Ron ran his hands, palms flat against her skin, from her shoulders down over the globes of her buttocks, the water cascading down over them making his touch feel like the whisper of silk. He took a step closer to her, his hips aligning to hers, making her take an intake of breath as her breasts brushed against the cool tiles that hadn't yet been warmed by the steamy spray of the shower.

As his hard cock pressed against her inner thigh and his hands slipped round to cup her breasts, his lips were at the back of her neck, alternating between kissing the damp skin at her nape, where the humidity had made tiny curls frizz at her hairline and whispering how fantastic she felt against him.

Eventually she couldn't take the sweet torture and more and slid round in his arms to kiss him. Her lips met his with fervour, her soapy hands trailing suds through his water slicked hair. Ron's hands were roaming over every inch of her, like he was memorising her by touch, groaning into her mouth as she pulled him closer, her hands kneading the taut muscles of his arse.

With a swift movement, he hooked his hands under her thighs, lifting her from the ground. Her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist and her arms against her neck as he braced her against the tiled wall of the shower. With one decisive movement, he impaled himself into her, both sighing in unison at the relief of being joined. As Ron began to build up a rhythm, Hermione felt the tension starting to build inside her, her thighs start to tremble...

Hermione just about managed to avoid squeaking with surprise when an interdepartmental memo skidded across the desk in front of her, scattering the pages of a proposal for standardised pay for free elves, written by someone who seemed to have little interest on the subject and an even smaller grasp on the English language that she was supposed to be fact checking. It was no surprise her mind had wandered on to more…interesting subjects, such as the reason why she had been so late to the office that morning and why even now, her hair still had a hint of dampness clinging to it.

A feeling of cold dread overcame her as she read the brief note, which turned out to be from Mafalda Hopkirk, requesting Hermione drop by her office at her earliest convenience. Had she found out somehow that she had Hazeldene's personnel file, or that she had been snooping around about the marriage law? Just how much trouble would she be in, she wondered, as her stomach curdled with nerves. Knowing there was little point in putting off the inevitable and certain that she would feel dreadful until she knew, she hurriedly straightened her robes, smoothed down her hair, and set off for Mafalda's office.

Mafalda was sitting behind her desk, her fingers steepled when Hermione knocked tentatively on the door of her office and was invited in. She offered Hermione a brief smile but her brow was wrinkled in a way that didn't help to assuage Hermione's concerns.

"Hermione, thanks for dropping by. Sorry to summon you so perfunctorily but I'm absolutely snowed under with work and I just haven't the time for niceties."

Hermione just inclined her head sympathetically and told the older woman that she understood, letting her take the lead in the conversation in an attempt to work out what she was in trouble for before she started gabbling confessions.

Obviously her face gave her away a little because Mafalda laughed softly, "There's no need to look quite so worried. I want to offer you a job! You expressed an interest a few months previously and honestly you'd be an asset to the team. And it would help me out of a bind – I just haven't got the time to advertise the post – we've been stretched here in DMLE ever since Helen, my Deputy, resigned over the marriage law, and just yesterday Olive Rookwood resigned. To spend more time with her new family," Mafalda sniffed disdainfully before continuing, "Frankly I just need someone sensible to fill in for me at meetings, write reports etcetera etcetera. I can't pay you what Helen was on, bloody Ministry cuts be damned, but it'd be a fair payrise compared to what you're on now. How does that sound?"

"What is it exactly you're offering me?"

"Deputy Head of the Department of Law Enforcement. You've done your time tucked away in Magical Creatures, you've produced some good work. No one can accuse me of just offering you a plum job straight out of school just because of who you are, unlike some Auror Departments I could mention. It's about time you started progressing your career or you'll be stuck down there forever. Which would be a crying shame because you could do a lot of good here."

Hermione couldn't help her mouth dropping open slightly in shock. She had thought that Mafalda was offering her some kind of Junior Undersecretary or administerial post rather than such a major promotion.

