The Curly Haired Curator Of CERN

Scientific Team Leader Doctor Hermione Granger PhD. walked into the lecture theatre at CERN and looked around at the room. It was a decent turnout, she was the lead researcher on the dark energy team for the Super-Collider and the members of her team were here to see the results of the latest experiments.

She tapped the tablet and brought the display screen above and behind her online, mirroring the presentation she had prepared on the device in her hands. She spent a short while introducing the parameters of their experiment, and a little longer explaining the methodology, and equipment used to detect the dark matter. Having completed the introductions Dr. Granger showed the first of the results screens.

It showed a starburst of lines, most of the items were identified as various sub-atomic particles, she scrolled through several indeterminate results. She paused for effect, “Then we adjusted the sensor parameters increasing the intermediate frequency, and we saw this,” the next slide appeared, showing the outline of a man.

The audience all started talking at once, Dr. Granger flicked to the next screen, it showed the image of the man in more detail, with long hair, and a trimmed beard, holding a stick in one hand.

When the general furore had died down, She returned to the data gathered. She went on to explain that they had taken the system offline and were checking for signal crossover with TV or computer signals and so far had found nothing, the sister sensor package designed to verify and substantiate the validity of experimental data showed the same figure.

The energy readings all fell within the expected parameters, the images were proof dark energy existed, and their unexpected shape was troubling as it would damage the credibility of the experiments. She went on to detail the proposed adjustments that the team would be making to the equipment and sensor packages to enhance the images.

Thanking her team for their time she closed down the display and left the room. The team members all made their way back to their workstations to their assigned tasks

Doctor Granger walked into her office and dropped into her chair. Four years of research, they had successfully detected dark energy and the image looked like a bloke in a leather jacket waving a conductor’s baton. It made them look stupid. No matter how convincing the numbers, the image made it look as if they had been hacked. She could not publish for fear of her and her team’s reputations being destroyed when some teenage computer nerd popped out of the woodwork.

She sat staring out of the window at the distant snow-capped peaks of the Alps, as someone knocked at her door. “Yes?” she answered irritably.

The door opened, a man she didn’t know, but somehow recognized stepped into her office. He was smartly dressed, in a nice charcoal suit, an expensive tailor she thought, a crisp shirt in a pale blue with a red tie with gold diagonal stripes and a gryphon motif if she was correct. He was tall, perhaps six feet, slim build but broad-shouldered and his jet-black hair stood out in an unruly mop, that looked good on him, behind a pair of fashionable glasses his strikingly bright green eyes almost shone at her. He smiled, an infectious and friendly smile. “Good morning, Doctor Granger, I am Professor Harry Potter, from the Black Institute. I believe we can help you with your recent findings.”

She stiffened, “I am not about to share our data before we publish, so someone else can take credit.” She replied tartly.

“We have no intention of taking credit, Doctor Granger. You have just proven the existence of magic, and I am afraid we cannot allow that, it has remained a secret for the last fifteen hundred years, and must stay that way for at least another hundred.” He smiled.

She snorted, “What? Please leave before I call security.” She shook her head in disdain.

“I am security.” He pulled a baton out of his sleeve and waved it around the room. Dr. Granger felt the sounds in the room deaden and muffled. As if they were in an anechoic chamber.

“Really, should I expect to be arrested by the string section, or perhaps the woodwind?”

He turned, “I am sorry Hermione,” his face did look contrite as he flicked the baton towards her and she was frozen in place. He walked over to where she sat in her desk seething at the presumption of this man. He swivelled her chair sideways to her desk and for a moment she worried he was going to take her against her will. He knelt in front of her, “A lifetime ago we were close friends, perhaps even more, and your parents made a choice on your behalf to remove you from our world. You are obviously still connected because you are drawn to magic. I am going to unlock your real childhood memories, it will be a little disorienting for a moment but know that you are the one person on this planet that I would never harm, my love.

