The ministry was a tough place to work. Somehow your history always had a way of coming back to haunt you. Percy had some periods of unhappy history. He backed the wrong horse in the race. Then it turned out that there wasn’t a race. There was only destruction and misery.
The Death Eaters lost the war, and Tom Riddle was defeated. Percy had done very little to help. He had done a lot to hinder. He had finally admitted that he blindly followed those in authority and suppressed his loyalty to his family.
Percy had been welcomed back but he always struggled with his guilt feelings. His younger brother Fred had been killed in the final battle. Many students, children really, were mercilessly murdered by enemies that he had done nothing to oppose until that last battle. Why was he allowed to go on living while so many others died? He was even allowed to marry and have children. Percy could not always be comfortable in family gatherings.
Post-war reconstruction had finished in the Ministry, officially at least. The reality was that reconstruction was going to continue under other names for many years to come. Percy had been reconstructed a few times. He had now been given yet another thankless task. He was supposed to be a liaison person in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. The department's main job was to clean up the mess made by other departments. Percy had to get those other departments such as Magical Creatures or Magical Law Enforcement to co-operate in the clean-up of the mess that they made in the first place. He was doomed to be permanently unpopular.
A general post service owl delivered a parchment to his desk.
“At last, something normal from the outside world. I have had more than enough of Ministry weirdness for one day.” Percy said to no one in particular.
The message was from his sister-in-law, Hermione Weasley. The message was short and intriguing. She was asking for his help to get a meeting with an Unspeakable. She did not say what it was about. She assured Percy that the reasons she had for asking for such a meeting were personal and did not involve any major threat to the Wizarding World, unlike what she was involved in while a student at Hogwarts.
At last, Percy had something to do which was helpful instead of annoying. It was also a favour which he could do something about. Percy did have a contact in the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables had their own liaison person. They didn’t speak about a liaison person, of course, but they did have one. Percy could send an inter-departmental memo to Unspeakable Eric Davis, and it would not be returned with a rude message about unauthorised communication with an Unspeakable.
Eric Davis was willing to meet Hermione Weasley. He followed her articles in the academic journals on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. Anything that Hermione wanted to speak to an Unspeakable about would be very interesting. A private meeting at Percy Weasley’s home was organized.
Percy and Audrey welcomed Hermione and took her into their small, neat sitting room.
“Eric should be here soon; he is quite intrigued about what it is that you want to talk to him about.” Percy gave Hermione a small smile. Hermione looked extremely nervous and unhappy. She did not reply to Percy’s attempt at conversation.
Audrey took over. “Are you OK, Hermione? You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine, Audrey. I don’t like leaving home and visiting without Ron. He always comes with me. I know that he’s dead. I can’t escape from the feeling that I need his permission to be here, and I don’t have it.” Hermione spoke quickly with a shaky voice.
Percy and Audrey did not respond. After a long, awkward silence, Eric Davis arrived.
“Eric! I’m so glad you could come!” Percy was nervous. He went to Eric and quietly mumbled in his ear, “Hermione is very nervous and upset. I’ve never seen her this bad. Take it easy, please.”
Eric nodded. “Sure, any reason why apart from the recent sad event?”
Percy shrugged. “I don’t know. It might be that and other things, I don’t know.”
Eric nodded.
Percy took him into the sitting room and introduced him. “Hermione, this is Eric Davis. He is an Unspeakable and is also Tracey Davis's father. I believe Tracey was in your year at Hogwarts.”
Hermione stood and tried to shake Eric’s hand. Eric deftly took Hermione’s offered hand, turned her hand so that it was palm downwards and bowed over her knuckles without touching them with his lips in the traditional wizard’s polite gesture of respect.
No one had done that to her since her the Yule Ball at Hogwarts when Victor Krum had treated her with similar old European manners.
“Oh! Um! Pleased to meet you Unspeakable. Please let me refer to you as Unspeakable. I am not dealing with things at all well and I just want to stick to the more formal ways.” Hermione responded in a shaky voice.
Eric greeted Audrey with his formal bow.
They all sat down.
Eric spoke. “How may I help you, Mrs Weasley?”
