FicWad

The Harry Potter universe and characters still don't belong to me. You'd think that the real universe would have done something to correct that by now.

Author's Note: Sheesh, what a bunch of whiners. Do something bad to a popular character and people get all grouchy at you. It's a good thing I've got teenagers, else my skin wouldn't be thick enough to protect my self-esteem. However, there were many good points in the comments and private messages, and another bunny sprang full-grown from my head, like Athena from Zeus's.

And another Author's Note: Muggle Champion was an old idea of mine, shelved after kb0 published his version. But three weeks ago I was blitzed on antihistamines and couldn't focus on the paying work I should have been doing, so I plopped down and wrote it from scratch in one push. No researching canon, no set-it-aside-and-check-for-errors-tomorrow. No apologies for the mistakes. There are probably fewer inconsistencies, oversights, and ridiculous "facts" per thousand words than in canon.

Muggleborn Champion

Hermione set foot in England for the first time in more than five years. Her lovers and companions, likewise. She'd missed the land of her birth. Apparently it wasn't mutual, to judge by the pre-dawn fog and drizzle that greeted the small party.

They were taking a bit of a risk, coming back. Two or three of them were criminals, according to the corrupt magical ministry. One was considered dangerous, to be monitored at all times. One was considered a national treasure, to be apprehended and monitored at all times. In fact, Hermione herself was the only one not wanted by the ministry for one thing or another, and even she would face difficulties and hard questions if she were discovered by residents of the magical world. She was here for a purpose that outweighed the risk and discomfort and effort. The others had come back for their own reasons. It warmed the formerly friendless girl's heart that most of those reasons involved supporting her on her Quest.

Hermione leaned into her grey-haired lover as he put an arm around her shoulders. He looked much older than she, but that was mostly the hair dye. He was a fugitive from so-called justice, after all. He'd put on a fair amount of weight as part of the disguise, but it looked good on him. He was solid, not fat, and certainly not skeletal, as the aurors had last seen him. And he wasn't nearly as old as he looked. Given their expected lifespans, he and she were practically the same age.

"What do you think, Pussycat? Apparate to the hotel or take a cab? The rest of you? Able to focus or what?" Fifteen hours in airplanes and airports had left them more tired than expected. But the prospect of showers and beds in minutes rather than an hour or more gave them the Determination and Deliberation to reach their Destination.

"And what do you two gentlemen think? I think this bed is big enough for three. And we need to celebrate our grand return to the isle of our birth. And Harry will be fine by himself in the other room."

Hermione usually could not be with both of her lovers at the same time. The two were closer than any brothers and either would gladly kill or die for the other, but that little bit of ick about being in bed with another naked man had Hermione sharing them sequentially rather than concurrently. But tonight she was going to get lucky.

...oooOOOooo...

Hermione hadn't always been this easy-going. She'd been raised religiously, as her parents sought to explain and control the strange happenings around her. In primary school, her brains and her drive (and her hair) had led her classmates to shun or mock her, driving her into a shell. Hogwarts had been better, between distancing herself from her parents' increasing distance and making the first true friend of her life. Still, even at Hogwarts she had many more enemies than friends.

Then came the terrible Yule Ball when she was fifteen. Hermione could not bear the approach of any man except her father. Her parents gave her love and did what they could, but there was an undercurrent of If you hadn't gone away to that school. If you hadn't left our world. If you hadn't been born a freak.

Harry came to her rescue once again. At first it was the beautiful Hedwig, taking Crookshanks's place when Hermione could no longer pet her half-kneazle familiar. And of course the letters she carried. The condolences and reassurances were awkward and ultimately meaningless, but "Get better, Hermione. I love you." at the end of every letter was the first that anyone besides family had said that to her. Hope began to lift her heart out of its dark place.

