Hermione was tired. Fatigued. Exhausted. Willing to go wherever the currents tossed her.

Right now, they had tossed her in front of a winged blue man with a fox head. She glanced at his hands. They were paws, but there was an opposable - she'd call it a thumb.

He was also still quite naked. Fortunately, the table they were sitting at did not have a glass top.

In front of her was an Irish coffee, since she needed a strong drink.

In front of him was a large bowl with three helpings of tapioca pudding. It had initially contained five.

"What do you plan to do with yourself now?" asked Jamaica suddenly.

Hermione had been thinking of little else, and it showed on her face.

"If it's any consideration," he offered. "My friends consider me a good sounding board."

Hermione frowned. "I don't get it. What's in it for you? Why would you help me?"

"I'm easily amused. And easily bored. By next week, I'll have found someone new to interest me. This week, it's you. You may as well take advantage of me. I have connections. I can help you."

Hermione looked shocked. She was, too. And her mind was feverishly looking for a catch.

"Want me to eat this pudding somewhere else?" he offered.

Hermione considered this, and sighed. "No. Not really. I'm very tired. I could use a friend." She looked up at him. "Even if it just for a week."

Jamaica shrugged, and took another large spoonful of pud.

"I'm going to Australia. My parents live there, or at least they did when I - when I disappeared. Maybe I can find them." She didn't sound very hopeful.

"They will surely be delighted to have you back from the dead."

Hermione rubbed her forehead. "That's the thing, see. They don't know I'm dead. They don't know I exist."

Jamaica looked curious.

"There was a war in Britain in the 90s, against Voldemort. I was a - a friend of someone important in it. Harry. Harry Potter. That placed me in danger. And my parents. I modified their memories and sent them to Australia."

"With their consent."

"No."

She cringed at the look Jamaica gave her. "That was wrong," he said. "It fits in with your general aversion to truth."

She cringed again.

"I should have told them, explained to them. Maybe they would have agreed to it."

"My experience with humans suggests that no non-psychotic parent would go into safety leaving their child in a war."

"So you understand! They would have stayed - I couldn't do that to them. Why I had to do it? To protect them?"

"No. If it was their choice to die for you, they had the right to do so."

"No. Yes. No." Hermione groaned. "It's done. It's what I did. Anyway, after the war, Harry and I went to try and sort them out. But we found that we could not bring back their memories without serious brain damage." She looked at him, eyes fiery with hurt. "Be happy. I was punished for my sins. They are alive. It's a price I'm willing to pay."

Jamaica ate some more pudding. He could probably bring back their memories, and certainly knew someone who could. But he didn't think the human sitting in front of him deserved that. Yet. However, she also didn't deserve to know his take on the matter, to have hope dangled in front of her.

"So you'll head off the Australia, look for your parents, see if they're alive. If they are, you will feel delight. And sadness that you cannot join them. You will weep. You will grieve. And then you will have to rebuild your life. How do you plan to do this?"

Hermione looked at the bottom of her whiskey-laden coffee ruefully.

"Leave ten New Koruna in the glass, and tap it four times with your wand. It gets replaced by a new cup."

A minute later, a happy Hermione was looking at the glorious white over russet concoction in her glass.

Two minutes later, the pair were sitting a lot closer to the wall.

"Do you lot know the meaning of the word privacy?" groaned Jamaica.

"Vix here tells me it's a small village in Indonesia," answered a chipper Alphonse, who was seemed overly pleased to be squeezing the snorkack into the wall. Fortunately, the leather bench they were sitting on was long enough to handle someone of his - stature.

"I thought you had silencing wards up?" hissed Hermione, who was now sitting next to two yellow-tracksuited figures.

"He does," said Katarina, her fangs gleaming. "We couldn't hear anything. That's why we had to join you."

"Ever considered asking us?" muttered Jamaica.

"Course not," said Alphonse calmly. "You'd tell us to go away."

"Go away," suggested Hermione.

"My point exactly," said the troll sagely. "So, Miss Granger. You planning to visit your old friends in Britain?"

Hermione gave her blue companion a questioning look. It galled her to find herself doing so, but she was effectively a stranger in a strange land, and he'd been the first to offer - well, not quite help, or even a shoulder to cry on, but - an ear. She knew the value of friends who listened. And even if he'd be gone in a few days, he was here now. And her mind had decided to trust him. So if he said trust them, she'd trust them.

