Disclaimer: Despite all begging and pleading and bribing on my part ("Do you like cookies? I make some mean chocolate chip cookies . . ."), I have not been able to procure the copyrights to the Harry Potter franchise. Curses. Foiled again.
Author's Note: I tried to get this put by Valentine's Day, honest. But the stars just wouldn't align and Jupiter and Mars got all wonky when Venus decided to run off with Pluto, who's miffed about not really being a planet . . . and, well, you get the picture.
Second Author's Note: Okay, partly what made this take so long was the decision that I made to make this have a plot. Obviously some kinks had to be ironed out, etc. Forgive me?
Third Author's Note: Please don't kill me! *cowers in a dank corner, alongside the splinched half of Terence Haverford* Right. You'll get that once you read the chapter. If you read the chapter, after all the horrendous abuse I put you all through by not updating.
FORGIVE ME!!
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Denial
Chapter Two: The Mysterious Lives of the Non-Mysterious
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Tuesday, September 2nd
It's at times like these when I wish that Marishka Grumbdell would simply keel over dead in her cubicle and save me the trouble of having to arrange the perfect murder. I mean, really, one must wonder about where that woman gets off.
Do you know what was on the cover of The Daily Prophet this morning? Unfortunately, up until five minutes ago, neither did I. This means that when I walked into the lobby of the Ministry, juggling all of the Haverford files and one of those ridiculously flimsy cups of take-away coffee, I didn't know why the gaggle of schoolgirls on a tour had snarky looks on their faces when I stumbled past them. When Melinda shot me a sultry grin and a lascivious wink as she dropped my morning cranes on top of the pile in my arms, I thought it meant she'd finally gotten to that fellow of hers up in the Magical Games and Sports division.
But no. Melinda had not gotten laid last night; those silly schoolgirls in the lobby were not just snarkily glaring at random passerby. This I soon learned when Weatherby sauntered over to my desk and said in his usual bitter little voice, "How nice of you to show up, Miss Granger, what with all of this drama in your life."
Normally, I am far better constrained around Aldrich Weatherby than I was this morning. However annoying and infuriating he is, the man has a fair hand with Arithmancy. Normally, you see, I respond to his snake-like voice and snidely spoken comments with a disdainful look and artfully raised eyebrow. However, due to the scarring experience of walking in on my best friend playing tonsil quidditch on my mattress with a woman whose vileness could be equated to that of a badly written romance novel, I found myself unable to respond in a restrained fashion.
"Get stuffed, Weatherby," I growled.
Then, in a truly annoyed fashion, I slammed my purse, insubstantial coffee cup, two feet worth of parchment and half a dozen cranes onto my desk, before giving him what Harry and Ron have dubbed, after a particularly mind-numbing drunken escapade, the Glare to Signify the End of the World. As can be expected, Weatherby took three quick steps backward, and as his reply shoved a crumpled copy of the Prophet in my general direction.
I snatched it out of air as he hastily retreated and smoothed out the front page . . . only to see a picture of myself and Harry outside of the Muggle ice cream parlor around the corner from our apartment. Harry had a towering cone of chocolate in his left hand that was tipping at a dangerous angle because he was laughing hard enough to be almost doubled over. I was joining in his hysterics as I attempted to wipe a smudge of chocolate ice cream off of his nose.
Underneath was a second picture of Luna and Ron in the sushi restaurant where Ron had proposed. Picture-Luna's eyes were glittering with tears as picture-Ron, no doubt for the sixtieth time this morning, slid a silver ring with a large oblong opal onto her left ring finger.
The huge headline, which occasionally turned pink and spitted spurts of tiny red hearts into the margin, read: RONALD WEASLEY ENGAGED TO QUIBBLER EDITOR LUNA LOVEGOOD: Hermione Granger, Heartbroken, Seeks Solace in Arms of Harry Potter.
I have to admit that this wasn't the first time that rag has attempted to link Ron, Harry and I into some sordid love triangle - sometimes for kicks they add in Luna or the Gin-inator - but this was the first time it was on the front page. Usually they stuffed it in some dank corner far back enough that I could happily ignore it.
