Chapter 20

A/N: HELLO READERS! I know, I've been absent. My only real excuse is I've been reading so many books.

I'm going to try to finish this story, but I know how many times I've said that before...

As always thanks to everyone who reviewed.

Also! Two of my stories (Deceptive Natures and The Fox) have been nominated for best comedy for the spring/summer round of the HP Fan Fic Fan Poll Awards ( hpfanficfanpoll . livejournal . com ) I'd really appreciate if you guys could vote for me and thanks to whoever nominated me!

~Frosty

Ron sat at the breakfast table with a mutinous expression on his face. Not even Daisy and the kind smile she directed towards him had lessened his foul mood. Harry had spent the night trying to get him calm while filling in details that Daisy had missed, but Ron was still displeased with his friend.

Stabbing a piece of egg with her fork, Hermione tried to ignore the tension in the room and eat – not for herself, but for her baby. Her entire body was rigid, just waiting for the explosion that she knew was coming. Ultimately, it had been her decision to keep Ron out of the loop, so it was her who had to bear the brunt of his anger.

Beside her, Draco seemed perfectly at ease, but she could tell that his relaxed posture hid as much tension as she struggled to conceal. Their sleep had been restful and deep, and neither one of them had wanted to leave bed that morning. Unfortunately, reality forced them from the comfortable bubble of their bedroom for this awkward farce of a normal breakfast.

"It was for your own safety," Hermione finally ventured. She'd eaten as much as she could with her stomach in tight knots and saw no point in pretending any longer. "The gods aren't going to be happy that you two know about them, and I didn't want to put my two best friends into the line of fire."

Ron's head snapped up to glare at her. "This is because I left you and Harry when we were hunting for Horcruxes, isn't it? You're trying to punish me."

"That's not it at all, Ron! Harry knows because-"

"Stop with the excuses, Hermione!" he cut her off.

"Ron," Harry tried, only to receive a venomous glare that kept him from finishing his sentence.

"I don't want explanations from either of you," Ron said. "I'm going to help Daisy find her daughter, and then I need you two to leave me alone for a while."

Hurt, Hermione frowned down at her plate. She knew that it was probably for the best that Ron have some time to reign in his temper as well as to take some time to think about things from her perspective, but she didn't like that he was so upset about her decision to keep him out of the loop. His feelings didn't change the fact that she'd make the same decision again could she go back in time to change things. Still, she hated hurting him.

She was also a little concerned that he was so calm about it now that the yelling was finished. From experience, Hermione knew that when Ron yelled, he was usually able to get his anger out of his system quickly. It was when he stopped yelling and calmed down that the grudges started. Ron could hold a grudge for a long time.

Draco patted her hand before glaring at the people who had invaded his house. "Don't you people have jobs to do?"

"I've taken a leave until further notice," Harry shrugged. The pained look on Ron's face said he hadn't thought ahead enough to do the same.

"I'm late for work," the redhead grumbled. When no one offered any suggestions, he grudgingly left the table, sharing a long look with Daisy before walking out of the room.

"Was it really necessary to bring the Weasel in on this?" Draco asked Daisy, his displeasure clear in his hard eyes. He hadn't exactly been fond of the woman in the first place for the trouble she'd brought him, and that trouble only seemed to worsen with her continued presence.

Daisy shrugged. "I like him and I don't like keeping the truth from those that I like."

Eyes narrowed, Hermione stared at her. There was something Daisy wasn't telling them, and Hermione had a feeling that the seer had seen a vision relating to Ron. If anything happened to Ron because Daisy was manipulating him, Hermione was going to make sure that the other woman regretted ever meeting Ron.

"Speaking of work," Hermione finally said, glancing down at her watch. "We're going to be late and today is our first day with our new department head."

Draco groaned. "This is going to be interesting."

The office was in unusual disarray when Hermione and Draco arrived. On a normal day, it was less than organized, but this chaos was far worse than usual. As far as Hermione could tell, everyone had completely stopped working to crowd around the door of their new department head's office.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked the nearest person, a newer employee that she didn't remember by name. It was hard to keep track of a lot of the younger people who worked in the department since Moss had run them off quickly with his unreasonable demands and heavy workload. A lot of the time, the younger employees were gone before Hermione even had time to learn their names. She was just lucky that she and Draco had been excluded from a lot of Moss' bullying because they were not only well known after the war, but because they were so good at their job.

The man's eyes widened slightly when he saw that he was talking to Hermione and then noticed Draco behind her. Yep, he was definitely new. The more seasoned employees quickly got over their hero worship of Hermione and learned to hide their fear from Draco, who only bothered people more if he knew they were scared of him.

