Water under the bridge.



The London streets had lights at noon, so thick was the fog. The Muggle New Year illuminations twinkled feebly through the murk, gloomy lanterns of lost ships on a grey sea. Like ships too, government buildings and monuments emerged and waned with the caprices of the wind which tore at the earth-hugging clouds, and at the rare passers-by.

One stooped-shouldered, elderly-looking gentleman, on a lower nook of Tower Bridge, had braved the weather in his violently yellow seaman's slick coat and gloves. Protected by a thick black woolen hat and a scarf rolled high on his wrinkled features, he now and then reeled a fish in, or a shoe, and looked interestedly on the romantic walk – or was it a lovers' tiff – happening on the Thames' bank under him. Or maybe the two cloaked figures were historical buffs looking for artifacts from the London Tower, so stooped were they, and intent on the almost invisible pebbles by the water's edge, striving to peek between the tendrils of mist around their knees. They advanced slowly, bringing up small objects and weaving what looked like short metal detectors at them in intricate patterns. From time to time one of them straightened up, and turned fully around, holding the metal detector at arm's end.

By a quirk of physics the mist alternatively dulled and amplified their voices.

"It's been a long time, Herm," said the taller form in a rough voice. "Even if we did get back to the exact spot, probably there won't be any useful remnants. It's the fifth time we're here, and we've found nothing…"

"The sixth. One for each week since I've been well enough to go out. And it's the exact spot," her eyes never left the ground, except to shoot wary glances all around from time to time, when she muttered "Hominem Revello". "Look," she sighed. "You don't have to stay. If there's anything I'll find it, and pass it to you through Ginny. The last thing I need is having your wife turn against me, too, because you were sacked because of me…"

"Not going to happen, neither part. Besides, it's probably safer for me to be here, than for you. How do you manage to get out, by the way? Ginny told me he was practically keeping you captive in that ghost-ridden monument of his after your were sick. Or did you rag him to the bone, already?"

She raised her head for a second, enough for them to exchange an amused, wry grin. "Oh… I do get on people's nerves after a while. But – ", she raised a gloved finger, "he needs me here for some historical research."

"Oh, really… What could be of such interest to him that he'd let you go out, and trust you to understand the matter better than him?"

"He's dumped about three thousand volumes on me, about money-related scandals and hidden magical influences on the Muggle markets, all the mathematical new methods of pattern-finding and such…Just my field." It's almost as if he was trying to make amends for the rest… Aloud she continued, "Of course, it's worthless without a solid historical basis, so after some time it got quite easy to convince him there were important manuscripts in the London Tower Library about the beginning of Wizard interest in gold stamping and creating… Remember all the ado about the Philosopher's Stone? Not difficult to trace known criminals to the Tower, and the manuscripts they have or have not left there… it's dark and creepy enough. And that way, even if he's got some tracing spell on me, I'm sticking close enough not to signal anything suspect."

"Mmmm. I still feel that something between my shoulder blades…"

"So do I. It must be nerves."

The taller figure harrumphed. "Oh, really. Give me a little credit, Herm. Either somebody is watching us, or something is watching us. I don't li… I think you should go home. Now."

Bloody right you, thought the fisherman as he reeled his camouflaged Extendable Ear up, and down, the make-believe fishing rod. Unless you finally find something, you worthless werewolf refuse. He fleetingly thought of reporting the Weasley mutt to the Minister… or to his goblin bosses. More satisfying, though, to hex him himself. The time would come. He squinted at the two figures, straining his ears to the voices his hastily contrived tool amplified only partially.

"I can't," she pleaded. "Snape keeps hounding me for the details of the… the attack when I was poisoned, with the baby. And I'll have to talk, sooner rather than later, because I'm tired of causing myself to go into catatonic fits. I don't know what to tell him, except that I was ambushed on my way to his house from my work at Rabunow's, after I'd gotten Em from Ginny, that they were five, and knew their hexes. If he knows we've been Apparated, or Portkeyed, to here, he'll never let me come back to investigate. It's not… he knows I was employed by Rabunow, now, so at least that I don't have to hide from him anymore…"

"So tell him the whole story. If you're not afraid for your job anymore, why don't you? Not that I harbor much love for the chap, but he knows a thing or two about spying and hexing… Healing, too, for that matter. And he's helped in the past…" Bill's face closed at the remembrance.

