Chapter Two

Disclaimer: It all belongs to the fabulous JKR.

A/N: A huge thank-you and plate of cookies goes out to Snapeophile, who puts up with a never-ending stream of emails and claims to find pleasure in answering the same question ("Does this work?!") over and over again. I do not know where this story would be without you! And a big thank-you and welcome goes out to the lovely sshg316, who jumped on board to beta at the last minute and who shows no signs of getting off anytime soon! You ladies are amazing!

*

The next Monday

Rose yawned and put her head on her desk. It was a Monday. Rose hated Mondays.

Mondays were paperwork days for the interns: they had to file reports, file invoices, file memos, help monitor critical patients' charts in the colloquially named "Chart Room," approve visitor requests for various patients – all in all, it was an excuse to give the secretaries a day off and let the interns take the workload. Save the chart monitoring – which they were only allowed to do because Healer Brown said her nursing team could use a break – the work was entirely mundane. Rose knew that she was quieter than most and that, as a Ravenclaw, she was thought to have a deep love for academics, research, and homework. Thus, people seemed to think she would be perfectly suited to administrative work.

Rose loved to read medical journals, yes. She liked to stay updated on the latest in medical research, both Wizard and Muggle, and found the academic text to be fascinating. Routine, monotonous details of everyday administration, however, she found to be tedious and trite. It was grunt work, it was unproductive (would Muggles make surgical interns file visitor requests?), and in Rose's mind, it was the "I had to do it so you will too!" irrationality that governed such traditional inductions. Ridiculous.

She sighed. Her cubicle was small; it had a desk, notebooks, pads of paper, pens, a bin for receiving mail, and a small lamp. And a chair, naturally, though her dad and Uncle Harry had frequently joked that the Ministry wasn't too keen on providing chairs in their days.

She was fairly certain they were joking, anyway. The Ministry's revitalization had only come at the hands of her father's generation – and, she smiled at the thought, due to a lot of her own family's work.

Some of her superiors at St. Mungo's sometimes seemed irrationally hard on her; she supposed that they thought someone had to make life difficult for Rose Weasley, daughter of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Like she'd had some kind of superior upbringing. She snorted. Healer Brown, a school chum of her dad's (and an ex as well, she suspected), was one of the few heads of department at St. Mungo's who seemed to think that Rose should be treated just as fairly as the others. Probably because she knew Mum and Dad enough to know they wouldn't spoil their children, Rose thought, very appreciative of Healer Brown's kindness. It was a shame she was training to be a mediwitch, as Healer Brown would have been a wonderful boss.

But no. The department head who was in charge of all interns, though thankfully not in charge of Rose's eventual career department, was a very old, very traditional, very arrogant cousin of the now-deceased Dolores Umbridge. Rose cringed. The woman was nearly as terrifying as her cousin, if her parents stories were to be believed; and that woman certainly knew of the trouble Ron and Hermione had caused Dolores "back in the old days."

One more year. Just one more year. Life wasn't that bad with the internship; her go was just a bit harder than most, given Madame Rookwood's inherent desire to make her life a living hell.

Rose sighed and pushed her hair out of her face.

Couldn't Mum find some reason to bust St. Mungo's for discrimination against employees? Doesn't that merit law enforcement? Or maybe Uncle Harry could just arrest Madame Rookwood on principal... He's wanted to do it for ages...

Harry. She hadn't seen Harry since the funeral, and she had a few questions for him... questions she wanted to ask him before asking her mum. I'm scared to ask her... scared of what the answers might be, how she'll react. She paused. And I'm not guaranteed an answer, anyway. I never am. Her mother excelled at giving vague answers, and parenthood had intimately acquainted her with the power of saying "no." And her father had always adored her mother far too much to contradict her judgment. Rather like Granddad, she thought briefly.

Hugo had been upset with her frequently throughout their adolescence; he'd get upset with her when she'd refuse to push a point with her parents or, furthermore, not even ask or talk to them about questions she had, which were frequently about Voldemort and the War. Hugo thought she was capitulating to their desire for privacy when, in reality, she just went to her Uncle Harry.

Harry had always told her things, had always been forthright; he'd never questioned a child's right to hear the truth, provided they were old enough to handle it. Harry had told her plenty of stuff about the War before she was "of age," when older relatives said she could know. Harry's refusal to abide by old traditions had been perceived a sign of arrogance by some, but Rose knew it was a matter of principal to him, and she suspected he'd often been told he wasn't fit to hear things because he wasn't "of age."

