Chapter Two

January 2006

The rapid clicking of heels on hard flooring echoed throughout the vacant atrium of the Ministry. Without fail, a mass exodus of the wizards and witches who were employed at various levels within their government occurred promptly at five o'clock each and every day, Monday through Friday. By the time six o'clock rolled around, the impossibly well hidden building in central London with its vast levels filled with a labyrinth of corridors, was a ghost town. Very few employees stayed longer than was required. Usually all that could be found from the quitting hour on, were the unfortunate few in law enforcement who had rotated to the night shift, the still dewy eyed, youths fresh from Hogwarts who still believed that by putting in enough hours of dedicated work, that they could make a change in their world, and the ambitious few who had their eyes on the ultimate prize of making department head and later Minister.

The eerie emptiness of it all made it the perfect meeting place for back room deals. An occurrence whose irony was not lost on Hermione as she pushed back the sleeve of her blouse to check the time as she arrived at the lift bank. Shaking her watch and bracelet back down after confirming that she was still prompt as ever for her clandestine meeting with Wizarding Britain's most outstanding Minister in history, she stepped into one of the lifts and wrestled the cage door closed.

Pressing the button for the floor that held Kingsley's second, more restricted, office, she offered her wand to be scanned by a magical eye not unlike the one Professor Moody had worn for identification before moving her leather satchel handbag up on her arm as she grabbed ahold of one of the support ropes. Taking off with a jolt, she counted the floors she passed and the wings the lift navigated through, having taken the exact course she was on, numerous times.

Her job was a creation of her own making — or rather a merging of her muggle roots with her wizarding life, the magical world surprisingly lacking in the field of her hybrid profession — and was always new and exciting. It offered her the opportunity to use and flex skills that were inherent to her nature. She was an observer, a problem solver, a fixer as muggles — and now witches and wizards — called it. There wasn't a puzzle she couldn't solve, an idea she couldn't bend, or an image she couldn't spin to suit her client's narrative and needs. Since she was twelve years old she had been crafting pictures and stories to support whatever she, Harry, and Ron had needed others to believe. And upon the conclusion of the war, she took her unique skill set and decided to turn it into a career, fast-tracking her education in order to achieve her ambition ahead of her five year plan.

She had returned to Hogwarts for her final year to sit her NEWTs and despite her early hesitancy of leaving Lavender behind — who like the rest of them, had been left shell shocked and fragile in the wake of the war's end — she had ended up completing them with marks of Outstanding in four months instead of ten. Following the winter holidays, she had enrolled herself at a university in Muggle Edinburgh and began studying mass communication and public relations. And in the fall of that same year, she had added studying magical law — where she became reacquainted with Lavendar's ex-boyfriend, Blaise Zabini — to her course load at the university's wizarding counterpart, completing her law degree a year ahead of projection and her muggle undergraduate, a year and a half early.

Then at the impressively young age of twenty-one — almost twenty-two by the time the renovations on their historic office front were complete — she and Blaise had pulled together a portion of his inheritance with part of her Order of Merlin First Class monetary award, and opened up, Golden Fire Solutions. Like most new businesses, things had started out slow with her often wondering if they had made a mistake in their joint venture. However, by the first anniversary of opening their crisis management firm, they had a continuous delivery of owls from those seeking their help in handling their problems and a retained client list that ranged from Harry to several of the British and Irish Quidditch League's most notorious bad boys to the infamous and alleged Madem of Knockturn to the Minister of Magic himself, whom she was on her way to once again handle.

"Arriving; sub-level seven; restricted access. Please verify identity to open lift gates," the normally cheery, disembodied voice ordered.

Holding out her 9 ⅞ rowan wood and dragon heartstring wand — which had replaced her vine wood following its loss in the war — for a second time, Hermione waited as the all seeing eye first studied it, then her, before allowing the gate to open. Going down the only available corridor, the powerful clicking of her red soled heels resumed. Pushing open the lone door, she stepped into Kings's more comfortably appointed office, her arrival going unnoticed in the face of his heated argument.

"I see negotiations are going well," she dryly commented, holding out her hand for the three fingers worth of topshelf firewhiskey Blaise has just poured over ice for himself.

Drinking from the glass with a cheeky wink, he retorted, "Oh yeah, I think they'll come out as life long mates after this one," before handing the half empty tumbler to her.

