New Beginnings

16th September 1998 (Ron is 18)

RON: I had just had a briefing with Langley, who I swear is getting rounder by the day, we may have to widen his door by the new year, and was walking back to my office with my nose buried deep within my notes. There had been a mini disaster last mission and somebody had to be held accountable so it was down to me to pin the blame.

As I walked past my secretary's desk I nodded without looking away from the diagram of the Death Eater stronghold that had been destroyed before full checks had been made that it was clear of all personnel and a trainee called Edwards had got his leg crushed in the rubble.

"Can you bring me the field reports from Hardy, Davis and..." I looked along the list of personnel who were present that day and smiled when I saw his name, "...what the hell, give me Potter's as well, I could do with a laugh."

I was about to kick the door closed behind me when I recognised the giggle that came from my secretary's desk and poked my head back around the door.

"Lavender?"

"Good morning Mr Weasley," she beamed and I shuddered.

"Oh don't Mr Weasley me please. What are you doing here?"

She sat up straight in her chair and attempted to look prim.

"I am your new secretary sir."

"Don't 'sir' me either!" I grimaced before closing my file completely and wondering why I hadn't had to sign my old secretary's transfer request, "What happened to Janet?"

"Janet," Lavender tried to think of a way to put what she had to say delicately, "is squeamish."

Well that was a new one on me.

"Squeamish?" I blinked while Lavender struggled not to laugh, "I have a squeam-inducing naked body do I?"

"Oh no Agent Weasley, she was full of praise for that, perk of the job as far as she was concerned, it was just the pukeing she couldn't handle."

I had to admit, my nausea was getting worse these days. I sat down on the corner of Lavender's desk, putting down my file full of notes, and set about my usual pre-amble with a new secretary.

"Well you obviously know about my condition and all that entails..."

Entails, hark at me!

She nodded and began to count off on her fingers.

"Always keep a spare set of clothing on hand, make sure you get something to eat and drink whenever you get back from a trip, and ask for Healer Wanless if I ever have to floo St Mungo's for you. Oh and sometimes you get sick when you come or go."

"That's pretty much it. You've got security clearance on the highest level too?"

Again she nodded, this time with some considerable pride.

"Youngest ministry secretary to gain clearance in the history of the department."

I waved my hands in mock celebration.

"Woo!"

Her face became slightly serious.

"So I know the true nature of your job and I know that you have selected Hermione Granger as your 'in case of emergency' person in the event of...an event."

I nodded and we shared an awkward silence. I suddenly felt self-conscious sitting on her desk and jumped back to my feet.

"So," I said, clearing my throat, "as long as you don't feel weird about the nudity it should be fun."

"Why would you think that would bother me?" she smiled an enigmatic smile at me.

I felt a little uncomfortable about this conversation now.

"Well y'know? It's bad enough just to see your boss naked without warning but we used to be..."

"Friends?" she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Exactly, well no, I mean we still are friends aren't we?"

"Absolutely," she nodded.

"Good," I smiled as I went back into my office before remembering that I'd left the file on Lavender's desk and hopping back out again, "I forgot the..."

She was already holding it up for me and we laughed.

"Listen if we're going to work together we've got to lose this weird tension we've still got between us," Lavender said before smiling thoughtfully and sitting forward in her chair, "how about we go for a drink after work and catch up with each other properly?"

I swallowed at this suggestion. I didn't know which part of it made me more uncomfortable.

"Um well the thing is..." I began, feeling my damn ears beginning to glow under my untidy hair.

Her face fell and she resumed her straight-backed prim secretary pose with a flush creeping over her own face as she did.

"No sorry that was so unprofessional of me I am so sorry it won't happen again Agent Weasley."

"No it's not that, and please call me Ron ok? It's just," I couldn't believe she didn't know, she knew everything else, "You still see quite a bit of Neville and Seamus don't you?"

She blinked as she tried to follow my train of thought in getting to that question.