When Hermione would speak to Rose about the past, she was honest. Rose didn't doubt her mother's honesty or integrity, but these questions were decidedly not things she wanted to confront her mother about – especially if her assumptions were wrong.

She glanced at the clock. 11:07 AM. She was overdue for her lunch break. Rose flicked her wand and quickly filed the papers before standing up to grab her purse. She walked out of the bull pen and headed out in the hall to the nearest fireplace. Grabbing a handful of green powder, she threw it in the fire and with a "Head Auror's Office!" was gone.

*

She stepped out into Harry's "receiving room," as it was widely called. It was a standard office space with traditional décor, though the colors were warmer than the harsh black and white that dictated many a department head's office. Rather, soft browns, creams, and faint hints of orange greeted those who stepped out of the fireplace and into the small lobby.

"Rose! How are you, dear?" Mrs. Figg, the secretary, asked cheerfully – a bit too cheerfully if you asked Rose.

"I'm well," she replied, giving a slight smile.

Mrs. Figg got up from behind her desk, quite a bit slower than she used to, and went to hug Rose. "Oh my dear, I'm just so sorry," she said quietly.

Rose returned the hug half-heartedly. Mrs. Figg was wonderful, but it was strange to be here in the Head Auror Office and know that only one of the two back offices was filled. Her dad's office had been left as it was... and it was plain depressing to be here without her father coming out to hug her. She was sure it was even sadder for Harry to be here without his lifelong best mate, having to see his office every day, remembering the decades they'd had working together.

Harry walked out of his office quickly, his white shirt rumpled, hair mussed, and glasses askew. Rose chuckled at the sight of him.

"What?" her uncle asked cheerfully, gesturing to his clothes. "Do I look like I left them lying on the floor last night?"

"You know you do, Uncle Harry," Rose said, a grin on her face as she went to give him a big hug. Mrs. Figg gave a knowing look and returned to her desk.

Harry gave her a kiss on the cheek before letting her go. "Is it business or family?" he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets.

"Family, of course," Rose said, crossing her arms over her blue robes. "What business could a St. Mungo's intern have with the head of the Auror Office?" she asked cheekily.

"Plenty, if Madame Rookwood is casting Unforgivables," Harry said, only half-joking as he led Rose into his office.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" he asked, leaning against his desk as Rose took a seat in one of the chairs. "Or did you want to go to lunch?"

Rose nodded. "I'd love to go to lunch, but... I've got a few questions for you, and you're one of the only people I trust to answer them."

She watched her uncle visibly gulp. "About your dad?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Mum."

His lowered his eyes to the floor, but not before Rose saw them darken. She saw him reach in his pocket; she knew he had grabbed his wand when the door closed behind her.

"What do you want to know?" he asked. "Though I reserve the right to not answer, as your mum is alive and able to answer your questions."

"I went to mum's room last night and I... found something," Rose started, too nervous for her own liking. Get some courage, girl.

"You went snooping in your mother's room?" Harry asked half-accusingly.

Rose glared at him.

"The door was open," she said strongly, "and it's never open, and I was looking for her, so I wondered."

She held her uncle's gaze for a second before he nodded. "Go on."

"I found... well, there were some things that were out that I'd never seen before. I found a letter Aunt Ginny had written her a long time ago. Twenty-five years ago, to be exact."

She could see a shift in her uncle's demeanor; his typically unflappable looks, the quiet self-assurance with which he held himself, all of a sudden seemed... nervous. He looked nervous. He never looked nervous.

"The letter said that Mum had... gone. She'd just finished her apprenticeship with St. Mungo's and was about to start a job there, but I know she never actually went to work for St. Mungo's. I thought she started with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement instead, after a... change of heart, or something." Rose looked beseechingly at her uncle. "And it also said she was engaged to Dad, but she and Dad weren't engaged until after James was born, which was five years after the letter was written, and then they got married quickly and had me right off. I know this, I've got a good memory, so there's no use saying my time table is wrong," she said, compelled to add that last bit.

There was silence for a moment.

"Did Mum take off?" she repeated.

Harry sighed. "Yes, she did."

Dumb question, Rose. The letter says she did. New approach.

Rose took in a deep breath. "How long was she gone?"

"Rose..."

"How long?"

"You should ask your..."

"How long was she gone, Harry?" she asked fiercely.

Harry met her gaze, now unflinching. "Five years," he said. "She was gone for five years," he repeated softly.

Rose sat back in her chair, her sense of triumph at her guesswork now turning in her stomach, turning into something sick...

"Were she and Dad engaged that entire time?" she asked quietly, not looking at her uncle.

"Yes," was the slow answer.

She breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at Harry, who looked sick to his stomach. Rose felt a flutter in her stomach again.

"What was she doing for that time? Where was she?" Rose asked, changing her tactics. She didn't want to cause her uncle pain. She didn't want to cause herself pain.

Harry looked a bit more settled now, like he was on safer ground. "She was in France," he offered. "She ended up doing a bit of work with Arithmancers and the like... that's what got her into law enforcement, anyhow. A bit of a switch from medicine," he said, smiling at Rose.

"Well, they both help people," Rose said.

Harry nodded. "Yes, they do." He paused. "I've got a bit of work to do, Rose, and it's almost 11:30; you should probably get some lunch in before your break is up."

"Right," Rose said, getting up from the chair. She gave him a hug and walked over to the door, ignoring her gut's uneasy feeling.

"Uncle Harry?" she asked impulsively as she put her hand on the doorknob. "Do you know anyone who has a doe Patronus?"

There was silence for a moment. She threw a glance over her shoulder, questioning, "Do you?"

Harry was sitting at his desk and didn't look up at her.

"Yes," he said. "My mother did."

"Oh," Rose said, a bit disappointed. The first Lily Potter had been dead for nearly fifty years. "All right then. Have a good rest of your day, Uncle Harry."

"You too, Rose."

She turned the knob and walked out the door, a sinking feeling in her gut telling her that, for the first time in her life, she'd been spoon-fed the "children's version" by her Uncle Harry. She breathed deeply as she left the Head Auror Office through the doorway, determined to vent her frustration by walking to Diagon Alley. She'd catch some lunch and prepare herself for the inevitable: she was going to have to ask her mum.

*

That Evening

Harry walked into the Burrow slowly, tired out from his day at work. It was exhausting doing the work of two men... He could hire someone else, had been ordered to by Kingsley, but it... was too soon.

He dropped his briefcase on the kitchen floor with a heavy thud and tugged at his necktie. It had been a stressful day, and he was home late. That didn't happen very often.

"Harry?" he heard his wife call.

"In the kitchen," he responded loudly, grabbing a glass from a cupboard and filling it with water.

He heard Ginny's light footsteps going down the stairs, through the hallway, and into the kitchen where he at last felt her wrap her arms about his waist. He closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of her warmth, of her body against his. She was practically an anchor.

"Why the late hour?" she asked softly. Only Ginny, he was sure, could ask such a loaded question without assuming an accusing tone.

"Too much work," he replied simply, turning to face her.

"I'm sure they'd let Harry Potter out of the office by eight o'clock, even if you still had work to do," she said, her gaze resting gently on him.

"I had to work," he said, distracted.

She raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Something on your mind?" She paused. "Ron?"

He sighed. "It's all to do with Ron and nothing to do with Ron at the same time, darling." He put his hands on her shoulders, steadying himself. "The work... the office – it's too much without him."

"I'd imagine that's all to do with Ron, wouldn't you think?" she asked, giving a slight smile. Harry would have chuckled had he not felt so weighed down.

"Rose came in today," he said, crossing his arms, looking at the floor.

"So?" Ginny asked. "She's practically your favorite niece... Oh." Her eyes dawned in recognition. "It was her first visit since..."

He shook his head. "No," he said definitively. "That honestly didn't even cross my mind, Gin. She came in today loaded with questions," he said, walking to take a seat at the kitchen table. "Questions about her mother." He reached for Ginny and pulled her onto his lap, holding her waist tightly.

"Why would that be so bad?" Ginny asked. "She's always gone to you if Ron and Hermione wouldn't tell her..."

"She found a letter you wrote her," he interrupted. "A letter from the week she... left."

She bolted upright, her eyes wide. "Rose found it? How could she have found it? Hermione's kept those under lock and key for years..."

Harry's eyes darkened. "She told me it was all destroyed."

He watched Ginny visibly gulp. "I'm sorry, darling," she said quietly. "A woman... well, it's easier said than done for us to get rid of things reminding us of places our heart has been."

"So she has all the letters," he said after a moment.

"Yes," Ginny said slowly. "Hermione is one of your best friends, but she's one of mine, too, in a... very different way."

"I should imagine."

She chuckled before a wave of sadness swept over her. "I know that it hurt you, that she took off to look for him. I know it hurt you even more when she stayed, but she didn't settle in Paris because of him."

"That he showed up was an accident, then?" Harry challenged.

Ginny glared. "Yes," she emphasized. "And you can write to Cosette if it'll change your mind."

Harry shook his head. "I don't need to write to her to know the truth."