She held the crystal glass up to her nose and took an indulgent inhale of the Ogden's Highland barreled reserve. Bringing the glass to her lips, she took a delicate sip, letting the amber liquor rest along her tongue so that the depth and layers of flavor could individually be savored. Humming as she swallowed, she handed the rest of the contents back to her friend and made her way over to the leather club chairs where Kingsley sat embroiled in a verbal war with his own friend turned blackmailer. Without a word, she extracted a file from within her purse and began dropping wizarding developed photographs onto the coffee table one at a time until she had their attention.

"What is the meaning of this?" Mathers demanded, the color leaching from his face as he took notice of just what sat between him and Kingsley.

"That, Mr. Mathers," she answered, pointing to a particularly salacious photo of the wizard in question bent over a spanking bench with an adult diaper around his ankles and a pacifier gag in his mouth, "is you, at Fallen From Grace in Birmingham last Tuesday with Mummy June." Pulling out more photos, she continued, "And you again on the Winter Solstice wearing a rather darling bib; you and Daddy Roger — honestly one would think given the scenes you two partake in he could have come up with a more creative name than that — engaging in a bit of oral cock warming; and my personal favorite, you and Kings just last November both in leather cuffs while kneeling and awaiting Mistress Rose's inspection."

Slowly turning the photos over, Mathers looked up at her and with his earlier hostility evaporated asked in a trembling voice, "What do you plan to do with those?"

"Nothing more than what you yourself planned to do to Minister Shacklebolt after finding out Mistress Rose preferred playing with him over you.

"I'll blackmail you, assuring mutual destruction should your information of Kingsley's private and consensual sexual activities ever come to light. Yes, he will be ousted as Minister and made into a caricature of a politician for years, if not generations, to come, but so will you, Mr. Mathers. And when people all across Wizarding Britain are asking how you came about your information, I will be only too happy to facilitate them with that knowledge, thus ending your own dream of one day claiming his office for your own."

Brushing the litter of photographs away, Hermione came to sit before him on the coffee table, her skirt pulling tightly over her thighs. Lifting her sharp heeled foot, she pushed it into his chest, sending him back into his chair as she quietly demanded him to answer, "Are you willing to cooperate now, Mr. Mathers? Or will I have to find other, more corporeal and humiliating ways with which to deal with you."

"No, Mistress Granger," he meekly replied, his eyes shifting between the nude colored heel she wore, the creeping exposure of her thigh as her charcoal grey skirt rode up, and the deep V of her royal blue blouse exposing what would otherwise be too obscene of an amount of her chest to be considered professional if not for the layers of gold necklaces she wore.

"That's a good lad," she cooed, shoving him back further with her foot, his armchair scuffing the floor as it moved with him. Standing up, she waved her wand over the collection of photographs to replace them in the folder. Dropping it to the floor, she commanded, "Now, pick that up, you unworthy, baby carrot prick of a wizard, and crawl out of here on your hands and knees. Daddy Roger and Mummy June are expecting you at the club where you'll begin to receive your punishment for what you've tried to pull here this evening."

Sinking to the floor and kissing the toe of her heels, he submissively complied, "Yes, Mistress," holding the folder in his teeth as he crawled and tripped over his robes on his way out of the office.

Once he was gone, Kingsley stood up and grasped her shoulders, bringing her in to kiss each of her cheeks as his deep and rich voice said, "Thank you, Hermione. I truly do not know what I would do without you. I already have the bank note ready for Gringotts, so your fee should be wired by the time you and Blaise return to Edinburgh."

"It's on the house, Kings," she dismissed, waving him off. "Consider it your free service for completing your frequent shopper punch card. Or if you feel you must pay us, hire us the next time you're in the market for a new Domme. You know there is very little we will not do in service to you as our client and less still since you're my friend."

"It's awkward having to discuss these things with you. I've known you since you wore your hair in plaited bunches over your shoulders."

"Kings, I still wear my hair in plaited bunches," she laughed.

"And trust me," Blaise said, tucking a bottle of the special reserve Scottish firewhiskey under his arm. "Seeing those photos of you, is way more awkward than having to just discuss your limits and preferences in order to vet potential Dommes for you. Not to mention, I'm truly terrified of whatever things Lavender saw while there that she now wants to try out. So in preparation of possibly becoming her, 'good boy,' tonight, I'm taking this as restitution for undue trauma and stress," he chuckled.

