DISCLAIMER

Anything that you recognise is from the brilliant authors of Criminal Minds, particularly Jeff Davis, and the magnificent JK Rowling's universe.

CHAPTER 3 : A chance encounter

Hermione smiled politely at the students exiting the room, wishing that they would hurry up so that she could go home to finish the book on miscarriages of justice she had borrowed from a friend.

Working for the Faculty did have its perks, she thought, as she organised her notes on the social anthropologic nature of collectors. She taught her students to analyse the way the compulsion of collecting mementos from distinctive moments of owns life could be linked to an underdeveloped sense of belonging in a community. As an anthropologist she taught them that to collect or gather precious objects that may seem random to a third party meant that the individual felt a very distinctive need to be close to the moment which the memento alluded to. But as an behavioural analyst she taught them that the persons who collected those mementos have a distinctive pattern in their mind, a map as to how and when those fit into place. It was not dissimilar to the way very young children remember objects that are associated with their parents and can draw the image of said object from memory, but not the face of the parent.

Exiting the building Hermione made her way to her favourite part of the campus, the library, to extend the loan on the book she was currently reading. It wasn't that she had not finished it, she could read 1.500 words per minute, whereas the general individual could only read around 200-250 words, but she found it so interesting that she wanted to read it more in depth : make notes of its most important passages and so on. She did not really need to note quotes as she could remember them from memory, but she liked having the written words around her. And as the book in question was quite expensive and offered in few libraries taking notes was the ideal solution. As she wandered around the campus she reflected upon the fact that she was nearly the same age as all those postgraduates students that were still undertaking classes. But being an overachiever she had already completed an PHD in criminal sciences and a bachelor in anthropology.

Her young age was sometimes a factor of difficulty in the classroom, while she was respected by her peers and her students in general, she sometimes had to remind the ones coming to see her to speak to her in a way that suited her status as a TA. She may be young and could probably relate with them, but she insisted on separating herself from them.

The war had left her weary of very close relationships, especially in the muggle world, as she would have to hide her true self to the person whom she befriended. Of course she was in amicable terms with most of the faculty and in especially good terms with the professor whose classes she often supervised as a TA. But even Angela Donovan was kept at a close distance. It was probably for the best, thought Hermione, as she approached the library.

The building in itself was indistinctive: it was built in the same brownish colour all the founders had seem to prefer, but it was the flow of students going in and out of the building that made it so distinctive. For a fervent reader like Hermione seeing so many students and faculty members walking threw those doors was a beautiful sight. It showed that knowledge still held power, that books still held regard in the eyes of her peers in a world were everything seemed to digitalise. She had no qualms, really, with the advancement of technology, but she felt that nothing could ever beat the feel of paper between her fingers. She loved holding books, the way the creases of the pages from previous readers meant that this knowledge had been shared, appreciated and consumed before her; the smell of old books always bringing a smile on her face. She loved reading and discovering, but teaching had also brought up a new appreciation for admiring the people around her as they immersed themselves in books and lost track of time.

Walking up to the front desk she asked the lady seated there to add a week on from the expiration date of her loan. Hermione knew her well, Emily was a sixty-something-year-old woman with a brown wig, covering the ravages of chemotherapy, and a smile that would disarm the most solemn person. They had bonded over their love of Shakespeare when Hermione first arrived in Seattle, and actually held a monthly tea date where they expanded theories on who would be the next best selling author of the year. As she waited for the computer to start calculating and accepting the request Emily tried to initiate a conversation with Hermione on the new book she was reading, a thriller written by a Venezuelan author whose name she could not pronounce, when the phone rang and she excused herself to respond. Hermione wasn't deterred in the slightest and started perusing the books that the library left on holders in its entrance hall. They were usually books written by Faculty members for whom the library made a sort of promotion. Hermione was surprised to find her book on the bottom rack, a lone copy seemingly forgotten there by students and faculty members passing by. A book Hermione had written under her first name only, not wanting to attract to much attention on herself, but all the same desiring to keep the one thing her dead parents had put a lot of thought into : her name.

She had been surprised, even astonished, to the general enthusiastic, dare she say phenomenal, response she got from readers. The book she had written on the effects of trauma on the mind of pre-pubescent teens, teenagers and young adults, had had a relatively good start at first, and she thought that was all their was to it. But some celebrity she had never heard of, a starlet from a young adult movie, had gushed about her book in a press interview about her daily life and every student and faculty members from her university and the cities surrounding it had immediately rushed to buy the book in question. From then on the sales of The Mind In the Tempest of War had increased to such a level that Hermione had had to change publishers because the little local company that her printed her books could not keep up with the demands. Now a somewhat famous American author, Hermione could not really be anonymous inside her own Faculty.

Which probably explains why one of her favorite contemporary author just tapped on her shoulder:

As Hermione turned around to talk to what she surmised to be a student in need of direction inside of the library she was presented with the face of one David Rossi. The man was exactly as the picture on his book made him appear to be : a perceptive, smart-looking man going through his fifties. But behind that general exterior she was met with a smiling face and inquisitive eyes that she did not expect to ever be set on her.

- "You are Hermione Granger aren't you?" He asked, even though his tone suggested that he was fairly certain that it was the case.

