History Moves in Circles

History Moves in Circles

Chapter 4: Magic in Unusual Places

She was running late; her employees were waiting for her on the sidewalk by the time she finally made it to work, Peter´s dark head bobbing about energetically as he talked to Kara, who was listening with only half an ear as she thumbed through the pages of a magazine.

They both looked up as Harmony came around the corner, Hindi curled up in her handbag.

"Ah," Peter grinned good-naturedly, "Sleeping Beauty hath awakened."

"Honestly," she retorted, digging her keys out of her pocket so she could unlock the door, "the one day I get here a few minutes late, you´re actually early! Of course, Kara´s always here on time."

The stately woman who looked like she belonged in an art gallery instead of Harmony´s bookstore smiled and slid her magazine into her purse. "Don´t mind Peter," she told Harmony, "He´s never had kids."

"Not for a few more years, thank you," Peter replied, pulling the door open for them. "I like being a bachelor."

Harmony winked at Kara, "That´s what Brian used to say," she muttered under her breath, not above teasing the lively wizard, "and now look at him."

Peter grinned and gave her a cheeky retort. Before Harmony could say anything, Peter had retreated to the small upper story of the bookstore, where the welcoming hoots of the owls met him. She shook her head. "I don´t know what I´m going to do with him."

"Peter?" Kara questioned as she pulled up the blinds. "He just has a lot of energy. Far too much for this early in the morning, anyway." She turned to look at the younger woman. "Or are you talking about Brian?"

Harmony let Hindi out of her purse and began to turn on the lights. "I can always fire Peter," she called up the stairs, and received another witty retort in reply.

Kara sat down behind the front counter and rested her arms on it, giving the younger witch her whole attention. "What´s wrong with Brian?"

Harmony moved a pile of books off of one of the chairs and sat down, knowing Kara would pry it all out of her before she was did anything else. "It´s not exactly Brian, Kara. It´s just the fact that he´s a Muggle. Jenny´s magic is starting to manifest itself. Almost daily now."

Kara´s blonde eyebrows lifted in surprise. "And she´s five?"

Harmony nodded. "Yes--she promises to be a strong witch. Right now, all she´s doing is dreaming and doing little stuff like turning Brian´s hair green, but I can´t watch her twenty-four hours a day. She´s going to do something one day that Brian can´t miss, and I´m not going to be around to fix it before he does." She absently ran fingers across the stone pendant she wore at her throat, checking once more to assure herself that it was still cool.

Kara sighed. "Harmony, you´ve taken every precaution that anyone could ever think of. Jenny and Troy are monitored with charms, you´ve practically magic-proofed their bedrooms; and your house has nothing magical in it! What can Jenny do?"

"She turned her father´s hair green this morning," Harmony murmured. "If he didn´t need so much coffee to wake him, I never would have noticed."

"Practical joke," Peter suggested, coming down the stairs with the morning owl-post tucked under one arm. "You dyed it green in his sleep."

She shot him an exasperated glance. The man was too energetic in the morning--even for her. Once she woke up, he was great--but entirely too enthusiastic before noon. "That´s no prank," she protested, remembering the time she´d had blue hair for an entire summer holiday, thanks to Fred & George. "That´s humiliation! If I pulled some sort of prank on Brian I´d put decaf in his Folgers can."

Peter froze, his brown eyes widening in horror. "And you don´t think that´s evil?"

Harmony lifted an eyebrow. "Switching coffee grounds doesn´t fall into my standard of evil, Peter," she returned calmly. Evil for those who had lived through Voldemort was something entirely different than the American wizarding society thought it was. Luckily, her alibi in this section of the wizarding world was sound enough. She was a muggle-born English witch who had fled the country during the darkest days of the war. As long as she was careful, she could reference living through the war without blowing her old identity--the unremarkable charm took care of the rest. Unless she directly told someone she had been Hermione Granger, they would never be able to connect her face with her name, even if she was standing next to her own picture. Peter, her local avid Dark War historian, had yet to make the connection in the four years she´d known him, despite all of the books and pictures he´d studied with her in them.

