When Magic is Useless

When Magic Is Useless: Chapter 7

Indus

They worked tirelessly for several hours, but in that time they barely scratched the surface of what was in the room. Every book had to be examined carefully by Hermione, Lily, Draco and Salazar before it could be opened and read. Many of them would have caused great pain or inconvenience, perhaps even death, had they not been so vigilant.

At last Hermione sighed and, rubbing her neck, closed the book before her. "I should go back. I doubt there's anything more I can do here today. My eyes are so tired that I would probably miss something anyway, and I do want to see Ron and tell him the good news."

"Hermione," Salazar said softly, looking at her worriedly. "You know that there is no guarantee..."

She would have replied hotly, for years of being married to Ron had helped her develop a considerable temper of her own, had it not been for his usage of her first name. He had been calling her Ms. Granger or Mrs. Weasley from the age of eight or nine, and calling her Hermione seemed a deliberate attempt to remind her that he had too been there at dark times, and had lost a great deal to the war she tried not to dwell on. Laz was no stranger to grief, and he was telling her not to expect the best, or encourage Ron to do the same. So rather than get angry, she forced herself to calmly reply, "I know that, my dear. But aside from his right to know what is going on in the search for a cure to what he is suffering from, I do believe that hope can only be good for him at this stage. And I do think that there is something here that will help us. I feel it."

"Well, far be it for us to deny your 'feelings,'" Draco interjected snidely. "But you're right about one thing, it is time to get back. There is a Quidditch game tomorrow I would like to see Slytherin win."

"Oh? - Who against?" Salazar asked. He missed Hogwarts, the only home he'd had in his entire life, a great deal, though he would not have chosen to be anywhere but at Malfoy Manor for the time being.

"Gryffindor," Lily and Art chorused. They looked at each other and laughed. Both were former team players, and still followed Hogwarts Quidditch faithfully. Art continued, "And Rowena has her first game as Captain of the team so you must want to see it very much, Aunt Hermione."

"Quidditch isn't quite my thing. She gets her interest, and her Keeping skills, from her father," Hermione smiled dryly. "I'm sure it must get just fascinating for you and Ginny too, Draco. And how do your kids handle it?"

"They support Hufflepuff." When his listeners broke into laughter, Draco grew even more petulant as he continued. "It was all Ales' idea, of course. She became very angry after a particularly competitive match and, though she was only three, broke away from her mother and joined Professor Sprout in the Hufflepuff section. Since then she has become an avid fan, and as they think its funny, all the other children follow her. I'm terrified she will be sorted into Hufflepuff next year."

"It would be greatly satisfying to be able to see the faces of all your ancestors if that were to happen, wouldn't it?" Hermione met her former nemesis' eyes and they shared a quick memory of Draco's Slytherin-loving father, and imagined how he would react to a grandchild of his being sorted into Hufflepuff. And it was quite possible. Though the daughter of two dynamic and very powerful wizards who had hundreds, if not thousands of years of magic behind them, Ales was one of the sweetest and least ambitious children either of them had known. Her parents had both been afraid that there was something wrong with her when she was a baby, especially compared to the twin brother who, only ten minutes younger, never seemed to be able to sit still or be quiet.

But though Draco was not a demonstrative father like the men in his wife's family were, he loved his children greatly. Even if he had not had his father's example of what not to do, he would not have remonstrated Ales for being a Hufflepuff. After all, when his children were just babies he had become all too familiar with the fact that he could lose them, at any time and in a horrific way, as Ron and Hermione had lost their first-born son.

As Hermione and Draco packed up to leave, Lily sent an owl to her trainer, asking for some time before returning to Headquarters. Normally, a request such as that would have been considered only as a reason to dismiss a trainee immediately, but these were special conditions. Aurors were very protective about their own, and Ron and Hermione were two of the best. It was helpful also that no one doubted her father would be their leader after he retired from the field.

Art had only to owl his uncles to inform them of his decision to stay, though he did, for form's sake, hastily scribble a request for permission. He received an exultant reply from Fred so quickly that for the first time Art realized how worried the two of them were about their younger brother. But then he had not known them when they were younger, and how good they were at hiding how much they cared about things they did not want to appear to care about. Before Angelina's death, the Weasleys had known that Fred cared for her, but from his casual disregard they had not assumed it to be serious until her death almost destroyed him. True to form, Fred sought comfort in the arms of many women, marrying more than a few of them, but was always searching for the capable, strong woman he had considered a friend as well as a lover.