She shook her head stubbornly. "Not yet. This is something I can't owe him. But I must, I must understand what happened. Because there's no doubt we were poisoned, and he saved our lives, but… there's something else wrong with me, which his potions palliate, but do not cure. That's why I need you, Bill. I'm almost sure I've been cursed, but even you couldn't find anything… there must be a remnant here, a trace…"

"Are you sure you're not reenacting your year in the Forbidden Forrest? Looking after elusive widgets in a ridiculously large haystack?" His eyes were kind on her, but also worried, and a little bit searching, and she was suddenly reminded of Ron so sharply that tears stung her eyes and her chest threatened to fold down on itself.

"It's not… it's not what you think," she managed. "My traumatisms are under control, I swear. I must get back at them, before they have another go at me, or at the baby. I'm acting rationally. "

"And crying rationally, too?"

She gave Bill a tired smile. The fisherman willfully relaxed his hand on his wand and made another effort to hear through the fog, letting the Ear dangle as near them as possible.

"No, it's because… never mind. Listen," she repeated intently. "There must be some remnant here. It's terribly important. Not only for me, but for Em…"

Bill hadn't moved, hadn't stopped looking at her with those same worried eyes. "You should have come to us again when you got out of Azkaban. We'd have kept you safe. It's not like you never lived with us before…"

She shook her head. "You have a family now, you must take care of them, and of your job… You couldn’t have prevented Narcissa from taking the kid, anyway." And I would have thrown us all back into the past, we'd have lived with the memories of Harry and Ron and…

"So what?" His voice was suddenly violent.

"What do you mean, so what? Emery's my son."

"Your son," he said with thick venom, "should be red-headed and large-eyed and happy to come visit his grandparents in the Burrow. If by any chance he'd have gotten your hair, I should have been ragging Ron about it, and taken the little one on broom rides with my own. Lucius' spawn had no business growing in your womb and kidnapping your whole life. You… You could still have found happiness, Herm, even if Ron... You'd have found a good man eventually… somebody good for you."

She was very still, eyes fixed on the water, lips pinched. "Don't," she prayed tonelessly. "Lucius' dead, Bill, and the baby is mine…"

"Oh but he isn't. Snape took care of it, didn't he? He turned you from Lucius' Breeder into his own. Manipulated you into giving him a child and… and all that without giving you your just rights as the mother, didn't he? Only he, the bastard, even got you to give him your money for that. At least Lucius made you rich, although I'll be damned if I ever understand how he got you to agree to this masquerade at all. But Snape... he's a leech."

"He's not," she sighed.

"How do you know?"

She gave him a sardonic, somewhat distressing smile. "How do you think? I made a list. In the end, it boils down to what he does, versus what he says… I came to the conclusion that if he only shut up, he'd be shortlisted for Fair Knight of the Year."

Bill snorted.

"Listen," she said, counting on her fingers as her eyes turned inwards, seeing the parchment.

Thumb. "He took me in when nobody would. Nobody who stood a chance against Narcissa," she held a hand to ward off his protest. "Nobody else could have convinced Narcissa to relinquish the child to him and let me in the neighborhood…"

Two fingers. "He's given us food and shelter, and clothes, and Healed us at incredible danger to himself when he could just let us die and keep all of Lucius' money – I'll come to the money issue later, it's the most complicated, and maybe the most interesting –"

Finger. "He bought me books, and a new wand." Her eyes got larger at that, as if she remembered something she should have done, and didn’t. She shook her head and went on. Finger. "Sometimes he takes me to the room he uses for dueling practice, since I've gotten stronger. And let me tell you: it was our loss we never had him as a DADA teacher. I feel back in Unspeakable training, when I'm in there…"

Another finger, pointed at Bill almost accusingly. "He's good to Em, really good. He's got his temper, granted, but… far better than I'd have expected. He buys him toys, even… Expensive, too-complicated-for-his-age, little-boy's-dreams toys. Plays with him at boys' games… What do you think?" she exploded, "that I didn't dream about a family with Ron? Still do? He'd have grown up into a brave, kind, considerate, strong man… like your father was. Honorable, with a sense of humor and a good mind for chess of evenings… wouldn't have taken himself too seriously, either." She stopped herself before she said the next words, not wanting to hurt her friend even more.

