Summer III
On Harry’s birthday, Hermione phoned her parents from the box in Ottery St. Catchpole. She'd been playing with magical coins ever since Eddie taught her the Protean Charm, but her parents had instructed her to call collect. Ginny lounged against the ivy-strewn stone wall, skimming her Transfiguration textbook. Ron, while fascinated by “telling-bones,” was hanging back at the Burrow and keeping an eye on Harry, even if he claimed he just really needed to get in some broom practice while the wind was blowing. Harry had not left his room all morning. Ron said they should just leave it. Let him have a lie-in.
She told her mum that her marks got in, and Malfoy lied about them, and prayed that the static would make her lie believable.
“Nine outstandings!” her mum cooed. “I’m so proud of you!”
“How’d you do in Dinivation?” her dad asked. His laugh broke up over the line, but she could picture him anyways. She didn’t even bother correcting him.
They liked America. The food was okay, New York was huge, and all of the relatives wished Hermione well (and said she should really come to college there.) Now they were at the conference, one of several, and relayed the highs (free floss, free dental picks) and lows (a bony whitefish that caused lines to the bathroom as everyone left to floss discreetly, and someone let out a stinker of a fart). Even the keynote speaker was pretty good, although Hermione’s mum was quick to correct her:
“Did Dr. Robert Galbraith give a good plaque talk?”
“Dr. Galbrathe, dear, there’s no i.”
“How did you know I was saying it with an i?”
“Mouth shape, darling, it shouldn’t be as high.”
Her dad laughed again. “She should’ve been a linguistics professor.”
If there hadn’t been a war, she would have. If there hadn’t been a war, her mum probably would never have gone to Germany, even.
“Well, was it any good?”
“It was fine,” her mum said, “until the weird section on transsexual dentistry, though. Quite random.”
“Quite,” her dad agreed. “I’m not sure why we should be examining our patients’ sex by the size of their teeth. Seems rather silly, to be honest. Their sex is on their paperwork already.”
They told her about some of the vendors they visited, and an old friend who had told them, sadly, about his wife’s death. They told her that they missed her, and that the sunsets were different in America. Hermione reminded them that she still wanted a book. Her mum promised soon.
“Give Harry our present,” her mum said, as they were wrapping up. “It’s in the package that should have arrived yesterday.”
“I will. Love you, Mum.”
“I love you,” her mum said, and her dad echoed, and Hermione clutched the receiver long after it clicked off. She thought about crying, but didn’t want to in front of Ginny. Then, on impulse, she reached into her purse and pulled out one of her magic tokens and called Marc. She had his house's number in her phone book. She thought he might cheer her up. He was good at that sort of thing.
“Marc?”
“Hermione? Hermione!”
“Hey,” she said, smiling into the phone.
“Hi!”
“It’s good to hear you,” she said. Marc had been in America when she was home; now that she was at the Burrow, he was back in Reading.
“It’s so good to hear you! When are you going back to school?”
“September first,” she said. “It’s always September first.”
“I wish I could visit. Your parents say it’s lovely.”
Hermione’s heart thudded in her chest. “I know,” she said. “I wish you could come.”
“I’d love to meet Harry, and Ron—”
“They’re idiots,” she interjected. “The two of them right now, it’s like—”
“They’re probably in love with you,” Marc finished. She knew he was smirking.
“Ehh…,” Hermione trailed off. “I don’t think so,” she added, and knew it didn’t sound convincing. But Marc let her go.
“Boys are all like that anyways.” He told her about his year. He was going to be a junior, a starter on the soccer team, and wanted to do the spring play. He had friends—so much better than his freshman year, when he didn’t have any. He liked going to Boston on the weekends and hoped she could visit him for Christmas so he could visit her (in Reading) for Easter. He said he wished he could text her, or IM her, but since her archaic school didn’t allow it—“No phones at all, really?”—he’d send her letters written as if he were messaging her, which made her laugh.
But Marc was Marc, and she knew, in the back of her head, that he’d question her, and when he did it was with his characteristic bluntness:
“Did one of them kiss you?”
“Maybe.” She felt her face flushing red, and, embarrassingly, a tear slide down her cheek.
“Well…did you like it?”
She watched some cows graze a field. “I…don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know,” he said, as if he were two years older and not two months. “It’s okay.” Her heart was pounding so hard she felt dizzy.
“Is it?”
She could hear his smile. A year ago they were having the same conversation in reverse. After his first breakup of a kind-of-but-not-really boyfriend. (Publicly friends, privately more.) “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll come out fine.”
“You sound like your mum.” Auntie Alice would say that sort of thing. She held her breath to see if he'd take the out.
“Guilty as charged.” He said it in an American accent to make her laugh, and drew out the r as strongly as possible.
“I miss you,” she said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Ginny waved off calling Dean—they were meeting in Diagon Alley later in the summer, so they took the slow route back to the Burrow, stopping to pick wild raspberries bursting with their summer-sweetened tart flavor. “How are your parents?” she asked, and Hermione said, flatly, “Fine;” “How’s Dean?” Hermione asked, and Ginny said, flatly, “Fine;” they smiled at each other and made a game of trying to throw and catch raspberries in their mouth all the way back to the garden gate.
