Title: Unspeakable
Author: Marie-Karma
Language: English
Genre: Angst, following Romance
Rating: T perhaps will go further.
Ship: Hermione/Sirius
Summary: After long years of work, Hermione succeed. The mystery of the veil was partly solved, partly enough for Sirius Black to return. A man living out of his time and a woman living without a life; who is really in need for help?

Disclaimer: The characters and themes belong to J.K. Rowling, the abuse of them belongs to me ^.^

Chapter One – Connections

When Hermione graduated from Hogwarts, she did not become an Auror as everybody expected. She started studying the myths and the ancient culture of the wizards, which surprisingly ended up with her being given the job of an Unspeakable. Hermione fell in love with the department back then, during her 'visit' in her 5th year. She loved the peculiarity of it, things to figure out and understand. She loved the challenge of it. She loved to solve problems.

Up to the age of 23, Hermione worked with time. These 5 years she and her fellow colleagues; Davis Seaford and Kennett Luis found a way to restore time-turners (that took them a year and a half and quite a few sleepless nights). Hermione read over 2,000 books, dealing only with time-turners that year, followed by a few thousand general time-traveling books and the records of both since 5094BC.

Hermione loved her job, the only downside in it was that she could never talk about it with her friends, just as her profession suggested, it was indeed; unspeakable. At first, they would meet in the Borrow during weekends, Ginny would tell some funny story about a kid that blew up his Muggle aunt and give a glare to Harry. Ginny was a healer in St. Mungos. Harry and Ron would tell about their late adventure as Aurors and give Hermione sad smiles. They did not understand that she didn't wish to have a lifelong of being a Super-police man, chasing criminals her entire life. They thought she was missing out on something, perhaps even just being a part of their team, like back then, in Hogwarts. Of course, figuring out cases was interesting and challenging as she liked, but she found her current job much more fascinating.

When they asked her how was her day or what she did that day, she would press her lips together and raise her hands in a "sorry, can't tell," manner. She would give them the dismissing answer; "fine", "alright", "ok" and so on. At some point they stopped asking.

Luna and Neville would tell about their lives at Hogwarts, Neville was an assistant to Spout for 3 years before taking the position completely and letting the old teacher retire. She did not leave Hogwarts however; she became an adviser and in the end of the year she would be one of the examinors, both in magical schools around the world and for home-schooled students. Neville was considered one of the best teachers Hogwarts has ever seen, even though his clumsiness. He was patient and explained everything in the clearest manner possible and he was passionate about his subject, which could not be told about all the teachers in the school (Binns).

Luna was teaching Care of Magical Creatures class, making naïve young students believe in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, Gulping Plimpies and Blibbering Humdingers. She also went on summer trips to search for the mythical creatures. Surprisingly, during the first 3 years she managed to prove both Nargles and Moon Frogs to be real.

Years passed, they were studying the time-turners and time-traveling in general for nearly two years (It took another half a year to restore the broken time turners, including traveling to deserts for the specific sand, making the glass, etc.). After these two years they went further into time discovering other methods for travelling, including various spells, potions and devices. Hermione was proud of her own time stopping or speeding watch. When Ginny asked where she got the watch Hermione lied, telling she bought it in a Muggle store.

Throughout these 5 years many things have happened. Most of which Hermione was completely, or partly, unaware of.

When Hermione was 23 she began working on her next project, the Veil. It was a busy year, Ginny and Harry got married, Luna was pregnant with the child of her new-found husband George Weasley, they had a private wedding in some ice-hotel in northern Sweden, telling about their marriage after it was done. Ron and Lavender were engaged, planning on marrying next spring. Even Neville was dating Hannah Abbott for nearly 3 years now, who was a fellow healer of Ginny in St. Mangus before she moved to Hogwarts to take Madam Promphery's spot.

Hermione lived in her apartment alone; she had two guest rooms, one for herself, a big living room with a piano (which was ridiculous since she didn't ever know how to play it), a huge kitchen with a small table that could enlarge by magic in case there were guests. For the last 2 years the guest room was occupied only once and the table stood as it was, when she first bought it. Only one chair was used. By Hermione.

After a year working with the veil Hermione did not make any progress, only filling her mind with a few extra hundreds of gigabytes of knowledge. She did not leave the veil project; only put it aside for a while, working with Kennett with the gates to alternative universes. A year later she returned to her project with the veil. Davis would constantly tell her that that would not bring her anywhere, that many have tried to figure out the mystery of the veil; "Throughout centuries," he would tell her, "Ever since 2055BC, and none have solved it and it's still this way today," he would sigh then and send her a tired glance, "Every new Unspeakable tries it in the beginning, they write the same reports, they come to the same conclusions and then they give up, all the same."

