18: Settling in at the Dursleys

Chapter 18: Settling in at the Dursleys

When Hermione popped over to the Weasleys' after leaving her husband's arms the next morning, she felt refreshed and reassured. There was still a lot of ground to cover between Severus and herself, but the hours they had spent talking the previous night, along with their other activities, made her hope they would work things out in the end.

"Hello, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said when she was allowed inside.

"Hello, Hermione, dear. Have you eaten this morning?"

"Yes, thank you." Hermione remembered her intimate breakfast in bed that morning and had to hold back a grin. "How is everyone today?"

"We're all well. I haven't spoken with Ron since he and Harry headed to the Dursleys'. Can you have him contact me to let me know all is well when you see them today?"

"I'd be happy to. I suppose the twins are working now." She didn't bother to stop her smirk this time.

"Yes, though they didn't spend the night. They seemed to decide they better get out of your reach before you decided you let them off too easily." Mrs. Weasley gave her a speculative look. "No one could get them to say why they earned your wrath. Even Charlie couldn't get it out of them, and they usually tell him everything."

"I don't expect that will last too long, unfortunately."

Mrs. Weasley smiled back. "I hope not, the suspense will kill me. Now, Arthur left you the tent for your stay at the Dursleys', and I packed up some food, since I'm sure those people won't feed you properly."

"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Weasley."

"Not at all. You and Harry are as much a part of the family as Ron. Let me know if you need anything else, and do come to dinner sometime early next week so we can see you."

Hermione smiled, knowing that would play right into Ginny's hands. She wondered if it had been Ginny's suggestion in the first place. "I'll let you know which night and bring the boys along. I'm afraid my own culinary skills are nowhere near your own. And then there's the boys. Harry and Ron can peel potatoes fine, I suppose. I'm not sure I trust them much beyond that."

Laughing, Mrs. Weasley handed Hermione a book, The Witch's Guide to Complete Home Maintenance and Cooking. "You can take this."

"Thanks, that will come in handy." Hermione grinned up at the woman who was very nearly as dear to her as her own mother. "I'd best get going. There's plenty to do yet today."

"Don't forget to write soon."

"We won't." Hermione hefted the tent bag and box of food in her arms and let Mrs. Weasley open the door for her. In a moment she was appearing in the Dursleys' back yard.

"What was that?" Petunia Dursley called only a second after the crack of Apparition.

Hermione set her things on the grass and walked up to the door, where Petunia was standing.

"Oh, it's you." Petunia's long, horsey face looked even more sour when she recognized Hermione than she had before...if that was possible. "Look, we told you there isn't room for you to stay here."

"Problem solved. I've brought a tent. Your back yard is plenty large enough for me to move it every few days so it won't hurt your grass. It isn't a very large tent anyway, and Harry and Ron can spend most of their time outside with me, so they won't be under foot. I'd even be happy to help take care of the back yard, to make things easier for you." Now that she had gotten her way, Hermione figured it would be easier to make things as painless as possible for her 'hosts'. It certainly wouldn't hurt to try. Weeding under cover of darkness, using her wand, of course, would take no time at all.

"This will be a normal tent, won't it? Not some freaky looking thing that will draw the neighbors' attention." Petunia's eyes glittered with suspicion.

"It's a wizarding tent, but it'll look mundane enough from the outside. I'll set up some charms that will make any nosey neighbors forget their interest in it. I promise it won't draw more than the slightest attention from your neighbors." Hermione knew it was awful of her to take that snippy tone, but she really had no patience for the woman and her ridiculous behavior.

Petunia sniffed. "And I suppose you expect me to feed you."

"No, of course not. Ron's mum has sent some food; we can buy groceries, and we'll get take out the rest of the time. We won't be a bother, I assure you."

"Just having you here is a bother. I assure you."

Not having the patience to deal with the irritating woman, Hermione stepped up and, since Petunia so kindly hurried back, as though Hermione were her personal boggart, she entered the sterile-looking home. "Could you get Harry for me? I'd appreciate it."

The woman looked horrified and insulted: first Hermione sullies her spotless house, then she orders her around. "Harry, get in here, now!"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia." His voice floated from somewhere near the front of the house, and a moment later Hermione saw him round the hallway as he came to join them. "Hermione, right on time." He smiled at her, though she could tell he was still struggling with Dumbledore's death, as they all were. She pulled him into a hug and squeezed him tight.