Ron was setting up tables and yard games for the birthday party. Hermione braided Ginny’s hair elaborately and the two of them heckled Ron about his chair placements. Harry came down and he wasn’t in a horrible mood, for once. The party was slow and luxurious and lasted well into the night. Different people popped by—Lupin, Tonks, Fred and George—and everyone ate themselves sick. At nightfall Mrs Weasley transfigured the tablecloth into a blanket for all of them and they lay on their backs stargazing until nearly midnight, Mr Weasley gently telling them a story for each constellation. Hermione dreamed that her parents were trapped in a green, smoking sky, and every time she got close enough to hear them scream, they started to choke.
* * *
The next morning, Ron, Harry, Ginny, and Hermione played an easy game of pickup Quidditch under the sun. Harry and Ginny said it was easy. Hermione wasn’t so sure. She was unsteady on her broom, and dodged every ball, including the Quaffle. Their attempt at a game quickly fell apart, and Ron and Ginny and Harry were chasing each other about the sky, hurling Quaffles and Bludgers willy-nilly, while Hermione just tried to stay afloat. She gave up and touched down on the grass, content to lay on her back. Crookshanks flopped next to Hermione and they watched her friends tumble and laugh.
They landed for a picnic lunch and Ginny quickly scampered off to shower and then go down to the village to meet Luna.
“Be careful,” Ron said, gravely. “She’ll have you decanting her Gurdyroots and it’ll blow up all over your face.”
“Oh, bugger off, she’s fine as a friend,” Ginny laughed. “She wants my help with a project. Says she’s painting.”
So it was just Harry, Ron and Hermione on the picnic blanket. Hermione laid down on her back, and Harry and Ron followed suit. They stared at the clouds.
Ron pointed at a cloud with three puffy finger-like shapes at the top. “Looks like Peeves’ jester’s hat.”
Harry pointed at a hook-shaped cloud. “Snape’s nose, I reckon.”
Ron snorted. “I swear it curls more when he’s about to give a detention.”
She could feel them watching her, waiting for her to tell them off for disrespecting the teachers, so they could take the piss. And, well, they really shouldn’t be saying such crude things. But she’d been their friend for six years. The sun was warm, the day had been pleasant, and she really wasn’t itching for a fight. So she pointed to a small archipelago of clouds and said: “Marietta Edgecombe.”
Ron and Harry were so stunned it took a couple of seconds, but then they started to guffaw.
“Nice one,” Harry said. Then they all started doing it.
Of two equally shaped clouds connected by a thin wisp: “Nearly Headless Nick when he’s nearly headless.”
Of a short one: “Flitwick.”
Of a pompous one: “Ernie buggering MacMillan.”
Of one that bulged in odd places: “Sprout with a pus-filled something.”
And then it was just fun:
“Hagrid pulling in the Christmas tree.”
“Blast-ended Skrewt on the bogs!”
“Umbridge riding a centaur.”
But it was “McGonagall in her tartan nightie with murder in her eyes,” that killed all of them with a helpless, hiccuping belly laugh. When they looked back up at the sky, all the clouds had changed. New shapes filled the sky.
“Padfoot,” Harry said, like he couldn’t help himself. The cloud did look a little bit like a droopy dog. Droopy, loyal dog. Padfoot.
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said. Ron elbowed her. She shot him a look, and he made a stop gesture with his hand.
“Mate,” he said. He was doing his best to sound casual. “You ready to talk about it?”
But Harry was already getting up. He grabbed his broom and took off before they could say another word. Hermione thought she saw him heading for the Padfoot cloud, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Let’s let him go,” Ron said. They watched as Harry got smaller, and smaller, and then he was out of sight. He told her that Harry was having nightmares.
“About what?” she asked. She looked up at the sky like the shapes would tell her something. She shook her head. Divination wasn’t real. She wasn’t even sure what to make of the alleged prophecy.
“I don’t know,” Ron said. “He doesn’t say.”
“How do you know he’s having nightmares, then?”
“He’s not answering when I ask,” Ron said. “He stops answering when his dreams are really bad.”
“Does he have them at school?”
“Every night or so.” Neville hadn’t said it was every night. Who got nightmares? Battered children. Veterans--soldiers. People who had lived through very tough things. “Sometimes he wets the bed.” Then he looked straight at Hermione. “Don’t tell him I said that. I don’t know who knows that.”
“Can’t you smell it?”
“Put a No-Smell Charm on his bed. Fred and George taught me how, back in first year.”
It was easy to forget that Ron wasn’t half-bad at magic. He had a knack for picking up from a demonstration: every time Flitwick did a spell instead of explaining it, or in the D.A., when Harry had Hermione show off for “practice,” Ron got the spell almost right away. He just thought he was rubbish. It was hard to think he was something when there were five brothers before him who’d done almost everything possible at Hogwarts.
