welcome here," Fleur told them, and with a graceful gesture invited them into her home. Hermione followed behind, hoping her grimace had gone unnoticed… she hated, hated, hated the nickname she'd received after defeating Voldemort. Just like Ha… like Harry had hated his nickname for doing the same, years earlier.
But in this latest legal skirmish, she needed every advantage. And with the elves, she had two of them, which she again hated, but which she would be foolish to ignore: She was The Witch Who Won, and she was the best friend of the Defender of House-Elves. So Kreacher had named Harry while leading the elves in the Battle of Hogwarts, and among elves the name had stuck.
"I hope you don't mind," Fleur said in a low voice as they made their way through the house.
"The title?" Hermione shrugged. "Ce qui sera, sera…"
"Not that," Fleur put in quickly. "But I didn't know you were coming today, and… well, Arthur's here with Telly."
Hermione pursed her lips but said nothing. It probably wouldn't matter, either way… and in any case there wasn't much she could do about it at this point.
They arrived in the Cottage's back yard. The garden here was impeccably kept, courtesy of the daily visitors. On a stone bench near one end of the garden, Arthur Weasley sat with his six-year-old grandson Telemachus. (The Weasley clan was still trying to settle on a workable nickname for Percy's youngest: "Lem" and "Gus" seemed too plebian, but "Telly" was too undignified for Percy's taste. Probably why Fleur uses it, Hermione reflected.)
Two house-elves sat cross-legged on the ground in front of them, looking with rapture at the central feature of the Cottage's garden. Elves came from across Britain, across Europe, on a sort of pilgrimage to see it and tend it: probably the best-maintained grave in England. The grave: dug, not by magic, but by the sweat of Harry Potter's brow and the blisters of his hands. The headstone: personally carved by the noblest wizard in elven history, in memory of the elf he'd befriended.
Here lies Dobby, a free elf.
Many house-elves might shy away from true freedom, but they all admired the devotion and heroism shown by Dobby. If it resulted in a few more house-elves considering freedom a good thing, Bill and Fleur were perfectly willing to open their home to pilgrims. The elves, in return, tried to be considerate of their hosts, and did not come at all hours, but at pre-appointed times. Hence, Dobbywatch.
They also repaid the Weasleys' hospitality by tending the grounds. They did make the garden a lovesome thing, God wot.
Fleur now turned to her new guests. "Have you been to see Dobby before today?" she asked the closest… Brillig, it was. The house-elf shook her head, slightly less scared now.
"Who are these?" piped a new voice. Hermione turned to see Telly asking Arthur. Arthur seemed slightly befuddled, as he so often did these days.
It was Brillig who answered… she seemed to have appointed herself the spokeself for the group. "We is here to see the great Dobby. We is here as friends of The Witch Who Won."
Telly looked puzzled. "What did she win?" he asked his grandfather.
Hermione attempted to intervene, but Arthur had already begun to reply. "Everything. And then she gave it to all of us."
Arthur put his arm around Telly and hugged him close. With a wave of his other hand, he invited the attention of the assembled house-elves. "You see, many years ago, the Dark Lord ruled. He was an evil man, and those were evil times for everyone. Wizards and elves. Some of us worked against him, but he was powerful. But it had been foretold, there was one wizard who could defeat him…"
"Harry Potter!" said all the elves in unison, excitedly.
"Yes," Arthur nodded, "Harry Potter. But what none of us knew, until it was over, was that the only way Harry Potter could defeat him… was to die. When Harry died, the Dark Lord could die. But it still took a brave, powerful witch to kill him."
Arthur was no longer seeing Telly, or the elves, or the garden. His eyes were filled with scenes from fifteen years earlier. "We were all fighting desperately," he said softly. "The last battle, and we had to win or lose everything, and we all knew it. At first we thought we were winning… centaurs, elves, giants, humans, all fighting against the Dark Lord's forces. And your grandmother… oh, she was magnificent, Telly. She killed the wicked witch. Bellatrix Lestrange. But then…" He choked, and began to weep. "Oh, Molly…"
"What, Granddad?" whispered Telly, wide-eyed and solemn.
"Then the Dark Lord killed your grandmother, Telly. And he started to kill everyone in the room. He… he was more powerful than all of us. Even after someone disarmed him, he could summon two more wands and continue the attack, and it's very hard to do magic like that, you know. But Hermione Granger…"
"Aunt Hermione?"