"We have some figuring to do, don't we?" She pulled back and looked over him. His clothes were old and ill-fitting; he looked tired as though he hadn't slept well and she wondered if the clothes were wrinkled because he had pulled them from the floor or because he had slept in them. It had only been two days.

"Yeah, too much. Ron's upstairs still."

"You don't mind if I go on up to Harry's room so we can make plans, do you? Thanks." Hermione gave Petunia no opportunity to respond before pushing Harry back toward the stairs.

He led her to his room, looking a bit embarrassed at the mess. It looked as though he and Ron had dumped the contents of their shared trunk and hadn't bothered to organize it since they arrived. At least there were no dirty clothes on the floor, she told herself. She didn't want to see boxers lying around. Or whatever else they may wear. She would have nightmares of Fred and George in their skivvies as it was. The rest she could deal with. She pulled the wand from her back pocket, and a wink later everything was in apple-pie order.

"How did you do that with Petunia? She didn't even protest," Harry asked, a bit bemused. "Dumbledore did a smashing job of railroading them last summer, but he was so blatantly magic."

"Acting as though I have a right to dictate to her was the key. Though, I did my best to be conciliatory. That she was probably frightened of what I could do to her surely didn't hurt." The sound of running water came from the room across the hall and a moment later Ron emerged.

"Hey, Hermione. Made it did you?"

"Yeah, can I get you guys to help me with the tent Mr. Weasley borrowed for me? Then we can set up house outside and get down to business." Hermione made a mental note to go home and get her things, and Crookshanks. Her parents would be willing to keep the cat, but Hermione didn't want to leave him behind.

Harry grinned. "One of those tents we used for the Quidditch World Cup?"

"Of course. Any other kind would be too obnoxious for long-term living. And since it's in your yard, it falls under the blood protection. Ron's mum sent some food too, and we need to send her an owl. She's worried about you two."

"Food. Good, the woman here acts like she's doing us a huge favor when she allows us bread and water." Ron's disgust was evident, and Hermione wondered if he had even heard the part about the owl. In resignation, she decided to bully him about it after some lunch.

"At least Dudley hasn't returned for the summer yet. We could be getting very small sections of grapefruit instead." Harry grimaced.

"Where did you say the food was?" Ron asked, a hand patting his stomach.

"Tent raising first, food afterward." Hermione led the way down the stairs and back outside.

*****

After an afternoon of making lists of everything they were going to need, or need to find out to defeat Voldemort, Hermione threw together a quick stir fry while the boys played a game of Exploding Snap.

"You know, we're going to have to take turns with this cooking stuff. I'm not getting stuck with it because I'm the girl."

"I can take breakfast," Harry said. "I'm a dab hand at eggs and bacon. I even do pretty well with pancakes and stuff."

"And I can throw together sandwiches for lunch," Ron said. "That leaves you with dinner."

"Figures, since dinner takes the most time," Hermione grumbled.

"Yeah, but we'll get takeout sometimes and give you a hand here and there," Harry said with a grin. "Ron can peel potatoes the easy way now."

With Mrs. Weasley's handy book, Hermione figured they would get by. Spell work was one of her strengths, after all. "OK, on to the next issue. Didn't you mention, er, Snape said something about you needing to work on your Occlumency, Harry?"

Harry's face darkened and he nodded. "Couldn't help throwing that in my face, could he? Taunting me all the way to the school boundaries."

"Well, maybe he has a point. It wouldn't hurt if we worked on it together. In fact, it would probably be good for the entire Order to strengthen those skills. They could come in handy in combat."

"Yeah, and who's going to work on it with us then? I wouldn't go back to Snape even if he weren't a traitor...and Dumbledore's, erm, not available."

Something protective in her made Hermione want to tell Harry to stop talking about her husband that way. It wasn't fair or completely true. It wasn't as though Dumbledore had given Severus a choice. But he hadn't authorized her to share any of that information. And Harry wouldn't listen anyway. "We can work on it. The three of us. I've been playing around a bit with Legilimancy. It wouldn't hurt to see what we can come up with. It'll be kind of like the DA only on a smaller scale."

