The house in Holland Park was large. It was entirely magical. The whole street was magical and was hidden in the same way as Diagon Alley. A short alley from a side street ended in a blank wall which opened when a person allowed to enter approached it. Permanent repelling charms kept unauthorised visitors and observers away. Only property owners could give access to visitors.
Bill and Fleur loved their house. Each of their children had a large bedroom. There were two guest suites which had a master bedroom, a sitting room, bathrooms, and children’s bedrooms. Three families could easily live in the house without feeling crowded.
Hermione allowed her hosts to get all of their things from their old house. They could stay as long as they needed to. Hugo loved his room and the access he had to the children’s library.
The children of the house had their own library and reading room. Rose and Hugo had a small collection of their own books. Rose had a dozen of them with her at Hogwarts. The rest filled one-half of a shelf in the library. Victoire, Dominique, and Louis had eight bookcases with eight shelves packed with books. They also had the books on their term reading lists with them at Hogwarts. The books were in English, French, Spanish, German and Latin. They could all use translator spells to help them when they struggled to read them on their own.
The shock of seeing her wand burn stayed with Hermione for a long time. It was one of the memories that she kept for her entire life. She felt that her life was burned away with her wand.
“I’m crazy.”
“Why do you say that Hermione?” Fleur responded as though the declaration was a normal thing to say at breakfast.
“Ron died and I feel nothing. My wand was burned, and I’ve been crying for days.”
Fleur looked at Hermione. “We are all attached to our wands. It is natural to feel pain when your wand is taken from you.”
“I thought that I would claw George’s eyes out at The Burrow. Then, when he came into the sitting room, I looked at him and I knew what he had done.”
Fleur waited, “What had he done?”
“He did what had to be done. My mind healer told me that I had to give up my old wand and get a new one. My old wand had been changed. It was bad for me. It was driving me crazy, very successfully by the look of it.”
Hermione talked to her cup of tea. “Somehow, he knew that my wand had to go, and he used his dreadful Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes stuff to do the job. He also got Percy and Audrey to front for him, the sneaky trickster.”
Hermione turned to Fleur. “I don’t want to know how he knew that. I might find out one day but I’m not ready to deal with that yet.”
The night before, Percy and Audrey had visited to apologize to Hermione. They confessed that George had supplied the toy wand set. They acknowledged that it was all George’s idea, and they were his ‘stooges’.
Hermione accepted their apology and Hugo received a genuine toy wand set from them which Fleur activated for him. Hugo was pleased with the outcome. The real toy wand set worked as promised.
Hermione dressed in her best shopping outfit. Fleur shuddered at the sight of the plain threadbare robes. She did not want to pressure Hermione into allowing the Weasleys to upgrade her wardrobe. Hermione had to take one step at a time.
“I’m going to Gringotts this morning and then I’m going to Ollivander’s to get a new wand,” Hermione announced.
“You really should consider a custom-made wand, Hermione,” Fleur replied. “It might take a week to have one made but it will be better suited for your professional work.”
“I don’t want to spend that much money for a wand to use at home,” Hermione said.
“Hermione, another thing you should get used to is that you are a professional witch. You are without doubt the most important expert in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy in Britain. You could teach both subjects at Hogwarts, or Beauxbatons, or Durmstrang, or Ilvermorny. If you wanted to you could get your qualifications to teach Transfiguration and Charms as well. You really should have a professional quality wand.”
Hermione looked at Fleur but did not respond.
Fleur spoke again, “I am going to Diagon Alley with you, it is not safe for you to go on your own when you don’t have a wand.”
“I will be safe enough. I will only go to Gringotts and Ollivander’s.” Hermione complained.
“Hermione! Don’t argue! I am going with you!”
Hermione pouted and then she nodded.
--ooOOoo--
Fleur and Hermione walked out of Gringotts. Hermione had just enough in her vault to pay for a custom-made wand. Fleur did not give up and prevailed in her arguments in favour of a proper wand for Hermione.
The bespoke wandmakers shops were found near the entrance to Knockturn Alley. As they drew close to the Alley, they heard a voice call from behind them.
“Hermione! Wait a minute!”
Hermione stopped and turned around. She knew that voice.
