Chapter Five: Gossip at the Ministry

"I need those forms by Friday so that I can work on them over the weekend. Also, could you contact Solar Whitte on the Third floor and ask him his opinion on the Birch case. After that I need…"

Hermione jumped back abruptly as a door was thrust open in front of her cutting off her path and forcing her to stop immediately or lose the pile of papers clutched in her arms. "Damon finally managed to get the Goblins to let him have a look around the family vault." A man with hair a few shades lighter than black stepped out from behind the door. "They had to promise that all they would be looking for or confiscating was documentation the Blythes might have stored there. I sent Stone to help him bring what he finds to the Ministry. It should be in your office by the end of the day."

"Excellent. Good work, Parker."

The door swung closed and standing suddenly before her was Ron Weasley, red hair, pale skin, blue eyes and all. Hermione's heart jumped to her throat as she stood frozen to the spot. Her mind seemed to come to a screaming halt; unsure if she should march up to him in the middle of the Ministry and give him a piece of her mind, ignore his presences and continue on her way or run to the nearest lou and empty her stomach in the toilet, a prospect which she felt extremely inclined to do. She would have recognized that voice even without seeing him there and she was mortified that it left her standing frozen, unable to make a decision.

"Ms. Granger?" Ramilda Vane tugged at her boss's sleeve in concern. "Ms. Granger, are you alright?" At the sound of her name Ron slowly began to turn, prompting Parker Gale to do so as well. His eyes landed on Hermione and a cold sliver crept into the blue orbs, darkening them to midnight as his chin stiffened. Without bothering to acknowledge her he turned back around and walked away taking Parker with him. Hermione watched him enter the office at the end of the hall and sit on the edge of the desk with his tall back to her, while his partner took a seat in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.

"Ms. Granger?" Ramilda asked tentatively."

"What?" She forced her eyes to leave Ron and focus on her assistant.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine." She restlessly smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from her robes. "Where was I?"

"Wasn't that Ron Weasley?" Ramilda asked, her face a mask of confusion.

Hermione's own chin began to stiffen. "Yes. It was. Like I was saying, talk to Birch and than…"

"He's really filled out since Hogwarts, hasn't he?"

"I wouldn't know." Hermione said, her voice laced with annoyance. "Now, the Denbore Files…"

"You were really good friends with him in school, weren't you? I always saw you with him and Harry Potter. Didn't you help them vanquish Voldemort?"

"What has that got to do with work or the Donbore Files?"

"Well, nothing." She admitted. "But honestly, Hermione; no one around here talks about work all the time." Ramilda had stepped to the side so that she could see down the hallway without interference. "Did you here about him and his kid?"

"No. But I don't think…"

"Honestly?" Ramilda asked in surprise. "Everyone around here's been talking about it for weeks. But than again you weren't here when it happened, were you? I recon its old news now, but still, we don't get many baby drop offs here at the ministry, especially not from Muggle women."

"What are you talking about?"

"Ronald Weasley." She said in a hushed voice. "It's the saddest thing." Ramilda stepped closer to Hermione, taking a quick look around to make sure there was no one there to overhear. "Apparently he fell for this Muggle woman, I think he met her at a Muggle pub. Anyway, the story is that when she found out that he was a wizard, she dropped him flat. Didn't want to have anything to do with our kind. Tore his heart out while she was at it. He hasn't been seen with anyone since it happened. Well, it looks like when she left him she took a little something with her, if you know what I mean, and when she found out the baby was Maggical too she dropped it off here at the Ministry. Now, I wasn't fortunate enough to see this, but apparently when he got the baby he was running through the halls like a madman trying to get the hell out of here before anyone found out about it. Well, it might 've worked only the baby was screaming her head off and drawing the attention of the entire Ministry."

Hermione stared at the younger girl a moment, her eyes scrunched in disbelief. "You're talking about Ron Weasley?"

"Yep."

"The man who was just standing here? In this hallway? With us."

Ramilda rolled her eyes. "Yes. Ronald Weasley. For goodness sake, I know who he is. Everybody around here does. And that was even before the baby arrived."

Brows furrowed, Hermione turned and resumed her journey down the corridor. "That doesn't sound like Ron." She murmured to herself. "Do you know if his mothers heard this rumor?"

"Why would I know that? You're the one who's friends with him and his family." The two women turned off the main corridor and into a smaller passage. "You wouldn't happen to know what his type is, would you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you know what type of woman he's in to? Mot of the girls around here are dying to know."