- "Euh…. Yes I am in fact. It is an honour to meet you Mr Rossi." She responded, even though a part of her was astonished that the man knew who she was. She may be famous in the Wizarding World, but in the muggle world Hermione was just a regular TA, with just one book to show for.

- "I have been meaning to talk to you at some point this year", answered the man. "I wanted to discuss with you the reasons you never answered that letter…" he started saying, but Hermione's eyes grew huge as his train of thought and she interrupted him.

- "I am not, nor was I at the time, in a position to accept such an offer. Working for the government has nothing to do with it, before you ask, I just do not think I would appreciate the emotional and physical demands of such a job. Plus I never trained for this.."

- "I understand that you never went through the proper training but the articles the British Ministry made about your capacities would be enough to be considered as a consultant for the BAU." As a said that, Hermione felt the familiar paradoxal dread and excitement course through her: of course she had considered the offer, who wouldn't have? At the time she just had graduated from her first degree after Hogwarts and she was unsure of what to do with her life, so the offer was genuinely interesting. But she stopped her mind from going through that direction again and remembered why she had refused.

She just graduated from a place where the students surrounding her had gone through hell with her. And while she may have used theirs and her own experience to start her book before graduating, she was not ready for this kind of pressure again. The fear of not knowing where the "enemy" could come from, the idea of having to watch over her shoulder every day for the rest of her life had been unappealing at best! It wasn't that Hermione was afraid of taking the job, she was a Griffindor for Merlin's sake! But she was reluctant to add to the list of people who wanted her dead: the war may have had ended in her favour but the world was not a friendly place. Former Death Eaters were still managing to evade the Aurors, and while Hermione felt safe enough in the Muggle world, she was not about to advertise her location.

This particular point had almost made her stop the publication of her book when she suddenly realised the danger she could put on herself, but Harry had convinced her that she should live and live well. So the book was published and Hermione slept with her wand no only under her pillow, which was standard fare for war veterans, but clutched in her hand all night long.

Hermione realised that her thoughts had wondered off and that she wasn't paying attention to the man in front of her. She set about rectifying that and turning the offer, he was sure to make, down for the second time.

But has Hermione set eyes on her book she read the last word that was written on the back cover: "courageous". And that single epithet made her reconsider.

- "Would your offer still stand?" She asked with a sense of foreboding.

The man stopped the description of his deception at her former refusal and answered with a smile:

"Yes, if your candidature is approved by the proper channels, as I am sure it would be, we would love to have you on a freelancer on our team. I use the term loosely you see, as we cannot fully integrate you as an agent, but you would go with us on cases and probably not on the field, definitely not at first, to help us solve those cases."

- "I wouldn't have to come now to see those "proper channels" agents, would I?" Feeling like she was taking a turn in a direction she had forbidden herself to even look to before.

- "No ! I would need to inform them of your application, if you could send me an updated resume, and you would probably be asked to come to an interview in a week's time in Quantico."

Hermione took ten more seconds to take a deep breath and realise the magnitude of what she was agreeing to, and answered with a polite smile - yet nervous, considering what she was about to do.

- "Then I will send my resume and any information you may require as soon as possible. Does the former email address that was written on your letter still exist?"

Rossi had a small smile when he realised she kept the letter. Of course he knew many people would have kept a job offer from the FBI but he felt like this women could have done everything she wanted with her life, and for her to have kept the letter it meant that she really considered the offer.

- "That would be perfect Miss Granger. Now I will not monopolise your time any longer, I will see you in two weeks time." he said with a smile. And just as he had came, he was gone.

Hermione stood there, her book still in her hands, with Emily looking at her strangely. She had probably not expected me to get a job offer from the FBI, thought Hermione with a small smile.

She decided to exit the library and go for a walk to think about what she had just agreed to.

Taking this job offer could be life changing and had the potential to be wonderfully fulfilling; but it meant reopening hold wounds and dealing with a trauma she was not sure she herself had even overcome.

As Spencer settled into the hotel room for the night, he thought about the day he just had. After a relatively quick plane travel to Boston the team had met at the local Police Station to look at the evidence drawn by the officers. But appart from crime scenes photos and a few notes here and there, the board was quite blank.

Spencer had immediately asked for a map of the city to establish a geographical profile while the others had dispatched to the different crime scenes to draw a preliminary profile of the UNSUB. But in the end the locations seemed random, even though Spencer spent frustratingly long hours trying to ascertain a visual or at least sensical pattern to the red dots, but to no avail. The team came back with only one lead: the UNSUB was probably a man given his specific victimology and given the efforts needed to blitz attack his victims without anyone seeing or hearing anything.

The shower drops hitting his back made him groan as he let go of the days frustrations and thought about the bed that awaited him. Exiting the shower he dried himself, brushed his teeth and settled in bed with the book her was currently reading with always the same fascinated expression of his face, a book about the evolutions of teens' minds through war and trauma. What fascinated him the most about the book was that he felt the author had personally gone through war, even though it seemed unlikely, given the picture of the pretty twenty-something that was printed on the cover.

This author seemed very intelligent, and at the same time her picture reflected the image of an attractive young women. An attractive young women, who, at second glance appeared to have suffered some trauma herself.