A/N. Thanks to those who read and reviewed.
Moving along now. First Harry at work then Ron and his personal life. I hope this answers some questions about what Hermione has been up to the past few years.
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Chapter 3 - One Troubled Teen
Knockturn Alley was a zoo when Harry got there. Several Aurors were on the scene and more were popping in, responding to the all-units call he activated as he left his office.
It was obvious that nobody had taken charge yet. He cast a civilian specific anti-Disapparition charm along the length of the lane, the stores, the shops and residences on it, and then bellowed out instructions randomly.
"Filtworth, Jiggs and Lintcoming, crowd control. Don't let anyone leave until I say so. Dunder, Wells, shut the alley entrance and keep the gawkers out. Peabody, Quank start polling for witnesses."
In the chaos he picked up Jessie Hewitt's distressed voice and approached the CFO. She was talking with one of his men and appeared shaken up. A couple of feet to her right just beside the store entrance was the lifeless body of Caractacus Burkes Jr.
"I had just told him he wasn't welcome inside when two wizards in black robes appeared, disarmed us both, cursed him and Disapparated. Hank and Ted went after their magical signatures."
"Assemble teams of five and help pursue," Harry said to one of the other Aurors and then turned his attention to Jessie, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just trying to get my nerves settled down," she replied annoyed at herself as she put her unsteady hands together. "These wizards were confident and cocky, to do this right here right now…"
She didn't finish but Harry knew what she meant. The brazen daylight attack on Burkes just outside his store while the place was still crawling with MLE indicated arrogance, desperation or both.
"Did Burkes know them?"
"I think so. One of them spoke and asked him 'Where is it?'. He replied that he couldn't tell them, that he wasn't the Keeper. Then they murdered him."
"Is that all they said?"
"Yes," Jessie said with certainty, then repeated the exchange for him, "Where is it? I can't tell you. I'm not the Keeper."
"Anything else?"
"They had identical tattoos on the right wrist but I could only see part of it. Much was hidden under the sleeves of their robes. It was a letter. Maybe V or W. That's all I remember."
They would run it through the database. The hit was professional and organized. Chances were they were a known entity.
He asked for the sketch artist and had Jessie describe both wizards to him. As that was being done, he bent down on his knees beside Burkes, wondering what the man did to deserve this and why it couldn't wait.
Harry's gut told him that someone was spooked when the shop owner was picked up for questioning. The Ministry insider who pulled rank to set him free went from mere person of interest to prime suspect. It was possible that the intention underlying Burkes' release was to send him straight to his death. If that were the case, did Burkes know it? And why would his 'friend' at the Ministry risk being implicated in something like this?
The Head Auror walked around and listened as the other eyewitnesses collaborated what Jessie had already told them. Ten minutes later the pursuit teams came back empty handed and a grim atmosphere hovered over them as each Auror Disapparated back to their beats. Harry left a senior Auror in charge of the crime scenes.
When he got to the Ministry a sudden impulsivity overcame him. Foremost on his mind was the identity of the insider who could be an accomplice to Burkes' murder. The magical artifact robberies had been all over the news and this morning both the owners of Borgin and Burkes, arguably THE store for the darkest of dark relics, were dead. The question was who had the balls to mess around with an investigation of this magnitude? There were only two current Ministry employees who would dare mess with him.
He veered off track and instead of going to his office found himself barging into the Minister's, not surprised to find the Minister of Magic with the Head of the Department of Mysteries.
"Harry, good timing," Leonidas Jericho, incumbent Minister on his fifth and final year of term, said to him, "Come in and join us."
"I'm not here for tea, Leo," Harry said calmly but looked straight at the wizard to the Minister's right. Head Unspeakable Cristo Maximus quickly masked his reflexive frown with a fake smile as Harry struggled to maintain self-control, "I just want to know which one of you is pissing all over my case."