Mafalda obviously sensed her discomfort and waved her hands airily, "Of course you need to think about it. Go away and let me know your decision in the next couple of days."

Hermione stumbled out of her chair, stammering out thanks and exited the room as quickly as she could, wondering how she could have gone from thinking she was in trouble to being offered a senior role in the Ministry.

Glancing at her watch, she noticed it was lunch time already and decided to go straight to the bustling cafeteria, weaving in a daze through the tables to join the queue. She managed to grab the last two pieces of the delicious looking chocolate cake they sold on only too rare occasions, which only seemed to add to her celebratory mood. Meaning to share her good news with the shy Welsh former Hufflepuff, Amy Jones, who worked in the Animagus Registry Department, who she often sat with at lunch time, she scanned the tables, looking for her friend's familiar blonde head. Unable to spot her, she checked her watch and noted that it was the time they normally met. Hermione shook her head in frustration – Amy was, if anything, even more of a workaholic than herself and if Hermione had guessed correctly, she was skipping lunch in favour of spending more time working on the amnesty on unregistered Animagi, that had taken up so much of her time recently. Remembering the all too frequent occasions she skipped lunch to work, and how awful she felt all afternoon, she rejoined the queue to purchase a sandwich and a drink, intending to deliver them to Amy along with the 'I've been offered a new job' cake, as Hermione had dubbed it.

Pushing the door to Amy's tiny office on level two with her foot, her hands full of the food that she only now realised it would have been much easier to suspend with her wand than carry along, Hermione called in to her, "You know, all work and no cake makes Amy a…oh! Sorry!"

A spindly looking wizard of about a hundred years old sat in the seat that she was used to seeing her friend occupying, "Apologies but Mrs Avery doesn't work here any more."

Hermione just frowned at him as though it was his fault somehow, "Has she moved offices? I'm quite sure she would have sent me a memo or something."

"No," he replied in his quavering voice, "She's resigned. It was all quite sudden really. One day she just sent in a letter, and said she wouldn't be coming back to work – she said she had a lot of leave to take and she was going to use that in lieu of notice. Said she needed to dedicate more time to her husband," the wizard scoffed as though he would never understand the foolishness of youth.

"But –"

"I can show you the letter if you like?" he fished around in his drawers and held a piece of parchment out to Hermione, but even across the desk, she recognised her neat script, and waved it away.

Excusing herself, Hermione returned to her own office, deep in thought. Whilst Amy had seemed less unhappy, more resigned of late to her marriage to Julius Avery, she had never mentioned any desire to give up her work and become a housewife. Suspicion prickled the hairs at the back of her neck – something was fishy, she could feel it. Pulling out a roll of parchment and a quill, she dashed off a quick note to Amy, making sure it sounded sufficiently bland in case it was intercepted, asking her if she was ok. She called an owl from the Ministry fleet, attached the parchment to his leg, giving him strict instructions to only deliver the parchment to Amy, if he could, and sent him on his way.

The idea that she might have been somehow pressured to give up her job, that her husband might have persuaded her that it was unseemly or ill-fitting for the wife of a pureblood to work, made her think again about how lucky she was to be married to Ron. Even if nothing had developed between them romantically, he would never tried to have imposed anything like that upon her. The daydreams that had filled her head so sweetly all morning began to drift back in before all of a sudden, a wave of crashing guilt washed over her so heavily that she dropped her head onto her desk with a soft groan.

Of course Ron would never try and make her leave her job, or try and influence her career in any way. That sort of action was reserved for controlling monsters like Avery…or herself. Her indignation at the way she suspected Avery had put pressure on Amy to leave work reminded her horribly of the way she had attempted to stop Ron leaving the Aurors. She had thought she had his best interests at heart and if she searched her conscience she was satisfied that nothing he had said about her wanting him to stay an auror for her being able to brag about it, she knew that hadn't come into it at all. But even though she had seen how much he had enjoyed being an auror and believed at the time that he had been having some kind of breakdown or had been running away from responsibility, she could see now that she had gone about trying to find out what was wrong in her usual bullish, 'I know best,' way. How on earth could trying to force him to stay in his job possibly have helped him more than just staying calm and being there for him could have done?

