The Catalyst

The Catalyst

Cat-a-lyst (n): 1. a substance that enables a chemical reaction to proceed at a usually faster rate or under different conditions (as at a lower temperature) than otherwise possible. 2. an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action. - Merriam Webster

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Prologue:

The undulating wail of an alarm startled her from her sleep, but she did not cry out as most children would. Blinking curiously toward the tiny window near the top of the door, she watched light and shadow flicker in an uneven pattern, like the flash of far-off lightning. She sat up on her little cot, and swung her socked feet toward the cool concrete floor.

More commotion. Now there was the thunder of running feet, shouts of - confrontation? fear? warning? She could not tell, but perhaps she should put on her shoes. She bent to retrieve the small white trainers, and quietly put them on. The noise outside her door continued on unabated, but nobody stopped and came in.

She was glad of that. Sometimes when they did come in, the needles hurt, as did their magic, even when they spoke in kind voices. And sometimes, when she got the answers wrong, their voices became hard and angry. Maybe they were moving again; it had happened a time or two before, always in the middle of the night, with much bustling and scurrying about.

There was a sharp noise, followed by a low rumble that shook the entire place they were keeping her. The metal frame of her cot rattled loudly against the stone floor and walls. More rapid footfalls, a terrified scream abruptly cut off. And then, a low, but distinct command from a voice she could not place:

“Check the cells.”

She tried not to react, but could not help lowering her head toward her chest in disappointment. They were coming after all… but maybe just to move her. She supposed it would be too much to hope that they would forget about her, and accidentally leave her behind. She swung her legs, smacking the heels of her shoes together, rhythmlessly, and twirled one of her chestnut braids around her finger. She waited, as the rattling of door handles and the creaking of unoiled hinges grew louder and closer. Each time, the door to an empty cell slammed shut with an echoing clang. The chaos had ebbed; she could still hear the clash, but it was farther away. She wished the person at the doors would leave so she could find a way out.

Then, a shadow crossed the small, square window, a face, cloaked and indistinguishable. She could see a glint of a gaze; it met hers briefly.

The agent's name is Falworth, she thought matter-of-factly.

There was an inarticulate cry that followed the shaking of the locked door. Falworth must have tried Alohamora, for the door quivered briefly like gelatin, but remained unyielding. The shadowy face peered through the window again. When he turned, his cloak fell back; he was young, with honey-colored hair and a strong profile.

Falworth has been married for six months. His wife's name is Regina. He probably won't get to see her until morning.

Someone else must have joined him. She could hear voices, muffled but audible. They were trying to open her door. They wanted to get her out… to get her away. For the first time, she regarded the little glass square with something like interest sparking in her green eyes.

These weren't any of the needle people, those who poked and prodded, consulting each other in low serious tones behind rolls of parchment, looking at her with dispassionate eyes. Perhaps they were going to let her out of here. Maybe they would take her to the zoo. Cautiously she stood, and trod softly to the door. She folded her hands neatly in front of her, and waited patiently.

The young man attempting to open her door peered in again, and did a double take, when he saw her standing so closely.

“Get back!” he told her, his voice muffled as if heard from a great distance. His hand lifted for the accompanying gesture. “We'll have you out of there in just a moment, little one. Please move away from the door.”

Regina had long brown hair that he thought was very pretty. He thought maybe when they had a daughter, she might look like me.

Obediently, she stepped backward, three precise steps, until she could feel the metal rim of the cot pressing into the backs of her legs.

A low rumble began and gradually built into a roar, and the door flew open with so much force that it hit the wall behind it and trembled on its hinges. Now Falworth was accompanied by another cloaked man; they stepped inside, little spirals of smoke still twirling up from the tips of their wands.

His partner's name is Dunwiddie.

“Hi there, darling. I'm Auror Falworth, and this is Auror Dunwiddie. Can you come with us please?” He held out his hand to her.

She turned anxious eyes to the open doorway. She was never supposed to be out in the corridor without one of the needle people, usually the one called Rhu, who braided her hair. They always locked it up tight. To keep her safe, they said, but she didn't believe them. Once, the door had inexplicably come open, after a very long, hard day when she was wishing badly to be free. There was much testing and prodding and consternation after that. Then they had given her the bracelet that she could not take off. It stung the soft skin of her wrist and gave her a headache. (Rhu said she was being silly, for how could a bracelet on one's arm give one a pain in the head?)

She did not even think about trying to open the door again after that.

He knows why I am scared. It makes him angry. But not at me.

“I promise it's all right. The people who did this to you, we're going to find them, and they're going to go to Azkaban. For a very long time. They won't be able to hurt you anymore.”

I can see a tall black building on a scary, sad island in the middle of a stormy sea. The sky is always gray. Falworth doesn't like that place.

She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself to jump, and reached up to wrap her small fingers around Falworth's hand, stepping carefully over the threshold into the corridor.

“There's a girl,” he said, reassuringly. He smiled down at her.

He would never hurt me. He thinks I'm a poor brave little girl.

“Can you tell us your name, love?”

“My name is Eleanor.”

“And your last name? The names of your parents?” She blinked up at him, confused.

He doesn't understand why I don't understand.

“Eleanor is my only name. I don't have any parents.”

She felt the two men exchange glances over her head. They asked her more questions, about her birthday, how old she was, the names of any people who were close to her. She didn't know any of the answers. Were they going to punish her?

Falworth saw her fright. His eyes were kind.

“It's okay, Eleanor. You've done well. We're going to take you to some people who will help you. We need to find your family.”

Family? There was no family. There were only the needle people, their questions, their spells that poked and peeled and burned, and their bland, expressionless faces behind the medical masks. She looked frantically back toward her cell, although she didn't know why. Hadn't she wanted to leave this dreadful place?

Auror Falworth misunderstood her glance.

“Do you need your things? Any toys… dolls, books? Extra clothes?” He appeared ready to double back toward the door. She tugged on his hand, shaking her head.

“I don't have any things. There isn't anything in there, except my bed and the table, and… the commode.” She wondered about the bracelet, its cool metal hidden beneath the rough sleeve of her jumper. They had said she could not take it off. They had said bad things would happen if she took it off. But Auror Falworth had said she did have a family… so perhaps the needle people were wrong about other things too. Perhaps he would help her get the bracelet off. She would ask him later.

He's angry again. But still not at me.

“What are bastards?”

Falworth grew very still. So still that Dunwiddie asked him if he was all right.

Falworth cocked a curious glance at her, but did not speak. Instead, he squeezed her hand, and tried to force his face into a smile.

“Come on, love. We're going to take you to some people who will help you.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, but his answer had no meaning for her.

“St. Mungo's.”

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AN: This is something that's been percolating around in the back of my mind for awhile, so I figured I'd throw it out there for consideration. I have not abandoned “Shadow Walker”, I'm just trying to figure out exactly where I want it to go. I had the next chapter nearly complete, but scrapped over half of it. It continues to be a work in progress.

Thank you for your patience. You may leave a review on the way out, if you like.

--lorien

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The Catalyst

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Chapter One: Shadowed Horizon

Scattered shoppers from all points of sunlit Diagon Alley turned to look at the source of the hearty laughter ringing from one of the tables on the flagstones outside of Florean Fortescue's. Many stores had been refurbished since the end of the War, and, even five years later, the striped canopies, the gleaming storefronts, the bright windows still held a charming, cheerful newness. There had been a period of caution, even wariness, but Wizarding society had surged back, as if in defiance of the fear and oppression so recently vanquished, and this better-than-ever Alley was only the most visible part of the result.

Even more gratifying was that the laughter emanated from the Boy Who Lived himself: head thrown back, mouth open, eyes shut. He leaned weakly against the back of the chair, as he subsided, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes, amid the snickers and snorts from the companions at the table with him. His hand was intertwined with that of a very pretty girl, whose face, crimson with mortification, clashed with her vivid hair. Chagrined, she lowered her forehead to the curled fingers of her free hand, and shook her head. A ginger-haired young man, obviously related to the girl, leaned over to make another remark that threatened to set Harry off again. The girl snatched her hand out of his, in mock anger, but his eyes softened as he took her hand back, murmured something nobody else could catch, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

Harry knew that they likely had the eyes of many passers-by, and as much as he normally loathed the lavish attention, he couldn't make himself care much today. The day itself was beautiful, he was in company with his best and closest friends in all the world, he had a good job he enjoyed working as a flight engineer for prototype brooms, Voldemort was dead, the Death Eaters were all but defunct, and the lovely girl beside him was in love with him. And he was eating caramel ice cream. His mood was easily broadcasting itself to all who saw him.

“Easy there, Harry!” Ron told him good-naturedly, noisily slurping the dregs of his milkshake through his straw. “You look like you might just take flight right now, even without that new Proton-whatsit broom.”

“It's a Photon A-220,” Harry corrected him, even though he knew Ron knew exactly what the new broom was called. “And I don't believe I'll do any sort of flying right now, broomless or otherwise, if it meant leaving this one behind.” He brought Ginny's hand up to his lips again.

There were harmonized groans from the other two at the table.

“Harry, don't make me regret this lovely ice cream I've just had.” Ron pretended to shudder in horror.

“At least he tries!” Hermione spoke up, but the sparkle in her brown eyes belied her miffed tone. Ron mimed taking a hex to the heart.

“If I kissed your hand, I might bloody my lip on that rock I just bought you,” he pointed out. Hermione exchanged a glance of fond amusement with Harry. Ron was inordinately proud of the engagement ring he'd presented to Hermione, only one week earlier. She couldn't help but be touched by how hard he'd worked to afford such a luxury item on the piddling salary offered him by the Auror Corps. At the same time though, she and Harry joked that they were going to start a drinking game: a shot every time Ron mentioned the ring.

She thumbed the solitaire lightly, twirling it on her finger, watching the sunlight splinter into a thousand facets as it collided with the stone.

“I'm surprised she can perform any sort of procedure at all,” Harry put in, breaking into her reverie, with a cheery wink. “Can you even lift it on rounds? A Healer with a game hand isn't much good, is she?”

“Resident Healer,” Ron put in, and Hermione threw him an arch look.

“Oh, such accuracy from the Auror Trainee.”

“Believe me, I'm well aware of your status. Especially since you said you wouldn't marry me until after you completed that bloody residency.”

“Ron, what on earth is the rush? I just turned twenty-three. It makes perfect sense to wait until we've both finished our training courses, and are working full-time.”

“Until we've both finished? Now you're adding conditions! It's another year and a half until I'm done. Tell me the truth - you don't really want to marry me, do you?”

Hermione rolled her eyes, and dropped her spoon into her empty saucer with a clink.

“Ron, don't be ridiculous.”

“Well, there's a ringing endorsement!”

“Tell me how in the world wanting to wait and marry you at the right time translates to not wanting to marry you at all?!”

Harry and Ginny exchanged long-suffering glances. While many things had changed since the end of the War, some things had not, and Ron and Hermione's rows were one of them. He had trouble understanding why Ron insisted on winding her up, or why Hermione let Ron do it for that matter, but he had come to assume that it was some kind of bizarre courtship ritual. He had lost count of the number of times he'd thought to himself, Don't say it, Ron, don't say it, just shut up and … But Ron invariably said the thing he shouldn't have said, being completely unaware of Harry's mental advice on the matter.

“Shouldn't most girls be so head over heels with their blokes that they can't wait to marry them and set up house?” Harry reflected that he was occasionally in awe of Ron's Seeker-like ability to say exactly the phrase that would irritate his best friend the most. Hermione's cringe was visible and obvious in reaction to the words “set up house”. She fixated Ron with the most withering glare in her considerable arsenal.

“We could just leave,” Ginny muttered out of the side of her mouth. Harry shook his head in response.

“Nah, it's going to be over soon. Watch. Hermione's going to get up.”

“When have I ever been `most girls', Ronald Weasley? If you want `most girls', there's always Lavender Brown.”

Wisely enough at that moment, Ron chose not to respond to that particular barb. “Of course, I'm glad you're not `most girls', Hermione, but a bloke'd like to be appreciated every once in a while, and you - ”

“I told you `yes'! I accepted your ring! I love you, Ronald Weasley. Why isn't that enough for you?” Hermione's voice had risen to a sort of hissed screech, if there was such a thing, and she grabbed her satchel with a huff, and stood to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Ron protested.

“I don't want to be late for afternoon shift.” Her answer was laced with venom, as though he had called her a rude name instead of asked her a question.

“I'll walk you out,” Harry offered casually, standing up and arching his back to stretch it. “I've got to drop a set of schematics off for Gareth, before I go back out to Clampshaven.”

“More testing?” Ginny asked.

“They want to roll out the new line before Christmas,” he replied, and stooped to brush her mouth with a kiss. “See you tonight?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “Bye, Hermione.”

“Later, Gin,” Hermione replied, amiably enough, although her voice still held traces of her annoyance with her fiance. They had proceeded about half the distance back toward the Leaky Cauldron, before Hermione sighed, “I'm sorry.”

Harry shook his head, dashing his bangs out of his eyes, and dismissed the apology. “You didn't do anything.”

“We're always rowing in front of you. I'm sure it gets old.”

He lifted one shoulder noncommittally. “Reckon I'm used to it by now.”

“I'm not,” she said, in such a low voice that Harry barely heard her.

“What?”

“I - I don't like fighting with him all the time. I mean, I'd - I'd like it, if he weren't my fiance. Sometimes it's fun watching him get all red-faced and apoplectic, but… ” She tossed her hair, searching for the right words. “He needs so much … propping up, so much constant reassurance. It comes off feeling like he thinks I'm a pathological liar, and doesn't believe a word I say.”

“Ron's always been a little - ” Harry began his automatic that's-just-Ron defense, but she cut him off.

“Do you think I'm settling?”

Her sudden question made Harry misstep, and he staggered over a couple of cobblestones before he could be entirely sure that he wasn't going to fall down. He thought he heard someone snicker from the doorway of an adjacent shop.

“Wh - what?”

“Settling for Ron? You know, because he's there and he asked me? It's so convenient too - you and Ginny, me and Ron.” She saw Harry's startled and panicked expression, and read it immediately. “Harry, I love Ron. You know I do.” She leaned toward him to knock his elbow with hers. “The good times are really, really good. But the bad times are kind of… tiresome.”

Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. Hermione looked up into his flummoxed eyes, and laughed.

“Oh, don't look so nauseated, Harry. I'm not asking you to take sides, or even telling you there's an irreparable problem. I just needed to … vent a little.”

The relief that flooded her best friend's features really was comical, she reflected. He pulled her to his side in a comradely, one-armed hug, as they arrived at the brick entrance to the Cauldron.

“You know I'll be your sounding board anytime, Hermione.” He kissed her cheek, and then patted his pockets, checking for the shrunken blueprints. “Talk to you later.” He winked at her, and then Apparated away.

Hermione was there for just a moment longer, tucking her wand in her pocket, and thumbing her satchel more securely onto her shoulder. She concentrated on the employee's entrance at St. Mungo's, and with a small crack, reappeared in a lounge-like area with several banks of lockers on one side. Another door led to some sleeping quarters for healers on-call or working extra shifts due to emergency. It was very quiet, and Hermione was thankful yet again for the charms that kept the bustle of the hospital out of this small haven.

She lifted the strap of her satchel over her head, and walked over to her locker, a small one in the darkest corner, due to her relatively low status in the St. Mungo's pecking order.

“Ms. Granger?” Her neck jerked her head to the side, her chin up and eyes wide with surprise, but not alarm. One hand twitched reflexively toward her wand, a wariness in her stance that no amount of time could ever fully erase. An Auror stood there, still in his work robes, two file folders under one arm. He was her senior by perhaps ten years, and had a craggy, determined face that recalled stolid trustworthiness.

“Yes?”

“I'm Auror Guinnein Dunwiddie, and I - ” He seemed almost at a loss as to what to say next, and he started to heedlessly crease the folders in his hands.

“Is something wrong?” Now alarm did flare up in her eyes. Ron? Harry? She'd just left them. Her parents? Maybe they'd been looking for her while she'd been whiling away the time with her friends.

“No, well - that is, there's something we need to discuss. It is of paramount importance.” He looked awkwardly apologetic, and Hermione couldn't fathom why. “Will you please come with me?”

TBC

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Two: Euphoria Broken

Wariness stepped in to moderate her alarm, as Hermione eyed the Auror in a measured fashion.

“May I see your credentials?”

He murmured a spell, and a smoky rendition of an Auror ID constructed itself in the middle of the Healer's lounge. He seemed to appreciate her care, but think it unnecessary at the same time.

“We're not leaving the hospital. The… person you need to see is just down the corridor.”

“All right,” Hermione's voice was tempered with caution. She had heard the studied pause before he said `person', and she had no idea what he could be on about. A patient perhaps? Her residency had gone well; she would have stood out as the brightest, even if people hadn't known who she was. But she certainly wasn't an expert in a given field, and certainly couldn't give a better exam or a more learned opinion than fully qualified Healers who been practicing for years.

He held the door for her, as they exited the lounge area, and led her down a rabbit warren of corridors, until they were deep within the administrative wing of the facility. Just as her concern was about to cross over into utter bewilderment, he opened a final door that led them into a plush conference room. It was tucked so far out of the way, she wondered that it ever got used at all. Sitting at the oval table was another Auror, one only slightly older than she was, with a corona of blond hair that made him look even younger.

He stood to his feet as she entered, and extended his hand for her to shake.

“Healer Granger,” he said by way of greeting. “I am Stuart Falworth, Auror Dunwiddie's partner.”

“It's nice to meet you. May I ask what all this is regarding?” The confused bewilderment in her tone downplayed the genuine concern in her dark eyes.

Glances passed between the two men, and a door in the back that she had not heretofore noticed opened. Three people walked into the room, and took seats. Two of them were Chief Healers and department heads, and one was an Intercessor, a kind of Wizarding equivalent of a Muggle social worker.

Hermione began to feel somewhat cornered. Her eyes tripped back and forth across the solemn faces.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“Assuredly not, Healer Granger,” Falworth said. “An Auror squadron recently ran a raid on a magical facility just outside of Nottingham. We received a tip that there had been some … well, some rather unsavory magical research going on there, magic that involved… wizards and witches as the subjects, most probably unwilling.”

“They were experimenting on people without their consent!?” Hermione's voice sounded properly horrified, but Falworth knew she was still trying to gauge what she could have to do with any of this.

“Yes. When we got there, however, the facility had been cleaned out. They must have known that we were coming, and there wasn't much left to indicate exactly what they'd been doing. Except for the girl.”

“Girl?” Hermione prodded him, when he paused. He seemed to be waiting for her to come to some kind of conclusion.

“Yes, a little girl. Not more than four or five years old, I should think. She called herself Eleanor, claimed to have no last name, no parents. Had no idea how old she was.”

“That's terrible! Poor thing. I'm assuming you've done the Origo spell?” She asked about a spell that was somewhat similar to a Muggle DNA test.

“Yes, we have.” Again, the Auror seemed to be waiting on her, for reasons that Hermione could not fathom. Were they waiting on her for advice… suggestions? Wouldn't their own department suffice for that kind of thing?

“Healer Granger, did you give a baby up for adoption approximately 5 years ago?” The Intercessor - Hermione recognized her vaguely - finally piped up and asked.

“I most certainly did not! Is that what this is regarding?” She sputtered a kind of angry half-laugh, inhaling so much air at once that she nearly choked. “It's absolutely preposterous! If those were the results, then clearly, your spell was faulty.”

“Healer Granger,” rumbled the low voice of Almeric Dudgeon, one of the most eminent healers at St. Mungo's. “The Origo was performed precisely the way it should be - more than once. There can be no question. The girl is yours.”

“And I am telling you that it simply is not possible. I have - I have never been pregnant, much less ever given birth.”

“We promise you that this can be handled with the utmost discretion. Someone of your status must naturally take greater care that…”

“Someone of my `status'?” Hermione bristled. “What exactly are you implying?” Only Hermione Granger could have made the Chief Healer over the Spell Damage ward, a venerable wizard who had seen at least eight decades go by, squirm in his chair.

“Nothing untoward, Healer Granger,” Dudgeon interceded for his colleague, his voice sounding like a metal shovel scraped over gravel. Hermione could only assume he was attempting to be soothing. “However, given the fame of some of your… associates… as well as your own notoriety, we only want to offer our assurances that this will be handled in as quiet a manner as you could wish.”

Hermione's brown eyes flashed fire, sweeping irately over those arrayed in front of her. Harry and Ron would have known the danger inherent in that disdainful gaze.

“Healer Dudgeon,” she began, contempt dripping over her words like syrup, “I am not concealing anything out of shame or guilt or fear that something untoward will come to light. I am telling you the simple and unvarnished truth. I have never had a baby. Ever. The Origo has to be incorrect - that's all there is to it. Bring Healer Glauerhaven down from Obstetrics, if you like. I'm certain her spellwork would corroborate my claim.”

Healer Dudgeon exchanged glances with his colleague, Healer Englebert Wilberforce. The two Aurors were flipping through the files, as if hoping to find some evidence of her veracity within. Hermione wondered why they were so convinced that she was lying - and that unquenchable clinical side of her was pondering how an Origo could be so miscast. It was a fairly complicated medical spell, but one taught in the first year of training. The silence grew oppressive, and the social worker's chair squeaked as she swiveled it in fidgety nervousness.

“Healer Granger,” Auror Falworth began, after what seemed like an interminable period of time. His voice was gentle, and his eyes were kind, warm with a lively compassion that seemed engineered to engender trust. “It is not my intent to disparage your word, but - are you absolutely sure that you have never been pregnant, never carried a child to term, never given a blood-born child up for adoption?”

“Auror Falworth,” she spoke to him in like vein, facing him squarely, imploring him to believe her. “I will be glad to undertake a Wizard's Oath. I have never had a baby.”

“You've never had any sort of physical relationship with Harry Potter?”

“Excuse me?” The deceptively quiet question caught Hermione completely off-guard. She jerked her gaze up to the Auror so abruptly that it hurt. Bewilderment quickly gave way to indignation, then anger. It made her struggle to stay coherent. “What kind of tawdry - I am engaged to Ron Weasley. You may have seen the notice last week in the Prophet.”

Falworth looked at her blandly, though Hermione could discern a glimmer of sympathy, before he pointed out the obvious.

“You haven't answered my question, Ms. Granger.”

“The question is so ridiculous, it is hardly worthy of an answer! I am engaged to Harry's best friend. Harry is seeing Ron's sister. Neither Harry nor I have ever even thought of each other in such a context. And really, I fail to see why - ” She stopped suddenly, and hurled an accusing glance back to Auror Falworth and his file. “ - why you suddenly brought up Harry?” She phrased the end of her sentence as a stand-alone question, and waited, although she knew the answer before Falworth gave it.

“Harry Potter is Eleanor's father.”

Hermione puffed a sardonic ssshtt of air between her teeth.

“I couldn't be more convinced that the fault lies with the Origo spell. Owl Harry and have him come in. Go on then. He'll tell you - he'll tell you the same thing I've told you.” Hermione's eyes were almost triumphant now; it was apparent to everyone in the room that she was either telling the truth - or had convinced herself that she was.

“Healer Granger,” Wilberforce spoke deliberatively, pulling at his long silver goatee, and twirling the end of it thoughtfully around his fingers. “The Origo was performed three different times, by three different Healers, including Healer Dudgeon and myself. The results were the same each time, ruling out spellcaster error. Unless you are suggesting that the fault lies within the little girl herself, that she somehow has the capability of misleading a wand, then… ” He spread his hands, as if presenting an array of facts before them. “There was no ambiguity, no cloudy answer open to varying interpretations. You are welcome to review the findings yourself - or even cast your own Origo, if you'd like…”

Hermione nodded automatically and with a distinct air of distraction. She vaguely realized that she was still standing, and sank into the chair behind her, without really seeming to notice its presence. A snap of Dudgeon's fingers Summoned the paperwork from wherever it had been stored, and he gestured for it to slide in front of Hermione. She flipped through the pages mechanically, noting various details with one corner of her mind, but her concentration was turned inward, working furiously to determine how the impossible had, in fact, occurred.

The other occupants of the room did not have to wait long.

“You - you said - ” Hermione began slowly, her mind racing ahead of her mouth's ability to articulate. Falworth arched his brows in an invitation for her to continue. “The - the facility - where you found the girl…” Eleanor, part of her whispered. “You said there were experiments being conducted - were there - was it only magical in nature, or were there - were there Muggle elements as well?”

She felt as if time had slowed down, as if her heart had become a force of its own, doggedly pounding a sludge of blood past her ears. Unknowingly her fingers curled in tension on the table, but the pressure of her nails did no damage to the lacquered surface. She absent-mindedly dog-eared the corner of the file with one thumb.

Falworth and Dunwiddie consulted the file.

“There was a wide array of potion ingredients that we were unfamiliar with. They appeared to be intended for administration by … injection.” Dunwiddie shuddered slightly, his distaste at Muggle barbarism clear. “There were some strange diagrams as well. We've got Unspeakables with the most intensive Muggle training looking at them. Something like this?”

He slid another folder over to her, tapping a couple of small sketched examples. They were clearly drawings depicting molecular structure, as well as the double helices of human DNA.

“Oh my God,” Hermione murmured, her voice a barely audible gasp of shock. Her pulse roared in her ears, and she closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness washed over her.

“Healer Granger, are you quite all right?”

No, I'm not all right, she wanted to vehemently shout. The violation - can you even imagine - how dare - Harry and I - we were …oh my God, we were harvested - without our consent, and they - whoever the hell it was - they made a person… out of us. And Ron - and - and Ginny - they - they'll… Her mind shied away from the topic. It was too much, too soon - she couldn't make herself approach it. How? and Why? perhaps had more concrete, more immediate answers. She let those questions crowd out What will we do about it now? and What will people say?

“Al - almost six years ago, after the - after the last battle w-with Voldemort… Harry and I - and Ron - we were all in St. Mungo's for a bit. It could have - ” She reopened her eyes, and they were wide and unseeing with shock. “It could have been anyone, could have happened at any time. While we were sedated… a Stunner while we were sleeping, a Confunded mediwitch… Imperio…”

“Y - you're saying that someone - they ­- took parts of you and Mr. Potter, and created a baby without your knowledge or consent,” Falworth looked utterly flabbergasted. Hermione knew that Muggle infertility treatments would be foreign to a large majority of the Wizarding populace.

“That's exactly what I'm saying. A gestational carrier - another woman - would have carried the baby to term. It's the only possibility.” She speared him with a quick look, as if daring any of them to call her a liar again. “Whoever instigated this had knowledge of Muggle science, perhaps was working with Muggles - or was Muggle-Born themselves.”

Stuart Falworth's eyes were moving furiously across the files. Hermione recognized the look of someone desperately trying to put things into some kind of sensible order. Finally, in frustration, he tossed the file back to the smoothly varnished tabletop, so that parchment fanned out in all directions.

“To what end?” He asked her helplessly.

Her forehead crinkled over troubled dark eyes.

“I don't know.”

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Three: Perspective Skewed

Hermione's feet made no noise on the plush Oriental rug, sinking into the luxurious nap, as she crossed the office of Almeric Dudgeon to stand before the fireplace. Everything seemed surreal now; she marveled at the bustle of the corridors of St. Mungo's, as she had moved from the hidden conference room to the executive offices immediately above. Patients were still being admitted; healers were treating spell damage, mediwitches were dosing potions, and orderlies were using Sterilizing Charms on the equipment. She was supposed to be on duty, but now she was borrowing the Chief Healer's Floo to contact Harry about a child that neither of them had known they had.

How could everything look so normal, when everything felt so different?

Someone had taken something from her - while she had recovered in this very facility, a patient, injured… one of these friendly, calming faces? One of these who had sworn to first do no harm? Her stomach bucked and roiled, threatening to eject the lovely lunch she'd had with her very best friends. She recalled the heat of the sunshine as it coated her hair and shoulders, which brought to mind Ron's annoying and yet endearingly familiar assumptions, and the sound of Harry's laughter…

… and now - here in this very hospital - there was a little girl, who was part her and part Harry.

She knelt on the shiny marble hearth, bracing herself against the gleaming gold trim and taking a moment to collect herself before tossing in a handful of Floo Powder.

“Brigadoon Broom Design.”

“Fly the Future on Brigadoon Brooms,” came a musical Scottish brogue, the motto coming in the casually rushed way of something that was said often. A merry round face, fronted by an enormous walrus mustache that all but obscured his mouth appeared in the flames. The disconnected voice became much livelier when he saw her. “Hermione! Always good tae see you. But I'm afraid Harry's no' here. He's headed out tae - ”

“Clampshaven,” Hermione finished for him. She shook her head in chagrin at her too-late remembrance. “You're right. He told us as much, but I'd forgotten.”

“Be glad tae leave him a message for ya.”

“No, thank you. Brig, do you mind if I come through? I'll just Apparate on up to the testing field. This will be quicker than going all the way down to the St. Mungo's Point.”

“Floo's always open for you, Hermione. Nothin' wrong, I hope?” His voice withdrew as he stood, and she could see the edge of his worn leather apron, where it brushed the shins of his heavy work khakis.

“No,” her voice echoed tinnily in her ears, as she whirled through the Network. She stepped into a large room that was part design studio and part carpentry workshop. Lamps hovered above parchment-topped drafting tables, and pieces of brooms were strewn about in the very definition of orderly chaos. Gareth, one of Brig's designers, was hunched over a table in the far corner. “Not at all, Brig. There's just an… important piece of information I need to pass on to him, that's all.” But she couldn't quite meet the concerned gaze of Harry's boss, and she was sure that he had noticed it.

And why did she feel compelled to march out to a broom speed-testing facility, interrupt Harry's work day, and tell him some news that would be thoroughly unexpected and almost certainly unwelcome? There wasn't anything Harry could do now, that he couldn't do this evening. Although, if the little girl was to be adopted quietly, without the news leaking from the notorious sieve that was St. Mungo's, then she and Harry needed to sign the paperwork sooner, rather than later.

But she knew that her excuse, while good, was still just that - an excuse. Her hand was trembling slightly, and she rested her fingertips against the edge of a table, hardly paying attention to what she touched. I've got to find Harry because I'm about to fall apart, she finally admitted inwardly. He keeps me grounded, when I feel like I'm going to fly in all directions at once. I need him to tell me that everything's going to be all right.

Ron's initial reaction would be suspicion, she knew. Even if it lasted for only a split second, his knee-jerk response would be one of betrayal. The tricky part would be navigating through Ron's hair-trigger temper without anyone saying anything unforgivable. Throughout their rocky courtship, they had managed to perfect a kind of balancing act, a detente of sorts, knowing what buttons to avoid or push, what topics to broach or leave unspoken, precise ways of wording things that would not set the other one off. Hermione had not been joking when she had told Harry it was tiresome. And now here comes something else to complicate things further, she mused wearily. Why does this have to be so hard? It shouldn't be so hard, should it?

“You like that, eh?” Brig's voice broke into her thoughts. She looked up, startled, to see his ruddy face beaming, as he nodded toward the table nearest her. Her fingers were resting lightly on a broom handle that - Hermione's attention was truly snagged then - appeared to be a beautifully rich, swirling wood grain, but in fact, was not.

“It's - it's an alloy,” she breathed in wonder, taking in the length of the broom, all the way to the tip of the smoothly sculpted straw, twigs perfectly aligned and twisted into a near point at the end. It looked sleek, aerodynamic, fast. Hermione was no broom expert, though she had absorbed more than she ever cared to through this job of Harry's, but even she could tell that this broom was special, a work of art. “Brig, this is lovely.”

Brig's grin grew wider.

“Harry'll be thrilled to hear ya say that.” Hermione's eyes widened in astonishment.

“Harry designed this?”

“Designed it and built it. All his own work. Must say I was impressed.”

“I - I didn't know he - he - ” Hermione felt like her disbelief was doing Harry a disservice, but Harry was - well - Harry. He was athletic, quick on his feet, with a natural reserve and good instincts about people; he had always seemed to harbor both a general dislike for structure, and a penchant for mischief. Since the end of the war, the front he had presented to people was a kind of casually guarded one. None of this appeared to lend itself to an artist's sensitive soul. She thought she knew Harry better than almost anyone else in the world, and she had never expected that he hid within himself a master craftsman.

“Still waters run deep in that `un, aye?” Brig's twinkling gray eyes seemed to read the exact path of her twisted thoughts.

“Undoubtedly.” She let laughter color the edges of her voice, as she reluctantly lifted her hand from the broom shaft. What other talents did Harry have that he was, perhaps, only now able to express and experiment with? She wondered if their daughter would be as special as he was.

That thought was like a merciless net, gathering her scattered musings back together, refocusing her on her purpose. She took a deep breath, and then tried not to act so much like she was steeling herself for an unpleasant task, as she bid a cheery farewell to Brig. Nevertheless, she had the distinct impression that not much escaped the hearty Scot. His nod was almost sympathetic, as he met her eyes for a moment; his attention had returned to Harry's broom by the time she stepped into her turn.

Even the gentle crack of her Apparation echoed slightly off of the low, rolling hills that surrounded the Brigadoon test flight facility at Clampshaven. She, Ron, and Ginny were on Harry's authorized list, and she felt relieved that she would not have to go round the front and through security. She had joked that she was worried she was signing her life away, when she filled out the paperwork for the authorization.

“Corporate espionage is rampant. Have to keep everything hush-hush, you know,” Harry had told her with a serious mien. The mirthful twinkle in his eyes had given him away, and she had swatted him upside his head with her newly signed document.

Hermione threaded her way through a thin screen of young trees, and onto the field itself. She squinted her eyes against the glare of the low afternoon sun, then finally shaded them with her hand, as she searched for Harry. He really had become more smiley, almost-but-not-quite approachable, as the war had become a more distant - though never forgotten - memory. His work was something he found fun and fulfilling, not merely an obligation or a means to an end. Ginny was lively and vivacious, nudging him out of his comfort zone and encouraging him to venture out into society and try new things. The burden he'd carried since he was eleven years old had been lightened, if not lifted, and though he still tried to become broody and guilt-ridden from time to time, he also seemed content to let Ginny, Ron, and Hermione distract him out of such episodes.

She had to admit that she liked this Harry. He was still media-shy and too impulsive, but he still had the noblest heart of anyone she knew, and unconstrained generosity to those he named friends.

He's seemed so much lighter lately. And now I'm going to take that away from him. She sighed, as she spotted him soar over a rise, head south, and then veer suddenly in her direction when he caught sight of her. There was movement on the field, and Hermione saw Harry's assistant began to head in her direction as well. Her shoulders sank and her eyes rolled skyward. She liked Morty just fine, but this was assuredly not the kind of bomb you could drop in front of other people.

Harry made a graceful landing, scarcely a meter in front of her, and hopped off of the broom almost before it had fully stopped moving. His hair was wind-tossed, and his flight had whipped color into his face. His eyes were lively and welcoming.

“Hermione! What are - ” Just that quickly, a shadow flickered over his expression, as though a cloud had darted in front of the sun. “What's wrong? Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone's fine, Harry. I needed to - I didn't intend to worry you, but - ” She wrung her hands nervously, and noted that her palms were clammy. Her eyes flicked over to Morty as he approached, clipboard and quill in hand and a Muggle stopwatch around his neck. She looked back at Harry, but didn't speak again. She knew she wouldn't have to.

“That was some flight, Boss,” Morty panted, slightly flushed from his trot across the green. His hair and clothing were in their perpetual disheveled state; he seemed to always look as if he had just been roused from sleep. He was at least a couple of years older than Harry, but insisted on referring to him as `boss'. Hermione privately thought that he did it solely for the purpose of irritating Harry. “It's getting great speed going straightaway, but there's 30% per cent slow down when it corners.”

“That's no good,” Harry commiserated. He took the clipboard from Morty, and scanned the first couple of pages, where Hermione could see detailed diagrams. He made a couple of quick jots with the quill. “Maybe there's something off with the shaft angle. Go on and write it up, and get the report back to Brig. I'll bring the broom, and be back shortly.” There was clear, albeit polite, dismissal in his tone. Morty had opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it, and set off for the gap in the trees through which Hermione had just come. Hermione figured that he was going to get outside of the wards, and then Apparate round front, rather than cross the entire length of the testing field from the inside. A moment later, a crisp crack confirmed her hypothesis.

“All right then, Hermione,” Harry said in his best don't-even-try-to-hide-anything-from-me voice. “What's going on?”

-->

The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Four: Enigma Disclosed

Hermione scrubbed her damp palms down the sides of her Muggle blue jeans. I didn't even get to change into my Resident's robes, she realized detachedly, recalling the abrupt summons from Auror Dunwiddie - which seemed to have utterly upended her life.

“I - ”

Any friendly playfulness that had remained had been leeched from Harry's face. His straight, dark brows had lowered in concern. He'd always been able to easily read her, and her agitation was making itself more than apparent.

“When I … when I got to work, there were - there were Aurors there, and they - they said they n-needed to speak to me, so - ” She knew she was forestalling the inevitable by giving him the pointless backstory. Her hands were fluttering at her sides like caught Snitches. Why am I so afraid to tell him? It isn't my fault; it isn't his fault. It was just an invasion - a violation - without consent, and a mad scientist of some sort has created our daughter. He'll be shocked, I'm sure, but he'll - then he'll - Rather suddenly, Hermione realized what made her so anxious. She thought that Harry would act with his usual innate sense of nobility, but she wasn't sure. And if he reacted in the manner that… Ron would, for instance, she didn't think she could handle it. Please, Harry, please - justify my faith in you.

She felt a gentle touch, as her fingers were encased in his calloused ones, stilling them. Her eyes flew open - when had she closed them? She looked across into his beseeching eyes, begging for her confidence, as his thumb skidded across her knuckles. When she smiled at him, trying to be reassuring, her lips trembled.

“They - they told me that they'd raided a laboratory, a place where they had been mixing Muggle science and magic, doing genetic experiments on… people.” Harry almost flinched in repulsion, but did not otherwise remark, waiting for her to finish. “They must have known the squad was coming - the place had been emptied and abandoned. But - but there was a little girl locked in a cell there, about four or five years old - they freed her, and - and she was - she is …mine.”

She couldn't have explained to anyone why she reverted to the singular there at the end. Ours had been poised to drop from her tongue, and something in her brain had seized up and refused it egress.

Harry's thumb had stilled. His fingers twitched reflexively, as though he had nearly dropped her hand, but they did not lose contact.

“Yours?” The word was quietly spoken, deceptively casual, yet it had been dropped into the silence like a two-ton weight.

“Yes.”

“H - how - I mean…I - I know how…normally, but - ” His cheeks turned a dull red, and in any other situation, she might have laughed at his discomfiture. “I mean, I - I like to think I would have noticed… that… and what about - ”

“Those people… they took an egg from me and - Merlin only knows why. The Aurors think that it was while we were in the hospital after the Final Battle.” The `we' in her sentence had been unintentional, and could have just as easily been innocuous, but his eyes had raced up to meet hers when she spoke it, and they seemed to burn with knowing.

“That isn't all they took, is it?”

She wanted to cry with relief. He did understand. She shook her head.

“And the child - the girl - it's not just that she's yours, is it? She's mine - that's what you came to tell me.” This time, she nodded, still not trusting herself to speak. There was a long silence, broken only by the softest rush of the wind in the grass. Harry had taken her hand between both of his, and was chafing it back and forth with a distinct air of distraction. She watched the war behind his eyes.

I have a daughter. I have a daughter with Hermione. It was as if he'd shouted the words. His journey mirrored hers; she could track it clearly: bewilderment - a child, my child - the glint of panic - Ginny…Ron - anger - what gave them the right - and then… compassion. He was seeing a child shut in a cupboard under the stairs, forced to stay with people who did not love her, did not want her, saw her as a means to an end, a tool to be used and manipulated, manufactured in a lab for some sort of purpose as yet unknown. He had been there, could perhaps understand what she'd gone through as nobody else they knew.

“Why would someone do this? What would be the point of it? We were never together. And - and I don't see why it would make - ”

“Harry, they don't even know who it was. The lab had been stripped of most of the relevant information, and was leased to some dummy corporation. They managed to detain a few lower-level people, but so far, they aren't talking. Until we know who, we'll never know why.”

Barely banked frustration simmered in the depths of Harry's eyes. She could see a thousand other questions jockeying for utterance, but he bit them all back. His hold on her hand gentled.

“They told you. Why didn't anyone come to tell me?”

“They were going to. I asked them if I could be the one to tell you.” She took a moment to smile slightly at the wordless gratitude that flashed in Harry's eyes. “They wanted to check with me first - they thought I - ” She colored slightly, and averted her eyes, her gaze going haphazardly across the windswept field. “They thought that we had - ” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “— and that I had never told you about the baby, that I had concealed it from everyone.”

“As if you would ever - ” Harry almost spluttered, offended on her behalf.

“Harry, it's not like in vitro fertilization and genetic manipulation are exactly Wizarding household words. They don't know us - not really.” She scrunched up her shoulders, let them drop, and sighed. “They went after the most likely explanation.”

“And that's what everyone else will do as well,” Harry realized suddenly, and met Hermione's knowing eyes, seeing that he was still struggling to catch up to her level of awareness. She knew that he wasn't really talking about the Wizarding World as a whole, but rather about two specific redheaded individuals.

“Most likely - at least, at first.” The silence straggled out between them, as potential Weasley shouting matches played out in their heads. “But of course, they'll believe us - they'll have to - ” Hermione sounded as if she were trying to convince herself, rather than Harry.

“What are we going to do?” There was that Harry-abruptness that she loved so well. While she fretted and worried and paced, weighed options, listed pros and cons, Harry was interested in the bottom line and the next course of action. It soothed her; he wasn't one for hand-wringing and moaning about insurmountable problems… just what are we going to do to fix it. She loved that about him.

“Well, I certainly don't think it's something we should keep from - from Ron and Ginny, but I don't see why anyone else needs to know about it. It's rather horrifying… but - but we were victims. We didn't ask for this. We didn't do anything wrong. And there are probably plenty of Wizarding couples out there who would love to - ”

“You mean, you want to give her up?” His words tumbled out quickly over then end of her sentence. There was an odd note in Harry's voice, and he was looking at her as though he had mistaken her for someone else. It made her flush and feel defensive.

“I resent your tone, Harry.” Her voice had grown frigid and her posture stiff.

“I just meant that - that we're not the only victims here.” He sank down to the grass, hunching over bent knees, reliving some memory that Hermione had no part of. She knelt down next to him, so he wouldn't have to squint up at her, and put her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I know that.” She had softened her tone, without actually conceding any ground. “But this isn't your fault. You didn't cause this. You don't have to - ”

“ - save her? Is that what you were going to say?” There was something impersonal, almost coldly sardonic, in his eyes as he looked at her. It was something that she didn't often see, something he reserved for people when he saw through their attempts to manipulate him - like members of the Wizarding Media.

“Yes, it was. There are people out there who can't have children - married, established couples who want children, who are ready for them now. Nobody would have to know who her parents were. Can you imagine the spectacle the Prophet would make? She'd never have any peace, if they knew. Wouldn't it be better this way?”

“But... a family, Hermione.” The pent up longing in his voice surprised her. He and Ginny seemed to be in no great hurry to formalize their relationship, and while she knew he'd always wanted to be properly part of a family, she'd not suspected this level of vehemence.

“Not this family, Harry! Not like this! You should know better than anyone that sharing DNA with someone does not make them family. Some twisted, faceless scientist grew her in a lab!” She flinched at the look on his face, but plowed ahead anyway, determined to make him see reason. “I know she is a victim too, but even that fact does not put you under obligation to her. You can't keep shouldering burdens for the entire world!”

Harry was silent for a very long time, and Hermione worried that she had been too harsh. She hadn't thought there were any bounds for her with Harry, but she wondered if she'd stepped out of them. She had moved her hand out of his hair, and instead played with the strands of cropped grass, feeling the breeze tousle her curls and watching him pensively.

“She's not the entire world. But she's my daughter. She's my daughter, and they put her in a cupboard.” He paused for a moment, struggling to contain himself. “Don't you think she needs someone who understands that?”

“There are counselors, people who've been trained to - ” Hermione tried again, but he was through letting her speak. She could tell by the determined flash in his green eyes that she had lost the battle.

“I - I know your way makes sense, Hermione. It's logical and rational and reasonable, and perfectly justifiable. But I don't think I could live with myself, if I - if I abandoned -”

“You've known about this for a quarter of an hour! Don't you think you should take a bit… and process this - this new development?”

“God, Hermione!” Harry hid his face in one hand and almost laughed. “How can you always sound so bloody clinical? And you haven't thought about it at all either - don't try and tell me you have. You've squashed it all into a corner of your mind, so you can - can poke it with a stick and take notes on it like some third party observer. You're going to keep doing that about important things, and one day you're just going to explode.”

It rankled her that he knew her so well, but she did not deny the truth in what he said.

