2

Chapter Two – Investigations Part 1

Ministry of Magic

Friday 4th September 2048

"Just for the record," Director Hammer began, as Hermione sat down across the impressive desk from the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, "I don't normally agree to interviews relating to former DMLE employees simply on the basis of a request from the wife on one of my current Aurors, even if she does happen to be a former Minster of Magic."

Hammer gave Hermione an enigmatic smile that hinted at a sense of humour that she doubted was ever shown to Auror trainees.

"In fact, I'm sure I recall that one of the main pillars of policy during your time in office, Mrs Weasley, was the integrity of the Auror Corps, based on the transparency and accountability of all the staff from Director downwards."

Hermione had the grace to look slightly abashed at that – it was true that she had made the integrity of the Aurors an important part of her regime, and this no doubt looked a little bit hypocritical.

"However,"Hammer continued, "I am, in fact, also well aware that Mr Potter was beginning to encounter a number of... anomalies... in how what was known about him was used, and by whom, and was looking to try and establish whether or not there was substance to those matters."

She looked at her visitor with keen eyes, and decided that if Harry Potter had left it to Hermione Weasley to sort out the mess he had left behind, she probably deserved a certain amount of help and co-operation to try and achieve it.

"I am also of the opinion that, no matter how badly he might have been hit by Wizard Flu last year, Mr Potter had in fact returned to a full and robust level of health, and should not have been found dead last month with no explanation beyond heart failure. He passed a full and rigorous health screening when he returned to duty, and had there been a heart defect or likely incipient heart failure, I am convinced that our screening would have picked it up – no matter what St Mungo's might say about the cause of death."

"Thankyou, Madam Director," Hermione said, with a sigh of relief.

"Now then, Mrs Weasley, I recommend for the purposes of the remainder of this discussion we dispense with the formalities and address one another by our given names," she grinned, "instead of poncing around with the titles people insist on using the rest of the time."

Hermione nodded. "Understood, Connie. And thanks very much for this."

"Not at all, Hermione. You must be as frustrated by this as anyone. Ron tells me you have been appointed Harry's Executor, but that he left you private instructions to investigate his... well his life, I suppose, rather than his death."

"I think the one will explain the reason for the other, in some fashion, Connie, but for the life of me I can't yet figure out how. Ron suggested I start by talking to you about Harry's return from sick leave."

"Indeed. I suppose the first point to make is that, like most people, I was expecting Harry to come back in and take over as Head of the DMLE. As you know, I had been substituting for him during his illness, and there was never any hint from the new Minister – that was just after Rodney Biggerstaff took over the role, if you remember – that they were looking for me to take over permanently.

"Harry asked for a meeting just between he and I on his first scheduled day back, and I had assumed it would be a handover meeting."

"Actually, Ron said something similar," said Hermione.

"Quite. But it was entirely different. He actually wanted me to continue as Interim Head, to give the impression that he was essentially feeling me out to replace him, which I guess was partly acurate when it comes down to it, but that he would remain in the Department with what he termed a 'loose portfolio'.

"Of course, I suspected that it was just designed to give him free reign to go out on field work as often as possible – the whole Department knew that he hated being tied to a desk and took every opportunity he could to organise and lead raids, not to mention getting involved with Auror Cadet training.

"And I guess he did do some of that, but he also seemed to spend a lot of time doing what he described as 'private research' or 'chasing up leads'."

Hermione's head flew up at the reference to research.

"He mentioned something about my research coming into his thoughts, but what I've been working on of late has been so experimental that I would hope he had the sense to steer well clear!"

Hammer's face filled with pity.

"I doubt it, Hermione. You know that's not how he works. He like to take ideas and fly with them on instinct. I suspect he picked something up from your own research and has been chasing it down alleys in completely new directions on whatever hunch seemed to occur to him.

"Granted, most of his hunches have come up solid over the years I've worked with him and for him, but even so, I wouldn't expect common sense to have come into play here."

Hermione winced, realising that Hammer was probably right – Harry's hunches were normally good, but even going back to their Hogwarts days there were some real no hopers in there.

