"September first," Fred muttered thoughtfully, watching Emma get ready for work. "Feel weird that we're not packing trunks last minute and rushing to the train?"

"A bit," Emma admitted.

Fred and George had decided to open the shop a bit later, knowing that most of their business during the school year would be mail-order and ministry contracts, and after the pre-school rush they'd had recently they really wanted to sleep in.

But Fred hadn't slept in. He'd woken up early and woke Emma up with kisses, making love to her before she had to leave for work at her usual time. She'd already taken a shower and now she was pulling on her work robes, trying not to smile at the way Fred was watching her body as she pulled the fabric over it, like a starving man being taunted with food he wasn't able to eat.

"It's sort of strange, not getting onto the train and looking for you so I can try to impress you with all of the fabulous stories of things George and I had done over the summer. It's like now that you're mine, the first of September means you going away from me for hours. I don't like it."

"I don't much like leaving you, either," Emma admitted, "but I have to. It's this thing called work."

"You don't have to work," Fred said softly, almost mournfully. Emma sighed.

"I know you don't want me to," she said. "Sometimes I don't want to either, but I need this job for my sanity. And I wouldn't be able to contribute fully to the war if I didn't have it and you know that."

"I'm worried," he admitted as she put her hair up in a quick bun. "I don't like the thought of you being somewhere that's going to be a target through the whole war."

Emma snorted.

"Fred, I married into the family most closely connected to Dumbledore and Harry Potter both. I was a target the moment we started dating and you know it. The fact that I work at the Ministry can't possibly put me in any more danger than I'm already in just for loving you."

She wasn't sure she fully believed it, but she had to make him believe it because he wasn't going to talk her out of doing her part for the Order. All her life she'd been the careful, studious Ravenclaw stereotype, but now she had a chance to test her limits and save lives.

Fred just frowned up at her, and she couldn't understand why her speech hadn't inspired him to let her be. Then he whispered, "We could put you in hiding, you know."

Ah, he didn't like the thought that their being together put her in danger. She also noticed that he didn't suggest they be apart exactly, just that she never leave whatever cage they put her in. She hadn't forgotten what that isolation had done to Sirius Black and she wasn't about to join him.

"George was supposed to make breakfast today?" Emma asked softly. "I'll be picking something up on the way, then. I'll see you this evening, all right?"

Fred didn't say anything, just got up and kissed her gently, running his fingers along the curve of her neck.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," she replied. "And everything's going to be all right, isn't it?"

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, kissing her again before she pulled away and left him standing alone in their bedroom as she went along her way to work.

"No breakfast?" George cried as she was leaving.

"No time!" Emma lied. "I'll pick something up on the way."

Before George had a chance to check his watch Emma barreled out onto the streets of Diagon Alley on the cool summer morning.

Diagon Alley certainly didn't feel like Diagon Alley anymore. It had been different ever since the events at the Ministry in the spring, deteriorating at an alarming rate as people disappeared and were attacked. Seedy was a decent word to describe it. Seedy and ominous. But Emma held her head high, refusing to allow herself to feel afraid of the phantoms in the corners of the street, the figments of her imagination.

She went through the Leaky Cauldron, greeting Tom the barman briefly as she went out through the front into Muggle London. The crisp air would have been hotter, probably, had the dementors not been wreaking havoc with the weather.

It was a bit more out of the way to her new coffee shop from the old one, but she didn't want to have the awkward thing of running into the boy who had started trying to ask her out. Even if Fred never found out about it, she felt a bit dirty.

"Breakfast bagel and tea," she said happily to the girl at the counter. "To go. I don't want to be late for work."

"I hate that," the girl said with a sympathetic grin. "My mum always forgets to set the alarm again once she gets up so I oversleep all the time. Don't worry, it'll be done in two shakes, you'll be stunned!"

Emma frowned as the girl turned, knowing the water for the tea would never get hot enough in time for her to get to work quickly without a bit of help. So she stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out her wand, waving it at the cup to warm up the water, just enough that it went a bit quicker.

The girl turned and looked at the cup to see that the water was already at a boil. She frowned.

"Wow, so fast it even stunned me," the girl muttered, putting the tea bag in and putting a lid on it. She slipped a bagel into a to-go back for Emma and handed her the drink and the food.

"There you go," she said happily. "Good luck at work and enjoy your day."

"Thanks, you too!" Emma said over her shoulder as she rushed out of the shop.

