Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

ooo

From the journal of Hermione Granger

5 January 1999, morning (the only one of them today)

Done, done, and done.

I put the last finish on it this morning, then sat back in my chair.

Draco was still sleeping, hugging the pillows-his, and then once I had vacated the bed, mine as well. He only murmured slightly when I shifted over and pulled the covers over him.

Under lamplight and utmost secrecy I began, and now I end.

The report is finished-the best guesses I can make about the means by which the Dementors might be Banished, and the traps that might await us.

Might await them. Pretty much unanimously they have let me know that I am not to be on the front line. As at Malfoy Manor for the Decommissioning, I am to be a witness and make notes of either the success or the failure.

The failure, if such it be -

I turn back to the manuscript once more.

Read it again for the fourth time.

There might be some error that will prove deadly, some miscalculation or scribe's error (mine or that of my sources) that will doom the effort.

ooo

The fourth rereading is no more enlightening than the third, and I must be honest with myself: I am stalling for time. I don't want to let this out of my hands. Never mind there's a copy should I find any errors; never mind that more than one set of eyes will be reading it.

I do not want to be in error.

It has to be perfect.

No, I say to that demon voice of student days; it has to meet requirements. There is only so much that I can do, and I have done it.

ooo

There. I've sent the Owl; it's done. The die is cast; Bill Weasley will meet me at Grimmauld Place in an hour. Eleven o'clock, which means that I'd best be dressed in something other than yesterday's clothes and my dressing gown.

Draco's still asleep, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth under his closed eyelids. His lips open and close, but no sound emerges. Whatever he meant to say does not break the surface of dream.

To it, then. A 'hot bath and then clean clothes. Floo to Grimmauld Place. It's done.

ooo

Tying the laces on my boots, I have to suppress laughter. On my list of things to accomplish in the post-war: Reform the Ministry. Well, it won't be coming to that, I'm afraid. The task was beyond my powers. The terms of the Banishing require revolution or annihilation.

And in a few minutes it's no longer in my hands.

Strike that one from the list, I think.

ooo

Bill's there, ever prompt, even as I step through the hearth-flames of Longbottom House to the even more ancient hearth of Grimmauld Place. He's sitting at the long table where everyone eats, in spite of the formal dining room upstairs. Dean's standing at the stove, finishing up a grand fry-up whose savor makes my mouth water.

Luna summons plates that line up on the counter like good soldiers, while Dean wrestles the big pan into place-then laughs, and takes his wand out of his pocket to direct the serving.

Four portions. Equal, until Bill says, "Not so much for me; I had a late breakfast."

"My breakfast was coffee," I say, "and quite some time ago."

I hand Bill the parcel with the report in it. He raises one eyebrow.

"For your eyes only, and it'll only open for your voice or Patronus."

"I'm assuming a Shrinking Charm."

"Well, yes, rather. The appendices are extensive."

He doesn't crack a smile at that. No, this isn't school, and I'm not the overzealous student. I'm the research department, and this is the semifinal report. People will be acting on this.

"I hope you have someone else reviewing it," I say. "I wouldn't like to be the only one signing off on the final approach."

"Oh for certain," Bill says, "the North Americans and the Central Europeans at a minimum, and some of our own as well."

"Don't let it get cold," Dean says, and I wonder if that's his mother talking through his voice. Luna nods and tucks in. So does Bill.

I lose myself. Food hasn't tasted this good-since the last time I forgot to eat. Slowly, slowly. I don't want to make myself sick.

ooo

I put my fork down. "So, the next steps."

"We'll be reviewing it. Griphook and the North Americans and some of the Order who aren't, er, encumbered. Some of our lot from Central Europe as well, Andrei Karkaroff in particular."

"When should I be returning the books?"

"Not for a bit yet for the standard texts. The rarer ones haven't been out of the stacks in some time."

"Some time?"

"Some centuries. Karkaroff may need those back for comparison.""

"So my next assignment?"

"Wait." My face must have gone quizzical, because he laughs. "I mean, your next assignment is to wait. It'll be a while before everyone's reviewed and compared notes." He raises an eyebrow. "Don't you have NEWTs coming soon?"

"Well, yes." An academic exercise, so to speak, but something to keep my mind off my troubles between now and the next task-

Retrieve my parents from Australia and undo the memory charm.

"Be prepared to travel on short notice," Percy had told me. So I am, so I am. My texts and notes for the NEWTs travel with me, now. I should rejoin my fellows at Hogwarts for the revision sessions, now that this task is over.

