DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns most of the characters and settings here—I own the rest.
Thanks to all reviewers, especially cochran4444. I have meant to make more frequent updates, but the Day Job has indeed intervened. And it's sadly true, I don't make a cent from fanfiction. I do have some non-fanfic published works, but they've not permitted me to retire...yet! As for the potion, it depends on the dose and the size of the person-it will work for about five hours on Hermione, although there are lingering effects, as noted in a previous chapter. Therefore, the ensuing conversation will be...interesting.
On with the show!
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
Chapter 13 - Inklings
"I'm doing quite well, Harry, thank you!" Hermione said, with a weak smile, and really, only Walden-who was watching her rather closely-noted that she was not quite as composed as normal...her voice was a bit shaky and she was gripping rather tightly to the edge of the table.
"Great!" Harry said, in a voice that, Hermione noted, sounded rather forced, but she wrote it off to the formality and awkwardness of the situation. "Mr. Malfoy here and my colleagues will be meeting for a short while, and then taking a brief tour of the Manor," and he gestured to the other two Aurors, Proudfoot and Corner. "After that, Mr. Macnair, I'll be meeting with you-you've been, er, reassigned to me, and as long as you're here, if you don't mind, I'll do your report as well. I've already stopped in and spoken with your father so there's no need for the residential tour today."
"When was Mr. Macnair reassigned to you, Harry? I didn't get a memo on that," Hermione said, as she gripped the table even tighter.
"This week-I did send a memo to your office, but from what I understand, you're on leave?"
"That's correct. I'm here assisting my former clients with their interviews for the Alliance for Magical Unity on a pro-bono basis," Hermione said, as she sat down. "Mr. Macnair and I were, um, just getting started, actually."
"Well, as long as you've got him here," Harry said, with a very odd look at both of them, "I'll go ahead and meet with Mr. Macnair, then. Michael, Benedict...if you'd do the tour with Mr. Malfoy, please?" The two Aurors and Lucius walked from the room, and Lucius began speaking in a noticeably unctuous tone. Hermione repressed the urge to giggle.
"So, er, Mr. Macnair," Harry began. "Although Miss Granger is no longer your official counsel, you may request to have her stay here in the room with you...er, with us...during this interview."
"Aye, I'd prefer that, Mr. Potter," Walden said, as Harry sat down next to Hermione.
"Very well, let's begin, then. Dawlish gave me some notes, and I did glance through them-you were on house arrest with your parents, Gavin and Elspeth Macnair, and you're still maintaining a residence there, correct?"
"Aye," Walden said, as he looked down at the table. Hermione noted that, although he was nominally quite composed, he was gripping the table just a bit as well.
"You've got a Portkey set up to go to Australia, to locate your son, Evan, and all that's in order...and so, it looks you're going to work for the Alliance for Magical Unity?"
"Aye, Mr. Potter, I've thought long and hard about it, and I'm verra passionate about the cause o' magical...unity," Walden said, a slight growl in his voice.
Hermione had to reach for tea and a biscuit so that she wouldn't completely lose her composure. I wonder if there's any way I can politely excuse myself, she thought, and then decided that would be even more suspicious, so she tried to regulate her breathing. Thankfully, Harry wasn't paying much attention to her.
"Um, that's, er, very good to hear, Mr. Macnair," Harry finally said, after a long, slightly awkward pause. "Can you tell me about what you'll be...er...specifically doing?"
"The main thrust of the organization is ta create a fertile environment for the flowering and growth of the wizarding world...ta help rebuild from the ashes, ye know," Walden continued. "I'm startin' off slowly with these interviews, gettin' worked up for the main event..." If he's going to keep this up, Hermione thought, we may as well just shag in the middle of the tea table and have done. He'd told her that the potion didn't force lust-that wasn't Lucius' style-it simply focused the drinkers' attention on sex and then amplified the pleasure when a connection (or connections) occurred, and allowed for wizards to keep going as long as they wished without the usual constraints...it had been something like eight times in a row when they'd taken the potion before, she recalled, and each time had been more intense than the last...the very last time, in fact, he'd bent her over the sink after she'd gone into the bathroom to splash some water on her face...she'd glanced at their reflection in the mirror and it had been quite overwhelming-his muscular, tattooed arms enveloped her, and his broad hands cupped her breasts...and in time with his agonizingly slow thrusts, he'd been pinching ever-so-softly at her...