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It was close to midnight and Ron Weasley was in Neville Longbottom's Hogwarts office. Pacing the width of the plant adorned workspace he was red in the face from humiliation and anger and was trying to walk off a portion of it. As he did this he intermittently cast dagger looks at the pink-haired fifteen year old girl seated on the work stool who seemed unaffected by what the head of the House of Gryffindor just reported to him. She was stone faced and met his stare with indifference, daring him to lose it. He was so close if not for the reminder that the girl knew how to push his buttons. Rose Weasley was after all Hermione Granger's daughter.
He looked at his timeteller again. Mid-effing-night.
"Caught snogging in the prefect's bathroom?!" he finally blurted out, "When your Mum finds out…"
"Where is Mum, anyway?" the girl answered calmly as she crossed her arms across her chest. "I wanted to ask her if she'd ever done that."
He was right. As he suspected this show was for her mother.
"You should be ashamed of yourself!".
"I'm only ashamed because I got caught," her eyes narrowing at her cousin across the way, "If it weren't for the rat..."
Albus Potter defended himself, "I did it for your own good! Malfoy is bad news!"
"Who cares? He snogs well enough and we would have done more than snog had you not..."
"Enough! I don't want details!"
Ron interrupted just in time. It was bad enough thinking of his baby snogging a boy let alone Draco Malfoy's. Why oh why did it have to involve Ferret Jr.? The little twerp was definitely lucky that Neville had the presence of mind not to have him in the same room right now. And if the slimy brat ever as much as laid a finger on his Rosie again he would mince him into ground meat and feed him to piranhas! Argh!
He shot another fierce look at his daughter. Ron was ill equipped for this full blown female teenage crisis that he had in his hands. Where was her mother when he needed her?
"What's the matter, Dad? Can't stand the thought that I'm a scarlet woman? That I may not be a virg..."
"Rosie! Malfoy?!" her cousin exclaimed. "I think I'm going to barf."
Al was all flushed from disgust, Neville from awkwardness and him from rage. Rosie sat, watched their reactions and had a most satisfied look on her face.
"You are not seeing that boy again!"
"Honestly. What are you going to do if I do?" she asked with mocked sweetness with that smirk she inherited from her mother, "Pull me out of school? That would be great considering I've been trying to get myself expelled."
"Don't test me, Rose!"
"This is my fifth major offense in less than two weeks. If it were not for your and Mum's connections, I'd have been kicked out in the first week. How long do you think before you run out of favours to collect?"
It was then that Ron lost it. Pushing his buttons! He perfected pushing buttons into an art form even before she was conceived!
"Go ahead! Get yourself kicked out of school and continue to waste that brilliance that we all know you're blessed with. You're a bright kid and nothing will stand in the way of you getting what you want because you're just like your mother!"
"I am not like my mother!"
"Do you think the pink hair and all this acting out is fooling anyone? You can't cover up the obvious! You think you can skip school and go out there in the real world on your own because you're an arrogant know-it-all!"
"I am not a know-it-all!"
"And you're doing things your mother never did just to prove that you're not like her when in fact you are very much like her in this single-mindedness to prove that you're always right!"
Rose was crying from frustration, unable to say anything.
"If I am called here one more time because of your foolishness I will personally withdraw you from school and ground you at home until you become of age! Don't you come back to me crying if you end up flipping gurbers at McDougall's for the rest of your life!"
"You mean burgers at McDonald's, Uncle Ron," his nephew muttered, correcting him.
"Whatever! Do I make myself clear?!"
Rose nodded between her sobs.
"I didn't hear you!"
"Yes, Dad."
Ron tried everything to get through to her since this started at the beginning of the school year and this was how things usually ended up. It tore him up that he had to hurt her feelings to get her to listen. There had to be an easier way.
Hermione had tried too and although he wasn't around when she talked with Rose last week, Headmistress Septima Vector described the interaction as fire against hard metal. Metal won that round and Hermione retreated, telling him on the phone to keep her posted and let her know when Rose was ready to talk. Maybe Rose was ready now.