The four of them rested their eyes and relaxed their minds in the remodeled living room. Ginny had changed it from something reminiscent of the Slytherin common room to a comfortable, cosy place to sit on chilly evenings such as then, though the colors were green, silver and black in honor of her husband. She had, however, done the summer equivalent of that room in Gryffindor colors. Malfoy Manor was more than a little mismatched in terms of colors and furnishings, but they were now both fond of it.

Salazar Snape slumped in an overstuffed arm chair by the fire, dozing off to the sounds of Art and Lily in the midst of an argument over where their wedding was to take place, with Ash trying to keep the peace. He didn't know whose idea it was to begin a chess game, but the next time he opened his eyes it was to a silent room, with Art deliberating over his next move as Ash glared at him. Art was no great chess player, and it was almost certain that he was cheating as he was neck-in-neck with his cousin. It was normally quite difficult to cheat at chess, especially when playing against Ron Weasley or his progeny, but they were using multiple level boards, and Ash couldn't watch all the boards at the same time. Salazar turned his head slightly to look for Lily, and jumped. She was sitting on the arm of his chair, her head propped in her palm, examining him closely.

"Merlin, Lily, what are you doing?" He meant to shout the question, but it came out as a hiss. It had struck him subconsciously that this was going to be one of those conversations that couldn't be held in a group.

"Looking at you," she answered, her voice no louder than his, but as determined as the light in her unfathomable green eyes. Not for the first time, Laz realized how beautiful she was, with hair she most likely spelled to look tousled rather than wild as her grandfather's had and her father's still did, and emerald eyes ringed with long, dark lashes. Her face was not scarred, but he knew her leg was, from a Quidditch game she had played as brilliantly as the men that came before her. It has been a vicious, bloody injury caused by a Bludger, and though Poppy could have healed the wound without leaving a scar, she had insisted on keeping it. Harry had not liked the thought of a scar on his little girl, especially as a symbol of victory when the scars that marred his face and body signified all that he, and people he cared for, had lost. It had led to a surprisingly strong argument, and the frustrations felt by his children, as heirs to a legacy even greater than his own because he had added so much to it after his mother's sacrifice, were brought out into the open. And like so many things become after being exposed to air, the poisonous feelings and resentments that both his children felt shriveled up and died when their father acknowledged them and their right to forge their own path, live their own lives, as he had fought to do when he had been young. And just as it had been for him, as they grew, they learned the value of striking a balance between not allowing roots to hold one back and using them for support and strength when both are needed.

Though she was still not quite twenty, Lily had grown into a capable young woman. She had once met Art prank for prank, but losing Ash had been a blow she could not recover from easily. And now, her father's immeasurable grief at the prospect of losing his best friend reminded her of what it had been like to lose hers.

So it was with a newfound ability to be gentle and tactful that she asked about the relationship between the Healer and the ward-keeper. "This is new, isn't it? Art and I have seen it coming for a while, but we didn't pick up on their actually being anything until yesterday."

"Which would be just about when it began," Laz smiled wryly, his brow lifted in a sardonic challenge. Ginny often swore that was something Slytherins were taught in their dungeon.

She swallowed, trying to ignore the unexpected prudishness of her reaction to his words, but he had his father's ability to look through her.

"Yes, it was rather quick of us, wasn't it? To go to bed on the first- well you can't even call it a date, can you?"

Lily wasn't a fool and was more than a little annoyed at his deliberate attempts to discomfit her. "I suppose not. But then you've been courting him for more than a few months, haven't you?"

In turn, her usage of the word 'courting' made him uncomfortable and he shifted a little in his seat. "Do you have a problem with that?" As with his father, words were one of his most powerful weapons, and he knew the advantage of suddenly shifting the offensive.

But he was talking to someone who managed not only to tolerate Art, but also to love him and want to spend the rest of her life with him, so she had learned the hard way how to handle the unexpected. "Well, not with the idea of the two of you, and I believe how you choose to conduct yourselves in your private lives is your business, and not mine. I certainly don't have a problem with your gender preferences since Sirius and Remus are the closest people to parents my father has ever had, and as such what they do is beyond reproach in my family. As it is, I think prejudice is the indulgence of the weak-minded, and I pride myself on being anything but weak-minded. I do, however, care for both of you a great deal, and Art is getting closer to Ash every day. He's filling a place in both of us I didn't think could ever be filled by anyone again, and what hurts him hurts us."

"I won't hurt him," Laz shot back, finally moved to anger himself.

"Not on purpose, I'm sure. But you can't promise me that you wont when things change, can you? If you'd asked me a year, two or three years ago, if my parents would ever allow anything to split them apart, I would have said no. But now..."

