Legacy of the Phoenix: Juggernaut by The Webspinner
Chapter Notes: These aren't coming out very fast; I'm sorry, but school takes up a lot of my time.
Harry tumbled out of bed, clutching his forehead and wondering whether he was going mad. Was this a dream?
No, the pain was too strong and too real. Ok…a hangover?
No, he never had anything larger than a butterbeer except on New Year’s and when Ginny was feeling particularly party-like. And last night hadn’t been one of those nights.
He looked at the sleeping redhead on the other side of the bed and shook his head. They had stopped aging a while ago, and still looked as if they were in their early thirties, but Ginny had wild nights less and less nowadays. Between trying to write a book on dueling and working on Order business, Ginny hardly had time for anything.
Harry pressed the scar on his forehead and pondered the problem, even as he fumbled around their room for a potion, a Benadryl, anything. Was Voldemort still alive? He’d seen the body. He’d killed him, and made sure he had destroyed all the Horcruxes “ what, twenty-five years ago? So what would make the scar hurt now?
Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone. It was almost as if it had never been there. Harry took his hand down and stood for a while, thinking. He looked over at Ginny.
It was probably nothing. Between the curtains, he could still see the darkness of the summer night. It might be just another ache or pain “ at his age, he seemed to feel those all the time. It was just a headache. Nothing worth worrying himself about. Certainly nothing worth waking Ginny up over.
Shaking his head, Harry climbed back between the sheets next to his wife. Within minutes, he was sound asleep. When he woke up that morning to find Ginny already gone to the Ministry, his three older children “ including James, who now worked at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes “ eating breakfast, and four-year-old twins Remus and Rachel running in mad circles around the kitchen, he sighed and never remembered that he had woken up in the middle of the night.
* * * * *
Three Months Later
Hermione ran fingers through her hair. “OK, let’s try it again,” she said firmly, gripping her wand in her right hand.
Her partner, a younger man named Charlie, waved a hand. “Come on, Professor Weasley. It just doesn’t work.” They were in a small training room in the basement of Hermione’s house.
“You just aren’t doing the motion right,” she insisted, gesturing with her wand. It showered out a few sparks in her annoyance. “It’s like a slingshot. As soon as my spell closes with you, you swerve your wand to meet it, pull back against the force of the blast, and send it back at me. Think of a slingshot bending back, go on.”
“You see, this is the danger of making up spells. I understand, Professor, that you are the expert in Theoretical Magic, but this just won’t happen. I’ve never heard of reflecting spell power, just stopping it with a Shield Charm.”
“I have been trying to find a true return to Avada Kedavra for years, one where it is clearly self-defense. This is it. One more time.”
Charles sighed and lifted his wand. “If you insist…Expelliarmus!”
A red jet of light shot from his wand and streaked toward Hermione. Hermione pointed her wand to where the path of the spell seemed to be going and shouted, “Devolvo!” The spell impacted her wand tip, and Hermione drew her wand back almost to her armpit. A red ball of some sort of plasma “ they were still trying to figure out what type “ was forming in midair at the tip. Hermione thrust her wand forward, and red light seemed to draw out of her arm, propelling the ball of spell energy forward at twice the speed it had come at her. It struck Charles right in the head, throwing him onto the pads behind him and sending his wand careening across the room.
“Omigod! Are you okay?”
Charles rose, looking frazzled but excited. “It worked! I don’t believe it! Professor…that felt like a damn Mack truck!”
Hermione grinned, even as she rushed forward to see if Charles was hurt. “It did, didn’t it? Oh, dear, Charlie, you’re bleeding on the elbow there.”
There was a swift knock on the door, and Hermione’s husband entered without waiting for a response. He looked at Charles knocked on the floor and the pair’s gleeful expressions. “I take it the spell worked?”
“Yes, Ron! We have a breakthrough into Plasma Energy Magic! My God, the possibilities! We could combine spell power into a single powerful spell…I’ll bet we could even split spells for area effect!”
Charles rose up, brushing dust off his jumper. “Since that discovery Professor Weasley made nineteen years ago, that all magic is basically plasmatic substance, we’ve been wondering what we could do with it. Now we know!”
