Hello, everyone.

Sorry for the delay. My computer decided it didn't want to connect to the internet or recognize a jump drive for a while. And I went off-the-grid camping. Finally, I'm running the Hermione Smut exchange on Livejournal this year (if you're old enough to be reading this story, you should head over there and submit a prompt or two for our prompt-grab). I hate to say hopefully everything is working itself out cuz I'm inviting bad things to happen if I do. But, knock on wood.

The next few days passed quickly. Hermione and Spencer worked on a few cases together before they decided that she was ready to start working on her own. She asked to spend the morning with Garcia, learning exactly what she did and learn what types of things she could ask the tech whiz to find out, and brought along the first three cases Hotch had assigned her. They worked on the first one together, with Garcia pointing out exactly what information she could provide her and how quickly it would take to find out each bit. Penelope let Hermione take the reigns on the second one, but was quick to point out when she missed something. They were working on the third file, with Hermione bent over the papers, occasionally asking for something, but mostly scribbling notes furiously, writing out anything she found that might be significant, then going back to try to figure out if it truly was or not.

Garcia had a pause while she was waiting for a couple school records to get sent back to her, and was watching Hermione work. "You remind me a lot of Reid," she said.

"Excuse me?" Hermione said, looking up, her pen resting on her stopping place.

"You and Reid. You both go into this zone, like anything short of the fire alarm is not going to distract you from your work. It's amazing and a little creepy at the same time."

"I just work better this way," she replied, stretching. "I don't like stopping. Once I get into a case I'm afraid to stop, because you never know when you're three seconds from the 'aha' moment where you'll solve the case."

"That is all well and good, but you have to know when to turn it off. You can't be thinking about cases twenty four/seven, you'll go crazy."

"I know. But I'm on the job now, aren't I?"

"You don't have to be. We do get a lunch hour."

Hermione checked the clock. "It's half past twelve. Are you saying you're hungry?"

"I am quite often hungry, sweetie. Taming the technological beast can be exhausting in more ways than one. Would you like to join me for lunch?"

"I could take a break," she nodded. Garcia drove them both to a small cafe, where JJ was waiting at a table.

"Suddenly I seem to smell a setup," Hermione smirked as she sat down.

"Oh, yes," Garcia beamed before looking over the menu. "You are new, you are young, and you are from very far away. We need to know more about you, and since you don't seem to use any social networking site we're going to have to go right to the source."

"The source being me."

"Don't worry," JJ said reassuringly. "We just want to get to know you. She just likes to scare people."

"The worthy ones stay. Or get stolen," Penelope pointed out before they turned to order.

"So, let's start with the redhead from the other day. He was quite the character," she laughed. "Where did you meet him?"

"I met him when I was eleven, when I first went to boarding school. He and his twin brother were two years above me, and well known as the terrors of the school," Hermione answered.

"You are good friends with them, then?"

"They always thought I was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but we got along well enough. I'd count them among my best friends, at least, I count George among my best friends. Fred, his twin, was killed a few years ago," she finished, the grief written across her face, but not betraying exactly how many deaths were causing that grief.

"I'm sorry," Garcia whispered.

"His was a hard loss to deal with. There's a little less joy in the world without him. No one could doubt that Fred and George Weasley were always good for a laugh."

"You and George seemed quite close. Was there every anything between you?"

"No. We were just good friends. But I did date his younger brother for eight years. He and I broke up about a year ago."

"Eight years with no ring?" JJ looked surprised.

"He would argue that I already had a ring from my work. He told me more than once that he felt like my affair. He wanted a wife who would give him children and devote herself to being their mother. He didn't mind that I wanted to work, he minded that I wanted to work as much as I did. He was ready for a family and a quiet life. I wasn't ready for all that, and he was. So we broke it off. We're still friends, though."

"Eight years," she repeated, sounding dumbstruck. "If Will and I go eight years without a ring I'll string him up and hang him from the rafters of the jewelry store until he finds something nice."

"I thought you didn't really want to get married," Garcia looked at her in surprise.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be thinking about asking in that time frame."

"True," she smiled before turning back to Hermione. "Anyone since then? Are you seeing anyone now?"

"I'm not currently seeing anyone," Hermione shook her head. "I had two relationships since then. One was... short but magical. Less than a week, but a week I'd live a thousand times over if I could. The other was just a non-committed relationship with an old boyfriend. Nothing emotional."

"A booty call," she clarified.

"A what?"