“I have been recently called into St Mungo’s Hospital to have an interview with a healer. It was supposed to be about how I coped with stress following the Wizarding War. Apparently, there is a program going on at St Mungo’s Hospital to help people who are still suffering from stress over their war experiences.” Hermione said.
Eric nodded.
“I wrote out some answers to questions. They all seemed to be on-topic. I was interviewed by Healer Brown. The interview seemed normal. He then asked me if he could examine my wand. I was reluctant to let anyone touch or cast any spell over my wand, but he assured me that the procedure would not harm me or my wand, so I agreed.”
"I lost my wand when we were captured and taken to Malfoy Manor. After the Battle of Hogwarts, I could not rest until I found it again. The Malfoys did not destroy it and left it at the manor."
Hermione brushed a stay hair from her face.
“He took me to a magical clean room. There was a big black stone slab in the room, and he asked me to place my wand on the slab. We then went to a viewing room next to the clean room and he ran the investigation. An auto-quill wrote out nearly two scrolls of results. “
“Oh!” Eric said.
“Is that a lot?” Hermione asked.
“That’s a lot. Please carry on.”
“He said that there were the normal rune sets in my wand which are required for it to work, and there were the extra ones that Ollivander put in his wands to assist the Ministry trace under-aged magic.”
Eric nodded and gestured to Hermione to carry on.
“He then said that there were one hundred and twenty-four other rune sets in my wand which were not normal. He said that someone had been modifying my wand. He asked if I knew about it.”
Hermione paused and fidgeted with her hands.
“I didn’t answer him. I got out of his office and ran away. I have collected my thoughts since then and now I want to get another opinion. I could investigate my wand myself, but it is my wand and I know enough not to trust myself to do this objectively. Can you advise me?” Hermione asked.
Eric thought for a minute. “Now! What can I say? First of all, that clean room and the investigation procedure were made by the Department of Mysteries for St Mungo’s Hospital when we were all being overwhelmed by calls for help during the recovery and reconstruction. The healers are not all experts at the sort of damage that spells and curses used in the war could cause. The whole clean room setup is very reliable and gives all the details of permanent incantations and embedded runic arrays left in things like wands, wizards, and other magical things. Wands are, of course, very tricky. If what seems to have happened to you is right, then someone took a lot of trouble to hide their tracks. They would have been powerful wizards and experts in the Mind Arts.”
Hermione waited.
Eric spoke again. “I can carry out the same investigation without the full clean room setup. Your wand passed the first test by not exploding or bursting into white-hot flames which are the sort of booby traps the clean room was made to deal with. I will need you to put your wand on a table and I will use an auto-quill to record the results.”
The test was run. Hermione picked up her wand. Eric read the two parchment scrolls.
Eric looked at Hermione. “Mrs Weasley, you were a student at Hogwarts in 1995, is that right?”
“Yes, I started my fifth year in 1995.”
Eric looked steadily at Hermione. “The first new set of runes was added on August 28, 1995. The others were added at intervals until December 1996.”
“All while I was at Hogwarts or staying at 12 Grimmauld Place with the Weasleys and Harry Potter.”
Hermione’s face hardened.
“Potter! He did this! I knew there was a reason to hate him. He revolts and disgusts me. What a lying, scheming cheat.” Hermione jumped up.
“Give me those. I’m going to the DMLE. He won’t get away with this.”
Eric turned away. “No! Mrs Weasley! Stop!”
Hermione was raging. “Don’t you dare defend him! Perfect Potter! I hate him!”
“Mrs Weasley! Stop! The results all have the magical signature of the wizards who put those rune sets in your wand.” Eric moved away from Hermione.
“Listen to me! Mr Potter didn’t do any of this. They were all made by Albus Dumbledore or Severus Snape.”
Hermione stopped, and her face slowly went blank. “That’s impossible.”
“No! It is not only possible but also most likely how it was done. They were the wizards at Hogwarts with enough power and ability to do this without you noticing. They were also the greatest experts in the Mind Arts at Hogwarts. In my opinion, Mr Potter could never have done this. He is not that powerful a wizard and it is well known that he is hopeless at the Mind Arts.” Eric stopped backing away from Hermione.
She collapsed back into her chair.
“Mrs Weasley, you are going to need a lot of help to deal with this situation. I will not talk about what is in those rune sets and arrays. You should go back to the healer who you were seeing at St Mungo’s and let his team help you deal with this.” Eric rolled the parchments and vanished them.
