“Last night at 8PM Ronald Weasley and four other violent criminals known to the magical law enforcement lured Hermione Krum, the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, into a meeting in Knockturn Alley, under false pretence, suggesting that Ronald Weasley had been kidnapped and will be killed if she doesn’t appear. Five men surrounded the pregnant lady, and Ronald Weasley attempted to murder her with the killing curse. Fortunately, the Auror office was aware of the situation, intervened in time and all five armed and dangerous criminals have been killed. The lady was unharmed.

We asked an Auror, who wished to remain anonymous, for a comment:

“Slander is one thing, but trying to lure your childhood friend and former fiancee, who is pregnant, in order to murder both her and her unborn child, is the lowest of the low. But trying that with a lady who lives with three Aurors, two of which are the joint heads of the Auror office and the third is her husband, that requires a level of stupidity that is rarely seen. Let’s just say that neither the magical society nor the magical gene pool will miss them. Of course, the boss immediately had us on the case and we dealt with the situation.””

Hermione closed the Daily Prophet, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “That Auror is right. I am fortunate to live with three Aurors, because if not for that, I would have been dead right now, Lily would be growing up without her mom, Viktor would be grieving, my unborn child would be dead, and Ron and his fellow ghouls would be laughing maliciously in some dark hole”.

Lyra was carefully applying pink gel to Hermione’s toenails. “I know that muggles have stupid nonsense sayings like ‘no means no’, but you can rest assured that this family has different rules. Next time you decide to go into a dangerous situation, be sure to let us know and tell us you don’t want us to be there for you, and we will be sure to completely ignore your wishes”, she grinned.

“Thank you for that”, Hermione laughed. “At least somebody here has a functioning brain, because mine was apparently asleep. Having you save me last night was the most satisfying and relieving thing I felt since I watched Voldemort drop dead like a sack of flour. Please, always ignore my stupid nonsense and handle my safety as you see fit, because, unlike me, you actually know what you’re doing”.

“It’s my job, sweetheart. Quite literally”, Lyra smiled angelically.

“And by the way, you are absolutely frightening when you fight”, Hermione grinned. “I’ve never actually seen you in action before, but that was quite something”.

Lyra just smiled, focused on applying the gel precisely.

…

“Kreacher, please get the door; it’s Arthur and Molly Weasley”, she smiled at the Elf.

“Yes, Young Mistress”, he croaked.

Arthur and Molly approached shyly, and saw two women on the couch, Lyra painting Hermione’s toenails; they just looked at each other.

“I’m sorry I can’t get up and greet you properly, but I’m literally in the middle of something, and Hermione’s comfort is the most important thing in the world to me now”, Lyra smiled at them, as Hermione blushed. “Please, get the chairs and make yourselves comfortable”.

“We’re so sorry, my dear”, Molly approached Hermione. “I’m so glad to see that you’re alive and well. When the Auror lady notified us of what happened last night, we almost had a heart attack and decided to come see you first thing in the morning. We knew he was lost, but that he would try to murder a pregnant woman, and not just any woman but you…” she started crying and couldn’t control her voice.

“It’s not your fault”, Lyra addressed them, not taking her eyes from the toenail. “I know you’ve been thinking about what I showed Arthur, but despite all your errors, none of your other children ever turned to evil. Ginny is a healthy, vital, wonderful young lady. Fred and George were pranksters, but their hearts were always in the right place. Percy’s only flaw is that he’s uptight and too formal when there’s no need for it. Charley and Bill are wonderful men. You should be proud of all of them. Ron’s choices in life may have been facilitated by Molly’s upbringing that promoted infantile behaviour, but they were not caused by it. None of your other children had those tendencies in the first place. He was just that kind of a person, and he made his own choices that ended up exhausting his guardian angel’s ability to save him. It is not your fault. And by the way, I am sorry to have caused you pain by killing your son, but I am glad I did it. He almost finished the killing curse invocation pointed at Hermione, and he did it with such murderous, cold hatred, that I haven’t seen anything like it since the fall of Voldemort. I am glad he’s dead”, she looked at them with perfect, transparent honesty in her eyes.

“I am glad you were there”, Arthur nodded. “Had he managed to kill Hermione, I would never be able to forgive myself. I’d probably go and hang myself in the attic, to be honest. Just the thought is too horrible to even consider”.

“Please, join us for tea and biscuits. I sense Kreacher had made a fresh batch and they smell wonderful”, she smiled at them with profound peace and kindness.

“We might just do that, thank you”, Molly smiled through tears. “I feel such peace here, as I haven’t felt in a long time. Thank you for having us”.