Harry's letters changed over the months. His report of Krum's immunity from prosecution betrayed his outrage. The destruction of the ship and Krum's unfortunate survival were detailed with a satisfied tone, making her suspect he'd had something to do with it. He regretted saving Krum's life in the lake. In his defense, he hadn't known if the shark was Krum or Diggory until he got to shore.

Then there were no letters for several weeks in June and July while Hermione grew worried and then frantic.

Dear Hermione,

I'm sorry I haven't written. Things have been hectic. I left Hogwarts early and joined up with Padfoot and Moony. I'll tell you more later when we can meet in person.

There's one piece of news that you won't want to wait for: Krum is dead. I was there when it happened. He died like a farm animal in the slaughter, not fighting back at all.

Send a meeting time and place with Hedwig.

Be well, Hermione. I love you.

Harry.

They all met the next day in an open air restaurant area. Hermione's parents insisted on accompanying her. No one misunderstood the meaning of the bucket of tools Mr Granger carried, roofing hammer and hatchet prominently at the top. Fortunately they weren't needed for Hermione's second re-contact with the wizarding world. Harry gave a plain-spoken description of the past six months and especially since Harry's last letter, just before the final task of the tournament. There was a lot of ground to cover and he persevered through Hermione's frequent interruptions to explain side issues to her parents.

And then Sirius and Remus told of their plans for the next several years. They had to work with Harry to use and control his magic. If he couldn't use it regularly he'd suffer from increasingly frequent and increasingly powerful bursts of accidental magic.

All three Grangers pricked up their ears at that. Hermione been suffering from accidental magic bursts for three months now. They had been mostly harmless but lately were becoming destructive.

"Oh, yes," Remus confirmed on being questioned. "That's one of the reasons wizards and witches tend to use magic even for little things like chopping vegetables. The magic builds up and has to go somewhere. The more powerful the witch or wizard, the more it builds up. And Hermione was one of the more powerful in her year, as I recall."

"But how can I use it? The ministry sent someone to confiscate my wand after I left Hogwarts."

"Allow me to come to your rescue, fair damsel. My house in London had dozens of spare wands, the last I looked. And none of them will have alert charms, like what Ollivander sells to eleven-year-olds."

Plans were made for Sirius to bring Harry and all the wands he could find to the Grangers' house in three days. It would take Sirius several days to open the house and make it safe for Harry and Remus to enter; Harry didn't have enough Black blood for the house wards to protect him from the aggressive and hungry creatures that no doubt inhabited the house now. The two might look out of place roaring up on Sirius's motorbike, but less out of place than the Grangers' Jaguar on Grimmauld Place.

Finding Hermione's new wand went swimmingly, and just in time. Two nights before she'd decorated everything in her room with pink and blue hearts. And the next day, when her mother was teasing her about which of their new acquaintances had set her heart aflutter, she silenced her mother, leaving the woman mute for six hours. This, understandably, did not do anything to make either parent tolerate the wizarding world any more.

"Harry, can I have some of your old Hogwarts texts? The ministry people took everything magic-related that I had, even Crookshanks." Hermione was more upset about that than about the confiscation of her other property. She and Crookie had shared a special bond since she first saw him in the pet store.

"Why would you want those? I've got lots better." Harry revealed the size and scope of his new library, something that Hermione's interruptions had made him forget to mention earlier. She was horrified at the nerve of stealing from a library, outraged at the thefts from him, impressed at his ability to pull it off, and envious of his new acquisition. She settled on lustful over the unlimited access he promised her. "Of course, Hermione. You're my best friend and you've always supported me. You're like the big sister I never had."

Soon the deal was settled. Sirius or Remus would pick up Hermione every morning for school at Grimmauld Place. Both children had new wands -- rather, old, monitoring-free wands that were new to them -- and the level of magic in Sirius's house would prevent any suppositional other scans from detecting them. They would split their time between magical subjects and mundane, with the goal of having both Harry and Hermione qualified for NEWTs and A-levels (him) and O-levels (her), even if they never took the tests.