With the anger of their breakup now fully dissolved, she was able to see that a good portion of the blame that she had heaped squarely at Ron's door in terms of how they had behaved, actually fell to her.

"Ugh," she sighed, vanishing the cake that sat on her desk away, just the sight of which now turned her stomach.

She pulled the proposal for standardised pay for Free Elves back towards her. Maybe she would be better turning down Mafalda's offer and staying in DRCOM. After all, if she couldn't even help her own boyfriend when he had clearly been going through a terrible time, what right did she have to make decisions for the entire wizarding community.

She kept her head down and managed to finish the proposal by 6 o clock and was just stretching out her aching shoulders and congratulating herself on pulling some sense from the garbled document before midnight when she realised that Harry and Ginny were due for dinner at seven. She quickly locked the document away in her desk, threw on her cloak and ran full pelt for the floo, trying to remember recipes that could be cooked in five minutes flat.

She was just climbing out of the fireplace, trying to remember if the heels of cheese left in the fridge were still fresh enough to make fondue, when she noticed an appealing scent of cooking that instantly made her stomach growl in appreciation.

"What's this?" she asked, curling her arms around Ron's waist as she stood behind him at the stove, resting the plane of her cheek between his shoulder blades.

He twisted around to face her and dropped a kiss onto her forehead, and even as she smiled at the pinny he had donned to protect himself from the food, she squeezed him tightly, enjoying the feeling of being welcomed home so sweetly. It was amazing to think that only a few weeks had passed since that mad rush to the hospital for Ginny – her and Ron were getting on so well that it was like they had never had those wasted years where they couldn't stand each other. Of course they bickered but neither of them would have it any other way.

Ron pointed at the bubbling pans on the hob with the wooden spoon he was holding, "The shop was quiet today and I could tell I was just getting under Verity's feet so I decided to finish early. S'not much," he told her self-consciously, "Just some soup, and that one's pasta sauce. I got the recipes out of the book mum gave you for Christmas. They'll probably be awful and we'll have to get a takeaway."

"Well, considering as I had completely forgotten, and we'd have had to get a takeaway anyway, this is a distinct improvement. Besides, it smells delicious. I could get used to this."

"Well I reckon I could get used to being a house husband if you want to keep me in the manner I'm accustomed."

"I think I just want to see what you've got under that pinny of yours."

Ron pulled her towards him, his eyes trained on her lips in a way that made her stomach flip over, "Keep talking that way, witch, and you might just get your wish," he murmured.

She was just stretching up on tiptoes to close the gap between them when they heard a scuffle coming from the fire place and they jumped apart, both looking strangely guilty as Ginny and Harry tumbled through, one after the other.

As Ginny and Harry busied themselves with removing their cloaks and handing over bottles of wine to Ron, he nodded his head towards the kitchen cupboard that housed her fertility potions, "Hermione, do you need to…"

Hermione blushed, remembering that their extended shower was the reason she hadn't had time to take her potion that morning. The spark of amusement in Ron's eyes suggested that he was recalling the same thing.

She removed one of the small glass phials and quickly swallowed her fertility potion, her mouth filled with the sweet taste that reminded her of something from childhood that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Not that she was allowed many sugary treats as a child – being the daughter of two dentists definitely had its disadvantages. When she had first taken it, she had assumed a potion she resented taking so much would have a nasty taste but she had come to enjoy the slightly bubbly citric tang to the sweet liquid. Not that it seemed to be having any effect – she had been taking it for a little over a month now and the healer's appointment that they had attended a few days earlier had proven that she still wasn't pregnant.

