1
Living

Meals at the Burrow became tradition after the war. Whether it was breakfast, lunch, dinner, or some combination of two meals, there was always a contingent of people at the Burrow at least once a week. Family and friends were ready and willing to subject themselves to awkward, explosive, or interrogative conversation for the sake of a delicious home-cooked meal and the ever-pervasive feeling of home.

Two weeks ago, dinner was more of an extension of George and Angelina's wedding reception. The newlyweds were welcomed back from their honeymoon and bombarded with questions about the Greek climate, the beautiful sights, the culture, and when they were planning on procreating. Angelina raved about the air, the sand, the food, and the mythology; George tormented his mother by regaling her with his plans to name his future children after what he thought were interesting Greek deities like Cronus, Priapus, Medea, and Tantalus.

The week prior, breakfast nearly gave everyone indigestion for the rest of the day due to Harry and Ginny's abhorrent list of potential names for their impending second child. Each deplorable name combination was laughed or groaned right off the parchment. After "Ignotus Godric" came 'round the bend, George threw up his hands and cried, "You may as well name the poor whelp 'Toilet Seat Potter' for all the worth you seem to have given him with those names!" Therefore, the naming of the second Baby Potter was postponed.

Dinner for the current week centered on Ron's stone-cold sober, piss-poor attempt to flirt with a beautiful, young clerk at the Magical Menagerie.

"—and she's going on about how some mongoose and some African fish will mate incestuously because of proximity and this git…" Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes under his spectacles, shaking his head. "He says, 'It sounds like you're really passionate about them, eh? Is it because you identify with them on some level?'"

Molly was nearly inconsolable with disappointment. Ginny was beyond inconsolable with laughter. Fleur's reactions ranged from incredulity to amusement to mild offense. Angelina's grimace was a combination of holding back her laughter and actual physical pain for Ron's experience. Hermione, having weathered the worst of Ron's verbal misfires, only shook her head and continued to eat.

Percy plucked his spectacles from his face to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Sometimes I question our blood relation."

Charlie had covered his mouth to keep from spewing his food since he couldn't stop chuckling long enough to swallow properly. Bill trembled with suppressed mirth as he tried to help his five year old daughter maneuver the pasta noodles onto her fork.

"And then what did she say?" asked Arthur, his horrified expression sending George and Ginny into fresh peals of laughter.

"She just stares at him and goes, 'Are you asking if I identify with animals or with incestuous creatures?'" answered Harry flatly, still unable to bring himself to look at his best friend. "But he didn't really get the hint and got flustered and said, 'Out of desperation, you know? Swinging every which way for survival's sake?'"

Charlie, Ginny, George, and Angelina howled with laughter—with baby Jamie chiming in with his own giggles.

"I meant—I wanted to know if the study had some sort of special meaning to her!" cried Ron desperately, the respected and celebrated Auror's face turning puce with embarrassment. "Like Hermione and House Elves and oppression and discrimination and abuse!"

"Yes, Ronald, because I'm sure Lana Shacklebolt has very powerful emotions about incest," deadpanned Hermione.

"Lana Shacklebolt?!" shrieked Ron.

"Lana Shacklebolt!" screeched Molly.

Harry fell out of his chair.

"You—the Minister's niece—how—" spluttered Arthur, looking on the verge of tears.

Percy pushed his plate out of the way and set his elbows on the table in order to cover his face with his hands.

"She only introduced herself as 'Lana'—how was I supposed to know she—oh, Merlin!"

"Ron, did you think that just because you mastered putting your foot in your mouth that you could shove the rest of your limbs up there too?" cackled Charlie, reaching down to help a wheezing Harry back into his chair.

"Be careful. Keep on like that, and some bird's liable to shove her foot up another one of your orifices," added Bill.

"I feel like that slug spell from your second year was cosmic foreshadowing to your complete ineptitude at interacting with women," rasped Ginny, accepting the cup of water from Harry.

"How you managed to date the Brightest Witch of Her Age is either a testament to the range of your capabilities and failures as a human being or proof of Hermione's temporary lapse of judgment," said Angelina.

Hermione winced, and Ron, if possible, turned even more purple than before.

"At least he's not doing it intentionally," offered Hermione, throwing her poor friend a bone.

"Yeah, his foot's in his mouth so often that his tongue picked up the bad habit of tripping as well," snorted Percy.

"He had his moments," said Hermione firmly.

"Moments amongst the decades of blunders," guffawed George. "Come on, Granger. What was the worst thing he ever managed to say to you by accident?"

Ginny burst out laughing "Apart from, 'You are a girl!' from your fourth year."

Hermione scowled, remembering that particular interaction, and then smiled slyly. "Well, there was also the one time he managed to imply I was physically disproportionate, psychotic, and cheap all in less than three syllables."