"Yes, Aunt Hermione. When he tried to kill her, she blocked his curse. Then she started dueling him, hitting him with spell after spell. We'd never seen anyone cast so many spells so fast, Telly! He tried to block them, and counter-attack, but she was faster than him… and her last spell broke through and hit him... and he fell to the floor, dead." Arthur smiled, but it was faint and tremulous. "And every evil thing in that room stopped fighting when they saw him dead, and they surrendered to her. To no one but her. And that, child, is why your Aunt Hermione is called The Witch Who Won."
All the elves' eyes flashed to Hermione at Arthur's words, and she felt she should say something. "I was one of those trying to stop Bellatrix before she and your grandmother dueled," she said quietly.
She fell silent, reliving the scene. She had become a true berserker in that battle, determined to kill Voldemort for Harry. The only reason she had taken on Bellatrix, in fact, was because Bellatrix stood between her and Voldemort. Looking back, she could barely believe she'd been so aggressive, so vicious, so merciless - the tiniest hesitation on Voldemort's part was all it took for her to launch her strongest Reducto straight into his heart.
Hermione knew she'd had to do it, but she took no pride in it, and she never wanted to have to do it again.
She turned her mind back to the reason she'd brought the young house-elves to Dobbywatch. "This is why we fight, Brillig," she told the elf, aware that the others were listening to every word. "Right and justice do not win unless we fight for them. All that evil needs to win is for the good people to do nothing." She could not directly ask them to reconsider their decision to testify: witness tampering was now as proscribed in wizarding law as in Muggle law, thanks to Shacklebolt's reforms (and hers). But she could make clear what she thought was the right thing to do… what Harry and Dobby would think was right.
Feeling suddenly tired, Hermione excused herself and left the garden, returning to Shell Cottage and, with luck, a cup of tea… or something stronger.
*
"Well?" asked Sheryl when Hermione arrived back at her chambers.
"They still haven't said they'll testify," Hermione replied wearily, "but at least now they're considering it again. We probably won't know for sure until the moment they're on the stand. Merlin, they may not know before then." She paused and picked up note from her desk. "Dennis?"
"Said he'd come back again when you weren't so busy."
With the Swivingham trial imminent and its myriad details clamoring for attention, Hermione really felt she'd spent as much time as she could afford on a mystery wizard who cooked for Muggles. On the other hand, she was looking into the situation as a favor to Fleur, for her would-be-sleuth teenager - and Fleur had just done her a favor, by permitting her to bring six house-elves to Dobbywatch on very short notice.
"Any word on the monitors?" Hermione asked Sheryl.
Sheryl shook her head and gestured to the corner of the office, where some quills were poised over sheets of parchment; one was writing words. "Swivingham hasn't said anything… well, perhaps when his solicitor was visiting him in his cell, but we had to turn off the monitor for that. Right now he's…" She glanced at the parchment. "Singing bawdy songs to himself. Something about a hedgehog."
"Hmf. He seems pretty chipper for someone awaiting trial," Hermione muttered in disgust. She would get the elves to testify, she must! In the meantime, however, she should wrap up this minor matter so that she could concentrate on matters of greater import.
"See if Dennis is free now," Hermione sighed. Sheryl nodded and returned to her desk, where she wrote a brief note, folded it into a paper airplane, and with her wand launched it into the inter-office slipstream.
Dennis wasted no time in arriving at the Senior Counsel's office. "Thanks again for seeing me, Hermione. I know you're busy, I'll keep this brief."
"No, no, I need some details if I'm to report accurately," said Hermione, but with a smile that said that she nonetheless appreciated the offer. "I take it you returned to the restaurant?"
"Yeah, but nothing new to be gleaned there. Clayman's employee records don't give much more than his address, which we already have, and some personal data, which we have no way of verifying. None of the staff had a photograph of Clayman, either."
"You at least got a physical description?"
"I got six descriptions, from six people. Which one would you prefer?" Dennis grinned at Hermione's look of surprise. "I interviewed them separately. Each of them was very specific about Clayman's appearance - and no two agreed in all details." He reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a small device, a gymbaled hoop mounted on a round handle. "No trace of Memory Charms or Obliviation, either. He must have used a very slick little Confundus charm, clean as a whistle."
"Why is he so anxious to remain anonymous?" Hermione muttered. "Anything at his flat?"
"Yes indeed, two things - both of which point to the fact that he's a wizard. First, I went over the flat again in greater detail, and any trace of this guy is gone. Right down to hair or spit or DNA fragments. Nothing that would identify him. It would be impossible for a Muggle to do such a thorough job, so it had to be a wizard."
