I had penned a very lengthy letter to Kingsley after breakfast, but the reply Pig turned up with on Sunday just as I was getting ready to leave contained only four words: When can you start? -K

So back in New York on Monday morning, I walked into Alice's office clutching the resignation letter I had written and offered her my two weeks' notice. To my utter astonishment, she reached into a drawer of her desk and pulled out a small Union Jack on a plastic stand and set it down between us. "It's an HR rep's nightmare for me to ask you about your personal life, but frankly, Hermione, I've been waiting for this moment since Thanksgiving." She smiled kindly at me. "I never expected to keep you forever. Any qualms about me promoting Anna to the head of the committee?"

I shook my head. "None at all."

"Good." She handed me the souvenir flag. "Go home."

I hadn't made it up to the Auror offices yet to tell Harry the news, but he beat me to it, appearing in my office just before lunchtime. "You'd think you might have let your best mate know you were leaving before he has to hear it through water cooler chatter," he teased as he flopped into the chair opposite my desk.

I set aside my files and smirked at him. "Word travels that fast, does it?"

"Bloke on my team is dating your newly-promoted assistant, so it wasn't much of a leap," Harry admitted. "You must have had a hell of a weekend over there." He was right, and he only knew the half of it. Ginny had threatened bat-bogey hexes on all of us if we breathed a word to Harry about her injury (though I was still the only one who knew the truth of it), and British Quidditch news wasn't likely to cross the pond before she got around to telling him.

"You were right, Harry, about it being the right time for everything. Ron and I have decided to move in together."

He was wearing a smug look as he mused, "Remember back in the fall, when you said that you and I officially becoming Weasleys and living happily ever after was a load of rubbish?"

I rolled my eyes but grinned at him. "Get out of my office, Harry."

He circled my desk to kiss my cheek. "Let me know if you want help packing."

It hadn't been foresight at the time, but I was now extremely grateful for the decision I had made when I'd first moved to New York to rent a furnished apartment, so all I had to pack now were my belongings. I had already contacted the realtor to make arrangements for the flat; there were witches and wizards who specialized in Muggle real estate, and I suspected that there were confundus charms involved, given that my lease agreement stipulated much more than a two weeks' notice to vacate, but I had never asked.

Anna seamlessly took over things at work so that by the time my last day rolled around, there was nothing left for me to do but enjoy the cake they had brought in for my going-away party. I had sent the last box of my shrunken things, along with a very disgruntled Crookshanks, with the morning's post back to Britain, and the few things remaining in my office would fit in my bag to go with me on the portkey that afternoon.

I was self-aware enough to know that the decision to move back home was somewhat impulsive—my relationship with Ron, after all, had gone from zero to one hundred in a matter of eight weeks, though Ginny, and probably Harry too, would argue that it had been much longer—but everything had gone so smoothly that it left me no lingering doubts that my decision was the right one. And eight short but amazing weeks with Ron had left me with no doubts about him, either.

"You know, just because I knew this was coming doesn't mean I'm not going to miss you," Anna said as she levitated her things into what was now her office. I had everything tucked into my bag, and Anna was the last goodbye I had to make before I headed down to the portkey terminal.

"You'll have to come over to London sometime," I said, returning the hug she gave me. "It's only a portkey away."

"Ditto." She sniffled once as she pulled away. "Don't be a stranger."

Harry met me in the portkey terminal to say a quick goodbye; he was working late tonight and following tomorrow, since as it happened, my move now coincided with the weekend he was proposing to Ginny. I could only hope that he got around to whatever he had planned for her before she got up her nerve to tell him about the baby. Molly, in typical fashion, had planned a gathering at the Burrow to welcome me home for the following evening, and although Harry still wouldn't say exactly what his plans were, I knew it wasn't happening until Sunday. But if Ginny was still as much a basket case about it as when she had first told me, hopefully the twenty-four hour cushion would be enough for her to get the proper proposal she was hoping for.