"We're waiting to see who our new department head is, but whoever it is has been locked in there since before everyone got here."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. So the entire department wasn't working because of their own curiosity. She stood on her tiptoes so she could see more of the crowd gathered and raised her voice. "I think we should all get back to work," she said with an authority that had led to her being called bossy while she was back in school. "Magical creatures aren't going to control and regulate themselves."

People turned to look at her and some even made their way back to their desks, but the majority of the crowd remained. Individually, they wouldn't usually ignore something Hermione suggested so strongly. Apparently they found safety in numbers. Hermione tilted her head back to meet Draco's eyes as he stood behind her.

"You heard her, go!" he snapped in a tone that had the whole heard of their coworkers scrambling to do as he'd asked. Sometimes Hermione wished that people were that eager to do as she asked, but then she remembered that their coworkers were still willing to speak to her without cowering. Her way was better.

The door cracked open the tiniest bit once everyone but Hermione and Draco were gone. "Granger, Malfoy, my office."

They shared a look at the shaking terror in the voice, but obeyed. It would be a shame to start off their very first interaction with their shiny new boss by disobeying him.

Draco snorted when they entered and saw the man. It was no wonder he hadn't introduced himself to his newest employees, he looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There was a nervous energy about him that made his average sized frame vibrate, and disturbingly large wet spots under his arms. Hermione was glad he didn't offer them a handshake; his palms would probably be clammy.

In fact, the man barely acknowledged them, just looked them over, nodded and murmured, "People respect you two."

Clearly they were going to have another new boss in the near future if this man couldn't get himself together. It was a shame that no one competent could be found to fill the position. The regulation and control of magical creatures was an important job and the Ministry was actually impeding the process with terrible department heads. If it wasn't for dedicated employees like Hermione – and even Draco to a lesser extent – the entire department would probably collapse and endangered magical creatures would go extinct.

"Is there something we can help you with?" Hermione asked, feeling sorry for the man. She was hoping that he'd be more able to do his job once he had recovered from his first day jitters. Maybe if she assisted him with a few of the larger issues, he'd actually be a decent department head.

"People respect you two," he said again, finally addressing them directly. "If you two are on my side, eventually they'll respect me as well."

"I don't think that's how it works," Hermione tried to tell him. Her comment was ignored as the man went back to his murmuring. His hands were a little steadier as he shuffled papers though, so maybe he'd managed to get ahold of himself a little.

Draco, starting to think that the man had already had the nervous breakdown and they were looking at the shell of a broken man, took a different approach. "What in our files made you think we'd cooperate with this scheme, especially me?"

"I didn't read the file."

Draco raised an eyebrow and looked at his partner before turning a smug smirk on his temporary boss. "You shouldn't have said that."

Abruptly, Hermione stopped hoping that the anxious man in front of her would overcome his nerves and be a decent boss. He'd locked himself in his office for hours and hadn't even read the file on the people he planned on begging for assistance.

Draco had recently cursed the man he was there to replace! What kind of department head didn't even investigate the man who had gone to Azkaban for cursing his predecessor?

Thoroughly sickened with the new department head, Hermione left the room before she said something outright rude. She had no patience for superiors who didn't bother reading files or doing work of their own and refused to have anything more to do with this doomed man. Their department had suffered more than enough under lazy leadership, she wasn't going to sit back and watch it happen again.

Smirking, Draco looked down at the shorter man. "Don't bother introducing yourself to people; you won't be here long enough."

He found his partner sitting at her own desk, angrily flipping through the files there.

"You know," Draco said slowly, "Your condition makes field work for the next few months impractical, it's too dangerous. What if – just for the duration of your pregnancy, of course – you took over as head of the department? You could straighten it out and then pick a competent successor so that we could get right back to field work after you're done your maternity leave."

Hermione tilted her head to the side, considering it. Really, it was quite a good idea. She would never forgive herself if something happened to her baby while she was on the job, and things in the field were frequently very dangerous. Besides that, the department could really use an overhaul from someone who knew the importance of reading a file.

"I'll consider it," she said, trying not to imagine the nightmare that it would be to find Draco a new temporary partner while she was unable to work in the field. He had too much energy to let him constantly sit and watch her do paperwork. He'd be forever trying to talk her into having sex on her desk and the like.

If she decided to do as he suggested she had plenty of time to work out that situation.

"Why is it that our trips into the field never land us in nice, comfortable locations where we're given shoulder massages while female beverage slaves bring us perfect tea as they cower in fear?" Draco grumbled.

He would probably demand that both the masseuse and beverage slaves were topless as well. There was no point in even acknowledging his complaints if he was going to be so unoriginal with them. Besides, she knew that, should his fantasy ever come to pass, he'd be extremely annoyed at the lost opportunity to behead something. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes and continued down the riverbank towards the water.

