The Plague Ship

Synopsis: What might have happened if Sirius had been a bit more proactive after the dementor attack on Harry and Dudley? AU, and Hermione had not gone to Grimmauld Place, deciding to spend time with her family instead. No super-powered Harry.

Timeframe: Starting early August 8, 1995, then continuing afterwards

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Potterverse, so quit asking for loans or donations.

Warning: It is said that only the middle class give more than lip-service to middle-class morality. Bashing of middle-class morality will occur. And it's diatribe time!

Chapter 12: Meditations

It was a warm afternoon, and Harry Potter sat on the veranda of his house overlooking the Dordogne River, sipping a glass of the black wine of Cahors. The area, just upstream of the more famous Bordeaux region of France, also made some lovely wines which went so well with the pate de fois gras produced in the area.

His chateau had a muggle-friendly wing, which was set up as a museum with ceramics dating back to the Egyptian pharaohs and the Minoans. The house elves had kept the museum rooms up and running in the years when the family had not been able to be 'in residence', and the Chateau des Ceramiques was a popular visit for the local school classes studying various periods in history. One of its prize (and priceless) pieces was a still-sealed amphora of wine from the year of Lucius Opimius' consulship (121B.C.).

Since his original escape to France and subsequent moving there permanently, he had kept in touch with his friends in England and Scotland. When he attained his majority (both magical and muggle) and had come into his inheritances, he found that the Potter family had retained some properties in the south since before the Hundred-Years War. Eleanor of Aquitaine had brought the lands into the holdings of the English crown when she married the English king Henry, and it had taken the war for France to get them back.

To Harry's continuing delight, the area was alive with magic dating back some thousands of years, when the tribal shamans had painted the walls of the caves in the area. The additional facts that his friends the Delacours lived not too far away, and his godfather Sirius also had a chateau close by, were also pluses in his mind.

The best part of living in this part of France, in Harry's mind, was that nobody cared about his history, or at least seemed to care. Here, he was another English wizard who had some property in the wine country, was friendly with the locals, paid in cash, and didn't chase the local young women. His only problem seemed to be a violent temper which appeared when someone tried to force him to do something. If asked for help, he would give more than was asked, but he would not be forced.

The local feelings about Sirius were rather more strained, as the old Marauder had never really had the opportunity (or the inclination) to grow up, and was seen as a bit of a rascal who delighted in upsetting people.

Harry kept in touch with the news from Britain, although he often found it depressing. Although there had been some improvement in the workings of the British magical world, the old guard was still fighting had to maintain their stranglehold on power. The bigotry which had been so prevalent was eroding, but not fast enough for Harry's taste. It had certainly not reached the concept of 'Egalite' or 'Fraternite' common in his new home.

As Fleur Weasley had commented during one of her visits, the English still had the idea of hereditary lordships firmly in their minds, whereas France had at least tried to discard this and many other such flaws in the revolution. As she wisely pointed out, it had not been completely successful, but certainly going through several wars with people working together provided the basis for a more level field.

Although her parents had returned to England and resumed their dental practices after Harry had put paid to the late and very much unlamented Tom Riddle, and various allied forces had eliminated most of the Death Eaters, Hermione had still found that, as what Harry was now calling a first-generation witch (rather than muggle-born), her prospects in Magical Britain were still slim. Consequently, after graduating from L'Academie des Beauxbatons, she continued her training in France and had recently attained her certification as a Maitresse des Potions. Not to be limited to the magical world, she was currently pursuing her doctorate in chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Many weekends Hermione would take the public floo down to Le Bugue and Harry would pick her there and drive (the muggle way) to his chateau on the heights above the town. He had found that, although slower that flying by broom (which Hermione detested), driving in an open car gave them a chance to breath the fresh air and take in the scenery.

Just how many bedrooms were occupied any given night was nobody's business but theirs. Hermione knew that Harry had visits from Ginny Weasley and Gabrielle Delacour as well, but knew that all three witches owned life debts to Harry, and that all three had become close friends. He asked nothing of them but their friendship, and if the friendship was intimate, again it was no one else's business.

Hermione also knew that Harry would never hurt his friends, and that in time, some new arrangements would have to be made, but that time was in the future. And for all that they all owned life-debts, Harry would never take advantage of that fact. During one joint visit she had laughed along with Ginny and Harry when he told them that every time Ginny visited and returned home without an engagement ring, he received a nasty Howler from her mother.

When all three of the young witches had attended Harry's Winter Solstice shindig, he had admitted to them (after some serious wine consumption) that he did want to have a family someday. However, he also knew that little children could be the bossiest creatures on the planet, and he was just not ready for that. Ginny had smiled and said that her mother had told her that no parent is ever ready for that.

