LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Three

The two Aurors from the African Ministry of Magic didn't look much different from the Interpol detectives; in fact, they were eerily similar, from their carefully nondescript Muggle plainclothes down to their world-weary expressions. Hermione wouldn't have known they were Aurors at all, had it not been for their conspicuous lack of concealed firearms and - subsequently - the wands in their wrist-sheaths, the ends of which were just barely visible to the trained eye, underneath their shirt sleeves.

And then, too, there was their manner - overly casual and just a bit too brisk, like a diner confronted by too many forks at a restaurant who is secretly out of his depth, but not about to let anyone else know it. Hermione followed them into the same interview room she'd visited earlier with the Interpol detectives, sparing a last glance for the sad little tableau over her shoulder: a sobbing Molly, her head buried in Arthur's shoulder, allowing herself to be led away like a child.

For Hermione, who'd never seen her mother-in-law look less than self-assured - no matter the stimulus or provocation at hand - the sight was profoundly unsettling, a sign that the universe was tilting off its patterned course. She sank into the chair that one of the Aurors held for her, hugged her arms reflexively, and tried to focus on not losing it again.

It sort of helped that they weren't too friendly. Faced with one more kindly-meant offer of tea, Hermione might have buckled completely - whereas the vibe of cool suspicion that she was getting right now, from the Ministry team, raised her hackles just enough to distract her.

The first bit of the interview followed in the tracks of the last: how long she and Bill had been married, when they'd purchased the villa, the order of the morning's events. What she'd seen from the bedroom window, in those terrible, interminable moments just after she'd heard the explosion. It wasn't as painful to tell the story over, Hermione realised; in fact, there was something almost comforting about repeating the sequence of events. With the repetition came welcome distance, and with distance, the call - more and more persuasive as time passed - to simply duck into it and disappear.

She was fighting that urge. But it kept lurking at the edges of her subconscious, nagging gently at her: give up, give in, sleep, forget. Hermione shook her head to clear it and shifted in her chair, vaguely aware on some level of the fine tremors in her hands.

"I can't do this right now," she said suddenly, almost without thinking, and the Aurors, one of them in mid-question, blinked at her.

"Sorry?"

"I can't do this right now," Hermione repeated. The awful, uncontrollable tears had given way to a feeling of disconnect that was almost worse; the synapses were firing, she could sense that, but something wasn't working, wasn't getting through.

I need to go home.

"My husband is dead," she said, hollowly, and fought her way to her feet. "My familiar is missing. My research - "

"Ah, yes, your research." This, from the taller and thinner of the Aurors - ‘Bullwinkle', Hermione had mentally dubbed him earlier. His lip curled contemptuously over the final word. "And what would the nature of that be, pray tell?"

She stared at him, taken aback by the tone of his voice - disapproval so immediate and strong that it bordered on hostility. The air in the little room was suddenly charged with tension.

"It's no secret," she said uncertainly. "You've probably read about it in the paper, at one time or another. There've been a number of feature articles on my work, both in the wizarding and the Muggle papers."

"Your recent work, you mean," Bullwinkle corrected, his voice cool and acerbic. "And quite impressive a catalogue it is, too. Migraine remedies. Topical anesthetics. ‘Organic bone grafts' ... whatever those are."

He sniffed. "Not a word about your current project, though. I confess that I'm most curious to know what that entails."

Hermione didn't like his tone.

"Areli thought it'd be best if I kept that under wraps for now," she said stiffly. "And on the Muggle side of things, Eli Lilly felt the same. It's more purely experimental than the other things I've attempted -- after all, everything else thus far has just required a few modifications of a pre-existing remedy."

Bullwinkle frowned. "Explain."

She shrugged, and felt her tight shoulder muscles creak in protest. "Even the 'bone grafts,' as Lilly advertised them, are just thin elastic strips of an organic ligament simulator designed to adhere to the surface of the bone, with time-release microcapsules of Skele-Gro in gel form, imbedded in the weave ... it may beat their steel-plate technology, but it's hardly groundbreaking from a magical standpoint. But the new project is - "here, she checked herself - "that is, was - just that ... new. If we'd been allowed to see it to completion, it would have revolutionised certain aspects of Muggle medicine and mediwizardry alike."