"Are your parents having problems?" Salazar placed a hand on her cheek, and his voice was soft. Since Harry had lived with his godparents for a while after Hogwarts, and still visited them often, Severus Snape's son had been especially close to the Potter children. And Harry's wife had been one of the few adult female presences in an adolescence guided almost entirely by men.

"They've always argued about things, but living in separate houses is a bad sign, wouldn't you say?" When Laz merely looked confused, her eyes widened and she slapped her forehead in self- recrimination. "Oh, that's right, you haven't been at Hogwarts lately so you have no idea! My father actually moved into Hogwarts about a month ago. My mother said he might as well, as he spent most of his time there anyway, and she needed to work a stable job."

"She resents his time with Ron," Laz was nothing if not painfully blunt.

Lily flushed at what she considered an implicit condemnation of the woman she adored, even if they were vastly different on a great many points. "She cares for Ron a great deal, and does want him to be well. But I think she needs him to be there for her as well. The second war, it made him a little distant and it was as if that didn't matter at first. There was this little space between them that they could ignore. But then two decades worth of space was altogether too much to ignore."

"I never noticed anything," Laz countered, but it was a lie. While Harry had been the type of father who hugged and kissed his children, there was an awkwardness to it that both served as proof of his sincere love for his children, and the lack of such attention in his own childhood. While his own father had not held him a great deal, and he couldn't remember even being kissed by him, he had always seen a similarity between his own father and Harry Potter, especially when compared to the Weasleys, who were nothing if not demonstrative. They both held themselves back, as if they were still frightened that if they loved too deeply some form of Voldemort would return and take the objects of their devotion from them. It was the opposite of Remus Lupin, who loved deeply but rarely indulged in physical demonstrations.

As if she could read his thoughts, Lily pointed out, "It's not that he doesn't love all three of us a great deal as much as he is afraid to admit it even to himself. And there's a limit, I think, to how long a woman can live under conditions such as that. Plus she is a Muggle, and I think she's more than a little tired of losing us to a world she can never belong to."

"Do you think they will get through it?" Salazar didn't often feel as off-balance and awkward as he did now, but he gamely pressed on, thinking to himself that this was much more difficult that getting Art back on a broom after an embarrassing spill.

For all the pretence at composure, Lily was obviously shaken and near tears as she shrugged. "For some reason, I think it's tied to what we're doing here. Maybe this is stupid but I believe that all of our problems will disappear if we can only win the war against that one."

"They won't," Ash broke in, thinking of an ever-young red-haired man and a dream that had not been a dream and had led them here. "Something is coming."

Lily, who had jumped at his voice, not having heard him approach, squinted at him in confusion. "Well, that sounded rather creepy. What, and how do you know?"

He just raised an eyebrow in a gesture reminiscent of his lover, and announced his attention to return to the library. He was joined by Salazar, and it was decided that Lily and Art would sleep until it was time to change shifts.

*

Hermione and Draco walked into the Great Hall to find the students in the midst of the pre-match excitement that always gripped them dinners before Quidditch was played between the two most competitive houses. Space had been made for a Weasley table now that school had restarted, and her husband and various relatives of his, and Harry, were also animatedly discussing the game she attended out of support for the people she loved, but consistently made clear her opinion that it was taken far too seriously. Almost three decades of being a witch, and she was still an idiot, her husband usually remarked at that point.

She didn't know she was crying until she reached the table and, in the silence that fell upon her approach, Ron reached up and touched her face. There was a babble of questions, and she started to laugh a little hysterically. "No, no we haven't found the cure yet! But I think we're close. We found a hidden library in the Manor"-

Harry jumped on those words. "Why didn't you tell us about the room, Malfoy? How could you keep that from us?"

Oddly enough, it was Ron who gently took Draco's side, for Ginny looked too angry to speak. "I think Hermione means that it was hidden from him, too, mate. What makes you so certain that it's there, love?"

Though he was obviously addressing his wife, it was Draco who answered. "I'm not sure. But the boy, Ash, seems to not have a doubt. Rather odd, isn't he? I'm not quite sure what he knows of all this, but sometimes I think it's a little more than the rest of us."

"You think he's involved?" Penny asked anxiously. Aside from his proximity to her son, he had been in her house a great deal since the meeting with Art in Diagon Alley, and she had grown more than a little fond of him.

"Penny!" Hermione exclaimed, not having noticed the woman she had grown close to since they became sisters until then. They hugged, Hermione leaning more into the embrace than she normally did. "We'll talk later," she murmured. Penny squeezed her hand in comfort and nodded.