In celebration of this, she poured herself a large glass of wine from the bottle Ron had just uncorked and clinked it against Harry's and Ron's, as well as Ginny's glass of water as they all seated themselves around the kitchen table.

As Hermione enquired how Ginny's health was, and Harry described in tones of barely contained agitation what had prompted him to build the baby's crib the muggle way, Ron slipped away and served them up bowls of soup that were as delicious as they smelled.

Their conversation drifted from the fact that Neville had told Harry he was thinking about proposing to Hannah Abbott, which was met with much jubilation, to the development Ron had made using Peruvian Darkness powder in intruder alarms to confuse anyone who set one off, to Ministry gossip.

"And she was just gone, just handed in her resignation just like that!" Hermione had just finished recounting the story of how she had discovered Amy Jones had left her job without telling her. She had omitted the reason she had been seeking her out in the first place, for some reason. She didn't want everyone to make a fuss when she hadn't decided whether she actually wanted to take the job.

"Do you think Avery forced her to leave or something?" Ron asked, "I thought all that pureblood snobbery about not actually having a job was dying out? Especially now so many of the old vaults at Gringotts have been emptied."

Ginny nodded in agreement, "All frittered away on solicitors bills, trying to get Death Eaters out of Azkaban. Either that or seized by the Ministry."

"I don't know!" Hermione shrugged in frustration, "She didn't seem like she was being controlled by him when I spoke to her before – she said he didn't even seem that interested in her. It just seems so fishy to me. She barely more than disliked the man, she certainly didn't seem like she was going to give up her job to go and be a society wife for him."

Harry looked at her gravely, steepling his fingers on the table, "You think it's something to do with the marriage law, don't you. That she's been forced into something?"

Hermione nodded slowly, unsure of how to voice the nebulous fears that prickled the back of her neck. She couldn't pinpoint what she thought was going on, she just felt like something was.

"I'd just sooner get it sorted. And then if she wants to stay married to him, spend her life shopping for gowns and attending charity events, then good for her. I'd just be happier knowing she was doing it of her own free will," she growled a little under her breath, running her hands through her hair, "I think I've gone through the law backwards, forwards, every which way you can imagine. I could probably recite the thing to you. But I can't find any loopholes – the thing's watertight."

Harry grinned at her and reached over to pat her arm, "Well don't worry, we'll figure a way round it, even if we do have to go a bit…Scooby Doo, on the Ministry's arse."

Ignoring Ron and Ginny's exchange of puzzled glances at the muggle reference, Hermione frowned, "I don't suppose you could visit your girlfriend in Personnel again, to get Amy's address? I fancy paying her a visit."

"Vera? She'd love to see me again! And perhaps I'll see if I can get hold of Dung, he might be able to tell us if there's any rumours going around the grubbier areas of Knockturn Alley. Was there anything useful in Hazeldene's personnel file"

"You mean a great big notice signed by him, confessing to being a death eater? No," she sighed, "It's funny, it's almost empty. It's got some references listed for when he started working at the Ministry but bugger all else. Then all that's in there is his training records and copies of his ID. It's like it's been wiped clean. Either that or he is the most boring individual you've ever come across."

"That's disappointing. Everett in investigations owes me a favour – I covered the midnight shift for him last week. I'll ask him to see what he can find out about him. Whether he falls on the dark or the light, that sort of thing."

"Ahh, the midnight shift, I don't miss that," Ron sighed with mock fondness.

"Is there nothing about the job you miss?" Harry asked, looking at him curiously.

"Well, I miss the excitement, and going out catching the bad guys. And I miss the cakes – the auror department always had the best cakes."

"What is it Harry?" Hermione asked sharply, watching Harry, as he in turn, watched Ron.

"We went on a raid the other day and my two best officers got injured. It was a bit embarrassing really – they both fired a stunning spell at the same guy, he ducked, and they hit each other. It's like they weren't listening to a word when I went over not standing in the cross fire of another Auror in the training sessions."

