Lady Malfoy and her lawyer Mr. Lawley came to see me in France. Narcissa decided to see her son off, and also to meet with me. Draco was leaving Beauxbatons for a week to participate in the ritual at his father's funeral. Lady Malfoy rented a negotiation hall for two hours, which the goblins provide to their clients for a considerable sum. Non-disclosure charms and charms preventing harm to each other included.
I slipped Narcissa's lawyer the contract that Mr. Goldstein had sent me. Standard for such cases, about not using information obtained from a witness to the witness's detriment. After all, a witness is not a lawyer - who knows what they might accidentally blurt out under veritaserum. Narcissa was also supposed to sign it. A lawyer could only conclude such a contract with their client's consent, so as not to face backlash due to conflicting magical oaths. After all, the interests of the client and witness might not align in some aspects. The lawyer, seeing the contract, frowned but didn't resist. He made sure everything was properly written and nodded to Narcissa. First Lady Malfoy confirmed the contract, then Mr. Lawley himself.
I gave the lawyer Dumbledore's letter. In it, really, only his words about the request to Severus and his signature are important. I wanted to give a copy, but they needed the original so specialists could check its authenticity.
I gave them the memory in which Snape takes a magical oath that he intends to help Potter kill Voldemort. An interesting topic, these memories. There's a spell that removes a copy from them, which is logical in most cases, and there's a spell that allows you to extract part of a memory completely and store it in a vial, like some kind of preserves. Some wizards prefer to store their bad memories precisely in vials, so they don't spoil their mood.
I gave them memories of the escape from Malfoy Manor. The part where I'm already in the garden.
The lawyer promised to compile and send for approval a list of questions I would agree to answer under veritaserum. On that note, we parted for now.
***
Luna had always loved to draw, but in France she really got carried away, even enrolled in courses, and in her free time often drew on the street. A Muggle-repelling amulet and a portkey home always with her. I had to tinker with the portkey. In the French Ministry, it's not so easy to get yourself a reusable one - you need to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and Luna is here unofficially anyway. In the end, I had to master this necessary skill myself. Remembering how ridiculously people die from poor-quality portkeys, I first tested on inanimate objects, then caught a stray cat on the street, and only after the cat did I dare try it myself, and then gave one to Luna. I made portkeys for myself and my parents too, just in case. And the cat now lives with us, and we call her Aurora. I wanted to send her back after feeding her something tasty as compensation for moral damage, but Luna decided to keep her. I wasn't against it, because Luna's cat means Luna takes care of her. The cat turned out to be a decent person, that is, cat. She wasn't impudent, didn't tear wallpaper, didn't make noise at night, readily came into arms and purred. After we washed her, treated her, and a month of normal feeding, Aurora became quite nice. Now I won't be able to test unverified portkeys on her anymore - next time I'll have to catch another cat that I won't feel sorry for. The main thing is not to show it to Luna.
Xenophilius came to his daughter a couple of weeks after Voldemort's death, rented an apartment nearby - Luna wanted to live in France a little longer. My friend moved to her father's, taking Aurora and her huge trunk with expanded space, which was half filled with paintings. The Lovegoods are planning their next journey, now in search of some Blibbering Humdingers. But if they come across Crumple-Horned Snorkacks - that's good too. However, Luna refused to leave before Snape's trial. She also wants to be a defense witness. I'm not sure that even the best lawyer in magical Britain will be able to quickly achieve a trial.
***
I passed my exams, and André and I went on vacation. It was a wonderful ten days - sun, warm sea, my beloved person nearby, and the feeling that everything would be fine. When I returned, Susan had already arrived from Beauxbatons and stunned me with news: she and Draco are planning to get engaged! No, I've known for a long time that they started dating after Christmas, but an engagement... although, these are wizards, for them it's normal. Susan asked me to be a witness on her side at the engagement ritual, since I'm now her closest person. I wonder, are there such pleasant magical sensations at someone else's engagement as at a wedding?
