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
As dawn broke on Wednesday morning, Hermione rolled over in her bed and stretched. Her limbs felt sore, and she was still very tired. Stifling a yawn, her arm came into contact with Bill, and she smiled in the pre-dawn light.
Bill cracked open one eye when she nudged him. "Morning," he grunted, his voice straining slightly as he woke completely. He smiled as Hermione scooted closer to him.
"Good morning," she replied, grinning.
"What time is it?" he asked, as he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Almost seven. We need to stagger our arrival times at the office," she said with a blush, knowing she would likely die of embarrassment if the entirety of the Ministry of Magic found out they had been shagging most of the previous night.
"I'll get a quick shower and head out first, then?" asked Bill. "Who knows, maybe I'll make some coffee and rock out to the Wireless while I wait for you."
Hermione couldn't help but giggle. She watched him walk from her bed to the bathroom door, clearly quite comfortable with his nudity; she certainly didn't mind the view. A few minutes later, Bill emerged back from the bathroom in just his jeans. She watched as he tied his wet hair back.
"Could I borrow a shirt?" he asked, but Hermione thought it would make a much better day in the office if he went without one.
"Sure," she murmured, climbing out of bed and pulling the sheet with her. She found an old Gryffindor Arithmancy Quiz Team shirt and quickly located her wand to enlarge it for him.
"Thanks," Bill said, pulling on the red and gold t-shirt. He leaned toward her and captured her lips in a kiss so surprising, that Hermione dropped the bed sheet in favour of his lips. "See you at work in a bit," he said with a wink, taking a moment to enjoy the view of her with the sheet at her feet.
Once he had gone, Hermione bit her lip and squealed as she dashed into the shower. She was just working up a lather of soap and rubbing her sore spots, when she realized she hadn't thought about work at all since yesterday afternoon. Her mind suddenly rushed back to Dennis, resolving to find him if he wasn't at the office when she got there. As she rinsed her hair, she heard the sound of her front door creaking open.
"Bill?" she called around the shower curtain. There was no response. "Is that you?" she called again, straining to hear over the stream of water.
Quickly, she finished rinsing and turned off the tap. She yanked a towel off the rack and wrapped it around her dripping wet body. Hermione poked her head out of the bathroom door, looking for the source of the noise. A dark figure dashed across the end of the hallway, and Hermione scrambled to reach her wand which was on top of the vanity. She tore down the hallway, shouting a poorly placed jinx which hit the wall next to her book shelves. The dark figure hastily ducked around her furniture and dashed through the front door before Hermione could calm down enough to hit them with a Stinging Curse.
Hermione sprinted after them, but when she reached the street, she found only her neighbours and a group of school children. Realizing she was still in her towel, she turned back inside and returned to her apartment. She leaned heavily against the closed door and fought the urge to cry.
Bill was in fact waiting at her desk, sipping some coffee and humming along to a particularly bad ballad when Hermione arrived. Bill smiled at her, but upon seeing the startled expression in her eyes and the paleness of her skin, he jumped to his feet.
"What happened?" he asked, guiding her to her chair.
Hermione took a deep breath. "After you left, someone came into my apartment."
"What?! Who?"
"I don't know," she said. "They were hooded. They looked pretty big, so probably a man. I chased them out before I got a good look. They didn't stick around to duel."
"You tried to duel them?" Bill asked, clearly impressed and yet very concerned.
"Tried to. But they kept ducking around the room before leaving. I sealed up the place when I left. There's no chance anyone but me is getting back in there today. But now I'm scared."
Bill looked thoughtful for a moment. "At least you're all right. But we need to find Dennis."
"Yes, immediately. We also need to find the Carrow sisters," she added. "I'm going to dig through Dennis' desk and see what I can find. You need to go to the Registration of Residence office and see what you can find on Flora and Hestia Carrow."
Bill nodded and promptly left the room. Hermione went to Dennis' desk in the office just outside her own. "I don't even know where he lives," she muttered to herself, frantically moving stacks of parchment around looking for anything the might be helpful.
