A/N: Thanks so much to my reviewers of the last chapter! I'm very glad that I got around to doing what everyone was saying I should do (have Em tell her parents about "the terrible thing", as one reviewer phrased it :). And, as always, much appreciation to Liss for the beta. Enjoy!
XIX
October 11
"Wood, a word in my office."
Brandon looked up from the report he was writing to see his boss, Timon Warezell, gazing down at him. The elderly man's expression was grave and Brandon felt a twinge of unease. But then again, Warezell always looked grave so it was probably nothing to get concerned about. Anyway, Brandon had noticed an increase in the number of his co-workers being called to Warezell's office. He had been in a few times himself but it was always for debriefings or updates on various assignments.
That didn't mean they hadn't all speculated, though. The distinctive odor of impending change was in the air but so far none of them had managed to gleam anything either substantial or realistic.
Sighing, he pushed back his chair and stood up. He hoped his boss wasn't looking for any kind of in-depth information because Brandon was so distracted that he'd barely made any kind of headway on the report. His mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions, mostly of the anxious variety, and had been since the previous afternoon when the owl had arrived from Emerson saying that she needed to talk to him right away. He'd Apparated to his flat to find her in tears, where she'd informed him that she'd told her parents the whole story.
"What story?" he'd asked.
"About the miscarriage," she replied. "Oh, Brandon, they were so angry! Not so much because of the pregnancy but because I waited so long to tell them about it."
He'd held her close and tried to comfort her, even as his own heart beat in a panic inside his chest. Her parents wanted to talk to them both, Em had said, and they'd been planning to go over to Ballynore that night. But some kind of development had occurred with Dr. Granger's research and she'd had to go to St. Mungo's. Meanwhile, Em had returned to school early that morning, so the talk would have to be put off or held separately.
Brandon found himself wrestling with the decision as to whether or not to wait until the next time Emerson was in town or to just go to her parents and get his tongue lashing over with. He certainly wasn't in any hurry to face an angry Harry Potter, and Dr. Granger was nothing to be sneezed at, either. But the more he thought about it, the surer he was that the latter option was the best one. It was the fact that he and Em had kept the information a secret that upset her parents. Any more beating around the bush on his part would only make things worse.
"Are you ever going to sit?" barked Warezell in his deep, rumbling voice.
Brandon's head snapped up. "Oh, sorry, sir. I was thinking about something."
"Well, that much was obvious," Warezell grumbled. "Now, Wood, the reason I called you in here- hold on a second." Grabbing his wand, he quickly locked and soundproofed the room, then fixed Brandon with a beady eye. "What I'm going to tell you is sensitive information, which is why I just cast those charms. You hear?"
"Sure," Brandon said, his interest piqued. Was Warezell going to talk about the coming change that all of them could practically taste but had no idea as to whether the flavor would be bitter or sweet? "What's up?"
"All right. John Needham, Assistant Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, is retiring."
Brandon's eyebrows arched. Now that was big news! A departure from that high up meant an inevitable jostling of the entire department from that point downwards. His division was under the Magical Games and Sports umbrella. "He is? Then that means-"
"That I'm the next Assistant. And I-"
"So you're leaving? Who's going to be the new Head of International Liaisons?"
Warezell glared at him. "Will you shut your gob and let me finish? Now the way the hierarchy works, I'm now directly below the Head of the Department, which means that I'm the new Assistant." He rubbed his gnarly gray beard and snorted. "Well, as it is, I have no interest in leaving this division, certainly not to be assistant to Bloomfield. We've never exactly seen eye to eye on things."
Now that would be putting it mildly, Brandon thought, suppressing a snort of his own. Warezell was always upsetting foreign officials, who would then bombard Bloomfield with angry letters.
"Besides, I'm much too old for all the running around that comes with the position and I've no interest in the posturing and arse-kissing, either. God knows I do enough of that here in dealing with these foreign idiots."
"Okay." Brandon knew better than to say anything else. It didn't take very much to get his boss ranting about the international Quidditch officials that he dealt with on a daily basis. An outsider would probably wonder why he didn't just quit if he disliked it so much, but those in the department knew that Warezell loved his job and was very good at it, too. That is, when he wasn't infuriating somebody or the other.
Warezell leaned back in his chair. "Which is where you come in."
Brandon blinked. "I do?"
"Yes. How would you like the position?"
There was a long silence. "Uh?"
