The Ancient Runes reference books were all out on the kitchen table. Hermione had started a new project. It would consume her thoughts for months or even years to come. She also had her daily responsibilities. Hermione woke up on the morning after Ron's funeral, she rose to prepare Hugo's breakfast and get him ready for school as she had done for years. Rose had flooed back to Hogwarts to resume her first year.
The world was the same but very different. Hermione was starting to be concerned. Why did she feel nothing? Her husband had died in a terrible accident. Why didn't she feel anything? There was no grief, no shock, nothing!
George had come to the door and told her that Ron had died. Something grey and opaque slowly slid down over her eyesight. The grey fog moved into her mind and slowly covered all her thoughts from top to bottom. She couldn't come up with a response. She asked George to look after the funeral. She didn't remember deciding to do that. The words came from some part of her mind that she didn't know about. Once George was gone the fog lifted and she felt normal again.
On the day of the funeral, she went to The Burrow with Hugo. The Gryffindor Head of House, Neville Longbottom, came bringing Rose with him. Hermione seemed to not recognize Neville. Rose looked pale but was not upset. She went straight to Hugo and hugged him. She and Hugo stayed with Hermione for the whole service. Rose only left her side to go to any person who tried to approach her to ask them not to bother her mother. Hermione did not object to Rose's attempts to make some space for her. Of course, some ignored Rose and tried to talk to Hermione or even kiss and hug her. Hermione didn't remember if she responded to them at all. She was pretty certain that she didn't say more than a few mumbled words to anyone.
Rose came home with her and stayed the night. She asked Hermione to let her go back to Hogwarts in time for breakfast. Hermione let her use the floo to go directly to the Gryffindor Head of House office.
This morning when she woke up, she rose and changed into her normal clothes for the day. They were the same clothes that she bought from the local charity shop last year. Hermione corrected herself. She didn't buy them. She was given them by the store manager after she confessed that she didn't have the money for the oldest second-hand things.
Hermione and Hugo walked to his school. Hugo didn't want to miss another day. It was a good school and Hugo liked it. Hermione had trained Hugo to control his magic before he started there. Accidental magic was always a danger but over the years nothing had happened to reveal the fact that Hugo was a powerful young wizard.
Weeks later Hermione remembered something, a thought had come to her as she listened to the eulogies at the funeral. She didn't remember who it was who said it or the exact details of what they said, but something started a suspicion in her mind that she had forgotten something important from all those years ago. She had written her own history of the years at Hogwarts, and the months on the run as the Golden Trio eluded capture by constantly moving their camp in the wilderness. The closest she could come to it was something that happened in her fifth year at Hogwarts. That was the year of Umbridge, Dumbledore's Army, The Battle of the Department of Mysteries, the death of Sirius Black and her OWLS examinations. Somewhere in there, something had been forgotten. It was something to do with Ancient Runes. The shadow hanging over all that time was the return of Voldemort and the start of the Second Wizarding War. Hermione scanned her old books, looking for a connection to whatever it was that she had mislaid in all those memories.
She spent an hour reading. Then she started on her daily list of jobs. Performing these daily tasks gave her happiness and joy. Hermione, swept, washed, polished, and tidied. If something was clean, then she cleaned it again. If something was missed on her list of jobs, then it would gnaw at her until she came back and finished it. The list was given to her by the light of her life, her loving husband, Ronald. Ron was the source of all good for her. The greatest enjoyment of her life with Ron came when Ron gave her instructions concerning what he wanted to be done. Every time Ron gave her a direct order, all her cares and worries dropped away from her, and feelings of relaxed bliss flowed through her. Ron knew exactly what had to be done and Hermione's highest fulfilment came when she obeyed his orders perfectly. Hermione worked at research on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, but this was purely to earn a few more galleons to help with family finances. Her true calling in life was to care for Ronald, his children, and their home. Everything else faded into insignificance. She laughed at her memories of wanting to influence the future of the Wizarding World. How silly she had been to think that a career in politics could be more important than caring for Ronald.
Then she remembered, Ronald was dead. Why wasn't she upset?
The floo chimed. Someone wanted to talk to her. Ronald had blocked floo calls except for those from his mother.
Hermione approached the floo. The face there was not Molly Weasley. Ron's floo bans had failed with his passing.
"Yes, can I help you?" Hermione was frightened.
What would Ron say? Nothing, he's gone.