“I have to be this `bloody clinical'. Someone needs to be, because you're all the time going about leaping off of precipices! This is crazy! What are you going to do? Just sign her out? Take her home? Your flat isn't even set up to take care of a child! Do you know what kind of adjustment this means? Do you realize what you'll be giving up?”

“If there are things I'm giving up, I'm sure there are also things I'd be gaining.” He raked his hands through his recalcitrant hair, and sighed. “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, Hermione.” His voice was gentle and utterly without accusation. “But I've made my decision. I'm going to go see her. Is she at St. Mungo's?”

Hermione nodded weakly, and then added a feeble, “Shouldn't you discuss this with Ginny?”

“Ginny loves me. She'll understand why I'm doing this.” There was a confident knowledge in his voice, but something flickered in his eyes that Hermione almost thought she'd imagined. Just the tiniest unspoken word of uncertainty: if Ginny loves me… Hermione felt, rather than heard, his sigh, his gaze growing distant, as he pondered hypotheticals; all of them, judging from his expression, melancholy.

Finally, his green eyes cleared, and he nodded at her, a nod of determination, of decision - and apparently, of farewell, because he suddenly started for the edge of the field at a prodigious pace, aiming for the spot Morty where had vanished what seemed like eons ago. Hermione stood on the empty testing field, staring after Harry, who showed pure purpose in every stride. She'd never been able to make him see sense, not once he was really fixated on a course of action. It was insane, absurd; the Weasleys were going to hit the proverbial ceiling. And yet, she found herself jogging at an increasing pace after him, managing to break through the copse of trees and hook her arm around his elbow, just as he Apparated away.

Their twin Apparation made a noise like a rifle crack at the employee's entrance of St. Mungo's.

“You shouldn't do that,” Harry said casually, as if they had not just been fighting about whether or not he should keep their daughter. “One of these days, I'll end up splinching you.”

“You'd never splinch me.” Hermione looked around at the banks of lockers where she had first seen Auror Dunwiddie - it seemed like ages ago already. “But while we're being critical, you're not supposed to be back here anyway.”

“I always come back here,” Harry protested. “Bronwyn doesn't mind. She'd have said so otherwise.” Hermione rolled her eyes theatrically.

“Oh, please! She can barely gather up the nerve to string two words together around you! I think Ginny rather loathes her.” She shook her head at the thought of the shy, pretty witch in charge of St. Mungo's Wizards Resource Department. “And you shouldn't use your fame like that. It makes you terribly unattractive.”

Harry's grin was pure cheek. “Sweet Merlin, he has unauthorized access to the St. Mungo's Personnel Department! Harry Potter's corruption is complete!” Hermione couldn't stop the laugh that escaped, even as she tried to purse her lips into a dour expression. Why was it so hard to stay angry with him?

As they were crossing the threshold into the hospital proper, she pulled backward on the crook of his arm to stop his forward motion.

“Harry, are you sure about this?”

“Do you know where they have her?” His ignoring of her question served as his answer. She pressed her lips together, and looked at him with pleading eyes, casting about for any further delay.

“Auror Falworth did say that they wanted to talk to you.” She tossed that newly remembered piece of information at him, hoping that they would be able to discuss this with some other people, other level-headed, rational people who might be able to dissuade him from this course of action. She felt inadequate to stand alone before the inexorable force of Harry's determination.

“I'll be happy to talk with them later. Hermione, I'd like to see her. Do you know where she is?” She looked at him one more time, as he simply watched her, waiting. She reflected that where Ron might be an incendiary device that one could either weather or dismantle, fighting with Harry was more like railing against the sheer granite face of a mountain. He would continue to do exactly what he thought was right, and wait for a concession of defeat.

“She's in a private room up in the Children's Ward. Fifth floor.”

There was something nostalgic and faintly adoring in Harry's smile at her, as he graciously accepted her surrender with a kiss to her temple.

“Are you coming with me?”

She rolled her eyes, unable to remain irritated with him, even while she fretted over his lack of common sense and forethought.

“Why on earth would I stop now?”

Together, they headed in the direction of the lifts.

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The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Five: Heritage Unveiled

The Children's Ward of St. Mungo's was a vividly decorated hallway, with doors of every color imaginable. Every surface was covered in tiny painted handprints that sometimes waved, gave passers-by a thumb's up, or tried to make off with the mediwitches' quills. The lights seemed brighter, the windows sunnier, and Hermione was sure this was by design. She reflected that even the merry decor could not quite conceal the smell and the feel of a hospital ward.

Hermione pointed down the hall, with the arm not still tucked into Harry's elbow. “It's this way. Five twenty-”

“Yes, the door with the Auror guard, right? I'd gathered that much.” He sighed, and nudged her playfully in the ribs. “The Great Harry Potter,” he mocked. “Can't even have children the normal way…” His second sigh assuaged her rumpled spirits by reminding her that Harry might seem to be all Gryffindor-Lion-full-speed-ahead, he was inwardly as uncertain as she was. “Have you been to see her then?” He was assuming that her knowledge of the room location arose from that fact.

Hermione felt the defensiveness rise up within her again. She didn't like to admit, even to herself, that she had had no intention of seeing their daughter, at least not in such context as the girl would be aware of their relationship. She couldn't help but continue to feel that this was yet another of Harry's harebrained, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants schemes, and here she was again, along for the ride. Just like always… She supposed there was something to be said for sticking with one's routines.

“No, Harry, I haven't.” His name escaped her lips on a gust of air. “I hadn't decided yet what course of action to take - still haven't, as a matter of fact. I didn't think there was any point in revealing myself to her, if I wasn't - wasn't going to be around. You really need to think about this. If you take her, is it really in her best interests? Or am I hoping it wouldn't be in her best interests, so that I can be relieved of any responsibility or guilt about it? This whole day's been a whirlwind, and I just don't know anymore - I can't distinguish anymore - ”

“—between what is right and what is easy,” Harry rumbled unexpectedly, startling her. Annoyed, she tried to jerk her arm out of his grasp, but he prevented it. She was shaking her head that he'd dared to go there.

“That's not fair, Harry.”

“I was just quoting…” He was all innocence. She was not fooled.

“I know what you were doing, and what you meant… and of course, that you're right in this instance, and I'm easy. Would that be - ” She stopped when she heard Harry's snicker, and realized the double entendre in what she'd said. She speared him with a look of long-suffering acerbity, as he tried to school his features into a more serious mien. “I hate you, Harry.”

“Easy and a liar…” he teased, and she felt the grin pulling unwillingly at her lips again. However, once they'd come up to the door, easily enough spotted by the two Aurors posted on either side of it, any facade of lightheartedness or mirth fell away as if hit with Finite Incantatem.

The younger of the two Aurors, dark-haired and somewhat self-important, looking just the far side of thirty, stepped forward and managed a perfunctory, “Identification please,” before realizing who stood before him.

“I'm Harry Potter,” Harry enunciated the obvious slowly, and with entirely too much wide-eyed sincerity, as he flipped out the security badge that was charmed to allow him into all of the Brigadoon facilities. Hermione nudged him reprovingly in the side, and lifted her wand to show her St. Mungo's tag.

“Healer Granger… and Harry Potter… Harry…. oh!” The Auror had unfurled a short roll of parchment that most likely held a list of those who were authorized entry. His professionalism almost succeeded in masking the speculative glance he gave the two of them. Judging by that reaction, the parchment also revealed their relationship to the little girl. Fabulous, Hermione thought, as she felt Harry tense up beside her. Still eying them covertly, the Auror opened the door, and stood aside to let them pass.

Hermione knew from experience that most of the rooms on the hall were large, housing multiple beds, generally for those children requiring a greater amount of recuperation time from some sort of magical mishap, or for those needing long-term care for a wizarding disease with little to no hope of a cure. This, however, was a small single room, holding only one bed, a small end table, and a couple of chairs. A baby blue-curtained window allowed a few beams of sunlight through, although Hermione was nearly certain that they were merely magical in origin.

A little girl sat up on the bed, on top of the sheets, legs criss-crossed, in a hospital gown and socks. She had a spiral bound sketching tablet in front of her, and a box of Quilliver's Color-Change Crayons was spilled across the folded coverlet at the foot of the bed. She flicked a glance at them, first at their faces and then at their empty hands, and the mild trepidation left her face. She went back to her drawing.

“Hello there - erm…” Harry verbally stumbled, and sent Hermione a frantic look.

“Eleanor,” she hissed.

“Eleanor.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, and closed his eyes, appearing to screw up his nerve one last time, before he approached her bedside. “What're you drawing?” The picture was a large and crooked, gray oblong, with some kind of squarish cut-out missing at one end.

“My door.”

“Your … door?” Another glance back at Hermione. She stifled a smirk, feeling a pang of sympathy for how out of his depth Harry seemed.

“Yes. It is the door at the place where I was.”

“I had a door like that once,” Harry volunteered suddenly, in a change from his awkwardness that rather surprised Hermione. His voice was genuine, and Eleanor seemed to recognize that. “Only it had lines crossing it like this.” He flipped her paper over and, with her black crayon, sketched out an irregularly-shaped door with wainscoting and a small rectangular grate in the center. Almost immediately after he finished, the picture emitted a puff of smoke and his door turned teal.

Eleanor regarded him with wide, green eyes.

“Did the needle people keep you in there?”

“They didn't have needles, but they were not very nice people.”

Eleanor appeared to mull this over, studying him for a moment, before co-opting his door sketch and coloring the slats in the grating with rainbow stripes. She didn't appear fazed by the psychedelic effect of the colors constantly switching back and forth.

“Dudley does not sound like a very nice boy.”

Harry fumbled with the purple crayon that he'd been twiddling with, and dropped it on the floor.

“Where did you hear about D-dudley?”

“He is your cousin. And you are my father. That means Rhu is a liar - she said I did not have parents. Will you hand me that purple please?”

Harry did so, taking the time to exchange a flummoxed glance with Hermione, as he knelt to retrieve the wayward crayon. Wordlessly, he handed it to the little girl who continued to touch up his drawing.

“Did your door have a circle handle, or a long, skinny one?” She spoke conversationally, using proper, almost too-precise grammar and syntax. She did not make much eye contact, but seemed fully engrossed with the artwork before her.

“Oh - er - it had a - a round one.” She flicked her eyes up to his again, and chose a yellow to draw the door knob.

“Eleanor?” Hermione spoke this time, her voice calm and soothing. Harry could tell that she was speaking as though she were merely a Healer on rounds. “How did you know that Harry is your father?”

“He said so.” There was a brief silence, broken only by the sound of crayon strokes on paper. “Only not with his mouth. And I heard him.”

“Do you always hear those things? That people say inside their heads?”

“If I can see them, I can hear them. But sometimes I can make them be quiet, if I try really hard.” She darted a look of disquiet at them that Hermione had a hard time interpreting.

“Eleanor, you don't have to worry about us,” Harry surprised Hermione by interjecting. “Whatever those…needle people told you not to do or not to say, they're gone now. The Aurors rescued you, and you don't have to go back to those people ever again. I promise. You can answer any questions that you want to; you can talk about anything that's bothering you.”

“I was not supposed to talk about it - about hearing what people do not say. The doctor said I was never to listen to… to what they were not-saying. Unless we were playing the card game.”

“Card game?”

“Yes. They wanted me to see the pictures on the cards, without seeing them. Rhu or Zed would hold up a card, and I could only see the back. Sometimes, I did not know what the pictures were. But if Rhu or Zed saw them, then I could see them too.”

“Have you always been able to do this?” Hermione spoke again, a kind of dawning horror welling up in her dark eyes.

“I cannot remember. I think maybe the medicine did it.” She shuddered a little, and started to put the crayons back in their shimmering box. She speared Harry with a sharp look, and answered his unvoiced question. “Sometimes I drank it - it was like very nasty juice. And sometimes, it was the… needles… Sometimes the medicine made me sleepy, and sometimes it made me feel hot inside, and sometimes everything turned rainbow colors and I floated away. They liked to play the card game. Or to see if I could make things go up in the air or get smaller or go away.” She seemed to curl down into herself, plucking at the blankets, as if she would like to take shelter beneath them or barricade herself behind them. Without comment, Harry moved her up to the head of the bed, and arranged the sheets and blankets to tuck her in. He moved the crayons and paper over to the small table. When he made eye contact with Hermione again, he was startled to see that she was holding back angry tears with difficulty.

Eleanor jerked her gaze up to meet his, as though he'd shouted at her. Her eyes were mournful.

“Do you think I'm bad? Or scary?”

“Eleanor, why on earth would I think you were bad or scary?” Harry propped one hip against the edge of the bed, and leaned forward so she could face him. “If I'm thinking angry things, it's because I'm angry at them, not at you. The needle people were wrong. To do those things to you. To lock you behind that door. To make you feel like you were being bad or scary.”

“But they were scared of me. When I did things I should not do, or opened things I should not open. Then they looked at me, and whispered behind their masks, and I heard them not-say that I might hurt them. And they gave me the bracelet so I could not do those things. But Auror Falworth took it off. His wife's name is Regina. He is very nice.”

“Aha, so I've caught you talking about me, Eleanor! Saying all good things, I hope!” His jovial voice preceded Stuart Falworth into the room. He was all smiles, but Harry knew he had missed nothing as he entered. He held out a hand for Harry to shake. “Mr. Potter.” And gave a nod of recognition, “Healer Granger. Thornton let me know that you had arrived. I hope you don't mind that I've come. There are some things we should go over.”

Harry and Hermione exchanged glances, and Harry stood, poised to move away from the bed. Eleanor grabbed at his hand, but jerked back almost as soon as she'd made contact. Harry arrested his own forward motion in surprise, looking at the little girl, who recoiled away from his attention.

“I'm sorry!” she said almost frantically. Harry reached out to take her hand, but she shrank further away from him, coming perilously close to falling off the far side of the hospital bed.

“Eleanor! Eleanor, it's okay.” He held his hand out, palm up, and waited.

“I'm not supposed to - ”

“I'm not going to hurt you. Ever. And you don't have to worry about hurting me.” He actually had no idea if she had any other exceptional magical abilities, but he left his hand there, dangling in space midway between them. “Did you need me for something?”

“I - I wanted you to … stay…” The last word was barely audible, and she wouldn't look at him.

“I'm just going to speak with Auror Falworth for a bit. I'll be right back, I promise.”

He moved away from her then, and followed Hermione out of the room, but not without giving Eleanor one more reassuring look before the door closed behind him.

Auror Falworth led them across the hall to what looked like a small meeting room, interrupting a Healer's approach to Eleanor's room, and gesturing for her to join them as well.

“Healer Desai is presiding over Eleanor's case,” he informed them.

“Hermione,” the petite woman acknowledged, shifting the stack of parchments in her arms.

“Shravana,” Hermione murmured in response. Harry offered his obligatory - and unnecessary - introduction, shaking Healer Desai's hand, as she gave him the usual yes, I know look in return.

“I gather Healer Granger's brought you up to speed?” Falworth addressed Harry, who nodded in reply. “I wanted to assure you that we are doing everything to locate the wizards or Muggles who implemented this operation. We have a few people detained, and I expect to receive the authorization to use Veritaserum by this evening.” He opened his accordion file, which expanded to cover most of the tabletop, and pulled out a sheaf of parchment. “Healer Granger did seem to indicate that the two of you would consider having the child adopted. The Intercessor gave me the paperwork, and this can be drawn up as soon as you would wish. It can be kept quite confidential. Would you want to have your personal solicitor contacted?” He was withdrawing several quills.

“Healer Granger was misinformed.” Harry's voice was cool. Hermione flinched; the use of her surname stung.

“I see.” Auror Falworth's eyebrows arched upward in surprise. “So the two of you have decided to … ” His gaze encompassed both of them.

“I've decided. I'm her father; how she came to be is irrelevant to me. Is she here for treatment, or can she go? Is there something I need to sign? She doesn't like it here.”

“We've done everything in our power to make her comfort -” Healer Desai rushed to the defense of her ward.

“Her childhood and mine share quite a few similarities. I can tell that she doesn't want to be here. It may be a different door, but it's still a door.” Everyone but Hermione expressed bafflement at that incomprehensible statement.

“There are several tests that we haven't finished running, but your daughter is uninjured, and I'm sure you could - ”

“Tests?” There was an undertone in Harry's voice that Hermione recognized as dangerous. “The first things out of her mouth when we walked in her room are about needle people and potions that make her hallucinate, and you're conducting more tests?”

“She's still considered a ward of the Ministry, and we are only - ”

“Where is the paperwork?” Harry thrust his hand out peremptorily for a quill. “I'll sign it right now, and I'll - ” Wordlessly, Auror Falworth slid the appropriate piece of parchment toward him, and he signed it, while muttered phrases like “any common human decency” and “treat her like a lab rat” reached their ears.

“Mr. Potter,” Healer Desai finally broke through his ire to catch hold of his attention. “I would respectfully ask you to reconsider. These tests are not invasive or painful. And while perhaps, given your daughter's background, the situation might be less than ideal, she is largely a mystery to us. She is showing signs of extraordinarily advanced telepathy - we don't know why. We've never seen anything like it before. It should be impossible at her age, and would be rare at any age. Besides that, we need to determine if anything else was done to her. We need to know if there will be any long-term damage from the signs of chronic potion usage that we've seen. For her well-being and to have her case solved, these tests are necessary.”

Auror Falworth backed her up. “The Magical Forensics department is studying the bracelet we found on her. There is some evidence that it worked to repress magic, but she was freely exhibiting her telepathy when we freed her, with the bracelet still on. I've also got people looking for the - what did you call her, Healer Granger? - the gestational carrier - perhaps she had a bond with the child, and she'd be willing to tell us something. I've got people looking at the books on Magical Records down at the Ministry, to see if we can garner any additional clues to her origin. I can only imagine what you're feeling right now, Mr. Potter, but it would be most helpful if you were to continue to work with us.”

Harry managed a somewhat curt nod, with the barest hint of conciliation flickering in his eyes.

“I would be a sorry parent if what's best for Eleanor did not immediately become my first concern. If this is to help her, or to find out who did this to her, then you'll have my cooperation. The first hint that it's to … satisfy someone's scientific curiosity…” His expression indicated what he did not say.

“If she'll stay here the night, she can leave with you tomorrow, and anything else we need can be done on an outpatient basis.” Healer Desai seemed appreciative to get that much from him.

“And the Aurors will certainly keep you apprised of the investigation's progress. We are certainly treading new ground in this case… as, apparently are you,” he added after a beat.

After Falworth had left, and Desai had excused herself to check on Eleanor, Harry made to follow the healer back to his daughter's room, but was blocked by a bone-crushing hug and a mass of curly hair.

“Not that I don't always love your hugs, Hermione, but - ”

“I don't know if I've ever felt so proud of you, and so ashamed of myself at one time before,” she murmured, her voice muffled into his shoulder.

“Hermione - ” he began to demur, always hating to hear someone run her down, even if it was herself.

“You're right. Of course you're right. How can we not take her? How could - I mean, you couldn't very well sit by and - after all she's been through, and - I couldn't believe it, the way she talked about what they did to her… mind-altering, and - and just filling her up with potions and sitting back and watching what they did to her… it - it made me so angry, and - and sad - and then you - you were so good with her, you seemed to know just how to reach out to her, and I realized that was because you'd been there, just where she is, alone… and unwanted. And it all - it's all so - I don't know what we're going to do, Harry. I don't know how we'll arrange it, or what we'll tell people, or - or what to say to the Weasleys, and I - it just - ” Hermione finally lost steam, and sniffled noisily into his shoulder.

“Ick. Geroff me, Granger!” He pushed at her playfully, and his grin took any potential sting out of his words. “I don't know how we'll handle all the details either, but I do know that if it's you and me facing just about anything this world could dish out - well, I'd lay money on the two of us just about any day of the week.”

“Well,” she managed drily, groping for her usual equanimity, “I've always said I didn't think you had much sense.”

Harry reflected on the long, obstacle-ridden road they'd been traveling since they became friends so many years ago. His eyes flickered with nostalgia for an instant, and then glinted with amusement, as they walked back to Eleanor's room.

“Yeah…” he mused. “But thank God for that.”

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The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Six: Life Rearranged

Harry slid out of Eleanor's hospital room some hours later, moving even as the door shut with a decisive click. He had promised the little girl that he would be back later that night, would make sure he was present when she awakened the next morning. She had the wide-eyed, stoic look of someone who wanted desperately to cry, but either didn't know how to go about it, or feared that there would negative consequences if she did.

Once the door shut, Harry let a muffled curse escape his lips, as he ran both hands through his hair, shoulders slumping with fatigue. Hermione had preceded him into the hallway, and stood quietly consulting with Healer Desai over Eleanor's chart.

“Can - can someone stay with her - until I get back, I mean?” Harry blurted suddenly, catching the full attention of both women. The question was directed to Desai, and Hermione stood silently, seeming, as she had done thus far, content to let Harry take the lead. “I - I just hate to think of her shut in that room by herself. I - I can feel how much she hates it, and how terrified she really is, and how she's been… conditioned to - to show nothing of what she's feeling on the inside, and I - ” He was thinking of the cupboard under the stairs, and the mute compliance, and the desperate need to please, and the fear that he would do something wrong without even realizing it. He voiced none of that in front of the Healer, but he could tell that Hermione had deduced all of it, and then some, by the look on her face.

“We can certainly have an Intercessor sit with her, Mr. Potter, if you'd like.” Healer Desai's words were carefully measured. Harry wondered if he was being humored, and then found that he really didn't care. He began to feel that monumental decisions were pressing in on him, that people were watching, judging, that he was going to fail them all… He wasn't sure he'd felt that kind of alarm since the conclusion of the Final Battle.

“Thank you. I'd really appreciate it.” His voice proceeded calmly from his mouth, but his eyes had already telegraphed his impending panic. Hermione had crossed the tiled corridor, and looped her arm through his in one smooth motion.

“Let's go, Harry.” He realized with faint annoyance that she was using her Healer's voice on him. “We'll go back to your flat, make sure things are set up properly, floo Ron and Ginny, and order in pizza.” Her voice was a little too bright; it sounded brittle, like spider-webbed glass, as if her entire facade would crumble into a thousand pieces if overly jostled.

“I'm not one of your patients, Hermione,” he sniped at her, as they made their way back toward the lifts at the far end of the ward.

“Imagine my gratitude,” she replied blandly, drawing another accusing glare from him. She waited until the lift doors closed around them, before pouncing. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Silence. He hated Hermione's knowing stares… the ones that were calm and unruffled and regarded you with a kind of superior placidity. I've got all day, they generally seemed to say, I know what's going on, and I can wait as long as it takes until you talk to me about it.

“Well, Hermione,” he finally ventured, sarcasm so heavy in his voice that it cracked. “I can't imagine what would bloody well be wrong! We've got to go explain a completely bizarre situation to our significant others, and then I'm going to have a daughter that I didn't even know about prior to today come and live with me, and I have no idea what in the hell I'm even supposed to do! I mean - taking Teddy to the zoo every now and then or letting him have doughnuts for dinner while we watch Disney movies in the living room is not exactly like being a real parent, is it? Not to mention the possibility that there is some nutter out there engineering people, and I'm not convinced that the fact that they chose us in particular is irrelevant.” He darted a glance at her, arching his dark brows, clearly waiting for her to say something like I told you so.

“Thank you, Harry,” she breathed softly and unexpectedly, sliding a little closer to him, and leaning her cheek against his shoulder. He snorted in self-deprecating amusement.

“Whatever for?”

“For being human.” At his questioning look, she continued, “for not being St. Harry, the guardian of those in need of rescue… at least not all the time. Besides, don't all new fathers go through something like this? Do you remember how nervous Bill was the day Victoire was born?” He made a dissenting noise that seemed to indicate that that situation was not quite the same. She leaned into him once more, nudging him with her cheek and shoulder and arm. “I may not always be sure about your reasoning, but I've always been sure about your heart. Eleanor is a very lucky little girl to have you as a father. And it - it might be hard, but…you know I'm with you, right?”

He bussed the top of her head, as the lift disgorged them out into the lower hallway.

“You always are… and it occurs to me that I probably don't thank you enough for it.”

“Probably?” She drawled sarcastically, and he poked her in the side, making her yelp and dance sideways away from him. He waited just inside the Employee's entrance, while she retrieved her bag, thinking about how much everything had changed since she arrived at the testing field to drop this bombshell on him.

“I should Floo Brig,” he said suddenly. “I mean, I guess I could bring Eleanor to Clampshaven with me, but I'm probably going to need a couple of days off anyway.”

“Harry, don't - ” Hermione started, but Harry had already gone around the corner to the alcove where she knew Bronwyn's office was tucked away. She heard Harry's voice, chummy and overly jovial.

“Afternoon, Bronwyn. I hate to ask you this, but I am in desperate need of your fireplace. Work emergency - would you mind terribly?” Hermione could not make out Bronwyn's reply, but the timbre of her voice was high-pitched and fluttery. A moment later, the department Head came out into the common area where Hermione waited. Harry's best friend stifled a smirk and shook her head, feeling a interesting mixture of awe and disgust that Harry could barge in, kick someone out of her own office, and make her happy to do so.

“Hello, Bronwyn,”

“Harry needed to use my Floo,” Bronwyn informed her, in lieu of a greeting. Her face and neck were crimson in contrast with her cream-colored Administrative robes.

“So I hear.”

Harry rounded the corner scant minutes later, and Hermione didn't think he'd disclosed much information to Brig, not over an unsecured Floo connection, but some of his earlier agitation seemed to have left him, and his eyes were calmer.

“Thanks ever so, Bronwyn,” he said, smiling briefly at her before linking his arm with Hermione's and Apparating away with a small snap.

“She'll talk about that for weeks,” Hermione said in her best Lavender Brown imitation, her brown eyes glinting with teasing, as they appeared in the living room of Harry's flat. Harry's responding look was dour at best.

“So,” Harry tucked both hands into his back pockets, and his eyes flew over the contents of the room with the air of an experienced surveyor. “What do we do first?”

“If I were you, I'd start by unearthing that junk heap you call a spare bedroom. It's going to be hard for Eleanor to stay there, if you can't even find it.”

He cut her a mock glare of offense, and then theatrically performed a Point Me spell and trotted off in the direction that his wand had spun. The burble of her laughter that followed him like a forest brook tripping over smooth stones was heartening. He paused momentarily at the threshold, attempting to determine where he should begin. The room was not as unclean as it was cluttered. Harry generally used it as a depository for anything that did not otherwise have a place to go, figuring he'd “get to it later” - which he usually didn't.

“Shall I Floo Ron and Ginny?” Hermione's voice drifted down the hall, and the light memory of laughter was still within it. But Harry caught the deeper undercurrent as well, one of trepidation. He couldn't help but selfishly reflect that if she Flooed, then he wouldn't have to.

“Ginny finished up at the shop an hour ago, but Ron's class runs another two, doesn't it?” he called back, as he conjured up a Banishing Bin charmed for Waste Obliteration, and began sending stacks of fan mail that he'd never got around to opening into its gaping maw. He sorted out loose photographs, old ones from Colin and newer ones that Ginny had taken, storing them in a shoebox in the top of the closet. He shrank the Muggle treadmill that Seamus and Dean had bought him, mostly as a joke, and stored it on the top shelf as well.

“You're right.” He heard her sigh. “I'll go ahead and Floo Ginny, and then leave a message for Ron at the training desk that we're eating dinner here tonight.” He could hear the whoosh of green flames, and two feminine voices in conversation, as he hefted his drafting table, lodged conveniently in the most accessible corner, into the hallway, and then Levitated it into his bedroom. By the time, Hermione had accomplished her tasks, he had cleared out most of the floor space, and emptied out most of the closet.

He used magic to shift the furniture around, and then hit the entire room with a couple of particularly deft Carpet Cleaning and Dust Banishing charms. He was surveying the results with some measure of satisfaction, when Hermione ducked under his arm to look as well.

“Used the pair of them, did you?” She was grinning saucily at him.

“Why does that make you so happy? Because I actually do use them on occasion, or because you were the one who managed to get them to stick in my thick head?”

“I'm not sure who started that particular myth - if it's something you believe because you were told so as a child, or if you just act like it sometimes - I don't know, to make Ron feel better or something…” She chuckled lightly over her last words. “But, you, Harry Potter, do not have a `thick head'.” As she said the last phrase, she poked him in the side of the head, twice, just behind his ear. He would've have winced playfully away from her and said an insincere, “Ow!” Or grabbed her around the waist, and started tickling her…

But the pads of her fingers yielded and slid silkily through the strands of his hair instead, and the playful touch turned into an almost-caress. He hesitated, his brow furrowing, as he watched her with something like bemusement. She had a look on her face, the one she got when she was puzzling out a particularly tricky potions combination, as if she were trying to figure out where she'd seen him before.

“I think you should paint,” she announced abruptly, swirling away from him and breaking the contact. “A Color-Change charm would work, although it wouldn't last as long as actual paint. But by then, you could ask Eleanor what she wants.” The furniture included a bed, dresser, and night table, and the pieces were part of a mismatched set handed down from Bill and Fleur. Having as little interest in home decor as one might imagine, and yet still having a vague sense of obligation that a room ought to have furniture in it, Harry had been well pleased with the ease of the donation and its subsequent arrangement.

Hermione's wand was flashing rapidly now, as she worked on the rather battered wooden furnishings, tightening and polishing hardware and smoothing out nicks and cracks. In another instant, she had changed the walls to a soothing pale purple, and then set all the furniture neatly into place, finally using a switching spell to change the bedding.

“She'll need clothes… perhaps a comforter for the bed… some toys and books, of course…”

“Oh, of course,” Harry mocked the off-hand tone when she referenced books.

“We should be able to do that tomorrow, but it'll have to wait until I finish my shift… would that work for you?”

“Erm…I guess,” Harry floundered slightly. The looming sensation was beginning to crest again. He had not thought so far ahead. Hermione noticed immediately; her eyes flickered with guilt.

“Harry, I'm sorry. I'm running roughshod over whatever you might have planned or want to do, aren't I? Ron is always fussing at me for taking charge, without so much as a by-your-leave.” Something shadowy flitted across her face - the same something that had worried him so during their lunchtime jaunt to the ice cream parlor.

“Hermione, I'm not afraid of admitting that I'm pants at details. And I know - I know - ” He wrapped his hands around her upper arms, and peered intently into her face. “ - that when you take charge, it is because you care about the person involved. I'm glad you care enough about me - and about Eleanor - to worry about the details. Ron should feel that way too.”

There was a veiled and unintentional slight toward Ron enclosed in the way he spoke the last sentence. He heard it, as it exited his mouth. She heard it, and hastened to clarify to him that that was not at all what she meant. But her explanatory words were cut off by the flare of the Floo, and Harry knew Ginny had just arrived.

He let go of Hermione, kneading the muscles of her upper arms lightly as he released them, and moved toward the door, his stomach pushing its way up into his throat. She caught his hand between her fingers in a quick squeeze. It's going to be okay, she mouthed, but he could see the uncertainty banked in the depths of her dark eyes.

Ginny expressed surprise in the redecoration of the spare room, and was somewhat dubious over the color choice. Harry implied without actually saying so that Hermione couldn't stand even knowing the spare room was there in such a state, and had bullied him into doing something with it. They sent for the pizza, and Hermione and Ginny Apparated down to a nearby wizarding market for drinks and dessert.

All too soon, Ron's lanky form materialized in the fireplace, and they were seated on the floor around the low coffee table, two large pizza boxes open in the center. Harry looked at his slice with distaste, unsure whether or not he'd even be able to swallow. The silence stretched out for so long that awkwardness began to seep in the cracks.

“All right, what gives?” Ginny finally asked, washing down a bite with a swig of butterbeer. “Hermione looks as tense as bird in a bludger shop.” Harry jerked his gaze up to look at Hermione with surprise, having thought she looked quite calm and collected. She offered him a faint reassuring smile, and patted his hand under the table.

“Hermione came to the Clampshaven field today,” Harry started slowly, scratching absently at the back of his neck, as he cast about for the right words to use. “Seems there were Aurors at St. Mungo's, and they needed to find me. You see, there - there was a raid at a … at kind of an illegal research facility - ”

“I heard about that raid,” Ron interrupted, genuine interest obvious in his voice. “Falworth ran it - a good bloke, he is - must have been a big deal. Usually, they go over all the ongoing cases during the daily briefing… but they've been playing this one really close to their robes.”

“Well, they - they found a little girl, about 5 years old, left behind in a cell at that facility, and - and she'd been experimented on; they'd pumped her full of potions and seen what magic she evidenced.” There were exclamations of shock and horror from the Weasley siblings.

“But why were they looking for you, Harry?” Ginny put in, leaning toward him with entreating eyes. “You got out of the Auror game quite a while ago.”

“I'm not sure you could say I was ever truly in it.” Harry had gotten into the training class with Ron, and about six weeks in, had discovered that he genuinely had no desire to continue those kinds of battles for the rest of his life. He'd run into Brig's son at Quality Quidditch Supplies the next day… and the rest was history. Hermione nudged him in the shin with the toe of her trainer, and snapped him from his reverie. “The Aurors were looking for me because the… ” One more deep breath. One more glance at Hermione. “Because the little girl belongs to me.”

The silence in Harry's flat was complete. Ginny and Ron both stared at him, as if waiting for him to give them the punch line.

“Be - belongs to you?” Ginny said in a voice without comprehension, faint anger lacing the edges. “That's crazy. They know who you are - surely it isn't that far-fetched that someone would claim - ”

“They did an Origination Spell at St. Mungo's, Ginny,” Hermione broke in softly. “Harry's pattern is on file there. I reviewed it myself.”

“How - how did that - how could you - ” Ginny almost gasped the words, as if her lungs could not get enough air to voice them properly. Her eyes were filling with tears, but her face was reddening. Harry figured it was anybody's guess as to whether sadness or anger would win out.

“You need to listen to the whole story, Gin - ” Harry's eyes were beseeching. He tried to take hold of her hand; she jerked away from his touch, as if he would burn her. “It's not what you're thinking…”

“Well… explain it to me then, by all means!” The clog of tears was evident in her voice. “Was it my sixth year, then? When you were supposed to be in school, but were gallivanting all over Merlin-knows-where? Who - ” Ginny's face was suffusing Weasley-red, but she was fighting for a semblance of control. “Who's her mother?”

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance of dread. It suddenly seemed that they had gone about this all wrong; suddenly they were faced with the million-galleon question, before they had been able to share the unusual Muggle science behind the odd situation.

“I - I - I am.” Hermione tried a couple of times before her voice actually came out properly. “But it didn't happen like that. You both have to listen.” She had been watching Ginny, who still looked like she was having difficulty breathing.

Heavy footfalls and the sound of Harry's door slamming decisively startled the other three out of their horrified trance, the tense and mangled emotions like a pea-soup fog around them. Harry jumped as if he'd been hit with a Stinging Hex.

Ron was gone.

Hermione was on her feet in the next instant, and out the door in the instant after that. Harry's door slammed again.

She did not return.

That surprised Harry, and when the feelings of hurt began to creep in, he tried to dismiss them. Of course she went after him - this is not like during the Horcrux Hunt. She'll be back later. He needs to hear the truth; she'll tell him, and then she'll be back. Besides, she said she's with me on this, and she has never broken a promise to me. Then why did it chafe him so that she'd gone after her fiance? But he couldn't think about that at present; there were more pressing issues pending. He looked back at his angry, confused, and shell-shocked girlfriend. He took her hand, and this time she did not resist.

“Please don't leave, Ginny. You've got to hear what really happened. I swear I am telling you the unvarnished truth…”

-->

Chapter Seven: Battle Lines Drawn

It seemed that Hermione could feel the impact of the sidewalk against the soles of her trainers jarring all the way up her back, as she pelted after Ron, nearly stumbling down the steps in her haste. She was just beginning to become seriously winded, when she caught sight of him. He was walking quickly, but smoothly, long, ground-eating strides, his head tucked down between two awkwardly hunched shoulders. He curved round to enter an alley, from which he could Apparate more privately, and she saw the exact moment that he noticed her pursuit: he stiffened briefly, as though he'd had a bolt of lightning jolt down his spine. Still, the check in his gait was all but infinitesimal.

She pressed herself harder, wishing she had tried harder to stay fit, ignoring the stabbing pain in her side, ignoring the startled glances of the people she was dodging. “Ron!” she called out between gasps, as she ducked into the alley. Her voice sounded as hopeless as her heart felt. “Ron! Wait!”

She was almost within arm's reach. If she lunged just a bit, she could catch him at the crook of his arm, she could… but something held her back. She couldn't do that to him, unsure of his ability to Apparate with an unexpected someone suddenly dangling off of him. And just that quickly, he was gone. She stood in the alley, chest heaving, arms akimbo, the warm and moist odor of refuse wafting around her.

Her mind clicked through a list of options in rapid succession, and she Apparated back to her own flat with hardly more noise than the crisp snapping of a twig. Using her own Floo as a base of operations, she checked his flat, the Burrow, his workplace, and George's shop, even as she discarded all of those places for being rather too obvious. She even made herself go to the pub and the Quidditch supply store, before telling herself sternly that she was grasping at straws.

In less than thirty minutes, she was sitting back in her little lounge, staring glumly at the merrily dancing flames. I wonder how Harry's doing with Ginny? she mused. At least, she stayed to hear him out. At the same time though, even while she despaired of Ron's reaction, she couldn't dredge up much shock. I knew this would happen. I know him better than almost anyone, and I knew…

And then inspiration struck her like a bolt from the blue. With the air of one fortifying herself, she dabbed two fingers at the dampness beneath her eyes, dusted off her Floo-stained shoulders, and made one cursory attempt to smooth her wild hair. She inhaled one deep steadying breath, before Apparating to St. Mungo's.

She strode gracefully out of the employee's locker room for what felt like the millionth time that day, and methodically moved through the various common areas of the hospital, surveying them in an efficient pattern. A pang of relief shot through her body like a spear thrust when she saw the splash of red hair at a corner table for two in the cafeteria. His very posture bespoke glumness; he was slumped over the cracked Formica as if he could divine secrets from it. He had his feet in the chair across from him, but removed them as she approached, without even really looking at her.

“Figures you'd find me,” he grunted, glancing at her briefly, and just as quickly dropping his gaze again.

“You really should've known I would,” she rejoined companionably. “Ron, I - ”

“Merlin knows why I came here. I wanted to see - I thought - but I should've known that anything involving Harry would be way above my pay grade.” There was the barest hint of a sneer when he said Harry's name that mightily discomfited Hermione. She pressed her lips together tightly, as she inhaled through her nose, trying to grasp onto some semblance of control, trying to remind herself that Ron had had a shock, that he was reacting as he always had when faced with something he did not wish to face.

“Ron, there is no need for this to change anything, not between you and me, not between you and Harry.”

“Are you daft, Hermione? This changes everything!”

“Why?” Her dark eyes entreated him; her voice so pleading that it cracked, dividing the short word into two syllables. “Harry and I are friends. Nothing more. The one who is changing things here is you. You didn't even let us explain.”

“What is there to explain?” Ron's voice was sullenly cruel. “I suppose I brought it on myself, didn't I? Ran off and left my best mate and the girl I loved when they needed me most. Abandoned them like the lowest kind of Slytherin coward, and deserved whatever I got in return, yeah? How long did you wait after I left?”

Hermione's nostrils flared with dismayed offense, as she visibly recoiled away from him. She felt color climb so high into her face that she thought she might combust right there in the cafeteria. If they hadn't been in so public a setting, she might have hit him.

“How dare you!?” she hissed. “How could you think that about me? About Harry? He's the - he's the single most - he - he loves you, Ron! You were his first friend, his brother. Even if he wanted to, and I've never seen the slightest indication of that - he - he wouldn't - and - and I wouldn't - ” She seemed to collect herself before she tumbled over the edge of sputtering incoherence, and resumed in a sadder tone: “It hurts, Ron, that you would think that of us. It did hurt when you left us, but I thought - I thought we'd moved past all that. Don't twist your guilt over that back onto Harry and me. We have never betrayed you. You always - whenever there's - ” She threw up both hands in utter exasperation. In a low, flat voice, she succinctly summarized the situation with Eleanor as she knew it to that point.

“There's a lot they don't know yet.” Some of the storm-cloudiness had faded from Ron's face as she spoke, but it was tinted with shame. “They must have done it while we recovered here after the battle. The Aurors have no idea who did it - or why.”

“Then why do you have to be involved at all? There's nothing really tying you to - you didn't even know about her! What would - ?”

“It's Harry,” Hermione cut him off with a shrug. “She's part of him, carries his blood… he's already claimed her as his - he did it when he'd only known about her for half an hour, just as simply as that. The people who did this chose Harry - chose me - for a reason. But I'll bet they aren't prepared to deal with a Harry who has decided to fully embrace the fatherhood that they forced on him.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?” She echoed, trying to sound natural, but feeling the heat rise in her cheeks.

“Harry has decided to do this. What about you? You're her - her mother…” Ron looked as if he were narrowly avoiding choking on the final word.

“I - I would've been inclined to approve adoption, but Harry was just - he was so sure… right away. I should've known what his reaction would be to the possibility of family. He's chosen this, and I … told him he'd have my support.”

“Support? What does that mean? What does it mean for us?” Some of Ron's ire, mixed with fear and not a little jealousy, had started to ooze back into his voice. She looked at him for a long time, and Ron would have given anything to have been able to read what was going on behind her eyes, the way - although he was loath to admit it - Harry always seemed able to.

“It means … it means that you need to come to terms with the fact that I have a child with another man. However that came to pass. Eleanor is our daughter, mine and Harry's, and we - what is your problem, Ron?” Ron had visibly flinched over Hermione's description of the child.

“This! You! You and Harry - all this `our' and `we' - and - I'm your - I'm your bloody fiancé, and it's like I'm this outsider looking in. You and Harry have always had this exclusive little circle, and now - and now this is just another thing I have no part in.”

“Of all the -- This is not about you! It's not even about Harry or me - not really. This is about a little girl who has been engineered into existence, who has been tested and tortured, but never been loved. Can you possibly get your head out of your arse long enough to ascertain that?! It's going to be a monumental change - that's certain enough. I was pretty bewildered at first. But Harry - he just decided - right then - that she was his and he wanted her. I thought - I thought maybe you'd love her too… just because she was mine.” Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to keep them at bay, trying to stifle a noisy sniff.

“Hermione…” Ron choked out in a rough voice. He reached across to take her hand, but she jerked it off the table, beyond his reach.

“Can't you - can't you just once… process something, think through all the aspects of something, before flying off your broom handle?”

“Of course! Because I'm sure, in all the time we've known him, Harry has never had a knee-jerk reaction to unpleasant news!”

“I've never once claimed that Harry was not impetuous - but he generally acts out of love, not out of jealousy or fear - You immediately assume the worst about people - about people you supposedly love.”

“I cannot tell you how bleeding tired I am of being compared to Harry!” Ron's voice started out at a low rumble, but crescendoed enough to begin drawing attention from neighboring tables.

“You started it!”

“The hell I did! That's all I've bloody well heard since I first met you! Harry doesn't think that - … Harry wouldn't -… if Harry were here, he'd - ”

“That's not true,” she whispered, horribly stung at his bitter words, part of her wondering if it was true. “I - I don't do that. We both know that Harry has issues like anyone else.”

“Yes, but when Harry has problems, it's because he had a stunted childhood, or has abandonment issues, or lived with the threat of death for too long. When I've got a problem, it's because I'm a jealous, suspicious prick, who - ”

“If the shoe fits…” Hermione trailed off with airy nastiness.

“You are the single most infuriating bird I have ever had the misfortune to meet!”

“And yet, you want to marry me?” She cocked her head to one side, in mock befuddlement. “That doesn't make very much sense, Ronald.” She took a moment of fiendish pleasure to appreciate the way the angry color drained from his face.

“Hermione, I - ”

“I can't even look at you right now! I don't know why I keep hoping that you'll behave differently. Owl me when you're ready to be a rational adult.” She stood, with as much dignity as she could muster, and exited the cafeteria, trying her hardest to ignore the ripple of murmurs that arose in her wake. She did not look back.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The silence in her flat was dense and total. Hermione had curled into the smallest ball possible on the far end of her slouchy sofa, holding a book in which she had not turned a page for the last half hour. She had cried so much that her eyes felt dry and tight, and a headache throbbed a steady drumbeat in her temples.

The bad times are kind of tiresome, she recalled her words to Harry from earlier. Tiresome, she thought sardonically. After the kind of day she'd had, that seemed like a colossal understatement. Her mother had always told her that there were some things worth fighting for, that things dearly bought, with difficulty and perseverance, were the things worth the most. She had thought she believed those things, her time in the war seemed to prove it. But perhaps she was wrong in categorizing her relationship with Ron as one of those things. Is Ron worth fighting for? It seems that I'm always fighting with him, not for him. And do I really appreciate my hard-won…misery? She twisted her engagement ring around her finger, watching the stone sparkle in the puddle of lamplight that spilled on the end table.