"Anyway, the new arrangements seemed to give him the freedom he was looking for, and also gave the Department the chance to claim it was up to speed with the 'future proofing' stuff you always used to mention, so I got big ticks in those boxes without too much effort, and the Minister overlooked the additional expense of paying two Heads when only one was officially doing the job!"

"And that left Harry free to come and go as he pleased in the Department, whilst still looking busy? What was he doing with all that time?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know, but as he was still putting in time with the Trainees and smoothing my job for me, I wasn't going to look too closely at it. I got the impression that he was spending some of that time in the Muggle world, but I don't know why. He would occasionally mention having read a report or something 'on the train' or 'on the way to work' which obviously he wouldn't have done had he beein Apparating or coming by Floo."

Hermione considered that carefully. Was this related to the house in Stevenage that Harry had left to James? What was there? She resolved to make that her next port of call.

"I'm not sure that I've got much further," she told Hammer disconsolately. "is there anything else you can think of that might be of use?"

Hammer was about to respond negatively, but a vague memory restrained her.

"The only thing I can think of is that Harry spent a few days with the Department of Mysteries. His explanation was that they were doing some tests on his power levels, and I assumed that this was to make sure that he hadn't lost anything after his illness, but maybe there was more to it than that."

Hermione sighed. The last thing she needed was to have to find out who in the impenetrable Department of Mysteries might have had an interest in Harry. Not to mention that even when she had been Minister she had gotten little out of them, possible as a snub for the mess that she, Harry and the others had left when they had been lured there by Voldemort in her Fifth Year at Hogwarts.

"I don't suppose you know who I might contact?" she asked.

"Actually, I do, because I had him up here asking some questions as well – it's a chap by the name of Derek Callender. Tall chap with blond hair and a square jaw. A bit arrogant, he seemed, too. Not sure if he was the direct contact with Harry or an intermediary, but he would be your best bet."

She paused for a moment and lifted herself from her chair to walk over to a filing cabinet. Browsing for a moment or so, she pulled out a file and put it on her desk. From it she plucked a photograph and placed it in front of Hermione.

"This is him. Not sure he's actually an Unspeakable. Probably just a low-level worker, given that his identity is known to us. Not to mention that he's usually in the staff canteen at least one day a week for his lunch."

"I'm amazed you have a file on him at all, to be honest," Hermione said. "I didn't think the Department of Mysteries would have countenanced that!"

"What they don't know, they can't hide," Hammer replied with a smirk. "I can't claim credit though, since most of this was Harry's work before I took over," she admitted.

Hermione smiled. "And how do I contact him?"

"Probably best if I get him to contact you. I'll find someone who can pass a message on to arrange a meeting, and ask him to Owl you for the details. Do you still work out of HGW Research, or should I get him to contact you directly?"

Hermione left contact details, including her mobile phone, though she didn't know if the Department of Mysteries would know how to use it. Even though she had grown up in the Muggle world, she was aware that her own understanding of modern technology had grown ever more out of date as the gadgets she was familiar became obsolete. Living and working with Wizards almost all the time meant she rarely relied eve on the technology she had grown up with.

In fact since her parents had passed away more than a decade ago, the number of people who actually called her via telephone was minimal, and she felt a bit glum as she realised that one more of those people had gone with Harry's death. That only really left Dean Thomas and Andromeda Tonks who rang her mobile phone still alive.

"So, do you want to check out Harry's office, to see if there is anything there that might help?"

"Good idea."

Hammer led Hermione down a couple of short corridors to a room that was slightly away from the main bustle of Ministry traffic, which had Harry's name on the door.

"I'll leave you here and get back to work," Hammer told her, "but let me know if you find anything. I find it hard to believe that Harry just expired like that."

Thanking Hammer for her time and thoughts, Hermione entered Harry's office.

On the inside, the room was little different from the Ministry's standard office fare, other than it had none of the ornate flourishes and other status symbols of a Head of Department. A desk and chair, a couple of filing cabinets and the normal office paraphenalia filled the nearest part of the room, and a couple of more comfortable couches and a coffee table fitted into an alcove to Hermione's right, away from the door. A set of dark blue Wizard robes lay draped across one of the couches, and a coat stand held a black cloak and a grey baseball cap. A pair of black shoes had been left under the coffee table.