Harry's response was more than grudging. "OK, we'll give it a whirl and see what happens. You in, Ron?"

"Sure, mate, can't hurt. So how we gonna do this?"

Hermione laid out her plans for each of them to spend at least thirty minutes with her trying to get into their minds. They could go an hour if they felt up to it. Every night. The boys groaned, but Hermione stayed firm on this. "If you want to be any good, you've got to practice hard. In a few days, I'll add some real school work into the daily schedule."

Ron moaned. "It's summer time and we're not going back to school. What are we studying for?"

"Defense against the Dark Arts, Potions and Charms. Seventh year curriculum and a few more advanced things. We might learn something worth while. Something we can use in battle. I'd like to add Transfiguration too." She grinned to herself; she had a special Transfiguration project in mind actually and knew the boys would be enthusiastic about it. "Well, maybe we'll start that one early on."

"I doubt turning toothpicks into sewing needles is going to come in handy in battle," Harry complained. "And it's not like we're going to pause in the middle of a duel and whip up some headache cure."

"That wasn't quite what I had in mind...on either count. Anyway, who wants to go first?"

Harry moaned and agreed to start out, which left Ron cleaning up the dishes. As he could do so with the use of magic now, he only grumbled a bit before whipping out his wand.

"Harry, concentrate," Hermione said in a low growl half an hour later. She knew she wasn't that great of a Legilimens, even if she did get in a fair amount of practice with her husband, but that meant Harry was worse at Occlumency than she had expected. After all those months of practice, he was still this wide open? No wonder Severus had mocked him. He had done OK at first, but seemed to be getting worse since, not better.

Scrubbing his hands over his eyes, Harry let out a frustrated huff of air. "I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble concentrating today. Too much on my mind."

"All the more reason to focus. In the heat of battle there will be plenty of distractions around you and you'll need to focus, even if you aren't fighting a Legilimens."

"How did you get so good at this anyway? When did you learn it?" Ron sat down beside Hermione, just a little closer than was completely necessary.

Not thinking anything of it, Hermione scrubbed the hair back from her face and reached for a distraction. "It's not that hard when the person you're working on is only giving ten percent of his effort."

"I have a lot on my mind." Harry stood, his hands gripped in fists.

"Calm down. I'm sorry. We're all a little on edge. Between recent events and what lies ahead of us, we've all got a lot on our minds." Hermione tugged at the hair she still held wrapped around her fingers. "Let Ron have a go at it while you take some time to shut down your mind, Harry. It might be easier if I'm not all but sitting on top of you."

"I need a walk," Harry said, pushing up from the chair opposite Hermione.

"It's not safe to walk around after dark."

"I need a walk, broom ride, something."

What you need is a good snogging from Ginny. Can't say that, though, can I? "Go pull some weeds if you're antsy. After I've poked and prodded at Ron a bit we'll work something out." They'd only been out of school two days, and they were already going stir crazy. It didn't bode well for the summer.

"Weeds. Great. Just great." Harry stalked out into the yard.

After a moment, Hermione cast a charm that let her see through the side of the tent. Harry was, in fact, pulling weeds, to her great relief. She ended the charm, then looked at Ron, who had seated himself in the chair Harry had so recently vacated.

"All right, is your mind clear?"

"As glass." He reached out and took her fingers in his, then looked her in the eye. "I'm ready."

Hermione glanced at his hand, gave it a squeeze, then pulled her hand away. She transferred her wand to that hand and cast her spell. Twenty minutes later she decided he had been perfectly honest when he said his mind was clear as glass.

She could see everything in it.

Frankly, his memories of snogging with Lav-Lav made Hermione a bit queasy.

"All right, we'll work on technique tomorrow. Tonight I want both of you to work on clearing your minds." Hermione stood, a headache blooming where her spine met the back of her head. She hoped tonight wasn't a harbinger of things to come.

She walked outside and found Harry more than halfway around the perimeter of the backyard. Scattered piles of weeds lay every which way behind him. Hermione walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Feel any better?"

"Yeah, actually. I'd still love to go for a broom ride, but I guess that's out of the question. Tomorrow let's get out of here for a little while, K?" When he looked up at her, he looked bone weary and discouraged.

