Months passed and nothing was found on the Dark Lady, whose name they still didn't know. There were no reports of anyone mysteriously missing, though there were a few on people with suddenly changing personalities. One minute the person would be happy and bubbly, the next they would be sad and depressed. At first it was thought they were simply suffering from mental illness, but that was quickly discarded upon examination. There was a spell on them. Why someone would want this was the question. How would it further a goal to have depressed people? St. Mungo's was trying to come up with a counter curse.
There was nothing tying these people together, except they were magical. Men and women were affected, though no child was hit. They came from all walks of life, Pure-blood, Half-blood, and Muggle-born. They were shop owners, politicians and housewives. It was as if the person casting the spell just picked someone randomly and fired. The DMLE was investigating.
In those months Hydrus and Grace's relationship grew. She had accepted the fact that he wasn't always an upstanding citizen, but never targeted innocents. She thought of him as a spy, giving him that mysterious feeling that she adored. Grace told him of her childhood and about her uncle who was caught being a pervert. He never did anything to her, but it still hit her hard since he was her favorite relative. That was her secret that she wanted to share.
Hydrus shared a few more stories of his own childhood, still letting her believe that it was in the orphanage. He kept most of his secrets and tried to keep the conversations in the now. He made sure to take his monthly aging potion. He didn't think he would ever reveal he was immortal; magic was one thing, immortality and time travel were different. The fact that he couldn't die would cause undue stress on the woman he cared for.
They still used the London flat, and spent a lot of nights there.
Harry was doing great in his schooling. If he were in a school he would be top of his class. The inventions and Hydrus's own future college education went a long way to making the child a smart boy. Thanks to never having met his mum's sister and her family, he never felt depressed or repressed. He was in no way a genius, but still doing very well.
They tried to get all the kids together in non-magical parks a few more times. Each time someone lost their temper and accidents happened. So they were discussing having play dates by alternating wizards and the Grangers houses.
The calls from the Granger parents petered off, now that they felt better about Hermione being magical. They still had some doubts on the wizarding society, but the men were quelling them the best they could.
One day the men were sitting in the living room going over their plans for the day, like they did every day. "I am thinking of breaking one of my rules," Hydrus said suddenly as he finished reading The Times and put it on the table.
"Which rule would that be?" Remus asked as he grabbed up the newspaper, beating Sirius to it. He did separate the sports section and hand it to his friend.
"I'm thinking of selling a few of the twins' products, and some of the things me and George worked on," the immortal sighed and ran a hand down his face. He had been debating this in his head ever since the reports on the new spell came out.
"Oh, which ones?" Sirius asked, perking up at new joke products. Hydrus never let him play with the twins' stuff.
"Down boy," Hydrus joked, making the other man pout. "No, not joke items, but things like the shield hats. They stop up to medium level curses and I can tweak them to cover the whole body. If we can get people to wear them then maybe we can reduce the amount of people hit. And a few of the other war based ones."
"That is a good idea," Remus said, ruffling the paper, "though I would make them better looking." He smirked over the top of The Times.
"Yeah," the time traveler smiled. The hats were pretty hideous.
"You could make them more stylish and keep them funny. Sell the stylish ones to Madam Malkin and put the funny ones in Fun For All Pranks. Maybe even make some gloves," the dogman suggested.
"Good idea," Hydrus said thoughtfully. "If I sell the patent for part of the profit, I can still deposit it in the Weasley vault."
"What if whoever is working this spell finds a way to get around the shield?" the werewolf asked, folding the paper and giving his full attention to the discussion.
"I'll just keep upping the protection. I'll do some research on the spell and see if I can't find that Dark Lady while I'm at it," Hydrus answered with a shrug. He still had all the books from the future on his book-reader and laptop. He also had many of the books he raided from the Death Eaters' houses that he had never read. Maybe the curse was in one of them. He might have to cut back on his dating time to start studying them.
"I can help with that," Remus said, pulling the immortal out of his thoughts. "The book store runs well without me, and I am sure if I ask Sarah, she would be more than happy to help in her spare time."
"I can help, it's a slow time at the Ministry right now, but Laura is busy, plus she's not much of a researcher," Sirius added, waggling his eyebrows.
"Give me your book-readers and I'll download some of the books I brought from the future. Sirius, I've got the entire Death Eater libraries on my laptop, so you can look through them with me. Remus, I'll give you the stuff I got from Flourish and Blott's." He waited until the two men called up their readers.
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