"Mrs Weasley, I don't know if you remember me, I am Healer Brown. I was the healer who helped you at St Mungo's when Rose and Hugo were born."
"Oh! Of course! It's been years! How can I help you?" Hermione relaxed a little.
"First of all, let me say how sorry I am for your loss. Your husband's passing has been an awful shock. If you don't want to take part in what I am going to ask you about, please tell me. You may need a lot more time to recover." Healer Brown paused.
"Healer Brown, you have been very helpful to me with Rose and Hugo. Hugo is such a darling. He is at school now and he loves it. He insisted on going back the day after the funeral. He didn't want to miss one more day. If there is anything that I can help you with then please ask." Hermione smiled at the Healer.
Healer Brown read from a statement that he had prepared. "What this call is about is to see if you can help me. I am working in a program created by St Mungo's to investigate the survivors of the Wizarding Wars. St Mungo's has had to try to help a steady stream of witches and wizards who are having many different difficulties adjusting to life after the war. There are too many varying issues at work here to put it into one sentence, but mundane medicine labels a lot of the problems as PTSD, that is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Healer Brown paused for a reaction.
"Yes, I have heard of that, and I suppose that I have seen it happening," Hermione answered.
"Ah! Good! Well not good, but you know what I am talking about. The thing is that you do not seem to have any such issues. Your family are doing well, I understand that Rose has just started at Hogwarts and Hugo is happy. What I want to find out from you is how is it that you have avoided PTSD when you should have been among the first to have problems. You saw the worst of the war. You were attacked and nearly died, you were tortured and then you had to pick yourself up and rush into the next fight." Healer Brown paused again.
Hermione's face was blank.
"I need to know what you have done to help yourself, and how I can use your experience to help others." Healer Brown paused again.
"What would you like me to do?" Hermione's voice was flat.
"Could I make an appointment for you to come to St Mungo's and let me interview you? You can bring Hugo and he can stay with you if you like. There are facilities here where he can be cared for if you want as well. The first interview will take about two hours." Healer Brown smiled.
"I will have to get permission from Ron." Hermione stopped for ten seconds.
"Oh!" Hermione put one hand over her mouth and waited. Then she took a breath.
"Yes Healer Brown, I would like that very much. Please make the appointment."
The arrangements were made and Healer Brown farewelled Hermione.
-ooOOoo—
Healer Brown moved from his office to the adjacent interview room. George Weasley was waiting for him.
"She has agreed to see me. You are absolutely right. She needs a lot of mind healer help. The Survivors Program is a real thing. Wizarding War survivors are coming into St Mungo's every day begging for help. She should have been getting help more than a decade ago." Healer Brown stopped and looked at George.
"I'm sure that this isn't that big a secret. Harry Potter has been getting this kind of help since he was in the aurors. Nearly all the aurors who served in the war are in the program. I don't have appointments with Harry, but I know he still has appointments with other healers."
George shifted in his seat. "Don't mention Harry to Hermione. The Hogwarts Golden Trio broke up after Ron and Hermione were married. We don't know what it was about, but we could see it when they came to The Burrow. Hermione could barely stand to be in the same room as Harry. It was as though she wanted to be sick if he was anywhere near her. Ron turned down every attempt to fix things. Harry tried to keep his friendship with Ron, but Ron ruined that as well."
Healer Brown looked at George. "You were there at Hogwarts with them. What was the relationship between Harry and Hermione then?"
George sighed. "By the end of their fourth year, I would have said that they were most likely to become a couple. They were rarely apart and seemed to communicate just by looking at each other. Then sometime in their fifth year, which was the last year that Fred and I were there, it just ended."
George thought for a few seconds and then continued. "The story in the family is that Ronald and Hermione became an item in their sixth year, but it really started in their fifth year. Harry and Hermione seemed to grow apart. Ron and Hermione always bickered but in their sixth year, Hermione and Harry fought all the time. They all knew that they had a job to do, and they stuck with it until the end after Ronald got over his customary petty tantrums. There doesn't seem to be a reason for the final breakup apart from the fact that Ron and Hermione didn't like Harry anymore. Harry married Ginny and they seemed to be fine as a couple."
"There was a story about someone trying to give a love potion to Harry. The story has it that Ron ate the potion-laced chocolates instead. Was that true?" Healer Brown asked.
"Yes! Ron never walked past a box of chocolates in his life." George replied.