“I’m not going to tell you more. You need expert help from the healers. I’m guessing here, and this might be out-of-line, but I think you have been obliviated not just once but many times. Possibly each time either Dumbledore or Snape modified your wand.” Eric stopped talking and waited for a response.
Hermione stood up. “I must go. I must get Hugo from school. Thank you Unspeakable. Goodbye!”
Hermione left the room. Audrey jumped up and rushed out to catch her.
A few seconds later, Audrey came back. “She apparated away. Is there anyone who we can get to go and help her?”
Percy thought for a while, “Not Mum or Dad, Mum hates her. Bill and Fleur might be able to help. Charlie? No! George and Angelina might be best. No one else I can think of.”
Eric waited. “Is she so isolated?”
“Yes! She has no friends. There were only the Weasleys to talk to. Mum and Ron controlled that as much as they could. Hermione is alone.” Percy went to floo-call George.
--ooOOoo—
The wand looked harmless. Such things could be so deceptive. Bill stood to one side with his wand ready to cast any protective shield needed. He had done this many times throughout his career as a curse breaker.
Fleur started with general revealing charms which showed nothing unusual. Then she cast the rune set revealing charms. There should have been the fifteen sets of runes normally found in any Ollivander’s wand. The names of those sets were written out by the auto-quill on the parchment. Then seven more sets were listed. None of these sets were well-known and so did not have a common name.
“These are so complex! What are they doing!” Fleur copied the parchment and handed a copy to Bill.
Bill looked at the magical signatures. “Well! At least we know who made these sets. Those extra ones were done by Severus Snape.”
“Bill, please start decoding number seventeen, I will take sixteen. One to fifteen are the standard wand sets together with Ollivander’s magic trace rune sets.” Fleur was concerned.
The solutions slowly found their way onto notebooks. Each rune set had some common components. Touching the wand would draw magical power from the wizard through the wand to cast the runic equivalent of a charm or a spell or a potion back at the wizard. Touching the wand will recast all the rune magic on the wizard who controlled the wand and only that wizard.
The results were written down.
- A Compulsion Enchantment that is causing the wand owner to seek out the wand and touch it at least once a day, thus renewing the enchantments. It was made on September 2, 1995.
- A Loyalty Enchantment keyed to Albus Dumbledore was made on September 2, 1995.
- A Loyalty Enchantment keyed to Ronald Weasley was made on September 2, 1995.
- A weak Hate Enchantment keyed to Hermione Granger was made on September 2, 1995.
- A mild Hate Enchantment keyed to Hermione Granger was made on December 17, 1995.
- A mild Love Enchantment keyed to Cho Chang was made on December 17, 1995.
- An Amortentia Love Enchantment keyed to Ginny Weasley was made on May 8, 1997.
“What a mess!” Bill angrily declared.
“Was Snape always obedient to Dumbledore?” Fleur asked.
“Yes! He was to the end. This was done under Dumbledore’s orders. If Snape had done this on his own, then Dumbledore would have easily detected it.”
“I can understand the Loyalty Enchantments, but why the Hate Enchantment?” Bill asked.
Fleur shook her head. “Harry didn’t hate Hermione. They were friends.”
Fleur looked up at the ceiling, “Wait a minute! What if …”
Bill looked at Fleur, “Yes! What if what?”
Fleur looked at Bill. “What if Harry was starting to have feelings for Hermione back then? A Hate Enchantment shows the victim the keyed person's worst traits and habits. The Hate Enchantment would fight against any natural attraction leaving a confused and un-romantic state of mind. They might stay friends with no romantic connection.”
Bill replied, “If Hermione was given the same thing, then it would work in reverse as well. Fred and George always said that Harry and Hermione were the best bets to become a couple from their second year on. They made a lot from their betting pool when it didn’t happen. No one bet on Ron and Hermione getting together. Everyone's gut reaction was that it was so wrong.”
“Everyone’s guts were right. We know that Harry was nobbled. Probably the same culprits did it to her as well.” Fleur murmured. “How sad! How awful!”
Bill looked even more concerned. “What do we tell Harry? How do we say it? We know that Hermione still will not stay in the same room as Harry. Probably the Hate Enchantment is still at work in her. Harry shouldn’t try to say anything to her. The results could be…, er!”