But no - this was scrawled out in huge letters directly underneath the Prophet letterhead, which, as I stared in horror, was drowned in a flood of little red hearts. The article took up the entire bloody page.
At that moment, I truly regretted getting my parents a Daily Prophet subscription. My father was waking up right now, taking his morning cup of Earl Grey from my mother, sitting down at the cheery breakfast nook in the kitchen . . . and seeing a front-page article speculating on the sex life of his daughter.
Poor Mum. She's been after me for years to settle down with "some nice boy" and get her grandchildren. I've told her and Dad for years to never trust anything written in the Prophet, especially about me and Harry, but I doubt she's going to heed this advice when she sees this bloody article.
Harry! Damn! If I don't intercept the Prophet on its way to his office, I won't have to worry about Marishka Grumbdell keeling over dead because a certain high-profile Auror is going to do the honors for her. I better get up to the Auror department . . . Weatherby better not get in my way, or else someone's going to be growing incisors out of their ears.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
11:47 a.m.
Yes, well, it's all good and well that Ron finds this all so amusing, but some of us have sociopathic coworkers who would like nothing more than to make our lives miserable. Some of us have parents who actually take the Prophet at face value. Some of us can't wander around laughing about this sort of thing. Some of us have to latch our friends to their desk chairs with their tie to keep them from murdering a prominent Daily Prophet reporter.
So while Ron may laugh, I just spent an hour talking Harry out of a one-way ticket to Azkaban. "Oh Harry, Grumbdell's just a hairy old hag" is what he said when he finally wanders in. And then laughed. "Hermione," he continued, "untie Harry before he implodes."
Being momentarily stunned that he properly used the word `implode', I found myself unable to comply. "Hermione," sighed Harry finally, wiggling his fingers in my general direction, "I'm the second ranking Auror in the entire Ministry. I could get out of this with one eye and no wand. Please untie me."
Somewhat suspiciously, I did so, and when Harry ruefully rubbed his wrists, I felt the teensiest bit of guilt. Then, upon remembering what he would have done had I not tied him down, I squashed all guilt beneath the heel of my eminently sensible thick-soled shoes.
I have no doubt of Harry's wand prowess - after all, we've worked on a few cases together, not that he'd remember, due to the Ministry-standard Obliviate that follows all cases when Mysteries work with Aurors - so I didn't point out the obvious, which was ask why he didn't untie himself if he could do it with one eye and no wand.
"Honestly, the two of you should realize that this is a conclusion the entire Wizarding world has already come to," pointed out Ron lazily from the doorway as Harry undid his tie and attempted to retie it around his neck.
"What?" I asked, my voice veering onto shrill. From my position hunched over the side of Harry's desk, I whipped around to look at him.
"You and Harry live together," pointed out Ron. "Everyone at the Ministry knows that the three of us shared a flat, and everyone also knows that Luna and I are getting married. You don't need to be an Auror to work out that you two are going to be together alone. And seeing as how Ginny was seen pretty cozy with that Gunerth fellow at some posh place on numerous occasions, and Viktor Krum's snogging his male teammate, that leaves the two of you desolate, seeking solace in each other, right?"
"Günter," I corrected absently, reaching across a messy mountain of paperwork - honestly, Harry has a secretary, he might as well use her - to assist Harry with his tie. I hated realizing this, but Ron actually had a point. Was the entire Wizarding world really thinking this? It did make a great deal of sense, if one considered it logically . . .
"Hmm?" asked Ron and Harry at the same time, the later giving me a grateful smile as I pulled the deep blue silk - my recent Christmas gift - out of his clumsy fingers.
"Günter," I repeated. "Ginny's model. His name in Günter, not Gunerth." Now that I thought about it, Lavender Brown had made the strangest comment the other day at the Order reunion, something about if I'd considered a baker for the wedding, seeing as how her cousin Brooke had a magic touch with pastry. At the time, I'd thought she meant Ron and Luna, but I should've known better, especially where Lavender is concerned.