"I think we can manage that." Darkness had gathered around them, and Hermione noted Harry had been pulling weeds by wand light. She ended the light spell with a soft "Nox," then vanished the weed piles under cover of darkness. "Let's get back inside and you guys can play a game of chess or something before bed." She reached out to him and he took her hand, pulling himself from the ground with her help

"Sorry I wigged out on you."

"Sorry I'm such a bossy know-it-all." She grinned at him, he smiled back and threw an arm around her shoulders in a friendly gesture. When Ron did the same from the other side, she thought nothing of it.

"Look, we've got a bookworm sandwich," Ron teased.

Hermione poked both of them lightly in the sides, then allowed them to lead her back to the tent. If she had to go through all of this, she was glad to have her friends by her side.

*****

So how did things go today? Did you get settled out at Potter's place?

Hermione smiled when she saw the familiar writing in her diary after the boys went back inside that evening. She settled back against the sofa in her tent. After darkness fell, she had pulled out her wand and cast about a dozen more spells to warn her of visitors, to protect the structure, and keep the conversations she would be having with the boys from being overheard. She also popped home and collected her things, then settled them into the tent. Right now Crookshanks was investigating the back yard. She imagined Petunia would be hysterical if she knew.

I'm all settled in the tent in the back yard and the boys have gone in for the evening. They were both groaning with frustration when I suggested we start Occlumency practice. I know Harry won't have a chance to clear his mind if someone sneaks up on him, but he did OK tonight. He does need a lot more practice though. Ron was a total failure, but then, I did pretty badly at first too.

Glad you've got things moving along. Wish you were here in bed with me. I could come up with some rather inventive activities right now.

Hermione laughed. I'm sure you could. I picked up some seventh-year texts yesterday in Diagon Alley, along with a couple other books that looked interesting. I'd like to start studying and looking for anything we might find useful in combat. That brought another groan from the boys, but they'll get used to the idea.

All right, I'll charm my diary to let me know when something's been added. She paused for a moment, feeling awkward and unsure how to end the conversation, not wanting to end it at all.

I better go, I just heard Wormtail come in downstairs.

You too.

Hermione sat back in her bed, staring at his words and wondering what he really thought of their relationship. As he had once noted, their feelings were manufactured, and Slughorn said love potions could only cause obsession, not real love. The Headmaster had hypothesized that the strength of the bond was determined at least partly by the need of the participants.

She and Severus had certainly needed a strong bond, an overpowering obsession that kept them coming back to each other. Nothing less would have sufficed for the long run. Still, she couldn't help but feel that the longing in her, the longing cause solely by the potion, seemed to have diminished as her real feelings for her husband had grown. The events of earlier that week had cracked their growing relationship, but not broken it completely.

She wondered if he felt the change in the bond too, or if he would acknowledge it even if he had felt it.

Letting out a sigh at the impossibility of sorting it all out right now, and accepting the puzzle for what it was...a puzzle that would take time and care to sort out...she closed and set aside her diary. Beside it sat the Potions text she had picked up in Diagon Alley the previous day. It had cost her dearly and sucked up a huge chunk of time to locate...she had to be sure the book she bought held exactly the potion she needed before she bought it, after all...but she had been elated to find it. And if it led her where she wanted to go, it would be well worth it.

Again she scanned the index, found the potion she needed and flipped to the right pages. The list of ingredients was long, and a few would be tricky to get her hands on, but none of them were exactly restricted. She pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and began writing down all of the needed ingredients, along with the amounts she would need for a single batch. When this was finished, she read through the directions once, then again. Tricky and potentially disastrous indeed. With some advanced reading and a bit of picking her husband's brain, she figured she could handle it...if she had somewhere to brew it, that was.

That would be a real sticking issue, however. And she would need . . . she paused to figure out how many doses would be in a finished cauldron, then stared.

Only eight.

Eight.

That was going to be one heck of a lot of batches for her to mix.

She might be able to mix two at a time, but they each took a month so she was looking at a minimum of six months to prepare and create the amount required. Determined, she pulled out another sheet of paper and began working on a schedule.

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AN: Thanks to RobisonRocket for correcting my punctuation, and to MaevePotter for her beta work.