When the Floo roared to life, it startled her badly. She bit back a yelp, watching as her book tumbled end over end off of her lap and across the floor, landing with a thwack near the low stone hearth. Harry flopped out of the fireplace in his usual ungainly fashion, and narrowly missed tripping over the fallen tome, before picking it up and handing it back to her.

“I didn't mean to scare you.” His hair was a tousled mess over brows crinkled in apology, as he surveyed his best friend, flattened against her sofa cushions, trying to regulate her breathing.

“Believe me, Harry,” Hermione said hoarsely, in an attempt at a wry tone. “Nothing you could do to me could make this evening worse.”

“Went badly, did it?”

“You could say that.” There was a beat of silence, and Harry sat down next to her on the sofa, slinging his arm along the back of it. “Where's Ginny?”

“Dunno.” His casual shrug did not fool Hermione in the slightest. “She Flooed out maybe an hour and a half ago. She might have gone to see her mum. She stayed… and listened, and seemed to understand… but she was - I don't know - in shock, I reckon. Said she needed to sort it out… but I'm not sure why she couldn't sort it out with me.”

“At least she listened to you…believed you. Ron was convinced that we've been carrying on a torrid affair since the Forest of Dean.”

“How did he find out?” Harry said in mock horror. His hand moved over the ridge of her shoulder, back and forth, comforting.

“That's not funny, Harry,” Hermione said, nonetheless snorting out a mirthless, tired laugh.

“I know… time and place, right?” There was a fatigued silence. Harry was absently winding the tip of his index finger into the cuff of Hermione's sleeve, while she stared glassily into middle distance. “Listen… Hermione I - I may have decided to bring Eleanor home, but it was never my intent to force my decision on you. If it's going to cause problems… you know I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, right?”

Hermione felt tears suffuse her eyes and burn her nose.

“You aren't hurting me, Harry. And I think this is the right thing to do. Ron and Ginny can make their own choices. They can either accept her … or …not.” She saw Harry shoot a concerned glance down toward her left hand.

“You and Ron - you didn't - ?”

“Not yet,” she prophesied glumly, and let her eyes drift shut. “God, I have such a headache. I hate crying.”

Harry pulled her closer to him, and kissed the top of her head.

“Why don't you go get into bed? I'll fix you some tea and a pain reliever.” She must have looked ready to protest, for Harry added, “Tomorrow's probably not going to be any less stressful.”

“You're probably right. Shut up, Harry,” she tacked on, when he teased her by looking around like he had just received favor from heaven.

“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah,” she half-grinned at him tiredly, as she shuffled toward her bedroom. “I know.”

AN - I have no worthy excuses for the unconscionable delay, and am utterly ashamed of myself. But here this is, and chapter 10 of “Shadow Walker” is close to completion. I abjectly petition you for your forgiveness…

--lorien829

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Chapter Eight: Bond Sundered

Harry became dimly and gradually aware of the muscles in his neck pulling uncomfortably, even as his cheek rebounded off of his shoulder and propelled his head unceremoniously into an upright position.

“Ow…” he muttered to himself, rubbing at the offending musculature, and taking a half-second to remember where he was. Judging by the pearly gray light outside the window and the utter hush in the rear of the flat, it was nearing dawn, but still quite early. He tried to recall what time Hermione usually got up in the mornings - whether he was awake ahead of her usual daybreak routine, or whether he should be concerned about possible effects of yesterday's news.

He stood up slowly, rolling his shoulders and stretching out the kinks that came from spending the night semi-upright on a sofa. He cursed under his breath, wishing he had recognized how sleepy he was and Flooed back home before he had gotten all crunched up. He padded down the hall in his sock feet, and availed himself of Hermione's loo, hearing nothing from the cracked door that showed only a sliver of a darkened room.

Harry checked the clock in the kitchen, decided that he would give her ten more minutes, and puttered around in her cabinets, putting the coffee on and pulling out the sugar, bread, and marmalade. He had returned to the sofa with a cup of tea, and the intent to search for the missing mate to his right shoe - toed off at some point during the night - when the Floo blazed up, casting a sickly green-gray light over the dim living area.

“There you are!” He said with an air of triumph, as the tips of his fingers caught the heel of the shoe under the sofa and fished it out. He uncurled himself to look straight up into Ron Weasley's bewildered -- and increasingly irate - face. Harry's eyes darted from the fireplace to Ron to his cup of tea to the kitchen, where the sound of percolating coffee bubbled clearly, to the shoe dangling in his left hand.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ron was all rising belligerence.

“Putting on my shoes?” Harry shot back.

“At half six?”

“Was I supposed to wait until seven?” His voice was purposefully snide, and he could just imagine Hermione's disapproving frown as he let his irritation get the best of him. Ron said something that he would never have uttered in front of his mum.

“Did you - after I left that day?” Ron sputtered. He wasn't more specific, but he didn't have to be. “Tell me the truth, Harry. If you were ever my mate, tell me! Did you and Hermione ever - ?”

“Ron, you are unbelievable! The amount of faith that you have in us is staggering, truly. I know what you saw - that night we got the sword - but I thought it was from that dark corner of your mind, you know, one of those thoughts you hate yourself for even thinking, the ones the Horcrux wanted to exploit. But you're still thinking that - without even any murderous evil wizard's magic to blame!” He shoved his feet into his shoes, without untying them, and stood up to face Ron. “If Hermione and I fell in love, why do you think we would keep that from you? Why do you think we would decide that misleading everyone and lying to all our close friends and family would be a good idea? And don't you think that around nine months from the time you left that people would start noticing something?”

“Surely you didn't spend all that time in the Gryffindor Quidditch locker room and not figure out that there are ways to cover those things up? As innovative a witch as Hermione is…”

“Didn't. Happen.” Harry's voice was flat, refusing to let himself be sidetracked. “I know Hermione had to have explained it to you - about the hospital, the genetic engineering, the…material that was taken from us. I know you're not so thick as to be standing here in the flat of my best friend and your fiancee, calling her a liar.”

Faced with such a bald statement, Ron was clearly flummoxed. Harry could see that he did not really think that Hermione was a liar, that he would never call her one, that he would hex anyone who did… but he was unsure what to do with the paradigm shift that meant the whole bizarre story was true.

He took a step closer to Ron, gripped his shoulder, shook it slightly. His green eyes met Ron's conflicted blue ones as squarely as he could make them.

“This changes nothing.” Ron flinched at Harry's unwitting echo of Hermione. “We're not cutting you out to start our own family. I'm not making any moves. Through an insane set of circumstances, Hermione and I are parents. We are trying to act in the best interests of an abused child. You - and Ginny - are adults. You need to act like it.”

“Is it really in the girl's best interests?” Ron asked, regaining enough equilibrium to ask legitimate questions, though the undertone was still somewhat confrontational. “To live with a single bloke in his early 20s? I know you have a good job, but who's going to watch her while you're at work? Hermione's hours are ridiculous. Why not give her to a nice Wizarding couple who are married and settled down and ready for children?”

“I may be a `single bloke in his early 20s', but I know how to cook and my flat isn't a health hazard. I've kept Teddy on my own loads of times! I was thinking Molly could watch her like she watches Victoire for Fleur and Bill, but if not, then I'll hire someone… After the childhood I had, I think I am pretty well-versed in how not to treat a small child. Don't you remember - don't you remember how it felt when Bill and Percy tried to talk you out of going through Auror training, especially after I quit? The training's been hard, hasn't it? But won't it be worth it in the end? I can do this, Ron. She's my daughter. I want to do this.”

Harry suddenly noticed Hermione standing quietly in the hallway, smiling mistily at him and dabbing tears out from under her eyes. Ron was standing in the wrong position to see her peripherally, and so muttered,

“Fine, you want to do this. But do you have to drag Hermione down with you?”

“Drag her down where?” Harry cried in exasperation, but his words were mostly lost under the first frenzied words of Hermione's tirade. She marched toward them resolutely, her corkscrew hair flying wildly behind her, eyes flashing, and looking pretty damned intimidating for someone in Mickey Mouse pajamas.

“Ronald Weasley! I am not a piece of luggage to be dragged anywhere! Why do you persist in believing that I am not doing any of this of my own free will?”

“Because you're not!! You're doing this because it's Harry. If it was anyone else… But Harry - I don't know, he's got this hold over you or something. It's just like when we were looking for horcruxes. You stayed with him.”

“You have got to get over this inferiority complex about Harry! It's so… it's so damned …” Hermione shook her head wildly in frustration, angered into incoherence, tears streaking down her flushed cheeks. Ron crossed his arms and looked resolute, though his ears were on fire.

“If it comes down to me or him, you choose him. You always have chosen him. And this time is no different.”

“Have you ever stopped to consider, Ronald, that I have `chosen' Harry in these situations because he is right? You don't care at all about the reasons I chose to side with him; you simply can't stomach the fact that I chose to side with him! It's a funny attitude to have considering he's your best friend! And you've neglected to mention the times I did choose you, the most important time being when I agreed to be your wife!” Harry's gaze zig-zagged back and forth, as if he were watching a Quidditch match with two sides of particularly adept Chasers. He wondered if he could make it into the kitchen undetected, but then figured he'd still be forced to hear everything from there anyway.

“I'm sure it was only because Harry didn't ask,” Ron snapped, and his voice was so cutting that Harry was completely taken aback. Hermione staggered backwards three or four steps, mouth agape, and one hand spread over her breastbone. Harry made an abrupt motion toward her, but then arrested it, fairly sure that he would only make things worse.

“It - I can't be - believe - how - how - you - ” Hermione squeaked out disjointed words, and looked like she was only seconds away from hyperventilating. Harry had never seen her so angry; he thought she was wringing her hands, until he saw her right hand acting on her left with an almost violent jerking motion. And then she was flinging something small at Ron's head. It whizzed past his ear, bounced off the wall, and landed in front of the fireplace with a musical ping.

Harry and Ron realized what it was at the same time, and Harry watched his best mate's face melt into ineffable regret. Hermione wrapped her arms around herself, hunching her shoulders with wracking sobs, and whirled away from them. She wrenched open the door to her bathroom, plunged inside, and slammed it with such force that two pictures fell from the wall in the hallway.

Harry was following her path before he really knew what he was doing, managing to twist the doorknob in the millisecond before she cast the locking spells on it. He heard the hardware inside the knob crunch together loudly, as her magic collided with his, and felt the handle almost fall off in his grasp.

Hermione was sitting on the lid of the closed toilet, folded almost in half, wild hair flowing over her knees and completely obscuring her face from view. Harry opened his mouth to say her name, guilt for the whole situation hammering painfully in his chest, but he was interrupted by an anguished pounding on the door.

“Hermione,” came Ron's voice, obviously agonized, even when muffled. “Hermione, please…”

Harry made sure his wand was easily accessible, and turned back toward the door. He opened the door gingerly, as the door handle was decidedly no longer serving its purpose. He kept his face impassive as he looked at Ron, well aware of the other man's half a head advantage over him in height.

“I think you should leave now.”

“Harry, I didn't mean - you've got to let me fix this - ”

“You've done enough, Ron.”

“And what gives you the right to - ” As quickly as Ron's anger had abated, it began to rekindle.

“Being her best friend gives me the right! I've known her for as long as you have… and I have never made her cry like that.” Even in the midst of the argument, he felt an inkling of sympathy for his male best friend, and made a concerted effort to soften his voice. “You should go. Before anyone says anything else to make this situation worse. Let everyone just calm down… and we can revisit this later.” Harry suppressed a cringe; he sounded like that annoying Mind-Healer that Molly Weasley kept insisting that everyone talk to after the war.

The fight seemed to drain out of Ron, and leave him completely emptied. He looked as defeated as Harry had ever seen him.

“Fine…” he said, and repeated an even more subdued, “fine… I'll go. I'll - I'm so sorry, Hermione.” He directed his last sentence over Harry's shoulder, and it echoed cavernously off of the tiled walls. Hermione's whole body was still vibrating with sobs, and she did not appear to hear him at all.

Harry smiled at Ron, a tight, not particularly wholesome smile, and then he gently, but firmly, closed the door in Ron's face. He made no move toward Hermione, but stood silently by the jamb until he heard the noise of the Floo.

As soon as the whoosh of the flames faded away, he turned toward his other best friend, her cries now dwindled to soft sniffles and hiccups. He handed her a tissue, as he knelt beside her, watching with pained eyes as she wiped at her swollen, wet face and runny nose.

“I guess I'm not engaged anymore,” she said, in a broken, wistful voice that was a shadow of its normal self.

“Now, wait! You don't know that. There isn't anything that's beyond repair. You know that Ron doesn't really think that - ”

“Then he shouldn't have said it!” Hermione rapped out sharply. “You shouldn't say things that you don't mean.”

Harry abruptly changed tack, half-wondering why he fell back into his old habits of defending Ron. He reached up one hand to pull her snarled curls away from her face, then rested it lightly on her back.

“I'm so sorry he hurt you.” He spoke as sincerely as he knew how. “I caused this whole situation, and I am heartily sorry.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Harry,” Hermione sniffed. “You didn't do anything.”

“I decided to keep Eleanor. I didn't think about how it would affect the people closest to us. I just assumed that you would help me, as you always have. I just - I keep bloody well needing you, and dragging you into my problems, and - well, it's nearly gotten you killed before, and now, when you should be able to live your life on your own terms, here I am again, throwing your life into utter disarray.”

“I am living life on my own terms. Those terms include you. They always will. And if they include you, then they include your decisions - your choices - and they include Eleanor. No questions asked, not anymore.”

Harry bowed his head, one elbow in her lap, one on his raised knee, hands clasped. He could still see the flutter of gold - like a Snitch - as Hermione's engagement ring arced across the room; he could still see the sickened, gray look on Ron's face as he realized what he'd said, what he'd done.

“Harry… Harry, look at me…please…” Her fingers were beneath his chin, trying to force his head to tilt up. He resisted the first couple of attempts, but the tears were back in her voice, and he'd never been able to stand seeing her upset. He relaxed the muscles in his neck, and let her move him.

She smiled through her tears when she could meet his eyes, and he wondered if she was reading his mind.

“You didn't do this. You didn't cause Ron to react the way he did. You are not the reason he is unable to face a future where he might not be my first priority. You did not make me act like a complete child, and throw my ring… We are adults, you know. Even when we don't act like them.” Her dark eyes grew distant and sad, seeing through him, past him. “And when we make our decisions, we have to face the consequences.” It all sounded so final. Panic was a vise around Harry's heart, a drumbeat in his temples.

“Please don't break up with him because of me.” It was a question borne of quiet desperation, of deeply embedded guilt. He felt that he had been forcing people in directions they would not go, if left to their own devices, and sometimes to their detriment, even death, ever since he was a child.

“Honestly!” She said it without any of her usual heat. “This isn't about you. I had to - I had to tell… Ron… the very same thing yesterday.” She swallowed hard, and he saw her jaw quiver with repressed tears. “This is… it's about what Eleanor needs; it's about what I need. I'm not - I won't shut the door completely on a relationship with Ron, but he - he is going to have to seriously think about what he truly wants from one. And … and it's not as if this is a walk in the park for me… or for you! And Ron just instantly focuses on how things are difficult for him, and I - ” Her voice rose in volume and timbre, as her ire began to overpower her regret. And, just as quickly, the house of cards that was her recovered composure collapsed, and she seemed to wilt. “I could just kill him right now. I hate him for making me feel this way.”

Harry reached for her then, and she came into his arms without hesitation. He shifted so that he was sitting on the floor, his back against the cabinet and his legs outstretched, and pulled her into his lap. He kissed the top of her head, leaned his cheek against it, as she sniffled into the shoulder of his shirt.

“Ron is an idiot,” he said frankly, and an unbidden laugh slipped from her mouth into the crook of his neck. “But he's our idiot. And deep down, you know he loves you. And I love you. So - so we'll think about Eleanor… we'll focus on her. And we'll face this together, like we've faced everything else in the last twelve years.”

“You're right,” Hermione said hoarsely, sitting up a little straighter, and smearing her tears across her face with the crumpled tissue in her hand. He could practically see her mentally assembling an action plan. “I can do this. We can do this.” He kissed her again, this time hitting her temple, and she closed her eyes at his touch.

“The coffee's on.” He maneuvered to help her stand, and then stood up himself. “I'm going back to my place to take a shower, and then - should I come back here? Or just meet you at St. Mungo's?” At the thought of bringing Eleanor home, his eyes alit with a kind of nervous energy. His stance was twitchy; he was balancing most of his weight on the balls of his feet.

Hermione darted a hesitant look at him, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Why don't you come back here? We can have breakfast. It feels - it feels right to start this together… since we're in this together.” Harry's resulting smile reached his eyes for the first time since Ron came through the Floo.

“Sounds perfect.” He cupped her cheek with one hand, dandling his finger tips at her hairline briefly, before sliding his fingers down to chuck her chin. “Half an hour?”

“Make it an hour.”

He heard the shower turn on as he closed the door, the sad knob hanging by one wobbly screw. A Reparo spell shored it up a bit, but Harry figured the whole thing would have to be replaced. A metallic gleam caught his eye, as he tossed the Floo powder into the flames, and he reached down to pick up Hermione's ring, forgotten where it had landed on the edge of the hearth. He picked it up, tucked it into his pocket, and headed home.

He whistled a bit as he stepped out of the Floo, taking care not to inhale any leftover soot. It did strange painful things to his heart to see Hermione so undone, especially when she was usually so strong and independent. But the impending visit to Eleanor, and the anticipation of her reaction when she found out she was going to have a home, a real home and a family, was starting to drive the rift between Hermione and Ron to the back of his mind.

The jaunty tune died on his puckered lips, when he saw his girlfriend curled up in the wing chair, looking as if she had been there for awhile. He could feel the weight of her gaze move the length of him, taking in the rumpled clothes that were the same ones he'd worn the day before. Her eyes were unfathomable, and Harry incongruously felt like he'd been caught out doing something wrong.

“I came to talk about it,” Ginny said.

AN - Eleanor will be back in the next chapter. It would have been this chapter, but Ron and Hermione will insist on fighting all the time!

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Chapter Nine: Connection Forged

At Ginny's quiet statement, Harry paused, one foot hovering about an inch above the ground in mid-step for a moment, before he gathered himself enough to set it down next to its mate. His green eyes roved over her face, searching carefully for any sign that their relationship's equivalent to hurled engagement rings was in the offing. He swallowed once, hoping that it wasn't as audible as he thought it was. He had an hour before he was meeting Hermione for breakfast.

“Okay,” he drew out slowly, hesitantly. “I'm listening.”

She took a deep breath, the way a diver would before plunging off of a high platform. She lifted her bright brown gaze to his, quirked one eyebrow at him, and smiled.

“I'm in.”

“Pardon?” Harry was reeling. It wasn't even eight o'clock, and he felt as if he had already been on emotional roller coaster ride that day.

“I'm in,” she repeated, a little more emphatically, struggling to keep the laughter out of her voice. “In this… with you. For your daughter.” She snickered at the pole-axed look on his face. “Harry, what did you expect me to say?”

“I - I dunno,” he mumbled, toeing at the ground with one shoe. “To tell me that I was being silly, or that I hadn't thought this out, or - or accuse me of having secret affairs with Hermione…”

Ginny laughed. It was musical and lovely in the early morning stillness of his flat, though Harry was fairly sure there was something implicitly insulting to Hermione in it. Before he could give voice to that niggling feeling, it was swamped under a wave of relief that Ginny was okay with it, that Ginny would stand by him, that there were no conditions attached to her love. They would not be reenacting a chapter from Ron and Hermione's book, and he was glad. He had had enough upheaval for one day.

“Sweet Merlin, Ginny,” he breathed. He felt most of the tension seep from him like a toxin being purged. “You have no idea - no idea how good it feels to hear you say that.”

“Silly Harry,” she murmured softly, uncurling from the chair and coming into his arms. “Haven't I proven to you yet that I'm not going anywhere?” He kissed the top of her head, and ran one hand over the silken curtain of red hair that flowed down her back.

“Yes, but most people would make exceptions in the case of children produced with third parties.”

Ginny rolled her eyes.

“You hardly went out and got Hermione pregnant. Once you'd explained it… and - and it all made sense. You're doing the right thing, the noble thing… being the hero.” Harry barely managed to squelch the flinch that spasmed through him at the last word. “It's not that much different from caring for Teddy, honestly. Like you're adopting a war orphan. Aside from the fact that she's yours…”

“No misgivings because she's Hermione's too? No worries that I'll always side with her, that I'm seconds away from throwing you over for her?” Harry's voice carried a note of bitterness in it, and Ginny cocked her head curiously at him, eying him sideways.

“Ron?” She finally asked, spearing him with a knowing glance.

“Right in one.” Harry's chagrin was obvious. “They had an outrageous row last night. And another one this morning…although I think that was partly because I was there.”

“Hermione was pretty upset last night, yeah?” Ginny asked, her mouth crimped in sympathy. There was an undertone in her voice, something hopeful - almost childlike. Harry couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. “It's good that you were there, then. Good that she has someone like you to lean on.” Harry felt his eyes slide shut in profound gratitude, as they moved to the sofa and sat down as a unit, his arm slung around Ginny's shoulders. He leaned his head back on the upholstery, and sighed. I could just go to sleep right now… but Ginny continued, “I wish Ron were more - more - ”

“Understanding? Compassionate?” He snapped off the two words before he could stop and remind himself that it was not Ginny at whom he was angry.

“He's always had trouble with - ”

“Loyalty? Perseverance?”

“Har-ry!” Ginny chided, but her voice wasn't angry. “There are reasons that he wasn't sorted into Hufflepuff. But he's a decent person. He's my brother. And he's your best mate. And your best friend's fiance. How long are you going to stay mad at him? This situation…it's an adjustment for everybody, you know. He'll come around.”

“I know that, Gin. But if you'd - if you'd heard the way Hermione was crying… I just…” He shook his head, as if to scatter away the gathering dark thoughts. “We're all the other has left, Hermione and I. Our backgrounds are so similar and - and things have never been the same with her parents, even after she brought them back, and…” He shrugged apologetically at her, as if realizing the inadequacy of his words.

“You have our family, Harry. Haven't the Weasleys always stood behind you?”

“Of course you have. And I'll never be able to thank you enough for it. But it - it's still not quite the same… and I - it - anyway, I'm not sure that Hermione and Ron are getting married.” Ginny had been curled quite comfortably into his side, but she sat up at his last statement, her mouth open in surprise.

“What? Why - what happened?”

“Ron - Ron said some pretty awful things… about Hermione and - and about me…”

“Well, are - are you sure it's over?”

“I don't know… she did throw her ring at him.” At that, Ginny flopped back down under Harry's arm, utter shock taking all the wind out of her sails.

“Wow,” she muttered after a moment. “He was really proud of that ring too.”

There was a beat of blanketing silence, broken only by the twitter of birdsong outside an adjacent window. Somehow it struck Harry as amusing that of all the things Ginny could have said initially, that was what she had chosen. The quiet was further disrupted by his unsuccessfully repressed snort, which was echoed by Ginny. The noises cascaded into muffled laughter.

“It's really not funny, Gin,” Harry managed breathlessly after a few moments.

“You're right! It's not!” Her mirth negated her words, and they spiraled down into a hysteria that re-ignited itself every time each met the other's eyes. After a moment, Harry sat up, removed his glasses and set them on the side table, to be better able to dash the tears of hilarity from his eyes. As he moved, his forearm brushed across something pointy nudging up from the edge of his pocket.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath, pulling the object out and holding it in the palm of his hand. His humor died an ignominious death, as he remembered Hermione hunched over, crying in her bathroom, huddled in his arms.

“Harry, why do you have Hermione's engagement ring?” Ginny spoke with a curious confusion. Harry smiled uncertainly, seeming nearly as baffled as she.

“I - I'm not sure. It was on the fireplace - and I just - I put it in my pocket…” He trailed off into silence, and Ginny would have given every last galleon she possessed to know what he was thinking in that moment. “I guess - I ought to give it back to Hermione… let her decide what she wants. I'll take it back at breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” The solitary word made Harry jerk his head up to look suddenly at Ginny, but her face was benignly wondering. When she met his gaze, she laced her fingers through his and smiled.

“We're bringing Eleanor home today. Hermione thought - she reckoned it would be a good idea to have breakfast together, as we're - as we're starting this venture together.”

“That's a wonderful idea. Trust Hermione to think of it!” Ginny's brown eyes danced, and Harry felt another surge of relief. He had wondered about her reaction, especially when he spoke of a `we' that clearly did not include her. “You can always count on her to have everything in order.”

Don't pretend as if you know anything about Quidditch. Harry started as the memory of Ginny's snide tone, sounding nothing like her merry, loving voice of that morning, rang in his head, and wondered quizzically why he should think of that now. He was being ridiculous, thinking of one less-than-kind comment on such an important day. His girlfriend and his best friend got along famously; his girlfriend was supporting him; she loved him. He had a daughter, and she was coming home.

He lifted Ginny's interlaced fingers to his lips and kissed them, enjoying the flare in her eyes as he did so.

“I've got to take a shower. I'm meeting Hermione in thirty minutes.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Twin cracks of Apparation heralded Harry and Hermione's arrival at the St. Mungo's employees' entrance. They moved in smooth tandem out into the corridor towards the lifts, an uncharacteristically heavy silence canopied over their heads.

Harry shoved both hands in his pockets, and looked sidewise at Hermione out from under the recalcitrant fringe of his hair. He had come out of Hermione's Floo face-to-wild-face with her, as she frantically searched the carpet and hearthstone for her ring. He had instantly felt terrible, and had immediately confessed that he had stuck in his pocket for safekeeping. Hermione had flushed a burning crimson, and she had held out her hand for it, thanking him in a sort of snippy tone that had rankled Harry.

It bothered him that she was so frantic over the loss of a ring that she had hurled at Ron's head scant hours earlier. He'd been trying to process why he was unsettled, as they ate a subdued breakfast. He could only conclude that it was either due to his protectiveness of Hermione, or that he had actually been subconsciously relieved that she would be able to help him with Eleanor, without Ron's disapproving form looming about everywhere, and was hoping they wouldn't reconcile. The latter made him feel guilty that he was putting his own ease before her happiness, and his brows were a ridge of dark cloud over the storm front in his eyes. Hermione had decided that he was bent on being surly, and her attitude had gotten more and more frosty as the meal ended.

Finally, as the lift doors opened on the children's ward, he heard Hermione heave a reluctant, surrendering sigh.

“Harry, I'm sorry I snapped at you about the ring.” He took her hand, and swung it playfully between them.

“I'm sorry for taking your ring. Dunno why I did - I - I should've just set it up on the mantelpiece or something. I didn't mean to make you worry… you know I never want to make you worry.”

“I wish I knew what I was going to do with the damn - ” Hermione started in a somewhat mournful tone, when she was interrupted by someone hailing them from farther down the corridor.

“Mr. Potter! Healer Granger!” It was Auror Falworth, his hair like a nimbus around him in the charmed lamplight of the ward.

“We're just here to sign Eleanor out - ” Harry began.

“Yes, of course. Would you mind coming with me for a moment? I must say, your timing is impeccable. There's just been a very curious finding in your daughter's case.”

“What kind of curious finding?”

“Is there something wrong?” Harry and Hermione's worried questions collided with each other and jumbled together.

But Falworth said nothing more until they arrived at the door to the same conference room they had been in earlier. “If you would,” he gestured for them to enter. The long table and many of the chairs were covered in stacks of parchment, boxes, and tabbed leather sleeves full of paper. Healer Desai and Auror Dunwiddie were seated at the far end, and several quills were writing feverishly, feathers fluttering and dancing with the ferocity of their movement.

“Shravana,” Hermione said uncertainly, when the dark-haired Healer looked up at their entrance. “Is Eleanor all right?”

“She is doing well… surprisingly well, considering what has been found.”

“Somebody had better - ” was all an irate Harry got out, before Hermione pinched him hard enough to shut him up.

“Won't you both sit down?” Auror Falworth asked politely, while Harry rubbed his arm and castigated Hermione with an injured glare. The auror's eyes were sincerely sympathetic, as he sat opposite them, and pulled a file in front of him from two chairs down. “I'm sure you understand that this is an unprecedented situation. We're asking for your patience during this investigation. I know you're both concerned for your child, as I would be were she mine. We are utilizing every resource we can to find out who is behind this.” He flipped the file open, and took a subtle preparatory breath.

Harry's hand had snaked under the table and grabbed Hermione's again, threading his fingers through hers, and squeezing so tightly that it was nearly painful.

“Dunwiddie went down to the Ministry yesterday, to check the Magical Record Books for Eleanor's birth or registration for Hogwarts.” Hermione was nodding. Every magical child was recorded in the books automatically, either at their birth, or - if they were Muggle-born - when they began to exhibit evidence of magic. “She wasn't listed.”

“How - how is that - how is that possible? You've tested her blood, haven't you? Isn't her telepathy evidence of magical blood? She - she wouldn't need an external device to suppress her magic, if she wasn't magical.” The questions spewed forth rapid-fire from Hermione, questions that she already knew the answers to, but wanted to hear someone else say. The pool of shock sitting like lead in Harry's gut had rendered him momentarily mute. He tried to imagine anyone who would have a more difficult time in life than a genetically engineered Squib daughter of Harry Potter.

“What - what does it mean?” he finally croaked, having to clear his throat before anything resembling speech came out. “I mean, what are the implications here - of - of her absence from the Book?”

“We're not even certain of that,” said Falworth, apologetically. “Squib children are usually registered as a Magical Birth, but then fail to appear on the lists for Hogwarts. Muggle-borns are sometimes not immediately registered at birth, but appear on the Hogwarts lists at a later date. Eleanor appears nowhere.”

“Can the Books be tampered with, the records covered up or falsified?”

“Theoretically possible, but highly unlikely,” rumbled Dunwiddie, not even looking up from the parchment he was perusing.

“He's right. Imagine all the Pureblood families that would try to have Squib births covered up. The Books are absolutely smothered in magical protections and failsafes.” Falworth backed up his partner's assertion. “As to your questions, Healer Granger… Telepathy is a form of magic, but it's not terribly typical. An Unspeakable could give you more details than I. However, even Muggles have been known to evince sporadic telepathy from time to time - it wouldn't necessarily mean that they could pick up a wand and open a door with Alohamora. And, as for the bracelet she was wearing - well, they're taking it apart in Magical Forensics right now. Unfortunately, the scattered records we were able to collect from the facility haven't told us much, like what they felt the need to suppress, for instance.”

“Her magical levels were a bit on the low side for her age, but rest assured they are there,” Healer Desai put in, and Harry felt his stomach unclench ever so slightly. “They have risen slightly since the bracelet was removed, so they may return to normal over time. She has actually shown very good wand control - better than most five-year-olds by far.”

“There is a … theory that we've been discussing this morning,” Dunwiddie spoke again. He snapped his fingers, and two quills arrested their motion and flopped to the table top.

“Guinnein…” Auror Falworth's voice was warning, but did not expressly forbid.

“It would account for the evidence,” Dunwiddie persisted, but Falworth looked skeptical.

“What would?” Hermione prodded.

“If Eleanor had been stripped of her magic, and … then had it replaced.” Harry and Hermione just stared at the craggy-faced Auror. Even Healer Desai looked gobsmacked.

“Even if they took - took her magic at birth, the record would have still been made,” Hermione stammered with difficulty, her eyes fastened on Harry's stricken face. She already knew - and he had been through sufficient Auror training to know - that having one's magic ripped away was one of the most painful things a witch or wizard could experience. His hand had not relaxed around hers; she stroked the back of it with one thumb, desiring to soothe him in any way that she could.

“Muggle methodology was clearly in use here, although we are not certain to what extent. It is within the realm of possibility…” Dunwiddie stressed the conditionals deliberately. “… that is, we know that there are Muggle machines…devices that are the equivalent to Aperio Parvulum, devices that could help those who controlled the experiments strip the magic from her before her birth… but without the magical feedback that would be caused by using the two spells in tandem.”

“You're saying that they used Muggle ultrasound equipment, so that they could see her, and target the correct areas to strip her magic in utero?” Hermione's voice was hoarse with horror, and her question wasn't really one at all.

There was an agonized, barely audible, “Oh God,” from Harry.

“And then replaced it with what? Once her magic had activated inside her bloodstream, the Hogwarts record should have been made - as if she were Muggle-born.” Hermione was struggling to maintain her composure. Why? She wondered, why, why does life always do this to him?

“Her magic appears natural, but we're still conducting tests,” Healer Desai interposed again. “Healer Granger is right. Naturally activated magic would incur a Hogwarts entry. There must be something to explain its lack.”

“But why would anyone do that?” Harry rasped. “What would be the point of taking away magic and then giving it back?”

“We can only speculate at this point, Mr. Potter. Our information will continue to be limited unless we can find who was involved. We don't want to overwhelm Eleanor, by any means, but the more she can tell us about her captors, the better the investigation can progress.”

“Is Eleanor a success or a failure?” Hermione suddenly said, her gaze distant, turned curiously inward. The others in the room froze, regarding her with bewilderment.

“How do you mean, Healer Granger?” Stuart Falworth asked.

“One of the keys to this whole mystery… would have to be whether or not Eleanor was a success or a failure… experimentally, I mean. Did they accomplish what they set out to accomplish? If they did… can you imagine? What if this kind of magical manipulation meant they could permanently and irrevocably take away magic? What if someone's magical ability could be reduced or amplified? What if they could give Squibs magic…or even Muggles?”

“There are those among our community who would not stand for such a change in the order of things. That kind of information would be very dangerous… and very valuable.” And Eleanor's life would not be worth a plug Knut, was what the Auror did not say.

There was a deafening silence as the involved parties mulled this over. Harry bracketed his forehead with the hand that wasn't holding Hermione's. She could practically see him once again shouldering the burden that she thought he'd finally laid down, five years ago.

“Can I - can I just go see her? Can she come home now?” he asked in a world-weary way. “Station an Auror outside my building, if you like. Ron Weasley can certainly tell you how well my flat's warded. We will certainly do everything in our power to keep her safe, until you've caught the perpetrators.” He turned to Healer Desai. “How often do you need her back here?”

“Once a week should be sufficient,” the healer replied, darting a look at the blond Auror. “I'd like to keep monitoring her magical levels. She would probably benefit from seeing a Mind Healer as well, regarding - regarding her captivity.” She said the last word tentatively, darting a wary glance at the Boy Who Lived.

“I'll bring her here next Thursday,” Harry said with an air of finality. He disentangled his hand from Hermione's, and stood, flexing his cramped fingers nervously. “As I am neither an Auror, nor a Healer, I'll get out of your way. If you'll keep me updated…?” He sent a questioning look to Falworth, who nodded without hesitation.

With an apologetic look at Hermione, who seemed to understand that, if he did not get out of that room and assure himself of Eleanor's well-being, he might explode, he slipped quietly through the door.

When he opened the door across the hall, he found Eleanor sitting quietly on her bed, dressed in khaki trousers and a shirt with the St. Mungo's logo on the front. Her shoes had been tied very carefully and neatly, and her hands were folded in her lap. A small canvas bag sat in the chair opposite. She's all packed, Harry thought forlornly, thinking that he might need to see a Mind Healer himself.

“Hello, Father,” Eleanor said very formally, though she could not disguise the way her back straightened in pleased anticipation.

“Good morning, Eleanor,” her father replied, clearing his throat unevenly, and striving to put a smile in his voice. “Are you ready to go home?”

“I do not know. I don't know what a home is like. But I - ” Her tiny fingers twitched reflexively in her lap. “I would like to go there with you.” She looked up to offer him a careful smile, but dropped her gaze quickly after she met his eyes. Her shoulders slumped, the very picture of melancholy and hopelessness. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry for what? You haven't done anything.”

“I make you sad.”

“Eleanor…” Harry crossed the room in two strides, and crouched in front of her, gently tipping her chin up so she would look at him. “You don't make me sad. When I was your age, I didn't have a home either… not a real one.”

“You had a door too,” she interjected. Her eyes flickered over to her canvas bag, and Harry wondered if their drawing was inside.

“Yes, I had a door too. And it made me very sad. My mother and father couldn't come and take me home. When I think of you… and when I think that you might have been as sad as I was… well, that makes me sad.”

“But not me?”

“No…not you. I promise.” He tossed her little bag up onto his shoulder, and held out his hand for her to clasp. “I think I have to sign a couple of things at the mediwitches' desk, but then we'll be ready to go. Hermio - your mother - ” He couldn't stop the feeling of utter surreality that swamped him, to be saying that and meaning Hermione Granger. “Your mother painted a room for you. It's such a nice shade of purple. Do you like purple?”

A flash of the five-year-old she could have been lit her eyes, and she nodded. She reached for his hand, as she slid down off the bed, but hesitated at the very instant they touched, a shadow of fear flickering across her face for such a brief instant, he almost thought he'd imagined it.

A tall, austere woman in Healer's robes and a medical cap and mask roughly grabbed Eleanor by the wrist, and half-led, half-dragged her down the hall.

“I didn't mean to! I'm sorry!” Eleanor was planting her feet, scrabbling with her other hand at the bony claw holding her wrist.

“You've set us back six months!” The woman said, tight-lipped in her fury. “Stop it, you stupid girl. Stop! Imperio!” Eleanor immediately began walking placidly next to her captor, her face as bland and expressionless as a mannequin's.

Harry sucked in a gasp and stood fully upright, as if someone had poured ice water down his collar. His eyes were round with shock.

“Eleanor, what was that? What was that?” He tamped down his rising concern, not wanting to frighten her, especially after the scene he'd been shown.

“I don't know. I don't know.” Her voice was trembling. She was picking up on his panic anyway, and assuming herself to be the cause.

“I saw - I saw a picture in my head. Something that I was - something I couldn't have known about. You and a woman, dressed like a Healer. She was angry. She was taking you somewhere. She said - ”

“'You've set us back six months.'” They spoke in unison. Eleanor looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes. “The woman's name was Mei.” Again their voices blended into a bizarre chorus. Harry swallowed against a growing tightness in his throat. What the hell…?

“Have you ever put pictures in anyone's head before? It's okay. It's okay. Can you tell me if you've ever put a picture in someone else's head?” His voice was so gentle.

“No. I don't do that. I only see the pictures that other people see in their heads. What they think and do not say. They can't see mine. Nobody can see mine.”

Eleanor was curled up in a tiny camp bed, with her feet tucked up under the hem of her nightgown. She was cold. She looked up and imagined that she might be able to see a star… if her room had a window. What if she was the only little girl in the whole world?

Her loneliness sucked at Harry like a miry bog at his feet. He felt like he was floundering; he wasn't sure he understood anything that had gone on in the last twenty-four hours. But he looked down at his child, who looked up at him with his own eyes, his mother's eyes, and then grasped his fingers in hers.

“That's not true, Eleanor.” He finally said. “I can.”

*

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AN: Nobody kill me for the H/G please. It's got to be in there. I don't want Ginny to be a one-dimensional inconvenience written out in the second paragraph. Hopefully the story will be richer for it.

*Aperio Parvulum - reveal the infant… It's something like an ultrasound spell.

You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.

--lorien

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Chapter Ten: Assumptions Burned

“That mate of Ron's - what's his name? - you know, the one who only ever wants to eat raw vegetables and kept pestering you about Muggle gym memberships?” Harry asked absently, peering through a gap in the curtains of his living room window. Hermione looked at him curiously from the kitchen doorway.

“That's Sinjin.” She shook her head. “I'm not sure how he and Ron became friends, really, even being in the same training class. Their philosophies on eating - and everything else probably - are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Why do you ask?”

“MLE's got him on watch. He's just there, at the newspaper stand.” He looked back at her, worried concern on his face. “Don't you think they should have someone with a little more training out there? They've not even advanced rank yet.”

Hermione laughed. “Harry, there was a time when you would have pitched the biggest bloody fit the British Isles had ever seen at the mere thought that any sort of Auror at all needed to watch your building! Who should be out there? Ezekiel Entwhistle?”

“No…” Harry drew out, mock glowering at her for bringing up the Head Auror. “I'd settle for his Deputy. Besides, this is …different.” He let his eyes drift down the hallway to the spare room that had so recently lost that title. He had been teasing her, but his face grew more somber with the thought of the new responsibility he'd taken on… even more so than Teddy, since Eleanor had no one else.

Hermione's pensive gaze tracked his own down the corridor, and he saw her fingers begin to twist and tangle themselves together.

“Why don't I plate everything and get the table ready, and you go tell Eleanor that it's time to eat?” he suggested gently. They had withdrawn to let Eleanor explore her new room - door left open - on her own terms. “Last I saw, she was looking at her books.” Harry wanted to meet her eyes with a conspiratorial smirk about the book-loving, but instead, Hermione looked worried and subdued. He crossed the room to stand beside her, and quietly said, “Hey, what's wrong?”

“I don't know - it's - you'll think it's silly, but - she makes me nervous.”

“Why? You deal with children - sick children even - on a fairly regular basis.”

“Eleanor's different. She's yours. That makes her special, even if she weren't - already exceptional. I - ”

“She's yours too.” The reminder was too gentle to cause defensiveness.

“I know. I just… don't want to mess this up. She can see thoughts, Harry. What if she knows that I was … less than enthused about this? I don't want to hurt her.”

“Hermione, you have one of the kindest hearts of anybody I've ever met. You can do this.” He picked up a plate of food, balancing its underside on his five fingertips, and smiled at her, cocking his head in the direction of their daughter, before sending various plates and cutlery soaring over the table. To all appearances, he was setting the board for dinner, paying her no heed as she moved warily down the hallway, but she could feel his concerned gaze watching her over the rims of his glasses.

She peered around the corner of the open door, reaching up with her knuckles to rap on the edge of the doorframe. Eleanor was sitting primly in a child-sized chair, a glossy picture book spread on her lap. Something in her posture was heartbreaking to Hermione, who as a young child would have been sprawled on the floor on her stomach devouring books by the stack. Eleanor looked up almost before Hermione made any noise at all. She stood up immediately, carefully and precisely closing the book and replacing it on the shelf, and then facing Hermione with her hands behind her back.

…waiting for instructions. Hermione wanted to cry.

“We're in no rush,” Hermione said in as soothing a voice as she could muster. She sat on the edge of the bed, and patted the mattress in invitation. “What are you reading?”

Reluctantly, Eleanor slid the book from the shelf, and brought it over to her, sitting stiffly in the place Hermione had indicated.

“I was looking at the pictures. I do not know how to read.”

For some reason, it surprised Hermione. Eleanor's manner of speaking, the way she carried herself, made her so much older than her years, that Hermione had trouble remembering that the girl was only five. Eleanor's education wouldn't have been much of a priority for her captors anyway.

“Books bring whole worlds to life! You can go anywhere, meet anyone, do anything when you read a story. Would you like me to teach you how?” Hermione felt herself turning red, imagining how Ron would react to her soliloquizing about the joys of reading. Eleanor was looking at her, her head cocked slightly to one side, like an inquisitive little bird.

“I would like that…Mother.” The word sounded tacked on and ponderous. Hermione knew there had not really been an “official” introduction, but then, she supposed, Eleanor wouldn't have really needed one.

“Splendid!” Hermione said, her enthusiasm for the task outweighing her nervousness. Laughter colored her voice, and she wasn't even trying. She tapped her fingernails on the slick cover of the picture book. “We can start with this one after dinner, shall we?”

Eleanor nodded solemnly, as though they had just made a pact. “All right.”

“Did you - did you ever get to look at books… or do anything for fun - before, I mean? At the place where Auror Falworth found you?” Hermione's voice was gentle. She was relatively certain that Harry would not approve of such a line of questioning, but she also knew that any bit of information they unearthed might help them apprehend those responsible.

Eleanor's demeanor darkened visibly, as she shook her head no.

“What did you do? What - what did they want you to do?”

“I played the card game. They wanted me to know the picture - to see it without seeing it. I could do that if someone else saw it. I could see the picture in their eyes. And sometimes they wanted me to make a moving picture stop moving or go backwards - without touching the buttons. They brought other people - they called them Muddles and they didn't have wands - they came in and sat in chairs and I tried to see the pictures inside their heads, the pictures of what they did-not-say.”

“Could you see inside their heads?”

“Sometimes. I didn't like to do it. The Muddles were scared. They didn't like it. Sometimes they cried.” Eleanor's lower lip trembled, and the childish treble cracked. “I didn't want to hurt them, but they made me. The `Perio spell made me feel all floaty, and then I would… do it.” Her voice became impossibly tiny on the last two words.

“Okay… okay, Eleanor, you don't have to talk about it anymore. I'm sorry.” Hermione brushed a lone tear off of her daughter's cheek with the pad of one thumb. Eleanor stiffened and froze, as though the thumb had been conducting electricity. “Ssshhhhh,” Hermione soothed. “No one is going to hurt you here. No one is going to hurt you anymore. Your… father and I would never let that happen.” She met the little girl's gaze squarely, unsure of exactly how the gift worked, but pushing all the thoughts of loving care and comfort and safety into the forefront of her mind. She was rewarded by obvious relaxation of the tension in Eleanor's frame. “Now, shall we go eat? I think there's cake for afters.”