"Riight," replied Ron skeptically, leaning his lanky form against the doorframe. His grasp of foreign affairs (and pronunciation) is as abysmal as it was when we were in school, despite the fact that I heard him distinctly converse with Harry once, pre-Luna, on the merits of women of certain cultures. They were far more enthusiastic in said conversation than they would have been had they known that I was still in the house.
The corner of Harry's lips twitched as I finished his knot, and he said, "Thanks for the insight into the mindset of the Wizarding world, Ron. Because Hermione and I wanted to know that everyone thinks we're shagging." He rolled his eyes.
"You look like a teenage girl when you do that," pointed out Ron, and when Harry attempted to stop swallowing his tongue, Ron turned to me and said, brightly, "Luna wanted me to send you a crane about stopping by tonight to help her start with wedding plans, but I might as well tell you now."
And then he was gone, in the usual Ron fashion, and Harry grimaced. "Sorry about going off like that," he said apologetically, pushing the knot up to his throat. "Sometimes it really gets me what they put in the Prophet headlines."
Headlines? "Harry," I asked slowly, "did you actually read the article?" I'd assumed he had, by the shagging comment, but he could've just inferred that from Ron's wordy explanation.
"No, why?"
And if he was that incensed over the headline, then the innuendoes about former threesomes were going to assure Grumbdell's future dismemberment and hairy death.
"No reason," I said as cheerily as I could, surreptitiously sliding his copy of the Prophet off his desk. "Just don't. It's complete trash."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2:31 p.m.
I told myself that I was going to put away this ridiculously juvenile little red journal, and take out the Haverford file - honestly, you have to wonder about men like Terrance Haverford, who splinch themselves across dimensions; how much free time does one need on ones hands to travel ones' left side into the Regency era - and get to work on the Arithmancy equations that Weatherby was supposed to have on my desk two hours ago, but I've discovered something a little strange.
Haverford's equations work out perfectly. I've checked and double checked and triple checked, and even gone so far as to have the odious Weatherby go over them for me. There is no explicable reason why he should have splinched himself, other than that his magic was a tad dotty.
But in the past few weeks I've been going over his personal history and all of his written records, and frankly the man is something of a magical genius - it took me a little less than a month of nonstop research and experimentation to even access his files, they were so heavily warded. It is highly improbable that his magic is suspect. I'd even say it was impossible, but I've been working in the Department of Mysteries too long to make such wide-sweeping declarations.
Still, it's absolutely peculiar that a man known throughout the intellectual world for impeccable equations and faultless magical theory would bungle up the project that he's been working on for decades with a smidge of spotty charm-casting. Haverford's in his fifties, his magical prime, with no recorded health defects, and I'm having a hard time explaining his mistake.
Because, as far as I can tell, he didn't even make a mistake.
Even Melinda pointed out over sandwiches from the cafeteria - I had to skip lunch with Harry, due to the multiple checking of Arithmancy equations - that the whole situation is a bit off. And while I'm not exactly going to go about trusting staff that's just out of Hogwarts and reads Witch Weekly with enthusiasm normally reserved for the birth of new family members or a first edition Sir Walter Scott, Melinda is an extraordinary witch; else she wouldn't be working for me.
I'd go and ask Harry's opinion, if it weren't for the Secrecy Oath that I had to take up accepting a position with the Department of Mysteries. I'd like to keep the Obliviating of my friends down to bare minimum.
Of course, now that I've written all of this down, I suppose I'll have to go through the trouble of bespelling this journal, won't I? At least it'll give me something to do, other than stare in frustration at the mounds of scribbled files on my desk. I desperately need someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who understands my thought process, and however bright Melinda is, she simply won't do.
I suppose I'll bespell this, go over these equations one final time, and then go owl Grey. Of all the times for his wife to be having triplets, it had to be now, hadn't it?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
8:21 p.m.