“That’s enough for today, anyway, Charlie,” said Hermione. “Go get those injuries fixed, and the Council on Theoretical Magic will be having its weekly meeting tomorrow. Will you be there?”
“You know I don’t miss a meeting, Professor. See you later!” Charlie rushed out the door, likely to tell Jenny at home what had happened.
“For a Professor who only actually taught for a few years, you’ve certainly made a mark on the young people,” said Ron as he walked over and put an arm around her.
“I’ve got to go up to my study, Ron.” She was practically dancing with excitement. “I’ve got to do some math, write up some stuff about this, figure out…”
“You have to do nothing, darling.”
“But the Wizarding world has to know…”
“The Wizarding world can wait. Or did you forget that we’re eating dinner as a family tonight?”
Hermione stopped. She hated not spending time with her family, but this work was so important…but then again, she had been the one who insisted on them eating dinner together every night.
“Very well then,” she said primly.
“I’m sure the kids will be delighted to hear about your breakthrough. Come on, let’s go eat.”
* * * * *
Harry sipped his butterbeer thoughtfully as he surveyed the patrons of The Hog’s Head. Aside from a few old witches and wizards carefully husbanding flasks of firewhisky, the place was dreadfully empty. It made Harry wonder why he even bothered anymore.
Even though there hasn’t been a true Dark wizard in ten years, the Order has to stay informed. You know that.
Even though he and Ginny saw too little of each other these days…it pained Harry to see how much time they kept apart. After twenty-four years of marriage, they both had things to do now. Ginny kept out in the limelight, an accomplished Auror, bestselling author of books on defensive magic, renowned sorceress the world over…but few remembered her faded husband, the Boy Who Lived, who had held such great promise. The Order of the Phoenix still attracted its fair share of recruits seeking to serve beside the great Harry Potter, but after a while they usually moved on to bigger and better things. Everybody had moved on, it seemed. Everybody except Harry.
Why do I sit here, acting like I’m still undercover? Am I seeking a new version of my glory days, when the whole world knew who I was because of who wanted to kill me? Perhaps I should truly move on.
No. Not while there was the tiniest hint of Dark Magic in the world.
Was this why Ginny and he were so far apart? This obsession?
Was Harry Potter useless without a Voldemort to fight?
A figure came striding through the door, and Harry shook off these thoughts. Short, stooped, the figure wavered for a second, then seated himself next to Harry and pulled a flask out from his robes.
“Evening, Mundungus,” Harry said quietly. He had kept Mundungus Fletcher out of jail, and the man would never stop owing him for that, that and the other things he had done.
“Evening, Harry. Haven’t got much to report today. There was a Dark uprising in the States…”
“There was?” Harry asked, beginning to get excited. This could be it, the thing that brought him back…
“American Aurors “ they call themselves Rangers for some reason “ nipped it in the bud. There’re rumors of something going on in Mexico, but rumor’s all I can find. And there’s something else might interest you.”
“What?”
“Something weird’s going on in China. You know how a month ago, their Minister booted every foreign wizard out.”
“Yes.”
“Well, all communications have ceased inter and outer the country. ‘N if that wasn’t odd enough, same things ‘re happening on the Muggle side. Foreigners being booted out, borders closed. They’re hidin’ something.”
“They’ve probably had an outbreak of gnomes or something. It’s nothing.”
“It’s odd, though, innit? I mean, there’s all sorts of kooky rumors bout their new Muggle leader, and…”
“IT’S NOTHING, MUNDUNGUS!”
Fletcher recoiled, aghast look on his face. Harry rose, all the resentment he had been feeling tonight billowing out.
“NOTHING! I’m nobody anymore, do you hear me! There’s nothing left for me to do anymore, no challenges for The Boy Who Lived! Nobody even wants to hear that I’m alive anymore! ‘You’ve done your part, Potter, now go away and leave us alone!’”
Harry stood for a while, breathing hard, and noticed the stunned look on Mundungus’s face. “I’m sorry, Dung. I guess that American general was right. Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.
“And it looks like I have.”
Harry left the bar.