At times like today, she was very tempted to pull him aside and tell him who she really was, just so someone would know--that there would be a place she didn´t have to hide anymore. But that was impossible. To tell the truth would put Jenny in danger, and Harmony couldn´t do that. She´d made a promise to a dying friend, and intended to keep it until she no longer had breath in her body to do so. So she firmed up and made herself believe that Hermione no longer existed. She was Harmony now.

Peter´s face was filled with apprehension. "I´m sorry Harmony--I forgot that you were..." he trailed off uncertainly.

"It´s all right Peter," she reassured him gently. "Those days were a long time ago," but, she admitted to herself, they still stung like freshly inflicted wounds.

Kara coughed politely. "Why don´t you just tell Brian you´re a witch and get it over with?"

The younger witch sighed. "It´s not that easy. I´ve always been very careful to keep from using any magic around him--he hasn´t the slightest clue that I´m anything more than a common Muggle. We´ve been together for seven years and he hasn´t seen so much as a robe! I just can´t sit him down one day and tell him I´m a witch, and have been for the past 17 years."

She paused and swallowed slightly, remembering the one time she had tried to tell him--but had never gotten around to it. The day she´d brought Jenny home, she had intended to tell him, but he hadn´t reacted well and she didn´t want to press things. "He´s not going to like it all--after all, we´ve been perfectly happy this long. If I can just keep Jenny´s outbursts under control then he never has to know."

Kara was watching her with a slightly amused expression, and Peter with a slightly resigned one. The dark-haired man stepped forward and handed her the morning´s copy of the Salem Review. She went to open it, but he lightly touched her wrist. "Tell him now, Harmony," he pleaded softly, his dark eyes glittering with suppressed emotion. "The longer you wait will only make things worse. My father waited for years before he told my Mom...and she didn´t take it well at all."

Harmony stared at him, surprised at his seriousness so early in the morning. "Mom...Mom was xenophobic. She just couldn´t accept that magic existed, so she packed up and left." His voice roughened for a moment, and she was struck hard with the urge to hug him.

"I´m sorry," Harmony settled for squeezing his hand. "But I´m afraid Brian will be the same way."

Kara shook her head, coming over to lay one of her perfectly-shaped hands on Peter´s shoulder in comfort. "Brian loves you, Harmony. He´ll adjust. Love will be enough."

The young witch shut her eyes tightly. Love wasn´t always enough. It hadn´t been enough all of those years ago; it hadn´t kept her with the first boy she´d truly loved. It hadn´t stopped her from losing two of her best friends, either.

She couldn´t risk losing Brian; she wouldn´t survive losing another man she loved.

She lifted her dark eyes to smile comfortingly at Peter. "I suppose I could try," she agreed finally, her resistance sanded away. "But I don´t know if he would believe me."

Peter and Kara exchanged glances. "Don´t worry about it," Kara began. "If he doesn´t believe just bring him down here."

"We´ll be more than happy to back up your story," Peter agreed. "After all, he´s going to have to see what the wizarding world is like eventually. Why not start with someplace halfway normal?"

"Oh--and I suppose a cage full of the Monster Book of Monsters is normal?" Kara asked archly.

Peter shrugged. "At least it´s not those Transfiguration books. You know, the ones that did everything by example?"

Harmony snorted, rising from her chair. "We spent four days catching all of those dormice. I sent them back to the manufacturer that way and they still refused to give me a refund." She pulled her hair over her shoulder and sighed. "Speaking of books, all of the little ones are in session now, so it´s just the college kids coming in. Who wants to work where?"

"I´ll stay upstairs today," Kara volunteered. "Some of the stuff up here needs rearranging, like the front window display."

"There´s really nothing on the second floor that needs done," Peter informed. The second floor of Hidden Treasures Books was filled with rare and unusual books, as well as Harmony´s collection of Muggle occult books and some ancient books from the history of the area that Peter was painstakingly restoring. In a town like Salem such things were to be expected, although Brian had looked at her a little oddly when he´d seen how many occult books the store had.

Of course, he had never been down in the basement, which was where the real bookstore was. Not long after Harmony had returned to the States with Jenny, she had persuaded Brian to move to Salem, where she had purchased a small building that had seen better days and turned it into a bookstore. The true reason she had bought the building was because its spacious basement opened out onto the American equivalent of Diagon Alley, Copper Lane.