“Cake?” Eleanor's eyes lit up in one of the first displays of real childlike emotion that Hermione had witnessed. “Sometimes the cards had pictures of cake. That's what they said it was called. Will - will there be candles in it?”

Hermione was completely floored by the swamping and overwhelming desire to laugh and to bawl at the same time.

“If you want candles, we'll have candles.” Her voice was sure and confident. Harry would conjure them out of thin air, if he had to. The slightest of smiles lit Eleanor's eyes, without changing the shape of her mouth.

Hermione reached for the little girl's hand to lead her back down the hallway into the dining area. Eleanor froze for an almost infinitesimal amount of time, but her mother saw it, changing her motion midway and turning it into a gesture: after you.

Walking behind Eleanor, Hermione was able to get the full effect of the sunrise-look on Harry's face when he saw his daughter. Seeing the way he had fallen head-over-heels into unconditional love did funny things to her heart. She couldn't have blasted the smile off of her face with a well-aimed hex, as he pulled out their chairs with overdone formality, using grandiose gestures that actually made Eleanor laugh.

As they ate, Harry kept the conversation light, steering it toward discussions of favorite animals and favorite colors. Hermione felt even more certain than ever that he would not have wanted her to question Eleanor about her experience, that he would prefer Eleanor to approach them on her own terms. She forced her attention back to the two people at the table, only to find that Harry had offered a trip to the zoo, and that Eleanor had agreed happily, on the one condition that there were giraffes.

“Where's Ginny?” Hermione finally asked gently, the domesticity of the entire scenario conspiring to make his girlfriend's absence all the more noticeable. “Everything is all right, isn't it?” She scoured Harry's face for any kind of brooding anger or heartbreak, even though she had noticed nothing amiss at any point that day.

“I asked her to - to give us a little privacy tonight.” He inclined his head toward Eleanor ever so slightly, feeling grateful that she seemed absorbed in the act of dipping her bread into her mashed potatoes. “I thought - I thought it might be easier if we settled in without hordes of people all over the place. Ginny was great… brilliant, really. She said she's all in - that she supports my decision and everything that - ” Hermione noticed the second that guilt flared up in his bright eyes. “I'm sorry, Hermione. I wasn't trying to rub it in - I'm sure you and Ron will - ”

“Honestly, Harry,” she said, trying for her trademark snippy tone, but ending up sounding somewhat fatigued. “I'm glad Ginny's been so understanding, truly I am. As for Ron and me… I don't - I - it's like what we talked about at Fortescue's. I think this has just brought issues to light that have always been there - we've just been ignoring them until now. I - I wish - ” Her lips trembled slightly, and she bit them together to keep from breaking down completely. Harry instantly enveloped the nearest hand to him with both of his own.

“Hermione…” All the apology and regret and frustration that he could not fix this, could not help her, could not take her pain on himself was rolled up into that one word, her name.

“I'll be okay.” Her assurance was frail, a barely audible whisper.

“Excuse me, Father,” came a polite little voice. “But Mother said there was cake.” Harry and Hermione exchanged bright glances, laughter gamboling in their eyes.

“You know what?” he asked her in a conspiratorial tone, leaning down until he was on Eleanor's level.

“What?” Eleanor's eyes were dancing. Harry lowered his voice into a stage whisper.

“Your mother is an extremely smart person. There is, in fact, cake for dessert. Do you want some?” The little girl nodded enthusiastically, and Harry ignored the excitedly swinging shoes that were occasionally catching him on the left shin.

Hermione raised her napkin to her lips, and coughed a single word at him. He looked at her quizzically, eyebrows raised, until Eleanor offered,

“Mother thinks you should put some candles on the cake, because I asked for them and I would like it.” Harry snorted at the way a blush rose up in Hermione's cheeks, and moved into the kitchen. She could hear various drawers sliding open and shut.

“I only have the tall skinny ones - ”

“Tapers,” Hermione interjected.

“And the little squatty ones - ”

“Tealights.”

“Ginny left `em over here, I reckon. I'll have to transfigure some - what do you think? Out of toothpicks?”

It must have been a rhetorical question, because Harry was back out of the kitchen almost immediately, bearing a cake topped with two bubble gum pink candles.

“And here we go!” He sat the cake at the center of the table with a flourish. He dimmed the lights, and drew his wand, incanting, “Incendio.”

The twin teardrops of light danced atop their respective candles almost instantaneously.

And then Eleanor screamed: a high-pitched, soul-rending wail of utter panic, her fingers first biting into the table top in front of her, and then reaching up to pull ferociously at her hair.

“Eleanor, what's wrong?” Harry's face was a mask of alarm.

“The candles, Harry! It's the flame, the fire!” Hermione shrieked. Her goblet split down the middle, the dislodged piece falling as if sheared away by invisible tools and shattering into her plate. The light fixture above the table trembled.

Harry's first instinct was to blow out the candles, but in the eternal moment of Eleanor's terror, the two tiny flames had grown into thin columns of heat and light, reaching nearly to the ceiling. Even as his mind acknowledged and processed the information, the fire expanded, its brilliance nearly blinding. He could no longer see Eleanor. Part of the ceiling was discoloring, ashy-black.

“Aguamenti!” His voice wrapped around and blended with Hermione's, and the twin jets of water made short work of the conflagration.

Eleanor was no longer in her chair. He called her name out once, hoarse with terror, before he heard her keening, and stooped to look under the soaked and smoking table. She was crouched underneath, folded forward over her knees, her hands over her ears, rocking, rocking, rocking. Her brown hair swished back and forth, obscuring her face.

“Sweetheart, come here.” Hermione's voice was cool and soothing from the other side of the table. She was closer, so she bent to take Eleanor's hand, to guide her out and calm her down. Eleanor recoiled away from the touch, a frenzied grunting momentarily replacing the sobs, making her sound more like a trapped animal than a human child.

“Wait.” His tone was gentle, yet still clearly commanding. “Let me try.” And he simply crawled under the table with her. “Eleanor, it's me. Your dad. I'm here. It's all right.” He continued in like vein, using short, simple, reassuring statements of fact until she stopped rocking. He ignored the water that was dripping down through the leaves of the table, distantly hearing the clatter that meant Hermione had started washing the dishes. “Is everything okay?” He ventured. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I…didn't… know,” Eleanor hiccupped.

“Didn't know what?”

“That candles… were… fire.” The last word was a dread whisper. “They were… in … pictures… on the … cards. With… crayons… didn't know.”

“And you're afraid of fire? Eleanor, I wouldn't let anything happen to you.”

“I don't like fire. Fire hurts people.”

“Were you in a fire?” Harry had not intended to touch her, after seeing her reaction to Hermione, but he reached up to smooth her snarled hair, without really thinking about it.

A middle-aged woman sat in a nondescript plastic chair, her hands and feet bound to it with Velcro restraints. Small disks had been affixed to her head with a gel-like material. Uncertainty and fear were obvious in her eyes. She was thinking of her children. They would be coming home from school soon.

“All right, Eleanor. We're getting a reading. Go deeper.”

The little girl swallowed, and looked at the woman with deeper concentration. The woman's moan of pain and terror was audible. Blood started to trickle from her nose.

“Keep going, Eleanor.”

“It hurts her!”

“Do as I say!”

“No!”

A wand came up, not from the one standing at the computer, the one who had spoken, but from another masked scientist.

“NO!” The sheer fury that blistered Eleanor's voice seemed to ricochet around the laboratory, and the wand flew from its owner's grasp, bouncing against the wall with a hollow clatter. Several items of glassware exploded.

“Eleanor, if you do not follow instructions, you will be punished.”

There was an angry Accio. The wand returned where it belonged.

Then Eleanor's gaze was caught by activity at a far table… where an assistant had just used her wand to light a flame beneath a beaker. She took that flame, she stoked it, she called it to her… and then she released it.

The room erupted into an inferno, as though accelerant had already been splashed around the walls, but somehow stayed clear of a small patch encircling Eleanor and the Muggle test subject. Doors flew open, spells glowed in the flickering light, people screamed. Somewhere an alarm was wailing.

Eleanor was scared. The fire had gotten away from her; it wasn't minding her anymore, and she wasn't sure that she could stop it.

A voice spoke an angry spell, a cold, deadly spell, from somewhere over her shoulder. A green light flashed in her peripheral vision, and then the captive slumped over, a dead weight, supported only by the bindings around her wrists.

Eleanor could not process what had happened. She heard Aguamenti being cast; she could feel the warm rush of steam, as water met flame. And then,

“Stupefy!”

Her world went black.

When Harry opened his eyes, he was lying flat on his back, with the lower half of his body still under the table. Hermione's face swam before him, and he felt the warmth of her hands cup his cheeks.

“Where's Eleanor?” He blurted with sudden urgency.

“She's on the sofa. She's fine… well, relatively speaking.” With the ease of long friendship, he reached up, and she helped him to his feet, stabilizing him under his elbows when he initially wobbled a bit. He took in the scene before him: the charred ceiling, the sopping table, the cake that was now an unidentifiable, misshapen and crusted mass - and then his daughter, seeming small and far away on the other side of the flat, silvery twin tracks of tears evident on her face. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” He placed a placating hand on her arm, and pleaded wordlessly for a little patience, before crossing to where Eleanor sat.

“Are you okay?”

“I hurt you. I made you scared. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!” She looked as if she would start rocking again, lost in a world of terror and abuse, so Harry knelt in front of her.

“Eleanor, I'm fine. I'm not hurt. You didn't scare me.”

“You're lying.”

“You didn't scare me much,” Harry amended, a twinkle of humor flashing in his eyes. “I'm not sending you away.” He took her by the shoulders, intent on verbalizing how important she was.

“You killed her! You did! You are a murderer.”

“I didn't! I didn't kill her. I don't have a wand. I can't cast that spell.”

“If you hadn't caused that fire - if you had just done what you were supposed to - she would not have died.”

Eleanor curled forward on her cot, in utter misery. That woman had children. They were coming home from school. She knew how much she hated it here, how much she wished to live in a real home, with a family, like the picture cards sometimes showed. And now she had killed their mother, somebody's mother… She wished that she were dead, that the green spell had hit her instead.

This time, Harry managed to claw his way out of it, tamping down the vision that wanted to rise up into his conscious mind. Eleanor was looking at him with wide, sorrowful eyes.

“Harry.” Hermione spoke only the one word, but he could see in her watchful gaze all the bafflement and concern, and knew that she noticed that he'd gone under again.

“It's okay. This was an accident. It can all be fixed.” He waved his arm vaguely at the scorched, soggy mess behind him. “Healer Desai and Auror Falworth are going to help us. And your mother and I will figure this out, I promise.” He directed her toward the rear of the flat, showing her which drawer her pajamas were in, and where her very own toothbrush sat in its shiny cup on the sink. When she was ready for bed, he tucked her into her new sheets, made sure the nightlight was on, and the door was open.

“Get some rest,” he instructed gently. “It's going to be okay. Maybe we'll go get some ice cream tomorrow.” His hand ghosted over her warm forehead, clammy from her tears and panic attack. Her eyes barely open, she reached up to brush her fingers across his fringe, mimicking his touch.

“Thank you… Father…” she sighed, already most of the way asleep.

“Always,” he smiled, and slipped from the room.

Hermione had repaired almost all of the damage done by their small inferno, but when she heard his footfalls behind her, she whirled on him.

“What was going on? Were you communicating with her? And the fire? None of that was in her file.” Hermione's speech was accelerating toward its usual breakneck pace.

“When you touched her, when she was under the table, did you see anything?”

“Anything like what?”

“Like a vision… or - or someone else's Pensieve memory?”

“No. Why? Is that what you saw?”

“Eleanor can - can access information from the minds of other people.” He cocked his head, as he ruminated over his other encounters with her. “I think she has to be looking at them, or they have to be looking at her… or both. But - but I can see into hers - I can see her memories. I think it happens when I touch her. Eleanor said nobody's ever been able to do that before - I can tell you what happened to her in that place, and it was awful.”

The lighting in the flat was low, and their voices were hushed in their desire to let Eleanor sleep undisturbed. Hermione's eyes were large and dark, and in them commingled concern, worry, and elation.

“If you can identify them, then…”

“Then they can be caught.”

Hermione hadn't seen this look, this Harry look in some time - not once he'd quit Auror training anyway. “But what about what it does to you?”

“It doesn't do anything to me. I'm fine.”

“Harry, you were unconscious under a table! This is not traditional Legilimency. I - I don't know what it is. There's no way to know what effect this could be having on you.”

“I think you're - ”

“I'm not overreacting! What about the fire? That's pretty intense accidental magic for a five-year-old! Shravana had said her levels weren't that high yet - they were actually low from the suppression. What if that was why her magic was being suppressed?”

“I know what the Healer said, Hermione. I was there. That wasn't ordinary accidental magic. That was - that was a - a - what do you call it? - a post-traumatic response.”

“What did you see?”

Harry described for her the vision he'd seen under the table, as well as the abbreviated second one, sparing no detail. Hermione's eyes were round with horror and wet with tears.

“Who are these people? How are these things still going on - after all - after all we - ?”

“Maybe this - this link I have with her will help us find out. But there's got to be some way to - to control it. I can't have a vision every time I touch her.”

“We can talk to Shravana about it. I'm not sure Occlumency would work in a case like this, but it would be worth a try.”

“Occlumency…” The word was a muttered, long-suffering sigh.

“Harry, all this is dangerous. I hate to say it… but she could be dangerous.” Something in Harry's eyes shuttered ominously at her words, and she propelled herself forward, ducking under his arm to hug him around the waist. “What if she has a nightmare, or someone comes after her, and she burns this place down?”

“I don't think she'll do that.”

“You don't think? I agree that she wouldn't do anything on purpose.” She rotated her head on his shoulder to look up into his face. “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

“She's a little girl, a traumatized little girl - my traumatized little girl. Nothing's going to happen to me. She's not a monster.”

“I never said she was.”

Harry's shoulders slumped, and his arm hung like dead weight around her.

“I knew this would be complicated,” he admitted quietly. “I didn't know it was going to be complicated quite like this. I wanted to - I hoped that - I want to - to fix her, I guess. To make her happy, to wipe away those bad memories, and teach her what life is supposed to be about - to be a family…”

The passion in his voice surprised Hermione. She'd always known he wanted a family, of course. But she couldn't reconcile that yearning urgency with his seeming contentment with the status quo of his and Ginny's relationship.

“You've been amazing tonight, Harry. No one watching would have believed you'd only been doing this for a day. She's very lucky to have you for a father.” Hermione touched his jaw lightly with her fingers, tilted her head up to kiss his cheek.

“Thanks, Hermione,” he said tiredly, heaving a sigh. “I think I'll - ”

“I'm going to stay. Here. Tonight. Just in case,” she continued adding information upon his querying look.

“Hermione, there's no need for you to - ”

“Please let me stay. For Eleanor… and you. I'll just Floo home and get my things, and I'll be right back.”

Harry yawned a jaw-cracking yawn, arching the fatigued muscles of his neck and back. “I've got stuff you can wear. You're not sleeping on the sofa.” He tacked on the last sentence, as he saw her move toward the furniture, toeing off her shoes and lining them up next to it.

“I'm not taking your bed.”

“You're not sleeping on the sofa.”

“Harry, you're being ridiculous.”

“Okay. You're still not sleeping on the sofa.” Hermione huffed in response. Harry smothered a smile, as she followed him back to his bedroom, where he took out a soft, baggy shirt and some drawstring flannel pajama bottoms. Hermione looked at them dubiously, and Harry rolled his eyes. “They're not Dudley's, I promise.” He gathered his own pajamas, and then took his pillow and a spare blanket for the sofa. She heard a soft whump as he dumped the bedding in the living room, and then returned to change in the bathroom, turning in the doorway before he entered.

“I'm glad you're here,” he said softly. “Thank you for staying.”

She leaned on the doorframe to his bedroom, watching him with soft eyes. The flat was very quiet.

“What?” He asked with teasing self-consciousness.

“We'll figure this out. You know we will.”

“I know.”

“I love you, Harry.”

The self-deprecating half- grin, the one that she loved so much, flashed across his face. He ducked his head, and then looked up at her through his fringe, fondness for her glimmering in his eyes.

“I love you too.”

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Eleven: Fire Exchanged

Harry awakened the next morning to a thunderously loud pounding on his front door. Alarm ran through his veins, powered his limbs like electricity, and he groped wildly over the arm of the sofa above his head for his glasses and his wand. He was advancing silently toward the door, padding in silent sock feet, when he heard Ron's panicked shout.

“Harry!! Harry, open up!! I can't find Hermione!!”

Harry's forward motion abruptly ceased, and he allowed himself a moment to move his eyes heavenward. They just caught the edge of the fire's reach, the ceiling a slightly different shade of white where it had been Repaired. It is far too early for this brand of drama, he thought.

“What's going on?” Hermione's sleep-slurred voice issued from the corridor behind him, and he turned.

“Good morning,” he offered with mock pleasantness, while his door threatened to be shaken from its hinges. Hermione ran one hand through her tangled hair, and used the wand in her other hand to adjust the waist of the too-large pajamas that had come un-Charmed during the night. “It's Ron. Apparently, you've gone missing, and he's come to me for help.” To make his point, he let his gaze run over her from crown of curly head to tips of bare toes barely peeking out from the pajamas. “This is going to be fun.”

She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm, and gave him a friendly shove toward the door.

“Open the door before he has a coronary.”

Harry non-verbally Unlocked and Opened the door, just as Ron was yelling something about “ - before I Reductor this bloody door, H - Harry…” His best mate's name half-died on his lips, and he stood somewhat awkwardly, wand arm akimbo, in front of the door that had flung itself wide before he was prepared to deal with it.

George poked his head in between the doorframe and his brother. One ginger eyebrow arched up as he took in the scene. “Mornin',” he drawled with an amused smirk. “Ronnie-kins here was certain that something horrendous had happened to our Hermione. Kidnapped, possibly. Forced to wear unflattering pajamas, certainly.” His grin grew broader with every sentence. “Death Eater involvement…” here he nudged Ron none too gently in the side, “doubtful.” The last word was a cheeky almost-whisper.

Ron's eyes had been bouncing back and forth between Harry and Hermione through George's speech, before skewering his brother with a murderous glare. Though the obviously slept-on sofa was clearly visible, he had been growing redder and redder. He had a wild and bewildered look on his face, and seemed to be deciding from which angle to attack first, soundlessly opening and closing his mouth a few times.

“What the hell'd you do to your Floo?” He finally burst out. Hermione turned her head sharply toward Harry in evident surprise.

“Eleanor… is afraid of fire,” Harry drew out slowly, pitching his voice low. “I mean, full-on panic attack, accidental-magic-inducing terrified. We had a front row seat to it last night. Which is why Hermione stayed the night. And why I disconnected the fireplace. It was not my intention to cause anyone concern.” His words proceeded forth carefully, deliberately, as if they were brittle things likely to be broken.

Any forthcoming belligerence died unborn, while Ron's posture sagged as though all the air had been let out of him. As Harry was talking, Ron had let his gaze drift down to Hermione's unadorned left hand, but was now avoiding looking at her at all.

“I'm - I'm - I'm sorry,” he stammered awkwardly. “I didn't - I wasn't trying to - I just went over and - and when I couldn't find her - I - and then your Floo wasn't - ” He flapped his hands up and down for a moment, and subsided, ears more crimson than ever. “I was just worried about…” He trailed off, and the direction of his stare caused Harry and Hermione to turn.

Eleanor was shuffling down the hall, rumpled from sleep, knuckling one eye. The stuffed kneazle that she had found at some point during the night was tucked under her other arm. When she noticed the strangers at the open front door, she shifted sideways so that her track kept her concealed behind her father.

“So - so that's - that's - ” Ron stammered.

“I have the distinct impression that I'm missing something important,” George observed. Eleanor's parents exchanged helpless glances, unsure of where to even begin. They all jumped at the crisp sound of Apparation. Harry already had his wand up, but relaxed at the sound of Ginny's merry voice.

“Oh, good! I haven't come too early.” She cheerily took in the group of them and the still open door. Eleanor retreated further behind Harry, whose long-suffering look met up with Hermione's apologetic one. “I wanted to do something to help. I brought breakfast?” She dangled a Charmed shopping bag from one finger.

“Thanks, Gin.” Hermione could hear the strain underneath Harry's voiced gratitude. Eleanor shuddered behind him, and he reached around with one hand to pat her shoulder reassuringly. He staggered backward slightly, and caught himself just in time, narrowly missing treading on his daughter.

“It's happening again, isn't it?” Hermione hissed. She watched the muscles work in Harry's jaw. He seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I'm fine,” he gritted back.

“You don't look fine.” Hermione's expression was fierce. “This can't keep happening every time you tou - ”

“What's happening again?”

“Nothing.” Harry almost sounded natural, as he answered his girlfriend. “Why don't you go on and put that in the kitchen?”

“George?” Ginny directed her next comment toward her brother. “You wouldn't mind going back to the Burrow and distracting Mum, would you? I managed to hold her off - told her I wasn't even sure anyone would be awake yet, but I wouldn't put it past her to show up anyway.”

“You told your mum?”

Ginny cast her eyes down at Harry's dubiously asked question. “I - I was trying to suss some things out… after you told me. I - I mean, people are going to find out eventually, aren't they?” She shuffled one foot a bit, an impatient almost-stomp. “George, please?”

The pleading in both Harry's and Hermione's eyes must have been convincing, because George flicked one look at them, and nodded.

“This doesn't mean I don't get to hear this whole story later,” he assured them, and Apparated away without further comment.

Ron and Ginny shuffled past Harry, Hermione, and their daughter, doing a fairly good job of not staring, on the whole. Harry peered out the front door, nodding at another Auror trainee, whom he recognized only vaguely, who had become watchfully alert at Ron's commotion. He raised one hand in a nothing to see here gesture, and closed the door, turning back to his best friend.

“Hermione, you've got to get them to leave,” he whispered.

“She'll have to meet them sometime.”

“She doesn't have to meet them today.”

“You can't compartmentalize your life forever. Neither of us can.”

“I'm not afraid of them,” came an indignant voice. Hermione and Harry both looked down, startled, meeting Eleanor's wide green gaze. “And I won't hurt them. I promise.” One small hand came up to rub the back of Harry's wrist, once, twice, in a reassuring gesture.

“Eleanor, I didn't think you would. And you are one of the bravest people I know,” Harry said, manfully blinking back the dampness in his eyes. He ignored the ceasing of the clatter in the kitchen, and knelt down to his daughter's level. Hermione followed, and he was distantly aware that she had threaded her fingers through his. “There have been a lot of changes lately. If it is too much at once, then we can wait. They can wait.” He cocked his head toward the kitchen. “It's up to you.”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze squarely, a resolute tilt to her chin that was so like Hermione that Harry nearly gasped aloud. And suddenly he saw all the pieces of them, them together - his eyes set neatly above Hermione's nose, her cheekbones angled above his jawline, her smile, his chin, her hair color… He didn't understand how he hadn't seen it before; it was incredible, magical - this marvel of creation, this perfect blending of two people. The circumstances of her birth didn't seem to matter as much when one was presented with the miracle of the finished product, the unmistakable, undeniable combination of them. There was a funny, tight feeling in his chest, and he couldn't articulate what it was, didn't understand why it was there.

He turned to look at Hermione, and found her looking, not at Eleanor, but at him, with an unusual twist to her smile and a mistiness in her eyes. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was thinking.

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “Both of you are thinking that I look like you together. I am glad it makes you happy.” There was the barest hint of teasing in her voice, and it made Harry emit a somewhat startled laugh. “They are your friends. It is `up to me',” here she aped Harry's cadence, “so I say yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure, Father.” A beat passed, and she slanted a glance at Harry, looking much older than her tender years. “You are welcome,” she added, in response to something that he had not said.

“Everything's ready here. Do you want to come eat?” Ginny called from the kitchen, startling the trio back to reality, and Harry felt Hermione drop his hand like she had been hit with a Stinging Hex. As he struggled to his feet, Eleanor rather unexpectedly locked her small arms around his neck. His own arms went under her legs to hold her up, as he stood. The fresh smell of her hair filled his nostrils, and the vision washed over him.

“Where is my mother?” Eleanor asked tentatively. A Muddle mother and child had been brought in. The needle-people wanted to see if the mother could do better on the tests, if they promised to hurt the child. Eleanor had only seen more tears and pleading than usual. The bracelet was making her head ache. She thought there was something in that potion too. They had made sure there were no fires today.

“You don't have a mother,” Mei answered harshly, pulling her so quickly down the hall that she stumbled over her own feet.

“Do I have a father?”

“No.”

“Where did I come from then?” Mei stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway, the harsh lines around her mouth and her iron-gray eyes etched deeply into her face with her furious frown.

“You were grown,” she spat.

“Like a flower?”

Mei backhanded her. Eleanor could taste metal at the corner of her mouth, but she did not cry.

“Like a virus!” The woman shoved her through the door into her cell, and locked her in with a resounding clang. Eleanor did not know what that was. She gleaned enough surface thoughts to figure out that a virus was something insidious, something that did bad things to people, made them sick. That sounded true enough. Her shoulders slumped. She did not dare search Mei's mind any deeper. Mei would know; she was not a Muddle - and it seemed to only hurt Muddles - but somehow Mei always found out, always realized it - and then Eleanor would be punished. She kept her gaze on the toes of her trainers, until Mei's shadow disappeared from the narrow window.

“Harry?” Hermione's worried voice broke into his reverie, as his stomach dipped and lurched as if he were falling…or going to be sick. His knees wobbled a bit, and he clutched onto Eleanor more tightly in the effort not to drop her. Hermione moved, one hand on his forearm, and the other arm around his back, hoping that she could keep him from falling.

“I'm all right,” he grunted, as the room stopped seeming to move of its own accord. Hermione was looking at him with that moist-eyed, thin-lipped expression that danced uncertainly between concern and irritation.

“You're not either.”

“Not in front of Eleanor.” Eleanor and Harry spoke at the same time, and Hermione's dark eyes grew even more wary. But Harry laughed, kissed his daughter on the temple, and admonished her playfully for being cheeky.

“Are you lot coming - ” Ginny began again, peering from the kitchen doorway and stopping abruptly at the sight of them. They turned their heads toward her in unison, unaware of the picture they presented: Harry's face bright with laughter, Eleanor in his arms, her fingers wending into his hair, and Hermione clutching his arm, having been looking into his face with worry. A teacup fell from Ginny's nerveless fingers, and shattered on the threshold of Harry's kitchen floor.

The sharp spray of glass and tea was like an Enervate over the occupants of the flat.

“Oh…how clumsy…” Ginny mumbled, looking down at the mess so that her vivid hair masked her face, and aiming her wand. Ron's eyes were darting suspiciously from Harry to Hermione, but he knelt to assist his sister in an unnecessarily bustling way. After exchanging one frozen glance, Harry and Hermione moved away from each other like someone had lobbed a Repulsing Jinx into their midst: Harry taking Eleanor to the table, and Hermione sidestepping Ginny to help in the kitchen.

Harry and Eleanor took the seats they had used at dinner then night before. After directing an orderly line of dishes and silverware to the table, Hermione moved to sit at the far corner, physically as far away from Harry as she could get. Harry watched her progress, with darkened eyes, and seemed ready to say something, but thought better of it. Plates and serving bowls of various breakfast foods were situated neatly on the table, as Ginny swished in from the kitchen, and sat next to him. He leaned in and absently kissed her cheek. Ron shifted awkwardly from foot to foot at the end of the table, and appeared monumentally ill at ease.

“I wasn't intending to - I mean, I only came to - ”

“Oh, for the love of Merlin, Ron! Sit down and eat,” his sister told him snappishly. But Ron made no move to do so, his eyes flitting to Harry, who in turn looked at Hermione for permission. The muscles in Hermione's jaw were tense; she swallowed once before jerking her chin down in one curt nod. Ron took a seat next to Ginny and across from Hermione, but she would not look at him, instead spooning eggs onto her plate with a fervent concentration that they had most often seen before important examinations.

Eleanor was watching all of them in turn, wide-eyed in an even mix of interest and astonishment, her forkful of eggs misaimed toward her cheek rather than her mouth. Harry watched in amusement, as she turned her head to intercept the food, without really taking her eyes off of the newcomers to their table.

“So, you're Eleanor? I've already heard so much about you. My name is Ginny. And this is my brother, Ron. He and your… dad were good friends at school.” Harry reflected that the tone in Ginny's voice was not terrible - in fact, it might well have been spot on, if Eleanor had been a typical five-year-old.

“H'lo.” For all her bravado in the entryway, Eleanor's voice was subdued, her head tucked down. Her eyes remained lively, darting from face to face, and Harry wondered what she was gleaning during those dancing looks. He couldn't remember a silence that had ever been so awkward between the four of them. “Why did you make Mother sad?”

She was looking at Ron, her demeanor calm, studious, and utterly unlike that of a five-year-old. Ron's ears were scarlet. No…Harry amended, there's never been a silence this awkward. They would have to have a conversation about the ethics involved in telepathy without consent.

“We - we had - we had a fight. G-grown-ups fight sometimes. It's not - it's not a big - ” Ron floundered, unsure as to whether he should play things down for the sake of the sprog, or be as serious as Hermione would think the situation warranted. He flung a helpless look at his erstwhile fiancee, but she seemed thoroughly absorbed in the placement of marmalade on her toast.

But Eleanor's mind was skipping ever forward. “You love Mother, and you love Father,” she indicated Ron and Ginny in turn. “And they…” She trailed off, and speared Harry with a curious look, suddenly appearing very much her actual age. “Will I have two families then?”

Harry managed to open his mouth, but no sound came out of it.

“I don't know what that means.” Eleanor cocked her head speculatively at her father, eyes squirrel-bright, hearing what he had not said aloud.

“What what means?”

“'Complicated'.” She said the unfamiliar word carefully.

“Who said anything about anything being complicated?” Ron asked, his voice rough with frazzled impatience.

“Ron, Eleanor is telepathic,” Ginny said gently, speaking without really moving her mouth much, darting her eyes meaningfully at the little girl. Harry and Hermione exchanged uncomfortable glances. Hermione could only imagine how much Harry did not want to talk about Eleanor - right in front of her, no less - like she was some kind of specimen. She stood abruptly, banging her leg on the underside of the table resoundingly enough to rattle the silverware. She thinned her lips, repressing what looked to Harry like a swear word, and gestured to Eleanor.

“Bring your plate, sweetheart,” she instructed gently, and proceeded to methodically situate the girl on Harry's sofa, adjusting the specially Charmed television to a nature show geared toward children. When she was sure that Eleanor wasn't wilting under perceived rejection, she returned to the table. Harry cast Muffliato before she'd even fully sat down, and without really meaning to, she flashed him a grateful glance.

“So, she's telepathic,” Ron resumed. “Dumbledore was a master Legilimens. It's not unheard of.”

“This is not Legilimency, Ronald. There may not be a way to block it. There's no noticeable mental push. She could sit right in front of you, and speak everything you were thinking as you thought it. She and Harry were speaking in unison earlier…” Hermione trailed off, her face vaguely troubled.

“So, you think this is complicated?” Ron pivoted in his chair to round on Harry.

“That's what you gleaned from all this, Ron, really?”

“Why would you say that it was complicated? Instead of telling her, `Yes, you'll have two families.'?”

“Maybe because the two families can't go two sentences without fighting about something stupid?” The scorn in Harry's voice was withering. “Besides, last I heard, the status of one of these `families' was iffy at best.” Ron flushed crimson, and Harry belatedly shot a guilty look at Hermione, who was looking gamely back at him, spots of high color in her cheeks. She forced a tight, false smile.

“It was just a fight.” Ron tried to defend himself. “It's a lot to take in all at once, but things will work out.”

“We're no longer engaged,” Hermione spoke icily, directing her comment to nobody in particular.

“Hermione, come on!” Ron sounded as he often did when he and Hermione were rowing, a mixture of pleading and indignation in his voice. “We fight all the time - what makes this any different? It wasn't even the worst row we've ever had!”

“Yes, Ron, we fight all the time. Shouldn't that have been our first clue? I think - I think I was just glossing it over, and only seeing what I wanted to see. And now - now maybe - ” Her mournful eyes darted over to where Eleanor sat on the sofa, absently chewing on toast, utterly absorbed in the television program. “Maybe my priorities have been reordered a bit.”

“You've known about her for two days! I can't believe that you're going to throw over our relationship for that!”

“I'm not the one throwing over anything! You're the one who accused me of harboring feelings for Harry, and settling for you!” She flung one arm rather theatrically in Harry's direction. “He's my best friend, Ron! You'd say he was yours too. If this is the way you're going to act every time Harry and I spend time together, and if that is only going to get worse, because he and I have a daughter together - then we most assuredly do not need to get married!”

“You and Harry don't `have a daughter together'. It's not - it's not the same situation at all. The two of you didn't - didn't create her together. Harry made a decision to adopt an abandoned child. Her sharing his blood, your blood, isn't - well, it isn't relevant. You aren't under any obligation to be any more involved than you want to be.”

The implication in his declaration was all too clear. There was a heavy, heavy silence over the dining table. Hermione and Ron stared at each other, faces flushed, chests heaving, but where Hermione's eyes would have been snapping furiously and Ron's would have been a fiery crystal blue, there was nothing but a dull sadness.

“We've gone over this, Ron! I do want to be involved. I'm not sure I can explain it - ” She darted a hesitant glance at Harry. How could she repeat aloud - in front of Ginny, no less - that she had been sure she wanted to be an integral part of Eleanor's life from the moment she had seen Harry come alive in her presence, since she had seen Harry make a snap decision, as she'd seen him do many times before, and step almost effortlessly into the role of father? This was something Harry had long wanted, something Hermione knew he deserved, and she wanted to be a part of it. As Harry's best friend, she'd known she would have a front row seat, but that wasn't enough. She did want to be part of it, even before Eleanor had started winning her mother over on her own merits. And if Ron was going to make her choose… “I - I just knew it as soon as I saw her.”

She felt, rather than saw, Harry's gaze jerk abruptly to hers, and inwardly cursed the heat that rose to the surface of her skin. Ron wasn't the only one who knew she was lying about that.

“That's a crock of dragon dung, Hermione,” Ron said quietly, as perceptively as though he'd been reading her mind. “We've been tangled up in Harry's life for so long that you don't know how to be any different, couldn't bear it to be any different. Lucky for you that the sprog is yours, so that you have a readymade excuse handy, eh? If the mother had been Susan Bones or - or Katie Bell, and they had made the same decision you did, you wouldn't have been able to stand it, being shouldered out of Harry's life, having some other bird take top priority. Frankly, I'm surprised you allow him to even see Ginny.”

“Half a minute, Ron - !” Harry began, his brows furrowing over angry eyes.

“That's not true!” Hermione's voice trod all over Harry's, as she tried to force it into its normal asperity, but it was tremulous and high-pitched.

“Isn't it?”

“Ron! Hermione has been my best friend since I was eleven! You were there! And I never wanted - I've - I've never asked - ” Hermione saw Harry backpedal a bit, momentarily closing his eyes to tamp down the rising frustration. “She's my best friend,” he repeated with forced calm. “I will gladly take as much of her support and her help and her company as she is willing to give.” He had dropped his gaze to his plate, but darted a quick glance upward toward the woman in question, knowing that they had now both skirted the truth.

I keep bloody well needing you… His apologetic voice from the other night echoed in her head, a far cry from the matter-of-fact words he had just spoken to Ron.

“You could be a part of this too, you know,” Harry added. “I know what a good time we all have with Victoire and Teddy. You could fill the same role: fun Uncle Ron.” A tinge of mirth colored his voice, but did not show in his somber face and weary eyes.

“It's a bit hard to be `Uncle Ron' without `Aunt Hermione'.” The bitterness in his voice was all too apparent.

“So, you're saying I should step back… let Harry and Ginny play house with Eleanor, is that it?”

“I didn't sign up for this!”

“Nobody's asking you to stay!” Hermione's words were raw and blistering, rendered close to unintelligible by rage and tears. “We keep rehashing the same things over and over and over. I am Eleanor's mother, not Ginny. And - and Harry's her father! And if you can't handle that then you can bloody well get out!”

Ron stood then, and there was an odd expression on his face. It wasn't the shocked disbelief that he'd borne when they had first broached the topic of Eleanor and it wasn't the sickened fear stamped there when Hermione had broken their engagement. Harry wasn't quite sure what it was: resignation and fury and… something else, something knowing. He spared a curt nod for his sister, and then wordlessly exited the flat. The crack of his Apparation - heedless of the Muggle traffic that sped by less than a block away - rattled the front door in its hinges even as it quietly clicked shut.

Hermione bolted to her feet, and paced frantically back and forth in front of the table, clawing curved fingers through her hair as though she were torn between whether to detangle it or rip it out of her head. She was muttering to herself through her tears, and neither Harry nor Ginny could make out what she said.

Ginny! Harry suddenly became conscious of his girlfriend, who had been sitting silently through the conflagration, and wondered what she might have been thinking about everything that had been said - and left unsaid. He turned his head slowly, as if afraid the movement would attract attention, but Ginny was not looking at him or at Hermione. Her gaze was directed downward, but her eyes were unfocused. Her fingers were twined tightly around the handle of her fork. Her knuckles were white.

“Gin - ” he started in a rough whisper. He cleared his throat, and began again. “Ginny, I want you to know that what he said, what he meant… you know that - ” Whatever he'd been about to say was driven from his mind completely by a second click of his front door closing. He swore under his breath.

“Hermione! She's probably - I should - I'm sorry, Ginny, but could - ” He was almost to the door, stammering nonsense all the while, but he was derailed yet again. This time it was a mirthless chuckle from his girlfriend. It was not a sound that boded well, but by the time he had looked over his shoulder warily, her face was composed, even close to amused.

“You can't leave Eleanor here. She hardly knows me, and I don't think she'd be comfortable with that, do you?” She rose gracefully from the table, and moved toward the door, patting him on the shoulder as she passed. “I'll go find Hermione. We can talk. Maybe I can help her… understand… why Ron said some of the things he said.”

He opened his mouth to ask why Ginny would be able to understand when Hermione did not, but Eleanor chose that moment to arise from the sofa, carefully balancing her plate in one hand. She put her free hand out in front of her and, seeming to know exactly where the boundary of the Muffliato was, touched it lightly with the pads of her five fingers. There was a soft zzt noise, and Harry saw a faint flash of pale color as the spell ended, like a soap bubble popping.

“El - Eleanor, how - how did - why did you end the spell?” He grasped at his shreds of Occlumency to try to keep her from hearing the bewildered that should not be possible that was winging through his mind. He wasn't even sure it would do any good.

“The penguins went off,” she explained. “And I'm done with my breakfast.”

It took a moment for Harry to fully process what Eleanor had done, and when he turned back around, Ginny was already gone.

TBC

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Twelve: Harbinger Conjured

Ginny shut the door to Harry's flat, gliding smoothly down the stairs, her rubber-soled shoes making very little noise. There had been no crack of Apparation, so she looked carefully down the sidewalk in both directions. Her eye caught the movements of various knots of people about their business, without any of them flagging an Urgent Owl to her brain saying, “There she is!” Damn it, she thought, either of the boys would be able to guess where she's gone better than I would. How hard can it be to spot an angry witch in pajamas?

A low whistle caught her attention, and she jerked her head up so rapidly that she had to splutter and push the fall of vivid hair out of her face. The Auror on Duty was lounged comfortably against a building across the way, perusing the newsstand with apparent single-minded intensity. Just when she thought she'd hallucinated the noise, he raised one arm, and pointed back to her left with one thumb. He never looked at her.

She took a moment to flash a self-deprecating smile of appreciation, which he did not see, and strode in the direction he had indicated, her gait purposeful without being panicked. She had just reached the mouth of a secluded alley, when she heard the hiss of air brakes and the rumble of an impossibly loud engine behind her. Cursing, she managed to spring out of the way just in time - into the road, ironically - as the hulking, aubergine form of the Knight Bus materialized right behind her, driving at breakneck speed down the sidewalk and coming to a whiplash-inducing halt.

Her peripheral vision just barely caught the faintest flicker of movement at the steps of the bus. Ignoring the adrenaline-fueled acceleration in her heart rate, she sprinted toward the head of the bus, managing to grab the bar and swing herself inside, just as it lurched away, narrowly avoiding a taxi and two fruit stands, before disappearing with a noise like a hundred Apparations.

She dropped a handful of sickles in the conductor's hand, without really counting them, and swayed with the manic motion of the bus, as she surveyed the interior for Hermione.

“I know you're here,” she bluffed, causing several people to look at her rather warily. “You know I'm not going to just give up and go home…” The threat hung in the air for just a moment, before Ginny heard a softly uttered,

“Finite,” and Hermione shimmered into view, skewering Ginny with a sullen look. The younger girl was unfazed; she had brothers, after all.

“I don't want to talk about Ron,” Hermione said definitively, before Ginny's rear end could even touch the mismatched vinyl bus seat.

“You can't pretend that didn't just happen.”

“I'm through, Ginny!” The words were vehement, but the tone was weary. “If he can't see… I'm done wasting tears and self-worth and … and perfectly good canary spells on him. I'm more important. Eleanor is more important.”

“And Eleanor's father? What of him?” Ginny's face was placid, in the dangerous, deceptive way that deep, still water was placid.

“Harry doesn't have anything to do with what just happened between Ron and me.” Hermione's brows were lowering stormily over her flashing eyes.

“Doesn't he?”

Hermione flung her hands upward in a gesture born of complete exasperation. “Don't tell me you're thinking the same ridiculous things that Ron is!” The intervening silence was barely calculable. Ginny's face melted from its unfathomable expression into a merry smile.

“Of course not. But I am trying to get you to see things from his point of view. Can you not see where your friendship with Harry might look suspect to someone on the outside looking in?”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

“Ron is not on the outside looking in. He's one of us! Of course, we're used to the rumors. They started when we were fourteen years old. Your mother believed them.” She shot a rapier glance toward Ginny, where it was easily deflected. “I kept thinking that Ron would get over the unfounded stories, get over the petty jealousy… Harry and I have been friends for almost ten years, and there has never… never… ” Her eyes went distant, soft, as she thought of a long-ago dance that they had danced together, light-footed on the edge of possibility, without ever quite taking that last step. “Harry and I are close. We've always been close. We… we get each other.” She interlaced her fingers, and then looked imploringly at Ginny, a plea for her to understand as well. “Maybe it was the time when the whole school thought he'd illegally entered the Triwizard Tournament.” Except for me. “Maybe it was after the Department of Mysteries.” I knew what might happen, but I wouldn't let him go alone. “Maybe it was during the Horcrux Hunt; I don't know, maybe it was all of it. But now, with Eleanor, I mean - however it came about, we're parents, together, he and I… She's got to come first, and Ron - Ron just hasn't shown that he'll be able to handle it, that he even wants to try to handle it.” She ran her fingers through her snarled curls, and Ginny suddenly noticed that Hermione had transfigured her pajamas into some kind of tracksuit. She shook her head, unsurprised, and was suppressing a small smile, when Hermione blurted, “It doesn't seem to bother you.”

Ginny's eyes snapped up from her perusal of Hermione's attire to meet her friend's frank gaze.

“Of course, it doesn't bother me. I know Harry. I know you. I trust both of you.”

“And Ron doesn't?” Hermione's scrutiny of her friend was a little deeper than usual. Her gaily carefree demeanor seemed somewhat less convincing. It does bother her. Her unconcern is a front, she thought. She pulled her gaze away from Ginny, and let her eyes roam beyond the window, without really seeing the passing streets. She wasn't exactly how sure how Ginny's façade of indifference made her feel.

“You know he trusts both of you, deep down. He just … he's always felt like he came in second to one or another of our brothers, and then to Harry. He's insecure, but he knows that neither of you would ever betray him. He just has to … adjust to the new situation.”

Betray. It was a strong word to use, and it immediately snagged the majority of Hermione's attention. Was there a subtle warning there? She snaked a sideways look, but Ginny's face was as pretty and open as it always seemed to be.

“Ginny, I was just telling…” She almost choked on the word Harry, and swallowed it instead. “ - someone the other day, the constant tiptoeing around Ron, worrying that I've said the wrong thing, fighting over every decision, every plan - it just gets tiring. And Eleanor has changed everything. That's all there is to it. She's - she's special. And I don't have time for Ron's temper tantrums anymore.”

“You're going off half-cocked. You're not thinking this through. This is Ron. You were meant to be - Harry's two best friends living happily ever after.” Hermione thought that if Ginny had been about a decade and a half younger, she might have stomped her foot. “If you would just - ”

“Ginny.” The word was bitten with iron. “I am telling you that this would have happened anyway. Maybe not now. Maybe not this way. But Ron and I - it wasn't going to work. It already wasn't working. I was on my way to realizing it - maybe he was too. Eleanor was just… just the catalyst.”