The walls were largely bare and grey, though opposite the desk was a large moving photograph of Harry, Ginny, their children and grandchildren that looked as though it had been taken fairly recently, and behind the desk (where visitors would see it) was a framed copy of Harry's Order of Merlin citation and a number of plaques confirming Harry's various training qualifications and skills.

It seemed to be a place for Harry to be seen, rather than an office he had made his own.

The desk itself was largely clear, except for a near-empty quill-pot and a small white-feathered quill which both sat on a large blotter to the right of the desk and a Foe Glass placed at the other end next to a small portrait of Ginny that waved silently at Hermione as she stepped around the desk and sat in Harry's chair, which she found to be very comfortable.

There were drawers to her left hand, and she opened them to see what Harry might have left in his office.

The top two drawers failed to reveal any particular insights – spare quills, parchment, magical mess-remover and the usual office stationary lay strewn in them, reinforcing Hermione's long-held opinion that Harry's mind could be both extraordinarily cluttered at times, yet as neat as a pin at others - but the lowest contained a small digital camera, a mobile phone that looked much more modern that Hermione's own model from the 2020s, and a small personal diary.

This surprised Hermione a little. She hadn't known that Harry had any dedicated interest in Muggle technology, and somewhere deep in her mind felt a little sad that he'd grown to embrace this without her even being aware of it.

Instantly, she shrugged the feeling off as ridiculous, though – working in the Ministry, she had seen Harry in person almost every day for forty years, and even when she had been working at Hogwarts the had chatted over the Floo at least weekly or visited one another's houses for meals. It wasn't as though he hadn't stayed in contact with her! If he'd developed hobbies and interetsts that he hadn't shared with her then that was his own business.

She picked up the diary and hat a quick flick through it. There wasn't much of interest at first glance – appointments with various Ministry officials were dotted around the months, and blocks of days at a time where Harry had noted Auror training dates. A few birthdays were scattered within, including her own she was oddly pleased to see, along with all the other Potters and Weasleys and some co-workers in the Minstry and old Hogwarts friends.

Several days a week – almost all of them weekdays - were simply identified with an S, and there were blocks of two or three days at a time where this was the only entry, which intrigued Hermione.

Flicking though with a particular interest in this, she found that almost every week had at least three days annotated thus, other than the week around Christmas and the two weeks at Easter that were marked down as 'Holiday'. On the latter occasion, she knew that Harry and Ginny had taken off to South Africa with Lily, her husband and their children for an extended family break.

The only thing that Hermione could think of that this might relate to was the house in Stevenage. Had Harry been living a double life? And what might she find when she visited there?

Surely if he'd been absent on all the listed days someone in the DMLE would have noticed it and commented.

On impulse, she took the three items for further inspection at home, and continued looking around. The filing cabinets were locked, but the keys were in the desk drawer and they held nothing of particular interest. Paperwork relating to various arrests and fieldwork took up much of the space, and the rest appeared to be literature and various other tools that Harry used in preparation for his Auror trainees. The pot plant that sat on top of one of the cabinets looked pretty weary, as though Harry had neglected to water it in several days, but the same could have been said for any office, anywhere in the Ministry, and Hermione saw no need to spend any more time in the room.

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Langley Brook Road, Stevenage

Monday 7th September 2048

After careful thought, Hermione elected to wait until the following week and visit the house in Stevenage when much of the neighbourhood might be out at work and less likely to notice someone out of place. Ron had joked that it was a good job that he wasn't going along, otherwise he was sure they would have been even more conspicuous.

Hermione had checked with the solicitor for the house keys and had been provided with a flat card which reminded her of a hotel room key from about forty years earlier, only it was completely black on one side.

The nearest safe place that Hermione would have been able to comfortably Apparate to was eight miles walk away, so she decided to take the train instead, and was pleased to remember that Stevenage was on the direct line from Kings Cross to Cambridge, with fast trains every half-hour, and she could Floo directly to platform nine-and-three-quarters even though the Hogwarts Express was not running.