The basement was where the true business went on, but Brian had no idea how much of a profit Harmony made off of it now. Every spare galleon she could find had been poured into the ramshackle little bookstore on Copper Lane, and now it was the leading book broker in this area of the wizarding world, especially for the students of the nearby Salem Witch´s Institute and the magical primary school. She would never be a fabulously wealthy witch, but she could live quite comfortably.

The Muggle half of her business managed to break even every year, and lately she had been pondering perhaps making it into a tiny little coffee shop. Peter could still continue the research he needed for his Doctorate upstairs, but she would no longer have to worry about making the Muggle bookstore succeed then, or finding reliable employees that could work in both worlds.

Harmony nodded at them. "All right," she began, "Peter and I will work downstairs today, and we´ll just close the second floor off."

After the plan had been agreed upon everyone made their way to their stations for the day, Harmony and Peter stepping through the door marked "Private" at the back of the store to get to the basement, where work began.

There were only the two of them in the basement; although Harmony had put an advertisement in the Salem Review a few weeks ago, she had yet to find another suitable employee. Peter and Kara were both very Muggle-oriented and could work in any section of the store, but if she could add a few employees to the basement things would be much easier on all of them and Harmony could go back to writing her book, which she hadn´t touched in at least a year.

Their day was filled with leading students to the correct book piles and tallying galleon totals and the like. Even with all of the younger kids already in school, there were enough University and Institute students to keep them on their feet all day long. When closing time finally came around Harmony locked the door from behind the circular counter with her wand and collapsed into the closest chair. Peter clambered up onto the polished counter, resting his head on a copy of Terrific Tunes for Terrible Trees and propped his feet up against the antique cash register.

They rested together, two weary warriors trying to recover from a gruesome battle. This silent camaraderie was broken a few minutes later when Kara came walking down the stairs, looking every bit as composed as she had that morning. "Goodness," she exclaimed at the sight of Peter sprawled out on the counter and the disorganization of the store in general. "It wasn´t that bad, was it?"

"Ugh," was Peter´s only response.

Harmony roused herself from her dazed examination of the rug on the floor to acknowledge Kara´s presence. "I think every student in the Institute has been through here today."

"Ah," Kara nodded wisely, stepping through a collapsed pile of shopping baskets to come behind the counter. "I figured as much from some of the characters we had upstairs." She cocked her head. "Do you want some help cleaning up down here?"

"Please," Harmony murmured, scrubbing at her face with one hand. "My head feels like it´s had an unfortunate meeting with a mountain troll´s club."

"That sounds like it would hurt," Peter replied, making himself more comfortable on the book. "At least there aren´t any trolls within a hundred miles of here."

The English witch groaned. "You´re very fortunate. Trolls are ugly, slimy, and their breath smells like sewage."

Peter chuckled. "Sounds like the voice of experience speaking."

His employer sat up abruptly, summoning a vial of pain-relieving potion to her, which she promptly downed half the contents of. "You have no idea," she replied, defiantly shoving herself to her feet and staring at the mess around her as the potion brought liquid bliss to her aching head and legs. With her headache fading away her strength was returning, and she turned her wand upon the store, casting the various charms and muttering the incantations that brought order to the chaos of the store after a hectic day.

She zapped Peter with a quick jet of blue sparks, forcing him to vacate his position on the counter. He gave her a token promise of rebuttal before starting to clean off the circular counter, and Kara began pulling the blinds and locking the doors. Working together, the three of them managed to pull the bookstore together for another hectic day in surprisingly little time, and suddenly found themselves in position to part for the day. With cheerful goodbyes her employees departed, Kara to her traditional family home and Peter to his bachelor´s pad a few streets away from Copper Lane.

Harmony, however, had no intentions of going home. She still had another good hour´s worth of work in front of her, but it was work that had nothing to do with the bookstore. This work was far more important, and much less legal. If any of the Department bigwigs knew about the stuff she had up in her office she could be arrested and sent to Azkaban.

She slowly climbed up to the second floor of the building, bypassing the still dozing owls and Peter´s work area to unlock her office door. This was where she kept her past locked away; nowhere near her family. This was where she kept her old family. The one that she had abandoned all those years ago--and the one that had just as willingly pushed her away.