“Bad! Messy! Homicidal! All of those!” Fleur replied.
“Yes.”
--ooOOoo—
Harry arrived back at the house after feeding and checking on the bull calves. He had twenty bull calves that he was fattening up to sell when they were ready. They had to be kept apart from the herd in their own stalls as they were too aggressive.
He left his boots in the mudroom and padded into the kitchen to make his second cup of tea for the morning. Farming was the best. Particularly when you could use as much magic as you wanted to fix the problems.
The floo chimed. His duty house-elf Pictsy came into the kitchen. “Mr Bill and Mrs Fleur want to come in from the floo.”
“Show them in, Pictsy” Harry was happy to have company.
“Bill! Fleur! Come in, sit down! Cup of tea?”
“Thanks, Harry! White with no sugar for both of us.”
Harry smiled at his visitors. “How did you go? Find anything interesting!”
“Yes! Lots! Harry, we recommend that you burn your old wand and grind the ashes to dust; as soon as possible.” Bill was straight-faced.
“That bad, huh!” Harry said.
“It is dangerous. Only for you, as you said.” Fleur said.
Bill put a folder on the kitchen table. “Here is our report. In this folder are the results of all the scans and our analysis of those results. Fleur has written a separate letter to you with her own thoughts about how we should move forward from here.”
Fleur took her cue from Bill. “Harrie, first, I want you to look at all the reports and letters and take some time to come to any conclusions. Please don’t go rushing off to try to fix things with other people. That is what you have done before but this time that almost certainly will not have a happy ending.”
“Come on, guys! Tell me what’s going on.” Harry smiled, this sounded like a wind-up.
Bill stayed straight-faced. “Harry, people have been messing with your mind. It started a long time ago and it went on for a long time. This is bad news. You are doing the right thing going to the mind healers. There is a lot more they must know about you, and it is in this folder.”
Bill looked unhappy.
Harry opened the folder and read the covering letters.
“We are guessing about this. We think that you have been able to escape from the full power of the enchantments in your old wand because it was broken and then repaired. Also, you haven’t been using it since you started work as an auror. You only touched it occasionally. The strength of the compulsion to touch it decreased over the years and finally faded when you moved to Potter Manor. Your mind healers will be able to tell you more.”
--ooOOoo—
The morning mail arrived. Owls didn’t get into St Mungo’s wards and offices, there were too many feathers and other germ-laden matter that came in with them. Mail was house elf delivered from the hospital post office.
In the pile, there was one letter which caused some apprehension. It was from Mrs Hermione Weasley. Healer Brown opened it. He let out the breath he had been holding. Hermione had apologised for walking out and asked for another appointment.
Three days later, Hermione came into the waiting room. It was less than a minute before Brown came to invite her into his office.
“Healer Brown, I must apologize again for my behaviour. I know that you deal with people with all sorts of problems. I never thought of myself as being someone with a problem. It is obvious to me now that I have a few issues that I need help with.” Hermione was now in school prefect mode. The real Hermione was frightened. Brown picked up the impression just from her voice which was too high and her speech which was too quick.
“Well, let’s see about that, shall we?” Healer Brown tried his best confidence-building smile.
“I think it would be best if you told me what it is that is concerning you. May I take notes with an auto-quill? The notes will be for my eyes only.” Healer Brown asked.
Hermione nodded.
“I think that I’m crazy. In fact, I know that I’m crazy.” Hermione said.
“Ah! There must be reasons for this. Is there any detail that you want to share?”
“I love my husband. I love him very much. I think about him all the time. I do everything I can to please him. There is no one else that I care about as much as Ron. I love my children, but I love my husband much more than I love them.” Hermione’s voice had a small quaver in it.
“I know that Ron is dead. He died and we had a funeral. They wouldn’t let me look at the body. They said that I wouldn’t recognize him. The injuries were ghastly. They had to use a blood sample to confirm his identity. They said that he would not have felt a thing. His death was very quick.” Hermione’s voice became more even.
“My problem is that I don’t feel anything. I’m not grieving. I don’t think that I’m in shock. I can carry out my daily tasks. I go to the bank. I do the shopping. I clean the house and I look after Hugo. I’m not even a bit sad that Ron is gone. I’m crazy.” Her voice was now clear and even.