Navigating the Muggle side of Kings Cross was more of a chore than it had once been, as there seemed to be modern technology all over the station, and with no obvious authority for her to ask questions of. Almost everything seemed to be automated.

Standing and observing for a short while provided the realisation that the magnetic strip in the ticket now simply had to be held up to a vertical scanner of some sort, which determined whether the ticket was valid before allowing the traveller onto the platform.

The train itself was reassuringly familiar, though its décor utilised rather more plastics than Hermione remebered from her youth, and whilst the seats were fairly comfortable, she didn't think she could fall asleep on one. It was only a 45 minute journey though, and she was quite happy to pull her e-Reader from her bag, as many around her seemed to be doing, and to continue re-reading her long-loved Middlemarch.

The e-Reader had been a birthday present from Harry, more than a decade ago, and she rarely got the chance to use it. She wasn't really sure how it stored all the books that Harry had ordered for her, but every birthday and sometimes at Christmas she would get a new notification on its display screen that he had purchased another book for her, and every time she checked it, there it was for her to read at her leisure.

On arrival, she followed the trickle of people leaving the train at Stevenage station and headed west, past what had once been an aerospace engineering site, and onto a footbridge that crossed the A1M. Looking down, she was startled to see that even now, approaching noon, the traffic was quite heavy, yet it was so very quiet. Traffic had been banned from Central London for so many years that even in her forays outside of the Ministry and Diagon Alley she hadn't been aware of how much of the vehicular traffic had switched from petrol and diesel to electricity.

Langley Brook Road was fairly easy to find, being a long, central road that served as the spine for what appeared to be a fairly new housing estate. The houses all looked well cared for, and many were detatched properties that looked as though they would have been fairly expensive.

When she came to the address she was looking for – number eighty-three – she was slightly surprised that it looked much the same as the other houses along the street. She wasn't quite sure what she had expected, but almost felt as though there should have been something that made it stand out as Harry Potter's house.

There wasn't. The front garden looked well-tended. The lawn perhaps in need of mowing soon, but the flower beds were largely (but not entirely) clear of weeds, and the driveway that led to the garage adjoining the front porch was clean. The front porch was an open-style rain shelter with a tiled floor and a brick pillar, and had a clean-ish welcome mat in front of the door. There was no keyhole in the solid-looking front door, but there was a dark panel to the right-hand side that looked to match the card that Hermione had received from the solicitor. She pressed the card up to the sensor, and the door clicked ajar, and allowed her to push it open.

Stepping into the hallway, a mellifluous female voice made her stop in her tracks.

"Stop there, please, and identify yourself."

Perhaps feeling a little self-conscious at letting herself into someone else's house, even though she had every right to be there as Harry's executor, she paused and answered.

"Hello? I'm Hermione Weasley. I'm a friend of Harry's."

"Hello, Mrs Weasley," the voice responded. "Harry said you might visit at some point."

Getting over her initial shock at being addressed out of nowhere, Hermione had looked around and realised that the voice was coming from a speaker built into the ceiling about eight feet in front of her.

"To confirm your identity, please can you state your date of birth and how you managed to attend all your classes in Third Year."

Hermione almost giggled. It was like a weird version of some of the internet services she had used back when she was fresh out of Hogwarts and fairly familiar with what passed for modern technology at the time. Trust Harry to have set up a system that mimicked that yet had a very specific question just for her.

"I was born on the 19th of September 1979, and to get to all my classes I had to use a Time-Turner," she replied. "Who are you?"

"Thankyou, Mrs Weasley. I am happy to confirm that your answers match those I needed.

"I am a Voice Activated Home Control System. Harry calls me "Vax" for ease of use, and I will respond to your voice to that name as well. If you need to talk to me, simply say my name and I will hear you as long as you are within the house."

"Okay, Vax," Hermione said cautiously, "but what do you do?"