I wonder what my adversaries at the Ministry would make of it if they knew that my assigned busywork had such conclusions ...

Well, if we're successful, they'll never know.

"Percy says you're aiming at his record," Bill says. I nod. "He told me that you ought not to worry so much. You have the advantage of him in practical experience."

"The plural of Horcrux is not a question on the NEWTs." Augusta had said that - or had it been the Headmistress? In any case, it was true enough.

ooo

"The Headmistress tells me you're to be at Longbottom House until the trials," Bill says.

"Well, she hadn't informed me of that timeline, but I'd gathered as much. After - who knows?"

"Speaking of Longbottom House," Dean said, "I wanted to thank you for that introduction to Madam Longbottom. We had a very pleasant visit, and I've been introduced to the Sargent portrait. Miss Emily Chattox."

I turn to him. "And what did you make of her?"

"You were quite right. She had words on the subject of Quidditch, not to mention other matters." Dean smirks.

"I can only imagine."

"She asked after my work, and Luna's too, so we came back for tea and she went through our portfolios."

No, apparently I can't imagine.

"She said that wizarding Britain might be ready for its first impressionist exhibition."

"She particularly admired the portrait of Dean's father," Luna said. "Said she'd not considered the use of the Pensieve in painting. And then she and Dean's father had a lovely chat about Quidditch."

The posthumous portrait, for which apparently Derwent had contributed some threads from the Pensieve deposition of Gabriel Thomas's murderer.

I can't find the words to ask what it was like to converse with the portrait of the father who died before you ever met him. Every so often, I think I have come to the end of the strangeness of this world and I'm proven wrong.

Dean smiles. "And then she asked if I'd done a self-portrait, and I said no..."

Luna all but bounces in place.

"After breakfast," he says.

ooo

The dishes wash themselves, assisted only by a few judicious taps of the wand from Luna. Dean applies Scourgify to the table.

Only then does he summon his portfolio.

It's quite a bit fatter than it was in the summer ... well, it's been more than six months. Dean has been busy, too.

I glimpse more of his wizard portraits, and then he turns over a leaf and there it is - his self portrait. Traditional, which is to say, Muggle media - I'm not experienced enough to tell what sort of paint he used. He's standing with his right hand aloft in mid-gesture with his wand, and a ball of bluebell flames in the left. He's wearing worn jeans - in fact the very ones he's wearing now, if I don't mistake, a T-shirt with the West Ham emblem, and open wizard's robes.

Except when I look closely, that's not a wand in his hand, but an artist's brush.

"Between the worlds, then," I say. "In balance." Not without envy: Dean's face is alight in that portrait, and when I look up, he's beaming. Got it in one, that look says.

Then he takes out another drawing, this time very carefully. It's a copy of the self-portrait, painted on illustrator's board in brilliant colors. "This is the original for the first card," he says. "Lavender's idea. She said it put her in mind of the Magician in the Tarot, and then we fell to talking ..." His voice trails off. "Lucky I'll be putting these out on the other side of the border, or they'd take me for a political caricaturist."

And they wouldn't be far wrong. In the fanned-out sketches I see the Chariot, whose driver is quite recognizably Kingsley Shacklebolt; the Hierophant, with the face of Horace Slughorn; even upside-down, I recognize Draco's pale hair and sharp features on the Hanged Man. The High Priestess has the face of McGonagall, the Empress is a young but recognizable Molly Weasley, framed among garden abundance.

Strength, the girl in armor wrestling the lion's jaws closed, has my face.

I look up at Dean, astonished. "Strength," I say. "I don't feel like a junior Samson."

Dean laughs. "I'm sure Samson looked in the mirror and saw the same ordinary bloke every morning." He hands me two more sketches, still in early stages. The Lovers - identifiably me and Neville - and the Devil, me and Ron. "I thought of you for these, but wanted to be sure it was all right with you."

I stare at the faces, mine and Ron's, distorted in discord, under the presiding horned figure. Yes, as a couple, we brought out the worst in each other. No question but that double portrait's dead accurate, in time and eternity. I'm curious what we'll make of each other as friends in the aftermath, but thus far it's been promising if New Year's Eve at St. Mungo's was any sample.