"Sex for the purpose of sex. Friends with benefits."

"That sounds infinitely less vulgar."

"And yet 'booty call' is so very painfully accurate," she shrugged before taking a bite of her salad.

"Unfortunately, you're right. Viktor and I dated a bit in school, but that wasn't 'dating' at all recently."

"Oh, Viktor. Sounds exotic. Does Viktor have a last name?"

"He does, but I just spent all day watching you pull things up, the most random facts, like the name of the Sunday School teacher people had when they were eight. If you think that I'm going to give you his information so you could look him up, you can just keep dreaming."

JJ laughed.

"I was just going to get a picture," Garcia pouted.

"No! I don't want my little fling with Viktor all over the place. It wouldn't look good for either of us. Every little thing I do gets up under a microscope, and he's an international qu... er, sports star. I don't feel like winding up in some supermarket magazine."

"This is getting better by the minute," Garcia smiled. "International sports star, you say?"

"And that is all I'm going to say," she said firmly.

"How many Viktors can be in professional sports in England?" she smirked.

"I can all but guarantee you'll never find him. You don't know what sport he plays, or what country he's from. I never said he played anything for England."

"Just a couple of minor setbacks," she said confidently.

"What about the other one?" JJ cut in. "You seemed very enamored with him."

"I was. And I made a stupid mistake with him," Hermione replied, pushing her food around with her fork.

"Are you trying to rectify your mistake?"

There was a long pause before Hermione whispered, "It's complicated."

"Complicated how?"

"Just complicated."

JJ and Garcia stared at her, but Hermione continued to play with her food.

"How are you liking the BAU?" JJ asked.

"I like it. Everyone seems nice."

"That's such a political answer," Garcia scoffed. "We're not going to go repeat anything you tell us. Hell, I'd be willing to bet that we've said half of them ourselves."

"OK," Hermione chuckled. "Hotch could pull the stick out of his arse a little bit."

"There we go," she laughed. "And trust me when I say that is one we've repeated a couple dozen times. Continue."

"He sees some parallels between us. We were both young when we took our first jobs, both right out of school, and have sort of married ourselves to our work. He read the background information I provided so I could train here, and because of that he knows we have both sacrificed relationships to stay where we are, and he's somewhat concerned for me. I think he sees a lot of himself in me, and isn't sure if he wants to push me so I can be effective like him, or try to teach me to reign it in.

"Rossi thinks I'm too green for a supervising job like this. He doesn't trust that my work experience has anywhere near prepared me for the things I might see while with your team. He also thinks I'm too young to be running anything, and is being cold to me to prepare me for the harsh reality that there will probably be someone like him on my team- an older man unwilling to take direction from a young woman. I'm going to have to work hard to prove myself to him."

"Spoken like a true profiler," Garcia noted.

"Morgan is nice to me, but nice does not equal trust. If I manage to earn that trust he'll start treating me more like a friend than a co-worker, like I'm part of the group. He flirts with me, but he wouldn't want to cross that line because I have no potential for any kind of meaningful relationship, and it would be very awkward if we just hooked up and tried to work next to each other for the next few months."

"And Reid?" Garcia asked, leaning forward slightly, as if this were the question she had been begging to ask for a while.

Hermione bit her lip and took a sudden interest in her hands. "Spencer is... very nice."

"Very nice how?"

"Just... very nice."

"You profiled the rest of the group, but you won't profile Reid. Why would that be?"

She checked her watch quickly. "Our hour is almost up," she said quickly, standing and pulling out her wallet.

"You can play hooky a little while longer."

"No, I'm supposed to meet with Hotch," she tossed some money on the table. "If you're coming, we should go. But if not, I'll meet you there."

"I'll catch up with you later."

"Okay. Nice to see you again, JJ."

"I'll see you around," JJ smiled as Hermione hurried off. "She's got it bad, doesn't she?" she asked Garcia as soon as Hermione was out the door.

"He's got it worse," Garcia nodded. "You should have seen the two of them at it the last couple days. There's mad energy flowing between them. It's like the end of a chick flick- you watch them for a while and just want to scream at them to kiss already."

"And from the sound of it, you've got a plan brewing."

"Not yet, but I will soon enough," she smirked, pulling out her cell phone. She pressed a button, put her phone to her ear, and waited for a second. "Hello, my delicious bit of chocolate," she smiled after Morgan picked up. "It is exactly like we talked about. We need to find a way to get the prince and princess of gray matter together."

