Hermione woke up a couple of hours later, stretched in a leonine motion and almost immediately realised that Minerva wasn't in bed with her. The older woman's scent was heavy in the room, laced with the lingering aroma of last night's arousal - she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes to find green ones staring back at her from across the room.

When Hermione spoke in a tone laced heavily with sleep Minerva smiled, "Morning."

"Afternoon," the witch replied sarcastically, prompting the wolf to take a frantic look at the clock, before sighing with relief that it was barely half past eight, prompting an amused chuckle from Minerva.

Hermione rubbed the sleep from her eyes and put her feet on the floor. "You been up long?"

"Since about six. I tried to be quiet but soon realised that there was no real need, you sleep like the dead."

Hermione chuckled. "That's good to know, but I wouldn't have minded if you woke me."

"I know but I wanted to get a head start on this."

"Dedication to your pack… That's a wolf trait if I've ever heard one."

"Perhaps you are rubbing off on me."

"Maybe I am." The young woman enjoyed the teasing and got up to turn the kettle on. "Another cup of tea?" Upon the lack of a reply to her offer; Hermione turned around questioningly to see Minerva watching her, mouth slightly open as she ogled the mostly naked witch.

She sauntered over, watching emerald eyes darken as they raked over her body. Hermione suddenly felt much more awake as a rush of desire hit her. Carefully avoiding damaging any paperwork, the wolf sat on the corner of the desk, closing the older woman's jaw with a finger under her chin, before leaning forward to softly brush her lips against Minerva's. Hermione didn't linger, it was just a fleeting contact and she pulled back with a smile. "So does this mean I can sleep naked again?"

Minerva bit her lip, hard, trying to suppress a moan but judging by the widening grin on pretty features, she wasn't completely successful. With difficulty the older woman brought her thoughts back to safer ground. She pursed her lips, and tried to look serious, "I suppose so, if you must."

Hermione giggled in response, more than happy at the reactions that she had been given, especially as a hand was currently resting on her thigh, gently caressing the soft skin. "Plans for today?"

Minerva glanced down at the paperwork, feeling that she shouldn't really blow it off to spend time with the younger witch. "Uhm," she started off rather inelegantly, then stopped because now that Hermione was awake she wanted to spend time with her.

The wolf smiled, stroking the other woman's arm. "How about I get breakfast sent up? We could spend the morning doing paperwork and then decide what to do for the afternoon and evening over lunch?"

Minerva looked up, surprised once again at Hermione's astute and understanding nature. She was also shocked that for nearly a minute she had forgotten that the young woman sitting on her desk was almost naked, despite having a hand on Hermione's bare skin. "That sounds perfect."

"Great, what do you want for breakfast?"

"Scrambled egg on toast please." Minerva pulled Hermione's hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles. "You're far too good to me."

"Nah, no such thing." Hermione smiled and went over to the phone, ordering food upstairs rather than eating in one of the castle's food areas was something of a luxury, but she would happily pay for it to keep her witch content.

Minerva tired of paperwork at around eleven-o-clock. It had been years since she had last sat at a desk for anything other than meetings and while she had missed it - she hadn't missed the back pain. She stretched her spine and stood up facing Hermione, who was frowning down at a large ward stone and a book.

She was familiar with the concept of ward stones, they were used in the foundations of Hogwart's Warding and had to be periodically refreshed with blood magic. The rock was enchanted with a runic version of a ward and could be utilised as a long term defence for a specific area, which meant that the spell was not tied to a particular witch or wizard and would not end with their death. Some of the stones at Hogwarts dated back to its founding and while that branch of magic was dated, it remained effective.

Sensing she was being watched, Hermione glanced up. "The part of our border where you entered is one of the closest to human habitation, it received this warding earlier than the rest. I decided to imbue the stones with anti-apparation wards, as they require significantly more power than Muggle-repelling charms and the like."

The wolf rubbed her eyes and sat back, "What I need to do now is work out their effective range, so I can map where to place them for best results. I would like to get the whole of our new border secured against magical entry by the spring."

Minerva cast a diagnostic charm over the rock and frowned, "There is also a spell to detect the amount of remaining energy in a group of ward stones from a distance, which will greatly reduce the manpower needed to maintain them. Grouping them will also increase their strength."

Hermione nodded gratefully. "The stage after this would be to make more but this time with multiple lower level charms, enabling us to magically keep out Muggles in a variety of ways. At the moment we just don't have enough strong magic users to maintain traditional warding."

