Carrying On.

Summer, 1980

"Qui est cet homme?" Three year-old Fleur Delacour asked her godmother curiously.

"Ladies do not point, ma petite," Hermione said gently to her goddaughter in fluent French. The tiny blond witch immediately lowered her hand, but waited patiently for an answer. "That man is Orion Black, my father-in-law."

"And who is this dainty creature?" Orion Black asked gravely, also in French, watching his young daughter-in-law speaking to a small girl. He had grown fond of his oldest son's wife, despite her rather odd proclivities such as spearheading rebellion groups and whatnot, which was why he had come to her home today with his youngest son, Regulus.

"This is Mademoiselle Fleur Delacour, and my goddaughter," Hermione informed her father-in-law, with an encouraging smile for her goddaughter.

Fleur made her very best curtsey, and Orion bowed and took her small hand, treating her like a great lady—like her godmother Hermione. The child was immediately taken with the gruff, older man and proceeded to climb onto the settee next to him and ask him a million questions. Hermione smiled at the picture the two of them made and turned to Regulus.

"Is everything ready?" Regulus asked quietly, his dark head bent slightly toward hers.

After the destruction of Voldemort, everyone had worried about Hermione's mental health. Sirius had been ridiculously over-protective of her, afraid that the smallest thing might make her spiral into depression. For her part, once Hermione knew that Sirius didn't blame her, didn't think that she should have somehow known and preemptively stopped it from happening, she was on the road to recovery. The news that James and Lily, and Lucius and Narcissa were expecting was accepted with calm grace. Her family worried about her despite her apparent health, and finally Orion gave her a project that had occupied her every waking moment until today. He had bitterly complained about the fact that his son and his niece's husband were forever branded like cattle. No decent, upstanding wizard should be permanently scarred like that. It went on and on. Anytime Hermione and Sirius visited Grimmauld Place, they were treated to the latest verse of Orion Black's favorite tune. Rather quickly, Hermione determined that she must find a way to remove the Dark Mark from all of her milites. It was fading slowly, as Voldeomort was truly dead, but it would never be completely gone and Hermione knew that Lucius, Regulus and Severus hated the fact that they had them anyway.

"Yes," she answered her brother-in-law simply, a calm smile on her face. "I have everything ready and we have prepared the smaller ballroom."

"Excellent. Lucius and Severus should be here soon," Regulus said with a slight smile. For him, that was the equivalent of Sirius' broad, happy grin.

In no time at all, the smaller ballroom of Hermione and Sirius' townhouse was filled with her milites. To prove themselves to one another and to Hermione, all of them had taken their outer robes and their shirts off so that one could see the marks of the lioness on their chests. They had never been gathered all in one place before, all of them known to one another. Not even on the day of their mass assault against Voldemort. It was almost like a milites reunion, if one discounted the fact that they were all half-naked. Hermione had house elves circulate amongst them with light refreshments while she used Lucius as her guinea pig. She held his forearm in her left hand and traced the fading Mark with her right, her brow furrowed in concentration. She could feel the magic, the connection of several charms linked and twisted in a particularly nasty and foul way.

Hmmm. What if you treated it like a sweater?

I'm sorry?

A hand-knit sweater can be unraveled, or picked apart, can it not? What if you picked apart certain of the charms? It would unravel, yes?

You may have something there. It appears as though he designed this to be as painful and as awful as possible. It looks as though it might have nasty booby traps built in, just as we had suspected. However, if I do pick apart a couple of the individual charms…yes, it just might work.

Well, who better to try it on than Lucy?

Eurgh.

Hermione concentrated with a single minded focus. She drew several tiny runes on Lucius' arm with the tip of her finger. They glowed briefly and she delicately used them to pick apart one of the individual charms that made up the Dark Mark, as though they were magical lock picks, or more properly 'charm picks'. It wasn't an important piece, so Voldemort hadn't bothered to booby trap it because it was linked to other, rigged charms. Finally, the charm unraveled itself, causing a break between crucial links that made up the Dark Mark. If she could destroy this other minor charm, there would be nothing holding it in place and it would disappear off of his arm forever. Hermione worked quickly, once she knew she understood what was involved. Soon, she was staring at the pale, unblemished skin of Lucius Malfoy's forearm. She blinked and then looked up at him. He'd been watching her intently, his silver eyes focused on her face the entire time she'd worked.

