Work Related Stress

16th January 1999 (Ron is 18 Hermione is 19)

I stared at Auror Davis' field report and tried to find a reason for the discrepancy. I wanted there to be a reason, I had been looking for one for an hour and a half now, and it still wasn't there. I knew I hadn't missed anything and that her field notes for the day of the winter solstice arrests were partially fabricated and I could prove it.

I really didn't want to prove it. I really hated being so good at this job. I really hoped there was a spectacular explanation for her abandoning her post and leaving Auror Parker exposed to the attack that almost crippled him.

I rubbed my head and stared at the report, willing it to change before my eyes.

"Ron?"

I looked up at Lavender's concerned face as she leaned in at my open door and answered her with a much rougher voice than I realised I possessed that afternoon.

"I've really got a lot on today Lavender," I sighed, in no mood to act amateur therapist right now, "can we just...not?"

She looked slightly offended but contained the emotion as best she could and straightened up her stance to a more formal pose.

"I was just letting you know that your sister is here to see you, she wants to know if you have a minute."

I sat back and blinked.

"Oh right, yeah sure send her in, sorry."

"That's fine," she said in quite an uptight manner before disappearing from my open door.

I closed the open file in front of me and waited for Ginny to come in. She was quite a while which I found odd considering she was waiting just feet outside to see me. She eventually stepped inside and closed the door behind her immediately and stared at me with that maternal look of pity mingled with anger she inherited from our mother.

"You look like shit Ron,"

"And you came all this way to tell me," I smiled sarcastically.

She shook her head and crossed the room an a few brisk strides, I got to my feet and we hugged over my desk briefly before she took a seat across from me and leaned forward to get straight to the point.

"Well I finally found out what your little 'spat' was about last year. Hermione told me when we went for lunch today."

I smiled at my sister and folded my arms.

"Funnily enough Gin, Hermione and I had several 'spats' last year, you're gonna have to narrow it down for me."

She really wasn't playing around and fishing for gossip, I could see it in the way she pressed her lips together so tightly they went a very pale shade of pink, and I wondered what had happened at lunch to make her so tense. I also worried about the possible state of Hermione when I came home in a couple of hours time.

"The one where she walked out on you for a week to go back home to her parents."

I didn't say anything, but I did suddenly want to know what Ginny and Lavender had been talking about for so long before she had come in to talk to me.

"I asked after you and Hermione told me that you were getting stressed at work; coming home, eating and going straight to bed. She reckons she hasn't had a proper conversation with you since the New Year and is worried that you're travelling more often and not asking for Lavender's help like last time. She said you promised to tell her everything, even if it was bad, but I want you to tell me Ron. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that crazy bunny boiler hasn't been up to her old tricks again."

Ginny's voice had been raising toward the end of her little speech and I shushed her frantically.

"What have you said to her?" I demanded and Ginny looked alarmed that my primary concern seemed to be Lavender's feelings, "If you've upset her Ginny I'll..." I was too tired to even threaten my own sister these days, "Please don't tell me you had a go at her before you came in?"

"And what if I did?" she hissed across the desk at me.

"I've only just convinced her to see a counsellor Ginny, she's been getting better ever so slowly and acting like a proper secretary and if you've messed with her head I'm gonna kill you. In fact worse, I won't come to your wedding!"

That was the Weasley brother's winning card in arguments with Ginny ever since the date of the Potter Weasley wedding of the year had been announced as February the fourteenth this year. Ginny was determined that everything would be perfect and her siblings threatening trouble and disruption made her shake with anger and fear until she looked as if she was going to explode.

"You're the best man!" she snapped.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that!" I scoffed.

We glared at each other in a mini standoff before Ginny shook off her sibling annoyance to go back to maternal concern.

"Look I'm sorry but when I heard that she wasn't looking after you when you came back hurt and that she...well she did what she did that time and you still wouldn't transfer her it made me so angry Ron. I don't blame Hermione for needing to take a break from you."

She sighed and wheeled her chair around the desk to sit directly in front of me and stare right into my face.

"Why is she still working here?"

"Ginny, I've never had a secretary who's lasted more than a week with me, it's nice not to have to re-train a new person on top of having to deal with travelling and this bloody job which, I have to say, just gets less and less fun with every day that passes."

"Well you leave then, get another job."

I jumped out of my seat and walked over to the filing cabinet at the far wall by the window.

"People are not queuing up to employ somebody like me Ginny, I only got this job because of the time epilepsy, nobody else will have me."