"Uh, Hermione?" Harry asked. "These interviews are to what purpose, can you confirm?"
"Er...a book, to be entitled Inside the Dark Arts, featuring exclusive interviews with a number of former Death Eaters," she hastily stated, looking into her tea. The leaves swirled around in a pattern, headed for the bottom of the cup, and she was reminded of the completely pointless Divination class...not that anyone, least of all Trelawney, could have predicted where she'd be sitting today. "It's all Mr. Malfoy's idea, both that and the Alliance," she added. "He wishes to give back to the wizarding community-the idea is that he and the others will, er, make themselves available for lectures and talks..." She wasn't entirely sure if that was precisely what was going on-Lucius had been maddeningly vague-but it sounded good enough. Harry was making notations using one of her charmed quills, nodding at her to continue. "Er, lectures and talks, to be given at Hogwarts and any other educational institution that requests them." She went out on a limb with her next statement, but it sounded legitimate enough. "From what I understand, Durmstrang Academy has already expressed interest, as well as, er, Ilvermorny, in the United States." She knew very little about the latter school. Walden had told her that although his wife had been a teacher, she'd been employed at the decidedly down-market Salem Witches' Institute, which was a college of further education for witches, mostly Muggle-born and of closer to university age. As for Durmstrang, despite her innocent dalliance with Viktor, she knew close to nothing about the place...and as she continued to think about him, her mind was filled with the rather improbable image of her sandwiched between Walden and the Bulgarian Seeker, all of them sighing with pleasure. She hastily sipped at her tea to cover her growing embarrassment, and reached for another biscuit. As she did, she felt Walden's foot nudging at hers, and as she quickly glanced up at him, he winked at her.
"Very good," said Harry, who, by now, had to be either completely oblivious to the undercurrents or pretending. "So, er, Mr. Macnair, what are your thoughts on the Restricted Wand Program?"
"Me wand's been workin' verra well recently," Walden said. It certainly has, thought Hermione. "Do ye need to see it?"
"No, you're not due for monitoring until after your return Portkey. I think I've probably got everything I need from you for right now-just make sure you check in with me straightaway when you get back from Australia," Harry said, and then he reached over for a cup of tea. "Hermione, mind if I speak to you privately for a moment?"
Walden stood up from the table and said, "I'll clear out and be back in a bit," and he nodded at both of them. I bet he's going off to have a wank, Hermione thought, and the mental image that thought produced made her blush uncontrollably...considering that he had done exactly that in front of her the previous evening, at her request. Luckily, Harry had stood up and walked around the table to shake Walden's hand, telling him that he appreciated his cooperation, so he didn't notice. Hermione took this opportunity to surreptitiously flick her wand over herself to get rid of her blush and calm herself down. It only partially worked.
Once Walden had departed, Harry waved his wand in the air and cast Muffliato, then turned to Hermione and looked her straight in the eye. "What the hell is going on, Hermione? I've been hearing some, er, rather odd things. Ginny said she dropped by your apartment a few days ago, but she changed the subject when I asked her what you'd talked about. And Ron came by last night."
"What do you mean, what's going on? I'm taking time off to go find my parents, we've been talking about it for months! I've never taken a vacation, not once since I started with MLE...which you also know, considering you've been advising me to take one for years now. And since when do you want to hear witches' gossip?"
"I mean what's going on here with you and...these two!" Harry waved his wand round the room, clearly referring to the two absent, former Death Eaters. A few stray red sparks shot out of the end of it.
"Exactly what I just said! Mr. Macnair approached me the other evening, he's been a bit reluctant to join the Alliance, and I advised him it was his best course of action. I told him I'd assist with the interviews, and thus, here I am. I certainly wasn't going to have them come to my flat," she added, although of course she had invited Walden there.
"But...look at my notes, Hermione...don't you think he sounded a bit, well, randy..."long and hard," er..."passionate,"..."thrust"?
"Harry!" she said, in a scolding voice, as she poured them both a cup of tea. "Really! You sound worse than Ron...he's the one who's shagging everything that moves!"
