How to Play Nice by WeasleyForMe
Bill finds out that his new work assignment has him paired with Hermione. Can he learn how to play nice with her? Bill/Hermione
Thanks to Clover Bay for helping out with this chapter, again! You rock!
Hermione watched Bill like a hawk as he cast a series of spells. "I wouldn't have done it that way," she muttered, earning an annoyed look from him. She was standing back a few steps from the post box, tapping her toe and shaking her head at everything he did. Why was he so bloody difficult to work with?
Within minutes, Bill managed to pinpoint the location of the spell, and with one last flick of his wand he turned toward Hermione with a grin. "The post boxes haven't been tampered with," he informed the witch next to him.
"That's nonsense," she immediately disagreed. "They have been blowing up in people's faces for the past week!"
Bill took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Why was she so bloody difficult to work with?
"It's not the post boxes that are the problem; it's the mail itself. Someone has been dropping hexed letters into the boxes, thus causing the explosions," he told her with certainty.
Hermione immediately started to pace up and down the sidewalk. She would momentarily pause to look at him, narrow her eyes in concentration and begin to pace again. "My Arithmancy might be off then," she muttered at one point as she strode past him. "Need to update my calculations..."
Bill decided not to interrupt; there was no way he could keep up with her when it came to Arithmancy. Instead he tried a few spells on the post box, hoping to help with the next stage of the problem: picking out the hexed mail and preventing anyone else from getting hurt. "Oh bugger," he muttered. His eyes went wide as the post box suddenly turned bright yellow and started to expand at a rapid rate.
"Hermione!" he called in warning, and she ceased her pacing. When she saw the state of the post box, she let out a squeal of protest and quickly looked around for any Muggles.
After casting a broader notice-me-not charm, she turned to Bill, "Now what the hell are we supposed to do?"
He shook his head and grabbed her arm, pulling her off of the sidewalk and into a patch of grass. "Do you think it's going to blow up?" he asked, just as a plume of smoke rose from the front opening. He deftly pulled her against his chest and dove into the grass as the post box exploded, sending flaming pieces of mail into the air around them.
The breath was knocked out of Hermione's lungs as she hit the ground, the noise from the explosion adding to her pounding heart rate.
Bill landed halfway on top of her, making it impossible for her to catch her breath. "Don't move," he murmured right next to her ear, and she felt an electric chill run through her body as his lips grazed her neck. She bit her lip to keep from audibly moaning, horrified by her reaction to him; he had been unpleasant at best over the last two days.
Meanwhile, Bill pushed himself up and shielded the flaming bits of parchment from landing on Hermione. Then he doused the flames coming from what was left of the post box.
"Are you all right?" he asked once the fire was put out. "Did you hit your head? You could have been killed!"
Hermione glared up at him. "My point exactly, Bill. These things are dangerous! I'm just glad it didn't hurt any Muggles." Then she took a moment to make sure she was able to stand before telling him, "I think I'm all right."
Bill helped her to her feet and inspected her for any injuries. "I'm sorry I landed on you. We should take you to get checked out."
She shook her head. "I swear, I'm fine," she promised, dusting off her jeans. She tried to take a step and had to hobble around a bit.
"But I weigh about fourteen stones, Hermione. What are you? About nine?" he asked, steadying her.
She glared at him and blushed profusely at the mention of her weight. "That's none of your business!"
Bill chuckled; he absolutely loved it when he made her blush. And, he wouldn't soon be forgetting how it felt to be sprawled across her. She was soft, warm and smelled like jasmine.
"Just tell me what you did that made the post box explode," she said, pleased that the notice-me-not charm had done its job; the street was empty.
"I didn't do anything!" he insisted. "It just blew up."
"I saw you casting a spell," Hermione said, taking a step closer to him.
"The spell was only to see if I could find the hexed piece of mail."
"But that must have triggered something."
"No, I don't think it did," he countered, clenching his fists.
"There's no other explanation," she hissed.
His anger was right at the surface, and he could tell she was on the verge of yelling.
"Look, there's no sense in arguing about this! At least I was able to pinpoint the problem! Let's just get a new game plan together," he said holding his hands up.
Hermione let out the breath she had been holding. "You're right. We should go back to my office and try to work it all out. And, uh, thanks for protecting me from the explosion," she added.
"You're welcome," he responded neutrally. They moved the remaining pieces of the mangled post box into a pile and Hermione vanished all of it.
Silently, she led the way back to the alley, and this time she reached for his biceps with no complaints from him. They Disapparated and ended up at the Ministry of Magic once again.
Once they reached her office, she slumped down into her chair and pulled out some parchment. "If the mail has been hexed instead of the post boxes, I'm afraid we will never be able to catch the culprit," she mused out loud.
"But, the traces of magic will be much more concentrated. What if we find one that hasn't been fed any hexed mail and wait until the arse who has been doing this happens to show up. Then we can hex his balls off, turn him over to the Ministry and be done with it."
Hermione chuckled. "You know, that's not a bad idea. Hey, Dennis, when you have a minute," she called out into her outer office.
Creevey was immediately at her doorway. "Yes, Hermione?"
"Can you clear my meetings for tomorrow afternoon? I think we will be out again all day working on some surveillance," she asked, and Bill had to smile at the fact that he'd come up with this idea.
"Bloody hell, what happened to the two of you?" Dennis gaped in response.
Hermione looked at Bill and realized that his tee shirt was covered in singe marks. She could only imagine what her hair must look like. "Uh, things didn't go so well in Crawley. Which reminds me, we need to fill out an Incident Report," she said. Dennis vanished again.
"Are you sure you don't need to see a Healer?" Bill asked once more.
"If this is any indication of what the upcoming weeks hold, I'm not so sure I want to keep working with you," she said with a laugh, trying to keep her frizzy hair under control.
Bill eyed her cautiously. If she didn't want to keep him here, who knew what type of assignment he would end up with?
A moment later, Dennis came back carrying a blank Incident Report form. Hermione quickly filled out the form and handed it back to him. "Please turn that in," she said, and he was gone again. At least working with Dennis was always a breeze.
"So how are we going to locate an untouched post box?" Bill asked.
Hermione pulled out her map and started to cross some of them off. "We're going to figure that out right now."
By the time most of the Ministry employees were leaving for the day, Bill and Hermione had finally had a breakthrough. Her Arithmantic equations made easy work of the process of elimination now that they knew the curse was coming from pieces of mail. "Tomorrow we'll go to Front Street and use the dark detector on the post boxes there to locate a clean one," said Hermione.
"No, we ought to just run through my diagnostic spells to locate one," Bill said, disagreeing with her plan. "This is what I'm good at, Hermione. Curse breaking."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "We still can't confirm that your diagnostics weren't the reason for the explosion today!"
Bill gritted his teeth. "I recovered artifacts from the bloody Riddle Estate using these spells!"
The two of them were on their feet, nose to nose, fists clenched, never noticing the approach of the Minister of Magic.
"Hermione!" yelled Kingsley Shacklebolt. "Another explosion in Crawley? I thought you had this under control! I need an explanation for this Incident Report you filed. Now."
See how fast I updated? I think I deserve a review! :) I have some ideas floating around in my head, but if you think of something you'd like to see, let me know!