So he said them for her, and he knew they hurt alike, the both of them. "But Ron's dead."

"Scoop." Her broken voice was tinted with irony all the same… "And if I want to stay true to what he died for, I'm going to bloody well give this child the best childhood I can, and teach him about Ron, and Harry, and what they did, and what he, my son, may yet have to do when he'll grow up to ensure another madman doesn't come along and win the whole game, this time. And I must do all I can to get well, so I'll be able to fight, do something useful if I have a chance to, and not leave him an orphan to fight my wars, like Harry's parents did. Although," she let a little laugh, "he's got Snape in his camp, just like Harry had, and that's invaluable."

The imagined pictures of Snape caring for her when she was sick, the remembered feeling of his fingers caressing her face and the music of his playing with Emery flew through her mind. "He's horrid to talk to, but… Snape's a good man, Bill."

"You defend him." Bill's voice was tinted with curiosity, and even the nosy old geezer up the bridge leaned a little forward.

"He's earned it," she said almost casually.

She began pacing the bank with long steps, and Bill followed her. They were taking up and throwing back small irregular stones and other objects at random, and the fisherman pressed his lips in frustration.

She put up a finger again, stopping and turning to look at Bill. "He's made it sound like a punishment, but he's exempted me from going back to that horrible man Rabunow, who made me do dangerously illegal work and got filthy rich of it, and instead I get to stay home with Emery and pursue my studies… Snape's even researched applied maths enough to know what books I'll find of interest. And yes, it may be related to the money issue… "

She stopped and looked Bill in the eyes. Her own were shining again, but not with tears. She was interested.

Bill chortled. "You know how I got Fleur to sleep when she was pregnant and restless? I read her aloud your award-winning paper, the one you sent my mother from the States. By the third paragraph she was off and snoring, better than any potion. I remember the title by heart," he intoned, "more or less… New s-specl-aria in the possible application of lexicographically minimal string rotation discovery methods to predictive patterns recognition of stock markets fluctuations …" he intoned, before his jest died on his lips as he saw Hermione's faraway look into the mist, over the water.

"Specularia," she corrected absently. A mordant pain had squeezed her chest. She wasn't jealous, and she loved Fleur dearly. But… She'd been read to four …no, three times, during her own pregnancy. The first was, when Lucius took from the Ministry's safe the original parchment titled "Formal Delineation of the Rights of the Leader of the Wizarding World upon any Offspring, begotten by the Leader from a Breeder of Impure Blood, and said Offspring's Breeder," dated 1346, and read it aloud to her, chuckling knowingly and revealing his plans for her and her unborn child. She should have killed him there and then, she reflected for the millionth time, and disappeared with her belly into the Muggle world.

The second text she'd been read… it was three months later, the Murder Accusation Act indicting her for Lucius' killing, and it had been read in Wizengamot, as had her sentencing judgment, which was the third time anybody had read anything aloud to her, during her pregnancy. Azkaban for life.

Hardly favoring a good night's sleep.

The fourth time… Emery was born already. It was the pardon decree. She asked herself again whether it was an anonymous friend, or a foe, who had pulled the necessary strings, and why. Probably a foe, she reflected, since help hadn't exactly been forthcoming since. Apart from Bill and Ginny. Apart from Snape.

Bill was not going to let her wistfulness sway him from the blunt truth. "He took all the money Lucius left you, and the kid for his own. He's got you as his prisoner, his housekeeper, his nurse, his concub…"

"Don't go there," she said. Her voice was mild, but steely.

Up there the fisherman was throwing his line again.

"I am under an oath of confidentiality," she said. "But even if I wasn't… I couldn't discuss this with you, Bill. It's his…"

She was trying to think of a delicate way to convey that Snape, even if…, was as gentlemanly as… in the circumstances which… when Bill raised his hand, his intent face a nice shade of crimson, to go with the scars.

"I won't pry," he said. "Only… only remember you do have friends, will you? I… you're like my little sister, after all… I can't think of doing nothing while the greasy git is forcing himself on –"

He fell, Stupefied by a hex who'd come from behind them both. As she spun over she saw a tall, thin shape in black, vaguely glittering in the mist, disappearing behind one of the buildings he'd just come out of.

