Summary: Hermione and Seamus survive the Auror academy, and struggle to find some semblance of routine. Seamus can't help feeling completely out of his depth with the attractive and flirtatious Blaise Zabini. Hermione struggles to maintain her professionalism in the face of frequent case subject Marcus Flint.

Beta-read thanks to Tanguera! Reviews are very much appreciated!

Review replies are found at the end.


Hermione stared out at the crowd of well-wishers, surrounded by her fellow Auror graduates on the stage. Seamus standing beside her and discreetly squeezing her trembling hand lightly in solidarity. It was a reflex for them to hide and disappear in a crowd, and even with a Calming Draught, all their instincts were screaming at them to run with so many faces turned towards them. They stood together, twitching and stifling giggles. The verbiage of the ceremony was stiff and pompous, directly contrasting their months of back-alley duels and dodging both politics and paparazzi. After Goren had been failed out for unethical conduct, his friends had either distanced themselves, or became more covert in their bullying attempts.

Dear Mum and Dad,

I am officially starting my new position next week. Out of our entire class, only Seamus, Monteith and I have been approved for the Obliviator squad; though Christoph has not accepted Monteith into his branch, likening his wand-work to a lumbering dragon in a fireworks warehouse.

After the ceremony, Seamus and I didn't stay for the reception. I've sent you our celebration pictures.

Seamus waved good-bye to his parents before dragging Hermione into a quiet corner.

"Merlin, thought they'd never leave. I've got to get out of here." Hermione sagged against the brick wall and nodded. "Good, there's a funfair in Chelsea."

After a few rides and eating a kilo of candy floss, Seamus bodychecked Hermione into a sticky photo booth and tugged on her curls as the corners of her eyes crinkled in too absent mirth. She wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders and gave his cheek a wet kiss as he scrunched up his eyes against the next flash. He smashed the last of the candy floss against her turned away chin as she laughingly flailed.

Seamus collected the pictures and handed Hermione her copy when they were draped over a dilapidated picnic table. They both studied the pictures for a moment, Hermione smiled sadly.

"It's sad, isn't it? I can't remember how long ago I smiled like this in a photo." Seamus banished his to the safety of his flat, and swung her up to perch in his lap, hooking his chin onto her shoulder.

"Then we make this our yearly jaunt, yeah? Spite the fuckers tried to kill us, can't give 'em satisfaction of not living it up." He knew his screaming nightmares weren't nearly as bad as Hermione's, and she saw more than the phantom blood and soot overlaying his face every time he used a mirror. "What did you say to Monteith? Managed to get the pale sod whiter."

Hermione smirked as she remembered the hard handshake she had shared with their classmate. "Don't let down your side, now." Seamus barked out a peal of laughter.


Seamus shrugged when Hermione glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. They stood in Deputy Chief Obliviator Christoph Hans' office, holding a red folder each containing their first assignment.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Is it particularly wise for a team to be made of two junior Obliviators?"

Hans made a shooing motion with his hand. "As your superior, you are obligated to think all my decisions wise." Hermione shrugged back at Seamus.

Their first assignment sat sobbing her eyes out onto Seamus' shoulder in the hallway, while he fished out anything in his pockets that resembled a tissue or handkerchief. He patted her hair and murmured nonsense, trying not to wince at the loud crashes of fragile objects meeting hard surfaces at high speeds inside the flat.

The young witch blubbered, "I knew he was Catholic but I didn't realize it would be this bad."

There was a loud thump and the door was yanked open by a slightly ruffled Hermione, brushing glass off her black coat before firing off a steady stream of non-verbal repairing spells. Seamus gently sat Amanda down on the couch, ignoring the squirming man on the floor.

"Right. Why don't you tell us how you want to go about this, lovey."

"I-I'm pregnant. Jack's the father and now...how can I trust our baby with him?"

Seamus pulled out his notebook, asking both the official and unofficial questions: whose name was the apartment under, was she financially dependent on Jack, did she want to keep the baby, would she consider carrying to term, did she have any family or friends able to support her. When Jack stopped fighting against the bonds, Hermione partially removed the spell from Jack's mouth, crossing her fingers that he would cooperate. The vitriol that spewed forth made both junior Obliviators wince and Amanda shed fresh tears. Hermione reapplied the gag and quickly scanned Jack's thoughts, and then minutely shook her head in response to Seamus' silent question.

"You can't stay here without endangering yourself and the Wizarding World, you know that?" Amanda sadly nodded.


Jack Hall peeled his eyelids open to a paramedic snapping fingers in his face.

"Sir, can you see me, can you hear me?" He groaned and tried to sit up, fighting against the hand against his shoulder.

"What happened?"

"Don't sit up just yet. Your neighbours called 999 when they heard a loud crash. The constables found you unconscious in glass, we think you tripped up of the rug and landed on your coffee table. We're taking you to the A&E. You have a severe concussion."