The uproar of indignation ("My fool son said what?!") and near-hysterical amusement ("Someone fetch a quill and paper—I need to get this down verbatim!") drowned out Ron's spluttered protests.

"Oh, let's just stop this," said Hermione, waving her hands to try and settle everyone. "We don't need to rehash that particular episode. Ronald's constantly the butt of our jokes."

"Yeah, because he does such a good job of making an arse out of himself," chortled George, earning a slap upside his head by Fleur.

"And on that note, I should get going," said Hermione, trying to hide her smile behind the last bite of her blackberry cobbler.

Molly, accustomed to Percy, Bill, and Hermione's scholarly schedule, brandished her wand to fix a plate of food for the younger woman to take with her.

"Don't tell me you're going back to work. You left to come here for dinner," said Ginny.

"Never heard of meal breaks, Gin?" asked Ron as he dejectedly devoured his own plate of cobbler, his face slowly but surely losing the violent color as the conversation veered away from him.

"I prefer to work at night anyway," said Hermione.

"Which leaves the Ministry fairly empty and quiet for you to work," said Percy, nodding in scholarly solidarity. "A wise strategy, Hermione. You can also change your workdays so your days off will be during peak days to further minimize—"

"Get out while you can, Granger," said George, tugging Hermione out of her seat and leading her away from the table. "Save yourself."

Hermione laughed as she made the rounds around the table, kissing Jamie on the top of his sweet-smelling head and hugging her adoptive family. She kissed Arthur and Molly on their cheeks and accepted the plate. Smiling, she walked out of the kitchen to the warm goodbyes and beginnings of a new session of make-Ron-feel-awkward-and-inept.

"Don't forget Friday—tomorrow, Hermione—is girls' night!" hollered Ginny as Hermione made her way to the fireplace. "You've missed it the last three weeks, and you'll be going to this one even if I have to carry you!"

"I'll do my best!" she called back as she stepped into the fireplace and Floo-ed to the Ministry.

These days, the Ministry pushed the limits of discomfort in the name of social progress. Pureblooded families were forced to move into the future or be left in the bowels of their past. New inventions—primarily coming from George Weasley and the occasional contribution of his siblings—introduced a melding of Muggle and magical that was beginning to revolutionize cultural norms. Kingsley Shacklebolt had delivered on his promise to herald a new age for the Wizarding World. Loud and familiar voices pitched and pushed policies that were rapidly changing the political climate for werewolves, Muggleborns, Squibs, House Elves, and other beings that had faced widespread discrimination.

Hermione Granger's had not been amongst those voices.

Her status as a war hero afforded her no preferential treatment. When she applied to the Department of Mysteries, the two head Unspeakables had balked at her choice of focus for a few moments, clearly having expected the famous Hermione Granger to be interested in the Time or Thought Rooms. However, their surprise only lasted a few moments before they reviewed her application—consisting of a thick manuscript of initial research—and assigned her a supervisor and a small office.

Hermione unlocked the door to said office, taking a comforting deep breath of parchment, old wood, and the soft remnants of incense. The walls were essentially bookcases, stuffed to the edges with books and tight scrolls, Muggle notebooks and folders, and one small radio set. She set the plate of food on the corner of her neat but heavily occupied desk and cast a warming charm over it, knowing full well she'd need it very soon.

She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk and lifted out the canvas bag of familiar materials and made her way back out and down the hall to the Death Chamber.

The cruelest punishment exacted on magical folk had been and always would be the Dementor's Kiss, whereupon a person's soul would be extracted from the body, leaving just a fleshy shell, with nothing but empty breaths to fill it. A lifetime imprisonment in Azkaban meant, at the very least, a sliver of hope that a person would survive the experience with their souls relatively intact. It meant they might be able to move on from the world to the next plane of existence.

Souls were the keys to life. They moved people, moved between people, moved mountains. The soul was the strongest and quietest aspect of a person's existence. It was a soul's call that could echo furthest, from one plane of existence to another.

The Veil, the ancient and mysterious stone archway set on a dais in the large, open chamber in the Department of Mysteries, had always been believed to be the doorway between planes. Its biggest secret was simple. The opposite of light is dark. The opposite of birth is death. The opposite of existing is non-existence. Life, at its very core, has no opposite. So the dead, those who were long-thought to be lost forever, were in some capacity still alive.

And it was that thought that fueled the five-year research of Hermione Granger. Forsaking a desk in the Ministry proper, an apprenticeship at Hogwarts, and even a post at Gringotts, she had chosen to become an Unspeakable, holing herself up in the depths of the Department of Ministries, with nary a hint of her goals to her loved ones.

Seven times she'd already performed spells that she thought would yank out a shaggy-haired, taciturn, immature, posthumously-acquitted convict. Seven times, she staggered back to her flat, feeling like she'd put her mind and soul through a full-scale battle.