...oooOOOooo...

Hermione went through her first day back with a cat-ate-the-canary grin. She tucked the memories from last night into a nice, snug little occlumency compartment, to be savored later, but enough happiness leaked through to keep her in a mildly euphoric buzz all day. She'd have to be careful that it didn't affect her task performance.

They all had missions to accomplish, all of which had to be done at close to the same time. No one was sure what flags would be raised or what alarms would go off, but it would be foolish to assume there would be none.

...oooOOOooo...

Lessons at the Grimmauld Place Reform School for the Insufficiently Prankerly had gone well. For two months.

Remus came running into the house shouting, "Sirius! Lock down now!" He'd been spotted on the street and aurors went to arrest him. He was wanted for questioning because he was a known associate of the criminal Harry Potter. Of course, the few people who had known that were either here in this house, were fugitives like Pettigrew, or were Albus Dumbledore.

The house wards would give them a few minutes if the aurors managed to trace Remus's hasty disapparation. No more than a few minutes. The four quickly gathered valuables and essentials and then the adults grabbed the teens and appeared in a bus station nearby. A combination of magical and muggle transportation, that was the way to get away. No one suggested taking Hermione to her parents. She had been living with the others for a month now. She was sure her parents loved her, but they were uncomfortable having her around now that she was doing magic again.

They escaped Britain by broom, Hermione clutching Remus around the waist the entire way. This was when Hermione first appreciated that his muscles were really quite well defined. And the man was solid and reliable, a good protector for an innocent young maiden. And if the wretched magical world were less backward and prejudiced, maybe he'd still be employed and she'd still be an innocent maiden.

But then she had to stop appreciating and even stop thinking. She was too busy holding on. Broomsticks were not designed for crossing oceans. The wind and humidity made for a slow, hazardous trip. No doubt Harry could have gone faster and straighter by himself but, loaded with Sirius and keeping watch over Remus and Hermione, even he was having trouble. They couldn't even cross at Dover because that area was watched for unauthorized crossings. Portsmouth to Normandy was longer and more difficult but safer.

They eventually wound up in Singapore. Totally separate from the British community but still congenial to English wizards who had trouble picking up new languages. Schooling resumed, without the old Black and new Potter libraries. They supported themselves however they could, taking advantage of the open capitalistism. Refugees from Wizarding Britain took a while to understand the lack of corruption and institutional prejudice.

...oooOOOooo...

Hermione had the single most important task today, the main reason they'd come back to the British Isles in the first place. While Sirius checking his house, Remus was checking Harry's vault, and Harry was checking a chamber, Hermione needed to collect just a book or two.

Slipping into her animagus form just outside Hogwarts's main gate, she sauntered up to the castle as a rather mangy cat. Once she'd finally achieved the full change, Sirius had laughed himself sick at how her bushy hair translated to a long but patchy fur coat. He'd been safe for the moment because Hermione had been clumsy in her new body and slow in transforming back, but her eventual payback was /sweet/.

Parting ways with the invisible Harry, Hermione slinked through the quiet halls, picking up sounds of near panic from various locations. The school was in the middle of OWL testing. That was why they had come today: a year of harried students, a year of students preparing to be harried, strangers about, strange familiars about, and a general air of worry and confusion. Perfect for an uninvited guest to slip in on a mission.

Nearing the Deputy Headmistress's office, Hermione checked the Marauder's Map to make sure the office was empty and then made her way in. The layers of locking, authentication, and warding charms were no match for a powerful adult witch trained by two Marauders. The item she'd come for was not protected at all.

Cat Hermione met up with Invisible Harry as agreed outside the castle's main entrance. His cloak masked noise and smell as well as sight, so he had to poke her to let her know he was back. They made it out the gates as unobtrusively as they'd made it in.