I deserve to be shot. Honestly, how could I have been so stupid? Of course Haverford would have monthly rotating wards - he had enough material that it would take at least three to read all of it, and another to put it all together. I should've known that three weeks was too little time to disable the wards of someone as intelligent as Haverford.
After owling Grey - a useless enterprise, seeing as how he has yet to reply - I decided to do a bit more reading about the history of Haverford's research, and found that the pages and pages of his writing were about as legible to me as Gnomish, meaning I could pick up a phrase or two, but not really the entire idea.
Damn. Damn. I should've taken precautions when I finished disabling them. I am so absentminded I could bash myself over the head with Melinda's solid marble bust of Mageret the Bulbous-Nosed. Argh. Grey honestly couldn't care less - Haverford may have splinched himself into the Regency era, but apparently his left half is stuck in the dank corner of some abandoned monastery where no one's ventured for centuries for fear of ghosts, or some other superstitious nonsense, and thus utterly safe - but I hate to face Weatherby and see his smarmy grin.
It doesn't matter that I'm well aware that Weatherby couldn't disable Haverford's wards with both hands and a Remembrance - I'm just completely annoyed with myself.
To make things worse, when I went out to get some take-out supper at the market on Birchwood Street, I must have hit some sort of geriatric rush hour, because every woman over the age of a hundred and thirty was there shopping.
I got stuck in line behind two of them that were particularly slow. The one directly in front of me turned as the first shuffled off with her groceries to say to me in what I suppose she considered to be a conspiratorial whisper, but was really terribly loud, "My, you are certainly a lucky young lady."
I was mentally calculating if I had enough cash on me to pay for the sandwich and lukewarm coffee, and for a moment wasn't sure what she was talking about. "I'm sorry?" I asked politely, leaning forward.
"That man of yours is quite handsome," she declared, and gave me a crusty wink as she pushed her small basket towards the bored cashier whose entire forearm rattled with bracelets as she reached for a box of cornstarch. I wondered for a moment if she was mistaking me for someone else, when she gestured to the rack of Daily Prophets across from us. "You'll have absolutely beautiful children, you know. All that lovely hair of yours with his complexion."
I could feel my cheeks flush with blood as the cashier ceased snapping her gum and shot me a look of interest. The three old women who had piled up behind me leaned around to see where she was gesturing. Their eyes landed on the Prophet and lit up. "Oh no," I corrected her quickly, willing the flush to leave my cheeks. "Harry and I aren't dating. That's a load of rubbish."
She frowned, returning her gaze to the picture for a moment. It was just my luck that picture-Harry chose that moment to attack picture-Hermione with his chocolate ice cream cone, and the two tumbled off into the corner of the picture, still laughing hysterically. The cashier and women behind me gazed on in rapt enjoyment as she continued, "Well, the two of you certainly seem a bit more than friends." She looked significantly at the picture. ". . . and I do insist that your children will be lovely."
There was a chorus of agreement from the three other patrons as she held out a few coins to the cashier. I distinctly heard one mutter knowledgably to another, "In my day, we didn't call a kneazle a jobberknoll, you know," as the woman before me gathered up her small bag of groceries and hobbled out of the store.
I handed the cashier my Galleons as quickly as possible, eyes averted to over her right shoulder, as she looked me over with obvious interest. "You know," she said in a raspy voice as she thoughtfully handed me back a few Sickles, "the woman does have a point. I mean, you an' Harry Potter an' all. That Ginny Weasley seems a lit'le like a bitch, don't she?"
My eyes snapped to meet hers, encrusted in heavy black eyeliner and bejeweled fake eyelashes, and I smiled at her companionably as I gathered up my sandwich. As confused as she may have been about Harry and my relationship, she saw through the clever disguise of the Gin-inator, and that deserved a little recognition.
Goodness, why is my clock ticking at me angrily like that? It's only 8:30 . . . oh no! Damn! Dinner with Ron and Luna! Oh, this ridiculous Haverford file is driving me positively bonkers. No doubt Ron will be alight with delight that Hermione Granger is late for once in her life.
Hmph.
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