"Yes," Warezell repeated. "How would you like to be the Assistant to the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports? You'd be perfect for the role, with your diplomatic experience and linguistic skills. You work well under pressure, and I should know. Haven't you wondered why I've been dumping all those assignments on you, sending you all over the place?"
Brandon sat stunned in his seat, his mind whirling. Warezell wanted him to be the Head's Assistant! But- "But what about Dunn? Resvik? Thorpe? They're all senior-"
"They're all senior arseholes," Warezell snapped. "They don't have half the integrity or initiative in my teenage son's left pinkie and God knows the kid is a fucking work in progress. Besides, I get to decide what I want to do with what is rightfully mine. If I don't want it, I get to choose who it goes to, and I choose you. Think about it. You're what, twenty-five years old?"
Brandon nodded dumbly.
"Bloomfield has a good five, maybe ten years left in him before he'll have had enough of the bullshit. You take the Assistant position, you're poised to be the youngest Head of our illustrious department since that pisshead Ludo Bagman."
Brandon couldn't believe his ears. Never had he thought that things could happen so quickly or get so far! Sure, he had dreamed about it, but they were just that - dreams. Only last night, Em had asked him where he saw himself in five years and he'd said something about being higher up in the hierarchy at work. But he'd never thought so far as Assistant to the Head!
"I- wow- I'm-" he stammered.
"You're the best person I've hired in ten years," his boss said gruffly, and coming from as curmudgeonly a fellow as he was, that was high praise, indeed. "I was testing you this year, trying to see how much you could take, how much pressure you would handle. And you didn't disappoint. You performed beautifully and left all those countries with them not so subtly hinting to me that they'd like you to handle all their future dealings with us. Even back in February or so when you took every weekend off to go see your woman, your work never suffered-"
Warezell was still speaking but his words were unintelligible to Brandon all of a sudden. That last comment had made the exhilaration inside him plummet so fast that he felt momentarily dizzy.
Because if he thought he was busy now, it was nothing compared to how he would be as the Assistant to the Head of the most Quidditch-centric nation on Earth. The Assistant handled the brunt of the daily affairs, the actual Head position being more symbolic rather than anything else. At the moment, his workload was such that he could only manage a weekend a month with Emerson. If he accepted the position that his boss was offering him, with her being over in Boston, he would be lucky if he got to see her once every six months. The very thought was paralyzing.
"Oh God," he murmured under his breath.
His boss heard him and seemed to mistake it for something other than the distress that it was. "I know it's a lot to swallow all at once. Why don't you take some time to think about it, talk it over with your folks? I must say that I, for one, am glad you chose a Ministry job and not something so one-dimensional as being a mere Quidditch player. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, and I'd be honored if you were to accept it."
He stood up and Brandon followed his lead in somewhat of a daze. "I'll think about it, sir. And thank you."
"Remember, this is a very delicate matter so be careful who you share this with. Very few know about it and we'd like to keep it that way until such a time as we're ready to make an official announcement."
Brandon nodded gravely. "I understand." They shook hands and he turned to go. But upon reaching the door, he paused and looked back. "Could I have the afternoon off, sir? There's somebody I need to talk to, and this new information has made it a lot more urgent."
"Of course," Warezell said, waving him away. "Just make sure you're here tomorrow. I'm expecting a flood of League memos and I'll need all hands on deck, as the Muggles say."
Back at his desk, Brandon shrugged into his cloak and hurried to the Apparation spot. His whole life seemed poised to take a radical shift and he found himself suddenly terrified. And with that terror came a burst of adrenaline. Something that he'd been putting off before felt absolutely critical now, and the adrenaline pushed his earlier hesitation way into the background.
"Brandon! How're you?" exclaimed Alice, the red-headed receptionist at Puddlemere's front desk.
He managed a smile. "I'm fine, thanks. How's it going?"
"Very well, thank you. Are you here to see your father?"
"No, the other C.E.O., actually. Is he here?"
Alice nodded. "He's in his office. Is he expecting you?"
"No, but I hope you can squeeze me in?"
"Sure. I'll tell him you're on your way up."
He smiled at her. "Thanks."
The ride in the lift seemed unbelievably brief and Brandon took deep breaths, steeling himself for what he was certain would be a difficult encounter. Emerson's parents weren't very happy with him at the moment and he hoped that by taking the initiative he might soften some of her father's wrath.