"Making enough stones however will take years with just you and there is no way to duplicate them."

"The enchantment isn't actually that hard, it's just time consuming."

Minerva glanced back at her own desk, "If you have an average of five children starting the magical school each year, that means in the last two years there are ten wolves who have left with a substandard education, who probably aren't for the most part using those skills."

"Hmmm?"

"What if we were to bring them back, have them help with the ward stones and they could catch up on work that they had missed at the same time? They would be benefiting the community, so would be paid and would have more options open to them once the project was finished."

Hermione raised both eyebrows and stared at her future mate, speechless for a few minutes. "You truly are brilliant." She smiled, "That is the best idea I have heard in ages."

Minerva wrinkled her nose, "Staff meeting is on Monday, maybe I will bring it up then." She pulled her chair over and sat next to the younger witch, "What else have you been doing?"

The chestnut haired woman reached for a completed pile of papers and flipped through it to find something specific. "We spend a lot of time looking for patterns; the idea being that if we know what brings humans close to our territory, we can prevent them from getting close by removing whatever it is. For example; we have a number of reports of humans in small paddle boats using this particular river and while it does bypass our territory, they have a tendency to stop and take photographs at this point." Hermione poked a section on the map. "We could use magic to increase the growth rate of the trees bordering the river to ruin the view or make egress less possible and we could even increase the water speed in that part of the waterway. That's pretty much what I do."

Minerva thought for a moment, "Earlier you said something about a new border?"

"Three years ago I persuaded the Council to pull back our boundary by roughly a kilometre on all sides. This enabled us to create a buffer zone of almost two thirds of a mile around us. We filled that area with fallen trees; rock piles, thorny plants, thickly grown underbrush, animal bones and the like to make the area look uninviting and harder to access. It's still a work in progress but it's effective." Hermione gave a shrug, "It almost worked on you, you walked nearly five miles transversely through the buffer and only veered into our land when forced to."

She looked into green eyes intently before continuing, "And I'm glad you did."

The older witch elbowed her gently, "As am I."

It was the second day in a row that Hermione had found herself dragged to a previously unfamiliar eatery attached to the brewer, one that only seemed to sell German sausages in soft bread rolls and almost entirely as a takeaway option. They were very good sausages, true, but it wasn't the lunch choice she had expected from the elegant older witch. The first time they had followed Minerva's nose and ended up being surprised to be sitting on wooden beer barrels eating a meal. Today Hermione might have held out for a slightly more upmarket cuisine but for the quietly uttered plea of, "Indulge me." And of course, she did.

The stall owner fussed over them this time, seating them next to the heater for Minerva's comfort, unfolding a red and white cloth onto a third barrel, creating a makeshift table. Today they even warranted plates rather than a simple napkin to eat from and their beer glasses were not plastic. Obviously the two women had become regulars, which if Minerva's moans of oral pleasure were anything to go by, they certainly would be in the future.

Hermione just laughed and ate her own lunch, slathering English mustard onto it, finding the heat a welcome counterpoint to the rich flavour of the sausage. Minerva seemed to be determined to try every topping available in a bid to find exactly what she wanted. "Alright, I'll ask. What's with the sausages?"

Minerva swallowed before offering a slightly abashed smile. "It's been so many years since I last ate whatever I wanted, most recently due to the necessities of war, before that my job and the perception of others; never eating with your hands, demonstrating the manners befitting a lady, not eating strong smelling foods before a lesson or meeting. I'm merely enjoying not having expectations."

Hermione offered a soft smirk, "That's adorable." Minerva threw a stray slice of onion at her and they were suddenly laughing heartily, both reaching out to entwine fingers together. Neither aware of the stall owner and his own mate smiling beatifically at the pair of them.

They left ten minutes later, Hermione steering her future mate in the direction of what she fancied for pudding. "Do you mind mixing your cuisines?"

"Not at all my dear. What did you have in mind?"

"There's a stall just round here that sells Baklava, that is absolutely delicious."

"Sweet tooth?"

"Not particularly, but there are a few things I will make an exception for." Hermione thought for a second, "We could also grab a bottle of wine, I just had an idea of where to take you this afternoon."

"A surprise?"

"If you like or I could just tell you."

Minerva tightened her grip on Hermione's hand, "I'm rather enjoying the unexpected."

"Except when it comes to lunch."

"Oh hush."