Hermione stared at the witch hurrying up to them. The face and the voice came together. The name that came to her was not one that she wanted to remember. At Hogwarts, this person had been a member of the Pansy Parkinson gang. She was always with them and had joined in with Parkinson’s sneering insults.
She was Daphne Greengrass, now married to a person closely connected to Harry Potter. Miss Greengrass had married the illegitimate son of Sirius Black, Leo Blake. Blake had inherited an obscene amount of money from the mundane and magical remains of the Black fortune. The money had been reserved for any natural heir of the Black family. It had not gone to Potter because he was only adopted. Sirius Black had given everything he could to Potter but even he could not touch what eventually came to Blake once he had been discovered.
Ron and Hermione had attended their wedding. Potter had insisted on them being invited. That was the last time that Hermione had seen her.
Hermione managed to remember Daphne’s married name but not her own manners. “Lady Pimlico, what do you want?”
“Please! Hermione! Let me say how sorry I am for your loss. I know we don’t have much in common but let me say this, if there is anything at all that I can help you with, please let me help you. I know that our history from our Hogwarts days was poor, to say the least. Please don’t hold that against me. Let me help you if I can.”
Hermione stood and waited. She was struggling to suppress a catty reply.
“Thank you, Lady Pimlico, I really don’t think that there is anything that you could do for me,” Hermione replied. She just managed to keep her voice even.
“Hermione, there is something that I want to talk to you about. Something from our time at Hogwarts has always troubled me. Lately, I have not been able to put it out of my mind. Please listen to what I have to say. I feel that this is something that you must know about.” Daphne spoke earnestly.
Hermione was sceptical. Her recent experience with the way George Weasley got things done put her in a negative frame of mind.
Fleur reached out to Daphne and put her hand on her arm. “Lady Pimlico, let me introduce myself. I am Fleur Weasley, Hermione’s sister-in-law. Hermione is struggling with the social niceties right now. Please let me invite you to my place for afternoon tea. Perhaps we can talk things over in a more relaxed way, sometime soon, perhaps tomorrow?”
Hermione let out a half-stifled whine. Fleur smiled at Daphne and pushed Hermione towards the wandmaker's shop.
Fleur gave her card to Daphne, “This is my personal card. My floo name is 7 Six Witches Close. It is on the card. I will expect you at about 3 in the afternoon. Call first and I will bring you through.”
Daphne nodded. She looked apprehensive.
Fleur took Hermione’s arm and guided her into the shop. “Bill and I had our new curse breaker’s wands made here. They are a specialized sort of wand. You will need a more general wand which this wandmaker is also very skilled at preparing.”
“Why did you do that?” Hermione demanded.
“Do you mean the invitation? That was good manners, Hermione. Also, Daphne is a very different person now. I know what her reputation was at Hogwarts, it seems that it is all ancient history. Daphne has helped a lot of people and has been a major influence in rebuilding The Daily Prophet. She writes feature articles for The Prophet. It would be foolish to ignore her if she says she has something important to tell you.” Fleur opened the door to the shop and guided Hermione in.
--ooOOoo—
It would be nine days before Hermione could pick up her new wand. There was no way that Fleur would allow Hermione out of their sight until she had full use of it. Bill and Fleur would have been glad to have Hermione stay with them permanently. The house was comfortable but empty with their three children away at Hogwarts. Hermione had slowly recovered some of her old personality. She started to take an interest in things other than her children and their previous home. For the first few days, she mentioned Ronald in her conversation. Then she stopped and seemed to mentally slap herself.
On the day that Daphne was going to come to tea, she didn’t mention Ronald at all.
That morning, Fleur had a tiny victory. She took Hermione shopping and managed to buy her a modern designer skirt, blouse, and jacket. The style was actually made popular by Chanel in the 1950s. It was radically modern compared to what Hermione had been wearing.
The time came for Daphne to arrive. Fleur took Hermione into the best sitting room and told her to wait there. The floo chimed at one minute past three and Daphne’s voice sounded in the reception hall.
“Please step through Daphne.” Fleur was waiting.
Fleur took Daphne by her arm and whispered to her. “Hermione is still fragile after her loss. There might be some odd things said. Try not to react too much.”