“Not the reason?” There was a mixture of faint hope and dread in Ginny's eyes, and Hermione couldn't quite pinpoint an explanation for it.

“Not the reason,” she echoed, laying one hand on Ginny's arm. Her eyes were gentle. “I don't want to hurt Ron. And I'll always love him. He's been one of my best friends for years.”

“He's going to need time.” There was an air of defeat in Ginny's voice.

Hermione removed her hand, and leaned back against her own seat, staring unseeingly out the window once again. “I know.”

*********

“The Knight bus? You hate the Knight Bus. Where were you even going?” Harry's voice was half-incredulous, half-amused, as he followed Hermione into the kitchen, having divested her of the laden bags of takeaway.

“I don't know! I just thought it might be the last place anyone would look for me. It was my bad luck that it nearly ran over Ginny, and she saw me sneaking on.”

“Yeah, she told me over the Floo.” There was a somewhat ponderous silence as they pulled little white cardboard containers from the two sacks. “So… you and Ron?” Hermione chanced a glance at him; his eyes were even more guarded than usual - she could see compassion… and something else, lurking, indefinable.

“We're done.” Her shoulders slumped as she sighed, bracing herself against the countertop, and she felt the warm weight of his fingers across hers. “I Owled the ring back to him this afternoon. Rather cowardly of me, wasn't it?”

“Well, you didn't exactly return it out of a clear blue sky. I'm pretty sure we all saw the writing on the wall,” Harry said in a comforting voice, outrageously mixing his cliches. “In fact, I can't help but feel that I put it there.”

Hermione gave him one of her best Harry, don't be silly looks.

“The way you always take responsible for other people's stupid and/or difficult choices, well, it's kind of endearing, Harry, but …” she shook her head at him. “It's not at all the case here. This is not your fault. It's not Eleanor's fault. You are perfectly at liberty to choose to raise Eleanor. And I…” She smiled faintly at him. The corners of his eyes crinkled up in return. “And I am perfectly at liberty to choose to walk this road with you.” She held up the lidded container of soy sauce in a mock salute. A laugh escaped his lips, as he reached for the container of fried rice and bumped it gently into her cup. “Cheers.”

They stared at each other, frozen in the moment of wholehearted camaraderie, until Hermione became all too aware of how Harry's other hand still rested on hers. His fingers had gotten clammy, and yet the touch seemed to crackle with an odd energy. Hermione pulled her hand out from under his, in what she hoped was a casual way.

“And anyway,” she continued, clearing her throat a bit to break up the moment. “I'm the one who should be apologizing to you, for running out on breakfast and disappearing like that. It certainly wasn't very motherly of me. How is she doing?”

“She's fine. You might've created a monster though.” Harry gestured around the corner, and Hermione peered in that direction, immediately noticing the stack of shiny new DVDs stacked near the television. “We went to the store down the block. She likes the nature shows.”

Hermione felt a pang of disappointment that she had missed the trip to the store, presumably Eleanor's first. Something of that must have flickered unbidden in her eyes, because Harry squared around in front of her, catching her by the elbows, and tipping her chin up to look at him. His smile was crooked.

“Hey. You were working some things out. We just went to the store. I know how you like to turn minor things to epic Granger failures, but this is not a big deal. Besides, I thought we might go to the park around the corner after we eat. There's still plenty of light out.”

Hermione was torn between dissolving into tears and … well, dissolving into tears, but she didn't want to dredge up Harry's guilt complex again. Instead, she dove into his embrace, enjoying the feel of his broad shoulder beneath her cheek. One of his hands splayed across her back, and the other snarled in her hair.

“Okay,” she murmured.

After they'd retrieved Eleanor from the depths of the bookshelf in her room (which caused Harry to make one or two unoriginal comments involving apples and trees), they ate in a mostly companionable silence, highly entertained at Eleanor's exploration of the fried rice and won tons, as well as the studious way she removed the peas from the Hoi Sin chicken. Harry's casual suggestion that they walk down to the playground was initially met with trepidation. Harry realized it was another thing that she had seen on a card and had had nebulously described to her, but she did not have any concept of what comprised an actual playground.

“It's not like the fire,” he told her softly, looking earnestly at her, willing his heart not to crumble inside him at the fear in her eyes. “It's not dangerous or scary. There will be other children there, playing and having fun.” He darted a glance at Hermione, with another half-smile on his face. “And your mother and I will be right there, if you need us. But if you don't want to go, that's okay too.”

Eleanor assessed them both somberly. Harry scraped at every shred of Occlumency he'd ever learned, trying not to think of Dudley or his gang stalking him on the playground. He could only hope that Hermione had a few better memories. Instead, he tried to focus on how much he wanted Eleanor to feel safe and secure, trusting that she could pick up on that with her unique abilities. He felt an upwelling of relief, when she nodded her agreement to go.

Harry cleared the table, while Hermione shrunk down a jacket for Eleanor, privately thinking that she would have to do some more extensive shopping, and soon. She quirked an eyebrow at Harry, when she saw him pulling on a pair of gloves and getting out an additional child-sized pair. It was not nearly cool enough for those.

“This way I can hold her hand. We experimented while you were gone.” Harry lifted one shoulder, almost shamefacedly. “I'm not sure if it's the leather, or the double layers… but this way, I don't have one of those `episodes'.”

Hermione was appalled at herself. “I shouldn't have left you alone! What if - what if something happened? What if she got hurt, and you needed to touch her, but you had a vision and blacked out? What if - ?”

“I don't always black out.”

“We are definitely talking to Shravana about this when we go back to St. Mungo's.” Hermione's voice brooked no opposition, absolutely unmoved by Harry's defensiveness.

“I'm way ahead of you, Granger,” Harry teased. “I've already Flooed her. We're going tomorrow.”

“You only did that because you knew I'd insist on it. You were trying to head me off at the pass.” Hermione narrowed her eyes at him in mock suspicion.

“Of course I was! Do you think I've learned nothing in all our years of friendship?” He swung the door open, and they bumped shoulders playfully, as they each took one of Eleanor's hands. The walk was a pleasant one. Harry's neighborhood was a cheerful and friendly place, located right where the fringed borders of a magical and Muggle neighborhood overlapped. As a result, while he got the occasional double-take, but people were much less likely to immediately recognize him here.

When they arrived at the gate to the playground, Harry and Hermione both squatted down on Eleanor's level, wanting to carefully identify for her the different pieces of playground equipment. The park was not terribly crowded, and when Eleanor expressed interest in the swing set and the merry-go-round, they ambled in that direction. Harry then settled Eleanor in a swing, with Hermione taking the adjacent one, and they showed her how to hold on, then how to pump with her legs. Quickly catching on to the mechanics, Eleanor had gotten enough speed for her dark brown hair to stream behind her like a banner, and her face began to open up. Hermione's heart did a stutter-step at the sight of those beloved green eyes dancing in her daughter's face. She exchanged heartfelt glances with her best friend - if this is what the good moments are like, no wonder people have children. Neither of them said anything aloud, but Harry must have instinctively realized what Hermione was thinking, for - without even looking at her, having eyes for no one but his daughter - he reached down beside him, and took her hand.

The merry-go-round was next, a sturdy metal structure, painted in different colored pie slices, with red bars to hold on to. Again, the process was carefully explained to Eleanor, and Harry made sure that an exuberant child, who galloped up wanting a ride, understood why they would be spinning so slowly, at least at first. It didn't take long before Eleanor was imitating the mischievous sprite opposite, seated facing inward, gripping the bars in both hands, and leaning back as far as she dared.

Her laugh sounded like music. Her eyes sparkled with joy, her mouth wide open, her hair swinging out in a wide, dark whirl. Hermione wanted to freeze the moment, the sound and sight of her daughter's happiness, the rapturous look on Harry's face, and the way she felt, and live in it forever.

“Father, it feels like flying!” The childish treble was breathless with wonder. It was really a ridiculous statement on the surface, Hermione reflected. How could a childhood as stunted as Eleanor's ever even be able to remotely conceive of what it would be like to fly? Where would she have ever experienced any kind of comparable euphoria?

Then, Hermione looked at Harry.

He was smiling, smiling a silly, giddy, besotted smile, wider than any she'd ever seen on him. And tears were pouring down his face.

Of course, she realized suddenly. She does know what it's like. Because Harry knows. Harry's flights had never caused him uncertainty or fear, had been one of the few places where he felt whole. She thought of the Quidditch games, thestral trips to London… Buckbeak… Harry showed her what it feels like to fly. There was an unbearable sweet ache in her chest, and she struggled to suppress the sob that wanted to burst out.

Suddenly, just in Hermione's line of sight, a boy, appearing about nine years of age, stomped up the nearby slide, in four or five large strides, making a series of loud, ascending, metallic clangs. The sole purpose of his incorrect slide usage was to utterly startle the younger girl clambering up the ladder to seat herself at the top. He was successful, and immediately on the heels of the noise came her high-pitched yelp of terror.

Something simultaneously caught Harry's attention, and she followed his alert gaze over his shoulder. A shadowy figure crouched in the arched curve of a bush. This time, she too saw a camera flash. Then there was another one from the opposite side of the park.

Eleanor jerked upwards, the sudden flashes of light, the scream, the sound of stressed metal startling her violently. She reached one hand up to cover her head, quailing from an expected blow. She swung out, clinging to the whirling merry-go-round with only one hand, and Harry sprang toward it with outstretched arms to slow it down before she fell.

Hermione felt the thrum of energy go through her, felt her scalp tingle, her fingers twitch, before she had really processed what happened. Even as she tried to put a label on it, the four lights at the corners of the playground and the traffic signal at the nearest intersection popped and went out. She thought she saw one sparking. There was the unmistakable squeal of tires biting pavement on the orders of a brake pedal too hastily applied, and she thought she heard the faintest musical tinkle of glass shattering into a million pieces. There were murmurs across the playground, shouts of parents checking on their children, the wail of a frightened toddler more scared than hurt. Absently, her hands flew up to smooth her hair, it having felt like it was standing on end, and then her eyes flew to where she had last seen Harry. The merry-go-round's spin was winding down, faded and forgotten.

Harry was sitting on the ground, Eleanor straddling his lap, pressed tightly against him, clearly terrified. One of his hands pressed into her back, the other cupped the back of her head, as if he could pull her inside him and keep her safe. The little girl was shaking uncontrollably, and Harry was muttering soothing nonsense, between which Hermione could hear, repeated rapidly, “It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.”

“Harry?” Hermione's voice quavered the question, pitched higher than she would have liked. “Harry, what happened?”

“The wizarding media is here.” The tone in Harry's voice was low and urgent. “We've got to get out of here.”

Hermione's mind groped to catch up. She felt as if someone had skipped a page in the book, as if she had missed one very important instruction that everyone else had heard.

“What is going on? Did she - ?”

“Hermione!” Harry's voice was not loud, but somehow blistering all the same. “Trust me.” Hermione realized that she was manically nodding, without actually speaking any words, and finally stammered,

“O -o -okay. Okay.”

“You're a Healer. Stay here. Make sure no one was hurt. It'd probably be best if the Obliviators didn't ever see you. Eleanor and I were never here. I need you to create a distraction.” Eleanor's hiccupping sobs reclaimed his attention, and he patted and murmured again for a moment.

Hermione had about a thousand questions, all clamoring to be voiced, but she accepted his orders without dissent. There was an odd sense of comfort in sliding back into old roles. Like riding a bicycle, she thought in a non sequitur. She surreptitiously slid her wand into her sleeve, and aimed it the slide, easily the highest point on the playground, and summarily abandoned in the chaos. The resultant surge was enough to dislodge the ladder from its anchor points in the ground, and jolt it upward, contorting the metal slope and causing it to protest and buckle. There were more cries of alarm, and the distant wail of sirens began their chorus.

Hermione never even heard the crack of Harry's Disapparation.

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Thirteen: Fastness Breached

“Would you like to tell me,” Harry said very gently, as he smoothed his hand over the coverlet of his daughter's bed, “what happened back there… at the playground?” Eleanor yawned, scrunching her eyes shut, as the bedside lamplight caught the shine of the newly applied Drying Charm in her hair. Harry had held his peace as he gave her a bath and readied her for bed, but necessity drove him to ask the question.

“I do not know,” she answered him solemnly. “The noise and the light made me afraid. And… and it - it came out of me.”

“What came out, Eleanor? What was it?” With effort, he kept his voice calm and pitched low. Her green eyes were wide with uncertainty.

“I do not know. Like - like with the fire you saw. I did not mean to break the lights.”

“Honey, I know you didn't. Sometimes… when children are magical, their magic gets away from them. It happens all the time. There's even a squad to fix those accidents. And then… you grow out of it, as your magic settles down and you become able to control it.”

“And then… and then, Father, you can give me hugs and hold my hand… without the gloves?” She lifted one corner of her mouth in a hopeful half-smile. Harry turned toward the foot of the bed to hand her the plush kneazle, in part to squelch the sting of pending tears that burned his nose. He had not fully realized the nuances that Eleanor picked up on, unbidden. And he truly knew how she felt, remembered what an impact Hermione's gestures of affection had had on his own heretofore love-starved childhood.

“Without the gloves,” Harry promised, even though he truly knew no such thing. As he Noxed her lamp and pulled her door almost closed, he wondered if the investigation had turned up anything new, or if Shravana would be able to give them any answers.

He had only just turned away from her room, when he heard the soft snick of his front door closing. Hermione was entering the living area, kicking her shoes off and pressing her fingers to her temples like she was forcibly keeping her brain inside her skull.

“Headache potion?”

“Please.” She sank onto the sofa, as Harry rummaged around in the medicine cabinet for the appropriate vial.

“What happened?” He asked the question hesitantly, as he backed out of the depths of the cupboard, a musical series of glassy clinks accompanying his question. The guilt he was feeling at having bailed out of a difficult situation and left her there to handle it was stamped clearly across his face.

“Nothing too crazy…” Hermione ventured slowly, taking the slim-necked container from his hand and tossing the dose back like a shot. He sat next to her, tension evident in every sinew, and waited, as she pressed her eyes closed, swallowed, and winced. She was several words into her next sentence before she looked at him. “There must have been some kind of power surge. The traffic signals were messed up - that caused a minor accident at the intersection. Lights blew in a couple of storefronts; some bystanders got cut.” Alarm blazed up in Harry's eyes, as she hastened to add, “Nothing major. And the Reversal Squad - they were there in minutes. I - I wasn't able to avoid them.”

“What did you tell them?” Harry's voice was so warily guarded that Hermione almost laughed.

“That I was walking through the park, on my way to your house, when a child's magic must have gone off. It must have started at the slide, but I didn't see anything of use.” She blinked faux-innocent eyes at him, as she parroted her story.

“I should've - I - I shouldn't have just left you - I - ”

“You did what you needed to do. You got Eleanor out of the situation as rapidly as possible.” Hermione laid a gently hand atop his. “Although…”

“I know,” he interposed glumly. “I saw the camera flashes too.”

“The chances that nobody caught you on camera… and that the Reversal Squad won't put two and two together are pretty slim.” She waited a beat, but Harry's gaze remained distant and unsettled. “They'll remember I was there. They'll want to know who Eleanor is. They'll start bothering the Weasleys…” Harry wasn't sure whether her pronoun indicated the Ministry or the media, and he figured she probably didn't know either. Her voice trailed off again, peering at him in concern. “We weren't going to be able to keep her a secret forever, Harry.”

“I know that. I know that. I just - I thought we might have more time, more time to figure out what - what exactly is going on. St. Mungo's is going to want a piece of her, the MLE, the Department of Mysteries… and now, the Prophet'll have a field day, for no other reason than the fact that she has my blood in…” Hermione privately thought that there were several other reasons, not the least of which were Eleanor's maternal heritage and its connection to her break-up with Ron, which in itself would be news, thanks to their relationship with Harry. She noted with a start that Harry had stopped talking mid-sentence, and was staring with single-minded intensity at absolutely nothing.

“Harry? Are you all right?” She picked up the hand she'd been touching so his was encased between both of hers. He jerked his gaze up to collide with hers, looking almost startled to see her sitting there - wherever he'd been just then, it had been quite a distance away.

“I was just - ” He closed his mouth abruptly, thinking better of whatever he'd been about to say. He shook his head, a series of short, quick motions. “Never mind.” A half-laugh. “It's gone now.”

Hermione cut her eyes sideways at him, but said nothing. He was lying. She knew it, and she was fairly sure that he knew she knew. She was not going to press him for what he was unwilling to say however - at least, not yet. It was getting late.

“I should go,” she murmured softly, half-rising from the sofa, before his fingers tightened around hers.

“Stay.” It was a request, and he would not have pressed her, but she found herself sinking back down onto the cushions, as quickly as she'd moved away from them.

“What is wrong?”

“What happened… at the playground - it's just highlighted for me how much - I mean, what's at stake with - and Ron and everything - I - ” Hermione's brows were a crooked furrow above her dark eyes, and Harry could not prevent a frustrated sigh. “We don't know what they were trying to do. We don't know why they left her behind. If the Ministry were to try to take her, to finish what those others started - `for the greater good', of course - ” he added sarcastically, “ - there's no way to know what kind of chain reaction something like that would cause. What if someone had been seriously hurt in that accident? There are still people there who - who don't like me - who would use this to further some kind of - of political advantage. What if we lose her? And I already - I already - ” His head dropped with the wobble in his voice, as she tried to communicate comfort by the swirl of her fingertips on his hand. “God help me, Hermione,” he continued tiredly. “I already love her as if you gave birth to her yourself, and I was in the delivery room at your side.” Her fingers stilled suddenly, and she hoped he would not notice the sudden wash of color across her cheeks. He raised his head to meet her eyes, and there was an upwelling of emotion in his that she did not recognize. The faint air of desperation, though, made her nervous.

“Hey, hey,” she shushed, in a soft voice meant to soothe. “You were right, what you said earlier. We don't know anything. So there's no need in winding yourself up over hypotheticals, right?” She stared at him, solemn and wide-eyed, willing him to understand. She could still feel the flush in her face that had not entirely receded, and he was staring right back at her, until an unwilling snort from ill-repressed laughter escaped his lips. She arched her brows in query, and he was all too eager to elaborate.

“You! Telling someone not to fret over hypotheticals. Talk about the kettle calling the cauldron black!” She narrowed her eyes at him in mock injury, although she couldn't honestly deny the truth inherent in his statement. She made as if to drop his hand and withdraw from him, but his grip tightened again around her left hand. His eyes were still dancing with their momentary mirth, as with careless grace, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it so gently that she barely felt it. Her heart stutter-stepped briefly, before resuming a painful, heavy rhythm against her breastbone that was surely audible. “I couldn't do this without you. I don't know what I would do without you.” Harry's voice was soft in the utter stillness of the flat.

“Miss me?” The sudden intrusion of Ginny's voice, while airy and light, struck a discordant note in the middle of their hushed conversation. Hermione's face felt scalding hot, and she withdrew from Harry's hand like it was as well.

“Ginny!” Hermione spread a smile of greeting across her face, and rose from the couch in what she hoped was a smooth and casual fashion. “I'm so glad you came. I was about to head on home, but it - it was a bit of a rough night. I'm not sure Harry should be alone.” There was something flat and coolly assessing in Ginny's eyes that Hermione was not entirely comfortable with.

“Harry is fine with being alone,” the man in question snapped irritably, looking as discomfited as Hermione felt. “He can feed and dress himself too.” Hermione leaned down to ruffle his hair, and then kiss the mess she'd made of it.

“Sarcasm does not become us,” she retorted. “I'll see you in the morning for Eleanor's appointment?”

Harry nodded, and Hermione moved toward his front door, grabbing her shoes with one hand, as she willed her heart to resume its normal rhythm. Over the sound of her exit, she barely heard Ginny say,

“You should really turn your Floo back on.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Hermione met Harry the next day, hand-in-gloved-hand with Eleanor at the St. Mungo's Employee's Entrance, he looked awful, and she told him so.

“So what were you doing last night, you know, when normal people were sleeping? Because you obviously weren't. And didn't you have any Pepper-up Potion on hand?”

“I took some.” Hermione's eyebrows arched up further. This was what he looked like with a dose of Pepper-up? She got her mouth open to ask what had happened, when he said, “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Was it - ?”

“I said, `I don't want to talk about it.'” His voice was emphatic, without quite crossing over into rudeness. Hermione figured it was more because of Eleanor's presence than hers.

“Mother thinks your sur-lee-ness is un-attractive,” Eleanor remarked blandly.

“Oh, Eleanor.” Hermione's voice was a weary sigh, her face aglow. Harry scrubbed his free hand across the unshaven lower half of his face, and looked torn between laughter, annoyance, and exhaustion.

“Unattractive, am I? If you think I'm unattractive, will you please tell Ginny that? Bombard her with owls, paint it on one of those enormous billboards, take out a full-page ad in the Prophet?” His purple-encircled eyes were full of misery. Guilt welled up in Hermione's chest, as it hit her right in the face, the reason that Harry looked so sleep-deprived and irritable.

“Oh, Harry, I'm sorry.”

“What have you got to be sorry for? Haven't we been friends for twelve years now? Why can't they trust us? Why can't they believe us, when -” He flashed a quick glance down at Eleanor, and stopped talking.

Maybe it's the way we look at each other, or the way we hold hands without realizing it, or that you say things like `I don't know what I would do without you,' where your girlfriend can hear them, Hermione thought sadly. She loved her relationship with Harry, and would be loath to alter it in any way. But perhaps, with her and Ron's break-up, Ginny was more apt to see her as some kind of rival, finding their closeness untenable.

“Ginny-Weasley thinks that you like Father,” Eleanor added somewhat unnecessarily, flashing those green eyes of Harry's up at her through her long lashes.

“Good morning, Harry,” came a piping trill from behind them, as Bronwyn fluttered out of her office to intercept him. Harry's reluctant mumbling response all but drowned out Eleanor's next pronouncement.

“—and I know you do.”

“Eleanor - ” Hermione managed a warning sort of hiss, before Harry steered them with alacrity away from Bronwyn's simpering clutches. Shock had parted her lips, but simultaneously closed her throat. The little girl was mistaken, had to be mistaken, had misread the situation entirely due to her lack of familiarity with normal human interactions.

Please do not say anything about that to your father. She tried to keep her mental `tone of voice' as calm as possible, and was rewarded with another upward flash of green - in what she hoped was acquiescence - and no further conversation until they had reached the children's ward again.

By the time they reached the small conference room across from where Eleanor had stayed, the little girl was walking almost directly behind Harry's right leg, close enough to occasionally trip on his heel and cause them both to stumble. Healer Desai was waiting for them there, and, to Harry and Hermione's surprise, Auror Stuart Falworth.

“I wasn't aware that this was considered part of the Ministry investigation,” Harry offered, somewhat stiffly, in response to Falworth's hand extended in greeting. Auror Falworth looked slightly shamefaced.

“With all due respect, Mr. Potter, at this point, anything regarding Eleanor is considered part of the investigation.”

“And what point is that?” Falworth cleared his throat awkwardly.

“She is still largely an unknown quantity, sir. I realize that you would like nothing more than to leave this ward in your broom contrails and never see me again in particular. But should you choose that course, then know that we'll likely never find out who did this and why.”

“Why should it matter now?”

Falworth chose not to answer in words, but merely crossed his arms and speared Harry with a look that was almost Granger-ish. Harry's mind was forced back to the conversation that he and Hermione last night, and knew that Falworth was right, however much he might not like it.

“Mr. Potter,” the healer interjected softly, seeming to read something in his body language that indicated his irritation subsiding. “You said last night that Eleanor was transmitting her thoughts to you?”

“That's not exactly it.” He paused to look down at his daughter, and saw her beaming at the Auror. He found more of his recalcitrance fading. If she had formed such a high opinion of the man in such a short time of acquaintance, then who was he to resist? “When we touch, I can see her memories. I - I'm not sure if it's done deliberately or not.”

“It's caused him to lose consciousness,” Hermione put in, concern clear in her voice and her eyes. Healer Desai murmured in acknowledgment, her quill flying across the file. With a one-armed gesture toward Eleanor's old room - shall we? - they were directed through the door.

“Any other symptoms?” Desai asked, as both Hermione and Falworth erected another layer or two of privacy wards.

“Dizziness, mainly. I was able to push it off once… mostly… ”

“Hermione, have you experienced this too?”

“No, only Harry.” That tone was still resonant in her voice, and Harry turned to look at her, oddly worried because he had made her worry. He found a feeling of longing welling up within him - longing to soothe the shadows out of her somber eyes. “I think it's been worsening each time, hasn't it, Harry?” Something strident in her voice warned him not to lie, and he smothered a smile at her constancy.

“It's - it's hard to say,” he stammered a bit, and wouldn't meet Hermione's gaze. “It seems like it could be getting worse, but … but we've been actively avoiding it, so - ” he held up his gloved hands for their perusal. “So - it's hard to say.” He shrugged.

“Does it affect Eleanor the way it affects you?”

“It does not hurt me.” It was Eleanor who piped up, rather than Harry. “I do not want to hurt Father. But I do not know how to make it stop. Can you fix it?”

“If we can find out why it's doing that, we might be able to stop it.” Healer Desai addressed the little girl, briefly kneeling to be on her level. “Can you hold your daddy's hand for me? Without the gloves?” She shot a look up at the Boy Who Lived. “Is that all right with you, Mr. Potter?”

Harry nodded roughly, and then reached over to briefly squeeze Hermione's hand, hoping to ease some of the obvious trepidation there. He hopped up to sit on the hospital bed sideways, legs dangling, while Hermione lifted Eleanor to sit beside him. They exchanged a brief glance, and removed their dark gloves, handing them to Hermione, before Harry gently took her little hand in his. He felt a bit like he'd just been coated in some kind of Sensory Deprivation serum, and his closed eyes rolled up in his skull as his equilibrium left him. Tinnily and as if from very far away, he heard Healer Desai say, “Healer Granger, can you monitor the - ”

Eleanor was in the hallway again. She was so tired. They had had her lifting large concrete blocks all day yesterday, without touching them of course. They had paid her no attention when her head throbbed and her nose bled, and tears and sweat blended together to coat her face. She figured she had gone to sleep, but it was a sleep full of angry voices and clanging doors and crying Muddles and flame. She did not feel rested.

Her hair was getting matted in the back. It had been a long time since Rhu had brushed her hair.

Mei and Zed met each other in the hallway, and were talking in hushed voices, studiously avoiding eye contact. Mei did not loosen the claw-like grip on her hand. She thinks I'll get away, Eleanor thought gloomily. But where would I go?

“… seem to get stronger responses with application of negative …”

“… as long as you know what will happen to you if…”

“… willing to take that chance… seems to think the results would be amplified beyond anything we've seen so far…”

“… may the curse be on your head then, if anything…”

She did not know what they were talking about, could not hear all the words, but she knew some of them: results, responses, application. More tests. She concentrated as hard as she could on stopping the trembling of her mouth, the welling of tears in her eyes. She really wanted to take a nap.

A joint in Eleanor's arm popped loudly as Mei jerked her into motion. She stumbled and staggered for a few steps before recovering from the sudden start. Mei did not appear to notice at all, as she all but dragged the girl into a dismal, cavernous stairwell, and headed down. They ended up in a poorly lit basement, lined with thickly painted cinder blocks and smelling of mildew. The corners blurred into shadow, and Eleanor felt uncomfortably that she was being watched with menace. Across the room, there was the faintest of metallic rattles.

Mei disentangled her fingers with a muttered oath, when Eleanor instinctively fought against being released, against being left in the middle of this scary, stinky room , where odd noises lurked in unseen recesses.

“Do not move.” And with clacking strides that quickly ate up the concrete floor, Mei was gone, disappearing behind a heavy metal door that closed with a decisive and resounding thud.

The metal rattled again, and then there was a slithering noise, as if a chain was being dragged across the floor. There was a low snarl, an almost gentle warning rumble bubbling up from the gullet of some monster that Eleanor was very sure she did not want to meet. A shudder rippled through her frame, but she did not give voice to the fearful whimper that wanted release.

“Eleanor?” A soft voice called, resounding lightly in the empty room. “Eleanor, Mei told me your hair needed brushing. Why don't you come sit down?” It was Rhu, something approaching kindness glimmering in her eyes, as she dragged a battered metal chair over to where Eleanor stood. The abrasive noise did not fully drown out the chain dragging, growling monster hiding in the dark.

“You can brush my hair upstairs,” Eleanor said hopefully, trying not to sound afraid. “In my room.”

“It's okay, Eleanor. There isn't anyone down here, but us.”

You're lying, Eleanor thought. She looked up at Rhu, focusing her gaze with intensity, willing Rhu's thoughts to her, hoping she could glean what was going on. But Rhu's mind was smooth, slippery and blank and cold, like a dead fish. The `Perius Curse, Eleanor realized dully. They did not want her to read Rhu's thoughts, so Rhu could not know what was happening either. Rhu tried to turn her head gently, as she began to slip the bristles of the brush through her tangled chestnut hair… and that was when Eleanor saw it:

An enormous black dog, eyes glowing in the dim light, unmistakable malice in every sinew of its bearing. Eleanor only had an impression of slavering jaws and a furious, frenzied bark, before it broke into a run.

“Rhu!” she shrieked, terrified beyond measure that the only adult in the room was paying no attention at all to the deadly beast bearing down on them. She jerked her body to the side, staggering Rhu backwards, and knocking over the chair. She felt like she was on fire, only the fire was inside of her, flowing, running, burning, then seeping through, breaking the seal of her skin and exploding outward in an aura of light that was white-hot and eclipsing.

She was able, with the distance of rapidly fading consciousness, to register the pitiful whimper of an animal in pain, followed by the sound of many feet and many voices.

“Harry!” Hermione cried in alarm, as her best friend's body arched up, as though hit with an unseen curse.

“Father!” Eleanor's voice was similar in timbre, and she immediately let go of his hand. But Harry did not blink his eyes open, wincing and rubbing his head with a self-deprecating grin. Instead, he keeled over sideways with unforeseen suddenness, nearly hitting the hard tile floor, before Hermione and Falworth managed to halfway catch him.

“He's seizing!” Hermione's declaration was urgency that had not quite crossed over into panic. Shravana dismantled the privacy wards, and sent out an emergency beacon, the equivalent of a Muggle code.

“Has this happened before?”

“No… nothing like this. Just momentary syncope.”

“It almost looks like magical feedback.” Healer Desai's wand was flicking back and forth too rapidly to be seen clearly. Her quill and file hovered nearby, recording everything. “But a five-year-old shouldn't be able to overwhelm an adult's system. There isn't even a Legilimental bond. Nothing but touch? It doesn't make any sense. None of this should even be possible.”

A team of mediwitches pushing a potions cart burst through the door, Levitating Harry onto the bed, as Auror Falworth carefully moved a distraught Eleanor out of the way. He cradled her on one hip like a toddler, while her eyes remained locked on the unresponsive form of her father. The lights in the room flickered, and one or two of the globes cracked in several places. Hermione's eyes followed the flashes and subtle sounds, and she exchanged worried glances with Healer Desai.

“This is magical feedback,” she said, as the two Healers apparently reached the same conclusion at nearly the same time. “His system is overloaded. All of his magical synapses are misfiring.” Hermione clenched her teeth to keep her jaw from trembling, willing her throat not to clog with tears. Harry needs me. I cannot fall apart when it matters most.

“We've got to stabilize him before there is brain damage.” Desai called out to the mediwitches, a rapid-fire staccato of potion names spilling from her mouth, as they moved into seamless coordination. “Keziah, take a scan of Eleanor please. We need the full panel of MSR. Can someone get a message to Healer Fellowes? He's the best we've got on this kind of thing. Hurry!”

Hermione had used a medical incantation to call up a three-dimensional rendering of Harry's brain activity. She and Shravana had not moved from Harry's side, as they rotated the image and discussed what was going on, while the mediwitches worked around his spasming limbs.

“Why don't they just Stupefy him?” Stuart Falworth murmured to himself, more than anything wishing to quietly extricate himself from this room and this all-too-personal situation. Healer Granger's agony was heart-rending to watch. But this child in his arms needed somebody, and he'd be damned if he was going to drop her in a hard plastic chair and leave.

“It could do more harm than good. They need to stabilize his magic first,” Eleanor replied, startling him, her over-precise diction telling him that she had gleaned the information out of someone's mind: the petite, silver-haired Mediwitch approaching them, perhaps.

“This isn't going to hurt a bit, love. Just hold very still for me.” With immediate and mechanical obedience, Eleanor made herself rigid in Falworth's arms so the Mediwitch's wand could scan her. She had almost finished when Hermione's frightened voice cracked across the room,

“Harry!? Stay with me, Harry. Stay with me.”

A word that Eleanor had heard Zed say once blistered from Healer Desai's lips. “Where the hell is Fellowes?” Another Healer burst through the door at almost that exact moment, as though Desai's imprecations had conjured him up.

“Eleanor, love, we're almost done. Can you be really still for me?”

But Eleanor couldn't be really still. Not anymore. Not even if they punished her. She had done this to him. She had done this. He had told her that she wasn't bad or dangerous, but he was wrong. He was wrong, and it was going to kill him. She was going to kill him. She found herself slumping face down into the shoulder of Auror Falworth's robes, unable to take any comfort in the soothing pat of his hand on her back.

“Daddy…” She whispered, but nobody heard her.

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Fourteen: Truths Spoken

The private ward was empty, save for the trainee Healer and the occupant of the only bed, the Healing team having moved on to other patients. The clatter and noise of the hospital hallway seemed quite distant, and other than the frothy bubble of the liquid remedies arrayed alongside the head of the bed, the silence was total and somewhat smothering. Hermione felt like the mediwitches had sucked out all of her energy and whisked it out of the room along with the potions cart. Slowly, she let herself slide down the wall, until she was crouched on the cool tile floor, folded over her own knees. She took several deep, slow breaths until the urgent, almost painful drumbeat of her pulse in her ears slowed itself.

Her eyes stung with tears, and she struggled to quell them. They had already poured from reddened eyes, when she burst into highly unprofessional and utterly surprising sobs, as Healer Fellowes told her that Harry had been stabilized and was - for the present - out of immediate danger. Auror Falworth had promptly offered to take Eleanor down to the cafeteria for a biscuit, and promised to be back shortly. His only response to her almost unintelligible thanks was a grave nod, though a suppressed twinkle glinted in his eyes. No wonder Eleanor likes him so much, she thought, rather randomly.

A smooth, translucent purple shell arced over the entirety of the bed, making it look sort of like a giant piece of hard candy lying on a metal rack. Woodenly, she stood and moved to the side of the bed, extending her hand and barely skimming her fingers across the vivid surface. It crackled against her skin, making a sandpapery rasp. Null magic field, she thought, watching with detachment as it blocked her magic, sparks lighting up the crescent undersides of her fingernails. It would keep Harry's system safe from the magic inherent in the hospital, from the magic of any wizards or witches nearby, from the magic found in maladies of any other patients, and even from the magical properties of the potions. The selection of solutions Healer Fellowes had prescribed for him was much more herbal than magical in nature. She could just barely make out the placid features in his face, knowing that he would remain unconscious, at least until his own system reoriented itself.

“Harry…” she whispered, her voice giving out on the last syllable. How frustrating to stand here and be able to do nothing, to know that no brilliant idea would accelerate this process, that nothing she could do would allow her to take his place! No wonder Harry always went charging off half-cocked. It was far preferable to this interminable waiting… wishing… hoping…

Hoping for what? A blush crept its way into her face unbidden, even though there was no one in the room to see her. Eleanor's offhand comment rang in her ears. …and I know you do. Her heart rate sped back up, and her palms grew clammy, stinging like they'd been scraped on concrete when she left them in contact with the null field for too long. She jerked them away, and wiped them down the sides of her robes.

…and I know you do. Oh, God - did she? And then she heard Ron's voice, angry, despairing: But Harry - I don't know, he's got this hold over you or something. If it comes down to me or him, you choose him. You always have chosen him. And this time is no different. She had gotten so angry at Ron, so sure that he was seeing things that didn't exist through a hazy veil of jealousy and insecurity. Had he been right, instinctively sensing what she had not been able to - or had refused to - see?

Yearning welled up within her, knotting her stomach, clenching around her throat, burning her eyes. One hand moved upward, of its own volition, to cover her mouth. This time is no different. This time is no different. She lifted her chin to stare across the empty ward with unseeing eyes, wide with realization and shock. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to flee. She wanted to fling herself next to Harry, to thread her fingers through his hair, to see his eyes light up with affection, as he slung one arm around her and told her that everything was going to be all right.

I have always chosen him.

An odd combination of glee and fear fluttered her heart, and then settled in her gut like lead. She had no proof that he felt any emotion toward her that was more than platonic. She knew that he treated her singularly among all other women with whom he was acquainted. But she also knew that her status as his best friend made her unique among all other women.

He's still with Ginny, still with Ginny. He has never given me any indication that he is less than happy with her.

But it was too late for caution, for temperate words. Too late to tamp down the hope that had sprung, fully formed, to life within her. He could feel the same way. They were special to each other. She knew that, had always known that. Maybe… Her fingers danced restlessly across the shiny purple shield again. Wake up, Harry…

The door to the ward swung open, not loudly, but suddenly enough to startle her. She was all but hunched over the null field, drinking in all of Harry that she could see beneath the muting purple, and jerked into a fully upright position, with wide eyes. Auror Falworth was leading Eleanor back in by the hand, the evidence of her snack clearly seen on her face. A smile wisped at the corners of Hermione's mouth. She looks her age, she thought fondly. She should look her age.

The null magic field crackled loudly, like the popping of grease in a pan of frying bacon, and a tremor rippled across it. Hermione's wide dark gaze met the Auror's, and Falworth backed up a pace or two, gently pulling Eleanor with him, and they paused. The purple field roiled, as it fought to stave off the little girl's amplified magic. Eleanor's countenance, those Harry eyes, were heart-breaking, recalling her father with such clarity that it made Hermione's eyes prick again: how he'd looked when they had lost Fred, Remus, Tonks; when Ron had left them in the tent; when he knew what he was, a Horcrux; the fathomless sorrow in those beautiful eyes, far too deep and knowing for one so young. Eleanor's little shoulders slumped, her gaze dropped to the toes of her shoes.

“We'll just wait outside for your mum, shall we, Eleanor?” Auror Falworth was saying, in a voice that was surprisingly chipper, without being condescending.

“What about her bracelet?” Hermione blurted suddenly. Eleanor wanted to see her father; the guilt was too heavy a burden for a five-year-old to bear. Surely she could do this much for their daughter, and her father.

“That's a good idea, Healer Granger,” Falworth agreed. “Eleanor, do you want to wear the bracelet - at least until your father is off the null field? I know it makes your head ache, but - ” Eleanor was already nodding, grasping Falworth's hand between both of hers. The Auror promptly directed his Patronus - an impish looking type of monkey that Hermione wasn't familiar with - toward the door. Hermione was astonished when it faded into an almost invisible outline before it slid through the door. She was sure her fascination broke through, as she caught Falworth's eye. “Built-in security spells,” he shrugged. “The Patronus is Disillusioned, and a Muffliato keeps the message from being heard by unfriendly … or unauthorized… ears.”

“That's incredible!” She murmured, half to herself.

“Unspeakables are making strides in magical research and spell development all the time.”

“Researchers here at St. Mungo's are too,” Hermione mused. “At least, the ones who are open-minded enough to consider the benefits in Muggle theory, procedure, and scientific method. There are things that are truly greater than the sum of their parts, when the best of both worlds are combi - ” She stopped suddenly, the muscles in her neck working convulsively as she swallowed. Her eyes darted helplessly down to Eleanor - a living embodiment of her previous words - and then back up to Auror Falworth. His eyes met hers in understanding, and it surprised her a little. “I wouldn't have - I mean, I wouldn't have thought that - ” Her eyes crinkled apologetically, and her smile was shamefaced.

“The Ministry is not known for its openness to innovation,” Falworth admitted with a wry grin. “The Unspeakables are a little different - always have been. And some of us Aurors… well, we're not as settled in the Dark Ages as most would like you to believe.”

“Once upon a time, I thought - I hoped anyway… after Harry - ”

“Human nature is the same, whether the blood is magical or Muggle. When people are afraid, they promise anything, swear they'll change, plan grandiose visions of an ideal future.” He shrugged. “When the danger has passed, and their way of life has been saved, they find reasons not to do any of those things.” He laid a hand on the top of Eleanor's head. “It's a shame, really. We aspire to so much, and so much of that is within our grasp, and we don't even realize it.”

“Surely, you're not advocating for this kind of manipulation?” Hermione spoke tentatively, wondering if she would offend him, but he laughed merrily.

“Absolutely not! But there is good that could be done too - if wizards would realize that they could use Muggle methodology and science to their advantage, if we tried to adapt some of their ways to our lives - rather than avoidance and intolerance.”

“And fear…” she murmured softly, almost to herself. She heard the faintest hint of noise, barely a rush of air, and Falworth's Patronus crouched before them again. She was unable to hear the message, but a moment later, Falworth raised his wand, muttered an incantation, and held out his palm, as if checking for rain. A heartbeat later, the bracelet appeared in mid-air and dropped into his waiting hand.

“Here we go,” he sing-songed. “Now we can see your Dad properly. Let your mum or me know if your head starts to ache. I'm sure we can get you a potion.”

Hermione held the door for Falworth to lead Eleanor in, and was about to follow suit, when she heard the pounding of feet - more than one set - down the tiled corridor. Hesitating at the familiarity of the stride, she was rewarded with the sight of the youngest two Weasleys pelting toward her, confusion and panic blended in equal measure on their faces.

“Ron? G - Ginny? How did you know we were here?” Something flickered in Ginny's face at the plural pronoun.

“Dunwi - someone at the office gave me a heads' up that Harry'd been injured.” Ron stumbled clumsily over the name, not wanting to get a colleague into trouble. “Thought I might like to know. All this is still technically above my pay-grade, but they - they can't stop me being Harry's friend.”

“Nice to know somebody can't,” Hermione snapped before she thought, but looked apologetic as Ron flinched. Ginny looked as though she wanted to say something very badly, and was only restraining herself with great difficulty. Color was mounting in her face as if she were a pressure cooker. “I'm sure you'd like to see him,” Hermione offered in a strained way, gesturing that they pass before her through the door. “He's under a null field. Will be until his magic restabilizes.”

The three of them walked through, and the door had not even swung to behind them, when Ginny noticed Falworth and Eleanor next to Harry's bed. The null field was rippling uneasily from time to time, but Hermione noticed that Eleanor's bracelet seemed to be performing its function admirably.

“Hermione, why is she in here?”

“Ginny,” Hermione's voice was almost a hiss. “Can we not do this - ”

“She's dangerous!”

“She's a little girl. She's Harry's little girl, and she can hear what you're thinking. Have a care, Ginny.” Hermione had moved so that she was in between Eleanor and Ginny, blocking their line of sight to each other. She let her eyes slide sideways to the purple shield arcing above Harry, and a pang of sorrow and uncertainty pierced her like an arrow. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

Ginny tracked Hermione's gaze, and her lips thinned when their stares crossed again. Ginny's bright eyes crackled with an indignant fury, while Hermione's were coolly challenging, with something like regret banked in their shadows.

“Stuart,” Hermione ventured, after a tense moment, tentatively addressing the Auror by his first name. “Would you mind terribly taking Eleanor down to the gift shop? I'm sure they have some crayons down there.” She fished in one pocket for a half-dozen or so Sickles. “I'll - I'll pay you back if that's not enough. I'm sorry. I - I know you aren't a babysitter, but…” You're the only other one I trust with her right now was what she did not say.

“No worries, Healer Granger,” Falworth told her in his gentle, cheerful way. “Just make sure that you don't leave him in here, until I get back. Just in case.” Hermione jerked her head toward him so quickly that she heard her neck pop.

Just in case of what? said her crinkled forehead and worried eyes. The auror averted his eyes, peering up at the ceiling through the fringe of his golden crown of hair. When his gaze swung back down to meet hers, it first encompassed the room, looping past Ron and Ginny, and Hermione knew that he wasn't going to speak of it - whatever else he had learned from the returned Patronus - right now.

“She'll be perfectly safe with me, I promise you.” And with that reassuring pronouncement, he once again led Eleanor from the room, cheerfully babbling something about the characters generally featured in coloring books for Wizarding children.

“Well?” Ginny prompted, as soon as the doors to the ward had closed, crossing her arms over her chest.

Hermione had moved back to Harry's bedside before she realized it. She needed to see him, see his face, even if it had to be filtered through a purple tinted null field.

“What, Ginny?” Her voice was world weary.

“Why isn't she locked up? Why isn't she being kept away from the Wizarding population? What if she hurts someone else?”

“She has a name, Ginny. Her name is Eleanor. And none of this is her fault.”

