The Lost Horcrux

The Lovegood Inquisition

Disclaimers: Dark themes, police state ideas, mention of spousal abuse (including rape) on and off-screen, death of minor characters, graphic imagery and violence, frank sex discussion, copious bad language, bashing the fucking Weasley's and Dumbledore, liberties taken with mythical history and the HP real-life timeline.

***

Harry reached across Hermione, met her eyes over the rim of her teacup, exchanged a sweet, loving look with her a moment, then took and another slice of toast from the rack to her left, which he then proceeded to butter carefully. Well, to call it a tea cup would be something of an inaccuracy, when in fact it was actually one of baby Alison's plastic beakers that Hermione was drinking from.

In fact, it was what they were all drinking from ... one cup at a time. ... because it was the only thing they had left for the job.

This was a fact only further emphasised by Sally, who was walking around the populated, but awkwardly silent, Breakfast Parlour, scooping up fragments of china that had been missed on the earlier sweep-up attempt, which had been the first tackling of this mammoth task, that was dealing with the absolute carnage that Harry and Hermione's wedding night love-making had wrought on the entire Palace.

It was all Harry could do not to burst out laughing. He had a reputation to uphold, after all. So he tried his best to pout and frown as always, but inside he was being tickled to death. And it didn't help that Hermione, sat so invasively close on his left hand side, was in exactly the same state as he. She was locked in a death struggle with a fit of giggles herself. Harry could feel them inside her, as potently as if they were actually in his own chest, which only made his own chaffing mirth ten times worse.

So Hermione sat in silence, burying her giggling lips in as much tea as she could stand, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with anyone, while Harry fought hard to pretend that ... despite the glaring evidence all around them ... everything was just the same as it always had been. It was a game everyone else was playing, and Harry was just in that sort of mood to join in.

But it was so damned hard!

For a start, some of the house-elves were nosily erecting a scaffold along one wall of the Breakfast Parlour, to begin replacing the missing parts of the ceiling, which had been swept into a neat little mountain nearby. They were whistling a cheery little tune, and clanking merrily away, as they attached struts and rivets and brackets to the steel frame. There were torturous screeches as wooden beams were slid roughly into place, and every now and then a playful elf would push another from the scaffold, and belly laugh as his victim bounced away off the scorched and singed carpet like a rubber ball.

And the assorted witches and wizards at the large breakfast table ignored all of it, as if they couldn't hear any of the racket happening just a few feet away from them.

Then there were the witches and wizards themselves. Harry was sat opposite Susan Bones, who was tousled and sleep-mussed and kept flashing nervous little glances at Cassie, sat at the other end of the table. Both of them deliberately evaded looking in the direction of Neville, who was sat with Enola on Hermione's other side, but he regularly flicked his humour-filled eyes their way, trying to catch them off-guard, then grinning madly every time he managed it.

As for Enola, herself, she had clearly been fucked to within an inch of her life by the looks of her. That was obvious from her dreamy expression and curiously curly hair, as she'd usually prefer to die before she displayed that to the world in a state other than the immaculate straight lines she favoured. Plus the fact that she had actually been limping when she and Neville entered the Breakfast Parlour that morning, which told its own story.