Dark Gods in the Blood

Chapter Twelve

Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you

would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest

trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a

dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you -- you

so remote from the night of first ages -- could comprehend.

-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The owl that usually delivered Ron's Daily Prophet was running a bit late. When he'd found out that Hermione read it, Ron decided not to cancel his subscription as he'd originally planned.

Ron all but lived with Françoise and the kids any more. Periodically, he'd go over to the Burrow for a meal or spend an afternoon at his flat with Hermione, convincing her not to throw out anything that may or may not be important as she decided that there was only so much clutter she could put up with. But any other time, if he wasn't at work, he was at the Potter home.

In fact, she was to join him today. He was looking after the kids while Petunia treated Françoise to something called a 'day of beauty.' Hermione was admittedly fuzzy on what such a thing would entail, but she suspected various bits of bodies would be waxed and therefore wanted to hear no more on the matter.

But Ron had Flooed last night and invited her to spend the day over at the Potters'. He promised fun. She wasn't sure about the 'fun' bit, but it would be nice to spend some time with Ron.

And the Daily Prophet was late.

There was no television, no radio, nothing of any Muggle entertainment at all. Ron didn't even have any books. Well, that wasn't entirely true. But she had no interest in books such as Keeper Legends of Yesteryear and what looked to be a collection of more than fifty books on the Dark Arts. She'd only read half of them before and the other half looked rather more unsavory than she'd like to tackle so early in the morning.

So Hermione sipped disconsolately at a cup of tea and stared at the top of the table, wondering what she could do for another hour.

She'd already cleaned as well as she was going to. Hermione was not a neat-freak by any stretch of the imagination, but she had no interest in living in abject filth either, so she'd gone over Ron's flat rather thoroughly as soon as she moved in. Fortunately, everything came out rather clean and Hermione was fairly content. The bed was comfortable, the furniture wasn't too musty smelling, and Ron refused to accept so much as a Knut of rent money from her in the two weeks she'd stayed there. "You've wasted entirely too much living in that dratted hotel," he told her the first time she'd tried to pay him.

A scratching at the door signaled the paper's arrival -- finally -- and Hermione stood quickly, opening the door and picking it up off the doormat.

As before, she started from the back and worked her way forward. She did not question her reasoning as she did this, really. It just seemed like a good idea.

Advertisements -- Gladrags was running a sale next week, she noted -- and marriage announcements -- good Lord, was that Dennis Creevey she saw smiling down at that pretty young witch?

Obituaries. Hermione read more slowly now, with more interest. An eighty-year-old witch that passed away in St. Mungo's after a protracted illness. A hundred-seventy-year-old wizard mauled by a Manticore. Only a handful of deaths greeted her eyes.

The entry at the top of the page snagged her interest. A young man smiled sadly at her from the photograph. Forty-year-old Alisander Weaver, the obituary read. Died 'at home,' whatever that meant. Survived by his wife and his fourteen-year-old son, currently attending Hogwarts. Weaver, a potions manufacturer by trade, was apparently an upstanding member of his small community in Buckinghamshire.

Forty years old, she mused, flipping the page over idly. Dead at forty.

And he died at home. Hermione wondered once again if that was polite speech for suicide. After all, it would hardly be prudent to say, 'Weaver poisoned himself,' or whatever had actually happened.

Dead at forty.

A wife and son, to boot. Poor kid, she thought. His Head of House probably had to tell him. She tried to imagine being sat down by McGonagall at the age of fourteen -- in her fourth year, then -- and told that her father was dead. That her father 'died at home.' What would she have done? What would this little boy do?

Hermione shook her head suddenly, as if to push the thought out of her brain, not wanting to be alone. Ron would just have to deal with her being half-an-hour early.

-- -- -- -- --

"You're early," Ron said as he opened the door. "I was hoping to have the kids properly washed and brushed before you got here -- like to show them off at their best advantage, you see. But Nicholas, I believe, is sitting in the den watching television in not much and Alice is nearly ready for her after-breakfast bath, aren't you, love?" he asked the little girl dangling from his hip, covered in sticky substances with juice running down her front.

"No bath," Alice tried. "Not dirty, Unca Ron."

