"Under no circumstances does this mean we're getting back together."
A terse nod. "Understood."
She looked at him a long moment before whirling and stalking off. The word 'idiot' floated back to him like a balm to his soul.
SSHG
"Good evening gentlemen, ladies," Severus said, walking into the hotel room in Zürich. "We've added a member to our team. I believe all of you know Hermione Granger."
A general cry rose up around the room ad Severus, Lucius, and Albus smirked at one another. Fleur and Minerva rushed the petite witch and embraced her first before the others greeted the long-absent witch in their midst.
"Hermione, as you know, is head developer at Tempest, working directly under Lardrassin. She's been sent ahead to prepare for their presentation at the International Gaming Expo, which leaves her at our disposal -"
"- part time," Hermione chimed in. "It's not like I have a time-turner at my disposal."
Dumbledore cleared his throat delicately and suspended an hourglass on a thin gold chain before him. "About that…"
"So Miss Granger has returned to us," Minerva said as she stood on the dais in the fitting room. She rubbed an absent hand down her arm, reveling in the smooth texture of the pantsuit that was at that moment being tailored to her body. She'd never had pants before. "How're her nerves?"
Lucius shrugged. "Okay. Not so bad you can see them."
"Hmm. Because I remember her during her school days. The weeks before OWLs and NEWTs were -"
"-memorable, if Draco's reports are to be believed," Lucius responded, raiding the tea tray. They had hazelnut petit fours!
"This is lovely fabric."
"It's imported silk, Min," Lucius said around a mouthful of dessert.
"It's nice. Supple." She took a deep breath and continued fingering the lapel of her suit jacket.
Severus caught the look of trepidation on Minerva's face. "Can you give us a moment, Mr. Janek?" The tailor nodded and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
"Are you sure you're ready for this Minerva? It's not too late to back out."
Cold blue eyes shot to meet his in the mirror. "If you ever ask me that again, Severus, it will be the last thing you ever do."
Severus turned and gave Lucius a wide-eyed look. She's ready he mouthed at his friend before signalling the tailor to return.
Lucius apologized, all graciousness. "We're sorry to keep you late, Gunter. Please extend my apologies to your wife."
The tailor looked perplexed as he set to his task once again. "There is not Mrs. Janek," he muttered around the pins in his mouth. Strange people, these Brits, he thought.
As Minerva was being fitted for her suit, a nondescript Irishman of medium height was placing traffic cones around one of the pretty, patterned manhole covers in the Swiss financial district. Without any hesitation, Seamus removed a tool from his jacket pocket and popped the lid off the manhole before ducking down into the utilities tunnel as though he belonged there.
"The fuck, Snape?"
"Yeah, what the actual fuck?"
Severus turned to face Fred and George. "I'm afraid I'll need you to expand those statements in order to formulate an appropriate answer, gentlemen."
"Tell us it's not about her," George said, crossing his arms.
"What's not about her?"
Fred huffed. "Tell us it's not about her or we walk."
"It's not about her," Severus replied obediently. He paused. "It's not entirely about her."
"So this - taking the Sister Wand -" Fred started.
"- Getting in with the Ministry -" George continued.
"- Stopping the rise of a new Dark Lord -"
"- Saving the Muggles from the evil daggytowel game -"
"- Digital, George."
"- digital! Whatever! It's all about getting Granger back, innit?"
Severus regarded his former students solemnly. "No. It's about fixing our reputations with the Ministry, garnering some international trust, and saving the Muggles from the misuse of a powerful magical object applied to a beloved pastime." He paused again. "It is business, first and foremost. Do I want Hermione back? Yes. Do I expect it to happen? I do not. And I will not jeopardize this plan in an attempt to win her affections again. Clear, gentlemen?"
George nodded decisively. "Crystal, Snape."
"Good. Now don't you have someplace to be?"
"Not 'til 12:30," Fred replied.
"It's 12:15 now," George pointed out.
"No. It's 12:00."
"12:15. Get a watch that works."
The young blonde behind the front desk of the bank welcomed "Welcome to Credit Suisse. How may I help you today?"
Minerva idly shot a cuff from beneath her sleeve. "My name is Contra Riete. I am here to discuss a private business matter with Mme Perspicace."
"Is she expecting you, Madam?"
"She is not."
"Then I'm afraid I need you to make an appointment," the receptionist stated politely.