"Snape loved her, Harry," Ginny said gently.

"He didn't love her enough to treat her as she deserved," Harry said harshly.

She gave a frustrated sigh. "You'll be angry either way," she said. "You're angry that Hermione left us, you're angry she fell in love with him, you're angry that she hurt Ron, and you're angry that Snape loved her, but at the same time you'll vilify him for not giving her what she wanted. If he'd capitulated to her desires, Harry, she'd have been in France with him for the rest of her life. You just can't be happy with that man, can you?" Ginny asked, exasperated.

"What I saw in... his memories..." Harry started. He shut his eyes, acknowledging defeat. "It's why Albus' middle name is what it is, Ginny. He is the bravest man I've ever known, and I saw him in an entirely new light after seeing the memories, and then what he did to Hermione... I felt let down, like I'd bought into something that was nice in theory but not nice in practice. The old hatred came back in full force."

"Severus Snape is not nice in practice, Harry dear, that's the point," she said cheekily, smiling. "He's a sarcastic bastard, and she loved him anyway."

They sat in silence for a bit. "I'm glad she came back," Harry said simply.

"Well, so am I, but now..." Ginny started, then cut herself off.

"What?" Harry's head snapped to look at her, interrogating.

"Well, now Ron's gone. Don't you wonder what she'll do?" Ginny asked him softly.

Harry ignored the question and forged on with his main point. "Rose came in today asking me where Hermione had gone and when she'd gone and for how long and..." He halted his speech.

"And?" Ginny asked. "If you can latch onto my interrupted thoughts, I can latch onto yours."

"She asked if I knew anyone who had a doe Patronus. She saw Hermione speaking to one on Friday night."

Ginny's eyes widened. "Did you tell her?" she asked after a moment.

"I told her my mum had a doe Patronus. It's not a lie," Harry said, defending himself against his wife's accusing look. "And hardly anyone has seen him alive."

"He still publishes in the potions journals; people know he's alive, Harry. His disappearance is not quite as ambiguous as it was in those first years after the War."

He shrugged. "I know quite a few people who think it's someone who knew him and who has been continuing his work that was left incomplete at his death."

Ginny snorted. "For almost thirty years?"

"People can blind themselves to the obvious for longer than that. And, like I said, hardly anyone in Britain has seen him alive. We haven't, for instance."

They sat there in silence for a while, Harry holding Ginny to his chest as their eyes dipped down lower and lower towards sleep.

"He's already been in touch with her," Ginny whispered to herself, feeling her husband fall into a deep sleep. She sighed. "It's just a matter of time, isn't it?"

*

A Mile Away

Hermione sat out on the oak patio, leaning back in her chair, her feet propped up on the table, hand wrapped around a glass of Chardonnay. She breathed in and out, slowly and surely. She'd taken two weeks off of work. Surely that was an acceptable amount of time? She sighed and put her hands to her face. She felt guilty – oh, so guilty – at her desire to get back to work. Widows weren't supposed to return to life as normal... They were supposed to sit in the houses they'd shared with their husbands, walk around crying, constantly reminiscing...

Didn't people realize how that made the pain that much more acute?

Her work was her passion, her fuel, her fire, and getting back to it was the only way she could imagine returning to life as normal... no, not as normal. Throwing herself into work was the only way she was going to bring herself out of the misery she'd walked in for the last two weeks.

Gods above, I miss him.

An image came to her of Ron's smiling face the day the accident had happened. They had gone to lunch before he went into Muggle London. She was so grateful she'd agreed to go. Usually Hermione preferred to work straight through the lunch hour and take her break when Diagon Alley was a bit calmer, but she'd agreed to meet Ron for lunch – well, not quite lunch. They'd gone to Fortescue's for ice cream. She smiled. Ron had ordered cookie-dough-with-chocolate-chip, she'd had coffee. Their favorite ice cream flavors, the only two ice creams that were guaranteed to be in the house at any given time (a fact which their children had always complained bitterly about, as Rose loved vanilla and Hugo favored berry).

Hermione was also grateful they hadn't spent much time talking about work. It had been a slow week for the Aurors and Law Enforcement departments, so they'd talked of Rose's internship, of Hugo's life at Oxford, of their worry for James, of Luna and Dean's anniversary party the previous week... and they'd reminisced a bit, too, which had surprised them both greatly. They didn't typically talk too much about Hogwarts days, now that those were nearly thirty years removed in the past. However, that day they'd talked of some moments in their relationship, of how she'd sent canaries flying at Ron (so maybe that wasn't a good example)... of their first kiss. She chuckled and took a sip of her wine. She and Ron had shared many passionate moments these past twenty-one years of marriage, though they had grown to be fewer and farther between as the years went on. These moments tended to happen when one surprised the other – typically Ron surprising Hermione – with an unexpected comment on a subject the other spouse was passionate about. However, Ron could only express so many positive sentiments about house-elves' freedom before that fire went out.