Healer Brown looked at a file on his desk. "I have pulled out copies of the medical examinations that Harry and Ron were given when they joined the auror training program. There were tests to see if any potions were active in them or if they had any suspicious history of using potions. Hermione and Ginny had to take the same tests when they were married as the men were trainee aurors. They were all clear at the time."
"So! No potions! That is something at least." George said.
"There are other ways of influencing people. These ways can be subtle. A small nudge in a certain direction slowly builds up an idea which wasn't in the mind of the subject before. You must be an expert in the Mind Arts. Confundus charms together with Legilimency and Occlumency can be employed over time to permanently plant suggestions in a subject. Do you know who the pre-eminent experts in the Mind Arts at Hogwarts were?"
"Dumbledore and Snape!" George exclaimed.
Healer Brown nodded. "Exactly. I have plenty of directions to explore. Give me some time to work with Mrs Weasley. I must emphasise that this meeting and any other meetings between us are top secret. If any of the matters discussed are made public, I will deny everything and throw you Weasleys under the charging Hippogryphs."
"Yep!"
George thanked Healer Brown and left.
Healer Brown locked his files away and muttered to himself. "The Wizarding Marriage Ritual, now I can get someone who will take the arithmancy apart for me. Mrs Weasley, you can help yourself and hundreds, maybe thousands of others to be free at last."
-ooOOoo—
Harry worked his way through the old study at 12 Grimmauld Place. He was moving the last of his books, papers, and mementoes to Potter Manor. Grimmauld Place was going to be renovated again. He had rebuilt it when he had first married Ginny and now it needed something more done to it. One of his children might be interested in taking it over once they were old enough. His godfather Sirius hated the place. Harry didn't hate it. It held a lot of good memories of James, Al, and Lily when they were young. The renovations would take months. The house could then be preserved for its next occupier.
The bottom drawer of the desk was emptied out onto the desktop. There in the mess of bits and pieces was his first wand. He had kept it for all this time. The wand had been broken in the fight at Bathilda Bagshot's house. Harry had used the Elder Wand to repair it after the Battle of Hogwarts. This was before he put the Elder Wand back into Dumbledore's Tomb.
Harry let his mind drift back to the fight at Bathilda Bagshot's house.
That was a silly amateurish thing to do, dropping your wand just because a monstrous deadly snake nearly killed you. What a beginner's error.
Hermione fired a blasting spell, and it rebounded around the room and broke Harry's wand.
Hermione had saved his life, again. All while she was mourning over Ron's desertion.
Why did he take Ronald back? Many hardened aurors asked him that in private moments. Harry had to give the only reply that he had at the time. Ron was his friend. He wanted Ron to be by his side. An older experienced auror shook his head and tapped him on his forehead. "You're touched up here Potter. I would never have let him come back, ever."
The damage to his wand was unavoidable. He had used other wands since then, but he kept his first one. Until he moved to Potter Manor, he had occasionally taken his old wand out and held it in his hand. For some unknown reason, he had left the wand behind and let the habit go.
Harry picked up the wand by the handle. A euphoric feeling washed over him. He felt a huge rush of romantic love toward Ginny.
She could do no wrong. How could he even bare to spend an hour away from her?
Harry dropped the wand.
What was that?
The feeling of overpowering love diminished and faded away.
The situation had to be worked out rationally. When he had come to 12 Grimmauld Place this morning, he was sad that Ginny had walked out of their marriage. He knew that his children were sad, but they had seen this coming before he had. In fact, he had not seen anything coming and it had hit him like a red London bus.
Any romantic feelings he had harboured for Ginny had diminished and faded. Today the fading of his feelings was very quick. Maybe the fading had been going on for a while and he didn't notice it. Perhaps the process began when Potter Manor was ready for the family to move to and things like Harry's old wand had been left behind.
Harry knew what spells such as Imperio did to him. He had experienced it first when Barty Crouch Junior had cast it on him during that Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson back at Hogwarts. Auror training had repeated the experience. The instructors had cast the Imperio Spell and had also dosed the trainees with all sorts of potions to give them the experience. They needed to feel what it was like so that they had a chance to react against the compulsion and possibly throw it off.
Touching his old wand was like being dosed with Amortentia, the powerful love potion. When he touched it every day, he would not have noticed it. The earlier dose of Amortentia would still have been active. Someone had changed his wand so that it gave him the equivalent of a dose of Amortentia every time he touched it.