"Your CT scan shows the swelling went down. Amnesia and confusion is common for concussions, you didn't lose consciousness for long and your vision and coordination seems normal. But you say you've lost memories from months ago? They may return after a week or so."

'Or never.' Hermione thought to herself. She stood disillusioned tucked into a corner of the examination room. They were responsible for Jack's amnesia, his missing weeks if not months of time. Seamus had left to sort out arrangements with Amanda, and Hermione had invisibly stalked Jack for his forty-eight hour observation period. Standing on the step and clinging to the back of the ambulance, following Jack's gurney to his room, and standing in a shadowed corner. She tracked for any mention of Amanda, flicking her wand to alter Jack's social media memories of her, his mother and father's memories when they came rushing in separately, and surreptitiously altering the memories of the friends he contacted the most.

It was two in the morning two days later, when Hermione got back to headquarters and found Seamus at their shared desk. His hair was still wet from a shower, scribbling out the last edits on their report with one hand, and sorting several yellow files by priority level and date with the other. She read it over his shoulder then signed her name at the bottom. Amanda was lucky that St. Mungo's had an external magical womb open up in time to take the little foetus.

"Hans says usual procedure is to take minimum a day off after each red file." Hermione tried to count the number of red files at the next desk of Obliviator Poole, Seamus rolled his eyes. "Poole apparently needed a whole week after the last one." She grabbed the oldest red file she could see, underneath a moldy carton of Chinese take out.

"Does he really expect us to? There's a half dozen files here. This poor man's been waiting for assistance two months now."

Seamus grinned, tossing the red file and attached report into their outbox. "He said you have to nap at least an hour between each one. I even made us a bunk." He showed her a ring attached to the linoleum tiled floor under their desk, with a yank it flipped up to show a tiny room below the floor with just enough space and headroom for two sleeping cots.


In hindsight, subsisting on hour long naps while cleaning up after heartbroken witches and wizards was obviously a route towards disaster. Besides erasing the existence of witches and wizards after their lovers rejected the existence of magic, there were: muggle womanizers who found out how dangerous a scorned witch could be, wizard womanizers who labelled muggle women as easy pickings, liaising with St. Mungo's and the Muggle Liaison Office to help medi-witches justify dispensing potions for STIs, filling out adoption paperwork, filling out external womb paperwork, and relocating the temporarily homeless lovelorn.

On their fifteenth file, Seamus got hurt.

"Piss off Hermione!" His partner just flicked his nose in response, then went back to running diagnostics. "It's bad enough you dragged me in here, now you can't even let the healers do their fucking job!" Said healer entered the room and raised an eyebrow at his prone patient trying to yank out Hermione's hair or smack her, without moving his legs. Blaise Zabini cleared his throat to announce his presence. The two Obliviators froze, and Blaise watched with interest as Finnigan's face flushed under his freckles.

"I'll do my job, but I require at least a hello before I get to fucking." The Slytherin smirked as Seamus' blush reddened further. "Oh, you do blush nicely. No circulation problems above the shoulders, but I'm more interested in below." Hermione stepped back and gestured with a little smile.

"All yours Zabini."

The healer started casting over Seamus. "Mine, you say? What a delicious thought, Granger." Then frowned. "How did you shatter both your legs and pelvis?"

Seamus stuttered, "J-jumping, well, a-actually falling. F-from a building, er half a building." Hermione put him out of his misery.

"He tried to tackle one of our cases, and got thrown out a window ten stories up. The spells we managed to get out were too weak to cancel the impact." Blaise handed two doses of Skele-Grow for Seamus to choke down, setting the bones with continuous flicking and swirls of his wand.

"You won't be up to any rough activity, fun or otherwise for a week. Such a shame." Zabini rested a cool hand on Seamus' ankle, then clucked his tongue when his patient jumped. "Easy, baby. Don't wreck my work so soon."

Hermione choked down a snort. She knew when her partner was attracted to a man, hell Seamus wasn't shy about using her as a wing woman to get laid. Blaise Zabini was in a whole other league to what Seamus was used to. Even in school, the man had a reputation as a hedonist of the highest order. The Prophet loved to document, in almost graphic detail, the lavish and romantic details of the socialite's past monogamous and polygamous relationships; speculating on his out of character employment and subsequent single status.

Blaise cast a few more spells to prevent arthritis. "All done. Nothing more than a slow stroll, no strenuous activity for a week and desk duty for two weeks. Got it?" At Seamus' nod. "I'd rather see you often outside an examination room. Though injured a month into a job doesn't bode well, does it love?" He tapped the medical chart then left humming.

Hermione's upside-down brightly grinning face took up his whole field of vision, as Seamus continued laying prone on the examination table, trying to will away the start of an erection. Seamus looked into her whiskey eyes.

"I'm fucked, aren't I?"