“I never said it was her fault. But that doesn't mean she needs to be running around loose, with power that she doesn't understand and can't control!”

“She's got a special connection with Harry. We don't know why yet. But it hasn't affected anyone else the way it has affected… him.” She looked at Harry again, her mouth unwittingly caressing over the word `him'.

“Harry told me what happened at the park,” Ginny pointed out, her eyes narrowing at the look on Hermione's face. “You're telling me that would never happen again? That you could guarantee that no one would ever be hurt by one of her `outbursts'?”

“Of course I couldn't. But that doesn't mean we can't work with her, teach her to control it, help her function in society.”

“At what cost? Are you telling me that we should sacrifice Harry - the hero of our world! - for this - this thing conjured up by a mad man? She - she wasn't ever supposed to be. She's unnatural.”

Ron had been standing silently thus far, watching the two young women spar as though he were at a tennis match. But he and Hermione both hissed in a breath at Ginny's last word. Ginny herself recognized one of Vernon Dursley's catchphrases, and coughed over the last syllable even as it escaped her mouth.

“I can't believe you would say that,” Hermione responded quietly. “I can't believe that you would spend any amount of time with Harry, say that you love him, and still say that about his child - about our child.”

“'Our child,'” Ginny mimicked her bitterly under her breath. “How could you even - ? You weren't meant to have a child with him. You aren't even together, you didn't make a decision together, you - you didn't - ” She huffed a little and looked away, struggling against tears. “You took his seventh year away from us, you took him away from me at the end. He always included you, confided in you - you're always around. The one thing - the one thing I had with him that you didn't was - was a - was romance. I thought one day, we'd get to have a family together, just him and me.” Without you was obvious, though unspoken. “And now - and now you're taking that away too.”

“Ginny, I haven't taken anything away. Harry's never once intimated to me that - and - and I've never - I would never - ”

“Even if you didn't - even if he didn't, with her around, then you'll always be around. Always be the mother of his first child, always sharing parenting experiences with him… something else that takes him away from me… again.” She looked from Harry's still form to Hermione, with shining damp eyes. “Besides, you say you haven't… and I know you haven't, yet. But I see the way you've been looking at him, the way you have to look at him… the way I look at him. You know it now, don't you?”

“Ginny…” Hermione's protest was fruitless, as her throat closed up. “I - I didn't know… before.” She looked at the younger girl almost helplessly. “How could I not have known? Surely, I should have realized…”

“Bloody hell.” The oath dropped loudly into the still room, and Ron shoved his hands into his pockets, crossing toward the doors and exiting with an air of despondency. Hermione could see his bright hair moving back and forth in front of the windows into the corridor as he paced.

“But, don't you see?” Hermione spoke with renewed fervor. “It doesn't matter - how I feel doesn't matter. Harry loves you! I'll just have to … move past this.”

Half-hearted hope flickered briefly in Ginny's eyes, and then was extinguished. “Harry thinks he loves me. And maybe that would be enough… if it weren't for - for … Eleanor. He'll figure it out eventually, how he feels about you; he's not that thick.” She laughed a bit, a joyless sound, and clenched her fists, looking for all the world like she was suppressing the urge to throw something across the room. “I want to hate you so much, right now. But - but how can I, when I would do the exact same thing if the situation were reversed? How can I fight for something, if I never really had it to begin with?”

Hermione had never felt so miserable in her entire life. And at the same time, there was a growing certainty inside her that Ginny was right, and it made her want to laugh and cry and skip around the room all at once. And that made her feel guilty. She dropped her gaze to the toes of her shoes, and tried to come up with something helpful and compassionate to say.

At that precise moment, the null field winked itself off. A soothing chime began to sound - a notification, not an alarm. Harry's magic had stabilized itself. Ginny and Hermione moved to either side of his bed, with bated breath, waiting for his eyes to flutter open. His gaze was unfocused at first; he stared at them both for a moment without comprehension, before he spoke.

“Ginny…” he said, reaching toward her with one hand. But before their fingers had even touched, he had turned toward Hermione in panicked remembrance. “Where's Eleanor? What happened? Is she hurt?” He was trying to push himself into an upright position, but his muscles were shaky and weren't responding as they ought.

“She's fine. Don't sit up just yet. Let Healer Fellowes see you first.” Hermione was pushing gently on his shoulder, impeding his attempts to get up. The warmth of his skin, even through the hospital-issued robe, seared her skin, and she felt her face begin to glow. “Her magic overloaded yours. You - you almost died.” Those horrible words escaped her lips with difficulty; she could feel her chin wobble, and clenched her teeth together.

Harry's eyes shone his empathy with her, knowing without her having to voice it, how difficult it had been for her. He knew that while she was generally cool and efficient during a crisis, she fell apart after it was over. He reached up and dabbed at the evidence of tears beneath her reddened eyes.

“You've been crying.”

“You know how I get,” she murmured, with a laugh that did not quite evade tears.

“I'm sor - ”

“Please don't apologize for nearly dying again, Harry.” Hermione's voice held faux-weariness, and Harry smiled that half-smile that fluttered her stomach. How had she not been aware of it before?

“Don't let me interrupt the two of you, please.” Ginny's voice was humorless and flat, falling into the room as heavy as lead, and wiping the smile off of Harry's face. He immediately moved his hand away from Hermione's, and turned toward his girlfriend.

“Ah, Gin, I'm sorry.” He was struggling to make his voice jocular. “I just hate that I keep traumatizing Hermione this way.”

“What about me?”

Harry blinked. He darted a glance at Hermione, as if in plea for her to save him from whatever precipice he was about to blunder over, but she was looking regretfully at Ginny, with something…else … hidden in the depths of her eyes, something he was unfamiliar with coming from her.

“Well, Hermione had to watch it happen - and - and you're always so - ” Strong, he was going to say, but he stopped as Ginny banged her open palms against the bed's railing so hard that the entire frame shuddered.

“I can't keep doing this anymore, Harry.”

At first, there was confusion in Harry's face, which then gave way to alarm. He reached out a beseeching hand to catch her wrist, but she twisted it away, sadly shaking her head.

“Ginny, don't do this…”

Hermione might not have been in complete agreement with Ginny's timing, but maybe it was better this way. She wondered if she had been the one to drive them all to this point, and felt horribly responsible: getting too attached to Harry, then breaking up with Ron… and then there was Eleanor. Her eyes drifted over towards the door, and caught Ron peering in the window, his face grim and shadowed. She looked back over to the couple to see what Ron saw; their body language would have been clear to any passer-by. She let her eyes slid shut briefly.

“Why not?” Ginny whispered brokenly. “Why prolong this when it is clear that it isn't me that you want?” Harry's eyes flicked from Ginny to Hermione, then back again.

“What have I ever done that - she was with Ron! I love you. Eleanor doesn't have to change that. Why - why won't you let her in?”

“I don't have a problem letting Eleanor in!” She protested. Harry gauged her expression carefully, and looked over at Hermione again. Awareness slowly dawned on his face and shuttered the light in his eyes. “It's not Eleanor at all, is it? It's what Eleanor represents. It's who she brings with her…” He smiled a tight, sad smile. “It's Eleanor's mother you have a problem with.”

Ginny swallowed convulsively, but did not deny it. Hermione groped blindly for the railing on her side of the bed, and twined her fingers around it. She could not look at either of them, and wished violently that she was somewhere else.

“I don't understand.” His voice was hoarse, and the simple question was heartbreaking. “Why does this change things? It's not like she wasn't ever around before.”

“She was with Ron before.”

“And now she's not? And that makes her a … threat… to you? Why? Didn't we go over all this last night? I thought it was all rubbish, what you were worried about… but you really believe…! She's my best friend. She always has been.” He sighed.

“She loves you. She always has.” Ginny's look was vindictive, her voice almost untelligible with sarcasm as she aped his sentence structure. Harry rolled his eyes.

“Hermione,” he said. “Please tell Ginny that - ” He swung his head toward her, and his next words died unborn in his throat, as he saw the look on his best friend's face. His jaw fell open as he took in her eyes, watching him through a sheen of unshed tears, eyelashes starred into points, and her hands clenching the railing so tightly that her knuckles were white. He cocked his head at her, as though he'd never seen her before. “Hermione?”

“So, we're done here, right?” Ginny's tone was clinical, but hurt was clearly stamped on her normally vivacious face.

“Ginny, I - ” His voice failed him again, and he couldn't help but look wonderingly back at Hermione for a moment. “Wait, please.”

Ginny was already at the door. She threw one last look back over her shoulder at him.

“Send me an Owl if you ever figure out what you really want, Harry.”

And then she was gone, whirling on one heel so fast that her hair swung out in a copper nimbus around her shoulders, and almost bowling over Auror Falworth, who was standing out in the corridor with Ron and Eleanor.

Harry sat in the hospital bed, looking as bewildered and forlorn as an abandoned child. Hermione pressed one fist against her mouth, and willed herself not to cry. The part of her brain that was still processing sensory input noted Ron kneeling next to Eleanor, apparently in serious conversation with her. He looked up briefly as Ginny blew past, but did not rise until the little girl had finished speaking. Eleanor's eyes lit up as she noticed Harry was awake.

“Father!” But instead of running toward them, she waited dutifully for the two men to proceed as well.

“Is everything all right in here?”Auror Falworth asked, as the three of them approached the bedside. “Mr. Potter, it's good to see you.” Eleanor was practically bouncing in her excitement, delight shining in her eyes, and Hermione watched fondly as Harry's face lit up at the sight of her. He reached to lift her up into the bed next to him, but Hermione blocked the motion.

“You shouldn't do that, Harry. Not yet.” Disappointment flickered in his countenance, but he dropped his arms back to his sides, and smiled at his daughter.

“I'm sorry for hurting you, Father.” Her wide green eyes were stricken, filled with a regret beyond her years.

“We'll figure it out, Eleanor. I promise.” Hermione could see Harry visibly restraining himself from laying a hand on her head, from offering some sort of comforting touch. She knew it had to be unbearably hard for him. And I'm making it harder.

While Harry chatted with his daughter and the Auror, Ron tugged on her elbow, pulling her across the ward to sit on the plain plastered window sill.

“What is it, Ron?” She asked in a long-suffering voice. She was not in a mood to go another round with him. But Ron's face was as grave as she'd ever seen it.

“I'm really sorry, Hermione. For everything I've said the last few days.” He closed his eyes and sighed, looking pained. “For the things I've done to make you - to make you not want to marry me anymore.”

“Ron…”

“Let me - let me say this, please. I think - I think maybe you were right. To - to call it off, I mean. I'll - I'm going to miss this - miss us, Hermione - Merlin, more than I can even say. But if - if he makes you happy, then - ” He drew in a ragged breath. “Then I'll support it as best I can.”

“He doesn't - ” she argued weakly. “He doesn't even - Ginny just broke up with him, and he looks like he got hit with a Bludger. I don't think we'll - ”

“You will.”

“This is a complete about-face for you, so you'll have to pardon me for feeling a little off-kilter. How can you possibly know that for certain?”

“I was talking to Eleanor. And she told me. She told me how the two of you felt about each other.” Hermione's heart began a heavy, accelerated beat behind her breastbone. She leaned toward him, lips parting almost breathlessly.

“What did she say?”

Ron's blue eyes were distant and gloomy, gazing toward Harry, but not really seeing him.

“She said that it was beautiful.”

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Fifteen: Veil Lifted

The parlor had obviously been called that only in better days. Only one window had blinds, a ragged set missing several slats, giving it the appearance of a mouthful of crooked yellowing teeth. The other window was unadorned, but so smudged that it really didn't matter. The furniture was battered, dusty, and out of date. The entire room looked like it had been suspended in time thirty years ago or more, forgotten, abandoned when better things had come along.

Forgotten and abandoned, he thought bitterly, just like me. He stood at the spindle-legged sideboard, leaving fingermarks in the dust, as he drank the vodka he'd brought with him straight from the bottle. What would Mother say? He snorted a laugh a little too soon after swallowing, and pungent fumes burned inside his nose. His mother wouldn't say anything to him, never had said anything of any kind of substance to him, acting for all the world like her scrawny little son was invisible. He might as well have been invisible; he was unmentioned, locked away, imagined into non-existence: the Squib son of an old Pure-blooded family - an embarrassment, an outrage… a freak.

And now, he was back in the old townhouse, the one his parents had used when they were in London. It was fuzzy in his memory, as he had been a very young child when they'd last taken residence there. There were too many people in London - the house was in a wealthy Wizarding section of the city, and someone might see him. His mouth twisted into a sardonic smirk of self-loathing. So they'd moved into a country manor, not too far a distance from the Malfoys, nor from the Lestranges.

His father had at least seen him, though he couldn't say whether being noticed by way of the application of rather nasty curses or a well-wielded riding crop was actually preferable to remaining unnoticed. His father seemed to think that being a Squib was something he had done on purpose, something for which he should be punished. He remembered lying on his bed in his chamber, an out-of-the-way place down a rabbit warren of corridors in the rear of the house, his eyes burning with tears, feeling the sticky blood from the welts on his back seeping into his shirt. Father seems to think that magic can be beaten into me, he had sniffed, wiping his leaky nose onto a frayed sleeve. I wish I were Muggle. At least, they don't have magic and don't care. They don't even know any better.

That thought had been a turning point. He'd made himself even scarcer around his house, not that his parents even cared. He spent time in the nearest Muggle village, remaining somewhat aloof, but watching and observing, learning and filing away that knowledge. His younger brother, as perfect a specimen of Pure-bloodedness as one could wish, got his letter to Hogwarts. They did not let him go with them to King's Cross. It became clear that his parents were involved in things that were shady, if not downright Dark. His teenage years passed in a blur of secret meetings and whispered cryptic messages overheard from around corners or beneath furniture, of his parents disappearing into the night in hooded cloaks. Once or twice, he got up in the middle of the night to find his door locked from the outside - those were the nights that the Dark Lord was actually on the premises.

One night in particular, a ridiculously muggy August evening, he'd been sleeping uneasily between sweaty sheets, but had been jolted awake by many footfalls and shouting. Doors were wrenched open and slammed shut in rapid succession, though from the sound of it, nothing was moving anywhere in his immediate vicinity. He'd peered from his window, charmed to look like a part of the wall from the outside, lest someone spot him, and saw shadowy forms, cloaks streaming behind them like black water, dashing across the grounds. Here and there, he saw flickers of moving light that might have been torches held aloft or spellfire. Cracks of Apparation were distant snaps of sound. By pressing his ear to his door, he'd heard a long, crescendoing wail that might have come from his mother's mouth.

He'd found out the next day from one of the house elves that his father had been involved in a raid, that two Aurors - brothers - had been killed. Those Aurors had also been members of the Order - what Order, he did not know, but it was something he always heard referenced with much trepidation and loathing. His father had narrowly escaped, now had to stay hidden. Fear and tension seemed to be tangible essences woven into their tapestries and built into the walls of their home. And, as September gave way to October, he'd started to hear whispers of another name more and more frequently until it was nearly frenzied… Harry Potter.

On Halloween night of that year, he'd made his move. He was nearly seventeen, practically an adult. He didn't think his parents would have normally cared about his absence, would have thought themselves well rid of him, but he'd worried that perhaps they were aware of all he knew: dates, places, names. He had made his plans carefully, secretly proud of himself for acting like the Slytherin he knew he would have been, stashing useful items here and there, removing things slowly enough where their disappearance would not be noticed.

The grounds were protected with anti-Muggle and anti-intruder charms and hexes, but he was neither a Muggle nor an intruder. The glass of his window had charms on it to prevent it from being Vanished, but no one had ever thought to secure it from being broken with a hammer. It was crude, brutal, Muggle. It had never occurred to them. He was on the upper floor of the house, his window looking out over a bleak, neglected patio where nobody ever went. He couldn't Levitate himself down… but he could use a rope. Shortsighted, he'd thought as he scrambled down, the rough fibers scraping his hands, and arrogant, to underestimate or dismiss them. We could one day pay for pretending that they are no match for us.

He grimaced to himself as he set the square bottle down with a noisy clunk and slosh. He still, even after all these years, even after his treatment at their hands, thought in terms of us and them. He couldn't help but identify himself as a Wizard, as part of a Wizarding family, someone who should have been the heir of that family, who would have been, if Squibs could inherit.

Instead, he'd fled into the night like a common criminal, carrying only a few essentials in a leather knapsack, knowing that his younger brother, Vasiliy, would get everything that should have been his. Why? He'd thought then. Why did the gods see fit to deny me magic?

His first clue that something had happened that fateful last night of October was presented to him the next morning. He had managed to scrape together just enough Muggle money for train fare, and made it far enough away to feel safe… until he saw the owls. They were everywhere; he could clearly see messages tied to their legs. Even the Muggles were noticing. Wizards walked openly in the streets, not troubling to use Disillusionment or Notice-Me-Not charms, not even trying to blend in with Muggle clothing, slipping unobtrusively through the crowds. There was an air of excitement, even joy, and he found himself sliding closer in attempt to find out what was going on.

“…thought all hope was lost…”

“… Boy Who Lived saved us all…”

“… say he's gone for good. Somehow Harry…”

It wasn't until that evening, when he'd had the stroke of fortune to snag a discarded Daily Prophet that had been carelessly left to blow beneath a park bench, that he discovered the whole story. This Harry Potter that he'd so often heard whispered about, apparently only a baby scarcely over one year old, had defeated the Dark Lord. No one seemed to know just how. Only that the Killing Curse had been cast, Harry was not dead, and the Dark Lord was gone. A footnote at the bottom of the page added a list of Death Eaters who had been arrested. Dispassionately, he read his father's name, followed by the clinical description, “arrested for the murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewitt.”

He'd vaguely wondered what that meant for Vasiliy and his mother, but couldn't bring himself to care overmuch. The fall of the Dark Lord affected him not in the slightest, and he'd moved on, staying nowhere for very long, stealing shelter in flophouses, alleyways, and empty outbuildings. The winter was long and miserable, but he vividly remembered the first warm day, where things seemed to have suddenly burst into flower, and things seemed more possible than they had only the day before.

It seemed no coincidence that he had met Eamon Moran that very evening in a Muggle pub. He'd been still underage, but his dark hair, heavy brow, and penchant to have a five o'clock shadow at noon kept him from being looked at twice, even as he ordered alcohol. The weedy looking young man with flyaway blond hair and rimless glasses sitting on the stool next to him, in contrast, had looked like he was waiting on his mum to pick him up after school. Eventually, they had picked up a conversation, and he'd been shocked to learn that the young man, Moran, was in fact more than ten years his senior and a Muggle healer - a doctor, he'd called himself - to boot.

There was something about Moran that vaguely unsettled him. Moran was articulate and intelligent, but there was something too intense in the eyes, as if he were wound just a bit too tight. But they'd struck up a rapport when Moran had bitterly mentioned a step-mother, who'd encouraged his father to ignore him, once the baby - a half-sister - had been born. The sister, he'd learned, had moved to some place called Hollywood, California, and was an up-and-coming actress, starring in her first Muggle movie. You think they care anything about my medical degree, my research articles, all the wonderful things my professors said I would do? He'd empathized with Moran, knew exactly how he'd felt with every fiber of his being.

Family, he'd snorted into his vodka that night, who needs them, anyway? Moran had laughed, and something in his face had eased up, in a way that was gratifying.

He took another slug of liquor, and shook his head as it burned its way down his throat. Now Moran was dead. It seemed somehow unreal and very long ago that they had ever been friends. My fault, he thought regretfully, I should have known he was crazy. Should have known that anyone who would care about me at all would be crazy.

It had almost worked though. Together, the two of them had very nearly accomplished what no one else ever had, what no one else had ever even tried: a fusion of Muggle science and magic - pushing the boundaries of what was possible, of what even merited consideration. They'd crunched theory together: he had gotten crash courses in Muggle medicine, anatomy, neurology, genetics. He couldn't have done any of the heavy lifting, intellectually, but he knew enough to grasp concepts, to be conversant. In turn, he had revealed the magical world to Moran. He'd known it was technically illegal, but what could they have done to him? He was doing no spells that could be detected, couldn't even make it into St. Mungo's or Diagon Alley without help. At first, Moran had thought he was pulling an elaborate con, but he'd eventually been convinced.

They'd worked for years, and he'd barely noticed the upheaval that surrounded the world he was not allowed to be a part of. Harry Potter was rediscovered, left for Hogwarts; his father escaped from prison, the Dark Lord was rising again. He'd found Vasiliy not too long after he saw the Prophet article about the Azkaban breakout, threatened to go to the Ministry with everything he knew: where their father was hiding, the defenses around their manor, the names of other involved Death Eaters. Vasiliy had been pale and frightened, but acquiesced in the name of family pride, Owling him enormous sums of both Muggle and Wizarding money over the next several years.

Then the unthinkable happened: Harry Potter, now seventeen, actually defeated Lord Voldemort. His name was plastered all over the Prophet, along with those of his two closest friends, Weasley and that Mudblood Granger. They'd been hospitalized due to their injuries in the Battle at Hogwarts, and a large majority of the surviving Death Eaters, including his father, who was suffering from the aftereffects of Obliviation, had been returned to Azkaban. Vasiliy was officially named the Head of the family, and his mother went into seclusion, though the threat of Azkaban still loomed over both of them.

He'd been mulling all these events over in his mind, when Moran found him, brimming with such excitement that he could hardly speak. I think I can do it. The latest combination is very promising. He'd stopped Moran immediately, demanded to have it administered at once. It's not quite that easy, Moran had added. An adult system is too stable, not dynamic enough. We need a child's system, to use like an incubator, and then - and then once it has matured and stabilized, we can remove it and insert it into a non-magical person. All we need is a child; a baby would be ideal.

Oh, is that all? His voice had been derisive. And just where are we going to get a baby - people tend to raise a fuss when those go missing.

The glint in Moran's grey eyes had been vaguely disturbing. We're going to grow our own. We Muggles do it all the time. We just need two viable candidates for mother and father. No Purebloods. The magic within the parents needs to be genetically strong, hearty. You know how much higher the magical indices were for the Half-Bloods and Muggle-Born. Yes, he knew. They had ended up with scientific proof that would send the whole Pureblood superiority movement straight into the bin - if anyone would have ever believed the work of a Squib and Muggle, that is.

He'd dropped his eyes to the papers, skimmed over the sea of print, until two names seemed to jump out at him, as though all of this had been predestined. Harry Potter. Hermione Granger. He'd looked back up at Moran and grinned. Why the hell not?

Why the hell not indeed, he shook his head. That had been before everything had started going wrong. The procedure had worked, beyond their wildest dreams. Her magic had been successfully removed, modified, and replaced; and she was powerful. It seemed that they had thought of every contingency.

Almost every contingency.

He lowered the vodka bottle again, but missed the edge of the sideboard this time. The bottle tilted - his not-entirely-sober reflexes were not up to the task - and crashed to the floor. Vodka splashed across his boots, as the glass cracked in several places. He cursed under his breath.

A knock, sounding distant but surprisingly loud, arrested whatever cleaning attempts he might have made before they started. Less than a handful of people even knew where he was since the Aurors had raided the lab, and he was unafraid that he could be connected to it.

He swung the heavy door wide; it creaked ponderously and the sun glinted weakly off of the dusty bronze door knocker shaped like a dragon. Rhunya stood there - he never could remember her surname - looking ill at ease, shifting from foot to foot in rundown leather shoes. She was magical, he thought suddenly to himself, from a poor family - little wonder she was uncomfortable standing at the door of the Dolohov family townhouse. He ushered her inside quickly.

“They've got her, sir. Just like Dr. Moran predicted.” She thrust a crumpled newspaper at him with a trembling arm.

Moran had become surprisingly proficient with regards to the subtleties of Wizarding culture. He seemed able to quickly deduce how a Wizard's reaction would differ from a Muggle's in a given situation. When their experiment began to show signs of failure, he had come up with a back-up plan, something grand and glorious, something that would ensure that the Wizarding world would finally notice him, Casimir Dolohov, the elder son, who should have been the heir.

Vasiliy would be so proud, Moran had said, nudging him in the ribs with a skinny elbow, that manic light fiery in his pale eyes.

But now, Moran was dead. She had killed him. Even so, he had seen no reason to divert from the plan. He had always hated the Wizarding world, hated it and longed for it simultaneously, in an instinctive way that he could not begin to plumb the depths of.

He didn't realize how long he'd been standing there, in the front entry, lost in thought, until Rhunya stammered tentatively, “What - what are we going to do now?”

He looked at the blaring headline on the front page of the morning edition of the Daily Prophet. “Potter/Granger Love Child Revealed! Weasley Family Incensed! Engagement Cancelled!” It was accompanied by moving photos of a young girl on a swing and an adult couple standing to the side, watching her. The picture was grainy and not of the highest quality, but the two adults were clearly holding hands.

“We do nothing,” he barked at her roughly. Her tremulous demeanor was grating on his nerves. Small wonder that she had been shunted off to care for the child. “It's only a matter of time now.”

His mouth curled into a tight, cruel smile, his hooded eyes making him look all the more menacing, as he studied the picture once again. The aura of happiness exuding from her parents was all but palpable, even from the bad photograph. How he hated them! How he hated all Wizards, with their careless, golden power, the arrogance of their entitlement and talent!

They would be sorry. The entire Wizarding world would mourn. He would ensure it.

***************

Harry had sat quietly through extremely strained and awkward small talk with Ron, before the gangly Auror trainee finally took his leave to head back to the Ministry. Healer Desai had taken Eleanor for a few more tests, leaving with Auror Falworth, who was intent on heading back to “their” conference room in the children's ward to go over some other witness statements from the playground. Finally, a cadre of mediwitches had come in, replenished some potions, performed a myriad of charms, and measured every source of magical output that it was possible to measure. Or so it seemed to Harry anyway.

When they were gone, it was just Harry and Hermione alone in the oppressive, strangely loaded silence of the private ward.

“Are you okay?” She asked him quietly.

“You heard the mediwitches. I'm going to be just fine. As soon as we talk to Healer Fellowes, I can go home.” She eyed him sideways, gauging whether or not he was being deliberately obtuse or not.

“I meant, about Ginny.” Her smile was gentle, but her eyes were direct.

“I - I - ” His voice rasped loudly in the room, but his gaze held more of confusion than of pain. “I feel like I must have done something wrong… but I don't know what.”

She said it was beautiful. Ron's words rang in her head, bolstered her confidence. It was true. It was real. It was not unrequited. Even if Harry did not yet realize it.

“I… think…” she began, drawing the words out slowly. “That - maybe - we were trying so hard to do what everyone expected of us… after the War. That we were so grateful that this was something…normal and fun, as opposed to everything else that had been expected of us. And we - we just continued in - in these… patterns.” She looked up at Harry then, and reflexively drew a sharp intake of air as their eyes met. Her skin felt like she had been hit with a low-yield Stinging Hex. “Because it was the path of least resistance, bec - because it was… easy.”

Between what was right and what was easy… Harry's teasing echo of their late Headmaster now resounded in her mind.

“It doesn't seem like the last few days with Ron have been what you would call easy…” The light-heartedness was present, though faint, and there was something behind his eyes, embers giving them brilliant light, of a hope yet unspoken that made her heart accelerate its rhythm.

“The easy part never stays easy… you end up just having to do things over again the - the right way.” She let out a little self-deprecating laugh, and momentarily dropped her gaze. When she looked back up at him, he was watching her with a guarded, measured look, as if he were compiling evidence and preparing to come to a conclusion.

“Hermione… do you think - ” His eyes seemed to blaze with a sudden intensity, and her mouth got very dry.

“We're back!” A sing-song voice from the doorway startled them both. Healer Desai looked fairly cheerful upon cursory inspection, but Hermione could see something serious in her eyes. She knows something, the Healer-in-training thought.

“Eleanor!” Harry's jubilant voice all but invited Eleanor to come sit by him in the bed, but Healer Desai kept a gentle hand on one of the girl's shoulders.

“Let's not get too close to your father, just yet, Eleanor.

Hermione raised her wand, and Summoned a chair from the far end of the room, lengthening the legs en route, so that it sat closer to the same level as the hospital bed. She sat down on it, and patted her lap.

“You can come sit with me, sweetheart.” Her tongue almost tripped over the unfamiliar endearment, and she hoped it sounded normal to everyone else. Eleanor's sad eyes brightened a bit, and she climbed up in Hermione's lap without hesitation, leaning back against her shoulder, and crossing Hermione's arms in front of her like a seat belt. Hermione breathed in the sweet scent of her daughter's clean hair, and felt her eyes prickle with tears. My daughter. It was so much easier to view Eleanor clinically when she did it through her Harry-filter - how could she ease the way for Harry - what did Harry need her to do, to think, to say?

Harry's right, she thought dully, as she recalled his words to her at the field testing pitch. And you haven't thought about it at all either - don't try and tell me you have. You've squashed it all into a corner of your mind, so you can poke it with a stick and take notes on it like some third party observer.

She lifted her eyes to look over Eleanor's shoulder at Harry. He was regarding her as though he knew exactly what was running through her mind. She wondered wryly whether Eleanor's telepathy was really that much of an anomaly.

“Father cannot see what people think inside their heads,” Eleanor said solemnly from her lap, still facing Harry. He snorted a suppressed laugh, and Hermione felt her cheeks flush. She leaned her cheek against the top of Eleanor's head, and slanted a look at him through her eyelashes. The look on his face made her face reheat and her heart flutter-thump inside her chest.

She said it was beautiful. The yearning look on Harry's face was beautiful. Hermione felt her throat close up with the sudden swell of emotion. Oh my God, we're going to do this - we're going to be a family…

“So, what did you find, Healer Desai?” Harry asked, in a mostly normal way, after clearing his throat roughly.

“I've got some of the Healers over the Research Department looking over the results, but I think we've found out why Eleanor affects Harry, but not anyone else.” Harry and Hermione both nodded attentively, their expressions those of expectant inquiry. “Her magical signature is almost identical to her father's.”

“That's impossible,” Hermione blurted.

“It's highly unlikely,” Desai corrected her, directing her explanation to the layperson in the room. “You know that Muggles have researched how some traits in a child come from the mother and some from the father?”

“Genes, right. Pretty common knowledge in the Muggle world. I'm following you.”

“Something similar applies to magical signatures. A child's signature is almost always unique, but can contain elements from both parents, in varying amounts. Sometimes, it will be more like one parent than the other, and sometimes it can even have elements from ancestors further back. Of course, if one parent is Magical and one is not, or if neither are Magical, then…” The Healer stopped, and waved one hand in dismissal. “ - but that's much more complicated, and not really relevant here. In any case, her signature is enough like yours to be remarkable, and is almost certainly not naturally occurring.”

“So, someone made hers like mine?” Harry concluded, casting a guarded look at his daughter, who appeared to be nodding off in Hermione's lap.

“Not necessarily. Her signature may have looked a good bit like yours on its own. And when it was manipulated, it ended up looking even more so.”

“Why?”

“Magical research has found that there are certain… configurations… in a magical signature that are found more often in individuals who are magically powerful.” It was Hermione who spoke this time, her calm voice trickling into the room like cool water. “It could explain why you and Voldemort chose brother wands, for instance. Your signatures could bear at least some sort of resemblance to each other's.”

“So her signature looks like mine… what does that imply?”

“They've amplified her magic, made her artificially more powerful. A side effect of that, whether intentional or not, is that your signatures are so similar that her magic spills over to yours, as if there were - some kind of conduit between you, as if her magic senses yours as an extension of itself. We aren't - wizards aren't meant to channel those levels of magic. It's dangerous, possibly unsustainable. It's why your system nearly overloaded - the sheer magnitude of her magic overwhelmed you, a completely separate person.” There was worry in the Healer's dark eyes.

“What - what does that mean?” There was fear mirrored in Harry's face, and Hermione reached out to take his hand in hers. He hesitated momentarily, as if afraid that Hermione herself would close the circuit between him and the sleeping child in her lap, but as her fingers slid through his and nothing happened, he visibly relaxed.

“We don't know yet. We do know that for now, the suppression bracelet seems to be doing its job. I would recommend that you try to refrain from touching her, for your own safety, until we know more.”

“Could you take it out of me?” Eleanor spoke, snapping her eyes open so suddenly that Hermione wondered if she'd been feigning sleep, even though she'd felt the limp, lolling weight in her arms.

“Take what out of you?”

“The magic. The part that is hurting Father. If it is hurting him, then I do not want it. Would you - would you and Mother still love me, if I - if I was a … a Skib?” Her voice lowered to a whisper on the last word, as if she were heralding something awful.

“Eleanor, we would love you no matter - ” But Harry cut off Hermione's soothing reassurances.

“Where did you hear that word?”

“Harry, really…” Hermione tried to remonstrate.

“Where did you hear that word?”

“Sir thought it once. In his head. Skibs are magical people with broken magic. He had broken magic, and it made him mad and sad. He hates being a Skib, and he hates Wizards. And he was scared of me.”

“Who is Sir?” Hermione asked gently.

“A man. Everyone called him Sir. Except Dr. Mo. Dr. Mo called him Caz. He had scary eyes. Like this.” She cupped her hands along her brow, and peered out from under them with hooded eyes. “All the things they did to Muddles, they were to fix his magic.” She ducked her head, until it was almost buried in Hermione's chest. “I was supposed to fix him. Dr. Mo said so. Dr. Mo tried to turn it down. But then it made him die.”

“What made him die?” Hermione sounded equal parts horrified and saddened.

“Tried to turn what down?” Harry's words overlapped and collided with Hermione's.

“The magic,” Eleanor whispered. Hermione opened her mouth to ask for clarification, but realized with shock that their daughter was answering both questions. One look at the pallor of Harry's wide-eyed face was enough to know that he had come to the same conclusion.

“Can we take her home?” Harry asked, after a somewhat awkward stretch of silence.

“Healer Fellowes still needs to check you and approve your discharge,” Healer Desai told him.

“Is she - is she okay?” He ventured, hoping that Desai would take a circumspect cue from him, and that Eleanor wasn't paying too close attention. She raised her wand slightly, and the barest flick was the only movement. “Her levels are fine. And we can do this as an extra precaution.” She swirled her wand tip in a circle, conjuring up a plain metal bracelet, much like the one already adorning Eleanor's wrist. She cast a medical charm that caused the jewelry to briefly glow orange, and then sent it soaring over Harry's bed where Hermione caught it neatly.

“This will monitor her magical levels. An alarm will sound if they get too elevated.” Hermione took up the explanation, as she slid the bracelet onto Eleanor's other arm.

“Right now, they're just on the high end of normal. Nothing to worry about.” Shravana added.

“Do you hear that, Eleanor? Nothing to worry about.” Hermione kissed the girl's temple, as Eleanor twisted in her lap to face her more fully. “We're going to figure this out. Your father and I used to be quite good at solving problems.” She flicked a teasing glance over at Harry. “And we're all in this together, you know. Because we're a family.”

Eleanor turned all the way around in Hermione's lap so quickly that Hermione grabbed at her, afraid that she was going to fall. Instead, nearly on her knees, Eleanor locked her arms around Hermione's neck, burying her face in the junction between neck and shoulder, hugging her fiercely.

“I love you,” the little girl mumbled, her words nearly lost in the crush. Hermione cast a damp, somewhat bewildered glance at Harry, who was watching them, and had apparently somehow made out just what Eleanor had said.

For the half-smile that had always been able to warm her heart and make her insides a little jumpy was on his face, and he mouthed,

So do I.

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The Catalyst

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Chapter Sixteen: Fears Confronted

The potions that Harry had been given at St. Mungo's had made him feel somewhat nauseated, and Hermione's Side-Along Apparation of him and Eleanor to his flat had not helped ameliorate that feeling. So he was more than willing to let Hermione take care of Eleanor's bedtime routine, while he collapsed onto the sofa, trying to coax his racing mind into thoughtlessness. He had not even realized that his eyes had closed, until Hermione's soothing voice sounded somewhere above his head.

“She was asleep before I had her fully tucked in.” There was a smile in her voice. Harry let his lips turn up in response, without opening his eyes. He felt the sofa cushions move as she sat down. “You should go to bed too. You've…been through a lot today.”

“I - I still - I can't believe Ginny broke up with me. I thought - I thought we - ” He floundered to a stop, and opened his eyes, fixing his bewildered green gaze on her face. “No…” he sighed. “I - I don't know what I thought. Last week, I would have told you I loved her. I would have meant it. But now… now - ”

“Now?” Hermione prodded. Harry sharpened his focus on her, squinting at her quizzically. She was leaning forward, looking strangely anticipatory. What was she waiting to hear him say?

“Now I wonder if I even know what love is. Maybe I was just - just telling myself it was love, because I wanted it to be love… or she did… or her family… ” He nodded toward the rolled up Daily Prophet on the window sill that Hermione had not noticed until that moment. Weasl - could clearly be seen on the visible part of the roll. “Three guesses what that article's about.”

She closed her eyes and sighed gustily. “Yeah…”

“Hermione, I'm s - ”

“Don't, Harry.” She laid one hand on his arm, forestalling his apology. “You keep trying to take all this blame. But this is not. Your. Fault.”

“It is my fault. If I wasn't who I was, then nobody would care whether or not we had a child together.”

“Maybe not the Prophet,” she mused. “But you don't think the people closest to us - Ron, Ginny - you don't think they'd have still had a problem with it?” Harry raked one hand through his dark hair and sighed. She patted his arm, and rested her curly head on his shoulder.

“Who's to say that it would have even happened to us at all… if I wasn't Harry Potter.”

“Now, you don't know that. They could have chosen anyone… it could have been random.”

He slanted a you don't expect me to believe that look at her. “One of us, maybe. Both of us? I doubt it. Besides, what about what Eleanor said about our Mystery Squib? Maybe he wanted us because we're well-known to be proficient at magic… and he was hoping a child of ours would be powerful.”

“And we're not Pureblood. There've been studies. The `hybrid' strain is hardier… but the old families don't want anyone to know that. He's got to be from a Pureblood family, I'd bet my library on it.”

“There aren't too many of those still floating around. Wouldn't he be easy to track down?”

“Maybe if Purebloods weren't so damn ashamed when they have children who are Squibs! Auror Falworth said they hide it - that's why the record books are tamper-proof.”

“But if the books can't be tampered with, then we'll be able to find him. There might not be witnesses who've seen him - or who would admit to it, anyway - but maybe… maybe Eleanor could - could talk to somebody, somebody who could do one of those sketches… like Muggle law enforcement. Do you think she'd do it?”

“Harry, I think it's fairly well established that she'd do anything for you.” She raised her head and eyed him softly for a moment. “You seem to inspire that in people.”

“Not in all people. Not in people surnamed Weasley.” There was bitterness in his voice. “People accept children all the time that aren't biologically theirs - step-children, adopted children… why - why wouldn't they do that for us? Why wouldn't she do that?”

“I can't answer that, Harry. But… isn't it better this way? I mean, in the long run. If she - if she couldn't handle it, then it's better to know now. You should know, more than anyone, what can happen when people never get over resentment of a child they're forced to parent.”

“But it's me. It's you. She said she loved me. You're her friend. You were going to be her sister-in-law. And she couldn't - she couldn't get past all that resentment? For us?”

“She couldn't get past the resentment because of us.”

Harry stared at her, complete befuddlement stamped on his face.

“But she - she always said… she never - she didn't think there was anything between us. She - she thought the idea was funny! Ron may have had doubts, but Ginny always said…”

“Then what were you fighting about - before the hospital? It was obvious you'd been up all night.”

“She wanted… she was asking something of me that I wasn't willing to give.” Hermione's inquiring dark eyes remained fixed on his face. He was suddenly and acutely aware of the sensation of her fingers still resting on his arm, and he placed his other hand on top of hers. “She wanted me to - to stop being around you so much. Not to never see you, she said, but just not as much. I - I told her that you were my best friend, that there had been times where you were the only one I could count on. That made her madder. She said that she would have been there for me if I had let her. But I - I - ” I just keep bloody well needing you too much. He floundered for a moment, and then gave up. “I told her you were non-negotiable.” He flashed a half-grin at her, and she felt her insides warm. “You're my best friend. You're Eleanor's mother. And I'm not going to let Ginny separate us. I just don't understand why she doesn't believe me. I've never lied to her about this.”

Hermione watched him for a long moment, and seemed to be contemplating whether or not to jump off of a precipice.

“Ginny…” she began slowly. “… has always resented me. It hasn't exactly been a secret.”

“But why?”

“For all the reasons that I'm sure you fought about. She resented that I was friends with you, that I was so close to you, that you took me with you looking for Horcruxes, that you tell me things you don't tell her. She knows that there wasn't anything between us, that there has never been, but…”

“But…?” Harry prodded.

“She's afraid of what might happen. She was always afraid of it, but this - this makes it worse. It's one more link between us. One more thing that we share, that she's left out of. She…she said as much to me. While you were… unconscious.”

“But that - but that's ridiculous!”

Hermione dropped her head then, her hair forming a spiral curtain between them, and she mumbled something that Harry did not catch.

“What was that?” He reached up and scooped her hair back, tucking the tumbled locks behind her ear.

“I said, `I don't think it's ridiculous.'”

“I don't understand.” She would not look at him, and Harry was shifting on the sofa, trying to angle himself into her line of sight.

“I mean that Ginny's right.”

“I don't think she's been right about anything so far!”

“Eleanor saw it. She told Ron.”

“What? She saw what? That Ginny was going to break up with me?” Hermione half-laughed tremulously, and against her will, she felt tears well up in her eyes. Immediately, Harry was all concern. “Hermione, what's wrong?”

“She saw how we feel about each other - how I - I feel about you. She told Ron that it was beautiful.”

“Hermione, I - ”

“I love you, Harry.” She finally lifted her luminous eyes to his. Harry was flabbergasted, looking very much like he could not believe his own ears.

“I love you too, Hermione, but - ” Her heart flipped at his words, but immediately sank. His tone was too flippant, too casual. They still weren't on the same wavelength.

“Not like that. Not - not only like that. I mean, I love you.” She dashed at a recalcitrant tear wending its way down her cheek.

“But - but - but Ron - ”

“Remember what we were talking about earlier? About doing what was right versus what was easy? And how - ”

“ - you just have to start over again, if you take the easy path.” Harry filled in the blanks for her, and something in his eyes and tone made her breathless. “But Hermione, how do you know? If you thought so with Ron, and I thought so with Ginny, and we were both wrong…”

“Harry, I've been thinking about this a lot… and honestly, I don't think anyone ever had a chance with me - not a real chance - ever since you saved me from that troll.”

“Ron cast the - ” He didn't know why he kept throwing out Ron's name, except that it was grounding somehow - he felt like his entire worldview had been knocked askew.

“Ron wouldn't have even been in that loo if it weren't for you. You always saw me. Even when no one else did.”

“Then why didn't I see this?”

“Maybe we were too close to each other to see it. Maybe we had grown so accustomed to each other in our allotted roles…”

Harry slumped back into the sofa cushions, and closed his eyes again. Hermione felt stricken for piling something else on him. He had nearly died today - nearly died! She tried to let the seriousness of that seep back into the forefront of her mind. His girlfriend had broken up with him, accusing him of feelings for someone else that he didn't realize he had… or didn't have at all, she thought suddenly. Maybe Eleanor is wrong. She's five years old, she's never known security, stability, love…

“Eleanor could just be seeing what she wants to see.” Harry's thoughts so closely paralleled her own that she slid back from him, startled. Hearing those words from someone else, voicing - confirming? - her own insecurities, stung. She inhaled a sharp breath, and tried to look stoic, forcing a smile onto lips that didn't want to cooperate entirely.

“You're probably right. You - you should - I shouldn't have thrown all this at you today, not after the day you've had… it - it was unspeakably selfish of me, and I understand if you - if you don't - I - don't quite understand it myself. How could the - the brightest witch of her age not realize that - that she wasn't in love with the man whose proposal she accepted? How - how stupid - how stupid is she?” Her face crumpled, and her voice withered away into muteness. She was going to cry; she was going to completely lose her composure in a grand fashion right in front of Harry. And while that had occurred before, it had never been about Harry before. I can't do this. She sprang to her feet. “I - I should - I should get home. You ought to get some rest.” She sort of lurched toward the fireplace without looking at him, remembered belatedly that the Floo was disconnected, and adjusted her course toward the front door.

“Hermione… don't go.”

His words dropped into the utter stillness of the flat, and the undertone of his voice gave her clammy palms. She had not heard him move, but when she pivoted back toward the living area, he was there.

“Harry…” The protest in her voice was weak, but she knew he heard it all the same. He got closer still, fully invading her personal space in the way that he always had, and yet this time, it felt completely different. “Don't say anything just because you feel sorry for me. Please.”

He was close. Impossibly close. She folded into him, as she had done countless times before, but this time, the implications were far from what they'd once been. She would have sworn that she could actually feel heat from the emerald flames in his eyes, which darkened upon her approach. He might be confused; he might be uncertain, but he was definitely attracted. She wondered briefly how mad it was to base a course of action on the word of a telepathic five-year-old. She saw the query on his face before he spoke, Hermione, what are you doing?