Draco will change the Malfoy tradition of marrying blondes. I wonder, will the children turn out ginger? Ginger Malfoys - that's hilarious, half of magical Britain will have cognitive dissonance. They plan to conclude the engagement at the Malfoy altar; the elves are now restoring the manor, which the Death Eaters caused significant damage to. When the owners were present, they restrained themselves, but after Narcissa's escape with her son, they stopped sparing the temporary base. Draco immediately left for England to help his mother; Susan and I vacationed in France for some more time. Another letter from Mr. Lawley arrived, informing that the trial would take place on August tenth. Pleasant news - usually Mr. Lawley sends me a very long list of additional clarifications. It will be a strange trial, without Snape himself. Definitely, Mr. Lawley is very cool to have managed to pull all this off, even with the Malfoys' money. He'll be even cooler if we actually win. What bothers me most about being in England is not the upcoming trial, but the meeting with Sirius and Harry. Sirius still plans to reconcile us.
***
Returning to England was strange. In two years, I had grown quite unaccustomed to it. We were expected at the Black house. Rita and I had seen each other not so long ago, and Padfoot was overjoyed at our meeting. Harry also hugged me after a small hesitation, but seeing there was no reciprocity, almost immediately let go and became embarrassed. He looked as if he hadn't slept for a week. He began to apologize confusedly and verbosely, saying that I was right then, Sirius wasn't there, and he had acted despicably. I didn't want to return to this, so I decided to change the subject and asked about his appearance.
It turned out that in the last month Harry had hardly slept, and when he did sleep, he had nightmares. At first, he simply dreamed of Albus Dumbledore; they walked together through Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Godric's Hollow. In the dreams everything was somehow white, as if in fog, and there was no one else but them. The headmaster each time told Harry that he should do the right thing. That it was hard, but necessary. That Harry shouldn't make a mistake. But how exactly it would be right, he didn't say, though Harry asked him every dream. There was nothing scary in these dreams, but Harry was somehow frightened. And then it got worse. Harry saw Hogwarts, this time not empty, but half-destroyed, with bodies of dead students everywhere, familiar and unfamiliar to Harry. He saw villages burned to the ground. He saw the Dursleys, from whom dementors had sucked out souls. He saw the ruins of Westminster Palace and the destroyed Tower Bridge. Little Whinging in the dream looked as if a tornado had passed through it, and the Burrow was burning in hellish flames. And then again the headmaster appeared in his dreams and said that the consequences of the wrong choice could be terrible. And his head constantly hurt.
I absolutely didn't like this, but Sirius attributed everything to post-war syndrome. Perhaps Harry hadn't told him everything - earlier our hero had been much more frank with his peers than with adults. And this even applied to Sirius. It wasn't about trust, but about not wanting to appear sick and weak in adults' eyes.
I need to drag him to a healer. Tomorrow we'll go to the cemetery to see Lupin, and then we'll go visit Nymphadora. I have another matter at St. Mungo's, but we'll postpone that for another day.
***
Tears welled up in my eyes when Sirius said to the tombstone: "Hello, Moony." It's easier for the dead - they're no longer in pain; it's hard to watch the grief of the living. We laid flowers and stood in silence for a bit. Sirius transfigured four glasses from leaves and poured us firewhisky. We toasted Remus's memory. Then we toasted again. Susan also began to sniffle and sob from Black's stories. But Sirius, with the decrease of firewhisky, on the contrary became a bit cheerier. He poured himself half a glass at a time, and just a little for me, Susan, and Harry. It's good that he has a wife, small children, Harry - he's not alone. I believe that for their sake he'll pull himself together; it just takes time.
After the cemetery, Susan moved by portkey to Malfoy Manor - they had something to finish before the engagement - and the three of us went to St. Mungo's. Tonks remembered me, was delighted, and immediately hugged me. I hugged her tightly back and burst into tears.
"Forgive me, forgive, forgive!"
"What are you asking forgiveness for? You're not to blame for anything!" Nymph's voice sounded surprised. "Everything's fine, everything's already over!"
Well, there you go - she went through all that and is still comforting me, when it should be the other way around. Guilt is a complicated thing.
After some time, Harry and Sirius left, and we remained alone.