"I guess being the chosen one just isn't worth what it used to be," Ron quipped unsympathetically.

Harry refused to acknowledge the comment, other than to take his glasses off and polish them on his jumper, a sure sign of irritation in him, "It would all be very well but now they're on desk duty for three months, standard procedure after receiving spell damage, even if it is from a fellow Auror. Which leaves me in a bit of a bind because I was planning on taking the next couple of months off work to be with Ginny and the new baby, if it ever decides to make an appearance," he glanced at his wife's large stomach – Ginny was now full term but showing no signs of going into labour. He drummed his fingers on the table a couple of times and Hermione sensed he was just about to go into his pitch, "So I was wondering how you fancied a job for a few months? You wouldn't have to sign back onto the Ministry payroll, it could be as a consultancy role – temporary head of the Auror Department? What do you say? Truth is, I've been a bit lazy with my paper work," he had the decency to look a bit guilty at this, "It might do the place a bit of good to have a shake up. And you've always been a better strategist than me – you'd be just the person to see what's needed."

Other than a quick intake of breath, Hermione forced herself to remain impassive. As much as she wanted to curse Harry for setting the kneazle amongst the owls when things had finally started going really well for her and Ron, she knew she couldn't get involved. The revelation she had made that morning was enough to keep her silent as Ron sipped his wine slowly, his brows knitted together in thought.

"I don't know…" he began slowly, glancing at Hermione for a moment. She wondered if he was hoping she'd say no, or that he wanted her support but she kept her mouth resolutely closed, her expression friendly but neutral. It had to be his decision.

Harry seemed to get the hint that he needed to let the two of them talk about it in private and waved his hands as if to dismiss the atmosphere that had settled over the table, "You don't need to tell me now. Think about it for a few days and let me know. And if not, there's always Wilberforth."

Ron and Harry sniggered, the tension broken as they recalled the hapless trainee who had been amongst the first who had gone through their revolutionised qualification programme. Somehow he managed to combine clumsiness and poor spellcasting with the kind of entitled arrogance that meant no one was too inclined to help him. By the end of the programme, he had ended up in St Mungo's with six extra legs. He had been put right eventually and returned to finish the programme a much humbler man who had go on to make a skilled Auror but had somehow never managed to shake the reputation, or the nickname 'Giant' ("because he's an eight footer", Ron had explained to Hermione when she had met him at an Aurors' Christmas Party).

After that, Ron got out a bottle of Ogdens Old Special Reserve that a client had given him and some rather nice cheese he had picked up in Diagon Alley and Ginny steered the conversation onto the safer subject of the match she had written an article on at the weekend in her new role as occasional Quidditch reporter for the Prophet. Hermione stayed quiet, her mind racing a mile a minute. She knew that whatever Ron decided, she would support him but she couldn't seem too enthusiastic, especially if he accepted, because then that could lead to him wondering if she had rather him be an Auror all this time, as he had accused her of before.

The truth was, she was scared. She hadn't realised how much she had taken for granted the fact that he was away from that world – the world of fighting dark magic, the world of being one Avada away from Game Over. He had gone into it so quickly after the war that she had never really had a chance to resent Kingsley for putting him in more danger, as though he hadn't been through enough, given enough. But she resented Harry now. Just a tiny prickle at the back of her neck. Nothing that wouldn't be easily forgotten. Just enough that doing any more than gloomily swirling the inch of amber liquid around her glass seemed like an effort and her laughter seem tight in her throat at Harry and Ron's terrible jokes.

Eventually Ginny and Harry went home and Ron and Hermione, both seeming subdued, muttered promises about tidying up in the morning and headed to bed in silence.

Hermione quickly changed into her pajamas, cringing at the awkward atmosphere that had descended over them so quickly. Ron slid under the covers after her but after dropping a perfunctory kiss onto her forehead, he turned onto his side to face away from her. Hermione huffed out a light breath of annoyance – she could practically feel him brooding but she didn't know how to help him.