“I'm testing a theory.” Her voice was low and throaty, answering that which he had not actually vocalized.

He opened his mouth to ask her what theory that was, but before he could speak, she was kissing him. Her lips were smooth and warm, and she tasted vaguely of the same String Mints she'd offered him at St. Mungo's, so he could try to get the potion taste out of his mouth. She felt like she was drowning and combusting all at once. She half-expected him to stagger away from her, bewildered or embarrassed, but he pressed her up against the wall, with an ardency that surprised her. Her arms wrapped around his neck, seemingly of their own volition. When oxygen became a necessity, they broke apart, but still stood in the entryway together, foreheads touching. Harry looked just as starry-eyed as she felt.

“So, what is your conclusion?” Harry had to clear his throat twice before any sound came out, and he did not quite achieve the jocularity for which he was aiming.

“Unchanged.” She tried to laugh, but it was a frail thing, dying almost before it was born.

“I always thought we'd be brilliant together,” he said, the underlying tone sounding as intense as she'd ever heard him. “This just confirms it.”

“You…always thought?” There was faint disbelief there. Maybe even the tiniest hint of anger, as though he were upset that she was not given full disclosure on all options available before making a choice.

“I - I mean, if - if things had happen differently… if I had asked you to the Yule Ball for instance… or if I had done something… when Ron left us.” He didn't even need to elaborate, and his statement so closely mirrored what Hermione had been thinking on the Knight Bus with Ginny that it startled her.

“But things didn't happen differently, Harry. They happened like this. We've both got baggage. No matter how we measure things out… people are going to get hurt…”

“… people are going to make assumptions… write articles… make wagers on whether or not we were together before our break-ups…” He rolled his eyes theatrically.

“Harry!” She fisted both hands into his shirt, and tugged him toward her, looking beseechingly into his eyes.

“There is a little girl in that room who has never known stability… never known love. I can't - I can't afford to mess this up. She doesn't deserve that.”

“Look at me.” She was still bracketed in his arms, her eyes as wide and deep and cool as a shadowy forest brook. “And tell me honestly…do you think that we're going to mess this up?”

“I don't.” He astonished her with his succinct answer. One of his hands came alongside her face to delicately move aside a ringlet of hair and trace the line of her jaw. He swallowed. “This feels too easy, though. It shouldn't be this easy, should it?”

She laughed then, and it was silvery and joyous, filling the darker corners of his flat.

“This? Auror raids, telepathic super-children, secret evil agendas, and angry Weasleys..? This is what you define as easy?”

“No, this.” He tightened his arms around her again, and brushed her lips with his, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence. “Shouldn't this be awkward and odd and uncertain?”

“We've known each other since we were children, saved each other's lives on countless occasions, and always, always supported and loved each other… this is - this is like standing at a threshold.” She kissed him again. “And finally gathering up the nerve to step across.”

“If this is a threshold, then it's to the door of the Room of Requirement. And it appeared when I needed it… before I even knew I needed it.”

Her eyes were sparkling with unspilled tears. “And what's inside the Room?” She whispered.

Harry drank her in, with a look that was half-adoration, half-disbelief, then pressed his face into the crook of her neck and shoulder. His response was an exhaled breath, “Home.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was a bleary-eyed Hermione who cautiously answered the door very early the next morning. She relaxed a bit when she saw Aurors Falworth and Dunwiddie, followed by a younger Auror with a sketch pad, and bade them enter. However, her ex-fiance was bringing up the rear, and looked as uncomfortable to be there, as she did to have him there.

“We're sorry to disturb you so early,” Falworth apologized. “But Auror Wyndham is our best spell sketcher, and he's got appointments for other cases the rest of the day.”

“A … spell sketcher?”

“Aurors receive training in certain magics that can help form a depiction of a subject being sought. It's along the same lines as a Qwik-Quotes Quill, although this requires much more finesse. It helps to have some natural artistic ability. Wyndham is one of the best I've ever seen. If we - if we could speak with Eleanor.”

“Harry and I were just talking about that yesterday, seeing if we could get a description. Eleanor called him Sir. We think he's Pureblood. I'll have to see if she - ” Hermione was interrupted by Harry coming out of his room, in a undershirt and boxers, his hair on end, stretching kinks out of his back and groaning.

“Sweet Merlin, Hermione! You sleep like you're expecting a Death Eater attack! Your kicking is lethal - my ribs are - ” His words trailed off comically, as his eyes finally came all the way open, and he realized they had visitors. “Erm… good morning. I'll just…” He didn't finish his sentence, but quickly disappeared back into the room he'd just vacated.

“That didn't take long,” Ron observed, spearing Hermione with a look that was more sad than angry, but nevertheless served to ratchet up the tension even further.

“Don't do this, Ron. Not after what you said yesterday. Why is he here?” Hermione directed her question to Auror Falworth. His eyes had been coolly moving from her to Ron, and she got the feeling that he was assessing the entire situation quite accurately in his head.

“It's my day to train with the sketcher. Apparently, I've got a sort of knack for it.” Ron was bracing himself for some kind of onslaught. Hermione wondered if Fred and George had been harassing him about it, so she smiled widely, and was relieved when some of the strain eased from his face.

“That's brilliant, Ron!” She hesitated, darting a glance at the other three men, and they immediately moved together to busily study the file. She flashed them a grateful look. “I'm sorry if this makes it harder… if - if things are - I mean,” she gestured toward the closed door, dropping her voice. “We - we … we haven't…” Ron flushed to his hairline when he understood her meaning, and he quickly lifted two placating hands.

“I didn't - I wasn't saying - well…” He raised his rangy shoulders. “Well, maybe I was. I - I shouldn't have been … I'm - this is hard, Hermione. I stand by what I told Eleanor, but that doesn't make it any - any easier to watch.”

The door creaked softly, as Harry reentered their midst, fully dressed, but still looking somewhat discomfited. “Is there something we can do for you gentlemen?” He said with mock formality.

Hermione watched him, as Falworth ran through the same spiel he'd given her, and as Harry responded in much the same way that she had. When he finished speaking, he looked over to her, and their gazes locked. She felt a vibrant thrum in the pit of her stomach. So this is how it's going to be. It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. From a distance, as though it were happening to someone else, she heard herself offer to prepare tea, coffee, and toast, while Harry went to rouse Eleanor. In quite a short time, they found themselves seated around a breakfast table with their daughter, three Aurors, and her ex-fiance.

When they set up for the sketch, Eleanor was in the center, with Wyndham and Ron to her left, and Hermione and Harry ranged to her right. Dunwiddie and Falworth sat on the opposite side, quills at the ready for note-taking. Harry's attention appeared to be strictly on the situation taking place, but he reached over without looking, and laced Hermione's fingers through his.

“All right then, Eleanor,” Wyndham said in an affable voice, as he tweaked the quill - a custom affair, with a number of tiny dials down the shaft, and topped with an enormous billowy feather - with his wand. “What was the first thing you noticed about… Sir, was it?”

“He had scary eyes. Black eyes,” she offered tentatively, throwing an uncertain glance at her parents, who offered encouraging nods. “They were like this.” She showed him the same shadowed brow ridge she had depicted for her parents the day before, cupping her hands over her eyes. Wyndham suspended the quill above the parchment, where it hovered, waiting. With a tap of his wand, it jumped into motion, lightly sketching out a pair of eyes.

“Those would be at home on a horror movie poster,” Harry remarked, his light comment not concealing the look of concern he shot at his daughter.

“How about that, Eleanor? Do those look right?”

“They were closer. And more this,” she accompanied her words with a squinting contortion of her face that had Harry's breaking into an adoring grin. Wyndham used his wand to manipulate the dials on the quill. “And these were bigger.” She ran her fingers over the tiny feathers of her eyebrows.

When Wyndham had finished her specifications, she blanched and recoiled away from the parchment.

“It's not real, sweetheart,” Hermione soothed.

“It feels like Sir is looking at me. Can he see me right now?”

“He doesn't even know where you are,” Harry reassured her, but neither he nor Hermione missed the looks Falworth and Dunwiddie exchanged. They still didn't understand what agenda was afoot, and what the motivation for leaving Eleanor behind was. “I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

“Can we finish this, Eleanor? It will help us find him, so he isn't bad to anyone else. Can you tell me about the shape of his face?”

Eleanor's green eyes were wide and panicky. “No! No, he will know. He - he will find me. He will.” She cast another frightened glance at the parchment. Ron quickly slid a blank sheet atop it, so that the eyes were obscured.

“They left me because I am bad. They want me to do bad things. If I do good things, then he will find me… or hurt people. He might hurt you.” She looked mournfully at her parents.

“I've fought bad wizards before, Eleanor,” Harry said gently. “So has your mother. Don't worry about us. But we do need to catch him. I know this is hard, but we need you…” As Harry spoke, Wyndham slowly exposed the sketch again, but Eleanor's response was immediate.

“No, no, no, no, no nonononono!” She was frantic, and Harry nervously waited for something to ignite. Hermione was providing the buffer between him and Eleanor, but…

“I know how to get the sketch you wanted,” he ventured. “I can give it to you.”

“Harry, you can't!” Hermione knew what he was getting at, and was instantly rejecting it.

“All I need is one glimpse of him. I can give you the image.”

“A - a pensieve. Couldn't we get the image from there?” Hermione sounded as desperate as Eleanor had, looking for any reason to keep Harry from mentally connecting with his daughter again.

Falworth was shaking his head. “Pensieve memories from children are notoriously unreliable. Usually, they're only admissible in court coming from a child older than eleven. And as panicked as she is, I'm not sure she'd even be able to latch onto a memory long enough to give it to us.”

“What makes you think she'd even give it to you, Harry? If she's going to purposely avoid it, then - ”

“I could find it. I haven't - I haven't tried to direct the contact in any way, so far… but maybe if I - if I steered it in one specific direction, I could find a memory of him.”

“The last time you connected with her, you seized. You nearly died.” Hermione belatedly flicked a glance toward Eleanor, but did not sway from her course. Her jaw was set in a mutinous line. She brought their clasped hands up from beneath the table, and used her other hand to enclose Harry's completely. “I'm not letting you do this. We don't understand it. You can't control it. It is dangerous.” She squared her shoulders, and looked across to Falworth. “We've been focusing solely on her telepathy. But you've even said that it is not the same thing as Legilimency. So let's try Legilimency instead. I've had the basic training at St. Mungo's, and it might be easier with someone she knows.”

“Hermione, we don't know how Legilimency will affect her either!” Harry protested.

“I'm a much better candidate to try than you are, Harry Potter.” She released his hands, and swiveled to face Eleanor, cupping her little shoulders with her palms. “I'm going to look in your mind. You're going to feel me in there, but it is just me. I'm not going to hurt you at all. I know it's scary, but I want you to think of Sir as hard as you can, so that I can see him. Then I can finish the sketch for you, and the Aurors can find him. Is that okay?” Eleanor swallowed, and nodded hesitantly. Hermione felt Harry move behind her, then arrest the motion. Her heart crimped with sympathy; she knew it was hard for him to not be able to comfort Eleanor with even the simplest of touches. “Will this work?” She asked, looking curiously at Aurors Falworth and Dunwiddie.

“Some might argue that she's too young to give adequate consent. I don't think we need to be too concerned with any illegality though. We've witnessed that she's had the procedure explained to her.”

Hermione nodded, and looked squarely at Eleanor again, the fear in those Harry-eyes breaking her heart. “Look right at me, sweetheart. It's going to be all right.”

Her first reach was tentative, and she felt Eleanor fight against instinctively against it, but then forcibly relax. Really, her self-containment was amazing - given the amount of power surging through her, the fact that she ever had any control at all was incredible. Eleanor's mind was alive with crackling energy, more vivid in hue and scope and detail than any she had seen before. The memories were tinged in color that linked to mood: soft yellow for joy, blue for sadness, red for anger. The yellow was almost non-existent. Hermione tried to center herself - Eleanor didn't need to read her mother's own regrets, not when she was being so brave - and moved toward the ones tinted steely gray and black.

She waited for the approaching memory to engulf her, glad that Eleanor was able to present her with one, rather than her having to be any kind of aggressor, going after something that caused her daughter fear.

A short, waifish looking young man in a white lab coat was walking down a hallway, furiously outstriding a severe woman with an angry pinch to her mouth. The woman was dragging Eleanor, who was nearly running, stumbling, to keep up.

“Why weren't you controlling her?” He shouted over his shoulder.

“I really doubt than you're in any kind of position to be questioning anything I do, Muggle.” The word dripped with contempt and loathing. “There was no way to know that she'd set the laboratory on fire. She's never demonstrated anything to that degree before!”

“We lost all the equipment, and two people! Do you know how long it's going to take to retrain and re-equip? Our window of opportunity is limited! She could get too old, and then we'll have to start all over again. I don't think he will like that very much, do you?”

“You were the one responsible, Doctor! You brought that Muggle woman in!”

“You were in charge of that.” He pointed an accusing finger at Eleanor, who shrank under it. He stopped abruptly at an unmarked door, and knocked.

The looming figure who answered was shadowy in the cool darkness of the room beyond. The features of his face remained obscured.

“Hello, Eleanor,” came a cool baritone, all the more sinister for its seeming friendliness. A faint note of hostility ran beneath it. “I hear you've been burning up my laboratories and my people. Did you enjoy it?”

Eleanor cringed and quavered, trying to duck behind Mei, who was holding her out from her side with a stiff arm. “I - I - I did not…I did not mean to.”

“Of course you did!” The voice was rougher now, harsh and angry. “Even the very magically gifted cannot start fires that intense completely by accident!”

“I - ” Her voice got even smaller. “I did not know it would do that. It - it got away from me, and it would not come back.”

“I see.” The voice was calculating. There was a subtle jubilance; something had pleased him. “Take her away. Doctor, I'd like to talk to you further. I believe I've had an idea.” He flicked the light switches on, as the man in the lab coat passed by him, crossing into the room.

That was the first time Hermione saw his face, and she reeled backwards, effectively shutting off the memory, as though she'd pulled a plug on a television.

She was breathing heavily as she came back to herself, felt the solidity of the chair beneath her, saw the light of the repaired fixture shining down on the dining room table, felt Harry's fingers clasped tightly between hers, and saw the alarm in his eyes. Her heart was beating a rapid staccato in her ears; she saw black doors spinning, purple flames, spell fire exchanged amid the wide windows and jaunty tiles of a diner…

“Dolohov,” she gasped. Harry and Ron exchanged glances fraught with meaning.

“Hermione… it can't be Dolohov.”

“Vasiliy Dolohov is the head of the family now,” Dunwiddie said. “We keep an eye on him, but he's never given any indication that - ”

“Not - not - ” Hermione's mind was whirling; she was having difficulty being articulate. “Not him… not that son. A Squib son. Does Antonin Dolohov have a Squib son?”

Falworth was all business. “We can certainly check into it.” Quickly, Hermione worked with Wyndham and Ron, finishing off the sketch that Eleanor could not complete. When she was done, they were stunned.

“He does… look quite a lot like his father, doesn't he?” Harry mused. The hooded look of menace was unmistakable.

“Eleanor,” Hermione asked carefully, as Wyndham lifted the parchment for display. “Is this the man? Is this Sir?”

The little girl was practically shaking in terror, but she managed a nod. Wyndham tapped his wand to the parchment, causing it to roll up on itself, and secreted his sketching tools in various pockets on his person. While Harry showed the Aurors out, Hermione steered Eleanor gently to the sofa, and turned on one of the nature movies Harry had bought her.

As soon as the door had shut, Hermione propelled herself into Harry's arms, which cocooned her exactly as she needed.

“I'm sorry you had to do that,” he whispered into her hair.

“Could have been worse,” she murmured back. “Could have been a Squib child of Bellatrix Lestrange's.” There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the DVD and a tremulous sigh from Hermione. Harry tilted her chin up to look into her eyes.

“What else is wrong?”

“There was something… something D - Dolohov said in the memory. That he had an idea. He seemed pleased that Eleanor had burned up that laboratory, that she had created the fire deliberately, but then lost control of it. And the way Eleanor says that she's going to hurt people, that she's going to hurt you, that she's bad. Who knows what she gleaned from those people while they talked right in front of her - most likely things that she didn't understand, still doesn't understand.”

“Whatever they were planning didn't work! Eleanor said that she was supposed to `fix' him, that he was `broken'. But instead her magic killed someone - what did she call him?”

“Dr. Mo.”

“They were obviously able to determine that the magical transfer wasn't going to work properly. They cut their losses and ran. Why else would they have left her behind?”

“I think she was left behind on purpose. There's something still in play.” Her worried brow furrowed over troubled dark eyes. “Harry, I don't think this is over.”

tbc

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The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Seventeen: Pawn Moved

Two owls flapped their wings at Harry's window that afternoon, appearing at roughly the same time: one a sleek, stealthy bird from Falworth, and the other a fluffy barn owl from St. Mungo's. Hermione was reading a story to Eleanor on the couch, and exchanged worried glances with Harry, who had emerged from the bathroom, where he was getting ready to leave for a short meeting with Brig about their broom's test results, at the noise. Fastening the clasp of his robes, he moved across the living area, opening the window with a flick of his wand. Both owls perched politely on the sill, waiting for him to take the letters, and departed when he had, with nary a backward glance.

He unfurled the one from the hospital, his green eyes roving across the script, and finished with a sigh, heedlessly squashing part of the parchment with his closed hand. Hermione was watching him, even as her lips were forming the words set forth in the story book, but Eleanor was well aware that her mother's thought were elsewhere. She stopped attending to the story, and also began to peer at Harry from over the top of the book.

“They want us back at St. Mungo's to finish the testing that they couldn't finish yesterday,” because of me, he implied without saying so. “Is that really necessary?”

“It's because her magic is… different,” Hermione said, choosing her words carefully, well aware that she had Eleanor's attention. “We need to find out the mechanics behind it, how it reacts to various stimuli…” She knew she had what Harry and Ron called her “Healer-face” on. “So, we know what needs to be done, should an illness or emergency arise.” She smiled at her daughter, and kissed the crown of her head. “This is not like what they did. This is to help keep you healthy and strong.” Turning an earnest face back to Harry, she added, “Go on to your meeting with Brig. We've got to balance these work and parenting things eventually. I won't leave her side, I promise…” She trailed off, as Harry had opened the second missive, and was reading it.

“It's from Auror Falworth. They'd like to see us later on, at the Ministry, if that's convenient.” He'd turned away from them, deliberately moving toward the kitchen, and Hermione knew there was more that he was not saying. Judging from the pensive expression on Eleanor's face, their daughter knew it as well.

With another kiss, and a “We'll take it with us,” Hermione slid the storybook into Eleanor's lap, and followed Harry into the kitchen. She moved into his arms without prompting and asked, “What is it?”

“They've found him. Dolohov's son. They've got a name, a birth date, a last known address. They're going to bring him in, and they want Eleanor to confirm his identity.” He drew in a deep breath. “They had Aurors canvassing the area of the old Dolohov townhouse - it hasn't been used by the family in years - and people have seen a man matching his description.” She looked up at him with eyes that were simultaneously fearful and relieved. “They're going to get him, Hermione. They're going to get the man who did this to her.”

“Best way out is through, yeah?” Hermione quipped, the lightness in her tone negated by the sheen of tears in her eyes. “We'll put this all behind us, and then…” Her voice trailed off, and she felt Harry's arms grow still around her. She knew they were thinking the same thing: this thing with Dolohov's son, the mystery of Eleanor's existence; these were distracting them from the daily problems that were sure to crop up - Ron and Ginny, the media, their fledgling relationship. Those things could be brushed aside, overlooked for now, but they wouldn't just vanish of their own accord.

“And then… we have to deal with angry exes, our entire lives on the front pages, how to raise an exceptional child, how to - how to - ” Harry was speaking those very thoughts aloud; his hands came up to cup her face, his little fingers sliding into the notch between her jaw and her ear and caressing the slender lines of bone there. “Merlin, why can't things just go as they ought for once? We've not dated, but we know each other better than anyone else. We haven't done… erm, that, and yet we have a child. The family that we were taken into as though we were born part of them is probably never going to speak to us again. And yet, somehow… I'm happy about all this.” He sighed. “It would have been nice to have gone about this the normal way round, though.”

“You've never been normal, Harry.” As he was about to respond with a laughing, sarcastic Thanks a lot, she finished, “You've always been extraordinary. And you bring that out in others.”

“If not for Eleanor, and - and everything that's happened, do you think - do you think we'd have ever - ?”

“I don't think we would have.” Hermione's voice was faraway and reflective. “And there's the greater tragedy. We would have stayed with Ron and Ginny, and probably been passably happy, in the way that someone swimming in a pond is thrilled with its vastness, because he's never seen the ocean.” Harry regarded her soberly for a moment, looking as though she were a gift that he couldn't believe he'd been given, but then he broke the solemnity with a half-grin.

“That's rather lyrical of you, Granger,” he teased. “And rather complimentary to me.” There was an impish sparkle in his green eyes.

“Don't flatter yourself, Pott - ” The remainder of his surname was swallowed by his kiss. Hermione's insides liquefied, and her knees wobbled. She felt his arms slide down to link behind her back, supporting her. Will it always feel this way? I hope it always feels this way. She almost groaned aloud when he just as reluctantly drew away from her.

“I've…really got to go…” His words trailed slowly out of his mouth, as if he genuinely did not want to give them voice. There was mute apology in his eyes, causing one corner of her mouth to uptilt.

“Go!” Her twinkling eyes and her playful shove made him kiss her again. “You've missed enough work already. You're lucky Brig likes you so much!” Harry backed away from her, with an expression that clearly said Of course he does. Why wouldn't he?

“I'll meet you at the Ministry in a couple of hours?” He called over his shoulder, half in query, as he moved to drop a quick kiss on the crown of Eleanor's head. Hermione nodded at him.

“I'll send a Patronus when we're finished at St. Mungo's.” He winked at her, ducked his head in farewell, and Apparated away with a crisp crack.

Hermione puttered around Harry's flat for a few minutes, tidying up things that didn't really need to be tidied, just to have something to do with her hands while her mind whirled in dizzying circuits. On one pass through the living area, she felt Eleanor's gaze on her, and stopped. The green eyes were even more solemn than was their general wont.

“What's wrong, sweetheart?”

“I'm not good,” Eleanor sighed. Hermione took a moment to curse everyone at that research facility for planting this idea in the psyche of an impressionable child.

“I know it's hard, Eleanor, but you have to tell yourself that nothing those people said to you was true. They - they were not good people. What they were doing to you was wrong. They were wrong, not you.”

“Just because you don't like what someone says, doesn't make it not true,” Eleanor pointed out placidly. “I am not good for Father. I am not good for anyone.”

“The Healers at St. Mungo's are going to figure out what to do. It might be something like your bracelet… but a better one - one that doesn't give you a headache. Or it might be something completely different. You are an important little girl, Eleanor.”

“Because I can see what people think inside their heads? Or because they want to give my magic to Skibs?” Eleanor spoke with a clinical curiosity that pierced Hermione like a rapier blade.

“Because…” Hermione hesitated, pressing her lips together contemplatively, and then came to sit beside her daughter on the sofa. “Because you're Harry Potter's daughter. Your father is important. He - he is one of the bravest, noblest people that I know. And he has saved many, many lives. People don't forget things like that. And you are his daughter. He loves you… very, very much. There are going to be wizards and witches all over the place out there, just tripping over themselves to help someone that Harry Potter loves.”

The corners of Eleanor's eyes crinkled up, as she pictured grown men and women hurrying to and fro, stumbling over every little thing in their paths and crashing into one another. “Do they trip over themselves to help you?” she asked, her implication clear.

“You know what?” Hermione leaned toward her with a conspiratorial whisper, trying to ignore the high color in her cheeks. “Actually, they do.” Eleanor giggled then, her nose scrunching up as she cupped her hand over her mouth. The sound struck Hermione as incongruous coming from such a serious little girl, and it made her vow to cause that giggle so much more often that it no longer sounded odd. She should meet George, she thought, almost instinctively, and then felt the new triplet twinges of guilt, pain, and regret immediately on its heels.

Eleanor had evidently read at least a bit of this, for she tucked her tiny hand into her mother's, and said, “You and Father belong together. That should not make you feel bad.” Hermione laughed a little, and blinked back the tears that had suddenly sprung to her eyes.

“Being a grown-up is hard sometimes, Eleanor,” she said honestly.

“Promise me, Mother,” she said, speaking as forcefully as Hermione had ever heard her. “Promise me you will not let anything - anything - keep you and Father apart from each other.”

“Now that we've finally figured out what was right in front of our noses, you mean?” Hermione forced some joviality into her tone, and found her good humor returning. “I think your father and I will be just fine.” There were still troubled shadows swimming in the green pools of Eleanor's eyes, but she said nothing further, and Hermione let it slide. “We should go on to St. Mungo's. Healer Desai will be waiting on us, and we can get this all over with. Maybe have some ice cream afterward?”

“In a cone?” Eleanor drummed her shoes against each other, and the sides of the rubber soles made a gentle thunking sound. There was a hopeful spark in her green eyes; so like her father's, Hermione thought.

“If that's what you'd like,” Hermione said agreeably, standing to her feet, and pulling Eleanor to hers. “Let's go and get this all finished! What do you say?”

*********

Harry and Brig were elbow deep in rolls of parchment spread out across three or four different drafting tables. They had been arguing amicably over whether or not a four-degree change in the shaft angle would improve the lagging cornering time, and then moved on to broom-straw composition.

“I'm tellin' ye, Harry, there's a reason it's no' been done before.”

“A broom tail is made of twigs to be functional, as a broom. If you're going to be flying it, not sweeping with it, then it doesn't matter what the tail is made of.”

“Ye still have to take into account: aerodynamics, shear, weight…” The buckles on Brig's leather apron jingled softly as he ticked points off on his fingers. “The twigs are economical, an' they work.” Harry stabbed his own finger in the direction of the experimental alloy broom on the far table beneath the large window. It lay in a puddle of sunlight, as if on display in a gallery.

“But what if something else works better? Something just as light, just as capable, but far more durable?”

“Ye don' even know that it'll work better. Ye've worked out the broom shaft with the alloy, an' it looks grand, I'll admit it. But the twigs would be a completely differen' matter!”

“I don't think it would be different at all. Using something like the alloy - why, broom tails could last five times as long!”

“So, ye want to be puttin' us out o' business then?”Brig's walrus mustache was cocked at a wry angle above his mouth. “Or did ye forget about the `Broom Repair' part o' our sign out there?” He chucked his thumb over his shoulder toward the front of the shop.

“We could revolutionize this whole industry, Brig!”

“I rather thought ye'd had enough o' revolutions for your lifetime, Mr. Potter.” His eyes were twinkling with gentle teasing, but Harry flung a wounded look at him: Et tu, Brig?

“I want to take it out,” he announced suddenly, no longer talking about the broom they'd been testing over the last two weeks.

“It isn't ready yet.”

“It needs one more layer of charms!” There was clear protest in Harry's voice.

“Charmin' a broom for flight is the most complicated part o' the entire process. Ye've never done one all on your own! Ye've got an elite broom there, and those charms are more complex still. Ye rush it, an' ye might just find yourself having a lunch o' cobblestones!”

“An elite broom, eh? Even if I replace the tail with something besides twigs?” Harry flashed a playfully mocking glance at his mentor, and Brig's mustache dropped dourly.

“You're far too young an' green to be using me own words against me. I'll no' have it! If ye want to finalize the charms on that newfangled contraption ye've got there, be my guest. But do no' come cryin' to me to collect all your body parts from the four corners of the testin' green!”

“I'll be careful. Do you really think I've come this far to kill myself testing a broom prototype?” Brig's wordless glance, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline, was eloquence itself. “Besides,” Harry stumbled, a crooked grin wobbling on his face, “I've got a daughter now, you know.” The pride in his voice was almost another sentience in the room. “I'm not going to take foolish risks, Brig. I can do this.”

“Yes, ye said as much o'er the Floo the other day.” Brig scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck with one massive paw. “So, the Prophet, then? They're tellin' the truth? About Hermione an' your wee lass… an' Ron?”

“Some of it's true,” Harry admitted uncomfortably. “But it didn't all happen the way they said. Our daughter - Hermione's and mine - she was created in a lab… by scientists. Like an experiment.” He gestured vaguely toward the alloy broom, groping for an example that a wizard might understand. “We - Hermione and I - we never cheated, Brig.”

“It didn't seem like something either o' ye would do, that's fair certain.”

“The funny thing is… now, now that everything has happened, and - and - even though nothing happened before… Well, now, we've - we've realized, that is - ”

“Ye've realized that she's the one for ye, haven't ye, lad?”

“Yeah,” Harry let out a half-laugh that was mostly just a sardonic exhalation of air. “We both have, Brig, and mostly… mostly I wonder - other than how we're going to raise a child and how long this is going to be on the front pages - mostly I wonder how I didn't see this before. It seems so obvious now, for both of us to have been so incredibly blind.”

“There's no need wastin' time o'er regrets about the past. It can't be undone.” Brig's heavy hand came down on Harry's shoulder for a couple of fatherly pats. “Best ye figured it out before any vows were said, before other children were involved, when hearts migh' be damaged, but no' broken for good. They'll be fine, Harry, an' ye an' Hermione will be too.”

Harry met Brig's gaze with a half-smile that gave clear voice to his gratitude, when he wasn't sure he'd be able to speak it aloud. Brig patted his shoulder again, and reached for the quill tucked into the band of his visor.

“Now,” he continued, his brogue becoming brisk and businesslike. “Let's see about getting' the las' layer o' charms on that broom o' yours. Show me what ye've got.”

******

Harry wasn't sure how much time had gone by, when he got the last charm laid down in precisely the location and configuration that Brig deemed worthy. The sun's angle was sharply different in the sky, and he was pretty sure that the muscles in his fingers had frozen permanently around his wand. He arched his back and groaned, as every vertebrae in his spine popped, protesting his lengthy crouch over the drafting table. Brig prowled around the perimeter of the table, examining the broom from every possible angle, and rapidly casting a succession of diagnostic spells.

“Well,” Brig said after a moment, drawing out the short word interminably. “I think ye've done good work, Harry. Ye've got a knack for this, no doubt.” He threw a critical glance toward the window. “And just enough time to take `er out before the light gets bad.” The childlike enthusiasm that wreathed Harry's face was infectious enough to wring an answering smile from the older man. “An' remember what I said. I'll no' be Summoning the pieces o' ye, nor chuckin' `em in the Floo to St. Mungo's!”

Harry picked up the broom with reverence, rotating it slowly in his hand and marveling at how light and natural it felt, like an extension of himself.

“Gareth and Morty `ave gone out on an orderin' run. I'll send Morty along when he gets back.”

“Brig!” Harry's shoulders slumped in disappointment, finishing with a muttered, “He calls me `Boss'.”

“And dinna pretend that ye don't love it on some level. Don't argue wi' me, Harry,” he added, as the younger man opened his mouth to protest some more. “It's safer wi' another wizard there. Just in case anythin' happens.”

“In case he needs to chuck pieces of me through the Floo?”

“Exactly so.” Brig nodded at him seriously, and Harry rolled his eyes, before Apparating up to the testing fields.

*****

Harry felt Hermione's Patronus before he saw it. He was airborne, but still felt the shivery rush through the wards, as the otter crossed through. When he saw it gliding toward him in a series of silvery smooth arcs, as if through non-existent waves, he felt his heart somersault into his throat, even though he knew what message it was likely bringing. Deciding that it would behoove him not to be thirty feet up in the air, he executed a long graceful dive, springing from the broom before it had come to a complete stop. He turned to face the ethereal otter, which had dutifully followed him down.

“We've finished the testing at St. Mungo's. Auror Falworth is ready for us at the Ministry.” Hermione's Patronus-voice, though clearly hers, had a cool, hollow sound that resonated around the otherwise empty testing field.

“Thank you,” Harry said automatically, then felt his face flush. Ginny had always teased him for thanking Patronuses. The otter dissipated into a glittery cloud of particles before vanishing entirely. He took a moment to rotate the new broom - his broom - in front of him, curling and uncurling his wrist, eyeing it carefully in the slanting afternoon sun. The ride had been fantastic, smooth and fast, the angles cut by the broom, knife-sharp. With a final fond glance, he shrunk the broom down and carefully put it in his pocket, strode to the edge of the field, and Apparated away once he'd cleared the wards.

He found them easily once he made it to the Ministry, though he'd entered the Auror department with some trepidation. He knew that these were Ron's comrades, his colleagues, and they were most likely to take his side; not to mention there were more than a few people Harry had trained with who still believed him to be a quitter who was overly enamored of himself. Thankfully, Ron didn't appear to be in the office; Harry wondered if he was out in the field with the spell-sketcher. He could feel eyes on him - he carefully avoided Sinjin's measured gaze - but was able to wend his way through the maze of cubicles and stacked file boxes without any overt confrontation.

And it looked like he might still have a fan or two in the place, he thought, as he caught sight of Hermione, with Eleanor clinging to her hand. He raised one arm in greeting, and met the eyes of a mousy young woman, clutching a clipboard and quill, looking for all the world like she wanted to melt into the wall after he'd caught her avidly staring. She dropped her gaze quickly, and scrawled something with her quill, pretending to be immersed in whatever it was she'd been tasked to do.

At least, not everyone hates me, he thought, and then reflected on how sad it was that that thought comforted him.

“Father!” Eleanor's voice was not loud, but had a jubilant tone. Harry felt his heart clench with unadulterated joy.

“Did they figure anything out?” He asked Hermione. He wanted so badly to be able to hold Eleanor's hand, to pick her up, to cuddle her to his side while they read a story…

“Not sure yet,” Hermione replied, her eyes sympathetic to his obvious desires, her voice discreetly low. “Her magic is - is highly reactive. Volatile, even. The attempts to suppress it cause it to surge around the erected barriers, to actively try to break them down, to - ”

“To escape?”

“Kind of,” Hermione nodded in agreement with his word choice. “That's what gives her a headache. Theoretically, we could increase the strength of her bracelet, but - ”

“ - that would make her headaches worse.”

“Exactly.”

“What about me? When can I - ?”

“I don't know, Harry,” Hermione's voice was compassionate and contemplative. “There are two research Healers who have actually attended Muggle universities, in addition to their Healer training, and they've been looking at some of the data, as well as Shravana, Fellowes, and myself.” She shrugged off-handedly, as if she weren't much of an addition. “The problem comes from your magic being so similar to hers. They've theorized that the more - the more her magic comes into contact with you, the more… acclimated it gets. That's why your reactions have been progressively worsening.”

“There's got to be something, Hermione! Something I could wear, some spell to be cast on me, to keep this from happening!” Hermione looked ineffably sad.

“It's just another barrier, Harry.”

He averted his blurred gaze to a far corner of the Auror offices, not wishing either Hermione or Eleanor to see him tear up. It's a wild thing, he reflected, thinking of what Hermione had said about Eleanor's magic fighting against restraint. It lashes out with attempts to bind it, or… he remembered the scenes he'd seen in her memory - the hellhound, the fire in the lab. Or when it perceives that it is in danger, that Eleanor is in danger. Part of him recognized it as ridiculous that he was referring to magic as a sentient being on its own. But most of him was frightened that such an unpredictable, savage, engineered thing was encased inside the fragile, five-year-old body of his daughter.

Belatedly, he jerked toward Eleanor, realizing that she was probably picking up on everything he'd been thinking. He met a somber green gaze, so much like the one that met him in the mirror. Her beautiful wide eyes - his mother's eyes - were fathomless and clear. She'd “heard” everything. Yes, Father. Her chin dropped in a careful nod. He couldn't really hear her in his mind, but her eyes said it all. You are right. Everything you did-not-say is right. He reached over and chucked her chin, careful to keep the cuff of his shirt in between his skin and hers.

“I am so sorry.” The four-word phrase seemed incredibly inadequate, and yet it was all he could do.

“It is not your fault,” Eleanor whispered back. Harry wasn't sure exactly what expression was on his face at that moment, but he felt Hermione's fingers twine with his and squeeze hard. “Maybe the Healers can fix it.” Something in the little girl's voice rang false, made Harry think that it was an untruth, a kind lie spoken solely for comfort's sake. He tried to make eye contact with her again, but she had bent down to adjust the lace of her shoe.

“Ah, Harry! You're here.” Auror Falworth's business voice, upbeat but brisk, drove Harry from his reverie. “We've got him in a holding cell. On suspicion of Dark Activity.”

“How can he be held for Dark Activity if he's a - ”

“Suspicion of Dark Activity,” Falworth corrected him, holding a finger aloft in mock pomposity. Harry squinted at him. The young Auror seemed entirely too…bouncy… for these proceedings, but Harry supposed that this would be a big arrest. Landmark case. And he did really seem rather fond of Eleanor. “We'll get Eleanor to identify him. Once we've got him for unlawfully holding her - then… well, then it doesn't matter whether or not he is a Squib. This way, please.”

They started forward, but Hermione was immediately jerked back, when Eleanor planted her feet. Harry knelt in front of her immediately.

“Eleanor, it's okay. I know you're scared. But we're going to be on the other side of a big, heavy window. He won't be able to see us. He doesn't have magic anyway, and there are Aurors everywhere.” He swung his arm wide to encompass the entirety of the department. “All you have to do is tell them whether or not the man in there is Sir. And then we'll be done.”

“That's all?” Eleanor's voice was a hoarse whisper, barely audible.

“That's all. Your mother can hold your hand the whole time.” Eleanor slid one shoe forward hesitantly, in lieu of a reply. They continued slowly to the corridor lined with holding cells, Eleanor walking so closely to her mother that Hermione was fighting not to trip over her.

An Auror guard on either side of the third cell door made it very obvious which one Dolohov occupied. Once they and Auror Falworth stood in front of the large window, charmed to be one-way glass, Auror Dunwiddie prodded something with his wand, causing the lights to come up in the cell. The hulking figure had been huddled in shadows, the cell almost twilight-dim, but his gaze lifted toward the window as the light grew brighter. Dunwiddie slid his wand into a small slot to activate the Sonorus inside the cell.

“Stand up and face the window,” the Auror barked. Very slowly and deliberately, Dolohov uncurled himself from the crouch, standing straight and looking where he was directed with a malevolent and unrepentant gaze. Harry heard the faintest gasp from Hermione, as they got their first clear look at the man himself. He really does look an awful lot like his father, he thought.

“Can you see?” Hermione asked Eleanor softly. The little girl's eyes were not level with the windowsill, and she shook her head. Hermione reached down and picked her up, setting her daughter securely on one hip.

Harry knew it was impossible. The man was a Squib; there was no way he could have known Eleanor was there. Perhaps it was an educated guess due to the raising of the lights, but his timing was nevertheless eerie and uncanny. As Eleanor fully faced the window, it appeared that the two of them - one in the cell and one out - locked eyes with one another. Dolohov surged toward the window so suddenly that Hermione found herself instinctively backpedalling, with Harry inserting himself between her and the cell.

“Nononononononono!” Eleanor had begun a nearly banshee wail. Dolohov slammed both hands against the glass, his face contorted and feral.

“NOW!” He roared. “Now! Damn you!” Harry heard it in stereo, both physically and through the Sonorus spell. Several of the Aurors were looking around, bewildered, wands at the ready, wondering to whom Dolohov was speaking. Dunwiddie flung himself toward the cell door, wrenching it open and causing it to clatter noisily against the wall.

“Stupefy!”

Casimir Dolohov went limp, a marionette with his strings cut. Three Aurors joined Dunwiddie in the cell to secure him. Harry could feel Hermione's form trembling next to him, even as she patted Eleanor's back and hummed tunelessly. Eleanor's sobs gradually dwindled to noisy sniffles and erratic hiccups, her face buried in Hermione's neck.

There was a flicker of movement in the periphery of Harry's vision, and his war-honed senses did not overlook it, even in his focus on Eleanor's wellbeing. His wand was in his hand before he had fully turned, and twin scarlet bolts shot toward the chest of the little wallflower who'd been watching him earlier. She collapsed at the far end of the corridor in a heap of dull-colored clothing, and he allowed himself to exchange a satisfied glance with Falworth, who had thrown the other Stunner.

She had cast something though. A diffuse, greenish cloud was hurtling toward them. Both Harry's Shield charm and Falworth's Dispersal spell failed to stop it, but the cloud appeared to pass through everyone and disappear, with no effect.

“Restrain that woman!” Falworth called down the corridor, and spared an appreciative look at Harry. “Your casting speed is stellar, Mr. Potter. Are you sure you aren't interested in returning to finish your training?”

“I'm sure!” Harry returned amiably, but whatever he had planned to say next was lost in Hermione's terrified shriek. He spun on his heel so abruptly that he nearly fell. Hermione was in the floor, cradling an insensate Eleanor in her arms.

“She just … collapsed. She's - she's so hot!” Hermione's voice was tremulous, almost incoherent, but Harry saw her stop and make a conscious effort to gather herself. Aurors usually had some knowledge of field medicine, but Hermione likely had the most training of anyone on the floor.

“Find out what she did! Somebody wake her up!” Harry thundered, gesturing toward the fallen form of their attacker. Falworth seemed unfazed that the Boy Who Lived was giving orders, and confirmed it to the nearest Auror, with a tilt of his head toward the second holding cell. “What - what are you doing?” This was directed at Hermione, who was shifting, trying to slide herself out from under Eleanor. Her small limbs were beginning to convulse.

“I can't examine her like this.”

“Give her to me!”

“Harry, you can't - !”

“Get me a blanket! The gloves worked well enough last time. And give her to me.”

An Auror was quickly dispatched to that task. Another one bent down to murmur a question in Hermione's ear. She shook her head vehemently.

“There's no way we can put her in the Floo. Not when we don't even know what's going on. And it's too far to get her outside to Apparate. Her temperature is soaring… and I - I - ”

Things were happening too fast, Harry thought, his mind whirling, his throat feeling as if it would swell shut permanently at any moment. People were talking around him, and he couldn't make sense of their words. Someone had brought a blanket, a heavy, itchy drab thing, and draped it over his arms and lap and front. Hermione gently set her in the concave hollow of the cloth, and Harry did his best to hold her elongated across his extended arms. Eleanor's dark hair was starting to cling to her flushed forehead and cheeks; her arms and legs trembled spasmodically. Hermione's wand was a blur, her brow furrowed in concentration, as she mumbled half-heard spells under her breath faster than Harry could process.

Eleanor had only been in contact with him - through a blanket and multiple layers of clothing - for moments, when Harry felt the hairs on his neck and arms stand up. Something - thrumming and painful and not unlike electric shock - roiled through his entire body. His hands clenched convulsively around his daughter. He felt as if he could identify every nerve ending he possessed.

“Some…thing's… wrong,” he choked. A shock wave rolled down the corridor, as cracks appeared in the plaster and plaques for Meritorious Service fell from the wall with a series of tinkling crashes. In the main bullpen of the Auror's office, around the corner, alarms could be heard in crescendoing klaxons. Hermione cast a diagnostic spell, and her eyes widened in horror.

“Her magic is mixing with yours. I - I can't fix this. We've got to get her to St. Mungo's! Can you stand?”

Falworth was shouting at the other Aurors to evacuate the entire floor. The light fixtures rattled noisily in their casings. Harry managed to stand unsteadily to his feet, and the tiles clattered beneath the soles of his shoes. There seemed to be a howling maelstrom of wind coming from somewhere.

“We're going to the Floo!” Hermione was shouting at Falworth, who nodded every two or three words. “Get everyone out of our way! Send an Owl! Let them know we're going and we'll need all the help they've got!”

And then she was gone, blazing a trail for Harry to the Floo Network, and he was following clumsily in her wake, fear and grief and love and hope and despair bleeding together in equal measure to form one desperate thought:

Please…

Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 1.2.7

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The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Eighteen: Angel Unbound

Auror Stuart Falworth stood outside the nondescript metal door, swishing the folder in his hands up and down so that it flapped against his open palm with a thwacking sound. He shifted from foot to foot, eyed the door handle again, and sighed. He knew why Entwhistle had directed him to this interrogation room, understood all the reasons, even agreed with them, but that didn't make him desire to be in other room any less. Dunwiddie and Symmes were taking on Casimir Dolohov, and if time hadn't been so crucial, he might've liked to stand at the one-way glass and watch them have a go at the forbidding looking man.

But he'd been ordered to question the girl, the mousy-looking one who'd been in the corridor, who'd fired the spell at Eleanor. Falworth knew that it was his youthfulness, his open, expressive face that had gotten him this particular duty. He didn't doubt his ability to crack Dolohov, were he given the opportunity, but Entwhistle knew his men, and even Falworth had to admit that he had a far better shot at engendering trust with this girl than did craggy-faced Dunwiddie or dour Symmes. Eleanor lurked at the back of his mind, accompanied by the frightened faces of her famous parents. He was becoming much too close to this case. Better that he did not go into a room where he would be tempted to do something to Dolohov that could very well get him sent to Azkaban. He shook his head at himself, trying to clear the crowded thoughts from his mind. He was wasting time.