Someone had been messing with his mind for decades.
Harry got out his new wand. When he became an auror he had ordered three new wands from three different bespoke wandmakers. Even after so many years he still called his favourite his new wand. No auror used their old Hogwarts student-issue Ollivander's wand. Ollivander made his wands with a set of runes built-in to help the Ministry to track magic being cast by students outside of Hogwarts. These runes ensured that magic cast in a magical household was not traced giving pureblood and half-blood students a huge advantage over any muggle-born students. The muggle-born could not practice magic at home as the others could. The problem for aurors was that their Ollivander's wands could be traced by anyone clever enough to build their own tracing runic array.
A magical strong box was essential equipment in any home where professional-level magic was used. Harry levitated his old wand into his strong box. The next issue was who could he get to investigate the situation. He could not trust himself to touch his old wand again. His Gringotts Account Manager might help. He should find out more about what was going on before involving him. The St Mungo's healer he had been seeing would help. He should have more reliable facts before talking to her. There was one person who had always been honest with him, Bill Weasley.
Bill was still heavily involved in curse-breaking for Gringotts. He should be able to uncover the horrible facts about his old wand. Bill was Ginny's favourite brother. Would this influence his judgement? Harry did not want to spread any bad news any more than he had to. He would take the old wand to Bill to get his opinion.
-ooOOoo-
Bill and Fleur and their family now lived in London. Gringotts paid well and Bill now got a percentage of the rewards for his curse-breaking work. The house was in a magical enclave hidden in the suburb of Holland Park. Harry had sent an owl with a note asking for some private time with Bill. Bill was happy to agree.
"Harry! It's good to see you. How are you? Is country life suiting you? Come in and let us have a look at you." Bill was friendly enough. So far, so good.
Fleur embraced Harry and gave him affectionate kisses on each cheek. "Harrie! Come in, tell us how you really are. No fibbing, we want to know."
Harry let himself be led into the sitting room and be seated in a comfortable chair. He was lugging his strong box.
"What is this?" Bill gestured at the box.
"It's my personal strong box. I have something in it that I need you to have a look at. It has got some kind of enchantment on it that I don't want to deal with." Harry said.
"Something aimed at you?" Bill exclaimed.
"Yes! I don't want you to take any preconceived ideas from what I might say. It is a wand. I want to know if there is anything unusual about it."
"Is it dangerous?" Fleur asked.
"As far as I know, only to me," Harry replied.
Bill took the box and put it aside. "OK! Let's look at it later. First, let me make something clear. Fleur and I are of the firm opinion that Ginny is behaving like a spoiled brat. As much as we were able to, Mum, Dad and all the Weasley boys let Ginny get away with anything she wanted to do when we were growing up. The only exception was Ronald, who had his own problems."
Fleur spoke. "It took me years to get the smallest bit of polite conversation from her. It does not matter what they say in front of outsiders, in private I am still on the outside looking in whenever the family gets together. Ginny and her mother freeze me out as much as they can. They still privately refer to me as 'phlegm'."
Bill smiled sadly. "The official Weasley family story is that Ginny was not a Harry Potter fangirl. That is lacking in the truth. Mum filled her head with all the Boy-Who-Lived stories, and she never got over her disappointment when she found out how ordinary you really are."
Harry laughed.
"You are making a new life for yourself as a gentleman farmer. That was the end of her girlish dreams. She might be the mother of three children, but she never grew up herself."
Fleur glanced at the strongbox. "Let me look at this wand. I have studied more wandlore than Bill. Also, I am intrigued that you are looking for help with something. You are infamous for trying to fix every problem on your own."
"Now! Tell us about yourself and the boys and Lily. How are they coping with the drama?" Bill asked.
"I am fine on some days, then depressed on others with manic highs mixed in. I have been seeing my regular mind healer once a week. Before Ginny left, I had been down to once a month. As far as I can tell, the manic episodes haven't resulted in me causing embarrassing public incidents. I seem to have been able to keep that between me and one or two farmers. They seem to know all about unhinged landowners being all eccentric and they let it pass." Harry grinned. Bill and Fleur glanced at each other while smiling politely.