"If I left you out here for much longer, Alice, you'd attract dogs," he said dryly, poking her gummy cheek and eliciting a giggle. "Oh!" Startled, he looked back over at Hermione, who was just standing on the front porch, looking bemused. "Where are my manners? Come in. Maybe you could coax Nicholas into some clothes. You do seem to be his new favorite."

"Good morning to you too, Ron," she said, sweeping past him and into the house. "Here I was, thinking I'd get to spend some nice quality time with my best friend, but instead he expects me to work?" She huffed teasingly.

He grinned. "Give me fifteen minutes to scrub the scamp here and then I'll be the perfect host. Tea and biscuits, even."

"Biscuits?" Alice echoed hopefully.

"Oh, not for you," he told her as he walked off into the interior of the house. "I've already fed you too much syrup on your hotcakes as it is. Any more sugar, and you won't sleep for a week."

The conversation faded and Hermione felt rather awkward lingering in the foyer. Deciding there was nothing for it, she bravely walked into the sitting room alone.

As Ron had said, Nicholas was sitting in the middle of the floor, propped up on his elbows, watching some indecipherable cartoon nonsense flash across the screen. He also happened to only be wearing a pair of underwear and what seemed to be a perfectly serviceable pile of clothes was heaped to one side. Suppressing a laugh, Hermione coughed softly to announce herself.

Nicholas jumped a bit, rolling over and eyes widening as he saw who it was. "Oh!" he cried, leaping to his feet. "I'm sorry ... please don't tell Uncle Ron ... or my mum either," he said as an afterthought. "I'm supposed to be dressed."

She nodded at the clothes now at his feet, as straight-faced as she could manage. "So I'd gathered."

Fumbling slightly, he pulled on the trousers and t-shirt lying on the floor. "Mum lets us wear Muggle clothes on the weekend," he told her, grunting slightly as he awkwardly buttoned up his little jeans.

"It's Wednesday," Hermione replied, corners of her mouth twitching.

"Uncle Ron lets them wear what they damn well please," Ron said casually from the doorway, clutching a marginally cleaner Alice.

The little girl clapped her hands. "Damn!"

He sighed as Nicholas laughed. "It's like she wants to make Françoise angry with me," Ron said forlornly.

Grinning, Hermione sat down in a nearby chair, doing her best to look innocent. "Actually, Ron, I don't know if she learned that particular one from you or not."

"Oh, really? Have you been corrupting her as well?" he asked, setting her on her feet.

Alice made a beeline for Nicholas, throwing her chubby arms as far around him as she could manage. "Nic'las!"

Making a face, he pushed her away.

But Alice was nothing if not determined, grabbing on for dear life and laughing as Nicholas shoved even harder.

"Geroff me, Alice," he growled as she yanked on his shirt.

"Are they always like this?" Hermione asked conversationally, watching the siblings either struggle or play -- she wasn't entirely sure.

Ron shrugged. "More often than not. Poor Nicholas spends a fair amount of time as Alice's personal punching bag, but he's fairly tolerant about it. Sometimes, though, he'll just ... oh, shit," he sighed as Alice began to cry. "Nicholas!" he reprimanded sternly.

Trying his best to look blameless, Nicholas gave his uncle a wide-eyed stare. As if he hadn't just slapped his toddler sister and knocked her to the ground. "She started it!" he protested.

"But you're bigger," Ron replied in what Hermione thought was a very reasonable tone. "You can't go around hitting her, Nicholas. You could really hurt her without meaning to. No matter who started it." This was accompanied by an unsmiling look.

"Sorry, Uncle Ron," he grumbled, glaring at his still-sniffling sister. "But I think she knows exactly what she's doing. She likes seeing me in trouble." The glare intensified and Alice's tears waned.

Studying the baby's red-rimmed eyes, Hermione had to concede that there was a devious sort of little sparkle in them. They weren't crocodile tears exactly -- she had been hurt -- but the vindictive glee Hermione saw there did not seem to belong to a two-year-old. Almost two-year-old. Whatever.

