HP, Untitled, The Grangers and the war
He had thought the pictures from the surgery were already gone, even the one of Hermione's graduation. Burned with Hermione's letters and this autumn's leaves, him stabbing at the fire with a fork and Gill pretending it was the smoke that was making her eyes water.
But this morning a drawer in the dresser had got stuck halfway out as he looked for clean socks. When he examined it he'd found the photograph taped to the underside with Christmas tape -- stupid shiny Christmas tape with stupid little sprigs of holly on.
He'd only intended to look at it for a second but the trouble with wizarding portraits was that they could suck you in for hours when you really had better things to do. They were like Tetris or the omnibus edition of The Archers that way.
He'd stayed home this morning to prepare their books for the accountant and spent three hours sitting on the bedroom floor instead, staring at the picture.
There was his clever girl. Tall now and so pretty, even if she was in those scruffy jeans yet again. Hermione waved at him, mouthed "Hello, dad!", as Ron Weasley sauntered over and slung an arm round her shoulder. The lanky ginger git waved cheerily, blowing his shaggy fringe out of his eyes.
Hermione had reddened and gone uncharacteristically quiet the last time he'd teased her about Ron and Gill had told him to shut up, so he gathered it was serious.
Ron murmured something into Hermione's ear. She slapped at his shoulder so he toppled off-balance and laughed. They scuffled about in fallen leaves, looking carefree.
He put the picture face down on the dresser. The movement was making him seasick, dizzy, miserable...
He wanted to talk to Hermione, to see her. He wanted to know she was safe. He wanted to order Hermione to come home for Christmas then lock her in her room until she decided to go to a proper university and study something sensible like geography.
He picked up the picture again.
Slices of pale wintry sunlight fell through sepia-tinted trees. Ron and Hermione straightened as though readying for a more formal picture, their eyes looking somewhere beyond his shoulder. Hermione began to look impatient, and Ron beckoned frantically to someone out of frame.
Suddenly from the corner of the picture darted a rail-thin lad with a shock of dark hair. Harry rushed over to their side, put his arm around Hermione's waist. A quick trade of grins, then all three faced the camera. There was a more a surge of light than a flash as a moment was captured.
He tapped the picture twice with a fingernail and murmured "Stasis". The picture froze in that position, Hermione between the two young men who were both her best friends and the reason she never came home any more.
Hermione had charmed the picture so that they could put it in the surgery without raising questions but have the comfort of a moving picture when he and Gill were unobserved. There wasn't much magic in molars so it was difficult for someone like him, a two plus two equals four sort of chap, to understand how wizarding pictures captured someone's essence. It had taken him a couple of years to fully understand that he wasn't going to find any James Bond-style flattened microcircuitry if he prised apart the layers of paper.
He knew Hermione couldn't come home -- Mr Lupin had explained it as best he could -- and these days when the BBC news talked about strange deaths, chemical leaks and gas main explosions, he never quite knew whether it was a horrible accident or the otherworld's war.
Hermione was only just eighteen; surely that was too young to be important in a fight he didn't even understand?
"Enough of this," he said out loud, and pulled himself to his feet. Reprisals against families were increasingly common, according to Mr Lupin, and any physical or magical link to Hermione had to go. It made it easier for the enemy to track them down, apparently.
Mr Lupin had then waved a polished stick about like a nutcase, muttered to himself in what sounded like pig Latin, then claimed he'd put protection charms on the house.
Protection charms. It was ridiculous. He didn't even believe in aromatherapy.
But Hermione had been insistent on the phone that he trust Mr Lupin, and it wasn't as if he could go to the police and say "Save me, I am being pursued by vengeful wizards". So here he was -- thinking that a semi-detached house in Aylesbury was bewitched and that his photographs of his only child had to be burned.
Only... not yet. He tapped the photo again. "Mobile!"
The three figures shook themselves as if their muscles ached from inaction and then smiled. Something caught the attention of Harry and Hermione and they walked out of the frame, but the figure of Ron did something he'd never seen before. He beckoned and leaned, very deliberately against the white border of the photo, pushing the sleeves of his sloppy black jumper up pale, freckled forearms. There was something honest about that stare. Something he liked, despite feeling resentful and over-protective and foolishly angry.
Now Ron was speaking to him, moving his mouth exaggeratedly so he could lip-read. After the fourth repetition he got it.
"Don't worry, Mr Granger, we'll look after her."
"I think it's more likely that she'll look after you," he replied, then caught himself. This wasn't communication. It was just a picture.
But Ron smiled and nodded, then sauntered out of frame too.
* * *
When he reached the surgery, Gill had just made coffee. She looked tired and drawn, a blush of white across her knuckles where she gripped the mug.
"Full waiting room again, dear," he said gently. "We'd better get to work."
She sighed. "I just... I needed a minute or two."
He nodded. She began pouring him a cup of coffee. "Oh by the way, the dresser drawer was sticking again. Bit of paper I think," he said. She put the pot down awkwardly, had to correct quickly to make sure it didn't topple over. "I know we were told to get rid of it but I can't."
Her eyes glittered in the light. She nodded.
"I put it in Hermione's Encyclopaedia Britannica," he said.
"Volume?"
"Venice to Wurlitzer."
Her smile did him a power of good. "After all, what harm could one picture do?" she said.