The secretary waved him in but in his nervousness, he knocked anyway.
"Come in."
Closing his eyes for a second, he opened the door and stepped inside. Harry Potter was sitting behind his desk, his expression unreadable and his emerald eyes, which Em had inherited perfectly, were quite guarded. His hands were tented on top of his wide mahogany desk and he was gazing steadily ahead, the very picture of power and prestige.
Brandon gulped. "Er, thank you for seeing me."
"Close the door and have a seat."
He hastened to obey, feeling himself reddening. He'd known Harry Potter all his life, had called him 'Uncle' for the vast majority of it, and admired him tremendously. He knew of the stories and legends associated with this man but it was memories of talking Quidditch and backyard pick-up matches that jumped to mind when he heard the name. It was countless Boxing Days at Woodhaven and dinners at Ballynore. Harry Potter was as real to him as his own father and that was why Brandon was so nervous. He knew he had let him down.
"So what brings you by, Brandon?" Harry asked, his voice calm and collected.
"Well," he began, then stopped to clear his throat. "Um, Emerson told me about what happened yesterday."
"Oh, did she?"
"Yeah, and I just wanted to apologize."
Harry arched an eyebrow. "For what? From what Em said, she made you promise not to tell us."
"I shouldn't have promised. It was wrong of us to keep it from you." He sighed and closed his eyes for a second. "When I was at the hospital waiting for information about how she was, I thought about owling you. But then I realized that it meant that I would've had to leave to find an owl. And I didn't want to leave her. I was so scared; I thought she-"
"You thought she what?" Harry asked, his voice still calm but with a definite edge behind it now.
Brandon looked up. "I thought she was dying. And once the nurse talked to me, I realized that she could have. If I hadn't found her when I did, she could have died."
"And yet you didn't feel that her mother or I needed to have that information?"
He hung his head, feeling horrified. Thinking about it like that made his actions seem so much worse. He didn't blame Harry or Hermione for being angry.
"Did you already know that she was pregnant when you went to see her?" Emerson's father asked sharply.
"No, sir, I didn't," he answered quickly. "She'd written to me that she hadn't been feeling well but I didn't connect the dots. When the nurse said that Em had lost the baby, I had no idea what she was talking about. Em hadn't had a chance to tell me, because everything happened so fast. One minute I was there and the next we were at the hospital and the Healers had taken her away. I didn't know." He swallowed hard at the lump in his throat. "She said she couldn't bear to write it in a letter, that she'd felt she needed to tell me in person. She was going to tell me that night."
Harry stared at him for a long minute and Brandon felt pinned to his chair by the emerald gaze. Finally, the older man looked away and stood up. He walked to his window and looked out at the immaculate green lawns of Puddlemere United.
"Do you remember the conversation we had on Boxing Day last year?"
Brandon started to nod before realizing that Harry couldn't see him. "Yes."
"And what was the one thing I asked of you?"
He closed his eyes. "That I not hurt her."
Emerson's father turned around. "I don't doubt that you love my daughter, Brandon. But you're not the only one who does. Do not ever forget that." He paused for few seconds. "I know that the pregnancy was an accident and I would never have judged her or you. I probably wouldn't have been able to help being disappointed in you both, but I would not have judged you. What right would I have had? I was twenty-six years old and unmarried when she was born, not much older than you are right now. If I had had a choice, the chances that I would've chosen to be the single father of an infant are slim to none. But if I could live my life over again, I wouldn't change a damn thing about that part. She was the best thing in my life and I wouldn't be the man I am today if not for that baby."
Brandon sat open-mouthed, staring. He had never heard Harry Potter sound so vulnerable before. The more he listened, the more he admired this man. And the more certain he was that he'd done the right thing in coming here.
"I can't live her life for her or tell her what to do. Not anymore. She is an adult and her choices are her own. But that doesn't mean her mother and I don't still care about her or worry. Just like I'm sure Oliver and Katie still care and worry about you and Andrew. That's what parents do and that aspect of it never goes away regardless of how grown-up our children become." He fixed Brandon with a look that managed to be auspicious and menacing all at the same time. "Do not make me regret trusting you with her, Brandon."
"Yes, sir," he replied, feeling greatly chastised, and yet, relieved. Staring at his hands on his knees, he struggled not to squirm in anxiety. Perhaps he still had a chance after all. He was still alive and unharmed. He'd come this far; why not go a little further? Why not go all the way? His palms began to sweat but he plunged on. "C-Can I ask you something?"