I imagine the figures clothed and no, it needs to be naked, pale skin and the elements. Raw. That's how I felt on the Horcrux hunt, all raw skin chilled to gooseflesh in the hostile elements. Tom Riddle's disembodied soul-fragment did none of us any good, but it exploited the fault-lines already there. A little scary that Dean can see that, but I'm sure it was plain to anyone else who was watching.

"Yes," I say. "It's horrifying, but it's true." I put that one down, reluctantly, and pick up the sketch of the Lovers. I'm dazzled by that mutual wonderment, the magical circle between two people in love, the embrace that cherishes. I feel understood. Observed, but in a friendly way.

"Especially as you're a public figure," Dean said.

I nod. Yes, I understand, and I also understand what Rita Skeeter could make of this. And at the same time, I'm drawn to all three of these pictures: myself alone, wrestling the lion - and haven't I been wrestling some kind of beast these last months? Then myself with others ... the lover who worked out better as a friend, and the friend I'd never even considered as a lover.

There's so much truth there that it's a bit frightening.

With a sense of stepping off into deep water, I say, "Yes. Yes, you can use my face on these." I'm still staring at those pagan icons, wondering how they'll look fully modeled and colored. Probably even more frightening. It's not so much that he's suggested my features but the body language is mine (and Ron's, and Neville's) even as it merges into archetype. "So how soon are they coming out?"

"I already have the contract for the Wizards' Arcana, but I think it's going to turn into a whole deck. I keep getting ideas." He shows a quick sketch in bright gouache, Augusta Longbottom sitting ramrod-straight with the portrait of Emily smirking on the wall above. "Here's my candidate for the Queen of Coins, so as they like to say, the rest is history. I know what I'm going to be doing the next few months."

ooo

Notes in idleness, I should call this.

Crookshanks curls in my lap as I read the first number of the resurrected Quibbler, the Umbridge opus and all of the answering salvos from the lycanthropy experts, the Remus Lupin Foundation, oh my. Thankfully they've saved me the moral dithering about spending the price of a Daily Prophet to read it, and they've got the opus in full.

Oh my, indeed.

Neville sits at the table, revising for NEWTs, with Draco across from him, doing the same. Around them, a rampart of books, Potions and Herbology.

If I could relax, this would feel domestic and cozy.

The house is quiet.

Once this would have felt urgent, revising for only the most important academic milepost of my wizarding career thus far ...

... Such as it is. Should I decide to stay.

Should the whole business not come apart and be sucked into Void.

Well, that does put the anxiety of a mere battery of tests into perspective, doesn't it? A war, a post-war, and I still don't quite take that as practical experience.

After all, I look at what I have yet to learn, rather than what lies behind me.

Crookshanks opens one eye, not quite balefully but pointedly.

"All right," I say aloud. "Too many thoughts at once."

He closes the eye, curls a bit tighter, with clear intention of not budging. I settle once more to reading.

ooo

I can't help thinking about those books at my parents' house. I see them in my mind's eye, stacked in the corner of their former bedroom. Karkaroff will be asking for the rarer ones back, Athanasius Delacourt and the rest.

Not that I haven't been over and over them, could write parts of those texts out by hand in the fashion of a medieval student who's taken in the philosophers so far as to be able to quote them at will ...

... But what if I missed something?

The others will mind it.

I did consult more than one text, everything I could lay hands on. Of course, there is always a Restricted Section ...

Never mind.

Never mind. Mind, mind, back to the matter at hand.

The Quibbler's talking reason to the fearful - and there are older heads than mine about this. Andromeda Tonks and the Remus Lupin Foundation, Bill and Fleur and Justin's mother. Lavender and Ron, Parvati and Padma, Seamus, Dean, and Luna. All of them. Not to mention the foremost experts in the wizarding world on the rehabilitation of lycanthropes.

I'm not the only one.

Augusta Longbottom is backing the Quibbler Press, as she's backed who knows how many other ventures.

"A very young person in a very old world," so Derwent called me, long long ago at the Halloween ball at the Ministry.

How long ago?

I must be two years older than everyone else my age. Maybe three. Which would make me and Percy Weasley nearly the same age. I was nineteen when this all began. Nineteen and some months on my nineteenth birthday ... but have I made good use of the time?

Crookshanks twitches his tail, and I take the hint.

Nothing I can do about any of it right now, but I can read. One must be well-informed.

ooo

Idly flipping through these pages ...

Sunday 3 May 1998

Now that the war is over, I have things to do. Let's see...