But Ron was having none of it. "Sorry, mate," he told Nicholas cheerfully. "I'm afraid that's sort of a 'little sister' prerogative. Little brother, too, for that matter. I used to get the twins in trouble all the time when we were young. Come to think of it, though," he said, tone becoming more thoughtful, "the twins usually deserved what they got. But turnabout is fair play -- Ginny did the same thing to me when I tried to play 'big brother.'"

By this time, Alice seemed to have recovered nicely, toddling over to the television and poking a few buttons with obvious curiosity. "Piggy?" she asked no one in particular.

"Oh, no," Nicholas moaned, putting his head in his hands melodramatically. "Can't you watch anything but that stupid talking pig?"

"Piggy," she repeated more stubbornly. "Watch piggy! Alice watch piggy." Her bottom lip was protruding dangerously and she gave the television screen a little smack with the palm of her hand.

"All right, Alice," Ron cried, moving over to put a calming hand on the top of her head. "I'll put it in." He pulled a rectangular little plastic case out of a cabinet that featured a Muggle photograph of a pig, among a few other common barnyard animals.

"Piggy," Alice said again in a decidedly happier voice.

Hermione was amused. "Boy, she's got every male in this household wrapped firmly around her finger, doesn't she?"

"Françoise isn't far behind," Ron said as he worried the plastic box open. &ldqu;Uh oh," he groaned, glancing back and forth between the television and whatever the box held. "Nicholas, would you ...?"

Rolling his eyes and emitting a sigh that clearly showed this to be a reoccurring phenomenon, Nicholas plucked the case out of Ron's hands. "It's not that hard, you know," he said, punching a few buttons on a black box sitting beside the television that Hermione hadn't noticed before. "Just put the disc in and hit the play button. It even says play on it."

"That's not a VCR, then," Hermione said dubiously, watching introductory credits flash up on the television screen as Nicholas turned it on.

"It's a PVC machine," Ron replied.

"DVD player," Nicholas corrected, rolling his eyes again. "Papa ... Papa brought it home before Alice was born. We watch movies on it."

She peered at the machine with mild interest. "So films are on CD's now? When did that happen?"

Nicholas shrugged and settled down on the sofa, permitting Alice to snuggle into his side. "Dunno. Before I was born, though. What's a VCR?"

"It was what we had before your DVD thing, I guess," she replied, still looking at the contraption, running her fingers over the black plastic with vague curiosity. "It played tapes instead of CD's."

"DVD's," Nicholas amended. "And what are tapes?"

With a short laugh at his confused expression (and Ron's as well), Hermione threw her hands up in the air. "I give up!" she cried playfully. "You'll have to dig out a history book, Nicholas."

"I wonder," he began after a beat of silence. "If --"

"Hush, Nic'las," Alice reprimanded him, her stern little face ludicrously juxtaposed with her bobbing curls and round cheeks. "Piggy."

Ron watched Hermione try to suppress her giggles with something approaching cheerful resignation. "I suppose if we're to have any conversation, then," he said, "we ought to take it out of the room, so that little Miss Alice here can enjoy her film."

"Piggy, Unca Ron," the little girl in question admonished. "Piggy movie."

He laughed at her look of consternation. "Oh, all right, you little Nazi. Come on, Hermione. Fancy a cuppa?"

Following him into the kitchen, she watched him set a kettle of water on the stove and then hasten back to the doorway to check on Alice and Nicholas. She sat down at the round table and soon, recalling just what had happened to that poor table, leapt back to her feet.

Smiling mirthlessly at her, Ron turned the heat up under the kettle and began fiddling in a cabinet. "Hard, isn't it?"

"I understand what Ginny meant," she replied faintly. "I certainly couldn't manage living here after ... after ... well, just after."

He stuck his head through the archway into the den once again. "You kids need anything?"

There was an indignant high-pitched squeal in response. "Quiet!" Alice practically howled.

After a slight pause, another little voice floated into the kitchen. "Can ... can I have some tea?" Nicholas asked softly, hovering in the doorway and looking up at Ron hopefully.

Ron gave the boy's head a pat. "Milk."

"Tea," he countered with a frown.

"Milk," Ron said firmly. "Nicholas, you know your mum doesn't like you having tea at your age. Besides, you're a growing boy and all that. Milk's good for you."