Jamaica shrugged. "Tell them what you will."

Hermione groaned internally.

"Maybe he can help," continued Jamaica. "He might look like something a hippogriff threw up, but he really is quite the softie."

Hermione looked at the troll appraisingly. The real estate mogul with arrest warrants in eleven jurisdictions looked his best to look soft and sweet. His efforts were ruined by his two female companions bursting into laughter as a result.

Teddy's apartment was small, dingy, well stocked with food. This week, it was in Liverpool, since he had tickets to watch the Merseyside derby.

It was not the sort of place you brought a girl home to. Unless she was someone you had grown up with and was your best friend. It also helped if she was your wife and she had chosen the bed herself. It was the only furniture in Teddy's portable pocket apartment that wasn't second hand.

As far the extended Weasley family knew, Theodore John Lupin and Victoire Annette Delacour-Weasley weren't together.

Despite being married and all.

They'd tied the knot, the Muggle way, at sixteen. In secret. On a dare. A misunderstood dare. In Gretna. With only their closest friends to witness it.

They just hadn't gotten around to getting divorced yet. She didn't mention it. He didn't mention it. One of the witnesses might have mentioned it once, but was immediately Hexed into submission.

The first couple of years, they tried dating other people. They really did. It never worked out. The first thing each of them did after a date was come home to their spouse and moan about how horrible it was. Followed by other - activities.

It was annoying, really, the fact that they couldn't live without each other. They got used it, though, in the way that a fish got used to its dependence on water - in other words, without ever noticing.

They couldn't bear the thought of the family finding out. Too many galleons would change hands, and the teasing would be incredible. They were rebels. They would not give in to the evil romanticists!

They found they could pull off a public "I Hate You!" routine with each other very easily.

Ironically, it was that passionate hatred that got them caught. Uncle Harry, famous for his emotional inadequacy (at least in the World According To Ginny Potter), was the only one who saw it. The glances within the glares. The touches within the slaps. The smirks within the sneers. The appreciative nods when an insult was particularly creative.

He'd given them a pair of communicator and Joint Portkey rings one Christmas. It meant either could be with the other at moment's notice, no matter where they were in the world. It was quite embarassing, since he'd packaged them inside a couple of baby rattles. His public story was that they would always be kids to him.

Victoire had pressed him once, asking why he never teased them about it, why he never told anyone.

He'd looked at her, looked somewhere far off in the distance, looked back at her, patted her on the shoulder, and told her to renew the charms on the rings every year. They didn't last forever, you see. Nothing ever did.

"You're up late this morning," said Teddy. He was sitting at the apartment's only table, forking some omelette into his mouth and appreciating the blonde wearing (only) his shirt.

Victoire yawned and grabbed his coffee.

He didn't bother to protest. And since she was going to steal his breakfast anyway, he pushed his plate towards her and got up to fix himself another one. And get a fresh cup of Colombian.

"I got in at three," she said when she felt sufficiently awake. "Alphonse met a girl and decided to get chatty."

"Let me guess. She was trying to sell him two miles of Madagascan coastline and he was trying to lower the price to that of a box of toothpicks."

"That is sooo last week," said the one-eighth Veela, digging into her stolen omelette. "And it was Mauritius, not Madagascar."

"There are parts of Mauritius left to sell?" he asked, genuinely surprised.

"There's not. She was a con."

"She's pushing up daisies now, then?"

Victoire shrugged, and her husband didn't press the matter.

"So ---" he said as he finally finished making his replacement omelette, "What was that unbelievable news you had for me?"

Whatever Teddy might have expected to hear, it wasn't something which could destroy the Weasley family. But as a solemn - and slightly scared - Victoire explained it, it was was difficult to see how anything but a huge coverup could save it.

The most important person in the extensive Weasley clan had committed an Azkaban-worthy crime twenty one years ago. And if justice was served, some children would be greatly hurt - to the extent that they might even feel suicidal.

He didn't remember anything in the Auror Ethics course that dealt with this situation.

Meanwhile, in a small hotel in Prague, a woman wept for the loss of her love, her dreams, for a past that had been stolen from her.