As soon as she found an alleyway to dart down she Disapparated to the worker's entrance to the Ministry and began drinking her tea as quickly as possible so that she had a hand free for getting into the atrium. She finished her tea just as she got to the front of the line she was in, Vanishing the cup since there was nowhere to throw it away. She made her way to the atrium and looked around for a moment, feeling that familiar sense of awe that she felt every time she stepped into the beautiful wooden space.

"Emma!"

It was the familiar, rumbling voice of Kingsley. She turned and smiled at him.

"Hello, Kingsley," she said. "I just arrived. Are you getting a lift?"

"Yes, let's share one," he said significantly, and Emma followed him over to the lifts, thanking him when he waited for her to get on first. Then he leaned in toward her and whispered, "Umbridge is back in the Ministry."

Emma's eyes widened.

They hadn't known what would happen to Dolores Umbridge once she recovered from the trauma of her time with the centaurs. The Order had discussed the possibility that she might end up in some small spot of the Ministry, some obscure corner where she couldn't do any harm. She certainly wouldn't be working with children ever again. Other than that, they hadn't really been sure. The fact that Kingsley had gone out of his way to mention it to Emma suggested that she would maybe end up overlapping with Emma's department, and this was the last thing she wanted. The year at Hogwarts had been more than enough Umbridge for a lifetime.

"Do you know where?" Emma hissed.

"Not yet, but the birdies are suggesting that Arthur will be reporting to her, so..."

"So I will too," Emma groaned. "All right, thanks. I'll keep my ears open."

"Are you going tomorrow night?"

"Can't, Fred and I got a pass. I'm giving my report to Arthur and we've got a date night," Emma said with a smile. "I heard Molly's making meatballs."

Kingsley nodded and smiled, but their conversation was cut short as a bloke from Magical Maintenance came into the lift the. A floor later Emma got out, said a polite goodbye to Kingsley, and walked along the familiar corridor to her office.

"Perkins?" she said, looking around.

Perkins should have been there, but he wasn't. There was a memo on her desk and she crossed quickly to pick it up.

Downsizing.

Her department had been downsized and she was now the only member. Despite the fact that it was already a difficult workload for one young person and one person who was just a hair shy of senile, Emma was suddenly all by herself in a very difficult position.

And she thought she had some idea why.

"Umbridge," she muttered to herself, getting straight to a stack of papers on her desk.

It really wasn't difficult to figure out. First it was half-breeds from Remus and Sirius's stories, and all manner of magical creatures. Then it was those fighting against Voldemort in spite of the Ministry's denial of his return. That had put Emma in enough of a tight spot as it was, what with her close connection with the Weasleys. That alone could have explained why Emma's life was being made more difficult.

But Emma was fairly certain that there was something going on beyond that. She was almost positive she knew what Umbridge's next target was going to be.

Muggleborns.

It really was the logical next step for a woman like Umbridge, and Emma was an ideal target for her wrath, as she had already made Emma a periphery target at the very least, for her connections to the Order. She had no way of knowing that Emma was actually in the Order. It was an out-of-character decision, Emma joining the fight, but she was already thrown in with the organization for being with Fred.

That, and the Minister wasn't likely to oppose any move that made Emma's life more difficult. He'd already made it perfectly clear that he didn't want her at the Ministry. Emma could feel herself being squeezed out, but she wasn't going to give in that easily. Pursing her lips thoughtfully, she grabbed a fresh inter-departmental memo to send to Arthur. She picked up her quill and scribbled a quick note to Arthur about wanting to meet for lunch. She couldn't, in good conscience, cancel her date with Fred to go to the meeting, but she had to be sure that someone was talking to the others about the recent situation. Maybe someone else would have good ideas on what to do about Umbridge.

With a brief pause, Emma added a note to go out into Muggle London for lunch, that she would pay, hoping that he understood that it was a conversation she didn't want to have in the Ministry cafeteria. Then she sent the memo off to Arthur and returned to the pile of work on her desk, praying that there wouldn't be too many inquiries that day. Her job seemed to be getting harder and harder as the war went on, but often she worked with other departments, so she could get a lot of help getting the heavy report load taken care of. Tonks was always more than happy to co-write a report.

Arthur wrote back not long after saying that he'd meet her in the atrium at their usual lunch time and she breathed a small sigh of relief, working through her stack of paperwork and anxiously awaiting lunch.

It was a bit strange, now that she knew that Arthur knew about her and Fred being married, to have lunch with him. She was taking her father-in-law out to lunch. Emma smiled a little to herself, thinking that if she couldn't have her parents around her during the war, maybe becoming a Weasley was the best thing she could have done. She would always have family nearby.