Sighing, she started to dig around in the drawers. She found several notes attached to a calendar that made her pause and smile. 'Pick up cake for Kingsley's surprise birthday party!' 'Don't forget- Hermione birthday, September 19.' 'Order extra biscuits for weekly department meeting- ran out last time!'
She pushed the notes aside and kept looking. As she dumped a few folders onto his chair, Hermione noticed some of Dennis' old pay stubs went sailing to the floor. Hermione dropped to ground and grabbed one of them, turning it over quickly in her hand.
"57 East Trenneman Street!" Hermione gasped when she found his address was listed under his name, and she tucked the slip into her pocket. She rushed back to her desk, considering going to get Kingsley, but it was doubtful he would have arrived yet. Hermione was about to go in search of Bill, but then she saw the pocket watch and folded parchment from Makar Gordian's home where they had been left in the middle of her desk.
"I wonder…" she said, wishing in that instant that she could quickly contact Harry. He had used that old Marauder's Map so frequently when they were on the hunt for Horcruxes, and it only took simple passphrases to lock and unlock the parchment. He might know something she didn't on this topic.
She tapped her wand against the parchment and suddenly gasped. She started to thumb through the transcripts from the questioning of the prisoners. She finally found the page she was looking for. Invenire et capere. There it was in black ink right in the middle of the page.
Hermione tapped a corner of the mysterious parchment and clearly spoke the words. "Invenire et capere!" Suddenly the parchment started to change. Blotches of dark ink started to seep seemingly from the very core of the parchment, forming a web of lines. The lines started to take the shape of the city of London.
"Why didn't I think of this yesterday?" Hermione asked the empty office. She unfolded the large map completely, and located the Ministry of Magic building in central London. And there she was on the map; a small star with the label Hermione Granger was marked as being inside the building, unmoving. Hermione's eyes went wide. She picked up the map and dashed out into the main artery of hallways connecting the various Ministry departments. She ran the length of one of the corridors, watching herself on the map as she went. Sure enough, the star with her name attached to it moved slightly across the map, but stayed in the confines of the building.
"Oh my sweet Merlin!" she gasped and turned to run back to her desk, earning many concerned looks as she went.
She threw the map down on her desk and skimmed over the other names listed in the Ministry of Magic building. "Mary Cattermole, Dirk Creswell , Amy Moreland, Roger Hilbert, and Justin Finch-Fletchley. That's it?" There were only five other names aside from her own that seemed to represent employees currently in their offices. But Hermione knew that at least two hundred witches and wizards worked for the Ministry of Magic.
"Muggle-borns!" she gasped just as Bill walked back into her office.
"Hermione, they have no record of a current address for the Carrow sisters," he said, looking quite dejected.
"Bill! It's the Muggle-borns!" Hermione shouted at him, a slightly manic look in her eyes. "Right here, on the map!"
"What map?" he asked cautiously, slightly afraid of her chaotic behaviour.
"This was a map! I unlocked the bloody thing!" she said, holding up the parchment from Gordian's house. "Look! It shows the location of every Muggle-born in the city of London! I'm on it, right there. See? And look over there, it shows Amy Moreland who works just down the hallway. She's a Muggle-born as well. So is Justin, he was in my year at Hogwarts."
"I can't believe it," Bill said, running his hands over the many lines making up the web of streets. "Hermione, if you're on here, maybe Dennis is too."
"Oh! I found his address in his desk," she said, thrusting her hand into her pocket to retrieve the pay stub. "He lives down the dodgy end of Trenneman Street."
They followed the streets of London on the map further east until they came to the correct neighborhood. A unified gasp came from the pair as they found a star labeled Dennis Creevey right next to one labeled Penelope Clearwater.
Thanks for reading! I want to say a special thank you to some of the anonymous reviewers of this story. I can't respond individually to those unsigned reviews, but I really do appreciate all of the kind words :) More to come soon.