"Well yes I do, Parvati is going out with Dean Thomas and she's my best friend, Seamus is Dean's so we socialise a lot. Why do you ask?"

"Did they never mention, um..." I tried to avoid getting into it but she really didn't seem to know what I was skirting around as she frowned back at me with concern, "I don't drink."

Wow, that was pretty blunt wasn't it?

"Oh," she said, as if wondering why that was such a big deal for me to say, then her eyes grew wide and she gasped, "Oh! I'm so sorry, that was such a stupid thing to say to you I can't believe I just did that."

I was kind of taken back by her level of mortification and laughed.

"It's ok, you didn't know, I don't broadcast it or anything."

Her hands were clamped over her mouth and she looked truly upset.

"But I remember now, they did tell me but you know how it is when people are talking about all the dreadful things that are happening to people and Seamus said the name and then started talking about...and I never thought that it was you. I just thought it was some other Ron not my Ron," her eyes widened even further, "I didn't mean my Ron, I don't have a Ron. Oh shut up Lavender!"

I chuckled at her getting more and more flustered by her faux-pas and thought that it was kind of nice that she felt as awkward about this as me. I also thought that we would be able to work together pretty well as long as we just acted like friends who happened to work together.

"It's ok Lavender, don't tie yourself up in knots about it, I put my foot in it all the time so it's kind of cool to have someone else in there with me!"

She smiled and I held up my folder and headed back into my office.

"So um, Davis, Hardy and," I said, in an attempt to get back to business as usual.

"Potter, I'll get right on it."

HERMIONE: I have had the worst day of my life.

All my independent house elves walked out on me and begged wizarding families to take them on as servants for no wages and with no holidays or proper clothing. I can't convince them that servitude is a bad thing and after all the progress we were making with the alternative employment options as well. I could've sworn that apothecary was really thinking about taking on a house elf as an apprentice.

Then all my lab assistants decided to transfer into a area with 'more potential' in the post-war wizarding world, leaving me to champion the whole rehabilitation of magic programme to the board in the new year and I'm just a bloody intern!

Then it rained on me all the way to and from both apparition points because Ron was tying up the fireplace with a call for half an hour and I broke the heel off my shoe climbing up the stairs to our flat.

I would say I hated this day but I can't.

I walked through the door, looking like a lame drowned rat, and saw Ron in the kitchen cooking dinner and dancing like a fool to the wireless as it blared in the background. I hid behind the cloak stand for a minute or two to watch him, fighting to hold in the laughter as the song on the wireless slowed down and Ron proceeded to slow-dance with the mop. He even paused to dip it, I was quite impressed, he never danced like that with me. Mind you, mops don't have feet to tread on do they?

An oven timer went off and Ron dumped his dance partner unceremoniously into a bucket head first before flinging the oven door open and congratulated himself on a magnificent roast pheasant.

"Where did you get pheasant?" I blurted out loud, forgetting that I was supposed to be hiding.

He let out a very unmanly squeal and almost dropped his masterpiece on the floor.

"Bloody hell Hermione, I didn't hear you floo!"

"Well the wireless is pretty loud, " I gestured before running my fingers through my tangled and dripping hair, "and I didn't anyway, somebody had their head in there for half an hour when I wanted to use it."

"Oh that was me," he said stupidly.

"You don't say?"

"I forgot to tell Lavender that I wouldn't be in until noon tomorrow and she got chattering, you know what she's like."

He lifted the lid off one of the pots on the stove and began to remove the steaming green beans as if he hadn't said anything that would cause me to go on a killing spree of jealousy at all.

"Lavender?" I tried to say with as much nonchalance as possible but only managed to sound like a pigmy puff being stepped on.

Ron had obviously taken my squeak to mean I had trapped my fingers in something as he leaned back from serving the roast potatoes with a frown of concern on his face.

"You alright?"

"Fine," I said as I caught sight of myself in the mirror and wished that I didn't look like one of Grawp's hairballs, "so you've got another new secretary have you?"