It turned out that guilt torments not only me. Nymphadora is ashamed before her son. She understands that he's not to blame for anything. But she still can't bear to look at him. Edward resembles her, and he's also a metamorphmagus. In the first months, he learned to change his hair color, just like Nymph herself in childhood.
Tonks told me that Nott tried to force her to take care of the child. He brought him to her and ordered her to take Edward in her arms. She took him because she couldn't disobey orders, but stood like a doll, trying not to look at the child. After several such attempts, Nott gave up. Now Nott is dead, but at the thought that she should try to become a mother to Edward, everything inside contracts with a feeling of protest and quite naturally makes her sick. Poor Nymph. Why must life be so complicated, even when all the bad things seem to be over?
Nymphadora started talking about Lupin:
"It's a strange feeling. Sirius told me that Remus and I were going to get married, but I don't remember him at all. They tried to restore my memory, but only some separate pieces came back. You can't understand from them why I fell in love with him. According to uncle's stories, he was a very good person - noble, brave. But I looked at his photograph and felt absolutely nothing."
The doctors promise to discharge her in a week. But they say that every week, Tonks added displeasedly. Besides memory loss, there were other problems. Due to stress and the inability to use a wand for a long time, Nymph began having spontaneous magical outbursts again, and since she's not a child but an adult witch, her outbursts are orders of magnitude stronger and could accidentally kill those around her or herself. But now everything is gradually getting better.
***
The next day I again moved to St. Mungo's, dragging two unconscious individuals in tow. Yesterday Harry predictably refused examination by a healer, arguing that he had been drinking. But over the evening I wore them down. No one has ever escaped my nagging alive. Having brought Harry literally by the hand to the Blacks' family healer, I went to Healer Smethwyck, with whom I had made an appointment yesterday. He treated Frank and Alice Longbottom - or rather, for the last fifteen years he hadn't been treating them but observing their condition, because ideas had long run out. And I have a new idea. I want to test my diagnostic method on wizards too, but usually wizards are healthy, and if they're sick - it's with some unremovable curse. But here the problem is probably in the head. And possibly it's specifically physical, not magical and not psychological, since legilimens couldn't understand what was wrong. The Cruciatus Curse is an incredible strain on the body; an ordinary person dies after a few minutes of Crucio. None of the wizards, of course, checked why the muggles who fell into Death Eaters' hands died, but the wizards themselves are much stronger. I need to check Neville's parents using my method. Perhaps Smethwyck will tell me to go to hell, since he's a serious healer and I'm a dropout who managed to work part-time for two years. Then I'll have to turn to Neville. Although that's undesirable, so as not to give false hope in case my diagnostics shows nothing new.
Smethwyck didn't send me away. On the contrary, he was very interested, and we spent half a day going over the scheme. Honor and praise to the healer - he not only understood healing magic but also knew traditional medicine a bit. True, in some areas he had slightly outdated information; explaining my method, I said it was partially similar to MRI, but that meant nothing to Smethwyck. Probably learned what was necessary and stopped following progress among muggles. But in magical medicine, he doesn't stop being interested in new things. The healer had to interrupt for rounds and two urgent calls; then a hospital elf brought us lunch, and we continued.
Already closer to evening, we began diagnosing patients. We went to the ritual hall, where I modified a ready ritual circle for my method, and Smethwyck ordered the elves to move Frank.
Extensive intracerebral hemorrhage and subarachnoid hemorrhage.[1] I still have many years to learn before I can call myself a doctor - I've just picked up bits and pieces - but it seems like such things need to be treated immediately; people don't live sixteen years with this. Even with timely intervention, it's not certain the patient would be saved. Or I don't understand something. Could it be that only magic has been sustaining the lives of its bearers all this time? I'll need to show the results to André.
Alice had the same picture. Smethwyck looked worried - he hadn't encountered such things. I said we needed to consult with a specialist. Right in front of Smethwyck, I called André through the two-way mirror - squibs have enough magic for mirrors and floo travel. André said he couldn't act as an expert - he operates on people, and with wizards everything is always different from people. People in these patients' place would have been dead long ago. Smethwyck, understanding that he'd come across someone who understood the problem better than anyone present, latched onto André worse than a tick, shaking out all details and clarifications.