Glowering venomously, Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest. "Papa let me have tea when I wanted it."

Ron matched him glare for glare. "First of all, Nicholas, I know that's not true. And second of all, I'm not your father."

"Then stop acting like you are!" he shouted, running from the room. Hermione heard his feet thudding as he raced up the stairs.

With a rueful smile, Ron shrugged at Hermione's questioning look. "Nicholas and I have always had a rather dysfunctional working relationship," he said, rattling teacups. "It's got to steep a bit."

"Of course," she replied, hoping he would continue if she held her tongue.

"Nicholas ..." he began, leaning against the counter and regarding a spoon with apparent interest. After a moment, he snorted. "Petunia calls him a 'sensitive boy.'"

"So I've heard," she said dryly, eliciting a rather emotionless chuckle.

Decisively, firmly, Ron laid the spoon on the counter, running his thumb around its handle, deep in thought. "He's never really liked me, I don't think. You see, for all his dratted sensitivity, what Nicholas really wants is to be able to properly assess things. Decide their function, their purpose. He's simply frightfully good at it. That's the sensitivity -- he knows what people are. He takes their measure as soon as he looks twice at them."

"Intuitive," she interjected.

He smiled at the spoon. "Perhaps. But the problem he has with me is that I somehow defy his little scheme. He has this mental image -- this ideal form -- of what his Uncle Ron should be. And I --" His smile turned self-deprecating. "I am sadly lacking. He resents me for this, I think. For not being enough like ..." Finally, Ron tore his gaze from the silver spoon and his eyes bore into hers. "Sorry. I do run on, don't I?"

"Oh, I don't mind," Hermione said with a sly look. "I like learning new and interesting things, you see."

His laugh was closer to genuine and he began pouring out the tea. "Is this a good time, then, for me to attempt to learn some new and interesting things about you?" He handed her a cup.

"Your efforts at subtlety are rather pathetic, Ron," she replied demurely, taking a cautious sip and wincing as the hot liquid scalded her tongue.

"I don't like it," he said, apparently immune to boiling water as he took a long draught from his own cup. "You breeze in after thirteen years without a word and then you won't tell me a damned thing about where you've been. It worries me, Hermione. Especially since I know why you left."

She did not meet his eyes. "You can't," she said.

His tone was bland. "I can guess, though. But I'll leave it for now, Hermione. Just know that I'll have the truth from you one way or another. Remember -- I'm an Auror. I can strap you down to a table and force-feed you Veritaserum. And I'd do it without so much as a second of remorse."

"Speaking of ..." she said in a transparent attempt to change the subject. "I was wondering about the investigation ... you know ..."

Shrugging, Ron drained his cup -- Hermione had not even managed a second swallow of hers. "It goes," he replied. "They still won't tell me much. It's so damned infuriating. Kingsley interrogates me about Albus' assignment over and over but won't throw me so much as a scrap of information. I'm on the verge of stealing the case file."

"Assignment?" she echoed delicately. "Ron, what do you ...?"

He was silent for several beats, making a pretense of cleaning up the tea things. "I shouldn't tell you," he said as he rinsed out his cup. "Albus made me swear." He emptied the kettle out and sat it beside the stove. "But then again ... I can't see what it would hurt. There's no reason any longer ..." Both his voice and his expression were grave. "Hermione, you've got to promise me that what I tell you won't leave this room. Not a soul. Understand?"

Wordlessly, excitement bubbling in her gut, Hermione nodded.

"You know that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was defeated back during our seventh year," he began. "Well ... his corporeal bits, at any rate."

She nodded again, a bit impatiently this time.

"What you don't know is that Voldemort didn't really die entirely until Harry himself died," Ron said bluntly.

Hermione blinked, trying to process his statement. "Ron ..."

With a wave of his hand, he cut her question off before it could start. "We're not sure exactly how Harry survived that attack when he was a baby."