“You know it’s a trap, right?”, Harry looked at Hermione incredulously.

“Probably, yeah”, she shrugged. “We have Ron; come alone to Knockturn Alley tonight at 8PM if you want to see him alive”.

“Probably as in certainly”, Harry grinned. “Let me send a detachment and deal with it”.

“And what if Ron gets killed?” she frowned.

“It’s a possibility”, he conceded. “However, it’s also a possibility that he aligned himself with some dark creatures who want to lure you into a trap and kill you, and he thinks it’s suitable vengeance for you leaving him”.

“That’s really a stretch”, she raised an eyebrow incredulously.

“Is it? With what we know about him, and how he’s been lately?”, Harry retorted. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. Also, you’re pregnant. And even if you weren’t, you’re precious. Risking you for that fool doesn’t sound like a good trade”.

“Maybe, but it’s my call to make”, she insisted.

…

She apparated there slightly ahead of time, and observed carefully, wand drawn. Harry was probably right and she was probably a fool, but she had to do this.

Three shadows moved in front of her, and she felt movement behind. Five.

“You were right, Weasley. She really is that stupid”, a nasty, rough voice laughed. “We caught ourselves the Ministry mudblood.”

“Probably pregnant again with that Bulgarian freak”, it was Ron’s voice, but rough, cold as ice. She shivered. “Time to die, bitch. Avada Ke…”

Hermione felt as if time froze around her as she felt terrible regret for not listening to Harry. As always, he was right. His instincts won them the war and she had to be a smartass and go against his advice. She won’t even get to tell him she’s sorry. Her eyes swam with tears, but then she realised something. Time didn’t just feel like it froze around her. It actually froze. A flash of white light swirled, red light flashed in five spots, at the chests of five thugs, and time suddenly restarted.

White mist materialised as a young platinum blonde woman in jeans and a warm sweater, wandless, completely relaxed as five men crumpled to the floor like sacks of potatoes: safely and permanently dead.

“Lyra?” Hermione was still in shock.

“Might as well earn my pay as your personal goddess”, she smiled. “Also as the head of the Auror office”. She snapped her fingers and three Aurors apparated, looking like they mean business. “Would you be so kind as to clean up after me? I’m afraid they were armed, in the process of deploying the killing curse, and I couldn’t risk lady Hermione’s life by using half measures. I’ll do the paperwork in the morning”, she smiled at the men.

“Sure thing, boss”, the closest one nodded respectfully as they started processing the bodies.

“Come, sweetheart. This must have been stressful for you, and you’re pregnant. Let’s go home and have Kreacher make us hot cocoa”, she hugged Hermione and they disapparated with a crack.

…

“He’s really dead”, Hermione spoke dully, wrapped in a blanket, holding a warm cup. “I didn’t want him to die”.

“I’m afraid it was his choice”, Viktor whispered, holding her tightly. “I’ve seen the preliminary report. Those were thugs adjacent to Death Eaters; they did jobs for them, and tried to become important enough to get the Dark Mark; they were on our wanted list, but not a priority. That’s the company he was keeping these days. It must have been his idea to lure you to your death, to curry favour with that scum, make himself important. Had you not come, sooner or later it would have ended similarly, but at least now you got to see what he became”.

“I’m not sure I’m improved by the experience”, she sighed. “Harry, I’m so sorry not to have listened to you. I can’t remember when your hunch was ever wrong, but I was a stubborn fool”.

“You were emotionally compromised by your misplaced sense of responsibility for him”, Harry nodded. “I didn’t want to insist, but I also didn’t want to let you walk alone into a trap, so I notified Lyra and the guys. I held the office, she held the field”, he smiled.

“You were never in danger”, Lyra smiled, massaging Hermione’s feet. “I allowed them to come close to releasing the spell only to make sure that they had lethal intent. Then I dealt with them. Girl, your feet are so cold; you’re in shock. But we’ll thaw you in no time”, she giggled, and Hermione smiled despite her mood.

“Thank you for saving my life, Lyra”, she managed. “I was already regretting not listening to Harry and expecting to die in a second, when time stopped around me”.

“I didn’t want to risk giving them the chance to finish the spell, so that was the only safe way”, Lyra nodded. “Nobody hurts what is mine”, she smiled a smile of fierce protectiveness.

“You know, the political landscape after the war ended up being completely different from what the Order of Phoenix would have expected”, Harry smiled at his wife. “They had a very black and white picture of reality in their heads, where they are the good guys and everything they believe and do is good and should prevail, while the other side are the bad guys and everything about them should be abolished and discarded. In reality, our long talks at school taught me that the other side is actually right in so many things, we should be very careful about ignoring those arguments”.