The man claiming friendship pointed his baton into her eye and muttered something sounding like legible lens, she was beyond angry at this point. She felt something like a mild shock and a flash that didn’t really come from her eyes, and she was stood inside her own mind, with the man, Harry. As she looked at this mental construct of him it took her hand and led her to a wall, when he touched the wall a pair of large wooden doors appeared and he turned, “Do I have permission to enter, to free your mind again?”

“Yes, please. Harry.” She was surprised at herself, her feelings for this Harry were of deep affection, of longing and remorse. She loved this man. Where did this come from? Part of her mind demanded.

He released her hand and opened both the doors, throwing them back against the wall. Taking her hand once more he pulled her into the space beyond the door. Standing looking back at her was her teenage self, but not one she recognised, the girl looking at her was filthy, her face hair and clothes were streaked with mud and blood. Her pink hoody was no better, she had a cut to her cheek and was holding a baton herself. No, it was a wand, her magic wand. It was vine wood, 10¾" long, with a dragon heartstring core.

“There you are.” The girl almost shouted at Harry, I have been waiting forever for you, I thought you had abandoned me.” She threw her arms around this Harry, who now looked like a teenager as well, equally bruised and battered, the two of them embraced and Dr. Granger felt herself pulled into the girl, she was now holding Harry, once more the smartly dressed man. Auror she thought, ICW most likely.

“Did we win? Did you finish Voldemort? My overbearing parents. How can they choose to mind wipe someone against their will.” She smiled, “Sorry for being such a shrew Harry, I thought you looked familiar, but I thought your wand was a conductor’s baton.” She giggled. In her mind she kissed her long-lost love and felt a slight jump as she realised she was also kissing the man kneeling before her. The kiss ended, and her heart was beating fit to leap out of her chest. Dr Frigid has been thawed she thought to herself.

“Harry, why has it taken so long?”

“Your parents had support from the French government, after the Battle in the Ministry they found out about the dangers you and they faced and took you to France, we thought they took you to Beauxbatons and I would see you again after the war, but they had your memory blocked and took you out of the magical world. They were going to permanently obliviate you and remove your magic, but Fleur’s father convinced them to leave it reversible.”

“Why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

“I wanted to, but I was arrested a couple of times. Your family has friends in high places. I came to all your graduations, I thought if I could win you as a girlfriend without revealing magic, then I would be allowed to reveal it to you under the statute, and also tell you the truth of your life. I was betrayed by someone I trusted and I was arrested.”

“Who betrayed you, us?”

“Ronald Weasley, you had rejected his advances, and he wanted to make sure we could not get together. He said ‘If I can’t have her, I am making sure you never do.’ He said it to my face at the pre-trial hearing.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing, when I explained what I intended, they had to admit what I wanted to attempt was legal. The case was dismissed; however your parents took out an injunction banning me from approaching you. Your discovery and it’s threat to the statute has allowed me to get it overruled, and since you have been an adult for many years, your parent’s wishes hold no authority over you.”

“What about your life Harry, are you.” She hesitated, “Are you married?”

“To my job if you believe my friends.”

She smiled, “I am not in trouble for kissing Officer Potter then.”

“Only if you refuse to do it again.” He smirked, and Hermione wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him into a long kiss.

“What am I going to do about this research, this is dark energy, it would replace fossil fuels, nuclear reactors, wind, and solar, free unlimited energy for the whole of humanity. I can’t just shut it down, our sponsors have spent millions.”

“Well, since I control your sponsors, they don’t mind it being kept secret. What you are calling dark energy is magic, pure elemental magic. You have created a technology that can detect magic, eventually control magic. The world isn’t ready. The governments will want to weaponise it, the world could be destroyed.”

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds?” She said numbly, “Am I the next Oppenheimer? opening Pandora’s box.” Her face was pale.

“No love, there are only twenty people who know what you detected, and the image you have captured means we can pass it off as a hoax, some hacker playing games.”