Ron nodded before looking very annoyed and huffing as he spoke. My heart leapt, he wasn't happy about Lavender being assigned to him and would drive her away with his obnoxious behaviour. How I love Ron's obnoxious behaviour when it's aimed at beautiful blonde women.

"Can you believe it," he began and I was only too willing to join in on the Lavender's a nightmare sing along, "Lavender told me that Janet's reason for transferring from me was squeamishness. How is that a reason? I made her squeamish!"

Ron huffed again and reached out for the gravy while I tried to keep my head together and not let Ron see that I was just as insecure as I had been when he had been dating her at school. She was everything I wasn't, she was a proper girlie girl and I was, well I was just me.

"I mean I know it's not been much fun with me since I cleaned up and started travelling again but I can't help it if the nausea's getting worse can I?"

I suddenly lost my focus on the Lavender issue and rubbed his back with concern.

"Did you have another episode today then?"

"No actually, third day in a row," we both lifted our arms in celebration at this momentous event, "you'd almost think that I was a normal person."

"Never!"

We both laughed and I carried our plates through to the dining table while Ron pulled out a bottle of fruit juice from the fridge. It was then that I realised just what Lavender being Ron's secretary would mean.

"So she's filled in on all your special requirements is she?" I asked as he poured.

"Who's this?" he asked as he sat down and picked up his knife and fork.

"Lavender, does she know what's expected of her?" I asked as casually as I could before muttering under my breath, "And what's not expected."

"Oh yeah, she got filled in before she got there, fresh clothes, healer Wanless and you're my emergency contact all that stuff, I went over it myself just to be safe."

Something in me felt smug. She had been told that I was Ron's emergency contact, that should make it perfectly clear to her if she had any ideas I thought, and I tried not to dwell on the number of times she would be seeing my boyfriend naked in the coming months.

"Kind of freaked me out at first," Ron said after swallowing his mouthful and looking up from his plate with a significant look on his face, I was about to confess to him that I was totally freaked out myself when he shrugged and went back to cutting into his pheasant, "but we had a chat and she seems cool. A lot more laid back then when I knew her."

I almost choked on my mouthful but he didn't notice and went on.

"Well that was until she offered to take me for a drink," he said with a look of real amusement on his face.

"What?" I was almost on my feet and diving head first into the fireplace to beat that strumpet to a pulp, not only does she ask out my boyfriend but she asks him out for a drink after all he's been through.

"She heard about it at Seamus and Neville's place but never really put it together apparently and she went all distraught when she realised what she'd said."

He was shaking his head and smiling but I couldn't eat anymore. I felt as if my stomach was twisted into a knot and my blood was about to turn into steam and shoot out of every orifice in my body with rage. Ron went quiet all of a sudden and glanced up at me with a serious look on his face. Great, he'd noticed that I was the canary wielding jealous Hermione again.

"It's gonna be like that every time I tell somebody isn't it?" he said quietly.

"What?" I said, still with my mind on other things and wondering if my rage had just cancelled out a whole conversation.

"Every time somebody offers me a drink I'm going to have to tell them and they're going to go all...they're going to treat me differently aren't they?"

I rose from my chair and moved around the table to put my arms around him for reassurance.

"Don't you ever be ashamed of yourself about that Ron, not ever, I am so proud of you for being able to come back from that. If people have a problem with it then they'll have me to answer to."

He pulled me onto his lap and we shared a short kiss before he stabbed a piece if pheasant with his fork and fed it to me.

"This is really good, you never did say where you got it from."

"Harry was working 'oop north' today and a grateful muggle poacher gave him a couple of pheasant for doing him a little favour in return."

"Poacher, favours...that all sounds a bit dodgy doesn't it?" I frowned.

Ron had the strangest smile on his face as he looked back up at me and fed me another portion of the pheasant.

"Mmm, he better hope that there's not an Auror watchdog keeping an eye on him."

I fed Ron a piece of pheasant as I wondered who would be keeping an eye on Lavender Brown.