Disclaimer: I do not own Queen JK's characters, only the plot of this story and Laurie.


"No Mrs. Robinson, you're mistaken. She's not yet my girlfriend."

Did he just say yet? I think he said yet. But did he, really? What am I supposed to do? Think damn it. You're Hermione Fucking Granger. Blanking out is not your style. It never was and you certainly shouldn't start now.

That's it, is my body working properly again? Now let's decide on what to do with that yet. Does it mean he's interested? That day, when Ginny asked him, he did say that he didn't consider it an option because I'm not interested. He did not say anything about his own interest. Right that's it Hermione, it means he could be interested. Should I do something about it?

Whatever it is, I shouldn't do anything about it now. Right now the best thing I can do is leave, and probably pay a visit to the expert.

I kept my head down and quickly made my way out of the building through the back door, ignoring Draco's feeble attempts to apologize Hermione. and the old lady's questions inquiring how she had offended me.

As soon as I was out, I quickly scoured my surroundings for any muggles and then disapparated before Draco could catch up to me.


Since the Patil twins and Ginny took over the Prophet, the main office has undergone some major renovations. To the outside world it would seem the same, but anyone who enters the building will understand what I mean. The building used to look like the burrow replaced all of the mess inside with paper. The place was always swamped with paper, on the walls, on the floor, and just about every place you could think of. So many experienced witches and wizards in the building and none of them thought to clean the place at least once a day.

The first order of business when Ginny stepped in was to do away with the mess and rearrange the desks in a similar fashion to a muggle news agency. Apparently she was inspired,her words, not mine, when she saw one during the tour of the muggle world Harry took her on. For all the chastising her father received from her, she was not much better when she was not in his company.

I entered the building from the apparition area, which was on the ground floor. The rest of the building was blocked from apparition, save for Ginny, Parvati, and Padma's offices. Straight ahead I could see the fireplaces. The Daily Prophet office consisted four floors, one underground floor and three floors above ground.

The ground floor was left open for apparition, fireplaces, reception, the Diagon Alley entrance and the elevators.

On the floor above, Padma manages the Political news column. That floor was the most hectic through most of the year, and is always teeming with Ministry officials and members of the Gamot complaining about the Prophet's publications or attempting, and I heavily stress on that word, to convince Padma to bend the truth in their favor. I prefer to avoid that floor.

Parvati sits on the top floor, and her word in the law when it comes to sports and economics news. That floor is pretty quiet through most of the year, but when Quidditch season comes around, especially if it's the World Cup, that floor publishes nearly half the Prophet every day. All of the members of that floor look like zombies for that entire duration. Just another reason for me to dislike the sport.

I hopped onto the elevator heading down to Ginny's floor. Even though their work isn't as hectic as the floors above, the crème de la crème of the wizarding world have always kept them pretty occupied. It is also the part of the Prophet that has the most number of readers, with gossiping housewives and impressionable young schoolgirls accounting for over seventy percent of those readers.

It was a usual occurrence for me to walk through the halls of the Prophet's main office, nobody questioned me or my intent as they all knew where I was headed and who I would probably meet.

I really hoped Ginny would be free for dinner. I was extremely excited to share this recent development with her but being who I am, I would never force her to skip work for my personal convenience.

With my fingers crossed behind my back, I entered Ginny's cabin. She was sitting in her seat with her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands.

"Hey, Ginny."

Her head jerked around to face mine. She quickly got up from her seat and rushed over to me. Her eyes met mine with a very unusual emotion.

"Gin-"

"Hermione, Harry is quitting."

"Ginny, what do you mean Harry is quitting?" My brain started listing the possible things that Harry could quit. It can't have been the gym. Ginny would never be so distraught over Harry quitting the gym. It can't have been their relationship. No… please don't tell me it's their relationship. It can't be, some part of my brain countered, you don't quit a relationship, you break up. The rest of my brain hoped that was the case.

"Harry is quitting his job as an Auror."

I let out a sigh of relief.

"Hermione, did you hear what I said? Harry is quitting his job as an Auror. Wait, did you already know?" Her brow furrowed in suspicion. Her tone was slightly accusative, questioning me if I had betrayed her by not telling her that her partner in life was unhappy with his job.

"No, no I didn't know Ginny, trust me, this is as much of a surprise to you as it is to me. Probably even more because I don't see him as much as you do."