“Maybe Lupin’s not too wrong,” Hermione said. “We’re not his guardians.”
“We’re his best mates,” Ron said. He sounded fierce. “Lupin just proves he hasn’t got anyone else to care about him, properly. Not like we do.”
Sirius, Hermione almost said, and then she remembered why she was summering in Ottery St. Catchpole and not London. She flushed. She stood up to go, but Ron grabbed her arm.
“Come on,” he tried. “It’s nice out.” But she held firm and he acquiesced. “Not the mood now, right.”
They packed up the picnic blanket and went into the kitchen, where Mrs Weasley was making tea. She had a grim look on her face that emphasized all of her frown lines. They tried to pass her for the stairs, but she shook her head.
“Emergency Order meeting,” she said. “You’ll have to use the brooms to get upstairs.”
Hermione’s blood felt chilled. “Emergency?”
Ron asked, at the same time: “Why aren’t you at Grimmauld Place?”
“Short notice.”
“Mum…”
“You’re not of age.”
“What’s happened? Is it the Death Eaters?”
“You’re not of age.”
The door opened a crack and Mr Weasley poked his head out. “Molly? Everything alright?” Then he noticed Ron and Hermione. “Oh, shouldn’t you all be with Luna?”
“Dad,” Ron said, “what’s going on?”
“It’s a Muggle attack,” Mr Weasley admitted. He looked rather grim, too, which was uncharacteristic. “Dementors in Slough.” He opened the door wider to let Mrs Weasley pass through, balancing the tea. “No listening, do you understand me?”
She felt the edges of her vision black out. Slough. All places in Britain, and they picked Slough? Her parents had friends in Slough. Thank God they were in America. What if they had been in Slough? Thank God they were in America. Could she give them a Charm? Could she put a talisman in their purses so if something happened it could alert her and she could run and she could Floo and she could find them? But then it wouldn’t just be her parents, it would have to be her grandparents, and her Auntie Alice, and Marc, whenever he wasn’t in America, and—thank God her parents were in America, thank God they were across the ocean, thank God, thank God, but what if she wasn’t always so lucky?
Dementors. There were dementor attacks but. They were supposed to be controlled by the Ministry. The Ministry had procedures. The Ministry had rules. Did they Kiss anyone? You can’t cure a Kiss. But the dementors weren’t supposed to attack Muggles. They were supposed to attack wizards. It wasn’t right. It was wrong. It was evil. They were supposed to follow the rules, a reedy little voice in Hermione’s head kept echoing. All of the rest of her thoughts were quick and panicky. Dementors in Slough. So close to home.
“Don’t worry,” Ron said, but his voice came to her from far away. “They’ve got people, they’re figuring it out.”
“No,” she choked out. “Please.”
“Breathe, Hermione,” he said.
“Can’t—”
Ron put a hand on her back and said, “Count with me,” and counted with her to ten, out loud, and did it again, until she could feel the warmth of his hand as on her back and not disconnected, floating somewhere on her body, which felt oh so far from her brain. “Your turn.”
“One—two—three—” and she made it all the way to ten too somehow. It was easier to breathe, but she felt shaky, and she could feel how clammy and sweaty she was, crawling all around her skin.
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “Ginny used to have—moments. Mum taught me.”
Then Hermione remembered why she’d gone so cold. It hit her all over again. “Dementors in Slough,” she gasped.
The living room door opened. Mrs Weasley was carrying out the tea, and trays of eaten sandwiches. Lupin walked behind her, his arms full of scrolls, headed for the Floo grate. Tonks was right behind him. Bill and Mr Weasley were talking as they donned their Ministry robes. Hermione was surprised to see Professor Dumbledore and Moody. She thought she saw a flash of Professor Snape’s black robes and Professor McGonagall’s green, but the door to the living room had already shut.
Ron said, “Dementors in Slough,” and everyone winced.
“And you’re not hearing more than that,” Moody said. He sounded gruff.
“How many Muggles were injured?”
“I’m sure the Prophet can tell you that.”
“But they won’t have names, won’t they? What if there’s a witch or wizard that really needs to know them, but can’t find them, because the Prophet doesn’t care?”
She felt a blush spike her cheeks, and eyes in the room pass over her. She looked at the floor.
“Ron,” Mr Weasley said. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m just saying,” Ron huffed, and crossed his arms. “It’s good to share some information. Could put people at ease.”
Bill said, “I’m sure you’ll know soon enough.” Tonks knocked into a cabinet, and apologized loudly. Mr Weasley announced he was heading back to work—“Perkins will start to wonder”—and Moody reminded everyone to arrive with the proper safety protocols. But Lupin was still staring at her, thoughtfully. She knew from all the times Professor Snape hijacked Defense Against the Dark Arts that werewolves were keenly attuned to wizard bio-markers—heartbeat, magical scent, emotional pheromones. It was hard to keep secrets from them. She blushed, and turned away.