A Dark Time For The Light

38

The tension only increased as the week drew to it’s end. Ginny went to lunch with Jo every day extracting more information with each chat.

The time that Hermione and Josie had caught a chemist working late, the reason why the alarm wasn’t on, then Hermione insisting on tying the guy up while they robbed his pharmacy even though the poor chap had been totally co-operative even volunteering the keys to the DDA cabinet. They cleaned out his till as they left.

Another tale of inferior gear. It seemed the two of them were dealing as well as selling themselves. Hermione barreling round to the guy’s flat at two in the morning and breaking three of his fingers with pliers until the bad had been made good and a large sum of money refunded to them for their trouble.

The scams to lure unwary johns into a threesome only to be robbed and whacked over the head. Hermione cackling as they fled the scene. For extra humiliation, Hermione always left their latest victim with his trousers and boxers around his ankles, open to at least ridicule, if not an extra beating if found in that state by recalcitrant home-going pub crowds, gangs of lads in the mood for some neanderthal fun.

Hermione was deeply pissed off by her lover’s attitude by the end of the first week and called her on it. Ginny exploded in fury at the wrongs Hermione had visited upon others. She fumed and stamped and raged. To her amazement and fury, Hermione started to laugh, “Where is she?. Come on. Tell me. Where is she?. There’s only one person who could have given you this much information”.

Ginny was chagrined, wanting to lay into her lover for her disgusting behaviour, but Hermione forestalled her. “Baby, I told you my life was ugly. I just wanted to spare you the goriest details, that’s all. Come on, I never lied. I may have glossed over stuff, but the life of a junkie whore isn’t very palatable. I wanted you to still love me, in the sweet innocent way you always had. I needed that. I have been to Hell and back, Ginny. I lost everyone. Harry, Ron, You. I took on too much and lost it. Just like Jose. I didn’t corrupt her. What would you have thought of me if I had laid my life bare?. You would have disowned me, is what”.

She flung herself across their bed and howled in anguish. Ginny was still angry but she sank down beside Hermione and took her into her arms. The stories tallied even though Hermione told them through choking sobs, then Ginny told her, “She works with me. She’s been training me all week. I think she would love to see you again”.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”, Hermione whispered. “I just wanted to find out more. She sussed who I was on day one. You’re right, she’s bright”, Ginny replied. They gazed at each other for a long moment. Ginny continued, “She said I was beautiful and worth agonising over”, then giggled.

They made up spectacularly, shrieking their mutual joy into the darkened quiet of the Bunker in late-night mode. The door-warden heard and smiled. After the fury of the row, the deep joy of making up. Ah, what it was to be young and impetuous.

They spent Sunday together despite an invite from Harry and Draco for Sunday lunch. They ate with the rest of the cadre around the canteen tables ignoring all but each other. Ibrahim tried to engage Hermione in tech talk to be gently held back by Tonks. “Leave them, love. They’ve been rowing all weekend. Whatever it is can wait”. Ibrahim backed off to a distant table and made calfs-eyes at his crush. A highly intelligent brown-eyed Witch who he adored.

That afternoon, Harry wondered and fretted at his best friend’s absence from the meal, missing the girls’ input to the conversation. It was altogether too butch. Football. Formula one which they all watched. The Japanese leg of the competition. The usual suspect won. Harry tried to call her, no signal. Harry and Draco walked back with Dean and Seamus. Harry was determined to find out what was bothering Hermione. He was unsettled.

At the Bunker, he was told that the girls weren’t receiving guests. He left a message for Hermione with Tonks and they went back to the flat. Harry’s mood down, not seeing his best mate, he imagined all sorts of mad scenarios. Draco shot them all down, “Look, Harry. They’ve probably just had rows. You and I have had them, and people just leave us alone. Tonks told me she’d heard them arguing then making up. Let’s just leave them to it. They’ll tell us if they want to”. Harry reluctantly agreed and they left the Bunker. Harry dropped a text message for his best friend to receive whenever she was near enough to the surface.

Monday morning. Ginny slipped out of the bunker quietly, not waking her lover.

Harry and Draco slept late. The sound of the letterbox clattering woke Harry. He donned his gown and went to investigate. He ripped open the envelope. A short note and a small key. Severus was laid up with either a horrendous cold or the ‘flu and couldn’t undertake the mail run that week and could Harry....?”.

The key was to the garage. Harry picked up the small tent and locked it behind him, packing it into the panniers along with the flexible water container. He winked at Draco, climbed back onto his scooter and they headed north. They had at least two weeks until Harry’s next job started and Draco’s appearance before the review board with his colleagues to discuss their next project was scheduled for over a week away, so they took off into the summer sun to play mailman.