From Harry's point of view, his first conscious and formative experiences with married couples had been the Dursleys, which served as a pretty poor basis for a belief in marriage as an institution (as it was said, who would want to live in an institution?).

Molly and Arthur Weasley, and Gil and Elly Granger had served as much better examples of what marriage could be, and two out of three was not really a convincing argument.

He knew that Draco's parents were both marked Death Eaters, but he knew so little about them, other than he had despised Lucius, that the state of their marriage was a complete unknown to him. He would not call it a mystery, because that would imply that he was curious, where in reality he had absolutely no interest in the matter. Harry considered that most people thought that 'hate' was the opposite of 'love', where Harry knew that the opposite of caring deeply for the well-being of another was complete and utter indifference to their existence – to 'hate', you were still involving yourself in their lives.

Other than these few, Harry really didn't know too many married wizards and witches. The staff at Hogwarts never mentioned spouses (spice?), and other than a few of his friends, he knew nothing of the parents of most of his classmates.

As Harry was contemplating the setting sun from his porch, he got a fire-call from Ron Weasley, who had news. Harry immediately invited Ron over for dinner, as that hour was approaching. As the fireplace flared green, Ron stepped through holding the hand of one of their housemates from Hogwarts. Harry recognised Lavender Brown, who Ron had been sweet on after realizing that he and Hermione really had only one thing in common, and that was Harry. Since he had left Hogwarts, and Hermione had been at school in France, the two had drifted farther and farther apart. They were still friends, sort of.

Ron had often found Hermione's know-it-all attitude and her bossiness extremely annoying. Having been bullied most of his life by his twin brothers, having his older brothers held up as examples, and then having his mother dote on his younger sister had given Ron an instant dislike for those features of Hermione's personality, and in the end they were better apart (or as Harry saw it, better to be kept apart, for the sanity of all around them). In their first year, Ron's mother had even sent a howler to his at breakfast time, where she very loudly berated Ron very publically, and then was all sweetness-and-light to Harry. This of course had done Ron's self-esteem no good whatsoever.

Harry loved them both, but he had been through enough battles in his life to want no more. For most of his early years at Hogwarts they had been his only friends, but there is no requirement to think your friends are perfect. Because of his upbringing, Harry had learned to judge people quickly and a bit ruthlessly, just as a matter of survival.

With Hermione and Harry's absence from Hogwarts, and the disappearance of Professor Snape and many Slytherin students, Ron found himself becoming more his own man, instead of being the third leg of a stool. Although not a brilliant a student as his three oldest brothers, or his younger sister, his scholastic prowess was respectable, and his quidditch skills won him praise from the other houses as well as his own.

As Harry poured them some wine, Lavender blushed (which surprised Harry, as the beautiful young witch had been quite the shameless flirt at school) and Ron asked Harry if he would do them the honour of being Ron's best man when they got married come the summer solstice. The new couple were suddenly bound up in a strong hug, as Harry agreed with the greatest of pleasure to the request.

Over dinner, they chatted about the goings on in England and Scotland. Harry had some news from Hogwarts, as Minerva McGonagall had visited her old (and a favourite) student a number of times. Separate bedrooms. Some of the other staff had visited as well on occasion. While Dumbledore's visits often led to deep philosophical discussions or talk of history, Pomona Sprout's visits were a delight as the cheerful little Herbology professor walked him around the walnut groves in the vicinity commenting on the various plants and their (often aphrodisiacal) uses.

When Pomona and Minerva visited together, Harry was often left with sore ribs from laughing as the two witches had wicked senses of humour, which had certainly not been on display during his classes at Hogwarts - Harry felt that if the two professors every wanted to quit Hogwarts and go on the road as a comedy duo, the 'Mona and Minnie Show' would definitely be a hit.

The greatest shock to Harry was Lavender's news that Nasturtium Parkinson was getting married to Gregory Goyle. Lavender put on a New York accent and commented about her becoming a 'Nasty Goyle'.

Since Pansy's death in the clean-up of the Voldemort 'gang (Pansy had taken the full Dark Mark, while her lover Draco Malfoy had yet to take the full Mark before Voldemort and most of his friends were 'removed' from the lands of the living – like most of the real world, this fact had annoyed Draco no end), Nasturtium had proved to be cunning and ambitious, as a good Slytherin should be, but her ambition appeared to be to survive the war that was coming. She had seen no value to the bigotry that eventually got her sister and father killed.