Daphne nodded.
Fleur preceded Daphne into the sitting room. “Please be seated, Daphne. Now, you mentioned yesterday that you had something important for Hermione to know.”
Hermione had stayed seated and stared at Daphne.
“Hermione, Fleur, what I have to say is partly a confession. I want to tell you both about a secret war that was going on for all the years that I was at Hogwarts. This war didn’t have a name. It wasn’t like the Second Wizarding War or anything like that. These days I think of it as the Greengrass Pureblood War. There were a few on one side and many on the other. Mostly, the bigger side didn’t know about the smaller side or even realize that there was a war. There was a war, and it was a fight to the death.”
Hermione twitched; she might have been showing impatience.
Daphne started again. “One side consisted of me, my sister Astoria, Tracey Davis, and one prefect from Slytherin in each of the years five, six and seven. The other side consisted of Malfoy, Parkinson, Nott, and all the junior Death Eaters in Slytherin and in the other houses. My father and mother recruited the prefects. The methods that my father used were not honest and ethical, but they certainly worked. Basically, he blackmailed and threatened them and their families until they ‘volunteered’ to join up.”
“The objective on the Greengrass side was simple, we had to survive. In the end, we did survive, but only just. You know what happened to the Death Eaters. Most of them died. Their families and fortunes were destroyed. Those that are left are now at the bottom rung of wizarding society. My father didn’t survive, he was caught on the last day of the war. My mother, Astoria and I lived. We scored three out of four.”
Hermione sniffed. She looked like her patience was running out.
“Why were we fighting the Death Eaters? My parents did not trust the so-called Light faction. The Light did not trust my father. He was labelled as dark, mainly because he did not go along with everything that the ministry wanted. If Voldemort won, if the Death Eaters ruled the wizarding world, then we would all die. Purebloods typically think that the secrecy laws are meant to protect helpless muggles from the big bad wizards. That is idiotic. The secrecy laws are there to protect the wizarding world. If the mundane world became fully aware of Voldemort and his plans to rule over muggles, then they would react. They would react by ending all wizards. My father knew what the risks were. He worked with muggle-born and half-blood wizards. He knew what the mundane world could do if they saw the risk. He knew the dangers and he knew that the ministry and even the Light faction did not understand the danger that we were all in.”
Fleur glanced at Hermione. She was now listening to Daphne.
“What did we do? What were our tactics? How did we survive? My father worked to hide muggle-born and half-blood wizards in the mundane world. They might have a chance to survive any muggle versus wizard bloodbath. At Hogwarts, we tried to stop the junior Death Eaters by simply betraying their plans. Every time they tried some witless thing to cause real harm and injury to any Hogwarts student, we let the professors know the who, when and where of what they planned. Mostly it was as simple as passing a message. One of ‘our’ prefects would take a coded note to a professor who would then arrange for school staff to discover the idiots while they were setting up their ambush or whatever they planned. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout worked out how to decode our messages. They aren’t stupid. Professor Vector was very useful. She looked at some Arithmancy homework that we gave to her, and she saw the method we used. She passed that on to the other staff. Snape and Dumbledore were left out of the loop.”
Daphne looked at Hermione.
“Why did I join Parkinson’s gang? My father had a saying. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ Malfoy and Nott would hatch a plot, and Parkinson was always involved. She would tell all her gang, mainly to impress us. I got to hear of most things in time to get a spoiler in place. All I had to do to stay in the gang was repeat Parkinson's insults as she yelled them out. Sometimes I had to be caught with the gang as they tried to do something silly. I got detentions. It helped to keep my cover.”
Hermione started to look uncomfortable. Fleur gestured to Hermione with what looked like a “settle down” motion.
“Think about this Hermione. How many times did you work in the library until you were the only one there? How many times did you walk back to the Gryffindor Tower on your own? You went along all those hallways and corridors without a thought about who might be waiting for you. How many times did you get to a lonely corner and find a teacher sending a bunch of us back to the Slytherin common room? How many times did that teacher then escort you back to your common room?”
Daphne waited for Hermione to answer.
“Well! It was quite a few times. You always had something stupid to spit out at me.” Hermione growled.