Harry had been right. E-mail had been a useful tool to most of the folk in the Underground, but many, especially purebloods, still needed a written lifeline. Pansy had full command of the Internet, but her parents still preferred pen and paper as did many others. The mail route was still very much needed.

Pointing the scooter north, Harry rode hard to Hogsmeade. Without the power of Sev’s bike, the run would take them longer, not to mention more rest stops to stretch tired legs, but at dusk they parked up, stripped off waxies and helmets and walked, hand in hand, to Hogsmeade.

“How long is it since you tasted Butterbeer, love?”. Draco was almost visibly drooling, “Too damn long”. As darkness fell around them, they tapped the secret knock on the back door of the Three Broomsticks. To be welcomed in by an enthusiastic Rosmerta.

They sat in the warm kitchen sipping Butterbeers before the fire exchanging news and gossip with Rosmerta and her own special circle allowed into her kitchens including Professor Flitwick. It delighted them both to see a Hogwart’s professor still resplendent in full teaching robes, even if these were the only clothing the tiny man had. He had run in only the clothes on his back, even if they were his teaching robes. Harry and Draco excused themselves and went upstairs, given the room that Severus always kept open.

“Hmm, don’t blame you for not sleeping in the chair”, Draco remarked sardonically. Harry swatted him, then dragged him to bed, “You ride bitch for a reason, blondie”. Draco melted at the deep guttural sound of Harry’s voice. Every hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he relaxed into Harry’s touch, turning to massage the tired driver’s muscles. Then stripping him of the rest of his clothes, running Harry a bath, gently washing him and drying him, laying a near-comatose Harry in bed and curling up next to him. Harry lay a moment, exulting in Draco’s attentions, then reached out for his blond Slytherin and they held each other as they slept. They woke as by mutual consent, deep in the night, then made love quietly, murmuring rather than screaming their ecstasy. Slept again, closer than ever.

Harry slipped out early the next morning to the Post Office. It was becoming harder to send and receive mail this way, especially from here. The Post Office was being watched, though in a lacklustre way. Harry found out that they had a Muggle phone line and resolved that this part of the Magical community, at least, should have the Internet, if only to keep in touch with the other Magicals in hiding, “Sorry, purebloods”, he muttered under his breath as he secreted the mail about his person, “You’re going to have to enter the real world like the rest of us”, he smiled grimly as he stashed his cache of mail.

Breakfast and Harry arrived at the room simultaneously. Draco let them both in. Rosmerta herself had brought it. “Hogsmeade’s being watched again today. There’s a chap out on the road heading East. He was spotted this morning by my chambermaid who arrives as an otter. You will have to be careful”. The boys nodded solemnly, “I think we may have to abandon these mail-runs. You’ve got a phone line here, there was a machine that was slated for Leicester, but you tell us that cadre is breaking up?”. Rosmerta nodded, “They were in a squatted house and were evicted two nights ago. I spoke to a party of four on their way to Kilmarnock yesterday, before you arrived, they didn’t hang around. They were in a hired van”. She handed Harry a slip of parchment with the travellers names on, no Terry Boot. He murmured that he would update the database that Hermione had created as soon as they got back to London.

Draco spoke up, “It looks like we need to find out where Leicester’s computer ended up and move it here, though it’ll mean the end of Sev’s mail-runs, but safety must come first. Does anyone know what happened to the Bristol lot?”. Rosmerta shook her head, “There’s rumours flying about. Everything from going to London to joining him”. “Well if they’re in London, they haven’t showed up at the Bunker”, rejoined Harry. Rosmerta smiled at them both, “Rumour also has it that you two have left the Underground and are now integrating with a flat and jobs and everything?”. Harry grinned. “We haven’t left the Underground as such, we’re still in regular touch and I work with Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, but we needed to see light through the window again”.

She could identify with that. She left them to their breakfast. After they’d eaten, Harry sorted the mail into the relevant stacks fastening them together with rubber bands. They packed and left after breakfast, Draco bringing their breakfast tray down. Rosmerta pushed a bag of cold clanking bottles at them as they left, “Something for tonight, boys. Be careful”. She hugged them both and they exited.

Instead of the carefree wandering pace they’d adopted on arrival, as they left, they clung to the hedgerows and kept out of sight as much as possible, mindful of Rosmerta’s warnings. They saw nobody as they found the bike. Harry stashed the mail and the butterbeers and they headed off north. They were in Scotland by early evening.

