What Do A Lion And A Wolf Share?

The Red Menace Returns

Hermione Granger tapped her foot on the dark marble of the Office of Familial Magical Matters lobby, her frustration and curiosity both growing in measured lengths as each minute went on. Infamous for her punctuality, she was not accustomed to being kept waiting by her Ministry colleagues. But she also wasn't pulled from her station in Sydney by the Minister of Magic, her friend and boss Kingsley Shacklebolt, to report for urgent matters with no context either.

Typically, she knew weeks in advance when she'd need to return for a meeting in London and she'd always known the purpose of the meetings; usually they'd be at her request to push a new effort in front of the Wizgamont. But today was different and Hermione did not like going into any situation without knowing at least something about it.

She'd been in Australia for the past two years, leaving the UK and her friends behind following the Battle of Hogwarts to find her parents and fix their memories. After a year on the run, she wanted nothing more than to hug them and tell them how much she loved them. After a few days of trying to reverse the charm herself, she enlisted help. When the healers at Prince Hill Hospital informed her that her memory charm was interacting with an unknown older spell and that the reversal process would take time, Hermione passed on her repeat year at Hogwarts, taking her N.E.W.T.s independently by her parents' hospital beds. Shaklebolt offered her a position at the Ministry that allowed her to work remotely for weeks at a time. For the past two years, her life consisted of work, doctor's visits, and independent research, with sporadic visits to London for work. Although they saw each other when she returned for work and owled regularly, Hermione desperately missed her friends.

Since she received the summons last night, she'd wondered what business she could possibly have within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, let alone this family-focused office. The possibilities she'd constructed so far ranged from something terrible having happened to Harry to an unwelcome job offer moving her from her position within the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Just as she started to construct new, horrible possibilities, the door to the main office opened and a short brunette woman in black robes waved Hermione in.

"Miss Granger, thank you for coming in today. Lyria Gardner, Office Head. I understand you've had a long journey," the plump Ministry official greeted her, ushering Hermione into her small office. Hermione eyed the nearly empty bookshelf next to the door and the decorative plates on the wall with nearly equal discomfort.

"Yes," Hermione said shortly as she sat in the chair across the woman's desk. Usually she'd try to be more polite, but given the circumstances, she was eager to find out why she was here.

"Well, let's get right to it," said the official, reading Hermione's tone. She laid a small parcel, white and crumpled, in front of Hermione. "Typically, this is given to the witch or wizard it pertains to on their seventeenth birthday. However, on your seventeenth birthday, the Ministry had already been infiltrated by You-Know-Who's supporters -"

"Voldemort," Hermione interrupted, her irritation growing with the woman. "It's been two years. Please, stop giving a dead man power by not using his name."

"Quite right. Anyway, these packages are impervious from destruction and can only be unsealed by the witch or wizard in question," the official began to speak more rapidly as she launched into her explanation, clearly anxious. "No one knows the contents before the parcels are opened, except for the ministry official who created the folder and the witches and wizards who went through the process of having it made. Several of them went missing during, em, Voldemort's rise to power. My department suspected that those taken were connected to Death Eaters in some way, but they would have no way of knowing the contents of the packages. We only uncovered this package when the Aurors raided the Lestranges' hidden cottage outside Edinburgh last month. Full of other Dark artifacts, of course, but these were protected by wards that were apparently quite difficult to break. I believe your friends Harry Potter and Ron-"