She wandered down the hall and peered through a door at the end - into a kitchen that looked fairly ordinary – and then opened a door to the side, which revealed a small but tidy living room. A black leather armchair and settee were positioned with a glass-topped coffee table between them, and a magazine rack to the side of the armchair. A tall bookcase stood against one wall and opposite it was a painting of a landscape that looked like a view across farm meadows. The walls had been painted a light, off-white colour, and the carpet was thick and in a rich dark red. She thought it a little gloomy for her own tastes, but the house wasn't to be hers anyway, so she was happy to let it slide.

The Control System appeared to have followed her movements, and now spoke to her from within the living room, from another speaker on the wall by a window that looked out over the front garden.

"I can do quite a lot of things, Mrs Weasley," it said. "I am connected to most of the electrical appliances throughout the house through the Wi-fi, so, for example, I can be used to activate and control the heating, lighting and hot water, the wall monitor and radio, the oven and alarm clocks, take answer-phone messages and relay information that may have been left for me to do so, and any number of other tasks that might be needed. Most of these activities can also be directed remotely from wearable media.

"Television?" she asked, putting aside the question of what the system meant by 'wearable media'.

"IP and streaming services from historic television channels can be accessed through the wall monitor, either on an on-demand or live broadcast basis. A subscription is required for some services."

"I think you lost me part way through that explanation, Vax," Hermione said with a grin, "but don't worry about it for now."

She had sat down in the leather armchair which was aligned to face what appeared to be the "wall monitor" that the system had mentioned. It looked similar to one of the flat-screen TVs that her parents had bought in their later years, but rather larger than the 40" TV she remembered and it was seemingly embedded into the wall rather than standing against it.

Thinking about what had brought her here, she decided that playing with all Harry's man-toys here, surprising as they might be, wasn't going to advance her investigation. As she decided what to do next, she idly flicked through the titles of the magazines Harry had by his chair, and was taken aback: Running Weekly she could understand, but a series of journals on Science Fiction and Metaphysics were rather unexpected – since when had Harry taken such a strong interest in Muggle science?

"Vax, how often was Harry here?" she asked.

There was a brief pause.

"I am not quite sure how to answer your question, Mrs Weasley. I was installed approximately fifteen months ago. Harry first activated me within fifteen minutes of the completion of my installation processes. Since then I have actively or passively been running almost continuously, based on the parameters that Harry set up and amended from time to time.

"Since initial activation, I have directly answered Harry's voice within the building on more than three thousand occasions, on more than two hundred different days. Some of those voice commands were in quick succession, some were over a period of several hours whilst Harry was present within the house, and some were on the same day, several hours apart.

"Does this answer your question?"

Hermione thought carefully about what that implied.

"I think so."

It appeared that the diary she had picked up in Harry's office probably correlated with days and times spent here in the house in Stevenage, and between that and the answer that Vax had given it suggested that he actually spent quite a lot of time here.

She wondered how he managed it without raising questions from either work or family.

She also wondered what he was doing.

A suspicious wife might well have concluded that he was having an affair, but Harry didn't seem the type, nor had he ever given her any reason to have such suspicions.

"If I picked a date out, could you tell me when Harry was here and what interactions you had on that date with him?"

"Yes, that is possible," the system replied.

Hermione pulled out the diary from her handbag and looked at dates where an "S" had been entered. She picked one at random – a standalone date with no annotations either side.

"Monday 9th March 2048," she said.

"On Monday 9th March 2048, Harry arrived via the back door at 6.21am. He greeted me and asked if any messages had been received. There were none. He remained in the house until 6.26am, when he activated the garage door control using his K-Watch and left via the garage door. He activated the garage door control again at 6.28am.

"At 5.24pm, Harry activated the garage door control again, and entered though the garage, activating the garage door control again within one minute. He greeted me, and asked if any messages had been received. There were none. He requested the shower to be turned on at pre-calibrated setting 5, and the heated towel rail at setting 4.

"At 5.45pm, Harry asked for the shower and the towel rail to be turned off.

"At 5.55pm, Harry asked for the BBC News to be played on the wall screen in the living room. As a live broadcast was due to begin at 6.00pm, I selected this option for him.

"At 6.28pm the news broadcast finished and Harry asked for the wall screen to be turned off.

"At 6.32pm, Harry left the building via the back door."