He looked at Neville and Al and said to them, "I'd like a moment with her alone."
After they left Ron's stance softened. When it came to Rose he was the easier parent.
"Rosie, you're smarter than this. I don't know why you're so angry at your Mum but whatever it was that happened when you visited her over the summer it's not worth ruining the rest of your life for. There are consequences for stupid behaviour. You are not a child anymore so stop acting like one."
Rose looked at him still with tears on her face, her voice cracking as she spoke, "All my life I hear people say that I'm just like her. Well I'm not like her, Dad. I just want everyone to realize that I'm not like her."
The declaration was punctuated with more sobbing. Ron was usually useless around crying girls but luckily paternal instincts came to the rescue. He took her in his arms and let her cry on his chest, stroking her colourful hair as he did.
He said to her softly, "Hush now. There is a difference between being her and being like her. You are not her but it's okay to be like her. Your Mum's a pretty amazing woman. You should be happy that people think you're alike."
"If she's pretty amazing then how come she's not married anymore and you have kids with another woman?"
Of all children to be had he got the one with the hard questions. He sighed, knowing that this was not really about his twin newborns or about her parents being divorced.
He pulled her back and told her, "I love your Mum and we tried our best to stay together. We tried many times but it just didn't work out. What happened between us was unfortunate but it had nothing to do with you or Hugo. And just because we broke up, that your Mum isn't with someone, doesn't make her less amazing."
His daughter was unconvinced. Unfortunately, his ex-wife had yet to tell him what transpired over the summer. She was always tight for time, always needing to be somewhere else. Ron surmised that Hermione was not really keen to talk because if she were she would have already done so. Really, since when did she ever have a problem fitting something into her schedule? Ron asked Hugo but the boy was tight lipped about it too. He had nothing to work on to soften Rose up.
"Rosie, you know you can talk to me about anything," he said to her, then remembered how he didn't want to hear about her snogging and losing her...
"Dad, honestly now," she said to him her brows raised and sounding so grown up as she thought the same thing.
"Okay, almost anything. If you can't tell me what's troubling you then talk with your Mum."
She's so much better at this than I am.
After a few seconds, Rose answered.
"Hogsmeade weekend is coming up. I'll owl her."
"Good girl," Ron tried not to show how ecstatic he was. Was he a genius or what?! "And you really should be thankful you take after her."
"Why is that?"
"How would you feel if people started saying you're like me?"
It was a joke but Rose replied seriously without batting an eyelash, "You're a great guy, Dad. I would be fine with that."
"Hairy chest, scruffy beard, deep voice? Are you sure?"
"Dad!"
He smiled and said nothing. Yes. Rose was so much like her mother. He considered telling her to lose the pink hair but thought he'd quit while he was ahead. That battle was for another day. Ron opened the door and let Neville and Al back in.
"Uncle Neville, can we go now?" she asked the Herbology Professor who nodded at her and her cousin.
"I'll see you both in the morning."
"And don't be too hard on, Al," Ron said after her, "He's just looking out for you."
"I suppose I can forgive him," Rose replied as they left. "Rat."
"Mule. Malfoy? What the hell's wrong with your brain?"
"It's called hormones, something you seem to have a shortage of."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You figure it out. I have something wrong with my brain, remember?"
Ron heard them exchange additional pleasantries. It felt odd seeing his pink haired Hermione-like daughter argue with Harry's look-a-like.
"Sometimes, they remind me of you and Hermione," Neville pointed out what he felt himself. "Did you get it sorted out?"
"Only Hermione can sort her out," Ron shared with Neville, "She did agree to talk with her Mum this weekend. Which reminds me, don't tell Hermione what I said about her, okay. She's going to kill me."
Neville laughed thinking Ron was joking around.
"It's too bad she couldn't be here tonight. How is Hermione?"
"Fine, busy with her projects, you know," Ron replied vaguely, hoping Neville wouldn't ask further.