Ginny looked hurt on my behalf at this and rose from her seat to hurry over to me and give me the hug I must have looked like I needed. I heaved a weighty sigh onto the top of her head and she looked up at me with sad eyes.

"You do know nobody's fooled by this personnel recruitment business don't you?"

I smiled and nodded.

"You really should talk to somebody if it's getting you down Ron."

I released her from our hug and sat on the windowsill.

"It's not that, it's just this thing I'm working on right now, I think I'm going to have to do something nasty to somebody I quite like as a person."

Ginny joined me at the window.

"And you can't talk to Hermione about it at all?"

I shook my head.

"It's top secret ministry business."

"What about Harry can't you...?"

I ran my hand over my hair roughly.

"Harry's the last person I can tell Gin."

"Could you talk to Lavender about it?" Ginny asked without looking at me.

I didn't want to follow this new direction and nodded with reluctance.

"Do you?"

I shook my head.

"Because you don't want to lead her on?"

We sat in silence for a moment before I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a little shake of reassurance.

"Look it's getting sorted today, I'm finishing it all once and for all and then things will get back to normal with me ok?"

"Normal?" Ginny frowned with a slight smile.

"Well for me at least," I shrugged.

We made a little small talk about the wedding preparations and I walked Ginny over to the door. She stopped me just as I was about to turn the handle to let her out.

"She's really doing her job the way she should be?" Ginny said, nodding towards the reception area on the other side of the door where Lavender was working.

"Yeah Gin, she's been much better, gone all professional on me."

"And she's really seeing somebody to get her head right?"

"I set up the appointments myself, she's never missed a single one. She's really been trying Ginny, I just think she's lonely that's all."

Ginny arched an eyebrow.

"I didn't think women that beautiful got lonely."

"You do," I said, "when Harry's away."

She broke into a wide smile at this.

"Did you just call me a beautiful woman?"

"No!" I said with disgust.

"You did!" she said, looking utterly delighted.

"I did not, I called you lonely, you added the beautiful part yourself, I'd have said wizened old hag myself!" I grumbled as I pulled open the door and shoved her out with a chuckle.

While Ginny giggled and walked backwards to the exit I turned to Lavender and nodded to my retreating sister.

"Lavender, if this woman shows up again tell her I'm in a meeting will you?" I grinned.

Ginny rolled her eyes and tried to conceal the look of mistrust she threw at Lavender who simply nodded and focused upon her work. I looked scathingly at Ginny who looked defiant about upsetting Lavender and waved before disappearing around the corner and out of sight.

"You alright Lavender?" I asked as casually as I could.

"Fine thank you Ron," she said without looking up.

I decided to leave it at that and get the hard part of the day over with.

"Could you ask Auror Davis to come up to my office as soon as possible please, send her right in and don't let anybody interrupt us ok?"

Lavender finally looked at me. Her face warmed as a look of sympathy melted her impassive expression.

"Of course Ron, I'm really sorry, she's a friend of Harry's isn't she?"

I swallowed and gave a single nod.

"Yeah."

HERMIONE: I stared at my reflection in the mirror and silently cursed Ginny Weasley and her diabolical scheme. I was being fitted for my bridesmaid dress for her impending nuptials and I don't know why I was bothering. To fit a dress is to make it fit the shape of its wearer in my opinion and this mass of chiffon and silk would be better fitted to a hot air balloon if you asked me. At least the colour was ok, eggshell blue to contrast Ginny's silver wedding dress which didn't resemble any kind of inflatable at all.

"What was she thinking?" I said to myself as I turned sideways on to see if it went in at any place but no, it just went out and kept on going.

I felt like a mushroom cloud.

"Don't' worry Hermione," Neville chuckled from somewhere behind me where he was getting his suit altered, "you can always get your revenge on her when you and Ron get hitched."

I spun around and almost electrocuted myself on all the static I had generated.

"What do you mean when we get hitched? Can you imagine Ron going in for all this? He's still reeling from the Yule ball and that was just a dance."

Neville laughed and shook his head.

"Oh come on he must have told you."

I frowned.

"Told me what?"

"That the two of you are married in the future, he's seen it hasn't he?"

I felt myself blushing and turned away to scowl at myself in the mirror again. It was true, there is a future where Ron and I are married, but we never really talked about it. I don't like to feel as if all my choices have been made for me already. Maybe it's my freedom fighter instinct or something but when Ron tells me that on such and such a day I will be wearing the dress we are looking at in a shop I do everything in my power not to buy it.