Various magical trinkets were piled on shelves, stuffed into cabinets, and lined up on the windowsills. She´d never gotten around to organizing any of her mess, not like she would have done before she´d moved to the States. She knew where things were--that was enough.

The English witch moved to her desk, not sparing a glance at the framed diplomas hanging on the wall. She wasn´t that person anymore. Pushing a stack of news scrolls off her desk revealed a beautiful drawing of two dragons, one bronze and the other gold, caught in mid flight across the parchment. A quick tap of her wand against the protective glass sent the lines on the picture writhing, and she watched dispassionately as the dragons twisted and morphed into something else entirely--a set of lines that faintly resembled a blueprint and a multitude of tiny moving dots. Harmony gave it a quick glance then tapped the glass again, unrolling one of the many scrolls on her desk to skim as the picture rearranged itself.

There was nothing new there either.

The process continued for a good half an hour, the witch methodically checking the areas that the trails were leading to. The head of her Order knew something was going on, but he didn´t know what yet--he´d put all of his field agents on alert. Despite the fact that she was dead to most of the wizarding world, Harmony hadn´t been able to let go some of her habits. Ritually checking for known Dark Wizards or their agents was one of them. And when Neville sent her a message asking her to keep a look out, she took it seriously.

Once the map revealed nothing out of the ordinary in her vicinity she continued to scan through the newspapers, ignoring the fact that it was now well past the time she was supposed to be home. She had just put the last paper down when a small furry body began to wind its way around her ankles.

"Hindi," she murmured, picking the kitten up.

"Mrrrow," her familiar replied, butting her chin into Harmony´s hand, who obediently scratched behind an ear. "Mrrrrrow!"

The witch sighed, glancing at the window, and let out a few soft curses. "I lost track of time again," she gasped, hurriedly arranging the papers on her desk, knocking over a very old picture that she didn´t bother to pick up. Looking at their faces even now hurt.

Hindi jumped from her lap and ran out of the office door in front of her, waiting while she locked the doors and set the alarm charms. Tucking the striped cat under one arm, she headed for her family-sized SUV and peeled out for home, ignoring the plaintive cries of one dizzy cat.

Her house was being bathed in the brilliant oranges of sunset when she reached it, and she heard Jenny´s happy chatter in the kitchen when she let herself in while a very frazzled cat making a beeline for Brian´s empty recliner. Harmony moved down to the kitchen, twisting her hair back into its usual bun, tucking her wand into it securely just as she stepped into the lights of the kitchen.

"Momma!" Jenny shouted, waving. "Hi!"

Beside her, settled safely into a booster seat, her two-year old grinned at her. "Hi," his voice was soft and furry.

She smiled and waved at them. "Hi. I see I made home in time for dinner."

Brian stood at the stove, a plate of spaghetti in each hand. He grinned a greeting at her, depositing a plate before each child at the kitchen table. "Hi, hon. You timed that just about right."

Harmony dumped her purse onto the floor and slid over to the stove to fill her own plate. "I´m sorry I couldn´t help out tonight but."

"Hey," he stopped her with a light kiss, the kids too involved in their food to notice. "You´re busy--and you cook dinner most of the time. I can handle night duty for a few days until the rush settles down." He turned and started doling spaghetti onto his plate. "Although if it lasts too much longer, the kids are going to get tired of spaghetti."

"You could always learn to cook something else," she replied, grinning at him, sticking her fork into the pan with sauce, then waving it in front of his nose. "Meatball?"

"Don´t mind if I do," he replied, taking the proffered food off the fork.

She snapped his nose with the utensil in her hand in mock indignation. "That was mine! Get your own!"

Brian winked at her and turned to ladle sauce onto his own plate of noodles, while Harmony made her way to the table to sit down. She had lifted the first forkful to her mouth when Jenny spoke up, chattering all about her day, Troy throwing in a few affirmative noises between bites. Dinner passed quickly, despite the fact that Harmony had come in late without letting Brian know. He thought she was working on reorganizing the store--she hated having to lie to him.