It was, of course, five hours later in London, so the portkey terminal at the Ministry was almost deserted when I arrived, and I saw Ron immediately. He was on this side of security (the perks of Auror clearance, I supposed), and his whole face lit up before he pulled me into a tight hug. "Welcome home, Hermione," he whispered, and I could hear the emotion heavy in his voice. He pulled back to look at me. "Alright?"

I leaned up to kiss him. "Never better," I promised. "Ready to go?"

He slid his hand into mine. "Quick pit stop first." We rode the lift down to level two, stopping just short of the double doors that led to the Auror offices. "Thought you might want to have a look at your new office." The shiny plaque outside the door read Hermione Granger: Deputy Head of Legislation. It fit with what Kingsley and I had corresponded about over the past two weeks, but seeing the official title after my name...Deputy Head put me on the same level as Head Auror, only a couple of ranks below the Minister himself.

I ran my fingers over the lettering. "It sounds so...important."

Ron laughed. "Merlin, Hermione. A few years overseas is all it takes to forget that you helped save all of Wizarding Britain?" he teased before bending to kiss my cheek. "You are important, love. C'mon." He pushed the door open for me and followed me inside.

It was quite a large office, with quite a large desk, and one wall entirely lined with empty bookcases just begging to be filled. There was a picture frame already sitting on the desk, so I walked over and picked it up. I didn't recall ever having seen the picture before, but it was Ron and I in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, around age fifteen from the looks of it, having quite a laugh over something and being completely unawares of anyone in the room but each other. "I don't remember this picture."

"I didn't either. Mum was going through some things last weekend and found it. Reckon Ginny took it, that summer. Thought it would make a decent placeholder until you got your things unpacked."

I set the frame down and reached for Ron, pulling him to me as I leaned against my desk. "No placeholder. It stays."

He shrugged. "Okay." He leaned down to kiss me, and I tangled a hand in his hair, deepening it. "I don't think your office is the right place for what I had in mind for your first night back," he muttered against my lips with a smile.

"I'm not officially on the job 'til Monday. Though I suppose you're right. And what is the right place for what you had planned, your bedroom?" I asked cheekily.

He shook his head, his nose brushing mine. "Our room," he corrected, and my heart swelled at the sound of it. I took his hand and laced our fingers together.

"Let's go home."

I was still awake around midnight, so I crawled out of bed intending on a cup of tea, but found myself walking the house instead. Despite not thinking that Ron moving into my Manhattan flat would have made any sense, Ron's house was much larger and cozier, and a better fit for the two of us, at least for the foreseeable future.

He had been bringing home and enlarging all the boxes I had sent via the international post, and they were everywhere. It hadn't seemed like that much a box or two at a time. I passed the living room where Crookshanks was curled up asleep on the couch, already settled in to our new place, and the guest room, ending up in the third bedroom that Ron used as an office. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the boxes were in this room, all of the ones containing my books. There was a tall bookshelf over by Ron's desk, though it was mostly empty, and curiously, next to it, was a faintly glowing outline on the floor that looked to be the footprint of an identical bookcase. There were similar marks around the room in varying shapes and sizes. I made a note to ask Ron about it and tore into one of the boxes.

Ron's sleepy voice interrupted me from the doorway a little while later. "What're you doing?" he asked around a wide yawn.

"Just unpacking. I'm not on London time yet. You can go back to sleep."

"You'll get acclimated faster if you come to bed, y'know." He yawned again and leaned his head against the doorframe.

"I know. I won't be much longer." I crossed the room to give him a quick kiss, and his arms wrapped lazily around me. "What are all these marks on the floor, by the way?"

"Oh. I wanted to have a desk and everything ready for you when you got here, but then I reckoned you might want to pick one out for yourself, so I just sort of mapped it instead."

I tilted my head up to look at him. "That's very sweet of you."

His eyes were closed, and I thought for a moment he'd actually fallen asleep standing up until he muttered, "Always the tone of surprise." I laughed and leaned up again to kiss the smirk off his mouth.