Giving Kingsley a hug as they walked to the office's fireplace, Hermione quipped, "Next time you want to meet up for dinner, just send an owl or floo call. No need to pay through the nose for our services when a dinner out is a fraction of the cost and infinitely more pleasurable for all involved."

"I'll try to remember that," he laughed with a kiss to the top of her head. "You two have a good night; tell Lav I say, 'hi;' and again, thank you both. I would not have survived my first reelection without you two, let alone be entering a race for a third term as Minister with such high approval ratings."

"No need to thank us," Blaise said, before amending, "Unless we're talking about Highland barreled firewhiskey. In which case, I would like my payment to arrive by the case, not the bottle."

Pushing the tawny complected Italian into the hearth, Hermione grabbed a pinch of the powder as she bid Kingsley a final farewell, and called out, "Golden Fire Solutions, Edinburgh," launching them into a swirling, body warping, cone of emerald flames.

Stepping out into their reception area as Lavender was blown in through the front door by the brewing winter windstorm, Blaise rushed over to relieve his better half of their takeaway bags, kissing her as if it had been weeks since he'd last seen her and not less than three hours. Hermione had become rather cynical about the notion of love the summer following the heart shattering end to her relationship with Marcus Flint. Though she was only newly sixteen at the time in light of the spare few weeks she added to her age following her third year, the way he had so easily left and forgot her had set a deep imprint within her head and heart. She didn't believe love was in the cards for everyone anymore, instead recognizing it for what it was, a chemical reaction in the brain. However, Blaise and Lavender were the walking, talking, shiningly devoted exception to the rule that proved her theory.

Her stunningly beautiful blonde friend — whom many mistakenly believed to be dim witted and vapid when witnessing her insecurity at play — had started a romance their fifth year with the equally striking and devastating Slytherin. The two were nearly inseparable, their relationship carrying and growing all the way through the war. However, when Lavender had been mauled by Greyback — the attack resulting in half her face, neck, and chest scarring with permanent rakes of his claws — and subsequently saved by Blaise during the Battle of Hogwarts as history had come to call it, the blonde had broken things off with him, unable to face him with what she considered to be imperfections too vast for anyone to overlook.

When Hermione and Blaise had ended up not only in law school together but in the same block of first semester classes a year later, the friendship they had that only existed because of their shared love for Lavender, grew into one that could exist without her. Having their own common interests though didn't stop him from obsessively asking after his former girlfriend. Anytime Hermione had returned from visiting her in London or her dove grey owl arrived with letters or care packages, he was there reading over her shoulder, digging through boxes hoping to find something that the scent of her perfume had clung to, or begging for recounted details of what she was up to while in secretarial school.

Despite her friend's sudden rebuffing of him, Blaise had still loved her and waited for her, hoping that with time she would adjust to her new appearance and accept that he found her even more beautiful for how courageous she had been. His undying devotion had endeared him even more to Hermione until she found her cynical self helping orchestra an elaborate trap to get the two pinning lovebirds locked in a room together to hash out what had gone wrong between them. And before their second — and last — year of law school had commenced, she had stood by his and Lavender's side, as she performed their unity rites, tying them together in magical matrimony.

Setting the takeaway on the corner of his wife's desk, Blaise helped Lavender out of her coat with a kiss to the scarred side of her neck and a hand caressing her five months swollen belly, saying, "Go warm up in the war room, tesoro. I'll get the plates from the kitchen and bring the food and the new requests in. You've been on your feet in those heels of yours too long today."

"Blaise, I'm pregnant, not an invalid," she protested, making Hermione curl her lips in against her bubbling laughter.

Her friend might complain, but they all knew she secretly loved the way her husband would obsessively fret and dote over her. Proving the knowledge true, the blonde's pout turned into a pleased smile as she kissed her husband's full lips one more time before stepping out of her shoes and padding up the stairs to the high windowed room, she had jokingly dubbed the war room because it was where they reviewed potential clients and made plans of attack for those they took on.

"Merlin, you two are a sickeningly perfect couple," Hermione smirked, opening up one of the floor to ceiling cupboards behind Lavender's desk that hid the eye sore that was their filing cabinets. "I mean truly, I think you just gave me a cavity with how sweet that was."