She whipped back to see the old man pushed - leaping? - over the balustrade of the bridge in a flurry of yellow plastic. In the split-second it took her to decide whether he was an attacker or a victim and to raise her wand at him, he'd landed with the grace only perfect physical strength confers to consummated athletes, near Bill's fallen body, and extended his arm towards...

"Petrificus Totalus! Impedimenta!" The force of her screamed spells and her wand swish caused a minor whirlwind in the fog, which sucked in the paralyzed yellow-clad aggressor, and spat him again in the middle of the water.

Should she release the petrifying hex and allow the yellow man to swim? She smirked. They were at least two, weren’t they? They'd been five to attack her at this same spot, last time. Almost killed Em. Let them take care of their own. When she'd have taken Bill to safety she'd tell him to call the Aurors in… after.

She knelt near Bill and hugged him in her arms, fondly, then spared another grim thought for the tracking charm Snape probably had on her. She'd just have to be quick, then.

She Apparated the both of them to the middle of a crowded street, checked they weren't followed, then again to the entrance of Bill's house, and knocked like a lumberjack.

Fleur opened the door, adorable as ever. Until, of course, she saw her unconscious husband. "Ermione? What 'appened?"

"Not now, Fleur, sorry. It's nothing. Rennervate" she commanded at Bill.

Fleur turned to a small boy by the door of the kitchen. "Maintenant j'ai besoin que tu ailles dans ta chambre, mon amour. Tres vite." she smiled primly.

Bill opened a groggy eye, looked at the hesitant child. "Do what your mother just told you to," he mumbled aloud, then sotto voce, "whatever it was."

"But I don't want to go to my room!"

"Oh, that? Go to your room immediately," the father thundered.

The urchin disappeared.

"I'm sorry and all that, and I know stumbling in your living-room with a half-dead Bill isn't exactly the most delicate way to ask, but…" muttered Hermione, "You've offered before, and now… I have no choice but to accept. Would you please lend me a hundred Galleons?"

From the gaze the two exchanged she understood it was too large a sum for them, and the pit her own request had opened in her belly deepened to despair. She pinched her lips. Fleur went out of the room.

"If it's a problem, could you Floo Ginny," she asked Bill. "I… it's urgent."

"No need to call hanybody," Fleur declared as she came back with a silk purse. "This is yours, Ermione. We were sad you never let us be your friends that way… or more."

Hermione shook her head to clear it, pushing the emotions back until she could afford to emote.

"I hope I can come back soon to tell you how much you've helped," she hugged the other witch. Then she turned to Bill. "You too, she said. Now, I think you should call the Aurors, and tell them about a ruffian swimming his way out of the water by the Tower Bridge. And if I haven't given a sign within… three hours, Floo this to Snape, please." She hastily scribbled a few words on a parchment lying nearby and sealed it magically.

She hugged her friends once again, went out in the street, and wavered a few seconds as she arranged her thoughts. Then she took a huge breath and Apparated to Rabunow's door.

Surprisingly, the wards still opened to the password she remembered. Suspicious, that. As she stepped into the vaulted shop the door clang behind her, and the lights flickered. She sighed, but to do this she'd had to take a deeper breath. The remembered, hated smell of dust and damp and old parchments, together with the faint metallic tang of the accumulated metals, assaulted her nostrils. She geared herself.

"Could we please stop the theatrics," she called. "I'm here to retrieve my wand."

She expected the cashier, in his whole two-hundred-years glory, to come up from his hiding place behind the teller, and ask her for the ticket and her money, to un-hock the wand, and, also, Rabunow with his belly to come lord over her.
But when the cashier did show up, it was only to give her a frightened glance and scurry up the stairs.

"See here," boomed Rabunow's chief bodyguard, Sarin of the last-week's-shower body odor, as he appeared seconds later from the upstairs office, flanked by two acolytes. "Our prodigal daughter. Should I be surprised? Come into riches, too. Look at these clothes!"

They were drab, but new, and warm and solid.

The man's small eyes concentrated on the crude, short wand she held, from behind the puffy folds that belied too many Firewhiskies drunk during too many years. "And she wants her new fancy Wand, now. You know you must pay for it, sweetie." His meaty hands, thickened even more by a lifetime of punching, came up to tickle her behind the chin.

