"12 oz. Black. No cream or sugar, right?"

Tom hummed, giving her another five. "I suppose it's not a very hard order to remember," he said with a smile.

She laughed. "You should see the long list of customizations that my other regulars spout off."

"They tip?"

"Hardly."

He grimaced. "That's terrible."

It was indeed, but tips were a courtesy, not a requirement so Hermione could hardly complain.

There was a pleasant pause as she poured the coffee. "Tom?"

"Yes?"

She felt flustered as she tried to remember the speech she'd rehearsed earlier that day. "I just wanted to say thank you," she finally mumbled out, handing the cup to him. She busied herself with wiping the counter as she continued, "For that day. At Hannah's funeral."

He gave a gracious smile. "You hardly need to thank me. You were clearly distressed. It was no problem, really."

It had been two weeks since then and Hermione noted that he came in every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night since then for his 12 oz. black, no-cream-or-sugar coffee. "Do you work the graveyard shift somewhere? I've noticed you come in quite late on the weekends for coffee and you never request decaf."

Tom chuckled amusedly and there was something about it – something in his eyes – as if there was a secret that only he knew, a joke whose punchline that only he was privy to. "Not a job, rather, a hobby."

Hermione perked up at this. "A hobby? What kind of hobby?"

He hummed. "A time-consuming one. I suppose you could call it a project. I take an individual sample from a pool of potentials and try to determine causation between two variables from which I inference a correlation based off of numerous personal observations."

She cocked her head at this. "So, you conduct experiments."

Tom grinned pleasantly. "I never thought of it like that."

She laughed. "I'm surprised you didn't. You are a researcher, aren't you?"

"A research assistant," he corrected.

"To-ma-to, to-mah-to," she waved him off. "You don't strike me as the type to be anybody's assistant. If anything..." she trailed off, not noticing the keen look he was giving her.

"Granger!" She never got to finish her sentence. Startled out of her thoughts, she turned back to see her boss, poking out of the backroom. There was a phone in his hand and a disgruntled expression on his face. "Phone call for you. It's from a Ron."

She frowned, not sure what it could be about. He knew she was at work and he'd never call here unless it was important. "Excuse me," she said absently and Tom nodded, turning to leave.

Hermione could feel her anxiety pool in her legs as she held her hand out for the phone. "Hello?"

There was a sob – a broken one that she'd never heard from him before. "'Mione, it's Ginny."

She felt a chill in her bones.

"She didn't come home last night or the night before. Please, please, tell me you've seen her."

The desperation in his voice nearly made her heart stop because no, she hadn't seen her. She hadn't seen her for two days.