To do this afternoon:

1. Sort out the contents of the blue beaded bag. I've lost track of what's in there.

2. Have a bath and a nice lie-in.

Mark the date:

Monday 11 May – Order of Merlin awards ceremony. (Find the periwinkle dress robes. My hair looks a fright. I think Bellatrix singed it when she was firing curses at me. Talk to Fleur... she might know something to do about it.)

To do next week (starting Monday 11 May 1998):

1. Talk to Headmistress McGonagall about setting a date for the NEWTs

2. Retrieve my parents from Australia

3. Reverse the Memory Charm on my parents

That should be straightforward. Once I'm done with that, I can get on with the rest of it.

To do this summer:

1. Get a job with the Ministry

2. Reform the Ministry (not sure about the timeline for this one; may not be finished by September)

At some point Ron and I will get married, I suppose, but that's not on the timeline yet. I have to get the other things sorted before I can think about that.

ooo

No, that's not even me. Not any more. Some ghost from the distant past: what was I thinking? Whatever my assumptions of that time, they were built on insufficient information.

My chief question now: why?

This business with the Goblins, and the Ministry, and the curious happenstance of my being turned loose on the archives. Who approved all this? And to what end?

How far is the Minister bound to silence?

Derwent ... why Derwent in particular? McGonagall sent me her way, yes, I do remember now that conference in McGonagall's office, my confession, that referral to St. Mungo's Spell Damage.

How does all this fit together?

I've revised enough for the NEWTs. I can summon a corporeal Patronus, I can make Polyjuice, Obliviate with the best (or worst) of them, bind another to silence with the lesser-known variants of Fidelius, create a blood-warded fortress that no one can breach ...

Create, at the meeting of word and world, a crystal palace of linked knowledge, and with only a few qualms, plant the seeds of its destruction.

Which are growing, quietly and inexorably, in the interstices of that fabric of light housed in my old workplace.

I am a fairish combat medic.

Still no master duelist, but I can hold my own if I have sufficient warning. Still no good at improvisation, so I try to make up for it by anticipating as many scenarios as I can. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, but I try to know the terrain.

And I'm not fighting alone.

Let me remind myself: I'm not fighting alone. Nor am I a child any more. I'm a grownup, so far as I can manage at this point.

Only two more items on that list, the only two that really matter: retrieve my parents and undo the memory charm, so far as that can be done.

And that's a matter of waiting.

Be prepared to travel on very short notice.

If Percy Weasley crossed the threshold now and told me we were leaving for Australia, I'd be ready.

The clock ticks on the wall. I reach for the time-turner on its chain, and Neville looks up from his books, as if he saw that gesture, and for a flash (before he can adjust his expression) I see naked worry.

It's not over yet.

ooo

Patience is not a virtue, or at least it's not one of mine.

A pity. I used to be so law-abiding.

Crookshanks just gave me one last look of reproach, and leaped off my lap to seek more settled quarters. He made a circuit of the table, curling around Neville's shins and then Draco's, before hopping up onto an unoccupied chair. Perhaps I've spoiled him for laps, or he doesn't want to risk anyone else interrupting his meditations.

Let me pretend that I'm done with NEWTs, because my mind has decided I am.

Write the questions, now that I've come to rest. If I get a chance to ask them, with all of the guilty parties in the room - for it certainly feels as if some amount of maneuvering occurred, to split me off from Harry and Ron, to extract me for some purpose. The Goblins received no payment from the Ministry, nor did I.

I'm really still in the same place as before.

If my gamble succeeds and we Banish the Dementors, then I'm free of the debt.

But the arrangement made no sense in the first place...

... Unless its purpose was not as advertised.

I don't know. I don't know whom to ask, because I already know how many can't speak of it. Bill Weasley might know a bit of it, Percy might as well...

McGonagall. Derwent. Shacklebolt.

McGonagall and Derwent know each other from several wars back, the Grindelwald Wars where Derwent's schoolgirl bravado about casting spells in English turned into something else.

Augusta Longbottom. Well, that's another one. I finally understand her interest in me was political, and professional, and dynastic, and personal - all in one ball. It's a small world here.

Yes, I reviewed the numbers and I still come back to how tiny it is.

I've grown up here, well mostly, and I still don't understand it.

Let me write questions, then, as if I will ever have the chance to ask them.

However unlikely that scenario, one must be prepared.

ooo

Author's Note: Dean's Wizard's Tarot is inspired by RedHen's Potterverse Tarot. Google "redhen publications tarot" to find this Amends- and Princess-inspired deck.