She stiffened, trying to cover all three men with her wand without making it too obvious. Then something was flying towards her head from her left, and as she ducked the three jumped on her. She got only one with her second Petrificus of the day, and the man fell, heavily, against the door, unconscious but blocking her escape.

She succeeded in avoiding the second man throwing himself at her sumo-style and even landed a vicious kick to his groin. Sarin was at her wrist from behind, viciously twisting it to get at her wand.

She stomped her boot on the inside of his knee. It was like kicking a tree, and in a whirlpool of sensations she at the very same time felt her head ring from a sidewise open-handed slap, administered with a hand big as her whole head but much heavier, a bite on her already twisted hand, and that same leg she'd tried to stomp on forcing itself between hers from behind, and sweeping her off her feet in a judo move. Even as her wand hand opened under the conjugated pain of the twist –enhanced by her whole weight hung on it now – and the bite, her other hand gripped blindly behind her, trying for the guy's hair. If it worked, she'd fall with him, and from that work something out. She succeeded only in taking his beanie off.

Momentarily stunned from the slap, her ears ringing, she instinctively shook her head. When her senses focused again, her thighs hurt terribly from their being pinned between the stone floor and Sarin's knees. His left hand held both of her wrists, his right was ripping her cloak apart. He found the hundred Galleons Fleur'd given her, and pocketed the purse with a greasy laugh.

"Rabunow will… no, he won't fire you," she spat. "He'll kill you, slowly."

He laved her face and her lips with his tongue, and she gagged. His oral hygiene was not better than the rest…

"Rabunow," Sarin said, "won't be back until next week. It's just us chickens here. And no, he won't be looking for you, because he surrendered you to that blood-traitor Snape, and I, M'lady, when I'm finished with you, will deliver you all pers'nally to M'lady Black. I don't deal with the likes of that Snape, me. And I'm not gonna need Rabunow ever again, after I've gotten my reward from M'lady Bellatrix."

She twisted and jumped to try and gain purchase. Mixed with her terror from Bellatrix was the fury at the loss of Bill's and Fleur's money. And she needed the good wand. She wouldn't have been in this position if she'd had it. Snape would be livid. She bit back a sob. Let him be livid and beat the hell out of her for hocking the wand he'd given her, but… after she got herself out of here.

Sarin's lowered his head to hers again, and she put all the strength she had left in butting him in the nose with her own head, hoping the pain would make him release his grip on her. He recoiled for a very small moment, but if anything pinned her harder to the ground. His free hand slapped her again, back and forth, and now the blood dripping on her from his nose mixed with her own.

The other man, the one whom she'd kicked, was limping towards her, his hands cupping his groin, generating a string of obscenities. When he got close enough, he kicked her in the flanks. Sarin laughed.

"Careful, mate, I've got my hand there. She hurt you there, didn’t she, the b…? Well, now she'll have to kiss it well again."

The two men dissolved in crude, gruff laughter as she desperately thought of what she could use as dilatory maneuvers, until the Tracking Charm Snape had menacingly attached to her kicked in, and the Greasy Git came, once more, to her reluctant rescue. The three hours she'd asked Bill to wait now seemed pure folly. Her mind went back, at Mach speed, on all the tricks she'd learnt during Unspeakable Advance Hostage Sit. Training. She let her body go slack, her eyes vacant, hoping Sarin would react. Silently she prayed to hear Snape's vicious voice in the vaulted space of the shop, before it was too late.


With the faltering remains of his consciousness Snape vaguely wondered who that black form was, that had emerged from nowhere to hit at Bill, and whether hypothermia would set in before the Petrificus wore off.

He'd been stuck diagonally by underwater currents to one of Tower Bridge's pillars' corner, six feet under the surface, and now his yellow-coated limbs moved against the submerged walls in strangely graceful, languorous movements, animated by the quirks of the stream. He kept himself from breathing water and dimly hoped he wouldn't drown, for Her needed him, and apparently in a quite urgent manner, if he'd trust the feeling of the Tracking Charm embedded in that ring on his paralyzed finger.

He knew though, with that absolute certainty we have for the constants of our lives, that he'd never yet been able to save those he loved, and with that thought his world went dark.




A/N: Still not mine

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