She did have something to say to that. "I thought Dumbledore said it was --"

Ron's voice was gentle. "Albus was trying to comfort an eleven-year-old boy, Hermione," he said. "He said what Harry needed to hear -- nothing more. The truth of the matter is -- and this is completely confidential -- is that we have no idea what happened that night. The best guess we have is that either Lily or James Potter cast some sort of protection spell over their son. And not a standard one, either. The details are, fortunately, not incredibly important. The upshot is that Harry and Voldemort were bonded that night. Something in their souls."

Letting out a deep breath, Hermione wrapped her hands around her teacup, wanting to feel something at least vaguely familiar underneath her fingertips. "Bonded," she muttered, more to herself than Ron. "That makes sense. But didn't Harry --?"

"Of course he knew," Ron said impatiently. "How could he not? Voldemort was practically trawling through his mind nightly for two and a half years at least."

She noticed that he was actually saying the Dark Lord's name. "Then what would Dumbledore need to keep all of this a secret for?" she asked dumbly, not seeing Ron's point.

"Hermione, the link went both ways," he said in a gentle voice. "The concern had always been not that Voldemort would use Harry, but that Harry would use Voldemort. That there were bits of his soul that were, in essence, the Dark Lord's. Apparently the Parseltongue was far more significant to Dumbledore than he let on. It was a sign that Harry could subconsciously draw on Voldemort's will. The only reason Albus let Harry stay on at Hogwarts after his second year was because he managed to defeat the basilisk with Gryffindor's own sword."

"I always wondered why Dumbledore allowed the Chamber of Secrets to remain open," she said, finally taking another sip of tea. "According to Harry's story, he had to have at least an idea of what was going on. I never knew why he didn't try to do something."

Ron's expression was carefully blank. "It was a test of sorts, apparently," he conceded. "But Harry passed and that's what matters. Well, and that no one was hurt," he continued after a slight pause. "Harry was not watched quite as carefully after that, particularly after he became more aware of the link between him and Voldemort. But then he managed to defeat You-Know-Who and the game changed yet again."

She finished her tea. "I never knew how complicated it was. It all seemed so simple when we were living it -- the Dark Lord was evil and needed to be defeated, and we were good and needed to win. Nothing more."

"I didn't know until about three years after," he agreed. "After I finished my training at the Aurory. Albus called me into his office one day. I was surprised -- I'd attended plenty of Order meetings, but I'd never met with him alone, you know. As it turned out, he told me about all of this. You can imagine, I was pretty angry with him for a while."

Hermione considered his words. A fresh-faced, twenty-one-year-old Ron Weasley, full of self-righteous Gryffindor indignation and the brashness of youth, being told that his best friend had the potential to become the next Dark Lord. Angry was quite possibly an understatement.

"But I thought about it," he continued. "And at the end of it all, I realized he was right. We all loved Harry, and that made his protection tantamount. It was just sad that he might need to be protected from himself. And with Voldemort dead, we weren't sure how the residual energies he'd transferred to Harry would act. He needed to be watched."

With wide eyes, she anticipated his next words.

Ron smiled sadly. "You're right, Hermione. Dumbledore appointed me to be Harry's watchdog. I was in the perfect position for it -- closer to Harry than any other human being on the face of the Earth. And I was glad to do it, proud to do it. Because deep down, I knew what Dumbledore was too cautious to believe -- that Harry couldn't be Voldemort. No matter what bits of Voldemort he had bouncing around up in his head. Harry wanted nothing to do with any of it. So because of that, I agreed."

Staring down at the saucer in her hands, Hermione hated to ask her next question but knew there was no way around it. "So you're saying that Harry never ..."

"Never," Ron said firmly. "Harry wasn't a perfect fellow by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a vast difference between imperfection and evil."

She was quiet, not knowing exactly what to say.

"And that's what Kingsley wanted to ask about," he said. "He didn't know the particulars, of course, but he knew enough to wonder if maybe a motive for Harry's death was buried there. But he's got no worries -- I've already told him everything I know. Well," he amended, "everything I think Albus would want him to know."

Shaking her head, Hermione sat her teacup beside the sink. "Webs within webs," she commented. "When did life get so difficult?"

"It's always been difficult, love," he said, mood shifting from dismal to something almost resembling cheerful. "It just takes some of us longer to notice that fact than others."

-- -- -- -- --