"Ms. Vane." Hermione snapped curtly. "This is hardly an appropriate discussion to be having at work and I would greatly appreciate it if you never brought it up again. Now, the Denbore Files. I want two copies made of everything. Have them bound and delivered to me in my office by half two." Hermione handed over half the stacks of paper she was carrying. "When you're finished with these tasks I have a few more I would like you to take care of."

Sensing that she had overstepped her bounds, Ramilda accepted the papers quietly. "Yes Ms. Granger."

Turning briskly on her heal Hermione left Ramilda and continued on to her office, concentrating fully on keeping her anger in check. Ramilda Vane was just as obnoxious and noisy as she had been at Hogwarts. She thrust open the door to her office and slammed it closed behind her. She banged the stack of papers down on her desk. With hands planted on her hips she strode briskly back and forth between the two ends of her office attempting to work off some of her unfounded anger. She knew it wasn't Ramilda Vane's fault she was angry, though she would have felt a lot better is she could blame it on the girls gossiping, but it would have been a lie and Hermione did not abide by lying. Ramilda had merely fed the fire that was already smoldering in her gut. She was angry at Ron for, well, for everything. But the person she was really angry with was herself. First for the reaction she had when she saw Ron in the hallway and secondly for the way she had wanted to defend him and curse Ramilda for the lies she was almost certain the girl was repeating. Most rumors were utter rubbish after all weren't they? And this one was one of the worst she had heard yet.

But she couldn't completely discredit the girl. Ginny had said at her welcome home party that Ron had a baby. How could she forget? It was a thought that was constantly on her mind despite her efforts to keep it out. And what if what Ramilda said was true? All of it? She had no way of knowing. She couldn't just come out and ask any of the Weasleys, not even Ginny. How would one go about broaching that particular topic? Plus, she had ceased worrying about Ron and his reputation long ago and asking about the rumors was all but saying that she hadn't. Ginny had already insinuated that she was still harboring feelings for Ron and Hermione wouldn't give her anymore credence for that particular belief.

Feeling exhausted Hermione collapsed into her seat. Leaning forward she folded her fingers together and rested her elbows on the desk. She closed her eyes and rested her brow against her knuckles, rubbing her thumbs back and forth against her eyes. There was a soft knock at her door. "Come in Harry." She called without looking up.

The door creaked as it opened. "How did you know it was me?"

Hermione sighed as she looked up, letting her hands fall gracefully to the table top. "You're the only person I know who knocks in that pattern."

"Really?" Harry's brow arched with interest. "I had no idea." He dropped a paper sack on her desk as he took the seat across from her. "Ginny sent lunch for you. She seemed to think you wouldn't stop to take it unless I brought it here and watched you eat it."

"I don't need a Nanny."

"Have you eaten?"

"No."

"Than I think Ginny's assumption wasn't far off." He nudged the bag toward Hermione and waited for her to take it and open it up before he continued. "You don't look so great. What happened?"

Hermione stopped momentarily with her hand stuffed inside the brown sack. "I saw Ron." She pulled out a sandwich, an apple, a plastic sack of carrots and a bottle of soda that Harry like to keep around the house. "I almost ran into him in fact."

"Ah." Harry nodded. "That would explain it." He watched Hermione unwrap her sandwich and bite off a corner. "I'm surprised this is the first you've seen him in the week and a half you've been working. The Ministry's not that big."

"Yes, well…" She took another bite. "It's no secret he's doing his best to avoid me now is it. Is he even aware that Ginny is hurt that he stopped bringing the baby for her to watch?"

Harry shrugged. "He has his reasons."

"Care to enlighten me?"

"I don't know them."

"Please." Hermione set down her sandwich to open her soda.

"I'm his best friend Hermione, not his diary. He doesn't share everything with me."

Hermione stopped with the bottle lifted halfway to her lips. "So you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Nothing." she smiled reassuringly. "It doesn't matter." She took a greedy gulp from the bottle before setting it aside. "I'm going flat hunting after work."

"There's no hurry."

"I know there isn't." Hermione agreed. "And I really appreciate you letting me stay with you, but… I want my own place. I want to unpack my books and furniture and I want to paint my walls. I love doing that you know. You should have seen my flat in Madrid. Finding the right color for a room is like finding the right word to end an essay. When you find it its exhilarating."

"Not quite the analogy I would have used, but I get the point." Harry stole a carrot and popped it in his mouth. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No." Hermione shook her head. "You go home and spend time with your family. And keep your wife off her feet. There's no need for her to work like she does when magic will work just as well."

"Did I just here right? Did miss 'Always use the Muggle way when possible' encourage the use of magic for common house hold chores?"