She lightly ran her forefinger over the light silver chain that hung around her neck. It held her wedding band; she'd put the ring on the chain only last night. The band was fairly simple – platinum with diamonds encrusted in it. She had insisted it needed to be practical, to Ron's dismay. He'd been pointing out stones that rose a good quarter inch off their setting – how did he think she'd be able to wear it, going to work, let alone chasing after the children that would come!

Now, however, her finger did not run around the diamonds but around the smooth inner band. She could barely feel the etching inside, faded as it was by wear and tear over the years. To my Dearest Friend – RW/HG 08/21/05.

She had burst into tears when she saw that Ron had put that in the band; she had no idea how he'd stumbled upon such a renowned Muggle phrase, but it meant so much to her that he had appropriated it for their own use.

And that was what hurt the most, really – she hadn't just lost her partner, husband, father of her children – she'd lost her dearest friend.

She breathed in deeply. She had to go back to work. She had to stay sane. Grieving Ron's loss in a near-empty house would do her no good. She had to be proactive and productive even if it killed her, even if it fueled the gossip corner of the Prophet. Rita Skeeter could write about it on the front page for all she cared. She needed to go back to work. There was some interesting research being done in France, and her hand had been in the cookie jar first. She didn't want to lose her place just because she'd taken an extended leave of absence... and Ron would understand. He would want her to; he had been the one who had encouraged her instincts with this project in the first place.

Her body stilled. Ron hadn't known why she was hesitant to pilot the research with her department. It had been fascinating, hadn't it? Finding ways to protect the security of Wizarding governments and financial systems with serums, as opposed to brute force as determined by Arithmantic probability? And a Veritaserum variant for the skin, Veritaserum as a paint to coat over certain spaces, doorways, objects, designed to protect them by being so personalized that they would recognize the touch of those allowed access? Veritaserum so powerful it could create a force-field to trap a perpetrator? Fingerprint identification, as appropriated from the Muggles, could be thwarted. Veritaserum could not. Additionally, this variant spared individuals the nasty byproduct of spilling their innermost secrets for a good hour after coming into skin-to-serum contact with it. The serum merely recognized an individual's touch and let them pass – no soul-searching necessary. Who wouldn't want to pilot this project, Ron had demanded? Had she bloody lost her mind – again?

Hermione hadn't realized how tightly she'd been winding her fingers in her curls until a few strands came out of her head. She sighed in frustration and flicked the strands from her fingertips. She hadn't lost her mind. She was just terrified to go to France to meet with the independent researchers who had engineered the potion. Three individuals from the British Ministry of Magic had been invited to meet with the intensely private group: the Minister, a much-older Kingsley Shacklebolt, the head of the Department of Mysteries, whose identity she didn't know, and, inexplicably, Hermione herself, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It made sense for her department to be involved, she supposed, but wasn't another department head better suited to come along? Kingsley had denied her request that she send another in her stead; her presence had been particularly demanded by the group, he said, smiling.

She knew why, and she was fairly certain that, on a superficial level, Kingsley did, too.

She had no confirmation that he was in the group, but he had to be involved. Veritaserum had always held a mystical sway over his academic interest; he had been fascinated by it and its properties, by the variants that could be produced. There were few other Masters in the world who would be capable of producing this particular variant – and even fewer who were capable of coming up with the idea in the first place.

And the pending visit was made that much more complicated by the fact that Ron was gone. She'd had a lifetime with Ron to cling to before, to cling to in the possible case that he would try to sway her... in case that part of her heart that he had claimed long ago would betray her. There was a part of her that he'd never left... he still could, as he'd said, bewitch her mind and ensnare her senses – even all these years later.

She shuddered and gulped the rest of her wine down in one swallow. She was not looking forward to seeing Severus Snape again, though her heart may tell her differently. That period in her life was gone, twenty years in the past, but still...

She gave a deep sigh. Nothing could happen. Save Harry, Ginny, and Luna, no one knew what had really transpired in her life, those five years she'd gone away. And it needed to stay that way. So what was the harm in going to France with Kingsley and whoever was heading the Department of Mysteries these days?

What's the harm? was the thought in her mind as she walked into the house, up the stairs, to her room... as she touched the blue box that sat by her bed... What's the harm?

*