"I came up for a meeting with Remus and Minerva. It appears your daughter and my first-year son have decided to ensure Hogwarts is never without a Weasley trouble-maker. Merlin, I don't remember the twins being this bad!"

"What did they do?" But before Penny could tell her, the women were distracted by Remus's slightly hoarse, but calm interjection into the growing argument over Ash.

"I trust the boy implicitly. What he knows of, I'm not sure, but I am certain of nothing as much as that he has your best interests at heart, Ron."

Ron smiled. "Good, because he is an excellent chess player, perhaps the best I have played against, and I'd hate"-

"Oh, of course," Hermione broke in caustically. "If he's a good Quidditch or chess player, he must be all right."

As the table broke into laughter, Ron wrinkled his nose and pretended to think about what she had said objectively. His years as an Auror had taught him to buy into that theory any more than his wife or best friend ever had, but he enjoyed tweaking her temper. There was so little to laugh about these days, anyway, what with his health and the break-up of Harry's marriage. He had more than a little guilt over his role in that, too, though Harry vehemently denied an perceived responsibility. "Well, how better to learn the value of fair play? And a fair player is a good wizard..."

"When's the last time you saw a Quidditch game where everyone played fair?" She shot back.

"Besides," Penny added, "Art told me your brothers have designed a multiple level chess board that allows a player to cheat. It is nearly impossible for the white pieces to win."

"Oh, how does that work?" Ron leaned forward in interest.

As four or five separate conversations began on the table, which was decidedly fuller than usual when Penny, Remus and Sirius joined them, Hermione leaned back and wished, not for the first time, that it were possible to capture every essence of moments like these. Even Harry was participating animatedly, pushing aside his personal demons. Wouldn't it be wonderful, she mused, if we could go back in our minds and see and feel what we saw and felt when we were happy with people who might not always be a part of our lives? And wouldn't it be perfect if that were ever enough?

Later that night, she unpacked her bag in slow, measured movements. Though Snape was more than competent to brew the reviving potion in Ash's absence, Ron was noticeably weaker than he had been at Christmas. Although she had only been gone a day, Hermione felt her heart ache as she observed perceived differences in appearance in that amount of time.

Ron felt her eyes on him, and frowned. "I'm fine, Hermione. You're a nutter sometimes, you know that?"

She laughed, sending her bushy hair, which was magically free of gray, bouncing and flying. "So you're feeling fine, are you?"

Hearing a note in her voice he hadn't heard for a while, replaced as it was by a grating concern, Ron raised his eyebrows. "Are we in the mood?"

"Well," she purred. "I don't know if we are, but I certainly am." With that, she grabbed his collar and pulled his towards her. Pushing away the thought that she might lose him, she pressed her lips and body against his.

*

"This looks promising," Ash remarked, holding out a book titled Obscure Curses and Weapons for the Unintelligent. Salazar glanced at it and laughed. "Who wrote that?"

"The name on it is- I can't make it out. The cover is too worn. Can you open it for me?"

Salazar took it and tried several spells that would uncover curses so he could counter them and open the book. As his search turned up nothing, he tried more complicated enchantments, but they, too, proved in vain. "I'm not sure, but I think this book isn't cursed." Then, upon Ash's making a grab for it, he pulled it towards him and continued, "But I'm tired. I might have missed something."

"You didn't. Let me open it," Ash whined, sounding impossibly young at that moment, as people tend to when they want something just out of reach.

Sticking his tongue out in a gesture that he would later blame on exhaustion as well, Salazar opened it himself, and smiled in genuine enjoyment. "Damien Weasley, 1881. No wonder it wasn't cursed!"

Ash had been echoing Salazar' smile until the words sunk in. "Another Weasley. This entire mess has been about us, about families, hasn't it?"

Their eyes met in sudden confidence that this was it. This was what they had been looking for all along. Ash quietly moved his chair so that he was sitting next to Laz rather than across from him, and they both began to decipher the yellowed, spotted pages marred by a spidery, fading quill in Latin.

*

Art and Lily bounded in, full of righteous indignation. "You didn't wake us!"

But they both stopped and shared an affectionately amused glance. Ash and Salazar were slumped over an open book, their faces turned to each other and only a breath apart, both snoring quietly. Their faces showed their exhaustion, and Lily turned to her intended, whispering, "We should get them to bed."

Art walked to them and examined their progress. "They've read quite a bit, haven't they?" He glanced curiously at the book their heads were resting on, and what he saw caused his heart to jump into his throat. "Lily, they've found it!"

THE END