The farmhouse was a lot fuller than the last time Harry had been there. There were more children running about the place. It was nearly dinner-time. Harry was greeted enthusiastically, Draco less so, but with cordiality none the less. They were led into a long low outbuilding that served as a dining hall for the whole community and well fed on a nutritious, if stodgy, vegetarian meal.

After the long ride, the stew and rice was welcome. Harry asked about a place to bed down for the night, to be told by Lee, “We’ve got a bunkroom, but the bunks are tiny. There’s loads of space to pitch a tent though. Severus always had a tent with him”. Harry grinned, “We’ve borrowed it. Sev’s not well and we’re on mail detail this week”. That said, they set about exchanging mail. A much shorter stack than he and Sev had delivered last time, mainly packages and small parcels. The Scots contingent had set up a PO box for larger items.

Business complete, Lavender grabbed the boys and they went to her bus that she shared with an ex-Hufflepuff Roland Wilson, three years older than her and their new baby, Jasmine. The Patil twins popped their heads in as did Neville and his boyfriend once news got around that Harry was visiting. They learned a bit more about the running of the place, whilst haphazard at times, seemed to work okay. Neville leaned in and murmured to Harry that one of the greenhouses in the garden centre now boasted a far more lucrative crop than annuals and perennials. Harry chuckled as he surmised the nature of the crop and asked if Neville had a sample. Neville, Harry and Draco excused themselves and stepped outside, “I don’t like smoking around the kids, you know?”, Neville lit three small blunts and passed one each to his friends.

As they smoked, they all sank to the ground enjoying the balmy night air. “Bloody hell, Neville, this is seriously good, have you any to sell?”. Neville grinned, “The first batch is cured and ready. I can do you a K for three grand”. Harry coughed, “Shit, Neville, just how much space have you given over to this?. I was just after an ounce, maybe two”. Neville sprang to his feet, offering his hands to haul the others up, “Come on, I’ll show you”.

He led them around the back of the farmhouse away from all of the vehicles. Domed shapes could be seen in the dusk stretching away from them. Plastic tubes some seven feet high and several metres long covering two fields. They tramped through the nearest field then climbed over the gate. They walked between rows of plastic tunnels until they reached the farthest two. Neville let them into the one on the right first. The plants were in darkness and Neville unhooked an industrial-sized torch from just inside the entrance and switched it on.

The smell alone was almost enough to floor one, but Harry and Draco gasped at the sight before them. Stretching off in neat-ish rows for ten metres was the biggest variety and number of Marijuana plants they had ever seen. As they went slowly down the aisle separating two large hydroponic beds, Neville pointed out the different strains under cultivation, ‘White Widow’, ‘Northern Lights’ and the extremely pungent ‘Bubblegum’.

They didn’t spend long in the greenhouse. “The plants are in the dark part of their cycle, too much light at night fucks them up. Come on, I’ll show you the curing house”.

The other greenhouse was the curing house. Large fat buds hanging in clusters upside down. Neville broke three large buds nearly as long as his forearm and going to a desk to one side of the room, he neatly labelled them, then handed them to the boys. One each of the strains in the growing house, “Here you go, free of charge, consider it a gift”. Harry baulked, “Nah, come on, this is a living for everybody, how much do we owe you, mate?”. Neville wouldn’t hear of it. He grinned, “Think of it as a housewarming present, though you must give the London cadre a turn-on”.

They left the plastic tunnel after sampling some of the goodies. Neville showed them a good place to pitch their tent and they all went back to Lavender’s bus, where they enjoyed a convivial evening, getting drunk on the farm’s home brewed cider and extremely stoned on the excellent weed.

Putting up the tent was nearly a fiasco, but Harry took over from an extremely inebriated Draco and eventually they had a sanctuary for the night. Draco had never slept under canvas before, and insisted on them sleeping with their heads at the door end of the tent. Harry grinned to himself, the last time he had slept in here, it was the other way around. He actually liked Draco’s way better. If you lay on your back, you could see the stars overhead. The cadre had lent them some bedding, Draco not keen on the mummy shaped sleeping bags.

Draco was snoring gently in minutes, held in Harry’s arms. Harry lay awake a while, then disentangled himself from Draco and sat up, listening to the various sounds reaching him. Children’s laughter, a baby crying, music, a radio from somewhere to his left, a strummed guitar to his far right. Gradually the place slept, enveloped in night mist that clung near the ground. Harry rolled a blunt then lay down again, gazing at the Milky Way arching overhead as he smoked. He put it out in the grass, leaving the roach. He’d dispose of it properly in the morning. He folded his arms around his deliciously warm sleeping lover and within minutes gave himself up to slumber