The kitchen of the Burrow, usually the beating heart of the Weasley family, felt tonight like a mausoleum. The enchanted clock on the wall, which usually tracked the family's locations with cheerful precision—Home, Work, School—seemed to tick with a heavy, ominous lethargy. The hands for Ron and Hermione pointed to Home, but the air in the room vibrated with the tension of Mortal Peril.
A half-empty bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky sat in the center of the scrubbed wooden table, uncorked, its amber liquid catching the low light of the dying fire. Next to it lay the crumpled, stained piece of parchment Hermione had recovered from the desk—the letter signed simply, damningly, 'H'.
Ron Weasley sat slumped in a chair that had been his since childhood, staring at the parchment as if it were a venomous snake poised to strike. His face was pale, the freckles standing out in stark relief, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a disbelief that was rapidly hardening into a cold, jagged fury.
Hermione was pacing. She moved back and forth across the flagstone floor, her movements sharp, jerky, devoid of her usual grace. She was packing her beaded bag—the same undetectable extension charm bag that had carried their lives during the war—but her hands were shaking so badly she kept dropping vials of Dittany and bundles of dried herbs.
"It doesn't make sense," Ron muttered, his voice raspy, breaking the heavy silence. He reached for the bottle, pouring a generous measure into a chipped mug, his hand trembling. "It doesn't make sense, Hermione. It's Harry. It's... it's Harry."
"It makes perfect sense, Ron," Hermione snapped, her voice tight, brittle as glass. She stopped pacing, gripping the back of a chair until her knuckles turned white. "That's the horror of it. It fits. It fits every gap, every silence, every shadow of the last fifteen years. We just... we didn't want to see it."
"But Cho?" Ron argued, pleading with the empty air. "Cho Chang? They went on one bad date in fifth year. She cried about Cedric. It was a disaster. Why would he go back to her?"
Hermione turned to him, her eyes burning. "Because of the war, Ron. Think about it. Think about the year after the Battle of Hogwarts."
She walked to the table, leaning over the map of the Balkans she had spread out earlier, but her eyes were seeing the past. "We were all broken. You and I... we had each other. We had your family. We had the grief for Fred, but we were together. Harry... Harry was alone in a crowd. Everyone wanted a piece of him. The Ministry, the press, the public. He was the 'Chosen One' who had fulfilled the prophecy. He had no space to breathe."
"He had Ginny," Ron said defensively.
"He and Ginny were on a break that year," Hermione corrected ruthlessly. "Don't you remember? She went back to Hogwarts for her final year. Harry didn't. He went into Auror training immediately. But he also took those long 'sabbaticals.' Those missions Kingsley sent him on. Tracking down the last Snatchers. Hunting dark artifacts."
She jabbed a finger at the table. "He was gone for weeks at a time, Ron. Sometimes months. He said he was in Wales. Or France. Or... Scotland."
Ron swallowed the whisky, the burn doing nothing to numb the cold knot in his gut. "So you think... what? He reconnected with Cho? Secretly?"
"Cho was fragile," Hermione whispered, her voice dropping. "She had lost Cedric. She had fought in the battle. She was drifting. Maybe... maybe they found comfort in each other. Two people defined by loss. Two people who knew what it was like to be looked at but not seen."
She picked up the letter again, handling it like a toxic substance. "And then she got pregnant. And Harry... the 'Savior'... he panicked."
"Harry doesn't panic," Ron said stubbornly. "He does the right thing. Always. It's his 'saving people thing', remember?"
"Read the letter again, Ron," Hermione urged, tears welling in her eyes. "Read what 'H' wrote. 'The timeline has to be protected.''I have to go back.' It's not about panic. It's about duty. Warped, twisted duty."
She began to pace again, her mind racing, connecting the terrible dots. "He thought a scandal would destabilize the new Ministry. Or maybe he thought the Death Eaters who were still at large would target the child. So he made a choice. A 'strategic' choice. He chose the 'Greater Good'."
The phrase hung in the air, heavy with the history of Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
Ron stared at the signature. 'H'.
"Harvey," Ron said, the name tasting like ash. "She called him Harvey."
"Yes," Hermione nodded vigorously. "Do you remember? About fourteen years ago. We ran into Cho at Diagon Alley. She looked... tired. Wary. She had a pram. She introduced us to the baby. Luke."
"I remember," Ron said quietly. "Harry was weird that day. Quiet. Wouldn't look at the baby."
"We thought he was just awkward because of their history," Hermione said bitterly. "But he was guilty, Ron. He was looking at his own son and pretending he was a stranger."
"And the father," Ron continued, his voice gaining a sharp edge of anger. "She told us the father was a Muggle-born academic. A researcher. She said his name was Harvey."
He let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Harvey. It's barely even an alias, Hermione. It's lazy. It's pathetic. H-A-R-R-Y. H-A-R-V-E-Y. It's the same amount of letters. It starts with H. It ends in Y. It's the kind of name you come up with when you're standing on the spot, terrified, staring at your ex-girlfriend and your secret child."
"It's arrogant," Hermione spat. "He thought he could hide in plain sight. He thought we were too stupid to notice."
"And the backstory," Ron said, standing up now, the fury rising in him like a tide. "She said Harvey died. In a car crash."
The kitchen went silent. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the wind rattling the windowpanes.
"A car crash," Hermione repeated, her voice trembling. "That's the story the Dursleys told Harry about his parents. That's the lie he grew up with. That's the lie he hated more than anything."