She glared me down for another few seconds before she accepted my statement as truthful and continued on. "But why? Why would he want to quit and why now? Didn't he always tell us that he was happy doing what he was?"

As Ginny's voice rose, I saw that her outburst was slowly gathering a little audience outside. Most of what she said was silent enough that nobody could hear it, and her room does have spells to block the usage of the Extended-Ears that her brothers patented and all such related products. But still, it wasn't safe. The Prophet might be the wizarding public's most trusted gossip channel, but it wasn't the only one available.

"Not here Ginny. Come with me, let's talk elsewhere." We locked up Ginny's office and headed to her personal fireplace. We both chanted the name of my bookstore and disappeared into the flames.


Both of us walked out of my bookstore and headed over to the local Pizza place, the one I usually frequent on days when I don't feel like cooking after a full day's work at the bookstore. We would probably be sitting here for a while and we both had a lot of things to discuss, though Harry's situation definitely takes the top priority. I made a silent prayer to Merlin that we don't run into Draco in the meantime.

We ordered a large Pizza to share and a plate of breadsticks with a dip on the side and then we got right into our discussion.

"Ginny, what happened? Tell me everything. Start from the beginning."

"There is no beginning or ending. An owl arrived from Harry about an hour ago, telling me that he loves me but he wants to quit being Auror once this mission about Narcissa is over. It doesn't say anything about what or why but it just says that he'll explain later, once he gets home."

"Then that's what he'll do, Ginny. Give him his chance to answer you properly."

"But-"

I reached across the table grabbed her hand. "Ginny, did Harry submit his resignation letter already?"

"No… But-"

"Ginny, he will not quit without telling us, especially you and he will take your interests into consideration before he decides to do anything."

"That isn't a problem, Hermione. If he wants to quit, I won't stop him from doing so. Hell, I didn't even want him to join in the first place, and neither did you or Ron. But I thought he went with it because he really wanted it. But if he's quitting now, right after he properly established himself as an Auror, why does he want to quit? And more importantly why couldn't I, the love of his life, have absolutely no idea about his interests? I always prided myself in my ability to be able to judge people. A skill I've honed to death and back since that whole Chamber of Secrets debacle in my first year, yet I couldn't even detect any sort of premonition about this from Harry." She gripped my hand a bit tighter and stared straight into my eyes. "Hermione, does this mean I'm no good at being Harry's lover? Does this mean I've failed?"

"NO… no, Ginny. Trust me, I've known Harry a little longer than you have and if there's one thing you should know, it's that you can never predict what he's thinking. He'll do a lot of stuff on instinct and even more stuff by keeping secrets. He's quirky in that way and you told me you love that about him. Now listen to your past self and give him a chance to explain once he comes back home tonight. We can talk about what or why after that. You can call me at any time, even if it is three in the night."

Ginny lay silent for a few minutes. I wanted to focus my attention on my worried best friend, but something else captured my attention. It was some person right outside the Pizza place. He had platinum blonde hair. And most importantly, he was walking straight towards the diner. I quickly ducked underneath the table.

"Yeah… You might be right. I think I should give him a chance Herm…" Ginny's words trailed off as she noticed that I had ducked down below. "Hermione what are you…"

"Ginny quick, come down, Draco is coming here."

"Hermione, what happened? Why are you hid-"

"Ginny, come down." Once she joined me, I lowered my voice and continued. "I was helping Draco clean his café and prepare the batter for the food today afternoon, when one of his regulars walked in and mistook me for his girlfriend. Draco told her on impulse that I wasn't his girlfriend yet. And then I rushed out and came over to you because I wanted your help about what to do next to get him to like me." The doorbell chimed and the sound of Draco's heavy footsteps as he strode over to our table. Hopefully that's just my imagination and he hasn't seen us.

"Hey Red, have you seen… Hermione." Fuck, he saw me and in such an embarrassing situation too. Seems like I already used my prayer for the day with Harry and Ginny's relationship.


I liked this one, even though I feel like the start wasn't as strong. I've been writing this all night instead of working in my research lab like I'm supposed to.

And yes, I uploaded this pretty early enough this time. Hopefully my next update will be just as quick.

Please read and leave a review about your thoughts, especially if there are any flames. I just want to know what you guys think so I can improve my writing skills. That's just as important as the joy I get from putting my wild imagination on paper (or on a screen, in this case). And of course, I enjoy reading your POV on these things.

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