Because of the obvious nickname for her first name, Nasturtium was using her second name (Gloria) and on her seventeenth birthday had officially changed her name, dropping her floral designation.

Now that the pure-blood bigots were losing their grip on society, certain facts were coming out. One was that Goyle's great-grandmother had been muggle-born – his grandmother and mother had seen fit to keep this fact quiet. This was far enough back that Greg's pure-blood credentials were not questioned, and with his father joining the ranks for the Death Eaters, what had been kept quiet became completely silent. The older women saw the writing on the wall, very clearly.

Because of the Death Eater affiliations, and mainly Goyle Senior's subservience to Lucius Malfoy, Gregory's grandmother had put a light block on Greg's magic and advised him to learn from history, and give the impression of, if not outright stupidity, at least limited intelligence. When she had been younger, she had read Robert Graves' book 'I, Claudius', where one of the friends of the man who was destined to become the Roman Emperor had advised the man to play stupid, and so survive the bloodbath that was the family relations in the imperial household. Slytherin cunning in action.

At his father's insistence, he had become one of Draco Malfoy's henchmen, although he made sure that all of his hexes were poorly cast, or missed their targets. Malfoy just thought him to be incompetent, which had been the intention. With Malfoy's inflated ego, it was not hard to convince the pure-blood ponce that he (Malfoy) was the powerful and clever Slytherin and leader that he had been brought up to assume was the truth.

It turned out that, after Harry Potter's departure from Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy's hatred of Potter and rapidly declining respect from the rest of the student body, had pushed the popinjay totally over the edge. As he was now declared to be the Head of Family Malfoy, but without the power or wealth to make this a position of any real value or status, Draco had started to fly into blind rages, sending curses at anyone in sight. One day, he stood up in the Great Hall, and disowned his mother, declaring that as she had not had the 'decency' to commit a murder as a good Death Eater should have done, she was no longer part of the Malfoy family.

Shortly thereafter, Draco's body was found floating in the Black Lake. As he had been the last of the Malfoy line, the Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy was declared extinct.

One positive outcome of this, at least as far as Nasturtium Parkinson was concerned, was that the standing marriage contract between the House of Malfoy and the House of Parkinson (of which since the deaths of her older sister and her father, Marked Death Eaters both, she was the last heir) was ruled to be null and void.

There was some speculation that Draco's drowning had not been a suicide, but as nobody cared much, nothing was done to investigate this possibility. Rumours had floated around for a while that Miss Parkinson might have had a hand in it, or some of Narcissa Malfoy's remaining friends had some connection to the event. Of course, many of the old guard blamed Harry Potter for the death of his old rival, but as Harry had been out of the country for most of a year by this point, this claim was taken as showing how desperate 'they' were for any excuse.

With the Death eaters exterminated, Gregory's grandmother removed the blocks on his magic, and Gregory Goyle was found to be actually a decent guy (to Ron's great surprise). He had seen what the hatred did to his father and most of his family connections, and wanted no part of it.

When Ron admitted that he just couldn't trust Goyle to really have turned 'Light', and that he suspected that the Slytherin was just trying to distance himself from the backlash against the Death Eaters (under Gloria's guidance), Harry asked if it was more believable that Goyle could be as stupid as he appeared for many years, and then come across as smart, or that a smart man could fake 'dumb'. After a moment's thought, he agreed, but said he was going to watch him for a long time before he would trust the boy who had beat him up for so many years. The old 'Trust but Verify'.

Another bit of news was that Draco's mother Narcissa had been released from Azkaban, and had found that someone had provided a small pension for her. As a witch was effectively 'sold' to her husband on their marriage, a disowned witch had few options, one of the more respectable ones of which was starvation.

Ron suspected Harry had done his 'saving-people-thing' again, even for the hated woman, but Harry flatly denied it. He had promised Sirius that he would not reveal that it was his godfather that had set up the small annuity for his otherwise destitute cousin, as he felt that her bigotry had been partly forced on her by their family, and also he disagreed with the principle that, on her marriage Narcissa no longer had any (legal) connection to the Black family. Having been to Azkaban himself, the old dog was showing, if not sympathy, at least mercy.

One last bit of news was that some of the Death Eater 'apprentices' who had not yet taken the full Dark Mark, had decided that after a year or too, vigilance would have relaxed. They had decided to take a page or two out of Tom Riddle's playbook for 'Taking Over the World', and started causing the old forms of trouble again. After one or two discrete assassinations and disappearances, this behaviour had died down very quickly.