“And we ended up adopting a balanced policy that acknowledges good arguments from both sides”, she nodded. “Things like Hermione being considered a pureblood, or House Elves being considered family members”.

“And also the dangers of magical blood dilution and extinction being taken very seriously, and preservation of ancient tradition and family lineages being enshrined in state policy”, he smiled. “Rather than one of us recruiting the other to their side, we ended up teaching each other and adopting good ideas”.

“Oh, I definitely consider myself as having switched to your side when Voldemort returned”, she was serious.

“But when we divorced the Voldemort issue, dark magic issue and the pureblood issue, I think I adopted all of your good ideas and slightly modified them. I think the lesson is that when two intelligent people argue, it’s not realistic to expect that one side will be completely right and the other completely wrong. In fact, when I realised how smart you are and how well thought out your arguments were, I expected to outright lose every argument with you and that terrified me.”

“On the other hand, there were certain arguments I didn’t actually want to win. I was just afraid of what it would mean if I lost. For instance, the Voldemort thing. My parents were so intertwined with him, that it terrified me to think he might actually be evil, and I rather spent inordinate amounts of energy thinking of all sorts of rationalizations as to why he might actually be the good guy despite all evidence to the contrary. Because, if he were evil, what are my parents then? Should I not love them because they are objectively on the wrong side? The idea terrified me. In the end, even after my parents emotionally separated themselves from him, it was excruciatingly hard to save them while at the same time not raising attention to the fact that I’m on your side”, she grinned.

“That was a more terrifying situation than anything I ever experienced, and I had a piece of his soul in my head showing me evil things”, he nodded.

“I think the key point was the understanding that Voldemort hijacked the pureblood issue that was actually important to people. He also hijacked the issue of dark magic, which was sometimes actually useful and people objected to the fact that it was outright outlawed. When the two of you disentangled those two issues from Voldemort and the specific Death Eater ideology one could only embrace if they were a murderous lunatic like Bellatrix and other thugs, things became much simpler”, Hermione joined them. “When separated from the death cult of Voldemort, the other two issues became quite rational and even I had to accept most of the arguments, even when it put me personally in a vulnerable position”, she smiled.

“And when you chose to put yourself in a vulnerable position, I felt so protective that I lobbied for laws that would guard you”, Lyra took her hand and smiled.

“It’s hard to play the game of political extremism when you love people on the other side of the divide”, Harry nodded. “That’s why Lyra and I kept holding hands while arguing. It’s hard to make deliberately injurious arguments against the other side when that other side is somebody you care about. We looked more like lovers than enemies and I guess that’s what we were, if not for my thick head.”

“And it’s hard to argue categorically against dark magic when we ourselves had to use Crucio or Imperio in the war if we wanted to win”, Hermione was serious. “You had to separate intent from the means. Saying that dark magic is universally bad is like saying good people should only smile all the time.”

“Harry and I ended up not wanting to win an argument unless it made the other one happy. It was just not seen as a victory if the other side ends up feeling defeated, because that would hurt, a lot”, Lyra squeezed Hermione’s hand.

“And I decided that I may be a hamster, but at least I’m your hamster”, Hermione smiled at her friend, who pulled her sweater over her head and groaned in embarrassment.

“I will never live down that stupid insult”, Lyra let out a muffled whine.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was an insult in the beginning, and it hurt. But then, after the challenge in the hallways, I started paying attention and started seeing you for what you are, and the idea that you just might be such a wonderful person that I might actually feel like a pet next to you cured me of lots of my intellectual arrogance and egalitarianism. For the first time in my life, I looked at someone my age and was forced to accept that they are superior to me in every way, and it didn’t feel humiliating, it felt great”, Hermione touched her cheek to Lyra’s hand. “I was just miffed for not being allowed to be your friend, so when you approached me after the war, I was in hamster heaven”, she laughed, to Lyra’s enormous embarrassment.

“This storm is far from being over”, Hermione noted, reading her copy of the Daily Prophet over breakfast.

“What do they say”, Harry sipped his tea.

“People are praising the Aurors for standing up for their bosses, and mentioning how they gave Viktor a hero’s welcome after the interview with him came out. Also how they showered Lyra with rose petals when she came to work. There are comments from the readers – women are swooning over Viktor standing up for Lyra by threatening to duel anyone who says a word against her. If Ron wanted you to become the most popular people in the world, he did a good job”, she smiled.

“Anything about how Ron is doing?”, Viktor put down his half-finished croissant.