Somewhere along the river she knew there was a stream that led to a deep pool. The trick was finding the place. She really hadn't been thinking ahead when she'd decided to look for it in the dark, but they needed the moon to be up.

"I thought gods knew when we were looking for them and then they decided whether they wanted to be found or not," Draco continued when it became apparent that Hermione wasn't going to answer him.

She trudged on in silence. If she managed to refrain from complaining while her body used much of her excess energy – as well as some of the energy she needed - to create another human in her uterus, then Draco could manage.

The tiny stream connecting to the river nearly tripped Hermione when she unseeingly stuck her foot in it. She shouldn't have been so busy rolling her eyes at her partner and should have been paying a little more attention to the terrain.

"Is that the stream we're looking for?" Draco asked as he watched her regain her balance.

Hermione chose not to dignify his smirking comment with a response. Instead, she turned away from the river and followed the stream, this time paying more attention to the terrain. Following behind her, Draco continued muttering his complaints.

The trees started getting thicker around them until there was no bank along the stream at all, forcing Hermione and Draco to walk in the water.

Despite the warm temperatures, the water was actually quite cold, and the current that had flowed cheerily when they followed it on shore was suddenly tugging at their ankles, trying to make their cold feet slip on the rocks. Draco looked at her with an expression that summarized every complaint she knew he was refraining from voicing.

"It shouldn't be that much farther," she said right before she slipped on one of the rounded, algae-covered rocks.

Draco grabbed her elbow before she could hit the ground. "I know you're determined to continue working despite the pregnancy, but you should really consider taking it easier. I'm sure I can get along with someone else for a while – say, nine months or so."

He tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow in a way she'd seen him do for his mother on icy days. Hermione wasn't sure whether she was annoyed about being treated like a frail, elderly woman or touched the he cared. As she slipped on another rock and used the arm for balance, she decided on the latter.

"You dumped your tea in a potted plant today because the plant's owner bragged about it and it annoyed you. Yes, I noticed you do that."

"I didn't say I was suddenly going to become a saint."

Hermione grinned victoriously when the stream came to an end at the deep pool they'd been searching for and she saw a glowing figure in the water.

"Artemis," she called, refusing to flinch when the goddess whipped around and levelled her with a fierce glare. The naked goddess was instantly holding a glowing bow that looked much like the one that belonged to her twin. There was an arrow trained towards the pair that had Draco grumbling about how nice and safe a desk job would be for everyone.

"What do you mortals want?" Artemis flicked her hand and was once again wearing her usual practical garments and archer's arm guard. "Keep in mind that your reasons better be good ones. I still haven't decided if I should turn you two into animals and having hound tear you apart or just kill you for watching me bathe."

Hermione glanced back at Draco who was looking at the goddess as if he was considering an attempt at beheading the woman. She elbowed her partner and gave him a glare warning him to keep his mouth shut.

"It's your twin brother who started the plague that's killing magical creatures," Hermione said with more than a little accusation.

Artemis didn't even blink at the accusation. In fact, she looked a little pained. "Apollo is being manipulated. He's not the most reasonable at the moment."

In Hermione's opinion, none of the gods were ever reasonable. Wisely, she chose to keep this information to herself.

"We're working on stopping him, but we don't have enough information," she said. "Is there anything you can tell us that would help?"

Artemis pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. "What makes you think that you'd be successful where I am not?"

Apparently Artemis had already tried to reason with her twin and it hadn't worked. Hermione chose her words carefully.

"Sometimes when one is too close to the problem, they can't see it clearly," she ventured.

"Mortal, you are millennia too young to give me words of advice." She paused and glanced towards the far side of the pool, where her prized golden doe was lapping at the water. "However, you did well in finding my doe, so I'll give you a chance with this. Keep in mind that if you fail, I'm turning you both into a pair of geese and feeding you to foxes for spying on me while I bathed."

Hermione and Draco nodded their agreement. At this point, they didn't really have any other choice. It had occurred to Hermione that catching a goddess known for severely punishing those who saw her bathing while she was bathing wasn't a good idea. She'd been confident that Artemis would be intrigued by their offer to solve her problem for her. Hermione was grateful that her guess had been correct.

"Apollo has never had much luck in love; even you mortals have stories about his more spectacular failures." Failures such as nymphs turning themselves into trees to avoid his amorous attentions. "Recently, he's had a string of rejections, coming to a head with a seer that seduced him only because she needed him to cure her sick daughter. The woman ran off as soon as her child was cured, starting my brother's little temper tantrum. I've tried to talk to him, but he's too far lost in his rage."

Things started to connect in Hermione's mind as a plan formed.