"He's assigned to Obliviators. You most likely will be soon."


Perhaps they had kept going because they could escape the nightmares, or get the adrenaline rush after a childhood of peril and abrupt withdrawal, or just making a difference; it sure wasn't to make others look bad in whatever trumped up imaginary competition. Obliviator Poole finally surfaced after almost a full month, and the ranting blowhard was accusing them of… Seamus actually wasn't sure what Obliviator Poole was saying. The man was literally frothing at the mouth in rage, puffing himself up and trying to intimidate by invading personal space. Hermione didn't even look up from the report she was writing.

Seamus shrugged and continued sorting today's batch of the never-ending stream of magically updating files, churned out of a rickety printing press that monitored the interaction of auras between resident British wizard-kin and muggles. They had managed to clear the backlog of red folders past the current month, before they were made aware others were monitoring their closure rate. Hans had re-delegated most of their non-urgent yellow files, and deflected as much politicking as possible, staving off his superiors' glee at having war heroes as his best Obliviator team inside a month.

Senior Obliviator pushed his rotund belly into Seamus the third and last time, igniting the frustration of having desk duty for another two days. Seamus gripped a jovial looking hand on Poole's shoulder, crushing flesh between his fingers while his other hand jabbed his wand against the belly forming a sweat stain in his robes. Speaking low, Seamus snarled out. "Neither Hermione or I give two fucks about closure rate. Get the bloody job done. Enough dosh for a pint and some chips at the end of the day. None of what I said has anything to do with you. So jog on!" Hermione on her part cast a shielded perimeter that pushed blustering Poole away from their desk.

It was enough of an incident that Hans suggested Seamus leave desk duty early for an easy yellow file, and that's how they ended up drinking with an exhausted Marcus Flint at a wizard pub.

"I don't get them. Purse dogs. It shat in her purse." Hermione healed the last niffler scratches from the athlete's face, ignoring Seamus' rambling treatise on domestication and breed functions of dogs. The glittery girlfriend and purse dog obliviated from remembering Flint's pet niffler attacking first the dog, then the girlfriend defending the dog, then Marcus trying to protect his girlfriend's newly botoxed face.

"Well, I'm surprised you're not dating pure-blood witches." His breath warm against her chest, as she peered into the cut to extract a broken-off claw. Hermione sat back trying to shake off the residual warmth of his large hands, supporting her waist when she knelt up on the booth seat to get at a laceration at the top of his scalp. Tugging her robes to cover her suddenly hard nipples.

Marcus raised a bisected eyebrow. "That's a bit prejudiced Granger, after all that effort fighting a war against it."

Seamus chimed in. "You're Sacred Twenty-Eight, mate. And playing both rugby and quidditch? Don't know how you worked that out, by the by. Thought you'd have loads of birds flocking."

Mark nodded and drained half his glass. "Failed my exams, avoiding an arranged marriage and getting out of being marked. They cut me off. No pure-blood bird wants a Sacred Twenty-Eight without the vaults. Mind, not a peddler, earned it honest I did. But I've known most those girls since birth, nearly all of them - harpies."

"I know perfectly nice pure-blood witches." Hermione countered, keeping her eyes focused on Seamus and her beer rather than the flex of Flint's arm right beside her.

"Aye, but none are angling for you to marry and fund their lives. Plus they'd all ask me to give rugby up."

At Hermione's confused expression, Seamus explained. "Wizards actually like rugby, think it's a great laugh, but just a laugh. Only ones serious about it are the Wizarding Supporters of Scottish Rugby Union."

Marcus nodded. "They approached me, see if I wanted to play during quidditch off-season. Tried out and got signed, then they got me an assistant who negotiated my quidditch contract. I'm told when and where I'm supposed to be, and get to play both."

Seamus laughed when he ordered another round for the three of them. "Yeah, and earning loads from both ain't a hardship." Marcus grinned and shrugged, starting on his second Guinness. Not noticing Seamus waggle his eyebrows at Hermione, who was trying to scrunch up against the wall so her thigh wasn't pressed as tightly against their case. Marcus Flint was a big man in general, and her rebellious brain pondered how much she would ache, trying to wrap her legs around his hips while he plowed into her.


Review Reply: In no particular order...

valarm0ghul1s, Lady Evora, sunset oasis: I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter, I hope this chapter was just as good! (In my head) Seamus and Hermione are like a smarter and practical Jack and Rose after the Titanic sank (their friends abandoning them after Voldemort's defeat); they're clinging together to survive on a piece of driftwood.

Aphrodite-Venus-u.k: Marcus is a professional athlete in both the Muggle and Wizard world, specifically he plays for the Scottish Rugby Team, and they have a navy blue uniform. My Marcus fancast in this story is rugby player Dan Carter.

PaigeAdams5972: Thank you for following and reading! I love giving shout outs to the reviewers that take the time to send me their thoughts.