Harry's mission had been a failure. When he got to the Chamber of Secrets he found that every trace of the basilisk had been removed. Either he had hallucinated the entire incident (and the source of the puncture wound in his arm) or someone --cough--Dumbledore--cough-- had gotten in and stolen it. He'd have his vengeance, but bearding the lion in his den was not a task to be undertaken on the spur of the moment.

Remus's mission had been a failure. He'd gone to the Burrow to get Harry's vault key back from Molly Weasley. It had taken binding charms and veritaserum to find that she'd emptied the vault. "Harry would have wanted us to be comfortable." The money had paid off the loans for seven Hogwarts educations, so Remus couldn't even take jewelry or other possessions as partial compensation. He obliviated the idle housewife and left her with the memory of a torrid lunchtime affair with a neighbor.

Sirius's mission was a limited success. The old Black house on Grimmauld Place had been left alone since they left, probably because of the very nasty wards Sirius had set. A curse-breaking team able to breach them would have cost more than the likely gain. The libraries, heirlooms, and mementoes in the house were intact. But at Gringotts he found that the family vaults had been seized by the ministry just after Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States had all declared him innocent of the charges from 1981. The odds were slim that he'd ever recover a knut.

Hermione's mission had been a success. She had the enchanted quill which noted all magical births and wrote the Hogwarts acceptance letters. She also had the book which listed the past fifty years' worth of births. And as a bonus she had found and pocketed a complete list of all muggle-born children contacted in the past ten years, with addresses and reasons for declining if they had.

Overall the day was a success. The quill and book were the most important. The money was not essential though it would have been nice. Without it they'd just have to start smaller.

But they could get started on Hermione's Quest. That was the important thing.

...oooOOOooo...

"Good morning, Mrs Roberts. I'm Miss G. I wrote to you last week? And this is one of my partners, Mr B." Harry and Remus were hidden nearby, waiting for approaching ministry wizards. None of the four were quite certain how the monitoring of muggle-born magic users was done, so they needed to watch in case Hermione's demonstration set off an alarm.

Hermione broke the news that Tom Roberts, age ten, was a wizard in much the way Minerva McGonagall had broken the news to the Grangers. She even did the same cat transformation.

"You have several choices for how to educate Tom. He can continue his normal schooling and receive magical lessons from us on weekends. He can spend days with us and take a mix of magical and non-magical lessons. We are still very small and growing, so we don't have rigid courses of instruction. For the time being, lessons with us would be rather like having a tutor. Or you could contact Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland. Normally they would have contacted Tom next summer, but they've been having a series of problems lately and they no longer can send invitations to magical children born to non-magical families. Even without the current problems I could not recommend that you send Tom to Hogwarts. There is a large and growing prejudice against children from non-magical families. Hogwarts is also very expensive, especially for non-magical families.

"No, I'm afraid that skipping the magical education is not an option. It might not be a problem now, but as Tom enters his teen years, bursts of accidental magic will become a problem. The most important part of magical education is not in learning the particular spells and potions but in learning to control one's magic. If Tom doesn't learn control, he will become a danger to you and to himself. He will also eventually draw the attention of the magical society, who are likely to take drastic measures to lock away his power. They are prone to carelessness and overreach when they do so and might well leave him a simpleton, or even in a coma.

"Oh, for the sake of completeness I should offer the possibility of binding Tom's magical ability myself. I would do this only with Tom's agreement, and I would revisit every year to see if he had changed his mind."

The Roberts took some time before deciding on the weekend option. There was no hurry. Hermione had begun with contacting ten year olds rather than eleven year olds on the chance that this year's acceptance letters had already been written or that McGonagall had glanced at the list and might remember some names.

And so it went. Hermione went on all of the contact visits because a young woman visiting a preteen was less untrustworthy than an older man or, worse, a twenty year old man. And a young woman who could turn into a cat was living proof that she wasn't just some con artist or random lunatic. One of the men would always accompany her, partly for companionship, partly for protection, and partly to help with the presentation.

...oooOOOooo...