"Was this a typical day?" Hermione asked.

There was a brief pause.

"I am not sure that I can make a valid comparison that would meet your own context for that, Mrs Weasley. May I suggest that you select a small number of dates to look at and I can print them out for you to make your own comparison?"

"Hmm. Yes. That makes sense." She flipped through the diary and selected a number of similar occasions where an "S" had been entered on a weekday, but not on either the preceding or subsequent days and read them out.

"Your prints are in progress, Mrs Weasley. The printer is located upstairs in the office," the system told her, and she got up and made her way up the stairs to the upper floor.

Peeking into each of the rooms, she concluded that it wasn't somewhere that Harry had necessarily claimed as a home, just somewhere to rest his head briefly – the master bedroom was plain and devoid of any particular indications that Harry used it regularly. The double bed was made up and the room was tidy. An alarm clock sat on the bedside table along with a copy of a Fitness magazine that Hermione was unfamiliar with.

The room across the landing was set up as a spare bedroom, but was completely characterless, and might not ever have seen an occupant.

The third bedroom was set up as an office, with a large desk and comfortable office chair, and a number of well-stocked bookcases. Spewing forth from a slot in the surface of the desk into a file tray was a series of sheets of paper that turned out to contain the information that Hermione had requested. She sat at the desk to read through the data that had been provided.

After five minutes or so she concluded that there was a pattern to the dates she had selected. Harry would arrive early in the morning from the back yard, check for messages, and leave via the garage. He would return in the late afternoon or early evening via the garage, check for messages again, shower, and watch the news. Some days it seemed he would ask for some music to be played, and occasionally would cook dinner, or have a cup of coffee, but he was always gone again in a couple of hours at most, and frequently less than an hour.

That he always arrived and left in the same manner prompted Hermione to take a break from her thoughts to check out the back garden and the garage and see if there was any clue as to his mode of transport.

The means of arrival was initially unclear to her – the garden seemed completely unnoteworthy, being about one third patio and the remainder laid to grass, with a couple of nascent apple trees towards the far wall. The only thing of note was the shed, which Hermione found required the same key card as the front door, and provided a little more enlightenment.

This was the only sign of the Wizarding World that Hermione had found on the property: the interior of the shed was three or four times larger than the outside. As well as a number of gardening implements and some strange gadgets that Hermione didn't recognise, there was an unlit fireplace that looked ready to be used as a Floo and a bowl of Floo Powder on the mantlepiece. Part of the area adjacent seemed to have been set aside as an Apparation point.

Hermione smiled to herself. This would make getting home rather quicker, not to mention making any potential return trip more palateable. This was also clearly how Harry was arriving and leaving at the start and the end of the day, and why there wasn't a massive chunk of time unaccountable at those times.

The garage provided a partial answer to the other method of arrival and departure – there were only two items in the garage: a chest of drawers – which turned out to hold various items of gardening equipment – and a bicycle.

Next, Hermione resolved to take a look at some of the other dates that Harry had listed as having been here – there was a week the previous September that Hermione distinctly remembered Ginny having said that Harry was away on an extended assignment and not home all week. This corresponded with a week where Harry's diary suggested that he had been in Stevenage the whole time. However, her thoughts were interrupted as she was closing the garage door when she heard somebody call out to her.

"Hello there?"

An elderly lady in jeans and a grey pullover was getting out of her car on the adjoiing driveway and had seen Hermione leaving the garage.

"Hello. Are you a friend of Henry's?" the lady asked, lifting a brown bag out from the footwell of the car and turning to Hermione. "He's not normally home until the evening," she continued.

"Well, yes," Hermione began, "but I'm here to check on the house, see," she tried to explain.

"Oh, is Henry away?" the lady asked. "We don't see very much of him, you know, other than on his bike to and from the station and then occasionally in the garden when he's on holiday."

"Well, no," Hermione replied cautiously. "I'm afraid he passed away a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh, no! I'm sorry to hear that," the neighbour said sincerely. "He was such a nice chap when we saw him, spent some time chatting to him when he was working on the garden, you know. I knew he'd been ill before, and assumed that was why he had moved out here from London, but I didn't realise he was sick again."