Minerva raised a single eyebrow and stared at her opponent. "I do not make appointments," she said with a sneer that would make Severus proud. "Please tell Mme. Perspicace that it pertains to Inositolic Inc. and its upcoming merger with Santé Naturel. I will wait." She managed to fix a look on her face that was simultaneously pleasant and menacing.
"I - but madam, you can't -"
"Make the call."
"So what do you want me to do?"
Lucius frowned at the Weasley before him. "You're going to follow Lardrassin. Learn to love his shadow. We need to know his routine, who follows him, and what his personal wards are if we're going to use him to get into the vault."
"All I get to do is tail him?" Bill winced a bit at the whinging tone in his voice.
"You have to fly before you can run," Lucius responded absentmindedly
"Reverse that," Albus said from the next room.
"So you're here for a loan?"
Minerva arched an eyebrow at the young man sitting next to her. She did not respond; she simply recrossed her legs and adjusted the knife-edge pleat on her leg to follow the line of her shin.
"Because let me tell you, Perspicace there drives a hard bargain. You don't want to let her hooks into you too deep. You'll never find your way out again." The young man leaned forward, eager. As if waiting for her to thank him for his unsolicited advice. How disappointing.
"I don't believe I asked for your opinion and my business is my own. Kindly mind yours," Minerva replied tersely.
She could see that a woman is talking in Perspicace's ear, relaying Minerva's demand for an audience. Larissa Perspicace - 44, Muggle, head of new client acquisition and retention, married to the head of Magical security, and the mother to two teenaged half-blood witches. A sharp tack, by all reports, and not on easy to fool.
Then again, Minerva is hardly new to the game.
"Madam Riete?" Perspicace strides forward, hand extended.
"Yes. Good of you to see me, Madam Perspicace. We have, I believe, business to discuss." Minerva shot a quick glance at the over-enthused idiot that she'd been forced to share a waiting area with for the past ten minutes. "Private business," she amended.
"Of course, if you'll just come this way, we can speak in my office."
Dean was bored. He was ticking off the minutes until break time - when his real work would start - by working through the arithmantic predictions for Muggle stocks on the New York Stock Exchange...which would open in another three hours. Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice futures looked up for the year, but it was anyone's guess how that particular stock would perform in any given year. One bad winter and whoosh, profits down the crapper. He sighed.
It wasn't long before Dean's supervisor strolled past his desk, a drab thing fixed to the wall of a Dijonaise colored cube. "Ah, Guillermo! How are you today?"
"I'm well, Dietrich. Just working on these FCOJ assessments."
"Ach. That one's a bitch, ja?"
Dean nodded morosely.
The portly older gentleman checked his pocketwatch. "You've been at it since eight. Go to the breakroom and have a coffee. Or tea. Whichever. You have an extra fifteen minutes today."
Dean was up like a shot. "Thank you, sir!"
"My pleasure, my pleasure." The man bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a Swiss Slughorn. "Off you go now."
Dean made his escape to the breakroom, dutifully made himself a cuppa, and settled in with a crossword puzzle as second-shift workers started to trickle into the room. Dean shifted his body slightly to listen in on the conversations around him, paying particular attention to two of the network maintenance crew. He would've cast a subtle eavesdropping charm, but the bank had a strict no-magic policy in the mixed areas. There were wards set up that would stymie even the simplest spells, so good-old snooping was the only way to get the job done.
What he would give to be able to use an extendable ear, though.
It was, however, Dean's lucky day. It looked as though the engineers were both horny and talkative. Two things that always seem to lead the way to indirect manipulation.
He wrote "Red Lips" and "Charise" into the squares of his crossword. They didn't fit.
Perfect.
"Well," Hermione said, "it's not the most inaccessible system I've ever seen. It's close, though. Definitely a black bag job. Do they employ in-house engineers?"
Severus nodded. "Several. And one of them's lonely."
"Lucius!" The redhead in a scrap of clothing that might have borne some resemblance to a nurse's uniform - but for the decidedly non-regulation g-string and bedazzled push-up bra - ran forward and gave the blonde man a hug. It was a toss-up whether Lucius' popsicle would mar the pristine white fabric, but he managed to chuck it aside just in time.
"Charise. How are you, love?"
"I'm doing well." She dangled a passcard in front of him. "This is what you wanted, right?"