"Well you won't clean the house and Gin won't let it get dirty, thank God, so yes, she should be using magic."

"Hermione," Harry leaned forward in his chair, "Let me fill you in on something that you might not be aware of. My wife is terrifying when she is pregnant."

"Excuse me?"

"Not all the time." Harry assured. "And I'm the usually the only one to see it. But when Ginny is pregnant she wants things done a certain way and gets very upset when they're not. When she's pregnant nothing is ever clean enough and I don't know how to do it right. So we learned with Si that it was better if I didn't even attempt to do any cleaning because Ginny would have to redo it anyway and would only work herself up over it in the process so that by the time she was done she would take it out on me, usually with a well placed hex. I love my wife, and I wouldn't change anything about her, but I know when not to interfere. And house cleaning is one of those times. After the baby's born things will return to normal and I'll start housecleaning again, but until than I'll stay out of her way."

Hermione sighed heavily as she took a large bite of her sandwich.

"What?"

Hermione met his eyes and he saw a trace of sadness there. "Nothing."

"Hermione…"

"Honestly, it's nothing. I just…I want what you have."

"A pregnant wife?"

"No." Hermione laughed looking away. "I want someone who loves me like you love Ginny. Someone who knows me well enough to anticipate my needs like you do hers."

"Hey," Harry reached across the desk and patted her hand. "You'll find someone."

"Yeah, but I want it now. I always thought I'd me married by now and at the very least expecting my first child. And seeing you and Ginny together, the way that you are…it makes me realize how much I really want what you two have."

"Hermione, I've known Ginny since she was eleven years old. Even if you met Mr. Right tomorrow it would still take you years to get to where we are."

"I know." She agreed. "But that doesn't stop me from wanting it."

"Well, I know a Weasley who's always in search of a good, highly organized, very talented witch to be his girlfriend."

"Harry…"

"Percy." Harry smiled cheekily. "Who did you think I was talking about?"

"I think it's time you get back to work Harry Potter. You know where the door is."

Harry rose easily to his feet. Can I trust you to finish your lunch without my supervision?"

"Yes Daddy." She said sardonically.

"All right than. I'll tell your mother you won't be in until dinner."

"Thanks Harry." Hermione nodded. "That sounds good."

"Have fun flat shopping." he said as he closed the door.

"So what was that about?" Parker followed Ron into his office and closed the door behind him.

"What was what about?" Ron asked picking up a file that had been left for him in the working area of his desk. He flipped open the cover and found Damon's notes neatly written inside.

"That girl in the hallway?"

Ron looked up from the page he was reading, "Which girl exactly?"

Parker frowned at his old partner. "You know which one I'm talking about."

"She's just a girl I knew at Hogwarts."

"Wait. Didn't…Granger? That was Hermione Granger?" Parker took the sideward twitch of Ron's lips to mean yes. "She doesn't look anything like I remember."

Sighing, Ron sank into his chair. "That's what five years in Spain will do to a person."

"No kidding? She looks gorgeous."

"Hmm." Ron set down the file. "When will the actual documents get here? I want to look over them myself."

"Don't you trust Damon and Stone?"

"Of course I do. But this isn't just a case anymore, it's a little more personal than that."

"Ron…"

"I don't care how many people see a document before I do; I'm going to look over it myself."

"What exactly are you looking for?"

Ron sighed, folding his hand over the file. "I'm looking for anyone who might possibly have a claim on that little girl."

"It sounds like a lot of extra work for a kid you never wanted."

Ron grunted. "Yeah well, she's grown on me."

"So I gathered. Never thought I'd see the day but I'm not afraid to tell you I'm glad I did."

"What's that suppose to mean?"

"Ron, we've been friends for a while now, so despite the fact that you're my superior, I'm going to be blunt with you. You need to lighten up. You've been about the job and proving yourself since I met you. And I'm okay with that. We do important work, and I'm glad you're as focused as you are. You've saved my sorry arse more than once because of it. But Ron, you never have any fun. How many girls have I tried to introduce you to over the past five years? Huh? How many have you actually met? Yeah," he said when Ron didn't answer, "That's not a good ratio. You've done it Ron. You've proved yourself. You rose fast through the ranks. You're there. As far as your career goes your next step is Greene's job and until he retires there's nothing more you can do. So why don't you go out and have some fun?"

"I go out."

"Spending time with Potter and your sister don't count."

"I'm happy with my life as it is. I'm not looking to start any new relationships."

"Bloody hell Ron. Who ever she was, it was five years ago. Get over it, mate."

"I am over it."