She reached over and rubbed her hand gently up and down his back, her fingertips finding the crinkled skin of the scar that ran the length of his back. She could feel the tension emanating from him but the fact that he had turned away from her made her wonder if he would rather not talk about what Harry had said. She decided to just start talking about something different, knowing that if he wanted to discuss it, he would soon bring the conversation round to the subject.

"You're not the only one who's been offered a new job today. Mafalda Hopkirk called me in to see her – she wants me to take a job as the deputy minister for magical law enforcement."

"Wow!" Ron sounded genuinely thrilled as he flipped over to face her again, propping himself up on his elbow, which made her feel even worse about not being able to be happier for him, "That's great! You're going to say yes I take it?"

"I wanted to see what you thought first, after all, it'd be longer hours, more responsibility. I'd have to bring work home sometimes and attend meetings… "

"Are you trying to think of reasons why you shouldn't do it?"

"No!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"Well that's what it sounds like. You said yourself, you're just hiding in that safe little job of yours and that's not fair."

"Not fair?"

"Not fair to you, not fair to the wizarding world who you are currently denying your brilliance to. If you don't want the stress, then fair enough, although I would start to suspect that you were under an imperius or something because lets face it, you live for stress, but don't think about not taking it because you're worried you'll mess up, or you won't be good enough. Because anyone who can score 112% in an exam aged eleven can never not be good enough for anything."

"Thank you," Hermione sighed, patting his arm as a weight lifted from her chest at his words of encouragement, "And sorry. For before – telling you that you couldn't work with George. Even though I didn't know the full story. I should never have tried to stop you doing something you wanted."

"Blimey Hermione, I thought that was water under the bridge now," Ron scowled in confusion, "What's brought this on?"

Hermione took a deep breath and decided to confront the elephant in the room, "Well…just, Harry's offer. I wanted you to know that whatever you decided, I'd support you."

Ron visibly relaxed in front of her, which made her feel about ten times worse – obviously he'd been worrying about what she thought about it. Still, her past experiences of his insecurity meant that she had to caveat her words.

"If you were to take him up on it, I'd worry, obviously. Constantly. Not because I don't think you're up to it, don't think that. It's just, I don't want you to think that I don't care, because I do. But if you want to do it, I trust you to weigh up the risks yourself. You can be whatever you want to be – not just because I've said it's ok but because you're amazing, Ron Weasley. And if you want to take up Harry's offer, I'd know you were making the right decision, just like if you wanted to carry on working in the shop, or even if you wanted to jack it all in and shovel hippogriff dung, I'd support you any way I could."

"Steady on love," he smiled, gripping her hands, "I appreciate the sentiment but really…dung?"

Hermione giggled, "I didn't say my support would exclude extensive scourgifying at the front door."

"The truth is, I was tempted by Harry's offer. Not just being an auror – head auror in fact, but the chance to make some changes. Well, it's not a chance that you get offered every day. It'd be nice to work in a team again too – it's all been a bit lonely since George left, even with the new staff at the shop," his face fell a little, "I doubt it'd be possible though. Weasleys Wizarding Security couldn't do without me for that long."

"Well perhaps George could come back and cover major meetings, by the sound of it, the New York store is running smoothly now. And I could help out too, if there was anything I could be helpful with? After all, I am a Weasley too," Hermione blushed slightly mentioning her surname.

"Granger-Weasley, and don't you forget it," Ron kissed her on the nose, "And it sounds like you'll have enough on your plate running the Ministry, soon enough. But I'm grateful for the offer and I might just take you up on it. After all, the stock room needs a good tidy up."

Hermione laughed in indignation, although her attempts to bat him on the arms were soon halted by his large hands pulling her close against him and his lips on hers to pick up where they had left off in the shower that morning.