“Yes, in fact”, his wife smiled at him. “He was seen sleeping rough in Diagon Alley, before someone took him in, apparently. It’s not clear, but he tried with a dozen people, family and friends, and they all had him kiss the door. There are also articles from people remembering him being nasty before, but forgave him for being Harry Potter’s friend. They are writing an angle where he was in fact a pampered little prince who always got away with everything, while his friends had to work for everything. They say he betrayed his friends every time he thought it would benefit him, and they kept forgiving him. It appears to be a ‘hate Ron Weasley’ week”, she closed the newspaper.

“I think his problem is that he kept pulling off the same stunt, it always worked, and he never bothered to figure out why that is”, Lyra mused, wiping powdered sugar off her lips with a napkin. “It was like assuming air or gravity. It’s always there so why even think about it. Now that I think of it, he used to be almost as rude to Hermione as I was, initially, but somehow he was seen as cute and I was seen as evil incarnate and a devil child. He was taken in, while I was locked out. So, he never gave it a thought. That was how things worked. I, on the other hand, had to revise my whole life to see what I did wrong, why it was perceived the way it was, and I was on the bottom of a slippery pit trying to climb out, and people were glaring at me from the edge, ready to push me back in, because I seemed to be all the wrong things. Conversely, when he would stumble, multiple pairs of hands were always extended to get him back up. Sure, I was rich in terms of money, and he was the opposite, but he seems to have been rich in social capital he kept drawing on, not even realising it’s there, the way I never realised money was a thing until I saw people who didn’t have it. But I realised money was a thing when I was eleven. He literally never gave his social wealth a single thought, he never considered what an advantage he had by being born in the core of the Order of Phoenix, and what it would have been like to be born in a family of Death Eaters, what a pit that would be to climb out of. He just assumed things are the way they are, assumed that he deserved everything he had and perceived it as nothing, and complained about the things he didn’t have and all the expectations people have of him, as if that’s even a problem”, she finished.

“You’re right about that, and I actually never thought about it that way”, Hermione was lost in memories. “He did say all kinds of nasty things about me – how he hoped we didn’t get sorted in the same house, how I was pompous and annoying, imitated me mockingly and so on. He literally drove me to tears, and yet somehow it all got swept under the carpet when he and Harry helped me with that troll. He always cared more about his food than his friends, and his emotional spectrum consisted of being embarrassed and feeling sorry for himself. You, on the other hand, made one blunder and we just locked you out for years, until you did that ‘either kill me or treat me like a person’ thing in the hallways. That’s when we actually started seeing you as a human being and not just an evil Slytherin girl. You really did have a pit to climb out of in order to even be acknowledged. He, on the other hand, just was. People always saw him, cared about his feelings, forgave him for his stupid nonsense, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry to say this, but you were seen as hostile background noise. We should be feeling as guilty for treating you that way as you feel guilty for messing up, if not more.”

“That thing about invisible social capital that he kept relying on without noticing it is even a thing, that’s an excellent observation”, Viktor nodded. “I never thought about it that way”.

“People never do, until it’s gone”, Harry smiled. “They don’t notice having loving parents and just assume it’s normal. People just assumed I had to be a pampered kid, because how famous I was for no good reason. They assumed I had to be a spoiled brat, and treated me like one. They never stopped to think that I was famous for having my parents killed while I was a baby in the crib, and that I was brought up by the Dursleys who treated me like trash; that I was always hungry, wearing Dudley’s old clothes and sleeping in a broom cupboard under the stairs. They assumed that just because they had things, it was a given that others have it at least as good. In fact, the only people who actually felt me in that way were Neville and Luna, who had similar personal tragedies.”

“And I assumed that since I knew you were one of the wealthiest people in the world, that you had to know it, and it never dawned to me until much later that you never even knew about it until literally days ago. I would never have thought, in a million years, that you lived a life of abject poverty and neglect, and nobody ever told you they loved you”, Lyra’s eyes glistened. “I saw how you seemed to be offended by my very existence because I wore nice new clothes, and I thought you just hated me as a person; I never even realised that you think you’re a homeless orphan who has always been told he’s a burden. I was always told I’m a precious treasure and my parents’ love and pride was like air in which I moved. I couldn’t even comprehend what you went through. It was such an implicit assumption to me that everybody has it the same way, that I only started to turn my brain on when you completely locked me out because my very being was offensive to you”.

“I guess Ron was never made to reconsider the existence of air”, Viktor nodded. “I wonder how many other implicit assumptions we all hold, never thinking about them or knowing they are there until the floor comes out beneath our feet”.

