Chapter Text
Hermione may not have worked for the Ministry for five years, but she still knew the narrow halls and haunted conference rooms like the back of her hand. Her heels made a satisfying click against the marble as she crossed the entryway, breezed past the DMLE front desk, and entered the hustle and bustle of the Auror pen.
“Counselor Granger.” Mrs. Guilfoyle rose to her feet as Hermione approached her desk.
“Is Robards ready for me?”
“Yes, but he said to—”
Hermione did not wait to hear the answer. She lifted her hand and with a soft push of magic, the office door swung open before her.
Robards looked up from a towering stack of parchment as she stepped inside the dark wood-paneled office. Behind him on the wall, an enchanted map of the UK showed where the Aurors were in the field. A particularly large cloud of dots had amassed in Birmingham this morning.
“Hermione,” he said, a resigned look on his face. “You’re early. I was going to ask you to wait for our other guest.”
“Yes,” said Hermione, slipping her cloak from her shoulders and placing her hand bag on the second chair. “But I thought we might as well get this over and done with, shouldn’t we? Since we both know how it ends.”
“Be my guest,” Robards said sardonically, gesturing to the chair.
Before she had left to join the Centre for Magical Creature and Being Rights, Hermione had been a prosecutor for the DMLE. She had become well acquainted with this office. The relationship between the prosecutors and the Aurors was like that of siblings in a particularly cutthroat family—half love, half loathing. Or at least, how she imagined it, not having any siblings herself.
“Thank you.” Hermione lowered herself into the chair. “Well, can we both admit now that this farce is a waste of everyone’s time? And that I don’t need Auror protection?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Please—how old was the last one? 18? 19”
“22, and he passed all his examinations with flying colors. Top of his Auror class.”
“I shudder to think what the rest of the class was like.”
“Hermione—ditching Jensen in the loo? Really?”
“He was interfering with my ability to do my job,” she said tartly. Not to mention riffling through her mail, drinking up all the tea in the kitchen, and scaring off their clients. “The better question is how could you send me someone who barely knows their wards?”
“Just because he didn’t memorize Butterworth’s doesn't mean he isn’t qualified.”
“And moreover,” Hermione said, “you have to admit that none of them are really qualified for this. I hate to pull this card, but how many people in this building can say that they received an Order of Merlin, started Dumbledore’s Army, hunted horcruxes, and brought down Voldemort, all before age 19? Hmm? What qualifications do any of them possibly have to guard me?”
“That may be true—but even you cannot watch your own back.”
“With skills like the ones I’ve seen, I’m better off watching my own back, thank you.”
“It might be better if you didn’t interrogate them all the second they stepped into your office.”
“Why shouldn’t I know more about them? I don’t want some stranger in my office or my house, mucking about in my things.”
Robards looked at her tiredly. “You made Dingleberry cry.”
“Was that what his name was?”
“Hermione,” Robards said, leaning forward in his chair. “I wish you would appreciate the pressure that I’m under right now. Minister Shacklebolt personally ordered that I ensure you have the highest level of Auror protection, due to the political sensitivities right now.”
Hermione brushed a speck of lint from her trousers. “That sounds like a problem for you and not for me.”
“You understand that if anything were to happen to you, and you were unguarded, it would look like we let it happen? That the Ministry was biased against you?”
She understood very well. In a few short weeks, she would be arguing the most important case of her career in front of the full Wizengamot, against the very lawyers down the hall that she had used to work amongst. One that could reshape the very foundation of the Wizarding World and the rights of the creatures in it.
Unfortunately, it had stirred up an angry hornet’s nest of opponents. Complete with a series of angry letters and howlers that far surpassed those that she’d received after Rita Skeeter’s articles in fourth year.
“You know,” Hermione said, smiling slightly, “one of the best things about quitting here is that I no longer have to worry about the Ministry’s reputation.”
Robards looked at her with an expression of defeat.
“Please, Hermione—at least accept Auror protection until the case is over. It won’t be very long.”
The first arguments had been scheduled for a month from now—the first of June.
“Even if I agreed to accept it, you would have to give me—”
The door swung open.
“Sorry, Robards, I was—”
Ron Weasley was in the doorway, his tall frame filling the frame. The surprise in his pale blue eyes was palatable.
“Weasley,” said Robards. “Thank you for joining us. Please shut the door.”
“Hermione,” Ron said tightly, his expression smoothing over.
“Ron,” said Hermione.
It took her a beat to realize he was waiting for her to move her bag from the other chair.
“There was a mix up at the laboratory,” Ron said to Robards as he lowered himself into the chair. “But we sorted it out.”
“Did the Painswick samples come out?”
Ron nodded. “Yes, and there’s a full match.”