Daphne gave a small smile.
“Of course, I did. I couldn’t very well admit that I sent the message to the teachers telling them when and where the Slytherin gang was going to cause trouble. If we let them get away with it, where would it end? It wouldn’t end until they drove you out of the castle. Dumbledore and Snape clearly showed that they would not defend muggle-born students from Slytherins. You might be loyal to Dumbledore but from inside Slytherin, the view was much clearer. Snape would let Malfoy get away with anything and Dumbledore would not force the issue.”
Daphne waited for a few seconds and then spoke again.
“That is all very interesting, but it is only the start of what I want to talk about. During our fifth year, some very odd things started happening to you.”
Hermione tensed.
Daphne noticed the change. “You’ve gone pale, Hermione. Something happened in our fifth year, didn’t it?”
Hermione said nothing.
Daphne spoke again.
“During the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Potter and you became of even greater interest. You spent much more time researching things for Potter and we had to work overtime to protect you at night. We even recruited people from outside Slytherin to keep a watch on you.”
Hermione huffed. “Why? Why were you doing this?”
Daphne paused as if she was considering something.
“Because Potter was special. We knew that Potter was special. My father told us before we started at Hogwarts that there was some secret inside the Department of Mysteries that he would not tell us about. That secret proved that Potter was more than what he seemed to be. My father knew that Voldemort could come back and that somehow Potter would be involved in the Dark Lord’s final defeat. He would not give us a hint of what it was about. His secrets died with him. We had to make sure that Potter and whoever was helping him didn’t get hurt by the junior Death Eaters.”
“The return of Voldemort was bad enough. What started happening to you over the next year made it worse. When we came back to school, you were different; creepy different. We had Arithmancy and Ancient Runes together. I noticed that you had a leather-bound notebook. You were working on it during any break. You were always looking up old reference books in the Ancient Runes classroom. Professor Babbling asked you about your new private project and you went all peculiar. You denied that you were doing anything, and the notebook was nothing special. Professor Babbling saw pages of runes written in the book and she asked again what it was about. You blustered about it being private. The professor was not happy.”
Daphne looked at Hermione.
“This is where the creepiness level increases.”
Hermione said, “Oh!”
“During the next lesson, we were on the lookout for this notebook. You didn’t have it. Professor Babbling asked where it was. You denied that there was a notebook and that you didn’t have a private project. She insisted and you denied all knowledge of anything like a leather-bound notebook. You were getting quite heated and angry. She backed off. She never mentioned it again. I wrote out everything that I saw and sent it to my father. He answered by saying that in his opinion, this notebook had something dangerous in it. It was taken from you, and you were then obliviated. You genuinely did not remember ever having a notebook. He suspected that the Professor had been done as well.”
Hermione was now very pale. “Fifth year, Ancient Runes, obliviated, odd behaviour, I have to go and see my mind healer.”
Daphne reacted, “OH! I didn’t mean that you were that weird.”
Hermione answered, “Maybe, but I do. I’m crazy. Whatever started back then in our fifth year has driven me crazy.”
Daphne looked concerned.
“There’s more. Through our fifth and sixth years, you continued to work on your own in the library. You stayed until late. We had to keep up with the protection service. Some things we could not do anything about. Sometimes Professor Snape would come into the library to find you. Our observers saw and heard this. He would tell you that the headmaster wanted to see you. He would take you to the headmaster's office. After twenty minutes or so, sometimes longer, he would emerge with you and escort you back to the Gryffindor Tower. You looked like you were sleepwalking. He would get you to the portrait, say something to you and then hurry away. You would stand for a while and then you seemed to wake up. You then went into your common room.
The creepiness got worse each time it happened. We were so far apart that I couldn’t get a warning to you or anyone else who you would listen to. That has always worried me. All this time you kept Potter at arm's length, and you took up with Weasley, and you refused to even talk to anyone outside of your little group.”
Hermione glared at Daphne, “How did you see so much? Surely Snape would have known that someone was following him.”
Daphne shrugged. “My father taught us disillusionment charms and other charms to help with listening and observing from a distance. He started training us to be spies. Snape probably knew that we were there, he didn’t seem to care too much about us. You were the one he was interested in.”
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