Harry waved his hand. "Go ahead."
"Um, I-I- wanted to ask- um, well, I-I love your daughter and- and I wanted to-"
"Are you asking for my blessing to marry Emerson?"
Brandon blushed crimson. "Yes, sir. I love her. I would've married her without hesitation if the baby had lived, and I would marry her this instant if she would have me."
Harry stared at him hard for a long minute before nodding. "I believe you."
Brandon exhaled the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "So it's okay?"
"You'll have to ask her mother. Whatever she says goes for me, too. But tell me something." He walked back to his chair and sat down. "What are you going to do about your job?"
He froze. "M-My job?"
"Timon told me he wants to recommend you for the Assistant Head position. He said he'd talking to you about it today."
Brandon suppressed a wry grin. Why was he surprised? Being its savior and all, Harry Potter was probably in on every official secret in the wizarding world. "Yeah, he told me. I just found out about an hour ago. I don't know. I'm leaning towards turning it down."
There was a brief silence. "Come again?"
"It's just- It's... I hate being away from her!" he blurted, feeling himself coloring again. It wasn't everyday that a bloke admitted something like that to his girlfriend's father, but he couldn't help it.
"And if you take the position, it'll mean even more time apart."
"Exactly."
They were quiet for a time before Harry spoke. "Do you want the position?"
Brandon ran a hand slowly through his hair. "Honestly? Yes, I do. It would be a dream come true and much sooner than I'd ever hoped. But I can't accept it if it'll keep me away from Emerson even more than I already am."
"It'll only be a few more months and she'll be back home permanently," Harry pointed out, his voice surprisingly gentle. "Timon said the position starts in January, three months from now." He frowned and pushed up his glasses. "I wonder... look, I'm not making any promises, but what if I could get them to postpone the start date for a few months? Would that work for you?"
Brandon gaped at him. "You would do that?"
"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, looking perplexed. "My daughter loves you and you're a good man. I've watched you grow up, and our families are close in so many ways. You have my respect, Brandon, and that is the primary reason why I feel comfortable with the fact that you're dating my daughter."
Feeling humbled and dumb, Brandon could only stammer his appreciation and profound gratitude. Harry Potter respected him, and he knew that if nothing else ever happened in his life, at least he had that one thing.
"You won't regret it, sir."
"Enough with the sir crap. Call me Harry, will you?"
Brandon laughed nervously as they stood up and shook hands. "Thank you, Harry."
"Don't go making wedding plans yet. You still need to get Hermione's permission and she's kind of pissed off at you right now."
His euphoria ebbed a notch. "Oh."
Harry grinned. "Just give her a little time to cool down, all right?"
"Okay. Thank you, Si-, um, Harry. I've taken enough of your time." He nodded once, hesitated, smiled nervously and hurried out before the other man could decide that he didn't respect him after all, and over his dead body would Emerson marry him. Only when the doors of the lift had closed before him did Brandon let out a shaky breath as he slumped against the plush, burgundy wall. And then the magnitude of what had just transpired started to dawn on him and he began to grin so hard that his jaws ached.
"I take it the meeting went well?" Alice asked when he reached the front desk.
In lieu of an answer, Brandon leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. She laughed with delight and he waved cheerily, bounded to the Apparation spot and concentrated. Upon arriving in his flat, he let out a whoop of sheer joy and pumped his fist in the air, his heart pounding inside his chest as if trying to jump out.
His whole life seemed laid out before him, just ready for the taking. He had the job of his dreams waiting for him to embrace, the trust of his superiors and the respect of the greatest man his world had seen in many generations. That was more than most people could ever hope for, but his blessings didn't quite end there. Because above all those, he had the love of the woman who held his heart. Everything else would be nothing at all if he didn't have her, but he did.
And as long as he had her, he had the whole world.
Sure, he still needed to get her mother's permission and Dr. Granger was very formidable in her own right. But he was confident that she would approve and then all that would remain would be to propose to Emerson. They'd talked about their future, and he wasn't at all scared about this step. He had never been more certain of anything in his entire life than that he wanted to spend his life with this woman.
What a long way he had come, though! Seven years spent languishing in love, pining after her, cursing himself for his cowardice, right beside her but yet, so far away. And now he had her, forever, he hoped.
All that was left to do was ask.
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TBC
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