Once plates had been clear, the two adults found themselves facing the biggest quandary of every evening, which consisted of clean up duty. Who was going to take the kids, and who was going to battle the kitchen. Harmony took one look at the smiling tomato-sauce covered kids and decided she´d take kitchen duty again. As much as she loved her children, there were some things that magic was most definitely more useful for. She´d be too tempted to just forgo the whole bath process and hit them with a cleanliness charm to make things easier.

So while Brian hauled them upstairs and put them in the bathtub, Harmony quietly did the dishes with a little help from a few judicious pokes of her wand, and was wiping spaghetti sauce off the table with a dishrag. She could hear voices and splashing from upstairs; Brian must have left the door open again.

A red-haired five-year-old appeared at her hip, wrapped securely in a big pink bath towel, wet hair dripping water on the floor. "Hi Momma," she chirped.

Harmony left her rag on the table and turned to her daughter, squatting to be more on her level. "Didn´t your Dad dry you off," she demanded, grabbing the towel and scrubbing the wet hair.

Jenny stood still, knowing from experience it would be futile to try to resist her mother at this point. "He tried," she murmured, voice muted beneath the towel. "But Troy tried to climb out of the tub and he told me to come see you."

Her mother sighed and continued to rub her dry, listening to Brian try to deal with their son upstairs. She couldn´t hear much--but the splashing and random loud thumps were not a good sign. Troy, like any two-year-old, wasn´t fond of bodies of water larger than a glass unless it was a mud puddle or a swimming pool. Getting him clean was always a battle and a half.

She was wrapping the towel back around her much drier daughter, intending to carry her upstairs, when it happened. If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed that Jenny´s eyes flickered to her throat at least a full second before it started, but Harmony had long since ceased being that observant in her own home. The pendant at her throat suddenly turned ice cold and began to vibrate against her throat, just like she´d charmed it to do.

Someone was doing magic. More specifically, someone in her family was doing magic.

"Momma," Jenny murmured, staring at the pendant, eyes wide. "What´s that doing?"

Harmony closed her hand around it, staring down at the little girl. Jenny was right here, and nothing was happening, so it couldn´t have been her. That left one person who could have possibly made her necklace glow.

Troy.

Harmony was already on her way upstairs when a shout from Brian echoed down the corridor. "What the..." he shouted, and massive scrambling followed.

The witch doubled her pace and reached the open bathroom door, not sure of what she was going to find. What she did find, if the situation hadn´t been so critical, would have been very funny.

Her husband stood on the toilet, completely soaked, as was most of the tiled floor and matching blue walls. He had Troy clutched to his chest, the little boy dripping wet, and still soapy from the looks of things, peering down into the bathtub in slightly horrified fascination. As nothing seemed to be on fire or in danger of blowing up, she lowered her hand from where it was poised above the wand in her hair. "Brian?" She questioned. "What´s going on?"

Troy giggled at her and pushed both of his hands towards the tub. "Ducky."

Brian hefted him a bit farther away from the tub and gave her a wide-eyed look. He was dumbstruck--Harmony had seen that particular look many times back in the medical camps during the wars. "Brian," she repeated firmly, drawing his attention to her, "what´s going on?"

He blinked at a sense of normalcy returned to his eyes, making her sigh in relief, and pointed at the bathtub, apparently unable to find words.

Jenny pushed her way past Harmony and wandered over to the bathtub, curious to see what was going on. "Oh cool," she exclaimed, and leaned over into the tub.

"Jenny," Brian hissed, "Don´t!"

His daughter didn´t listen, and shoved her hands into the water to grab something. Harmony heard a rustle of what sounded like wings, and much to her surprise, a quack. Jenny, apparently having trouble, climbed back into the tub, and after a few moments of splashing, Jenny grinned. "I got it!"

There, in her outstretched hands, was the rubber duck that Troy couldn´t take his bath without. She had both her hands clamped around its wings, but the duck itself was still made of rubber. It was just animated. As Harmony looked down at it, the rubber head cocked and it stared back at her with painted-on eyes. Quack.

Up on the toilet, Brian inched backwards.

Harmony glanced at the duck, then up at her son, who was watching it happily. A smile twisted the corners of her mouth, and only years of practice kept her laughter from bubbling up. She apparently didn´t have to worry if her half-breed son was a squib now--she had her answer.

And a lot of explaining to do.