I avoid the shop, I return the dress unworn when it is given to me as a birthday gift by my mother, and six months pass by without me ever seeing that dress again. Then I am at a big ministry function and I excuse myself to go to the lavatory to freshen up where I am splashed by a faulty tap and what I'm wearing is soaked through. One of the female employees comes in with her outfit, bemoaning that she never even got to change before her ailing grandmother called to summon her back home and offers me the loan of her outfit so it didn't go to waste and then there I am standing before a time travelling Ron in the dress he told me I was wearing that night and I realise that I have no free will at all.

It's not that I don't want to marry Ron, it's just that I'd like to feel that if we ever did decide to spend the rest of our lives together it was our decision and not a pre ordained plan. Fate is all very romantic when you don't know it's coming but I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to surprise Ron again. No woman wants her man to find her predictable does she?

"Hermione I was wondering," Neville was saying, shaking me out of my thoughts, "y'see I want to bring somebody to the wedding but I wouldn't want to make things awkward for you or Ron, for anyone really, and I just thought I'd ask you before I asked her."

I gave Neville a quizzical frown and rustled my way towards him from within my frilly tent.

"You're not making any sense Neville, why are you asking me if you can bring your girlfriend to Harry's wedding?"

"Oh she's not my girlfriend, she doesn't like me like that she's just a friend, and she never will be anything else. I'm not deluding myself to think I could get someone like that even if she is a little flaky right now."

I laughed and rubbed Neville's arm, stopping as soon as I heard the crackle of static charging up again.

"Any woman would be lucky to have you as a date Neville, don't put yourself down."

"No but we really would just be going as friends because she's well, there's someone else involved and I don't want to hurt any feelings or step on any toes or anything, but she's a good friend of mine and she's going through a hard time and I thought I'd take her to the wedding to cheer her up."

Something about what Neville was saying began to make me feel queasy.

"Neville who are you talking about?"

He swallowed.

"Lavender Brown."

My brain went into overload and I tried to rewind everything Neville had just said in his preamble to the big question. There's someone else involved, she's going through a hard time, she doesn't like me that way, a little flaky...

"You want to take Lavender to Harry's wedding?" I repeated for my own benefit.

Neville shook his head rapidly and turned away from me to fuss with his collar in front of the mirror.

"No you're right it was stupid of me to ask. After all that stuff with Ron last year I should never have brought it up."

"What 'stuff' with Ron?" I snapped as I turned him around forcibly.

"Well the problems I mean. She had feelings for him and he obviously didn't and she would always show up at Dean and Parvati's place in tears and then Ron told Dean what had been happening and Parvati tried to get her to change jobs or see somebody but she just got worse and Parvati and her kind of drifted apart so she started coming round to me and Seamus and we've kinda been looking after her."

I looked down at my feet. Things had obviously been just as bad as Ron had tried to explain to me if Lavender didn't even have Parvati's friendship anymore and had resorted to hanging out with Neville at his place. Not that Neville was any kind of last resort friend to have, not at all, but he wasn't really the kind of person somebody like Lavender would ordinarily give the time of day to.

I really did want to be the bigger person and tell Neville that I would be fine with it but I wasn't fine with it at all. I wasn't fine with spending time in the company of somebody so infatuated with my boyfriend that she was in therapy because of it and I knew that Ron could only just cope with her at work let alone in a social context as well, plus the little issue of my having just told the bride to be all about Lavender's lowest moment. Ginny had been livid, both for me having somebody making a play for my boyfriend and for her brother being 'molested' as she called it while he was unconscious.

Molested, it made it sound even worse when she had put it like that, and I didn't think I would ever be able to get over that having happened.

"I'm really sorry Neville, I wish I could be bigger about this but I don't think it's a good idea."

"No of course it's not, you're right and I'm stupid, I was just talking to her last night and she was telling me that she was feeling like her old self again and I...but you're absolutely right though. It's inappropriate."

I turned back to look at what I could fit of my dress in the mirror. It was worth keeping Lavender away just so she didn't see me in this revolting outfit.

RON: Beverly Davis, the Auror I had spent most of January desperately trying not to find guilty of abandoning her post, sat opposite me with an expectant look on her face. She was pretty, despite the scar on her upper lip from a childhood accident in the muggle world that could have been magically healed without leaving a mark on her, and her long blonde hair was tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She was almost as tall as I was and there was barely enough room under my desk for my legs let alone hers.

I picked up her fabricated field report and tossed it to her.