“I know how shocked I was when Lyra confronted me. It was not just the shock of how she did it, but the shock of understanding that she might even want to. It was the realisation that she’s not just some rich moustache-twirling villain like Dick Dastardly or Cruella de Vil who is evil because she likes being evil, but an actual girl with feelings that can be hurt, and enough courage to give me a choice between respect and death. When I actually had to think about it, I realised I was a total jerk and I didn’t like the feeling”, Harry reminisced.

“Dick who?”, Viktor scratched his head.

“Old muggle cartoons”, his wife smiled and explained. “It’s an animated hand-drawn life-like thing. I’ll show you”.

“Show me too, I had no idea that even existed”, Lyra smiled.

“Yeah, that’s one of those implicit assumptions. I assume everybody knows what cartoons are”, Harry laughed.

“Arthur, what’s wrong?”, Molly looked at him with deep concern. “You barely said a word since you returned, and you’ve obviously been crying. What happened there?”

He looked at his wife, trying to find adequate words.

“Lyra is as old as Ron. If she were my daughter, she would be one of our youngest children. I always wondered if she and Harry are old and experienced enough to be the heads of the Auror office. After today, I think I can only see her as my senior, someone like Dumbledore or even greater. The question I have is no longer how someone so young can hold such an important office. It’s how a soul so vast can fit in a body so young, frail and pretty. She used a spell on me, you know.” He sighed deeply.

“What kind of a spell?” Molly was instantly alarmed.

“She opened her heart and shared her childhood memories with me. Seeing our children in rags, not being able to afford books and wands, signs of poverty, her crying in frustration after seeing it. The feeling of injustice that pureblood children suffer those humiliations needlessly. Her anger at me for allowing it, for not taking those lucrative promotions and treating my job as an extension of my obsession with all things muggle. It’s nothing I would have thought. It’s not hate, or contempt. She honestly believed pureblood wizards are a precious treasure and should be kings and queens in the world, and she thought her wealth was normal, it was because they are what they are as a family, and then she saw us and it was shocking, it hurt her soul so much to see purebloods living in poverty and it was such an injustice she would cry herself to sleep at nights thinking about it. And I saw her for what she is when she opened herself up to me. She is so vast, so pure, so innocent and so incredibly powerful that I just wept like a child for making such a person cry. It felt like making a perfect God cry.”

Molly just stood their with mouth open and couldn’t find words.

“She also shared some things about you, you know”, he tried for a smile. “She resents you for not allowing the kids to grow up, to be adults, for enabling Ron in his infantile behaviour so that you would have children to care for longer, giving yourself a purpose. Not wanting Bill to marry, thinking no woman could be good enough for him, no woman could replace mommy, and offending Fleur, whom she loves very much and thinks she’s a wonderful, good hearted lady with a bright mind. She showed me her perspective and I saw why Charlie, Bill and Percy, and even Fred and George, ran away from our suffocating atmosphere that attempts to suck their lives away and keep them children forever, and never allow any important issue to be touched because we become defensive and start accusing people of all sorts of things just to keep things as they are. She showed me everything she sees, and everything she feels, and the reasons why she feels it, and her mind is so pure, clean and powerful, it was like somebody expanded my soul a hundred times and I could suddenly grasp all of it. It’s absolutely amazing. I don’t know how a human being can even be that pure and vast. OK, I probably could imagine it if it were Dumbledore, but not a tiny girl who could be my daughter. And the worst thing is, the conclusions she makes are nothing like I would have expected. It’s mostly her own pain, frustration that she can’t make it better, that she can only observe and we don’t even allow her to tell us what she sees. I am in absolute awe of her, Molly”, his eyes glistened with tears and one dropped down his cheek. “And I’m not the only one. Viktor Krum was there and he watched it with his mouth open like you right now, and I could see it in his eyes how amazing he thinks she is. I would have dismissed it as nonsense, thinking that no human being can deserve such worship as the three of them shower her with, but now I think they are right. I used to wonder if she’s good enough for Harry; now I wonder if anyone is good enough for her.”

Molly’s eyes filled with tears. “Was I really trying to keep them from growing up because I wanted to be a mom forever and didn’t know what to do when they grow up and leave?”, she sniffed. “I felt some of that when Ginny threatened to leave and we threw Ron out for being a ghoul.”

“Lyra sees it that way, and honestly, seeing it in her heart it all makes sense and it looks as if I was shown the objective truth of it all after living in my own head with my own justifications for decades. It feels like waking up from a dream and understanding that I’m not the good guy that I thought I was”, he let out a broken sigh. “It all had a quality of God showing me the truth as it is”.

Molly just embraced him and they cried together.