The two women picked out their dessert and probably enough extra to last for a few days, then went to the wine stall. Hermione chuckled when Minerva began to have an in depth conversation with the wine merchant, debating the type of wine to order - she might as well have been speaking Japanese for all the sense it made to the younger witch. She rather liked it when the older woman showed another facet of her personality and she stood there with a smile, watching her.

A few minutes later, Minerva felt a hand on her elbow and Hermione spoke softly, "If you're happy here, I'll just nip and grab a few bits?"

"Alright." Hermione grinned happily when Minerva kissed her cheek, slipped some money into her hand, before leaving her alone for what was really the only time since their arrival. The witch seemed comfortable and had found her equilibrium, it also didn't hurt that she was liberally covered in Hermione's scent from the previous evening's activities. Probably ten minutes passed before Minerva finalised her purchases and turned around at feeling the weight of a gaze on her.

Stepping out of a shadowed alley into the market was another black wolf; this one was pure black without any of the softer shades that Hermione possessed, so dark in fact that his coat seemed to draw light towards him, the only exception to the monochrome appearance were two pale grey eyes that were wide and hard as they locked onto her face. The wolf was huge, standing at least a foot above the largest of the others milling around in the town, and would have dwarfed Hermione.

Minerva had encountered lots of these people in animal form over the last few days and had almost forgotten her terror upon first meeting them, but she remembered now. The heavily muscled wolf was clearly male; judging from his powerful shoulders, deep chest and massive head. His lip pulled back in a silent snarl, hackles were raised and he took a single menacing step forwards.

The witch thought furiously, trying to figure out what to do, what Hermione would do. Hexing the wolf probably wasn't the answer. Then she remembered what she had been told before, regarding the wolves' particular proclivity for posturing. With that in mind she straightened her back and just watched the wolf, forcing herself to relax. He was enormous and reminded her of someone she had met.

"Dimitri?" The snarl faltered, just for an instant but she saw it. "I thought that was you." He moved another step forward. "I don't want to fight but I will defend myself." The wolf gave a mock lunge forward but Minerva didn't flinch, merely dropped her wand from the holstering charm into her hand. "I've been fighting battles since I was a teenager and I'm not easily intimidated." The wolf stood up on his tiptoes making himself appear even larger. She wanted to laugh at him but didn't dare, Dimitri looked like he was on a hair trigger. Time seemed to stand still, then with a low growl the wolf edged back into the shadows.

Once she was sure that he was gone Minerva gave a shaky exhale and leant back against the wine stall. Only a moment passed before strong arms wrapped around her from behind, "Are you alright?"

"You were here?"

"For the last part." Hermione could feel the older woman's erratic heartbeat, she was praying that Minerva would stand by what she had said the last time they had discussed this type of thing and wouldn't hate her for letting her fend for herself.

"Thank you, for respecting my wishes."

"I won't lie, it was hard. Every instinct was screaming at me to protect my mate and I couldn't bear it if something happened to you."

Minerva turned in the young woman's arms, hearing the pronounced tremor in her voice. "It's alright Hermione." She cupped her face in both hands and brought their foreheads together. "I'm alright, he was just trying to scare me."

"Here." Came the unexpected voice of the wine merchant, he was holding a tray with two small glasses on it. "Try this, it's good for shock." Hermione conjured a sturdy chair big enough for the two women and pulled Minerva into her lap.

"Thank you." They each took a glass. "What is it?" Asked Minerva.

"Mead, very strong mead. It's the winesellers version of a sweet cup of tea for shock." The man stood there and watched them drink. "By the way… Sorry, what's your name?"

"Minerva." The witch held out a hand for him to shake.

"I'm John. So Minerva, you have, what's the saying…? Balls of British Steel!" He returned to his business, leaving them effectively alone.

Both women guffawed, letting their tension seep away. They took a few minutes to calm down before Hermione spoke. "I'm not going to let Dimitri spoil this afternoon, I will have to try to do something about him, but not right now."

"Is your plan for this afternoon to go somewhere quiet?"

"Yeah, just the two of us." Hermione brushed a few stray hairs from Minerva's face.

"Good, let's go."

Authors Note: Thanks to Libby for the beta.

The phrase 'Balls of British steel' is taken from one of my favourite werewolf movies - 'Dog Soldiers' - if you haven't seen it please do. It shows British squaddies in a way that is pretty true to life and has enough laughs, gore and cringy CGI to entertain anyone on a Saturday night.