"It was rather sudden, I'm afraid," Hermione explained. "They think it was probably a heart attack."

"Oh dear. He seemed to be reasonably fit as well, with all that cycling, but you never seem to know these days – some of those folks that do all that exercise seem to be the first ones to go, you know," the old lady chattered on. "I don't know about any family he might have had, but I suppose that's why you're here, dearie?"

Hermione sighed.

"Yes, sort of. We went to school together and then worked in the same building for a number of years. I wasn't expecting it, but he appointed me his executor."

"Oh!" the lady said, sounding a little upset. "I suppose that means you'll be looking to sell-up? Barely get to know one set of neighbours than they seem to move on these days. Thought with this being a new estate that people would be sticking around for a bit, but I guess you can't plan for everything, can you?"

"Err, no. I'm not sure if the new owner will want to keep it or not. Part of my visit was to see what sort of state the property was in and find out whether it would be suitable."

"Well, he always kept the garden in good shape, I'll say that about Henry, so I'll imagine the rest of the place is still in good nick, too – can't imagine he's been home enough to cause any damage, and he didn't seem the type, anyway. Just a nice young man who hadn't found the right nice young woman to marry," the old lady continued, and Hermione suspected she wanted to inquire as to whether there was something going on between Harry and Hermione.

"No, it looks in good shape to me," Hermione confirmed. "In fact, if we weren't welded to looking after my parents in London, my husband and I might have been interested in the place," she added, just to throw the woman for a loop.

"Oh! Right! I see!" the neighbour said. "Anyway, I'm sorry to hear about Henry, and hope everything goes well for you."

"Thanks," Hermione replied, and turned back to the house to make sure the conversation was definitely over.

Back in Harry's upstairs office, and reviewing the additional dates that she had wanted to check, the oddest thing that Hermione found was that there was essentially nothing really odd about those occurrences – Harry had appeared to have lived life as a single, middle-aged man on leave from work, pottering around the garden, watching various shows on his screen or listening to the radio, cooking for himself and generally relaxing – if it wasn't for the fact that he was living a second life away from his wife and work to do it.

It was frustrating to Hermione that she couldn't really see any way of getting any further information to help her understand why he was doing this.

"Vax, did Harry leave any messages for me?"

"Yes, Mrs Weasley. There is one message for you. Would you like me to play the message?"

"Yes, please."

In place of the female voice, Harry's familiar baritone came over the speaker.

"Hi Hermione. Now that you've found my little hidey-hole in Stevenage, you'll be getting an idea of what I've been doing for the last year or so. Essentially it's a cover in case anyone started looking too closely into my occasional absences from work. I figured that suspicions that I was having an affair would distract anyone from what I was actually doing.

"It's also been a bit of a haven for me to come to as I've found out more and more about how my life was orchestrated for me – maybe a bit of a way of feeling what life might have been like had I not been a Wizard, or not had the weight of the Wizarding World thrust upon me, in any case.

"Riding to the station and then getting the train into London gave me space for my own thoughts for once – you should try it sometime, but I suspect you'd just end up downloading more and more onto your eReader!

"Anyway, just to let you know that I've actually written my final thoughts down now that I've got all the information and confirmation I need, and it's all stored on the Norway Cloud, where I felt it safest. If you aren't up to date on Muggle technology, you might need someone to explain how to access it. I was delighted at how well your research project dovetailed with what I was trying to achieve, though I suspect that once you've refined it further you might be able to do even more with it than I think I will ever be able – my notes on the process are also on the Norway Cloud.

"I hope everyone's been coping okay with my departure, but I'm realistic enough to know that Ginny will be distraught for some time. I wish I could say I'm sorry to her, but it's probably better that she thinks I've died of a heart attack than some of the other ways I might have ended up getting offed.

"As I've said before, Hermione, you're the only one that I think I could trust to see this through and to do the right thing once you've evaluated the options. Love you. Bye."

And it was the final straw that made Hermione break down in tears, alone, in Harry's secret home, and then bury the grief behind her once and for all.