"The boys knew that this was coming. They don't like it, but they aren't all bent out of shape about it. Lily was steamed up about not being allowed to ride her pony every day if Ginny got custody of her for weekdays. When the custody demands didn't arrive, she got more relaxed about it. I still don't know what to think about this, but Lily doesn't seem to be missing Ginny at all. The boys assure me that they will survive without her." Harry shrugged.
Bill sighed. "OK! Do you want to watch Fleur work on this thing in the box?"
"No, please let me pass on that. I don't want to influence your findings in any way. Do anything you want with it. Let me know what you find."
Bill, Fleur, and Harry enjoyed their catch-up conversation and the evening meal together. Bill and Fleur's children were all at Hogwarts. They were in different years from James and Al. Fleur would start to examine the wand in the morning.
-ooOOoo—
The preparation had been difficult. Healer Brown had sent a list of questions to answer. Hermione wrote her usual detailed answer to each one. She had to work hard to answer some of them. The facts were all there, but they chased each other around in her memory. The bundle of essays had been sent back to St Mungo's Hospital before the first interview.
Now Hermione was here to be interviewed in person. Hugo was at school.
"Mrs Weasley! Please come and take a seat." Healer Brown was obviously pleased to see Hermione.
Healer Brown had been afraid that she would be frightened away if she had read her own work and had seen what he had seen. He had studied her answers to his history questions and had seen many glaring gaps and contradictions. The story she told varied in many ways from the official history of the Hogwarts Golden Trio and the Wizarding Wars. There were also some important internal misalignments which reinforced his concerns about Hermione.
"The essays you sent me have been very helpful and fascinating. You put in a lot more detail than appears in the official history." Healer Brown waited for Hermione to respond.
Hermione carefully replied. "Ah! Yes, there was a lot of editing in the official books. I didn't agree with most of it. A few things must stay secret forever, but certain individuals should not have had the real story suppressed just to protect their reputation."
"Yes! Er! Well! There is one important thing that I want to look at now. I have not hinted at this before, but I really do want you to help me on this issue. You never mentioned getting a new wand. Am I right in assuming that the wand you are using now is the original wand that you bought from Ollivander before starting at Hogwarts and have used since then?" Healer Brown smiled in what he hoped was a friendly non-threatening way.
"Oh! Yes, it is. I have never seen a need to replace it. My wand work has always been complimented. There isn't a problem is there?" Hermione asked.
"No! Not at all, there is however a standard list of tests which we always try to run on each interviewee's wand. We find some interesting things. People do all sorts of things with their wands which can have unforeseen effects. Your own essays show that your wand has already done more than other wands do in several lifetimes." Healer Brown smiled.
"I don't want to let it out of my sight."
"Of course not! I won't touch it either. Please come with me, there is a magically inert room which I have booked for us to use." Healer Brown took Hermione along a hallway to a clean room. In the centre of the room was an obsidian slab. It was three metres long, two metres wide and waist-high to Hermione.
The slab was black and had a mirror finish. It hummed with magical power.
"Just put your wand on this slab. The slab is solid stone. It will become magically inert when the test begins. We must do this to eliminate any outside interference." Healer Brown indicated to Hermione to place her wand on the slab.
They retreated into an adjoining room which had a viewing window to the clean room.
Brown touched a series of runes on the bench under the window. An auto-quill started writing on a scroll next to the controlling runes. The quill wrote line after line. It wrote to the end of the scroll; Brown placed another scroll on the bench and the writing recommenced.
The auto-quill finished its task, Brown took the parchments and ushered Hermione into the clean room to retrieve her wand. She gave a smile of obvious pleasure when she picked her wand up.
"That's good. It feels the same. I'm always unhappy when it is out of reach, and I haven't touched it for even a few minutes." Hermione happily put the wand away in her robes.
They returned to Owen's office. Brown read through the scrolls.
"Now, Hermione, tell me, have you ever let anyone modify your wand?" Healer Brown asked.
"WHAT! NO! NEVER! WHAT IS IT? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"
"The readings coming from your wand show the runic sets that Ollivander put in all his wands. There are the standard runes put in to assist the trace that the Ministry used to track magic cast by students as well as the basic runic sets needed to make your wand work. There should be fifteen well-known sets in your wand. In addition to those fifteen sets, there are one hundred and twenty-four more runic sets." Healer Brown waited for Hermione to respond.
She stood up; her face was suddenly calm.
She didn't say anything. She turned and hurried from the office. Healer Brown rushed out to try to catch her. Hermione hurried to an apparition point and apparated away.
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