"The facts say otherwise."

Ron's fingers tightened around the page he was holding, crumpling it slightly. "Don't you have a job you should be doing?"

"And there you go resorting to anger, a sure sign that I've said something you don't like. Look, I might not have been friends with you as long as Harry Potter has, but there is a reason why we work so well as a team. Because you and I, we understand each other. So before you try lying to me again, remember that I can see through it and it won't work. I'd consider myself a poor partner if I didn't."

"Well," Ron unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair. "Now that you have that off your chest, are there any updates on the Allan murders?"

"No sir. Banning hasn't turned in his daily report as of yet. Nor have I heard from Mathews or Jones. Winston is set to arrive in," he glanced at his watch, "ten minutes with a full report on the Bakers. And Williams and Schue have been in the office all day catching up on paper work."

"And Blume?"

"Called in for another meeting with the Board."

"Damn it." Ron slammed a fist on the arm of his chair. "Can't they just leave the boy alone? There's nothing that he could have done differently. Greene and I are both satisfied with his work and have reprimanded him, what more do they want?"

"To make sure it doesn't happen again."

"So why haven't they called me. It was as much my fault as it was his."

"They don't see it that way."

"Well I do!" Ron slammed his hand down on the table before he pushed to his feet and began pacing the length of his office. "There's a little girl living with me right now because I was too careless. I've always demanded a certain standard of diligence and thoroughness and I let that standard slip and she's the one who suffered. It isn't me. She's the one who's going to suffer for the rest of her life. Where's my reprimand? Where's my punishment for allowing this to happen to her?"

"I thought her staying with you was your punishment."

Ron came to a stop beside his magiced window and stared out at the artificial landscape beyond. "It might have started out that way but it stopped being a punishment a few weeks ago."

"Did it?" Parker asked. "It sounds to me like it's eating you up inside. It sounds to me like the knowledge that she'll be an orphan for the rest of her life is going to bother you more than it will ever bother her."

"No." Ron shook his head thinking of Harry. "Kids never get over loosing their parents, no matter how young they were when they lost them or how old they grow to be."

"She isn't Harry."

Ron finally turned away from the window to look at his friend. "In this case she might as well be. It's going to affect her the same way it affected him."

"She's going to have a crazed Dark Lord coming after her?"

Ron scowled in annoyance at his cheek. "No. She's going to miss having parents. She's going to resent the fact that they were taken away from her and that she won't have a single memory of them. She'll miss all the holidays they never had and all the birthdays they never celebrated together. When it comes time for her to go to Hogwarts she'll want to know what her parents were like. What house they were from. Did they play Quidditch? Were they particularly good at any form of magic? There is nobody to give her those answers. We took away those memories and we can't give them back. That's how it's going to affect her. The same way it affected Harry. I watched him go through that first hand and I don't want the same for her. I would give anything to give those memories back, but I can't. So you're right. I am obsessed with her case. But I don't know how not to be."

"Jesus Christ Ron," Parker stared at him with sudden understanding. "You haven't opened up to me like that since we first started training. You can't keep all that pent up inside you. You can't concentrate with all that going on in your head."

"I know. It's one of the reasons I've been so stressed lately. I need to close this case. I need to move on. But I can't do that until her situation is settled. Which is why I will thoroughly look over every scrap of information we gather so that we don't miss anything. I don't want some mystery person coming back to bite us in the arse some years down the line because they have a claim to her."

A Note From the Author:

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so forgive me if I ramble a little bit. I know that I haven't expressed my appreciation to you in hard copy in the last four chapters. And I'm sorry for that. For those of you who reviewed, I hope you got my responses. Your reviews honestly mean so much to me. They spur me on to keep writing and working when I'm not particularly motivated and I really take everything you say to heart. One of the main reasons I do this is that I want to become a better writer and getting valuable feedback from you, good or bad, makes all the difference in the world. Oh, side note. I know I have terrible spelling. I work on really hard but I just miss it. So please forgive me on that. To everyone else, thank you so much for reading my story. It's honestly the greatest thrill for me to know that there are people out there who appreciate what I do. You are the reason that I keep on doing this, even though the seventh book is long over now. I really hope you enjoyed this chapter and I will try my best to get up the next one as quickly as I can. Some of you know I wasn't planning on getting this up so soon, but I grew tired of working on my Thesis and I took a little break that lasted quite a bit longer than it should have. I tell you this so that if you don't hear from me in a while it isn't because I've abandoned my story, it's because I'm working on my Thesis. Anyway, happy reading and hopefully I'll see you all next chapter. Noterwomann