Before he could talk himself out of it, or further delay, he grabbed the door handle and twisted in one wrenching motion, thrusting himself into the room. The girl looked up at his noisy entrance, startled. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Her thin fingers, with their bitten-down nails, trembled on the table top.

Frightened rabbit, Falworth thought, and allowed a gentle smile to light his face.

“Can I get you anything? Are you thirsty?”

“N - no…” She stammered, flicking her eyes up at him and then down, the barest modicum of eye contact.

“Is there anyone you would like to call? Your parents? Your solicitor, perhaps?”

Something almost derisive glimmered in her eyes for an instant. She shook her head in the negative, not bothering to answer aloud.

“What is your name?”

“Rhunya V - Vaiciunas.”

“You worked in the facility where they kept the child, did you not?” He tried to keep his voice clinical. The child.

A short, jerky nod. Her eyes darted to the one-way glass, then back.

“You were working with wizards - Healers? - and Muggle scientists?”

Another nod.

“To accomplish what?”

“They wanted to - to transplant magic into Squibs.”

“What about Muggles?”

“It wouldn't work. Muggles are - are missing something, an - an enzyme or something… the magic can't be processed or activated.”

“I would think that a Pureblood like Dolohov wouldn't even dream of attempting to give magic to Muggles.”

“He - he - it was Dr. Moran's idea. I think they fought about it.”

“Any idea why transferring magic to Squibs didn't work?”

Something shuttered in her face. Falworth glanced over the file that he already had mostly memorized. Her change in body language was interesting. Here we go…

“Dr. Moran said the s - science was sound. It should have worked, but her magic was - was - it was too much, it was - it was unstable. When they - they forced it, forced her, Dr. Moran - he died. It was unworkable. They - they said we would have to start all over… with - with a new child.”

“And how did Mr. Dolohov feel about that?”

“He was angry. And Dr. Moran was dead. I - I don't even know if we - er, they could have done it all over again.”

“Why did you leave the child behind when you fled?”

“She - she must have been overlooked. It was an accident.” Rhunya would not look at him.

“Now, Miss Vaiciunas. You're not going to sit there and lie to me, are you? Why would you be up in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, waiting to hit her with a spell, if leaving her behind were merely an accident?”

“She - she might have talked.” The excuse was lamely given.

Falworth smiled at her.

“Miss Vaiciunas - Rhunya… I know you're scared. I know that Dr. Moran and Casimir Dolohov were not nice people. I know that you probably had to do things that you didn't want to do. I don't think you are a bad person. You were a Healer trainee, weren't you?”

She blinked at him, surprised.

“I - I didn't finish my second year. My - my parents were killed in an accident. There wasn't any money left. I had to drop out.”

“And that's when you took the position with Dolohov and Moran?”

“I was sleeping in an alley!” His question had been blandly asked, without accusation, but her voice was blistering, with some of the first real emotion she'd showed since he'd entered the room.

“Perfectly understandable. You've got to make your own way in the world, yeah?” He gave a casual shrug, and saw the rigidity in her posture relax a bit. “You may have made some poor choices, aligned with questionable people, but you can rectify that now. I need to know why you left her behind and what was in that spell you cast.”

“I told you - ”

“I want the truth, Rhunya. I want to see you make your parents proud.”

She slanted a look at him, as though acknowledging that she knew what he was doing, yet could not deny that it was effective. She closed her eyes and breathed in sharply through her nose.

“She was left deliberately. I - I overheard Dolohov talking to some of the staff. Not - not many people knew she was Harry Potter's child. But - but Dolohov wanted him to find her. They knew the Aurors were close.”

“Dolohov wanted Harry Potter to find her? Why?”

“He hates Harry Potter. Don't - don't most dark Pureblood families? He said this was `plan B'.”

“What was plan B?”

“They gave her an inert potion before the raid. The potion… and then the spell…” She shrank away from him in her chair, as she murmured the last part barely audibly.

“To - to kill her?” Falworth struggled to keep his voice level, not wanting the emotions surging through him to escape into his face.

“The spell activated the potion. Her - her magic is dangerous. It's too much like her father's; it's too powerful. Dr. Moran said - he called it a cas - cascade failure. He said she would be a time bomb.”

Falworth felt sure that his heart had stopped its steady rhythm inside his chest. And perhaps time had stopped too, because the moment that he merely sat and stared at the girl seemed to last an eternity.

“She's going to kill Harry Potter?” He finally managed. His fingertips were damp on the surface of the case file.

“It will kill everyone.” Her voice was tremulous. She swallowed noisily. “If - if her magic is fluctuating the way Dr. Moran predicted, it will destabilize everything magical in the vicinity… starting - starting with the most similar, starting with Harry Potter. Nothing would be left of St. Mungo's, but a crater.”

“When?” He all but whispered, in hoarse horror.

Her eyes were sorrowful and dull, transfixed by the worn table top.

“Not long.”

****

When Harry staggered out of the Floo network into the crowded Emergency Department of St. Mungo's, things were a blur. He could barely make out Hermione, her curls whipping behind her as she gestured and shouted. He made it about three steps into what was intended to be a sprint, before he fell to his knees, still protectively cradling his daughter. He felt like he was about to vibrate out of his skin.

“Harry!” Hermione's cry sounded like it was very far away, but a gurney soon hovered next to him, and Eleanor was lifted from his arms by a phalanx of mediwitches.

Hermione was fluttering like a cornered Snitch, not sure who she needed to be hovering over first. She settled for grabbing Harry's hand, hauling him up and steadying him, without really looking at him, while she yelled for the receptionist to notify Healers Fellowes and Desai immediately.

“Are you all right?”

The buzzing in his ears was beginning to fade, as was the electric current through his veins and the gelatinous feeling in his joints.

“I think so,” he managed, and she was already moving, following the gurney. He stayed on her heels, dodging patients, visitors, and staff alike, eyes unseeing, mind uncomprehending.

Eleanor…

The room was jammed full of wizards and witches; spellfire flew, potion vials soared through the air and were snagged neatly by inerrant, purposeful hands. Cacophony reigned; Harry could only make out snatches of the orders shouted and spells cast. He could only see a glimpse of Eleanor on the gurney, pale and clammy. Her limbs twitched ineffectively against Restraining charms. He stood motionless in the doorway, feeling oddly like he was watching the whole scene from above himself, until he caught Healer Desai's eye. She murmured something to a nearby mediwitch, who then came to kindly, but firmly, shuffle him out of the room. He planted his feet, but still somehow found himself out in the corridor. The mediwitch was speaking at him, but he couldn't decipher any of the noises into intelligible language. His eyes were burning, his fists clenched; his fingernails were digging painfully into his palms.

He craned his neck to see what was going on, but could no longer spot his daughter in the crush of people. An alarm went off; activity increased. He was suddenly startled to find that Hermione was standing next to him. How long had she been there? He blinked at her.

The terror in her eyes mirrored what he was feeling, the roiling emotions too horrifying to be put into words. Mutely, they stared at one another, and Harry saw shivers beginning to tremble through her body. Shock, the shred of knowledge flared to life in his mind. He lifted his arm, still feeling like he was being controlled by something other than himself, and pulled her into his chest, pressing his lips to the top of her head, when she began to cry.

More alarms. Three mediwitches sprinted out of the room, while two others plus another Healer dashed in. Part of his mind distantly noted the billowing of Auror robes: Falworth and Dunwiddie had arrived, their faces pale and terribly solemn. Harry thought that he probably should flag one of them down and ask about the spell that had been cast at the MLE, but he felt both distraught and sluggish, unable to adequately take in everything that was happening. This can't be happening.

“ - oing to have to clear this entire floor.”

Falworth's no-nonsense pronouncement snagged their entire attention. Hermione lifted her head, sniffling noisily, as they exchanged bewildered glances. She's not contagious. Is she still in danger? Are they coming after her?

The mediwitch they had intercepted looked like she was going to argue with Falworth.

“Listen to me!” The Auror's voice was commanding, carrying through the corridor a little more clearly. “We've got to get everyone out of here, everyone off of this floor, and we've got to ward off that room!” He handed her a small roll of parchment, affixed with a Ministry seal. “I have the authorization to see this done immediately.”

Falworth looked up, and saw Harry and Hermione standing just the short distance away. There was something ineffably sad in the Auror's gaze, and it made Hermione's heart seize up with dread. She straightened up, entwined her fingers with Harry's, and threaded her way through the building chaos to where the officials stood.

“What's wrong?” Hermione entreated. “What are the wards for? Are people coming after Eleanor?”

Falworth shook his head slowly, the artificial hospital light glinting coldly off of his curls. “Casimir Dolohov is and will remain in our custody. We know of no further external threat to Eleanor.” He swallowed, looked like he might say something else, but then turned away. “Now, if you'll - ” His progress was halted by the clenching of Hermione's other hand in the sleeve of his robes.

“What do you mean by external threat? What do you know then? Why are you warding this floor?”

“For the protection of everyone else here.”

An insidious certainty crept its way inside Harry's mind with Falworth's words. Fear and dread sent a shot of adrenaline through him, and he suddenly felt as if he were once again operating at full capacity.

“The spell? The spell that woman cast? What did it do to her?”

Falworth forced himself to meet the younger wizard's blazing eyes.

“It activated an inert agent in Eleanor's body. Something she was made to ingest for this precise purpose. A plan they had enacted from the very moment Dolohov's own plans for her magic failed. They've overloaded her magic, waiting until you had claimed her. Her system is consuming itself.”

“They used her to get to me. They wanted me.” Harry's voice was dull.

“They're trying to take out the entire hospital. The wards should contain the damage to this floor. Which is why we also need you both to leave.”

“Like hell we will,” Hermione rejoined hotly.

“It's the only way we can guarantee your safety.” Sod our safety, Harry thought vehemently.

“They're clearing the floor,” Desai said. “You won't be allowed to stay.” Her eyes were sorrowful, and she and Hermione seemed to have some sort of wordless conversation to which Harry was not privy. Hermione had wilted against him, back to being a frightened parent once again.

“How much time do we have?” She asked quietly.

“Not much. A half-hour maybe?”

“How much time - Hermione, I'm not leaving her. There's got to be something… She mentioned - she mentioned being a Squib once. Couldn't we do something? Remove it?”

“Harry, we can't remove magic from a wizard or witch any more than Dolohov could give it to a Squib or a Muggle.”

“But when - before she was born - they - it wasn't in the books.” Harry's voice was desperate; he knew it. There had to be something; surely there was something. Hermione's eyes were simultaneously compassionate and broken. Tears trickled in steady streams down her cheeks.

“Mr. Potter, she was an unborn baby then. Her magic was nascent. It certainly wasn't in the state of upheaval it is now. I'm afraid there's …”

“No!” He spoke hastily, to prevent her from finishing her sentence: nothing we can do; as if speaking it aloud would cause it to become fact. “We only just found her. This can't be the way that it ends. This can't be…” He was sucking in deep draughts of air, but still felt like he couldn't breathe. Something was compressing his chest; something was choking him. He couldn't get anything into his lungs. Grief. It was a weighty burden.

“She's had several potions to help stabilize her, though I'm afraid it's a stop-gap measure at best. She's conscious though… lucid. You should go to her, while there's still time.” Shravana Desai's voice was gentle.

While there's still time. Harry felt like he was going to throw up. He managed a nod at Healer Desai, though his vision was so blurred he couldn't make out any of her features. Without looking at Hermione, he moved toward the now much emptier room. She trailed behind him, their fingers still entangled.

Various magical medical accoutrements whistled and puffed and flashed intermittently, but the room was otherwise very quiet. Eleanor was ensconced in the narrow metal bed, her hair snarled and damp around her face. Her cheeks were flushed beneath heavy-lidded eyes that she lifted toward them with effort. Her hand groped restlessly atop the sheet. Harry fished one of the gloves out of his pocket, and put it on before taking her hand in his, his eyes burning with the indignity that he could not touch her, could not touch her, not even now.

“I am sorry, Father.” Her limbs twitched at the magic boiling inside of her. Harry could feel it building, even through the gloves. Something sparked and popped, and a mediwitch scurried in, wand aloft, to adjust a setting, taking no notice of them at all.

“You haven't done anything to be sorry for, dear heart.”

“I cannot - I - ”

Hermione hushed her, smoothing her hair back from her pale forehead with a gentle hand.

“You know what you did, Eleanor?” Hermione's voice was soft and loving, though Harry could still hear the subtle clog of tears beneath her words. “You are a hero. You saved us. I didn't know what we were not-saying.” She used Eleanor's term, and a ghost of a smile wisped across the girl's face. “Your father didn't know. But you did, and you made us see. You made us see each other.”

“Do you promise?” Eleanor's voice was hopeful, desperate.

“We promise.” Harry croaked, barely able to speak through the tightness in his throat. He met Hermione's eyes, awash in tears, for the first time since they'd entered the room. There was an aura of solemnity as if they'd just exchanged marriage vows. Eleanor's fingers fluttered around his, butterfly soft. God, he was going to miss her so much.

Both Harry and Hermione jumped as a Shrieking Charm wailed suddenly above their heads. Healer Desai and three mediwitches rushed in, followed by the Aurors. Harry could feel the surge of magical energy building beneath his fingertips.

“Her magic is fighting the restraints. It's going to break through,” Hermione warned them. Harry suddenly recalled her words from the other night. It's just another barrier. “Clearing this floor isn't going to be enough.”

Falworth and Dunwiddie exchanged glances, as if something Hermione said had just confirmed their own privately-held fears.

“She said St. Mungo's would be a crater,” Falworth admitted reluctantly. Nobody had to ask who she was.

“Everything magical thing - be it charm, ward, object, or person - will be completely destabilized. The destructive output from the overload will be enormous. There are patients here who cannot be moved.” There was a quiet urgency in Shravana Desai's voice.

Suddenly, Harry felt like he was back in the Ministry at the end of his fifth year. The fight in the Department of Mysteries had been a debacle. Sirius was dead. He was lucky that his friends had not been killed. Bellatrix Lestrange was mocking him, and… and Voldemort's presence had bloomed inside his head. Kill the boy… Voldemort's gamble had not been a gamble at all, knowing that Dumbledore would not take his life, knowing that the venerable wizard would not aim a killing blow while he wore a child's face, Harry's face.

Dolohov had counted on the same thing.

“I - I do not want to hurt anyone,” Eleanor spoke with difficulty, her fingers twisting almost painfully around Harry's. “I never - I never wanted - ”

“A very strong sedative might - ”

“Don't you dare finish that sentence, Shravana!” Hermione's harsh tone gave voice to the same thought he'd had, before Harry could even open his mouth.

“What do you suggest we do? We have a responsibility to the patients here.”

“Yes, to all of them!” Hermione bit back.

Harry jammed his other hand into his pocket, feeling like this whole situation was surreally horrifying. Were they truly having this conversation? While he was losing his daughter? His fingers curled around something cool and cylindrical, and it took his frazzled neurons a long moment to suss out what it was.

His broom…

“Wrap her up warmly,” he said suddenly, startling everyone, including himself. “I'll - I'll take her out of here… somewhere away from people.”

“You can't Apparate with her. Not with her magic in this kind of flux,” Hermione said softly. Harry withdrew his hand from his pocket, and showed her the tiny alloy broom cupped in the palm of his hand.

“I'll take her to the flight testing grounds. Nobody will be there.” He heaved a great, shuddering breath, as he blinked back the burning in his eyes. His jaw muscles trembled with his effort to speak. “Whatever ha - happens… it won't hurt anyone else.”

“Harry,” Auror Falworth said gently, cupping a hand on his shoulder in a comradely way. “Your safety won't - ”

“I'll not leave her to face this alone.” There was quiet resolution in his voice. The shreds of Hermione's composure wavered and broke.

“I'll go with you.” She was not asking, and he did not attempt to dissuade her. He just jerked his chin down, an apparent acquiescence, and waited for them to finish swathing Eleanor in a heavy blanket and lower the wards. When Healer Desai indicated with a gesture that the wards were down, Harry strode out through the crowded waiting area, with Hermione this time trailing in his wake.

Just before he crossed the magical threshold leading outside, he turned to Hermione, leaning to kiss her gently on the cheek, speaking even as he Enlarged the alloy broom. “Go ahead, and Apparate up to the testing grounds. I'll meet you there. Shouldn't take me more than a half-hour.”

Hermione stammered an unintelligible reply, and only just managed to Disillusion him, Eleanor, and the broom, as he eased out the door, Statute of Secrecy be damned. She saw faint motion as he swung his leg over the broomstick, and then , with a sort of eddy in the air, they were gone. Hermione felt as though a large chunk of herself had gone with them.

With the distracted air of someone who needed to do something, but wasn't sure what, Hermione pivoted in the main entryway to the wizarding hospital, only then becoming aware that nearly every eye in the waiting area was fixed firmly on her. A few of the more unfriendly looks came from those who had a copy of the Prophet unfurled on their laps. Hermione couldn't bring herself to care much. She would take every ill wish or malicious glance if it meant that her little girl was going to be okay.

It isn't fair, she thought. A handful of days… that's all we get? Not enough to even make a good beginning, to find out her favorite color, to buy her clothes, to have a birthday party, Christmas… She choked back a sob, and knew her nose was running. We didn't even get to take her to the zoo. Grief clawed at her insides, rending and tearing, leaving a cavernous void of pain. The injustice of it all made her want to scream, and she knew she couldn't stay there another moment, even if it meant being up at the testing field long before Harry and Eleanor were.

She Disapparated with a crack, not sparing another glance for the gawkers in the waiting room.

***

Harry could just make out Hermione's bright jumper and the halo of her hair, as he made his descent, carefully guiding the prototype broom with one hand. He had had to add a layer or two of protection spells, as the interaction of his magic with Eleanor's had overridden the physical layers between them. He was mindful of what Hermione had said about Eleanor's magic bucking against attempts to restrain it, and had only increased the buffers between them when he became worried that it would impede his ability to keep the broom in the air. He had flown high and fast, and could no longer feel his fingers or the tips of his nose and ears.

As he landed, carefully cradling his daughter, and letting the broom lay where it had fallen on the testing pitch, he could see that Hermione had been crying. The cuffs of her jumper were clenched in her fists, so that her hands were completely concealed.

“How is she?” She whispered hoarsely.

“She's been in and out… it's getting worse.”

“Let me have her.” It was more of a plea than a command. Harry knew that it was the sensible thing to do, fatigued as he was by staving off Eleanor's magic during the flight, yet he was still reluctant. He set Eleanor carefully against Hermione's shoulder, his best friend's arms automatically encircling her, and as a unit - a trio - they sank to the softly wafting grass of the field.

Eleanor's breathing was shallow; there was sporadic eye movement beneath fluttering lids, and a pale light swirling beneath the surface of her skin, giving her an almost ethereal glow. Her tiny fingers trembled, flexed as if they would grip something. Hermione quickly offered up her own hand, and some of the stress smoothed out of the little girl's face at the contact.

“Harry, hand me my wand,” Hermione said shortly, her normally authoritative tone undermined by the grief beneath it.

“Hermione…” The word was a mild admonishment, but still Harry fished the instrument out of the pocket of her robes. With a series of rapid flicks and swishes, Hermione began speaking again, her voice low and cool and knowledgeable, spitting out medical information that Harry couldn't have even began to make sense of, were he in a calmer frame of mind. “Hermione!” He repeated, somewhat more heatedly. “Hermione, stop!” The flow of words trickled to a halt.

“Is there anything you can do? Can you stop this - this overload?” The questions nearly lodged in Harry's throat, but he managed to get them out. His eyes were burning.

Hermione's lips parted, but no sound accompanied the motion. Instead, she dropped her gaze, drinking in the face of her daughter - their ­daughter - and shook her head. No.

“Then… just stop. Let's spend - let's spend the time we have left… with her.”

A sob rattled out of Hermione's mouth, and she saw Harry's jaw clench as he struggled to keep his own composure. His hand found hers, and their fingers interlaced, squeezed, clung.

“There wasn't enough time,” Hermione said thickly, her voice clogged with tears. “It - we should have had - we didn't get to -” She gave up trying to be articulate with a slumping shrug of her shoulders. “There were so many things we should have gotten to do.”

Eleanor's eyes opened then, her eyelids raising slowly and with much effort. They were brilliantly green, sparks of color flaring within their depths.

“There was. There was time. There was so much…”

Her hand twisted out of Hermione's clasp, and groped over to where her parents' hands were twined together. Before Hermione could stammer out any kind of a warning, she felt the brush of the tiny fingers. Her gaze flew up to Harry's in alarm, but all she felt was a sort of pulsing warmth where they touched.

Harry was sitting on a hospital bed, wielding a crayon, as they talked about doors.

Harry and Hermione were showing Eleanor her new room.

Harry was bringing cake out of the kitchen after supper.

Harry and Eleanor were re-entering the flat with a shopping bag full of animal movies.

Harry, Hermione, and Eleanor were walking down the street, hand in hand, heading for the playground.

Hermione was sitting on the sofa, with Eleanor in her lap, reading a book.

Hermione and Eleanor were sitting by Harry's hospital bed. Eleanor's arms were around Hermione's neck; three little words hung in the air between them.

Tears were free flowing down Harry's face when Hermione opened her eyes. Their gazes locked, and she knew without needing to ask that he had seen it too.

“She - she held it back… for - for me, so that - so that I could see too -- so that we could both see just what we meant to her,” Harry rasped with difficulty.

“It - it is getting to high for me to reach, Father,” Eleanor panted. “I have to - I have to let it go.”

Harry closed his eyes again, and Hermione saw a spasm of pain shudder across his face. Her heart felt like it would just cease beating from the agony of it all, and she knew she was holding Harry's hand so tightly that she would leave marks.

“Then - then let it go, Eleanor, sweetheart. It's okay.”

“We love you so much, little one,” Hermione managed, not even recognizing her own voice.

“I know you do. I - I love you too. I am - I am sorry that I make you sad.”

“Only because we're going to miss you so much. We wouldn't trade the time we got with you for anything - anything - ” Harry's voice was fierce. “ - in the whole, wide world.”

“Mother…”

“Yes, Eleanor?”

“You promised. Remember? You promised.”

“I know. And I will.”

A smile flickered at the corners of Eleanor's mouth. Her gaze went through them, beyond them. Her body grew even hotter, the light suffusing it growing brilliant enough to blind. There was a clap of thunder, a wave of energy strong enough to leave them breathless. The wards around the testing field crackled and shut down.

Hermione knew without looking that Eleanor was gone. Her eyes felt dry and tight, and there was a dead weight sitting like lead in the center of her chest. She would not have thought that it could hurt so much. She was no stranger to death - neither was Harry - but this - this - loss was infinitely worse than anything she could have imagined.

Harry was slumped across Eleanor's back, most of his weight across Hermione's folded knees. She could not see his face, and a bolt of fear shot through her.

“Harry!” She cried in a voice choked with panic. What if Eleanor's magic had overwhelmed him at the last? What if the energy output shut down his heart? “Harry, are you okay?”

He didn't answer, but did slowly lift his head, revealing a face being ravaged by grief.

“No,” he said. “I'll never be okay again.”

----

*runs and hides*

I promise that this is where the story was going from the very beginning. I based it on the penultimate couple of episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. (You can ask Witherwings if you don't believe me. He is my witness!)

All I can say is: this story is not over yet. The Catalyst is still working in the lives of our two heroes.

Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 1.2.7

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The Catalyst

*

*

Chapter Nineteen: Grief Unfettered

Auror Falworth erupted from the department's own Floo network, all green fire and righteous indignation. He had sent Dunwiddie back from St. Mungo's earlier, in an effort to see if there were anything else to be gleaned from Casimir Dolohov. He had stayed behind, speaking with Shravana Desai and a couple of the other Healers who'd had occasion to work on Eleanor's case. He had a vague notion of where the testing pitch was, and held out some desperate, nebulous hope that something could still be done.

The Healers had been not at all encouraging, and had followed up their conclusions with the medical and magical reasons for them. Healer Desai, in particular, looked almost haunted by what had transpired over the last several hours. Finally, Falworth realized that enough time had passed where there should be news of Eleanor's fate. If there was no longer anything he could do to prevent it - and the thought wrenched his insides in a painful way - then he was for damned sure going to figure out exactly what Dolohov had done, and why, and make certain that he paid for it.

He had been more or less instructed to “take care of the Potter girl situation”, and make sure that few civilian casualties were sustained. He figured that meant he ought to have followed Mr. Potter and Miss Granger up to the testing facility and taken the appropriate measures, whatever those would have ended up being. He also figured that the Ministry would likely frown on any news that the Savior of the Wizarding World had been blown to hell by some ridiculous bastardization of proper magic and Muggle medicine, engineered by a Squib and a Muggle, no less. However, Falworth's genial Hufflepuff nature did not extend to ripping parents away from their dying child, nor to inserting himself into the grief that a hero, who frequently ended up with his life splattered all over the front pages anyway, deserved to muddle through in private.

By the time he tossed the Floo powder into the noisy and crowded fireplace at St. Mungo's, he had worked himself up into a fairly decent fury. He remembered his first thoughts upon seeing Eleanor in that cell, that she reminded him of his wife; he remembered the weight of her in his arms at the hospital, as they watched Healers fight for her father's life; he remembered the twin looks of agony on her parents' faces, just earlier today. He strode through the rabbit warren of the Auror bullpen, and back toward the interrogation rooms, his cloak snapping behind him, and his expression clearly warning against approach.

“Stu…” An Auror who'd finished the same time he had, from Ravenclaw, Ferdie Beauchamp, managed to hesitantly call out, snagging his attention. “Zeke wanted you in his office as soon as you got back. He wants a report.” None of the Aurors would have ever called Ezekiel Entwhistle, “Zeke”, to his face, but most of them did it behind his back.

“Not finished with it yet,” Falworth barked, even though he knew, and Ferdie knew he knew, that a written report was not what the other man had meant.

The interrogation room where they had housed Rhunya Vaiciunas was dark, and Falworth had no idea what they'd done with her. The second room, however, still had the flashing red beacon just above the door frame, indicating that it was occupied. A quick glance through the charmed glass told Falworth that Dolohov was still inside, glaring sullenly at Dunwiddie and a silver-haired Auror named McEwen. He flashed a look at the two Aurors stationed in the corridor, with wands at the ready, but still leaning somewhat indolently against the far wall, and flung himself through the door, before anyone could protest.

Surprise flickered in both Dunwiddie's and McEwen's eyes, but they did not betray anything more in front of their suspect. Falworth hesitated for a fraction of a second, unsure now what to claim as his reason for entering, and knowing that he was far too close to this case.

“You're looking rather upset.” Dolohov had no such qualms about speaking , apparently. There was a self-satisfied purr in his voice. “I do hope no one has died.”

Falworth emitted a sort of inarticulate roar, which may have contained the two words “little girl”, before he lunged toward the table, heaving the Squib from his chair and slamming him against the wall, his fists wound tightly in Dolohov's lapels. Dunwiddie hurtled behind him in an attempt to pry him off, and McEwen motioned for the Aurors in the corridor to stand down, shaking his head subtly in the direction of the window. After a brief scuffle, Dunwiddie succeeded in parting the two, although Dolohov resumed his seat with enough smug superiority in his eyes that Falworth desperately wanted to clock him a good one.

“For the love of Merlin,” Falworth managed to say. “What was the point?”

“I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.” Dolohov's voice was low and measured, the articulation of each syllable indicative of the youth he'd had, exposed to aristocratic people, even while being shunned by them. “I'm quite unsure as to why I'm still here. I've told your colleagues that I wield neither magic nor Muggle medicine. I simply cannot do that of which I am accused.” He upturned empty hands, a self-deprecating note of chagrin in his voice.

“The experiment?” Falworth played ignorant, hanging onto to tattered remnants of control. Dolohov's answering look made Falworth think that his attempt at subtlety was less than successful. “The raided lab? We have a witness who has described you.”

“You have a witness?” Dolohov's teeth scraped across his lip, emphasizing the `V' of the present tense. His gaze was amused, coolly sardonic. Falworth could feel the color mounting in his face.

“Yes, we do.” He did not allow himself to look at the other two Aurors in the room. “Did you really think any facet of your experiment was going to work? You - a scion of the Dolohov house - reduced to working with Muggles.” He let disdain drip from the last word, shaking his head as if he felt sorry for the man across from him. “So - let me see if I've got this right - you're born defective; your parents are quite justified in their focus on their younger son, the one who can actually perform the functions of a magical heir. You end up consorting with Muggles… and hatch a plot with one of them to… what? Take over the world? Dispense magic to everyone, as if you were some sort of apothecary?” Falworth pursed his lips as if he were holding back a laugh. Do not think of Eleanor, he told himself sternly. A dark shadow of hatred gleamed in Dolohov's hooded eyes, though his face remained impassive. “The plan doesn't work - no big surprise there, I'd wager - so your secondary plot,” his voice lilted upward, as if he were telling a particularly funny anecdote, “is to murder Harry Potter, the greatest hero the wizarding world has ever known.” He infused his tone with some grudging admiration. “You do aim high, don't you? Were you trying to get your mummy and daddy to love you? Couldn't you have just knocked over a Muggle bank or two? They don't even have dragons. Muggles apparently do it fairly readily - I'd think it'd be easy enough, even for a Squi - “

Falworth didn't get to finish the word, as Dolohov dove across the table, succeeding only in knocking the Auror from his chair before Dunwiddie banished him toward the wall, holding him pinned in place, with one flick of his wand. Falworth picked himself up, daubing at a smudge of blood at his temple, where he'd hit his head on the table. He followed Dolohov's irate gaze, zeroed in on his partner's wand.

“You never got to use one of those, did you, Casimir?” Falworth purred. “You were never even accorded the chance. Stripped of your birthright by some caprice of fate. And then - “ His voice grew less tentative. He was on the right track now; he knew it. “And then you grow up, hidden in the shadows, an object of shame, your very presence declaring your parents' failure… and who do you keep hearing about? Who controls where you parents go, to whom they speak, how they act? Who are they all afraid of? Who has power that he hasn't earned, doesn't deserve, doesn't even know how to wield? Who has altered the very destiny of the Dark Lord himself??”

Dolohov was trembling with rage, his chest heaving against the spell that prevented his movement.

“Harry Potter,” Falworth whispered, and Dolohov flinched. “It's him, isn't it? Embued with all the power that you were denied. As famous and adored as you are forgotten and despised. You may have told your Muggle friend something different, but that was the only real reason you chose Harry Potter's child, wasn't it? Once you knew the experiment wouldn't work, you came up with another plan, a plan that would take him out. You knew his background; you'd read enough about his Blood-Traitor ways, his faith in Dumbledore, his unwillingness to kill… you were almost certain that he would take the child in. And so you left her there, left her there for us to find.

“But of course, you've failed. Did you really think you could beat Harry Potter?” The amusement was back. “Or his offspring for that matter? Harry Potter's daughter has more power in her little finger than you will ever have. Sure, you may have made her that way, but of course, you couldn't do that right. So you tried to make her into a weapon, but then you couldn't do that right either. Listen! Maybe you can hear them laughing.”

“You're lying!!” It was an unhinged cry reeking of desperation. “She's dead and so is he! You don't have to be magical to put together potions, you just have to be a chemist. And the witch triggered it. The witch triggered it! Eamon said it would work. Eamon said - ” He sucked in a ragged breath, sagging against the bonds of the spell. “He has to be dead. He has to be dead…” It was almost a sob.

Falworth darted a glance at Dunwiddie and McEwen. “Got enough?”

McEwen's curt nod was all the answer he needed. He rose and exited the small room, not even sparing a glance for the pathetic Squib, still pinned to the wall like a beetle. Dunwiddie followed him out.

“So, she's alive? They were able to stop it?”

Falworth's shoulders drooped forward. He dropped his gaze so he wouldn't have to look at the hope in Guinnein's eyes.

“I don't know.”

***

Harry wasn't sure how long they'd been slumped in the middle of the broom test-flight pitch - long enough that the sun had begun to feel uncomfortably warm, long enough that the tears that weren't still burning his eyes like acid had dried on his face. He could no longer feel his right leg. And even all those things that were dimly registering in some back corner of his brain felt distinctly unreal, as if he were watching himself on television. Hermione hadn't moved either; he could still feel her nearby, could still hear her sniffles.

“I don't know what to do now.” His throat felt raw, his voice crackly with disuse. How long had they been sitting here? He squinted up at Hermione, backlit by the sun. Movement caught his eye: Hermione's fingers stroking the ends of Eleanor's hair. Where is a Time Turner or a good `Finite' spell when you need one? This can't be real. He wanted to stay there forever, memorizing her face, imprinting it indelibly into his mind, and yet he wanted to flee too, run somewhere where he wouldn't have to see the stillness of that sweet face, where he could pretend it hadn't happened.

He could never pretend it hadn't happened.

“They'll need to come… get her, I - I guess,” Hermione began slowly. Harry watched one of her hands tighten possessively. “They'll…” her voice dropped until it was nearly inaudible. “They'll probably want to - want to make sure she's - she's…” She looked helplessly at him, tears coating her cheeks like lacquer.

“Defused?” The word came out of him unbidden, angry and abrupt. Hermione sobbed, a suppressed hiccupping abomination of a thing, and he immediately felt shame swamp him atop everything else.

“I can check,” she breathed, but made no actual move to do so.

“Why didn't - why aren't we dead?” he managed, reflecting with utter sincerity that he wished he was.

“I don't know. It - She ­was destabilizing magic. She - shut down the wards around the pitch - did you hear them go? If she did that, then we - we - should be dead.” Her voice was articulate, even though it sounded like a weak shadow of itself.

He had accused her, earlier, of compartmentalizing things, of refusing to feel things so that she could examine them clinically. He realized that she was doing it again, but somehow that made him love her more, because she was doing it for him. He could barely summon the will to pull air into his lungs, and she was trying to figure things out, even while she was hurting just as much as he was.

“Hermione…” he began, feeling the burning ache in his chest and throat begin to tighten anew. He felt like someone had scooped out everything that mattered and scarpered off with it, leaving him hollow and empty.

A crack of Apparation startled them both into action. Neither one leapt to their feet, but sought to angle their bodies between their daughter and the intruder, wands brought to the ready without conscious thought.

“It's Auror Falworth,” a voice called. The low angle of the sun made it hard for them to see him. “Is anyone hurt? The wards are out - oh, Merlin!” He stopped speaking as he got closer, and saw what Harry and Hermione cradled between them.

Falworth's lips pursed around words he did not speak. Is she…? He did not ask, did not need to ask. It was painfully obvious in the bleak looks and defeated postures of the parents twisted around the body of their daughter. His eyes ran professionally over the two of them, ignoring the twinge in his chest as he tried not to look at Eleanor. Mr. Potter and Miss Granger appeared unharmed.

“The two of you are all right.” It escaped unbidden, not quite a question, and he wanted to Silencio himself. Of course, they were not all right - Harry's baleful answering gaze said so eloquently. He tried to imagine what they must be feeling, and could not.

“We're okay, Auror Falworth,” Hermione spoke, her voice tear-clogged and raspy. “We're not sure how…”

“Let's … let me help you take her back.” Falworth suggested gently, dropping near them in a crouched position.

“Take her back where?” Falworth just barely restrained a flinch at the sound of Harry's voice. He'd heard that voice before, many times - it was the voice of someone watching his life shatter around his feet, the voice of someone who'd watched Death Eaters slaughter his children, the voice of someone who'd seen her home and her husband burn to ashes.

“To St. Mungo's, Harry. To find out what happened, to find answers.” Hermione's voice was calm, even though Falworth could hear the restraint, the tightness in it, as she fought to keep it from trembling.

“What the hell do answers matter now?”

“The answers always matter.” She hooked her arm beneath his, bracing his weight against her shoulder, but arrested the attempt to stand. She cast a helpless look at Auror Falworth, eyes flicking down to Eleanor and back up to him.

“Here, let me - ” he began, reaching to take the little girl in his arms, but Harry's tightened around her in response.

“No!” The single word almost blistered with pain, and Falworth noticed the tears washing down Hermione's cheeks anew. Harry made a visible attempt to collect himself, and then added, in a more controlled tone of voice, “I've got h - her.”

Together, they helped him to rise, as he protectively cradled his daughter against his chest. The wind dandled playful fingers through his hair, dried the new tears on his face. Harry felt as if he'd been sitting on that pitch for a hundred years. Again, the unreal sensation that this was happening to someone else crested over him. His arms were numb; his heart was numb. Distantly, he could hear Hermione speaking, as she looped an arm into the crook of his elbow.

“I know where to go,” she said softly. She jostled a bit against him as Auror Falworth took up position on her other side. “Hold on to me,” she directed.

And then they were gone.

***

They were in a deserted corridor, all cool dark tile, greenish torchlight, and the pungent aroma of Sterilizing Serum. Harry couldn't read the metal placard on the nearest set of double doors, but even in his stunted childhood and decidedly abnormal adolescence, he had seen enough snippets of crime procedurals to know where they were. The dreadful weight of that knowledge coupled with the Side-Along welled up enough nausea to cause him to unceremoniously give Eleanor over to Falworth and Hermione.

There was a bin tucked into the corner of the corridor, and Harry only just made it in time, wandlessly ripping the lid off of it and propelling it down the next hallway with a deafening clang that he barely registered. The metal edges of the bin bit into his fingers, as he clung to it, as though it were a lifeline, and vomited into it, retching until there was nothing left but tears and bile. The futile emptiness sucked at him like a Dementor. It wasn't, perhaps, the first time he'd wished to die, but he'd never meant it more than at that moment.

There were cool fingers on the back of his neck, as a dampened handkerchief appeared in front of him, mopping his forehead. Slowly, he stood up, swiveling to see Hermione behind him, tears standing in her dark eyes. The corridor was empty.

“Auror Falworth went to … get help. She's - she's in there.” She gestured toward that set of double doors and pressed her lips together tightly.

Harry felt something akin to shame burn deep in his gut. Compartmentalizing. She's still doing it. How many times over the years had Hermione shoved aside what she was feeling, so that she could be there for him? The Department of Mysteries, the Horcrux hunt, the Tournament? How many other times that he had been too thick to notice?

“Hermione…” he croaked, trying to articulate his gratitude, trying to finish what he'd started to say when Auror Falworth arrived. He cupped her jaw in one hand, trying to ignore the burn of imminent tears in his nose. “I - I love you. And I am so sorry… for your loss.”

It was trite, canned, a ridiculous and unhelpful thing to say. Yet, it had been the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could force out of his aching throat. And he knew - even reeling as he was - that he desperately wanted to make her aware that he was aware of her grief.

Hermione sobbed something that sounded like our loss, and came into his arms, which closed around her without thought. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and shoulder, and let herself cry. He pressed her as closely to him as he could, so closely that he could feel the vibration from her wracked body, and held her while she did.

He could feel the dampness seeping into his shirt, as well as from his own liquid eyes, yet neither of them moved until they heard the low hum of voices and the resounding footfalls of multiple people approaching. He heard Hermione draw in a jagged breath, as she moved away from him, daubing at her eyes with the handkerchief.

Falworth came around the corner, accompanied by Dunwiddie, Healer Desai, and someone neither Harry nor Hermione recognized, but was presumably the coroner, a dour-looking witch with iron gray hair and a no-nonsense attitude. The other three looked almost as stricken as the young couple felt.

“She's - ” was all Hermione could manage, with a feeble flip of her arm, gesturing toward the double doors from which Harry had seen her emerge. She clenched her teeth together in a vain effort to keep her jaw from quivering, and laced her fingers through Harry's so tightly that she thought she could feel the bones grinding together.

“The post-mortem trace should only take an hour or two to complete. Then we'll be able to determine cause of death. You two should go home… try to get some rest…” The coroner's voice was at odds with her appearance, surprisingly gentle and empathetic, though she did not euphemize her words.

“Will you be able to tell us why we weren't harmed?” Hermione blurted the question, almost without thinking, unaware that her mind had registered, on some level, the details of what had transpired. “The wards at the testing pitch failed, but Harry and I - ” are fine. Her sentence trailed off unfinished. She and Harry were clearly not fine.

“I will see if I can find anything out about what happened, Healer Granger.” The coroner turned and proceeded down the corridor, her heels clicking, then retreating, as she disappeared through the doors.

Shravana spoke next, laying a compassionate hand over Hermione's arm. “Take all the time you need, Hermione. The Chief Healers have already spoken to our media liaison. Once the report has been given, all St. Mungo's will release is that there is no longer a danger to the wizarding populace at large. Any further information is restricted.”

Alarm flashed suddenly in Hermione's eyes. “Do you think there could still - ”

Harry interrupted her, his voice still raw and rough. “I picked her up. I - there was nothing. Nothing happened.”

Hermione understood. The very thing that made her magic unstable, that made it want to commingle with her father's, was gone. The danger was gone.

Eleanor was gone.

“It's just a precaution,” Healer Desai added, appearing to agree with Harry's assessment.

“Of course.” The phrase slipped out on a shaky breath of air, a meaningless nicety. She cast dark and mournful eyes toward the two Aurors. “Do you - ”

“We'll Owl, if we need anything,” Falworth said carefully. “It is not our intention to intrude. I - I can only imagine what you must be feeling now.” Hermione felt Harry's hand tremble in her clasp.

“There are people you can both talk to. The hospital has several Mind Healers on retainer.” Healer Desai spoke kindly, but Hermione could practically feel Harry physically rejecting the notion.

“Thank you.” Again, the words fell from her lips as if she'd been Imperiused. Harry was starting to shake. She wasn't sure who was clinging to whom more fiercely. “Owl as soon as you know anything.” There was a beat of silence. She couldn't, could not, look at those double doors again. She felt as though she were seconds away from completely losing it.

“Let's go home, Harry.”

***

Harry and Hermione went straight back to Harry's flat, something for which they were both immensely grateful when they heard the tumult just outside the front door. Hermione unlaced her fingers from Harry's and moved carefully toward the front window, flicking the edge of a slat just enough to glance out. The sidewalk was jammed, reporters smashed up against each other, camera equipment whirring and flashing and emitting colored puffs of smoke. Bystanders, who were obviously Muggles, were moving past the melee as quickly as they could, eyeing it sideways, but not yet looking unduly alarmed. If it kept up, it would not be long before the Ministry was called out.

The decisive click of a door shutting penetrated Hermione's consciousness like a rapier. She turned, noting that Harry's own bedroom door was still ajar. He'd gone in Eleanor's room.

So swiftly that she wondered whether she'd Apparated, she found herself at the door, rattling the locked handle. She could have used Alohamora, but somehow that seemed like the grossest of betrayals.

“Harry!” She strove to keep her voice from cracking. “Harry, don't do this!”

“Hermione…” Her name was a sigh. She wasn't sure what he would have finished it with: go away please; I can't do this right now; leave me alone?

“Harry… please let me in.”

The words resonated heavily in her soul. She wasn't talking about the door. And they both knew it.

A split second later, the latch gave way. When Hermione entered the room, she almost blundered right into Harry, who'd stopped just inside. Her eyes tripped over the light purple walls, the little bookshelf, the plush Kneazle, the bed - turned back neatly as though Eleanor had just gotten out five minutes earlier. She must not move much when she sleeps, Hermione thought - have moved - past tense, past tense, dammit!

The pain was blistering, debilitating. She tugged at Harry's elbow.

“Let's not stay in here, Harry,” she rasped.

“I need to stay in here.” His reply was simple, and she did not argue further. He moved to sit beneath the window; the curtains were drawn, only ringed with low light from outside, and the room was dim. Wordlessly, she joined him on the floor.

“It happens so fast, you know. People. In your life, and then … gone.” His gaze was glassy, distant. She wondered who exactly was in his mind at that moment - Eleanor, Sirius, Fred, Remus, his parents…

“I know, Harry.” The words were automatic. Did she know? Did the sheer number of Harry's losses make each additional loss easier to handle… or harder to bear? But she looked at Harry's face, white to the lips, and knew that this one was worse, far worse than any that had come before.

“Except for you. You were always there.” His voice was mechanical. He sounded as if he were reminding himself of fundamental truths, taking security from things he knew, when his feet had been knocked out from under him.

“Every time. Except one. I wasn't there then… at the end. But I would have been.” If you'd let me; if Ron hadn't been there; if I'd been stronger; if I'd known my own heart…

“I know.”

“And… and I'm here now. I'm here.” Now. Forever. She couldn't bring herself to say it, but he must have heard it anyway.

“Not just because of - ” Eleanor?

“No.” Her voice wobbled. “Because I love you. I'm not going anywhere.” She laid her head on his shoulder, and she felt him relax a little then.

“Neither am I.” He sniffed a little, and she felt him drop a kiss on top of her head.

They sat silently in Eleanor's room until long after the sun had gone down.

TBC

AN: I am so sorry this has taken so long. This chapter was incredibly difficult to write. Thanks for being patient!

--lorien

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