The lessons at The Grange followed the loose program that Remus and Sirius had come up with. The students studied all subjects in rather a mish-mash, following the lead of the tutor but taking input from everyone. "Preston has suggested that the caster's ability to move his wand in a precise fashion affects the power or duration of the spell. You three, dig through the libraries for anything you can find on the topic. The rest of you lot, design some experiments where we can measure the precision or sloppiness of wandwork and measure the effects on different spells." They often looked at different ways to do the same thing: a charm, a transfiguration, a potion, a chemical process, a bit of engineering. And all of their work and findings and progress was written in formal reports with graphs and statistical analyses and anything else Remus could think of making them do. This had worked very well in Singapore. Hermione would of course have blown the top off the testing curve regardless of didactic style, but with Remus and Sirius's approach Harry had gone from a mediocre student to a top performer in Singapore's equivalent of NEWTs and O-levels.

Weekend classes focused on controlling magical outbursts more than practical spellwork, and theory hardly at all. Most of the muggleborn children took the weekend option, largely because The Grange was not an officially registered substitute for the normal schools. Money was also an issue. Hermione had hoped to open her school free of charge, but the loss of the Potter and Black fortunes put an end to that idea. Regardless, most of the weekend students intended to stay in the muggle world and were taking magical lessons only so they would not be a danger as they got older.

Occlumency lessons were a part of controlling magic. None of the four knew of a good reason for occlumency, and mind disciplines in general, not to be taught at Hogwarts. But all four were now cynical enough to suspect that it was because Dumbledore and the ministry didn't want the peons to be able to conceal their thoughts.

Sirius taught the students the same way he had taught Hermione and Harry. Before leaving Britain he'd used a pensieve to pull out the painful memories of his imprisonment and then organized the ghost of the memories to remove any remaining sting. Hermione had no memories of when she was raped because Krum had knocked her out first, but the pensieve and memory techniques helped with the aftermath.

And the occlumency study had helped Hermione in another way. Remus tested her barriers and mental organization. The raw emotions of the werewolf prevented him from practicing occlumency, but that same wolf gave him the force to be a powerful legilimenser. And in Hermione's mind he saw unbounded respect and affection for both Sirius and himself. And a fair amount of sheer physical appreciation only for himself. Take that, Sirius! Point for me! Remus didn't jump Hermione then and there, of course, but the door was opened for the two to spend many evenings alone together. No one was surprised when one of the evenings lasted until noon the next day.

Hermione getting with Sirius was more of a surprise, but her explanation had Harry nodding sympathetically, Remus patting her on the shoulder, and Sirius giving her a hug and copping a feel. The long and the short of it was that Sirius's playfulness was giving Hermione a sense of youthful joy that she'd never felt before. It all came together for her when she and Sirius were doing a rapid spell-casting exercise. Sirius being Sirius, tickling charms had been involved. Hermione had caught a misaimed one down there and the next thing she knew she had ripped the man's robes and shirt off. Luckily Remus wasn't the jealous type. The girl felt unadulterated joy at being alive for the first time she could remember: on the one hand a rock-solid lover who accepted her just the way she was, and on the other hand a playful, overgrown child of a lover who accepted her just the way she was.

...oooOOOooo...

All the while, Hermione continued to visit non-magical families. Her list had hundreds of children in hundreds of muggle families. Almost all took a place in her school, with some choosing Hogwarts and a very few not making any decision. Hermione gave all of these families a post box address in case they changed their mind.

One day Hermione and Remus returned to The Grange with a ten-year-old and a six-year-old and a baby. Harry saw the baby first. "Congratulations, you two! I'm sure Miss Schedule-for-Everything didn't slip up with the contraception, so you must have planned this. The only question is, who's the father? He doesn't look furry enough to be Remus's. Better luck next time, Old Wolf."