"Your report from the night of the winter solstice."

She nodded.

"I recognise it."

"Could I have the real one please Auror Davis?" I asked bluntly.

She blinked once before sliding the field report back across my desk to me.

"There you go."

"No this one is the fictional version where you stay where you are supposed to stay the whole time and there is a freak accident that you were in no position to have stopped. I want the version where you abandon your post, nearly paralysing your partner due to your not being there when a Death Eater who was supposed to be in your custody attacked him. That's the story I want to hear."

She smiled at me as if she thought this was a game we were playing or a training exercise.

"I don't tell stories."

I leaned across the desk and spoke in a low voice, I saw her eyelid flicker and she shifted ever so slightly in her seat.

"This was very well done," I pointed down at her file, "you covered everything. You have witnesses, you have all the times, names and places exactly where you should have them and bloody hell Bev if you didn't describe the smell right too. That really is the mark of a perfectionist, you really didn't want to get caught did you?"

"You can't get caught if you never do anything wrong," she smiled again, her tone even and unwavering.

"You see you just missed one little thing, one thing that seems totally insignificant but it blows your entire cover story out of the water, and if I gave you this report to read five times you yourself wouldn't spot your mistake but then again that isn't your job, that's mine."

She laughed nervously.

"You're giving me a bollocking for a spelling error?"

"No Miss Davis I'm sacking you for dereliction of duty and conspiracy to withhold information from the ministry."

She looked as if she was about to throw up. We stared at each other for some time before I huffed and tapped the recorder with my wand.

"Off the record," the magical recording device stopped, "where the fuck were you Bev?"

She dropped her cool act immediately and hissed over the desk to me.

"Sacking me Ron? Can't it just be a warning?"

"That's not answering my question."

"I was with you!"

I blinked and sat back in my chair. That was certainly a new one on me.

"Excuse me?"

"You Ron, you called me away from my position that night, and you told me that no matter how good my cover story was you'd see through it in a second and bugger me you did!"

I was beginning to understand now and looked over Bev's shoulder to be sure that the door was still closed firmly.

"What exactly are you telling me?"

"I am telling you that you are Agent Weasley, an undercover operative for the ministry monitoring corruption in the Auror department, you have a birthmark in the shape of a kidney and the colour of a grey bruise on the inside of your left thigh right at the very top and when you are thirty three you will be stabbed in the gut and transport to my mission where you call me out of position to heal you and tell me all those things. Well apart from the birthmark, I could see that for myself what with you being completely naked as a result of your time travelling which is also top secret and how could I know that if I'm lying?"

She was almost breathless as she completed her explanation of events that night. I looked at her and felt a wave of incredible relief washing over me.

"So you typed up this cover story to cover...for me?"

She nodded.

"I knew I couldn't put your name in the report, I couldn't put you at the location and blow your cover and I thought I had done a pretty good job of covering my own arse but apparently you're really good at your bloody job."

I heaved a deep sigh and shook my head with a smile.

"Am I really sacked?" she said, looking crushed.

"No," I said happily, "we have a contingency plan for when I interfere with procedure while on my travels, you're fine, it's all ok don't worry."

She sagged in her chair and closed her eyes, mouthing a silent thank you to my ceiling.

"Just one thing though," I asked, "this stabbing, was I going to be ok?"

She smiled and nodded as she sat back up in her chair.

"Yeah you were going to be fine which is more than I can say for Parker."

I frowned at this. Auror Parker was the injured party in this whole fiasco and I wondered why I called Davis over to assist me at his expense. Bev was also wondering about this apparently.

"If you were coming from the future you knew what would happen to him by calling me away. I mean I know he's going to be fine and there was no permanent damage but that was a nasty little hex that Death Eater hit him with and he's lucky he can walk."

"So it wasn't an accident then?"

"You know it wasn't," she said, "and I wasn't around to see what really happened because I was busy helping you."

I nodded and thought about why I would have risked Parker the way I did.

"Thank you by the way," I said absent-mindedly.

"You're welcome," she shrugged, "look don't beat yourself up about it too much, I mean you knew he was going to be alright in the end, and you were coming from a future where you obviously thought it was a calculated risk. I trust your judgement Agent Weasley."

I smiled at her while still pondering the significance of me allowing somebody to get hurt. Suddenly my eyes were wide and something Bev had said before came slamming back to the front of my mind and I looked at her in horror.

"What?" she said, gripping the desk anxiously, "What is it?"

"How did you get close enough to see my birthmark?"