"Laugh all you want, Granger," Blaise replied, ducking into his office to pull out a vase of Lavender's favorite flowers that he had stashed that afternoon. "One day you're going to realize just how much more than an occasional dinner and shag Ades desires to have with you or you're going to meet a bloke who will turn that pretty, overly rational head of yours. Either way, the next thing you'll know, you'll be turned into a simpering, dream clouded, fool in love like the rest of us."

Kicking off her own shoes and losing nearly four and a half inches of her height, she collected the new dossiers they had received that day in a basket and started to follow him up the stairs, derisively saying, "That will never happen," tacking on a silent, again.

Dropping the basket onto the oblong table in front of an empty seat beside Lavender and falling into one of the chairs with her legs thrown over the arm, she exchanged a knowing look with her friend, the two witches loudly calling out, "Not it!" catching the literal odd wizard out off guard as he had been scooping a heaping pile of char siu barbecued pork out of a container and onto a plate for his wife.

"Damn it!" he swore. "I hate it when you two do that. I mean at least if you're going to tag team me, I should get the full sister wives experience."

"Sweetheart, while you may be a stallion in the sheets, you couldn't handle the both of us without pulling a muscle or straining your cock and I'm a little too addicted to it these days to risk it," Lavender laughed, accepting the plate.

" These days?" Hermione jested. "Do you forget how you got in your delicate condition?"

"Piss off," she laughed, throwing a green bean at her.

"You two broke the table!" Hermione exclaimed for what was probably the hundredth time, her hands spanning out to gesture towards the war room's hardly six month old replacement.

Snatching the first dossier from the pile and proceeding to leave greasy fingerprints on the black file, Blaise grumbled, "I don't see what the big deal is. I bought us a new one, didn't I?" Looking at the folder as the two women laughed, he remarked, "Oh Merlin, yes! We are so taking this one. At a minimum it's a three month retainer but probably six. Not to mention he's a client of Ades so we'd be doing Pucey a solid, therefore making a dent in that pile of favors we owe him," flicking his wand so that the contents within spread out and stuck themselves to the windows.

The few bites of food Hermione had ingested turned sour as a face she hadn't been able to escape for the last ten years stared back at her. In a position meant to command their attention as they worked, Marcus Flint's crinkling blue-green eyes appeared to track her suddenly still form as the photo's loop continually showed his full lips pulling back in a captivating smile to reveal his partially crooked teeth — no amount of magical dental cosmetics having been able to fully correct the mess of overcrowding he had suffered from as teenager in light of how often his face was hit with bludgers. Setting her plate down, she couldn't help but scan the most recent tabloid recounts of his numerous and never ending exploits as Montrose's, and the British and Irish League at large, most notorious and infamous bad boy chaser.

Paparazzi camera smashing; pub and pitch brawls; no less than six different witches on his arm over the span of time between the Winter Solstice and the third day of the New Year; drunken disorderly shenanigans such as swimming naked in a fountain on New Year's Eve while drinking out of a magnum sized champagne bottle were captured and highlighted for them to study. The boy she had lost her heart to was not the man before her whose life was lived in front of the media's lens. The wizard she had fallen in love with had been shy and unsure, not the womanizing cad he had become since making her his first conquest.

Ten years later, he remained the one puzzle she couldn't figure out. Who was the real Marcus Flint? Was he the discounted boy who had treated her as if she were a singular treasure, fawning over her intelligence when others had mocked her for it? The one who had bought her a house upon his second graduation and promised her a lifetime of love? Or was he the cruel and callous person who had left her the morning after he had gotten into her knickers, with a scrap of parchment that had answered none of the no less than a thousand questions that had sprung up in light of his absence under a ring she stupidly still wore around her neck or affixed to her bracelet? The one who three months later, had begun gracing the sports section of the Daily Prophet as well as the gossip columns of Witch Weekly for both his stellar skill on a broom, flying for the Ibizan Hounds in Spain and his insatiable nightlife and bed hopping between witches? And just when she had thought she had finally come to a place where she could accept that she would never know and that her heart had been irreparably broken, he had returned to Scotland, playing for the Montrose Magpies as he had told her he would, the first season following the true defeat of Voldemort; his presence an inescapable ghost in her life.