"Oh, be quiet, Harry!" Not having any faith in his restraint, Hermione conjured a fistful of alum in his mouth. She and Harry would never be the laughing pranksters that the Marauders had been, but then, Sirius and Remus were no longer the laughing pranksters they once had been. But it was getting better. All four were helping each other overcome their personal demons.

"William and his brother and sister were living at an orphanage, Harry. Their father died before the baby was born. The mother abandoned them a month ago when the baby started vanishing her dirty nappies. On top of the boys' accidental magic, it was too much for her."

A fierce light filled Harry's eyes, both impressing and worrying Hermione. "Don't worry, kids. I'll take care of you." Money was tight. It didn't matter. Hermione would not turn away these children. And only a fool would get in Harry's way when he had taken up his own Mission.

And before long money was not a problem. Harry and Sirius refused to tell anyone where they went on their outings ("It's better you don't know, in case you're ever asked." When Hermione asked Sirius if he was turning tricks on Knockturn Alley, he retaliated by transfiguring her clothes into the tackiest streetwalker outfit he could imagine. Remus came in before she could undo it. Hermione got lucky that night.) but by whatever means the family no longer had to find second-hand clothes and toys for their new children and the school could afford more supplies.

...oooOOOooo...

The home visits continued. Hermione mixed visits to prospective students and visits with parents of young children. She hoped that telling parents that they were not insane, they were not imagining things, their child was not possessed, would prevent problems as the children grew. Better yet if she could talk to the parents before the first occurrence of accidental magic.

As Hermione worked her way through the younger names on the list, she eventually began visiting more of the older children, those who would have received their Hogwarts letters while she was out of the country. She found a disturbing trend.

"Yes, some men in dresses came a few years ago. They waved their sticks at Jessica and her father and myself and then left. We couldn't remember anything for a while, but then we found the letters from Hogwarts and eventually it all came back to us."

The family had declined Jessica's invitation to Hogwarts because they were not willing to accept the required oath. "I swear on my life never to steal from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry or from the Ministry of Magic; that I will support the Ministry of Magic; that I will obey the orders of the staff of Hogwarts and those of representatives of the Ministry of Magic; and that I will never reveal the existence of magic to anyone not able to perform magic."

Hermione found that this was a standard oath required of all incoming students. Rather, it was required of muggle-born students. Half-blood students whose magical parent worked in the wizarding world took a less comprehensive oath. And pureblood students, who were by definition reliable and trustworthy, did not take any oath at all.

The wonder was that Hogwarts had any muggle-born students at all. As it was, they had very few, and no new muggle-born since Hermione stole the book and quill. And, from what she and Remus could pick up on the street, most purebloods were happy with the changes in Hogwarts' student body.

Hermione redoubled her efforts to contact the muggle-born and bring them to her school.

Before long, they so many students that all four adults were working seven days a week and Hermione could barely find time to make her visits. It was time to bring on staff. Fortunately, Sirius and Harry had paid off the mortgage on The Grange and were easily covering the family's expenses, even with Harry's five children needing food and clothes and toys. Hermione first hired some of the parents to teach the muggle subjects. And, as time went by, she was able to find witches and a few wizards to teach the magical subjects. These were mostly the older muggle-born relatives of her students, unable to find good-paying jobs in the British wizarding world but still interested in the magic they'd learned. Several of them leaped at the chance of furthering their own studies with the Black and Potter libraries.

With money, most of their problems went away. Staffing and most supplies were addressed by galleons and pounds. They even picked up a selection of magical plants and animals -- The Grange had been a farm, after all -- though the plants kept dying until Hermione eventually gave it up as a bad deal. The only real problem remaining was finding wands for the students. Sirius's supply had run out, they couldn't go to Olivander, and they couldn't find enough matches for all the children at the few second-hand stores willing to deal with customers who didn't know the password. The short-term solution was for Harry to travel to the continent and acquire a hundred second-hand wands. The long-term solution was for one of their new staff members to bring in his wood-working father and give him a pile of animal parts and a book on wand crafting.