“Is that image real? Oh my God it’s Sirius isn’t it?”

“I think so, do you think you can figure out how to make the bridge and get him from beyond the veil?”

“What about my team, can they be told?”

“Over half of them are magical, they work for the Black Institute, me.”

“Of course, you are Sirius’s heir, does that make you Lord Black or something?”

“No, within the family I am ‘The Black’ but there is only Teddy, Andromeda and Cissy now. Draco I suppose, he is a cousin.”

“Who is Teddy?”

“Teddy Lupin, my godson, son of Remus and Nymphadora, they died in the final battle against the Death Eaters.”

“Oh my Harry, how many died, who did we lose?”

Harry took both her hands in his, “Sirius at the Ministry, Dumbledore the following year, at the battle, Fred and Ginny Weasley, Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus, Colin Creevey, Daphne Greengrass and Theodore Nott, Crabbe, Snape, Amos Diggory, Cho Chang, Katie Bell, that I can recall now, there were over fifty lost that night. The Death Eaters were pretty much destroyed, those that survived were hunted down and killed. There was no more patience for trials, if you had a mark, you died. The only marked survivor was Draco, because he fought with us and killed Fenrir Greyback, he was badly injured and in St. Mungo’s for nearly a year, but wasn’t infected.” He grimaced, “It was a victory but at a terrible cost. If I am honest I was glad you were somewhere safe, I died briefly at one point, and I remember being happy thinking that you were safe as I went.”

“You died? Oh Harry. I should have been there I would have stood at your shoulder.”

“Yes you would, but you would not have come back after Voldemort would have killed us both and most likely tortured you in front of me for his pleasure.” He squeezed her hands, “It’s all history now. Let the past stay where it belongs.”

Hermione nodded, “My memories are there, but it’s years ago, where we lovers?”

“No, we were too young, we loved each other, deeply. We had kissed, but only once or twice, some of the adults were conspiring to keep us apart, Dumbledore didn’t want me to be happy, he needed a willing sacrifice for his grand scheme, he needed me willing to die for everyone, and not want to stay alive because I loved a girl. Molly Weasley wanted Ron to marry you, she could see that you made him a better person, she wanted me to marry Ginny if I survived. Sadly for Molly Bellatrix killed Ginny right in front of her, as I was fighting Voldemort.”

“Ronald Weasley, he turned up at my university, more or less demanding I become his girlfriend, my boyfriend at the time wanted to punch his lights out. Now I have my memories, what you said about him betraying you makes sense. He was our friend once.”

“I am not sure, I think he was always Dumbledore’s inside man. Dumbledore manipulated my entire childhood and life up until he died. He actually caused me more harm than Tom Voldemort Riddle. I used to hang out with Fleur and her friends when I first took up a job with the ICW, I didn’t trust the British Ministry after the war, they offered me an opening in Auror training, but I decided to travel for a year, and unwind. I found myself skiing with the Delacours, and they suggested the ICW in Italy. It’s a lot warmer than London, better food, and no blood bigots. Vampires yes, but no bigots.” He laughed. “It was Fleur who made me question what had happened to me and why. From the staged meeting at Kings Cross with the Weasley family, to Sirius being imprisoned, even if Albus knew he wasn’t the secret keeper. My name in the goblet of fire, and having to compete. He never cared one iota about my life.”

Harry’s hands were on Hermione’s knees, as he leaned forward to kiss her again she pulled him to her feeling him between her thighs sent shock waves of heat into her core. After the kiss, “Why don’t I take the afternoon off, and we can finish this conversation at my house?” she asked, wondering how long it would be before they were in bed together.

“Lock up your office, I can apparated us both straight there if you like.” She folded her laptop. Standing picked her shoulder bag from the chair in the corner of her office and her coat, “That’s me” she said, he took her hand and with a twist they were standing in her kitchen.

He turned her to him, kissing her fiercely and pushed her against a countertop. “Bedroom.” She said, and led him from the room.