"Thank you," he said feelingly, his eyes flashing a tumult of emotions briefly before he locked down and regained control of himself.

"Excellent work, girl!" Orion said gruffly, eyeing his nephew-in-law's smooth, unmarred skin. "You next, Regulus!"

"No, Mr. Black, Regulus has to go last," Hermione chided him gently. "We've talked about this, I know you remember."

"Hmph."

"Father, you know that Hermione's logic is sound," Regulus said firmly. Orion glowered at everyone and then turned his attention back to Fleur who was trying to gain it.

"Hermione Canopia Po-Black! What on earth is going on in here?" Dorea Black stood in the doorway of the smaller ballroom, her extremely pregnant daughter-in-law in tow. The two women gaped at the assembled half-naked men in Hermione's house.

"Hello, Mum," Hermione said calmly. "I'm removing the Dark Mark from all of my milites. Gentlemen, this is Dorea Potter, my mother, and Lily Potter, my sister-in-law."

All of the gentleman bowed politely toward their domina's mother and sister-in-law. Dorea Potter's eye twitched slightly. She distinctly recalled an odd conversation she had had with Professor MacGonagall after the defeat of Voldemort. The professor had gone on and on about how Hermione was the mastermind known as the domina in some circles and as the Lioness in others. The professor had been ranting on about how she must have begun recruiting while she was still in school because rumors had begun then. Dorea had smiled and nodded at what she had hoped were the pertinent points, but now that she was faced with an entire room filled with young men that she knew her daughter had gone to school with, well, it made her wonder about everything that Minerva had said.

"Mother, why don't you and Lily visit with Orion. He's growing impatient with the slow process," Hermione said dryly. Lily moved toward her friend, while Hermione motioned to Rabastan LeStrange to come forward. She took his arm in her hand and began frowning at it thoughtfully.

"Hermione? Won't Sirius be awfully upset about you being in a room of practically naked men?" Lily asked nervously. Before, Sirius had been overprotective of Hermione. After…that day, he'd become almost impossible. Hermione snorted and rolled her eyes at Lily.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lily," Hermione said soothingly. "I'm also in a room with my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, my mother, my goddaughter, my blood-brother and you. Who on earth would dare to impugn my honor with all of you present? Besides, all my milites are men of honor. The paw prints won't take if they're not. They would never dream of taking liberties with my person. I am a married woman, after all."

Every man in the room seemed to stand a little bit straighter upon hearing Hermione's staunch support of her milites. Men of honor. They hadn't felt like that for some time, and today's removal of the Dark Mark would help them all gain back a little of that. The woman standing in the center of the room had become legendary to them even before she destroyed Voldemort. She and her lieutenants had offered all of them a second chance, a way to escape their private hells. Each man felt he owed her a life-debt, and further, that she had rescued their family's honor as well, which to many of them was the more valuable of the two. They all waited patiently, and conversed amongst themselves, discussing their families' attempts to recoup after the war. Somewhere in the house a door flew open and struck the wall making a large bang noise. All of the milites turned to the ballroom doors in surprise.

"Hermione? Where are you love?" Sirius called as he pulled off his Auror robes and tossed them over his arm. He loosed his shirt a bit and stuffed his tie in his pocket.

"Mother said that she and Lily were going to visit," James offered as he shrugged out of his work uniform. "Maybe they're in the parlor?"

"In here, Sirius," they heard Hermione call from the smaller ballroom. They pushed open the large doors and stopped uncertainly in the door way.

"Er, Hermione?" James said after a moment. Hermione glanced at him.

"Hullo, Jamie. Are you looking for Lily? She's over there with Sirius' father," Hermione said cheerfully. "Now, forgive me, but this next bit takes a lot of concentration."