"And he used it," Ron roared, kicking his chair back. It clattered to the floor. "He used the lie that ruined his childhood to erase himself from his son's life! It's sick, Hermione! It's twisted!"
He paced the length of the kitchen, his hands pulling at his hair. "He wrote himself out of the story using the Dursleys' script. He killed 'Harvey' so Harry Potter could go back to being the hero. So he could marry my sister. So he could have a 'perfect' family."
Ron stopped, leaning heavily against the sink, his breathing ragged. "He looked me in the eye at the wedding. He stood there, my best mate, my brother-in-law, and he lied. He let Cho raise that boy alone in a cottage in the middle of nowhere."
"He didn't just let her," Hermione corrected, her voice cold and analytical now, stripping away the emotion to look at the hard facts. "He gave her the means to hide him. The potion. The blood-dampening potion. I smelled it, Ron. I analyzed the residue. It wasn't a standard suppression draft. It was ancient. Ancestral. Something likely from the Potter vault."
She walked over to Ron, forcing him to look at her. "He drugged his son. For fifteen years. To keep his magic from showing. To keep the secret safe. That's not just abandonment, Ron. That's... that's cruelty. That's Grindelwald-level control."
Ron looked at her, his blue eyes filled with betrayal. "But why? Why now? Why did the letter say 'Dumbledore is coming'? Dumbledore is dead."
Hermione hesitated. This was the one piece that didn't quite fit the puzzle of "Harry the deadbeat dad."
"Maybe he meant a portrait?" she guessed weakly. "Or maybe... maybe he meant Dumbledore's plan? Lysander Grindelwald mentioned Dumbledore. He said Dumbledore foresaw this. Maybe Harry was following orders we never saw. Orders left behind."
"Orders to abandon a child?" Ron scoffed. "Dumbledore was a lot of things, but he wouldn't order that. And even if he did... Harry defies orders. That's what he does. He breaks rules to save people. He doesn't break people to save rules."
He grabbed the bottle of Firewhisky and hurled it into the fireplace. It shattered with a roar of green flames, glass spraying across the hearth.
"He changed," Ron said, watching the fire flare. "After the war. He became... the Head of the Department. The Man. Maybe the power went to his head. Maybe he started believing his own legend. 'The timeline has to be protected.' Who talks like that? A hero? Or a god?"
"A politician," Hermione said softly. "Someone who thinks they know what's best for the world, no matter the cost."
She went back to her bag, packing the last of the supplies with renewed vigor. "He's in the Balkans, Ron. Albania. The forest where Voldemort hid. He said he was tracking dark artifacts. Maybe he's looking for something else. Maybe he's looking for a way to fix what he did. Or maybe he's just running."
"Does Ginny know?" Ron asked, the question hanging heavy in the air.
Hermione paused. She looked up at the ceiling, toward the bedroom where Ginny Weasley had slept as a girl. "If she knew," Hermione said slowly, "she would have killed him. Or she would be with him. She isn't. She's at home with Albus and Lily, thinking her husband is a hero on a mission."
"We can't tell her," Ron said instantly. "Not yet. It would destroy her."
"We have to protect her," Hermione agreed. "By fixing this mess before it blows up in her face. We have to find Lucien. We have to get him away from Lysander."
"And Harry?" Ron asked. "What do we do when we find him?"
Hermione zipped up her bag. She slung it over her shoulder, the weight familiar and comforting. She walked to the back door and opened it, letting the cold night air flood the warm kitchen.
"We ask him," Hermione said. "We show him the letter. We ask him why he signed it 'H'. We ask him why he chose a car crash. And we ask him why he let his son become a weapon for a Grindelwald."
"And if he lies?" Ron asked, stepping up beside her, his wand gripped tight.
"Then we fight him," Hermione said, her voice devoid of hesitation. "Because the Harry we knew died fifteen years ago. The man in the Balkans... he's a stranger. And he's dangerous."
Ron nodded. He looked at the Burrow one last time—the home that Harry had been welcomed into, the family that had adopted him. Harry had betrayed that hospitality. He had betrayed the very concept of family.
"Let's go," Ron said. "Albania."
They stepped out into the darkness. The orchard was silent, the gnomes sleeping in their holes.
Hermione took Ron's arm. She thought of the boy in the lighthouse—Lucien. She thought of his green eyes, so like Harry's, but filled with a terrifying, raw power. She thought of him being twisted by Lysander, taught to hate the world that had rejected him.
She felt a surge of maternal fierceness. She hadn't been able to save her own parents' memories completely. She hadn't been able to save Fred. But she would save this boy. She would save Lucien from the sins of his father.
"To the Balkans," she whispered.
With a loud crack that startled the roosters in the coop, Ron and Hermione Disapparated.
The kitchen was left empty. The shattered glass in the fireplace glinted in the dying light. On the table, the map of Europe lay open, a red circle drawn angrily around a forest in Albania.
And beside it, forgotten in their haste, lay the crumpled letter. The letter signed by 'H'. The letter written not by a corrupt, ambitious Harry Potter, but by a desperate, time-displaced James Potter who had sacrificed his very existence to ensure his first son lived.
The letter that Hermione had failed to read fully.
Because if she had, if she had been able to read the blurred lines at the bottom, she would have seen the one instruction that would have stopped her in her tracks. She would have seen the name of the godfather.