XXXXXXXXX

"Granger!" Hotch called as she walked past his office the next day.

"Yes, sir?" she asked, walking in as he hung up his phone.

"I just got off the phone with the office in Atlanta. A teenaged girl has gone missing from a small town in southern Georgia, it's their third disappearance in a month. They're requesting our immediate assistance."

"Okay," she nodded, feeling a surge of adrenaline coarse through her body.

"Is your go bag ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Get it. Wheels up in half an hour."

"I'll be ready in five minutes," she nodded, hurrying out of the room. She hurried out to the bullpen, where her bag was waiting for her under her desk. Spencer had his bag out on his chair, and was shoving a few files into his attaché case.

"Are you excited about your first case with us?" he asked as she started to shut her computer down.

"Excited, and a little nervous. I'm afraid of getting there and drawing a blank or forgetting something crucial or something."

"We all were a little nervous on our first case. You'll catch on quickly," he said, closing his bag as she grabbed her bag from underneath the table. As they were walking towards the elevator Garcia came running up, a bag that would easily fit both Hermione's and Spencer's in it clutched in her hand.

"What are you doing, Garcia?" Spencer asked.

"I'm coming with," she replied matter-of-factly.

"I didn't think you normally went with," Hermione pointed out.

"Normally I don't, but I want to show support for our newest team member," she smiled. "Besides, there's only one hotel in the town, and due to a wedding there were only three rooms available. You're going to have to double up, and poor Hermione shouldn't have the luxury of getting a room all to herself."

"You are so thoughtful," Hermione chuckled as they boarded the elevator. A short ride away and they were at the airfield, getting on the plane, waiting for Hotch to work things out with the pilot so they could get on their way. Garcia and Morgan sat on one side of the table as Hermione and Spencer sat on the other. Morgan produced a pack of cards and started dealing.

"So, Detective Granger," Garcia started in a fake British accent after they played for a while. "What do you do for fun back in London?"

"If I'm by myself I read," she said casually. "I've got a giant backlog of books. My friends keep buying me some for my birthday and Christmas, and since I don't have much free time I haven't made it through them all. If I'm with my friends we usually play games. They like playing me in chess, because it's the only game I'm complete rubbish at."

"You're not good at chess?" she asked, looking surprised.

"I just have a problem with..." she bit her lip for a second, because her fundamental problem with wizard's chess was that the players beat each other up and she was hesitant to cause even toy pieces to fight, but she went with, "thinking far enough ahead. I don't have a problem with it in real life, but when it comes to chess, I'm just not that good. And I don't play often."

"Do you listen to music?"

"I do, but mostly just local bands. And the classics, of course."

"Like who? Like Hendrix era classics?" Garcia asked.

"Not quite. Bach, Chopin, Beethoven... They help me calm down at the end of a long day. Though, at the risk of sounding stereotypical, I do love the Beatles. My parents were fans, and so I am."

"What kind of cases did you work?"

She paused, searching for the right words. "I worked a little bit of everything," she replied.

"Come on, you have to have some kind of exciting story," Morgan prompted.

"Exciting is not quite the word I would use for it," she replied, hand rubbing the sleeve over her left forearm. She was saved from further explanation by Hotch announcing it was time to talk about the case. Each of them were given their assignments for what they needed to do as soon as they hit the ground. Hermione was going with Rossi and Hotch to the police station, Spencer and Morgan were going to the house of the girl who had gone missing most recently, and Garcia had already commandeered a room at the city hall attached to the police station, the only place that had room for her computer setup.

"Granger, a word," Hotch called, motioning for Hermione to come sit with him and Rossi.

"Guess I'm out," Hermione said, placing her cards on the table and moving to the seat Hotchner had indicated. "Yes, Hotch?"

"I wanted to make clear my expectations for your first assignment with us," he said, looking serious. "I know it's a new situation for you, and you may not feel comfortable with how we do things just yet, but I do expect you to contribute where you can. I know it'll be difficult, because I expect you to not only work the case but also observe the team dynamic, and each of those would keep you busy enough in its own right, but until you understand the way our team functions I expect you to do both. In time I will expect you to take the lead on some of our cases, and when that happens you and I will work alongside each other closely so I can give you pointers or notes. By the end of your time here I expect you to be able to lead on a case with no assistance."

"I appreciate it," she nodded.

"Anything you need, you can talk to David or myself."