"The problem with revolutions is that people die in them," Bullwinkle observed sharply, and - to his credit - looked discomfited as Hermione's eyes began to well.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Weasley," he went on, a bit more gently. "It's just that I don't think you understand exactly how much trouble your work has gotten you into."

"Trouble?" Hermione frowned. "But my research isn't anything controversial," she said tiredly. "If I was working on cloning, or genetic alteration, I'd understand ... but what I do doesn't challenge any moral conundrums. It doesn't hurt anyone."

"It doesn't matter if it hurts anyone or not," put in the second Auror - this one shorter and squatter, with slightly protruding front teeth. (Try as she might, Hermione couldn't help but picture him in an aviator's helmet.) "Information doesn't have to be harmful to be dangerous; all it has to be is frightening, or unsettling."

He rubbed his forehead absently, causing a glimpse of wand to surface as his sleeve rucked up. "Mrs. Weasley," he said. "What do you know about a group called the Knights of the Golden Wand?"

**

Oh, this was getting ridiculous.

Hermione, who had sunk reluctantly back into her chair during one of Bullwinkle's chillier bits of Bad Cop Commentary, shook her head wearily and stood up again.

"The Knights of the Golden Wand," she said, and laughed. It was a cold sound, and an unlovely one, and it made her feel better - more in control of herself, less weepy. "You expect me to believe that they're in on this? That they destroyed my office building, bombed my house, and murdered my husband, all because of bone transplants?"

"Mrs. Weasley - "

"No." Hermione shook her head again and headed for the door. "No, that's just silly. Nobody would make that big a fuss over a surgical technique, especially one that can be duplicated in the wizarding world for much less bother and cost - Skele-Gro, as I recall, retails for about four Sickles per half-liter. Not worth the cost of the plastic explosive alone, let alone the manpower involved." She glared at them. "And besides, the Knights of the Golden Wand haven't been heard from since Harry Potter defeated Voldemort, twenty-two years ago. Don't you think I read?"

Rocky's hand was on her shoulder. She brushed it off.

"Now, if you don't mind," she finished, more quietly, "I'm going home to comfort my mother-in-law." A pause, as she fought to control her shaking lips. "And … and to find my c-cat."

Bullwinkle's voice halted her with her hand on the doorknob.

"The Knights of the Golden Wand," he said, "have already owled the Ministry of Magic to take responsibility for this morning's events. And have provided us with inside information about the crimes that only the perpetrators could have known."

Hermione tasted bile in the back of her throat. Slowly, unsteadily, she let go of the door and turned to face him.

"Indeed," she said. Deep in the lake of her grief, an ice-blue flower of rage found itself and began to coalesce. She didn't recognise her voice as her own. "And what, pray tell, have they proffered as justification for their actions?" When he didn't answer her right away, she took a threatening step toward him, feeling her heart thunder and rush a millimeter underneath her clammy skin.

Odd, to be so hot and so cold at the same time. So angry. So helpless.

"Why did they do it?" she demanded, her voice cracking. The room's only windowpane collapsed to the floor in a tinkle of broken glass, as if crushed by a careless hand. "Why?"

A tense moment of silence, during which Hermione sagged - frustrated, embarrassed, and utterly spent - against the doorframe. The two Aurors exchanged clandestine glances, then looked away.

"They've found out the subject of your research," Bullwinkle said. He sounded tired but resigned, and Hermione realised, in a sudden flash of insight, that she'd been wrong about him; he'd never been angry with her, at all. "And they're prepared to go to any lengths to stop it."

He studied her for a long moment, his lantern jaw set and unflinching. "Someone's been telling your secrets," he said, "and it's nearly gotten you killed. Any guesses as to who it might be?"

**