Hermione found that he was right when she asked to see the reports. Most were identical and stopped at different level of progress. Hermione asked for the library with all the works that has been done with the veil ever since wizards started worked with it. Davis' aged face frowned but he said nothing and led her into the deeps of the department. The circle of doors was only the first of many. The others were bigger, more confusing, leading to long never ending corridors with as many doors. Half of the Unspeakables were responsible for the exploration when not working on a project. Many of the exploring Unspeakables were aged people, like Davis, in their early 50s or late 40s. At least one Unspeakable would disappear a year behind the doors that were the source of the name of the department: Mysteries.

He led her through 3 circled rooms and 5 corridors; she was having hard time remembering the way. Maybe it was done this way for the new Unspeakables to give up the useless research and start concentrating on something that would perhaps bring use. Hermione knew, once she entered the room with millions works, that she was not going to give up her project.

Hermione was reading a work of a pure-blood wizard from the 600's when the phone rang. The wizard, named Holosinus Devortshield, was insisting that Muggle-born were not able to pass through the veil, it was a privilege of Pure-bloods since only they could go inside. He also told that Half-bloods were slightly aware of what was going on behind the veil but they were not as sensitive as Pure-bloods. Muggle-borns on the other hand were completely ignorant to the events.

The text was written in such a prejudiced way that Hermione almost threw it aside immediately. Swallowing her pride Hermione kept reading, reminding herself that she was a professional, she too remembered that Harry could hear something behind the veil while she didn't. Hermione kept reading granting her teeth at the language and metaphors used by the author. She jumped when the phone rang for the second time.

"Hello?" Her voice sounding a lot more tired than she imagined.

"Hermione, come here quickly!" It was Harry he sounded excited and in pain, her heart started racing immediately.

"What's wrong, Harry? Did something happen?" Her mind racing through the worst possibilities. All the most known Death Eater were caught and spied on –

When has she become such a pessimist?

"Not at all," His voice sounded on the other side of the line, "Ginny is giving birth."

Hermione felt like face-palming herself. How come has she forgotten? "I will be there soon." She said and hang up. Ginny's due date was coming closer and closer in the past few weeks. Due date? It was not a test. Hermione shook her head and grabbed Floo powder to Floo to the hospital. Hermione frowned, did a 'baby due day' actually have a specific title? She shrugged her shoulders.

In front of the room addresses to Ginny stood a crowd of people, most of these red headed Weasleys. Hermione saw the Twins with their wives, Fred with a pregnant Angelina and George with Luna and their little child Chop, Luna insisted that this name would give the child a lot of good luck in life and Nargles would never bother him. George smiled at her in amusement and hugged her, saying that not a day with her is boring, that she would always find a way to make him smile and then he would go even deeper and remind her he loved her.

Every person with eyes could see it anyway, Hermione was ashamed of that thought, she really did not mean to be mean or bitter, sometimes it's just taking a tool of her, this whole situation. Which situation? She was not sure, but she knew there was one.

She looked away from the merry couple to see Bill and Fleur there with their 3 daughters, all as much Veelas as their mother. Ron and Lavender were standing there, Lavender plainly nervous and Ron who was cracking a nerve.

Mrs. and Mr. Weasley were there, Molly was rushing from place to place, apparently she could not relax. Perhaps moving and doing anything calmed her down. Hermione remembered her time in the Borrow when Mrs. Weasley would cook to calm her nerves. Arthur on the other hand was talking to Percy's Muggle wife about her job as a manager of relations with the magical world. Charlie was talking to Neville, they were singles tonight. Charlie's wife, Linda, from Romania, was taking care of a dragon birth in Norway; she promised to come as soon as possible. Molly thought it was careless to work with dragons while in the 7th month of pregnancy. Charlie and Linda, however, would smile to one another and say that danger should be their last name (Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes). Neville was standing by the door glancing at it nervously every now and then, his now fiancée was inside helping Ginny to give birth.

Hermione felt like an outsider. "Hermione!" One of the twins finally noticed her arrival, by the fact he had his hands around Angelina, she could only guess it was Fred. "Nice to see you!"

"Nice to see you too, Fred," She smiled, "How are you two doing?"

Angelia patted her big stomach, "Three," she smiled cheekily, her happiness stabbing a little part in Hermione, she could only wish to be like her. "We are great. Fred and George came up with this new selection of products for pregnant women, I think their shop grew 5 times bigger during the last 3 months. How are you?"

"I am pretty good," She could not tell much more, "I should come visit you sometime there, I live a couple of blocks away and haven't been there for 4 years already." Which reminded her, "Do you think you need a bigger apartment now that you are about to have a child?"

Fred looked at his wife, a look that meant that they were in fact looking for a place to move to. "Do you have something in mind?" He asked with a his big charming smile.

Hermione nodded, "I am selling my apartment, it's too big for only me, I am moving to a place only a block away from the Ministry of Magic. It's in Muggle London."

Angelina and Fred once again exchanged a few secret looks before turning to her, "We would like to see it sometime if possible."

That was when the door opened and a happy Harry stepped out of the room with a rigid Hannah, "Only 2 at a time." She warned with a serious glance before cracking into a smile: "It's a boy!"