Both men watched as she very carefully set about taking the Dark Mark off of man whose arm she was holding. Sirius and James nodded politely to the people that they knew, privately surprised at some of the men who had been forced to join Voldemort's Death Eaters to protect their family. It might be easy to assume that every single member of that group had done so willingly and had participated in murder and carnage with a rapacious glee, but such assumptions ignored several key facets of any large organization. To run, and run well, money is required to fund any organization of any size—even a non-profit organization needs money. Sirius and James recognized that many of the men in this room were from the wealthier Pureblood families. Voldemort had used his brute squads to threaten these mens' families thus 'encouraging' their cooperation. In some cases, the families themselves required obedience. Lucius Malfoy had followed his father's orders, Regulus had followed his parents' orders (or so he thought at the time), Rabastan LeStrange had followed his brother, and Head of House's orders. Loyalty, Duty and Honor had forced the young men in this room to become part of something that they would have much rather not had anything to do with, but today would help to heal that. James and Sirius considered all of this within a space of minutes, and rather than scream and yell at Hermione, they moved toward Orion and Dorea who were talking quietly.

"Good afternoon, father," Sirius said politely. He bowed to Mrs. Potter and Lily, and gave a bow and a wink to Fleur who giggled. "Ladies, a pleasure to see you."

"Sirius," Orion said gruffly. Fleur was sitting next to Sirius' imposing father, cuddling shamelessly into his side while he snuck her candy out of his pocket. The sight made Sirius' heart ache for a moment, and he glanced to Mrs. Potter, who was watching him with knowing eyes.

"It will happen when it happens," she said softly as she kissed his cheek. "Give her time."

"Lily, you know the healers told you take it easy," James was muttering at his wife, a scowl on his face. "I don't really think gallivanting across Britain was what they had in mind."

"Oh, don't be silly, James," Lily scoffed. "We flooed in to my parents' for tea, Petunia was there with her baby, Dudley. Then we flooed here to see Hermione and talk to her about our family dinner this Sunday."

"I still don't like it," James muttered. "What if something had happened."

"Nothing will happen, Jamie," Hermione soothed from where she was working on another of her miles. "Ha-er…the baby will be fine."

"A fine thing that is," James groused working up to his favorite complaint. "All I ever get is 'the baby' this and 'the baby' that, but for Malfoy over there you've gone and given him the sex, the name and probably which wand is his."

"Now, there's no need to be jealous of poor Draco," Hermione said flatly. "Lucius and I have theorized that because Lily is…what did you say the other day? Oh, part of a recovered bloodline or something, anyway, that that means that she'll infuse some, er, vitality in the vine, so to speak."

"Vitality in the vine?" James echoed in surprise. Lily blushed and Dorea chuckled.

"It means you ought to have a litter of young wizards and witches, all strong in their magic," Orion explained in his gruff voice. "Sounds reasonable to me. M'family used to raise hippogriffs, and the old journals are always going on about infusing new blood to revitalize the breeding stock."

"Hippogriffs?" Sirius asked curiously, a certain gleam in his eye.

"Sirius, later," Hermione said firmly. "So really, Lucius, you need to find a 'muggleborn' witch once Draco begins school and arrange a match with her parents. The Malfoy line is in desperate need of some revitalization. Regulus, too, should look for a similar girl, or at least a half-blood."

"What's this about hippogriffs, though?" Sirius asked his father quietly, and thus began a fascinating conversation that intrigued Sirius on a multitude of levels, and had the happy coincidence of making Orion Black feel important and needed.

"You believe that Draco will be an only child?" Lucius asked Hermione quietly later that afternoon after every one of her milites had been freed, his expression grave. She sighed and looked up into his silvery eyes.

"I have Seen him as an only child," she murmured, "but that was before, when Voldemort was in power. It is entirely possible that that would have affected your ability, and Narcissa's willingness to have children. She loves you and she will love Draco unconditionally, but I doubt she'd be willing to give more children over to Voldemort."