It worried him that Hermione didn't reply to the message about Rose's latest antics, the one he sent through his timeteller. A while back she cast a bidirectional Protean charm on the face of his watch and linked it with the golden locket she had on her all the time.
"I hope she has time to drop by and visit an old friend. I haven't seen her in a while."
He hadn't either. A year. Hermione had not been home in a year and that was when her Mum died. And before then it had even been longer. Since resigning from the Ministry he had seen her maybe four or five times and talked with her sparingly, mostly about Rose, Hugo and school. When she told him she was moving years ago it never crossed his mind that this would happen.
"I'll let her know."
"Last I heard she was putting together another school with an integrated curriculum. There were many skeptics but the one in North America is being talked about as a huge success."
That depended on who one asked. It was a success because it finally got off the drawing sheets and became a reality. Hermione was the visionary behind it and one of the four founders of the school but in the process of breaking norms and putting magical and non magical children in one learning environment, she made a lot of enemies. Around the time the first school was set to open, she received constant death threats and escaped two assassination attempts by fanatics who thought the concept damaging to society's natural balance and a danger to the Statute of Secrecy.
Ron heard Neville continue, "The word on the street is that it offers the best academic and social education for leaders of tomorrow."
That was what the extremists were afraid of; the shift in thinking that could effect real and lasting change. Despite the danger to her life, Hermione being Hermione refused to be intimidated. The resistance only bolstered her belief that she was doing the right thing. Precautions were made to protect students and faculty. The school grounds, like Hogwarts, was unplottable and impenetrable, guarded by magic Ron could not even pretend to understand. That first year it took in fifty carefully selected students from a thousand applications, the following year a hundred more and this year another two hundred. Change was slowly happening.
"There does seem to be growing acceptance of the concept."
"Well, if someone can pull off putting magical and non magical children in the same school it would be Hermione," Neville added. "She must be happy about the results."
Ron nodded.
Encouraged by the outcomes, Hermione decided to establish another school in Asia. With her and her family's safety a concern, she was now making it impossible for anyone to know exactly where she was. Why she thought it best to keep him and everyone else she knew uninformed about her exact whereabouts was beyond him.
"But you should know all about this. Hugo's a third year in the program."
"His best mate is a Squib werewolf."
"It must feel odd though that Hugo's not attending Hogwarts," Neville commented innocently.
"A bit," Ron admitted. "If Hugo were here he could have kept an eye on his sister."
Although he wasn't Hugo's biological father the boy was as good as his. Had Hermione asked him for his opinion he would have preferred Hugo at Hogwarts. She never did.
"Rosie's a good kid. She'll come around."
"Thanks for all this Neville."
"I would expect the same from you if I had children. How are Anne and the twins?"
"Oh shit!" he exclaimed, suddenly remembering something.
On cue his video phone began to ring and he quickly answered, "Hi dear…yes, we just finished with the meeting. Neville says hi…Rosie's settled, for now…no I didn't forget…right away…bye."
"Is everything okay?"
"Anne insists on doing everything concerning Sam and Brian the Muggle way," he groaned, "I'm on emergency diaper run."
"Seriously?"
Ron's eyes involuntarily rolled upwards, "I barely survived having one baby at a time. Anne has very high expectations. And I say this even though I was married to Hermione."
Neville commiserated with his pain, "Good luck, mate."
They walked down the aisle to Neville's office fireplace. Ron thanked him again and just as he was about to Floo out, his Auror pager buzzed. It was the Minister.
He excused himself and called in. Dialing into the main Auror line and waiting to get connected, he was troubled. The Minister never called him directly. Any business went through the Head Auror. Merlin, had something bad happened to Harry?
"Ron, where are you?" Leonidas Jericho asked seriously.
"Hogwarts. Is everything okay, Mr. Minister?"
"See me in my office right away," the Minister replied solemnly, "And you might want to bring your daughter with you."
It was midnight. He had a sinking feeling about this.
"What's going on?"
"I'm afraid I have some bad news."
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