"I know," said Harry, "He's being a git, I had to tell him to shut it with his rubbish...but, er, I did see that column in the Prophet..."
"You can't tell me after everything we've been through together that you actually believe a word that woman says," Hermione said, as she passed the tray of biscuits to Harry, who enthusiastically grabbed a handful. "I just told you. Mr. Macnair came by my office the other evening. He was very thankful for the work I did for him and...er, asked for my advice. If you must know, we had a discussion at a Muggle pub, which was at my recommendation, because if we'd gone to the Cauldron, we'd never have had a minute to ourselves. We ran into Percy in the lift on the way out of the Ministry, by the way, it wasn't as if we were sneaking round. Skeeter made it sound a lot worse than it was." Every good lie contains an element of truth, Hermione thought, feeling rather Slytherin about the whole thing.
"Oh," Harry said. "But Ron said you sent him a Howler-"
"Only after he sent me one first, and Hagrid wrote me as well. Neither one of them has bothered to contact me in months other than that...if you must know, that's some of what Ginny and I were discussing-"
"Couldn't you at least give Ron a chance?"
"Absolutely not, after the way he's behaved! He was foul enough to bring one of those wretched witches with him to Easter dinner, or have you forgotten that?"
"I agree he's been horrid but that doesn't mean you should be hanging round dodgy Death Eaters!" Harry shouted. "Macnair looked like he wanted to shag you! You should cancel the interviews and head back with us!"
Too late, Harry, Hermione thought. "Back to the Ministry? I told you, I'm on leave right now, and I can take care of myself-if either one of them does something the least bit inappropriate, I don't even need to call you here, I can send the both of them straight to Azkaban, and they know that!"
"You sound as if you've forgotten what these wizards are capable of! I was the one who got Macnair reassigned from Dawlish. I don't trust him!"
"Who, Dawlish? He's an arsehole. He did Incendio on Walden's old wand when he wasn't supposed to, I was there!"
"I mean Macnair!" Harry shouted, as he sat down his tea cup. "I'm sure I told you before that he was the one who nearly strangled me at the Department of Mysteries!"
"Yes, somewhere we never should have been in the first bloody place," Hermione crossed her arms. "And I'm sure you've quite recovered from that by now, while I'm the one who has a permanent purple reminder of that night, courtesy of Antonin Bloody Dolohov, so you have a lot of nerve saying I've forgotten what Death Eaters are capable of!" Of course, she thought, I've certainly been getting quite an education here lately...
"I'm sorry, I thought you'd gotten rid of that along with the one from..."
"The one from that disgusting Lestrange woman, the one that was put on me right across the hall over there? No, the scar from Dolohov didn't respond to the salve. I'm stuck with it." Hermione said. "Now is there anything else you want to ask about?"
There was a long pause, during which both Harry and Hermione refilled their tea cups and got more biscuits.
"I, er, I guess not," Harry said. "Sorry."
Hermione glanced up at the door. Lucius, Walden and the two Aurors were heading back in. "Better take that spell down."
After the Aurors finally departed, Hermione, Lucius and Walden sat around the tea table for a brief moment. Lucius sipped tea quietly, while Hermione Vanished the books, parchment and quills she'd created. "You know, you really should have been a bit more circumspect, Walden," she began. "Harry grilled me about both of you and threatened to take me back to the Ministry with him."
"Sorry, lass, I couldna. If I'd had to sit there a minute longer I would have fucked ye on the table. Let's go upstairs before me bollocks explode."
"You didn't go, er, take care of things just now?"
"Aye, I did, but I'd rather take care of ye," and he stood up, walked over to her, then bent down and picked her up. "And ye'd better let Lucius join us or he'll start whingin' again."
"I do not whinge," Lucius said, as he stood up and took Hermione's outstretched hand.
Harry Potter landed on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place much later that evening; the countless reports he had to file as a result of the parolee interviews, as well as an impromptu meeting with Kingsley had prolonged his working hours. He'd begged off a pub visit with Corner and Proudfoot, intent on sitting in the kitchen for a few peaceful hours with Ginny.
It wasn't until the couple were getting into bed that he was reminded of something. "She called him by his first name, and defended him," Harry muttered.
"I'm sorry, what?" Ginny asked.
"Never mind. Guess it was nothing."