...oooOOOooo...

After five years, The Grange's first graduating class took its bows. The students all knew enough practical magic to get by and a few had gone to France to take OWL and NEWT equivalents. Hermione was pleased to find that the Remus and Sirius approach had yielded very good results. Four or five years at The Grange gave the same education as five or seven at Hogwarts. Better, because the day students had been learning math and composition and science and computer skills along with the magical subjects.

Harry was the source of good-natured amusement for all of the staff and many of the students. He had a relentless determination that no magical child would grow up unloved. Not only did he take in the children that Hermione occasionally brought home, he figured out how to make the enchanted quill write out the addresses of any age group of magical children. He brought several small children back from orphanages. Hermione knew not to ask about his 100% success rate in getting them to sign over custody. Even with his forehead scar having faded --- it had lost its red, angry appearance even before they left England, and was just an old scar within a few months --- he was still a frighteningly intense young man when he was on a Mission. As well as being an unmarried young man with no visible means of support and not even a high school diploma.

At any rate, the amusement came from watching Harry care for three, then five, then six children, aged one to thirteen years, while helping with classes and bringing in money by whatever mysterious means. He finally brought in help, the older, non-magical sister of one of the students, when he had ten children. They married within a year and Elizabeth Potter delivered his twelfth child six months later. Sirius laughed himself sick and added methods of contraception to the curriculum for the older students.

"Even though you have finished your formal education at The Grange, do not think that you must leave. I hope that you will return from time to time, whether to continue your studies in our unmatched library or to share your experiences with younger students. Most of you have made new discoveries. I beg of you to come share what you discover or invent. When we can afford it, we will buy copies of any books you write. And finally, we will always serve as a message center so you can find each other wherever you go in the magical and mundane worlds." Sirius had given the fun speech and stuck Hermione with the important, but unfun, messages.

...oooOOOooo...

During the summer after the tenth class graduated, The Grange hosted a meeting of many graduates and their spouses, some of the older students, parents, and other concerned folk.

They all formed a community of common background. They weren't exactly a part of the muggle community because they could use their magic to slide around laws and custom they didn't care for. They weren't a part of the British wizarding world because that world didn't even know they existed and wouldn't have accepted them if it did. The students and graduates could easily move within either world, but they weren't part of either world.

"We are a community. Not just a group of people who spent time at Hermione's school. We all form a community and it's time to recognize it and organize around that fact. We especially need to take steps to protect ourselves. I don't want my children being hunted by either the wizarding world or the non-magical world."

"Your family is big enough to form its own world, Harry!"

Everyone laughed, but everyone agreed with what Harry said. Almost everyone. The two graduates who had been burglarizing warehouses in a manner likely to draw the attention of both the police and the DMLE of course argued that they were not responsible to anyone, especially not a bunch of schoolteachers.

Harry was elected to lead the community. He refused to let them call him Minister, stating that he didn't want to make the old fraud divination professor be right. "Mayor Potter", that was what the sign over his desk said.

Hermione left him to it. She had a school to run and her third pregnancy was her most difficult. She was now in her mid-thirties, not that old but not that young, either. And she was carrying twins. Not just any twins. Fraternal twins are common enough, but the medical spells showed that these two had different fathers. Remus and Sirius had high-fived each other. The babies were pranking their mother from the moment of their conception. "Moony, we have write up everything we can remember about our Marauder days. All the pranks, everything we learned." Hermione chased them out of the room with stinging charms, but knew that nothing would stop those two.

As she heaved herself up to investigate the crash from the children's room, Hermione wondered if she should cut back her schedule. She had fulfilled her Quest: the muggle-born magical children in Britain were being cared for. Her school was well-established now and had the momentum to keep going without her constantly pushing it. Harry was doing what was needed for their new society. And four children of the Marauders would give her new and interesting challenges for the next few years.