The Apparition deposited them in the entrance hall of Grimmauld Place in a tightly clustered group, and the noise of it brought Mrs. Weasley out of the kitchen at a run.
She took one look at them — the pale faces, the tight set of shoulders, the residual cold still clinging to their clothes — and her expression went from startled to controlled alarm. "What happened?"
"Dementors," Sirius said. He was shaking water off his collar; the last of the woods' chill was melting now. "Two of them, street-level in the Muggle area. They came straight at us."
He explained the rest quickly.
Dementors were Ministry-controlled creatures. They operated out of Azkaban under Ministry direction and were not deployed to civilian areas without authorization. Two of them appearing in central London and targeting a specific group of people was not a coincidence or an equipment failure. It was an instruction.
Mrs. Weasley was already pulling towels from a cabinet.
Kevin raised his hand, and the residual water on all of them simply lifted away and vanished. Everyone was dry in roughly two seconds.
Sirius paused mid-reach for a towel. "Teach me that."
"Later. Lupin — write Dumbledore."
Lupin was already in the kitchen.
Mrs. Weasley fussed, checking each of them over with hands and eyes both. Kevin let her do it — she needed the activity more than they needed the examination. Everyone assured her they were fine, Harry loudest and least convincingly, and then Lupin called from the kitchen: "Arthur's already written."
They crowded in to read the letter over his shoulder.
The Magical Law Enforcement Patrol had picked up traces of Patronus Charms in a Muggle residential area and were requesting an account of what had occurred. The framing of the letter was careful in the way Ministry communications were careful when they were building a case.
Not: Why were Dementors deployed to a civilian area?
But: Unauthorized magic was detected, and we require an explanation.
"They're not even addressing why Dementors were there," Mrs. Weasley said, her voice rising.
"We were in the trees," Harry said. "Not a single Muggle saw anything."
Kevin pulled out his camera. "I photographed the attack. Two Dementors, Lupin casting the Patronus, the whole sequence. Dated, verifiable." He set it on the table. "Dumbledore will know what to do with it."
Hermione had noticed him snap the pictures during the attack but hadn't said anything — she'd recognized the intent immediately and trusted that he knew what he was doing.
Lupin picked up the camera. "I'll develop these and send them along."
A second letter arrived on a flash of flame — Dumbledore's response, brief and characteristic: Don't worry. I'll handle it. Almost certainly Voldemort's influence — he has recruited them before. I'll investigate further.
The Ministry went quiet after that. Whatever case they had been building seemed to deflate over the following twenty-four hours. No charges. No summons. No owls.
They left it to Dumbledore.
School was four days away. Kevin and Hermione stood outside the front door of Grimmauld Place watching a Ministry owl disappear toward the Grangers' house.
"You said two months," Hermione said, eyes on the owl until it was out of sight. "So we pick it up, recharge it, and send it back. Every two months."
"Best I can currently manage," he admitted. "But the protection level is high enough that it matters. If someone with Voldemort's power tried to breach it, they'd spend long enough on it that I'd know and be there before they finished."
He patted her hair as he spoke, the absent fond gesture of someone who had stopped noticing they were doing it.
"And I'm making extras. Rotate them, so there's always a fully charged one in place."
She turned and pressed her face against his shoulder, arms wrapped around him. He held her.
She was better at not showing the fear than she'd been a year ago. She was better at most things than she'd been a year ago. But it was still there — the awareness that her parents were Muggle in a war that had specifically targeted Muggle families before, that there was nothing they could do to protect themselves from magic, that the love they had for their daughter made them a pressure point that anyone who wanted to hurt her could exploit.
Kevin had started the alchemy work because he needed to understand the bracelet. But her parents had become the reason he'd pushed through the failures.
"They're family to me," he said quietly. "I'm not doing this as a favor. I'm doing it because they're mine too."
She made a small sound against his shoulder.
"Someday," he added, his voice dropping lower, "I'd like to ask them properly. For the record."
The pause that followed was very still.
She pulled back just far enough to look at his face. Her cheeks had gone deep pink, and her mouth was doing something complicated between a smile and an attempt not to smile.
"That," she said carefully, "is a conversation for after graduation."
"Noted."
"Entirely after graduation."
"Clearly noted."
She held his eyes for a moment, checking — and then apparently decided that yes, he did know what he'd said, and yes, he had meant it, and this was apparently simply something she was going to have to process while also maintaining her composure.
She pinched him. It was a good pinch — precise and committed.
"Ow —"
"Idiot," she said, with great warmth, and walked back inside.
Kevin stood on the doorstep. He was smiling.
He followed her in. She had barricaded herself in her room, and when he knocked she didn't answer, which was fine — he'd have time to smooth it over.
He knocked three more times. Harry appeared in the hallway, read the situation as a fight, and offered commiserating solidarity.
Hermione yanked her door open, fixed Harry with a look that made him step back, pulled Kevin inside by the wrist, and closed the door.
Harry stood in the empty hallway.
"I was just—" he started, to no one. "I was trying to help," he told the door.
The door did not respond.
---
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