She wasn't finished.

She'd lit so many candles that the cold, dreary Death Chamber smelled constantly of smoke. She'd covered nearly every surface of the stone dais in runes so often that it'd grown worn with how frequently she'd had to start over and scrub it all off. To no avail. Sirius Black was no closer to stumbling out of the Veil than Hermione was to becoming Empress of the Galaxy.

She'd figured it out, though. She'd given up on most of her prior research on the Veil, which had been mostly speculation anyway, and started anew. From the ancient theories of life and death, she'd forged her own avenue to understanding the Veil, and it would make her eighth bloody attempt that much more successful.

The key to death was simply that it was still life, and Hermione was going to figure out how to get the annoying bastard back if it killed her. The irony wasn't lost on her as she prepared her votive candles (again), a charmed dagger (again), and potion-infused paint for the floor (again). The idea was to reach an arm through the Veil and pull out a straggler, one who hadn't yet been unborn, but had rather tripped into the wrong plane of life and gotten a bit lost.

Granted, that'd been the general idea, ever since her first day down in the Department of Mysteries. Passionate and eager to accomplish the impossible, Hermione rode on the hope infused in the worldwide post-bellum magical atmosphere. But even without working in the Time Room, she knew the toll seven years had taken.

Seven years.

Seven years, but it was still easy to fantasize Fred skipping through the silvery, billowing Veil, brushing off his shoulders and shooting her a devilish wink. Tonks would stumble over nothing but still lob a cheerful greeting and flash a bright new hair color. And as he'd carefully step through, the warmth of Remus's kind smile would outshine his scars and shabby robes.

Hermione didn't expect to resurrect the entire bloody battlefield from the second of May, but she'd hoped to bring someone back, ensure that her efforts weren't so futile, that maybe the fates weren't so decisive. That maybe it truly hadn't been someone's time.

Bringing Sirius back hadn't been solely for the sake of her goals, nor for Harry's. Harry, who remained in (a heavily renovated) Grimmauld Place, chasing after two year old James Sirius with the eager help of eight year old Teddy Lupin. Hermione wanted to bring back Sirius for Sirius's own sake. He'd been cheated from life twice, but now he was the only one that had a legitimate chance of being brought back through the Veil.

As she lit the last candle and opened the first mason jar of her spelled paint, Hermione sighed. There was no point defending her actions and saying she wasn't trying to live in the past. When one spent more time with the dead than with the living, missing those who'd gone was an inevitability.

With the last rune drawn, Hermione came to stand in front of the Veil and braced her hands on the stone arch. The silky mist billowed gracefully, its rhythm unchanging and uncaring of her sudden, close proximity. She felt no warmth, no cold, and no disturbance in the air.

She stepped back, taking a deep breath and letting it go slowly, steadying herself for another round, praying she'd at least make some sort of headway if she couldn't fully succeed.

Compared to the other rituals, which relied heavily on chanting or spell-casting, her new attempt depended on the quality of her meditative state, so she positioned herself on the ground, legs crossed, the backs of her hands resting on her knees with her thumbs and index fingers together.

Despite her hope and confidence, Attempt #8 was still very much an experiment, and exactly what she was supposed to be meditating upon was as nebulous as all the texts' explanations for the ancient magic of life. The theory had been to summon her own life force in order to seek out Sirius's and pull it out. Like magnetism. She had no real way to test that theory without using herself, and it wasn't as if she was familiar with summoning her own life force.

So she picked up the knife in her right hand and set the blade in her palm, holding her hands close to the middle of her chest. Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing, slowing it down so she could feel her heart thrumming through her chest. Then she let Sirius's face bloom in her mind. It'd been so long that she'd forgotten certain details about his face, but his wide, crinkly-eyed grin and the stormy grey of his eyes were as vivid as the last day she'd seen him.

Hermione brought the blade to the meaty base of her thumb and sliced a short line down it. She set aside the dagger and fisted her hand, trying to push out as much blood as she reasonably could. Wincing as she rubbed her fingers over the pooling blood to coat her palm, she hoped this would be enough. Then she pressed her bloodied hand down on the rune painted in front of her—raidho, for world rhythm, for the dance of life.

And everything from that point forward, with blood on her palm on top of raidho and Sirius's face in her mind, was a blur of stormy greys and shimmery silvers. Her ears roared in waves, echoes of whispers rebounding along every crash. The rest of her senses, however, were blocked, as if she was detached from her body.

Only one thing stood out in the haze—a faint voice that sounded nothing like Sirius.

"…Granger?"

Yeah, I'm trying to get through all my stories again and fix them so I can move on with my life.
I can't remember how many tries I've put down at this point, but bear with me.