She smiled reassuringly at Brian, watching out of the corner of her eye as Hindi sat down at her feet and regarded the now mobile duck. "It´s okay, Brian," she pulled on her best bedside manners. "It´s not going to hurt you. It´s just a duck."

Brian looked at her like she had grown horns, and Harmony supposed that in his view, she might have. She wasn´t even remotely surprised by the duck that was now wriggling in their daughter´s hands. "Really," she soothed. "I can explain."

Troy reached towards Jenny and his favorite toy. "Ducky."

Her husband shook his wet blonde head. "It just...happened. Troy wouldn´t hold still, so I put the duck on the edge of the tub. He got upset, and the next thing I know there was water everywhere, the duck," he eyed the toy in Jenny´s hands. "It moves. And I know it didn´t do that before."

Of course it didn´t. It was a rubber duck. Their son had just put an animation charm on it.

"How can you explain that," Brian demanded.

"Very easily," she returned, "but it´s a long explanation, and one you´re probably not going to believe at first." She smiled at him, hoping this would all work out. "Why don´t you go to our room and put some dry clothes on, and I´ll finish up with Troy and get the kids to bed. And then I´ll explain to you exactly what happened to Troy´s toy."

Brian regarded her with slightly suspicious eyes, but he trusted her. Even after she´d left him for a year, he was willing to give her that much leeway. He stepped off the toilet and handed her Troy, who was still happily watching the toy in Jenny´s hands. "I´ll be downstairs," he murmured, walking past her. "Probably with the bottle of brandy."

Harmony watched him go, then turned to her children, who were both fascinated with the duck, and completely unbothered by the fact that it could move. She deposited Troy back in the bathtub and deftly transferred the toy into the water, handing Jenny a fresh towel. "Dry off and nightgown," she ordered.

"But Momma!"

"No buts, Jenny. I have to explain to your Dad tonight. I´ll explain to you tomorrow."

Jenny knew better than to question her mother when she used that particular tone of voice and took the towel without comment, casting a last longing glance at the duck, which was now happily swimming through the water, playfully pecking at Troy´s toes. "You promise?"

"I promise," the dark-haired woman returned, "Now get moving. The sooner you go to sleep the sooner morning will come."

Jenny pounded down the hall towards her room, and Harmony turned her attention down to her son. She smiled at him and ran her hands through his soapy hair, and watched as he played with his creation. "You are going to be quite the Charms student, aren´t you?"

Troy grinned, showing her his white teeth. "Come on," she sighed, wiping a loose strand of hair out of her face as she knelt on the wet floor. "Let´s get you cleaned up so I can go explain to your Daddy."

With the duck to amuse him, it took her very little time to get the soap rinsed off of him and carried to bed. In no time at all she found herself standing at the foot of the stairs, duck in hand, watching Brian drain a glass of brandy while Hindi sat in the chair opposite him.

Taking a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders and strode into the room. It was now or never.

Brian looked up as she walked in, pouring himself another glass of the amber liquid. "You want some?"

"No thanks," she returned, settling herself in the chair across from him to watch him carefully. Hindi prowled over to her and began sniffing the duck, which quacked at her in protest. "Hindi," she chided, "leave the duck alone."

"Mrrow." The kitten gave her an insolent glare but laid down and waited for the fireworks to come.

Brian glanced up at her, blue eyes slightly haunted. He gestured vaguely towards the duck that she´d placed on the coffee table. "How do you explain that? Ducks just don´t magically come alive."

Harmony couldn´t hide the sardonic smile that sprang to her lips. "Actually," she began softly, "they can."

Her husband glanced up, and she was glad to see the sharpness in his eyes. Good, the shock was gone; she wouldn´t have to explain this all to someone who couldn´t hear what she was trying to explain to him. "Brian," she admitted ruefully, "it´s about time I told you why I disappeared all those years ago."

He lifted his head and settled back into his chair, hands folded across his lap in a manner he used to indicate he was ready. "I´m listening."

"Well," she breathed, "I suppose I ought to start at the beginning. I come from a very ordinary family--my parents are dentists, but I was never quite...normal." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, summoning the courage that she´d developed over her years as a Gryffindor before she uttered the words that would change her husband´s life forever. "I´m a witch."