After Ron and Lavender went up to bed, Harry stayed up watching the stars from the balcony of his room. He thought about some of the discussions he had had with Hermione about the cosmos. Her maternal grandfather had been an astrophysicist, and he had told her stories of the stars and how they worked. Her grandmother had also enjoyed stargazing (which is how the Lafeys got together originally), and had told the young girl the legends about the constellations and the star names.

One topic that had come up when he and Hermione were stargazing was the quantum theory called the 'Many-Worlds Interpretation'. In this view of the theories of reality, it was thought that all possible outcomes of every action actually existed, and so there were many worlds, each the consequence of variations in the outcomes of prior events. They had talked about possible other worlds where Harry had gone to his trial and had his wand snapped, or the basilisk had killed him and Ginny had died, or one where Tom Riddle had never been born or had a happy childhood and not become Voldemort, or one where Ron and Hermione were happily married. Suggesting this last option had caused Hermione to choke on her glass of wine.

Harry liked to sit back and contemplate what might have happened if 'things had been different'. From talking with Sirius and Remus when they visited, Harry had decided that if he had met Sirius or his father during their school years, he probably would have hated them – they seemed to be the same arrogant bullies that he had had to fight all of his life, from his cousin Dudley to Draco Malfoy. But for the anti-werewolf laws, he could see his mother marrying Remus Lupin, who had apparently been the brains and tactician of the Marauders, where James Peter and Sirius had been the 'operational' part of the quartet. After all, Remus, with Lily's help, had been the primary author of the Marauder's Map.

Sirius never explained what had happened to James to allow Lily to fall in love with him. Harry suspected that James had just finally grown up (where Sirius ever had).

At this point in his reverie, Harry stopped abruptly, as he thought "What the hell right have I to tell someone else how to live their lives? This is the same arrogance as I have been fighting against my whole life!"

Arrogance. His uncle had declared that magic didn't exist, couldn't exist, and if anyone (notably Harry) thought differently, well, he was just going to beat it out of them.

Arrogance. Dumbledore had gone against his parents' wills, and dumped him with the Dursleys to live in an abusive environment (emotionally, if not physically). For the greater Good, of course.

Arrogance. Wizards deciding that they had the right to obliviate muggles who might have observed magic. If a muggle-born magical child did not accept a magical education (from 'the finest school of magic in the world'), blocks were put on their magic and their families obliviated.

Arrogance. A thousand year old hat, however magical, got to decide (on the basis of a couple of seconds' exposure) who you were going to live with, be friends with, sleep with, associated with, probably mate with, and influence you through your whole long life.

Arrogance. Dumbledore and the Ministry deciding that a fourth-year student, who was explicitly forbidden to enter a contest where more experienced and educated students were routinely killed, had to participate.

Arrogance. Wizards killing anyone they thought inferior, such as those without magic, or those of other species who didn't have the same magic.

Arrogance. Wizards (Dumbledore again) who believed that, due to their long lives and experience, they knew better how to run other people's lives. Who knew nothing of the magical knowledge of house elves, or goblins, of centaurs or others, but believed themselves superior to all of these.

Arrogance. When Dumbledore found that the goblins and their curse-breakers were fully aware of Horcruxes, he was dumbfounded – in Britain this had been a state secret, so even other wizards and witches were not to be trusted with this knowledge, even if it could save lives. As to what the goblins knew or what their magic could do, or for that matter what magic house elves could perform, like most wizards, Dumbledore had never even bothered to ask.

Arrogance. Harry telling his godfather (or dogfather) to grow up. The man had been in prison for most of his adult life, and now was living the life of a rich playboy. Harry was falling into the same middle-class morality that the Dursleys had tried to drum into him. Not only was this arrogant, it was also hypocritical of him. Sirius was currently seeing (and other verbs) Veronique Desoiseaux, a Veela cousin of the Delacours – being a Veela, Niki was as lusty as Sirius (Harry had similar experience with Gabrielle, and she was only part-Veela), and the two were happy together. For the moment, or longer, who could tell? What right did Harry have to interfere?

Harry thought of the couple of old friends in the guest bedroom, and thought "At least someone I know seems to be headed for a happy life.

Looking back, most of Harry's life had been a horror show. Ten years of living with the Dursleys after witnessing his mother's murder, then four years of school where he could be sure of at least one attempt to kill him per year, while being harassed or verbally abused, a contest where every event was a threat on his life, and finally the arrogant powers-that-were threatening him with loss of the one good thing in his life for having the temerity of defending himself and his cousin from another deadly attack.

As he realized that the glow in the east was the oncoming dawn and that he had stayed up all night thinking, he drained his glass. He would take the coming of the new day as a sign. Life was not perfect, but it was awfully good.

Finally!