"No," she quietly answered, finally ripping her gaze away from the angel wings tattooed along the muscular expanse of Marcus's back and the petite brunette who had joined him in his illicit New Year's Eve swim.

"No? What do you mean, no?"

"Blaise, no," Lavender reiterated, grabbing the wine bottle and refilling Hermione's glass well beyond that of a standard serving.

"He's a fucking train wreck whose contract is up with the conclusion of this season and no word on new offers. I'm telling you, three months of image rehab at a minimum . It'll be laughingly easy and lucrative for us. Get him cleaned up in time for the National selection and help him secure a new contract. In and out, nothing to it."

"No!" Both witches shouted at him.

"What am I missing here? You two haven't even looked it over. I know he's a handful but he was always a good bloke, if a bit of a quaffle head, in school. Plus, he's one of Adrian's. We always help out his clients when needed."

Guzzling half the glass, Hermione licked her lips as she met the blue eyes of her friend and confirmed, "You never told him?"

Sounding offended by the very idea, Lavender scoffed, "Like you even have to ask. Of course I never told him! You and me to the end, babe. Our secrets and the bodies we've buried forever remain between us."

"Okay, I've officially lost the plot here. What the bloody hell do you two have against Flint?"

Inelegantly finishing off the rest of her wine and pouring herself another glass, Hermione started and stopped several times in attempting to answer him before nodding to Lavender to do so.

"You remember how he repeated his seventh year?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Hermione was his appointed tutor that year and the two of them became… romantically involved," she settled on with a shrug, clearly not liking the term to describe their relationship.

"Oh fuck…" Blaise swore, summoning the firewhiskey he had pilfered from Kingsley and opening it up to pour her a generous glass in exchange for her wine. "Something tells me this is much more suitable for this story than wine."

Not bothering with savoring the exquisite taste, she took several gulps, cringing at the burn in her throat as she swallowed and continued on in place of her friend.

"When we were released early for the summer holiday after Cedric's murder, I came here to Edinburgh with Marcus. He had told me he was going to sign with the Magpies so he could be closer to me while I finished school, showed me a house he had purchased for us here since it was halfway between Hogwarts and Montrose, and proceeded to divest me of my virginity and I his — or at least I think his, I don't really know anymore given all of this," she said waving her hand at the window Marcus's flaming reputation covered.

"Then like the fucking selfish arsehole he is, he abandoned her in the middle of the night, leaving behind a bloody two sentence long note saying, 'This isn't what I wanted, to leave you behind. I don't know where you'll land when you fly, but angel, you were the love of my life. Forever yours, Marcus.' Further burning up the steaming pile of shite lies he had told her about loving her and wanting to be with her come the fall after a summer of complete silence when his arse and prick were plastered all over Witch Weekly with those hideous, daft, poor imitations of Hermione."

"That's unfair; I'm sure those witches had lovely qualities," she admonished, sipping on the liquor.

"As his ex, you have to be gracious and remain on the high road. As your best friend, I don't. Therefore, I get to call those cows, easy, broom chasing whores-"

"As opposed to the broom chasing whores who make you work for it?" her husband snorted, earning a slap upside the head.

Not losing the stride of her rant though, Lavender continued, "-and him, a small pricked-"

"That's a lie."

" Don't help him, Hermione! We hate him, remember?"

"How can I forget?" she replied flatly, sinking further into her chair as she continued to drink. "He won't let me. I know he hasn't even spared me so much as a fleeting thought in the last ten years, but I swear, it's like he's trying to make sure I never forget him by always making himself into a front page story."

Catching sight of one of the looping pictures as she went to take another drink, her undying hatred which served her well in masking how pathetic she knew she was for still being in love with his memory, flared to life as she yelled, "I can't fucking escape him!" throwing the tumbler of whiskey at his case.

Summoning the photos back to him, Blaise didn't even bother to return them to their folder, instead throwing the liquor soaked pictures and the notes Adrian had provided into the fireplace. Siding with his wife and her best friend, he too jumped aboard their hate powered train and said, "Fuck Flint; he'll be lucky if we don't pour kerosene on his reputation since the media is already chasing him with a lit match."

"Have I told you how much I love you," Lavender cooed, kissing her husband as he pulled out the next file, Hermione only half listening as she watched Marcus's smiling face curl and burn in the flames.