He smirked and passed her a roll of bills. "Yep."
Unashamed, she flicked through the stack. "This is only half."
"Did you get the other thing?"
Charise - a phlebotomy student whose real name was Charlotte - pouted before producing an empty snüz tin with a few hairs in it. "Don't know why you want these anyway. Paternity test?"
"Something like that," he muttered, handing over the other half of the money. "Thank you love. Say hi to your mum for me?"
"Say hi yourself," she said with a titter. "She's on in twenty minutes."
There were really no words for the look on Lucius' face in that moment.
Hermione - polyjuiced as Mirco Schmid, junior network engineer -registered on the bank's logbooks at 9:54 PM that evening, well into the third shift, but too early to catch people on their coffee break. It was the work of a few moments to slip into the server room, pull a few wires, and locate the feeds for the internal video monitoring, the primary trunk line, and network status. A few well-placed bugs of her own design, a check on her tablet, and she was out the door.
Lucius and Severus watched as she walked down the hallways of the bank's IT sector. "Her arse looks good in those coveralls," Lucius mentioned.
"May I remind you that the arse you are so admiring belongs to Mirco Schmid, not Hermione Granger."
Lucius shrugged. "Either way." He crunched on a nacho.
"Why do you think they always paint hallways that color?"
"They say taupe is very soothing."
"They are clearly idiots."
Lucius shrugged again.
"Madam Riete, you have a request to make of Credit Suisse?"
"I do. I am supervising the merger of two pharmaceutical companies - Inositolic and Santé Naturel. We have recently had some...security issues. You have heard of us?"
"I have, though not of your misfortunes," Larissa Perspicace replied cautiously.
Minerva nodded with a satisfied air. "Good. We have worked very hard to keep it that way. Needless to say, we are looking to make some new arrangements for some of our more proprietary formulae. I understand you can help with that."
Larissa brightened immediately. A new client! She might make her monthly quota yet! "Of course, Madam Riete. We have safe deposit boxes available in our -"
"- I will stop you there. Safe deposit boxes are for aged brandy and grandmothers' pearls. I need something more than the box." She leaned forward. "What else can you offer me?"
"Well, there are the vaults, but they're not at all modern. I'm sure you would prefer -"
"Yes. The vaults. High security, I presume?"
"The highest. But they're only available to clients who have been through the most rigorous vetting -"
"-and you do not feel that I would pass this vetting process, Madam?" Minerva sneered.
"Frankly, no. It's a very special type of vetting. It requires...binding oaths."
"Hm." Minerva glanced at the camera in the ceiling and turned her body away from it slightly, sliding the tip of her wand from beneath her sleeve to show the manager. "I believe such oaths would not be a problem."
Larissa Perspicace's eyes widened. "Let me get the paperwork."
As soon as the younger woman had left the room, Minerva shifted in her chair again. Her hand dropped to her side and she quickly slid the small microphone bug that she'd palmed under the seat of her chair and affixed it to the bottom.
"Bill, what have you seen of Lardrassin?"
The eldest Weasley son appeared somewhat sleep-deprived, but otherwise hale and hearty, if somewhat distracted by the sight of Fleur Delacour going through her limbering routine on the balcony of their hotel suite. Admirably, he managed to keep his eyes mostly on Lucius and Severus while he made his report. "I'd say Lardrassin is a machine, but it would be a lie. The man is a boor. He eats like a horde of Ronalds, sleeps with anything that moves, harasses his employees, and keeps no schedule that I can follow. He has a number of weaknesses that we could exploit, but our best bet for the time that he's here is simply to send ample booze, food, and women to his room in the hopes that he never leaves. I've seen no evidence to say that this approach wouldn't work."
Lucius sent a look toward Severus and shrugged. "Inelegant, but effective."
Severus sighed. Bill had at last lost the battle with his libido and was openly staring at Fleur as she curled into a backbend.
"Take the day, Bill. I'm sure you could use some R&R after a week following Lardrassin. He arrives on the 8:00 PM flight tomorrow, yes?"
"Mmm?" Bill said, still peering through the glass door. "Um, yea. 8:00 PM."
Severus snapped in Bill's face, bringing his attention back to the two gentlemen in the room. "Then you're back on Lardrassin duty at 8:00 PM tomorrow. Now go chat the girl up before your eyes fall out, you berk."