"So we've since concluded," commented Hermione. "And the second thing?"
Dennis's grin had turned smugly triumphant. "The fact that he doesn't really understand modern Muggle technology. His phone has Caller ID, and it retained the number of the last person to call him." He placed a slip of paper on Hermione's desk, with a phone number written on it. Hermione began to be seriously worried.
"Dennis," she said, her voice rising, "please tell me you didn't try to do a search by magic through Clayman's telephone? You know what magic does to telephone or computer networks! It took us weeks to clean up that mess with British Telecom three years ago…"
"Which is why I've spent three years cultivating contacts within BT and BT Mobile," smiled Dennis. "They think I work for New Scotland Yard. I asked them about this number, off the record of course. They wouldn't give me a lot of information, but they did verify that it's a mobile phone number… registered to one T. R. Lupin." He leaned back in his chair and watched Hermione's gobsmacked face as she processed this bombshell.
It took her a gratifyingly long moment to do so.
"Are you saying… Teddy Lupin knows this Clayman?" Hermione said at last.
Dennis shrugged. "I'm saying Teddy Lupin called Clayman's flat on the night he and the Weasley girl had dinner at the Idée Fixe. Whether it was to warn Clayman that he'd been outed, or to get his recipe for bouillabaisse, well, that I can't really say… but I know the way to bet."
*
Circe, I don't remember when I've had this long a day, Hermione thought tiredly, as she arrived home. She dropped her briefcase by the front door as it closed, hung her cloak on the peg in the hall, and went to the kitchen to scrounge some dinner.
Bottlebrush, her silver tabby Kneazle, was waiting expectantly in the kitchen next to his food dish. "Yes, yes, you silly thing," murmured Hermione as she filled his dish, "you're not going to starve." She opened the icebox, brought out the makings of a salad, and began to assemble it as she reflected on her day. Her main priority, she knew, should be on finding a way to get Swivingham's house-elf sex-slaves to testify.
And yet, her thoughts kept coming back to the mysterious Jacob Clayman. Did Teddy know Clayman from someplace else? Teddy's said to be knowledgeable about Muggle computers - for a wizard, anyway - so perhaps they met online? But that doesn't tally with the other facts…
She shook her head, ate her salad without really tasting it, and returned to the living room. She Summoned her briefcase, opened it, and spread the papers on the low table in front of the sofa… glanced over them… and decided that she couldn't bear to look at them tonight. Instead, she went to one of her many bookcases and looked over her library of books. She passed over the volumes that had come from Grimmauld Place, which Harry had willed to her, and instead selected a novel by one of her favorite Muggle authors, Dorothy Sayers.
But Murder Must Advertise didn't distract her, as it usually did.
Playing with Bottlebrush didn't distract her, either.
She started three letters to Rose before giving up the task as a lost cause.
In the end, she got ready for bed, whispered "Nox" to kill the lights, and crawled under the covers. Her bad dream had disturbed last night's sleep - she needed a full night of sleep tonight. She closed her eyes and attempted to clear her mind of all thoughts.
No such luck. Hermione's brain seemed to be on overdrive: thought and reasoning flooding through it, as they hadn't done for, well, it seemed like years. For the moment, she surrendered to the trains of logic that were using her head as a waystation.
Assume Teddy knows Clayman… the timing of the phone call and Clayman's disappearance strongly suggests it. Why didn't Teddy say anything about him to Victoire? Is he trying to hide him… or protect him?
If Teddy swung that way, I might have suspected a love affair with an older man. But from what Fleur's said, he's not only quite straight - and something of a flirt, as well - he's genuinely attached to Victoire. So he must be protecting Clayman… for some other reason. What?
Is Clayman a criminal, perhaps? If so, he's astoundingly good - we have no evidence of a crime here at all! Even the use of the magical herbs and wine in Muggle food: as long as our secrets aren't revealed, there's no law against that.
But this Clayman does seem to want to be anonymous. Perhaps he's protecting someone, someone who'd be ashamed that this powerful wizard was working as a Muggle cook…
No way of knowing. All I know is that Teddy seems to be the one doing the protecting.
It's not a lover. It's not a family member. Teddy's too close-mouthed about this for it to be a casual acquaintance. Is there a pattern to his behavior? Do I know of anyone else who's acted like this?
Hermione rolled over and tried to settle more comfortably into her pillow.
Well, there was Harry. This was exactly how Harry acted with Sirius. Fiercely protective of his…
Her eyes flew open. Of. His. Godfather.