As soon as she was ready to take a lunch break she put her papers in order and made her way down to the atrium, rolling onto the balls of her feet and then down again while she stood alone in the lift, anxious. She walked across the atrium to where Arthur was reading the paper and tapped his shoulder. Arthur jumped and then smiled at her, putting the paper away and following her out into Muggle London.

"Have you spoken to Kingsley at all today?" Emma asked, leading him along the city streets to a nearby Italian place she thought he might like.

"I haven't had a chance," Arthur said, keeping pace with her easily. "I take it you did?"

Emma nodded.

"Umbridge is back in the Ministry, and it looks like she's going to be your boss now," Emma said, looking around. She didn't think they'd be followed, but one could never be too careful in these times. After all, Arthur was a known Order member. He might not be enemy number one to the Death Eaters, but they wouldn't be chastised for attacking him.

And she was Muggleborn.

"Ah, I knew something was different, but they hadn't given me any information yet," he sighed. "I take it we need to go over what I need to address at the meeting."

"Yes," Emma said slowly. "And I don't think it can wait. I think they're trying to squeeze me out of the Ministry. Actually, I think they're looking for an excuse to get rid of my department altogether."

Arthur looked like someone had just knocked the wind out of him and he followed Emma into the restaurant in stunned silence.

"Two, please," Emma told the hostess kindly, and the woman smiled, nodded, and grabbed two menus, leading them to a spot toward the middle of the cozy, clean place, setting the menus down on the crisp white table clothes, one at each setting, and informed her that the waiter would be coming by soon to see about their drinks. Emma thanked the woman and looked over at Arthur to make sure that he was all right before picking up the menu.

It was pretense, really. She'd been to the place often enough to know what she wanted. She just didn't want to make it look as though they were doing anything other than what normal people did on a work lunch break. After all, they were already dressed oddly. No need to draw any further attention to themselves.

"Perkins is gone," Emma said as casually as possible. "They're downsizing. That's what the memo said this morning. I'm sure I'm the next person to be fired."

Arthur fidgeted nervously, glancing over the menu and frowning as he did so, as though trying very hard to decide what to order. Emma knew he was fretting over the state of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department.

"I'll see if we can't figure out some way to handle this," Arthur said nervously.

"Hello," said a friendly voice. They looked up to see an attractive blond-haired, blue-eyed young man about Emma's age standing there. "My name is John and I'll be your waiter today. Anything to start off with? Drinks?"

"Yes, I'll have water, thank you," Arthur said.

"Tea for me, just black," Emma said, watching John scribble on his notepad. "And could we have some breadsticks?"

"Certainly," John said with a smile. "I'll be right back."

John went away and Emma set down the menu and began tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the pristine white-clothed table.

"So other than work becoming a living hell," Emma said with a smile, "how are things for you? I feel like I never see you out of the Ministry."

Arthur smiled a little.

"Well, you know, I do work quite a lot. I think I'm getting more hours with this new job. Molly's so pleased."

Emma didn't mention that she thought Molly was a bit more pleased about the pay raise. She didn't think it was the sort of thing one should say to one's father-in-law.

"Speaking of Molly," Arthur said softly, "when do you and Fred think you'll be telling people that you're actually married?"

She shrugged, looking around to see if their waiter was bringing the drinks yet.

"At least not until after Bill and Fleur are married," she said slowly. "Because Molly will make us do a ceremony anyway and we don't want to put her under too much strain. We've talked about waiting until the war's done, but that will depend on how long it goes."

"I understand," Arthur said with a knowing nod. "Yes, Molly's ready to tear out her hair with this business with Fleur."

John came back and set down their drinks and a small basket of breadsticks.

"Are we ready to order?" he said happily.

"Ah, yes," Emma said with a smile. "Could we get two pappardelle al ragu di angello?"

"Absolutely," John replied, scribbling happily before picking up their menus. "I'll take that order right back to the kitchens!"

She watched him go. Arthur frowned slightly.

"What is that, exactly?" he asked. "What you ordered."

"Pasta with lamb and tomato," Emma said, tapping the table once more. "It's a specialty of this chef. Delicious."

"Ah, it sounds lovely," Arthur said uncertainly.

Emma didn't worry about whether or not Arthur would like the food. She was sure that he would. Besides, she had enough other things to worry about in her life without stopping to concern herself with things that didn't really matter.

"It's nice to get away from the office," Emma said gently. "After all, we seem to spend half our lives there."

Arthur nodded.

"You have a good set-up, though," he pointed out. "If you lose your job at the Ministry, you could easily work with the twins. Or not work at all. But some of us... We don't have that luxury."

And Emma nodded, wishing silently that they never had to deal with that eventuality.