Hermione studied his profile as he spoke to Robards.
She had seen him not too long ago—the Wizarding World was too small to truly avoid each other. But they had always played a careful dance at the various weddings, galas, and magical baby naming ceremonies to ensure that they were never really alone, or had to spend too much time looking each other in the eye.
Robards straightened. “Well, now that Auror Weasley is here—I can propose my plan.”
“Wait a minute,” Hermione said. “You mean to propose that he be assigned to me?”
Robards steepled his hands. “Yes, that is exactly what I am proposing.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Trying to get rid of me so quickly?”
Hermione turned on Ron.
He was smirking slightly. God, it was just like him to barely speak to her in years—by their mutual agreement, of course—and then immediately make a joke to get under her skin.
“Did you know about this?”
“No,” Ron said, cutting his eyes to Robards. “Though it seems obvious very now, what Robards meant, when he asked me to accept a ‘high profile protection assignment’.”
“Hermione,” Robards said, lifting a hand. “You said that you wanted someone who matched your qualifications and someone who you know. Ron fits both of those. You have to admit that.”
He was right—Ron was the only person in this building, now that Harry had moved on to being the DADA Professor at Hogwarts, who checked every box she had mentioned.
Robards 1, Granger 0.
He had anticipated her perfectly.
“I never said that I wanted someone,” Hermione said quickly. “I was merely pointing out the flaws in your planning.”
“Do I need to remind you of the letters you received last week?”
Ron leaned forward in his chair. “What letters?”
“Idle talk,” Hermione dismissed. “All bark and no bite.”
“Everything’s idle talk until the worst happens.”
“And besides,” Hermione said, “surely Ron has other duties to attend to? I would think that a protection assignment would be beneath him.”
They may not talk anymore, but she still spoke to Harry, and aside from that, she kept herself well informed on the going-ons at the Ministry. She had to, as part of her job as a solicitor trying magical rights cases. Ron had been promoted to Deputy Head of Investigations last spring under Savage. She doubted he was in the field much anymore. Aurors in supervisory roles rarely were.
“We have already sorted that with Savage,” Robards said quickly. “This is one of my top priorities right now. Everyone understands. And Ron has already agreed.”
Ron nodded stiffly.
Robards had her cornered, she had to give him that. He read the expression on her face. “At least give the arrangement a trial run for a week or so. If you feel that it is not working, we can reevaluate.”
Hermione gritted her teeth. “All right. Fine.”
“Wonderful,” Robards said, smiling broadly. “I knew you would come around.”
Hermione forced herself to turn.
“I have an opening in my schedule at half past two this afternoon. Come to the office and we can discuss. I assume you know the address.”
Ron nodded. “Right.”
Hermione gathered her cloak and bag. “Well, it was nice to see you, Robards. Let’s never do this again.”
Robards inclined his head. “Hermione.”
She nodded to Mrs. Guilfoyle as she swept out of the office, pulling her cloak over her shoulders. Curse Robards for ambushing her like that, and curse herself for folding so easily.
A hand touched her arm. “Hermione.”
She stiffened, turning.
Ron was behind her.
He had caught up to her annoyingly quickly with those long legs of his. With his height, she had to tilt her neck at an angle to look at him, a fact that she found particularly irritating at this moment. He lifted his eyebrows. “Your house, tonight.”
“Excuse me?”
“We will meet at your house tonight to discuss our arrangement. Not at your office.”
“Why would I agree to that?”
“Because I’m going to reset your wards, and I want to kill two birds with one stone.”
Hermione bristled. “I already have done my own wards, thank you very much.”
“No one denies how accomplished you are,” he said evenly. “But even you are not a warding expert, unless I’ve missed that part of your life over the past 10 years. I will reset your wards—this is not a discussion. It is part and parcel with you accepting Auror protection.”
“You don’t even know where I live.”
Ron lifted his other hand, revealing a folio of parchment. “I have your file from Robards.”
Hermione wanted to scream.
Ron lifted a brow. “So do you want to pick a time, or should I pick one for you?”
Damn him.
“Six o’clock. Don’t be late.”
Ron did not rise to her bait about lateness. “All right.”
“Goodbye.”
Hermione made to step away, but he stopped her with his hand.
“Oh and Hermione?” He stepped even closer, lowering his voice. She caught the scent of his aftershave and something underneath, something like the mint toothpaste that she had smelled all those years ago in a dark Potions classroom. “You may be able to boss around and intimidate the Auror trainees and junior Aurors, but you can’t do that to me—I know you. So it’s time to reset your expectations, all right?”
And he left her there in the middle of the Auror pen, furious and fuming, with a sensation that was unfamiliar to Hermione Granger 10 years after the war—that she had been outplayed.