"Thank you," she nodded again as the plane started to sharply descend. Within minutes they were touching down, and were met at the small airport by two Chevy Tahoes. Hermione got into the Tahoe that was heading towards the police station, Spencer and Morgan got into a second one with a local agent who knew the case and where he was going. As soon as they got to the station Hermione helped Garcia carry in her equipment before running after Hotch and Rossi, who were starting a conference with the police chief.

"Chief Wilson, this is Agent Granger," Hotch offered as a quick introduction.

The middle-aged officer looked up at Hermione and smiled widely. "May I take your jacket, ma'am? Our air conditioning has been acting up lately, and I know it's warm in here."

"No," Hermione replied quickly, earning her a suspicious look from Rossi. She recovered quickly with a polite, "Sorry. I'm cold blooded, so it's fine in here."

"Just let me know if you change your mind. Amari Jackson," the Chief changed gears, placing a picture of a pretty, dark-skinned teenaged girl in a cheerleading outfit on the table. "Just turned eighteen last week. A month and a half away from graduating. She disappeared from her home sometime between 4, when she normally got home from school, and six-thirty, when her parents got back from their bakery the next town over. Witnesses reported seeing her get out of her boyfriend's truck, he drove her home every day, and going into her house, but no one coming or going after that. Problem is, the property backs into a wooded area, and unless the neighbors are looking over the fence in the back no one would notice someone coming in back that way."

"Does the fence surround the property?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, but there is a gate in the back that's been broken for a while. No one goes around back there, so her family didn't think much of it."

"Any prints?"

"Only those of the family. It's pretty rough wood, so it's tough to get any kind of print off it. Only ones we got were off the latch."

"How far through the woods to any kind of road?"

"Two hundred yards."

"Was there any signs of a struggle?" Rossi asked.

"Not that we noticed. Some of her things were missing, so we're hoping that means she's still alive. But we didn't see any drag marks or anything through the woods."

"Any footprints?"

"The season's been kind of dry. The ground is still pretty hard, so footprints would be difficult to make, especially for someone who weighs a hundred and twenty pounds."

"Did you mention there were other girls?" Hermione asked.

"That's why we called you down here. Two other girls, Amelia Everett and Sarah Wright went missing about two months ago," he laid two pictures of young caucasian girls on the table. "To be honest they disappeared on the same day, and had been talking about heading to Atlanta or New York or somewhere to try to make it in the music industry when they were done with school. We just assumed that they jumped the gun a bit and left, and we didn't investigate it as thoroughly as we possibly could have."

"That is quite the change in victimology," Rossi noted. "Two girls, both white, on one day to one black girl?"

"It doesn't seem to make sense," Hotch nodded.

"We only have one high school in town, and there's not that many kids in it," the Chief informed them. "Three girls missing from the senior class in one month isn't going to go unnoticed. And now I have both sides of town demanding answers."

"Both sides of town?" Hermione asked, sounding confused.

"De-segregation may be the law in this country, Miss Granger, and the state can force 'em to go to the same school as such, but that's about as far as these folks have been willing to go."

"He means there's still a black section of town and a white section of town," Rossi added.

"Everyone goes to the same stores, since there isn't that much choice in a place like this, but churches, bars, and neighborhoods are separate by choice. There's some mixing, but not as much as the more politically correct of us would like."

"So what you're saying is that is highly unlikely that the first two girls would be hanging out with the latest one?" she asked.

"They may see each other at school, perhaps at one of the diners in town, but other than that probably not."

"Have you talked to anyone at the school about it?"

"Yes, and the best we can get is that there was no interaction between them, other than Amari and Amelia were both cheerleaders and had a couple classes together."

"Is there a possibility that the two cases are completely unrelated?"

"There's always a possibility," Hotch nodded, "But until we have proof we're going to have to play it like they're related. What do you think we should do, Granger?"

"I think we should talk to the friends, boyfriends, and families of all three girls," Hermione started, confident in what she was saying, but trying to portray that it was her first time thinking of running things. "See what they say about the situations, anything they may have seen or heard, about their relationships, try to see what make them disappear like that. I also think we should get Garcia looking for everything they're not telling us, or what they may be hiding or lying about. We should also look for anyone else around town who might not have been seen as much as usual. If someone disappeared with the girls, and it's someone from the town, there is probably something that someone has seen that they might not be connecting to the case."

"Good," Hotch nodded, one corner of his mouth upturning slightly. "Go talk to Garcia. We'll make some phone calls."

"Thank you, sir," she replied with a genuine grin before she turned and hurried towards Penelope's new corner.