My God! After an hour and a half of communication, Smethwyck talked André into coming and operating on one of the patients. Provided the relatives would agree. I was sure André would refuse - he prefers to keep as far away from wizards as possible. The operation would have to be done at St. Mungo's; in a regular hospital, such a patient could knock out all the equipment with a spontaneous outburst. André dictated to Smethwyck what would need to be bought. "Buy, not steal from muggles! Mio, on your responsibility."
I returned to Grimmauld Place after midnight. I was met with bad news. Harry's curse is no longer dormant - it has become active and threatens his life. But they won't be able to get rid of it at St. Mungo's. In Britain they don't work with such curses, but possibly in South America, Japan, Russia, Africa they might be able to help - they do magic completely differently there. There were some coordinates of foreign healers at St. Mungo's. Tomorrow Sirius and Harry are departing for South America. They decided to start with it because Sirius was able to get a portkey there today. We went to bed in a lousy mood: Harry was grim, Sirius was panicking, even Rita had lost her usual lighthearted appearance, and I was overcome by bad premonitions.
***
The next day we saw Harry and Sirius off, and then Susan dragged me to Diagon Alley to buy fabric for a ritual robe. There won't be a festive ceremony - England is licking its wounds after the magical war. On the groom's side there will be only Narcissa, on the bride's side there will be me. Therefore, no fancy dresses. We immediately put on ritual robes and head to the altar. I had a robe left from last time, but Susan's entire property burned down, and there had been no occasion to sew a new one earlier. The engagement will take place on August first, on Lughnasadh - the harvest festival, which is considered a very auspicious date for weddings and engagements.
The wedding will also take place on Lughnasadh in a year, when Susan finishes her last year at Beauxbatons. After the engagement, she's planning to move to Malfoy Manor for the last summer month, though she's still a bit afraid of Narcissa. She says that by her appearance it's completely impossible to determine how she feels about her son's choice. Susan constantly feels like it's not very positive.
We bought robes and walked slowly through Diagon Alley. The alley has lost its colors and looks sad. Many shops haven't reopened yet; some windows are boarded up, some have no glass and you can see in the dark depths that the furnishings are destroyed by spells. Though some shop owners have already returned and begun slowly tidying up. Smethwyck's Patronus caught up with me when we were sadly looking at the dirty windows of Fortescue's café.
"Miss Granger, could you come to St. Mungo's? I'm currently discussing a new treatment method with the Longbottoms' relatives, and I could use your help."
I'm already anticipating Augusta's anger. Susan went from the Leaky Cauldron by floo to the Black house, and I went to St. Mungo's.
Wow, Neville definitely ate his vegetables in the morning! Or drank Skele-Gro - he grew to almost two meters. I didn't even recognize him at first - we had only corresponded for two years, and here are such changes. Now I'll have to crane my neck when talking to him. My appearance interrupted a heated argument on the verge of scandal. Augusta understood nothing and therefore was angry. Neville also understood nothing and was nervous. The meeting of old friends somewhat reduced the intensity of passions, but then Augusta demanded that I explain everything to her from the beginning. My explanations predictably turned out to be little more comprehensible to Augusta than the healer's explanations, and she began to get angry for the second round.
In the end, opinions were divided: Neville and Smethwyck were for, Augusta was against. And I... logically I think the operation should be done, but frankly I'm scared to take responsibility. People can die after such operations, even if the surgeon does everything right. True, ordinary people here would have died without the operation too, but wizards, as we see, live.
In his dreams, Neville was already imagining healthy parents. I tried to bring him down from heaven to earth, to explain that any operation is a risk, always, and brain surgery especially. But my friend firmly said that mom and dad would surely prefer to take the risk, because the way it is now - this isn't life. Lady Augusta looked at her grandson's burning eyes, at his determined face, and waved her hand. The only thing she insisted on was that Alice would be operated on first. That's understandable - she loves her daughter-in-law too, but she fears more for her son in any case.