“Mrs Weasley, you are not crazy. One of the healing profession’s little secrets, that we don’t talk about too much, is that everyone is a bit unbalanced from time to time.” Healer Brown paused and smiled again.
Healer Brown took a breath. “At the moment, you may feel that you are more than a little unbalanced. My opinion is that you are under enormous stress and that this stress is showing up some issues that have been imposed on you a long time ago. Your feelings are the result of having some parts of your mind put in controlled compartments. The control of these compartments is coming from somewhere outside of you.”
“No one is controlling me! I don’t see many people. The main people that I deal with are Ron and Mrs Molly Weasley, his mother. Except that Ron is dead. I’m crazy.” Hermione slumped down in her chair.
“What I am talking about is the matter that we discussed the last time we met. That is, your wand.” Healer Brown waited for a response.
“Well! Since I saw you last, I got another opinion about my wand. I managed to get an off-the-record meeting with an Unspeakable and he scanned my wand. It seems that he got the same results.”
Hermione pouted; her look of annoyance was obvious.
“He would not tell me anything about the way that my wand had been interfered with except to say that it was done by Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore. He told me to come back to you and work with you about it.”
Hermione looked angry.
“I’m still crazy. This is not helping.”
“Did the Unspeakable recommend that anything be done about your wand?” Healer Brown asked.
“No, I ran away before he could finish. Running away is my new favourite way of dealing with things.”
“Ah! That may or may not be a good thing. Let’s see if we can progress.” Healer Brown looked tense.
“Er! Mrs Weasley, have you ever considered getting a new wand for yourself?”
“NO! Never! No! Sorry! I didn’t think about that. No, I don’t want a new wand. I can’t imagine life without my wand. I loved it from the day that I got it at Ollivander’s shop. No, I want this wand to be fixed if there is anything wrong with it. I want it fixed so that I can keep it forever.” Hermione went from shouting angry to contrite.
“We will have to consider the possibility that the rune sets added to your wand have been done in a way that prevents them from being removed without destroying the wand.” Healer Brown paused and considered.
“Mrs Weasley, you are one of Britain's greatest experts in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. You know how rune sets can be entangled. A change made in one set changes another set because of entanglement.”
Hermione nodded.
“The rune sets which drive the normal functions of your wand have been entangled with all the added sets. The entanglement does not hinder the normal way that your wand works. That seems to have been done so that the added sets cannot be removed.”
“Cunning! I bet it was Snape who did that.” Hermione snarked.
“It was done to all of them. Dumbledore and Snape both had their own way of doing it and they consistently used their favourite methods.”
Healer Brown took an apprehensive glance at Hermione.
“Can we examine the nature of these rune sets?”
Hermione sighed. “I hate this, but I must face it. There is a reason why I never investigated my wand myself. I couldn’t bear to think about it. It was like thinking about my baby. I couldn’t do it. Let’s get started.”
“There is one set which triggers all the others. It replicates a charm which compels you to touch your wand at least once each day. When you touch the wand all the other sets are triggered, and they cast their enchantments on you. None of the enchantments cast by each rune set is powerful or long-lasting. The effect is maintained by being cast on you each and every day. A potion might last a month, but these runic enchantments only must last days. Do you know why?”
“Powerful long-lasting enchantments can be detected and blocked. Low-powered enchantments are regarded as something like a love potion bought from Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, too weak to be a threat and can be treated as a joke. However, when they are cast every day, the enchantment can be active at a powerful level all the time.” Hermione was grumpy.
“The others fall into three classes, Loyalty Enchantments keyed to Albus Dumbledore, Hate Enchantments keyed to Harry Potter and Amortentia Love Enchantments keyed to Ronald Bilius Weasley. They were all cast at low power levels, to begin with, and were then increased in strength each time they were built into your wand. The Hate enchantments were increased in strength many times.”
Healer Brown paused and studied Hermione.
Hermione had entered her private mindscape.
She was down in her anger boiler room, and the coal was flying into the boiler furnace.
The anger pressure gauge was rising.
Healer Brown hoped that the safety valve was working.
If Hermione’s anger boiler blew up, then the explosion would be big.
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