Two months earlier…
"Hermione, you have got to be kidding me. We're supposed to be at Mum and Dad's in an hour!" Ron stared at Hermione as she brushed the floo dust from her grey work robes carelessly onto the rug.
"I know, I know. I'm sorry Ron but I really can't get out of this. You know how work has been lately…" she said in a feeble attempt to justify cancelling their plans.
"A bloody nightmare. That's how it's been, but that's not an excuse. Mum's been looking forward to this for ages, the whole family round for dinner. That includes you!"
Hermione sighed. She had known as soon as her boss, Loretta Fleets, stepped into her office just as she was packing up to leave that she would have to cancel on Ron. Again. She had worked her way into a senior position in the Department of International Law at the ministry, and as a result her relationship with Ron was suffering.
"Please, Ron. I promise I'll be there next time. It's just we've got this meeting coming up with the new head of Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and I really think this might be the person who finally listens to my department about House Elves. It has to go well, and that means working a few extra late nights."
"A few?!" Ron asked incredulously. "Hermione, you've worked late every night for the past few months. I've hardly seen you and you promised that you would come tonight-weeks ago." His face was turning redder with each word he spoke; a warning sign Hermione knew well. She chose her next words carefully and spoke softly.
"And I feel terrible, honestly I do. I was looking forward to dinner with your family and Harry so much, but this meeting is just too important for us not to prepare for properly."
Ron threw his hands up in exasperation; Hermione's gentle approach had not worked. "Merlin, Hermione I have tried to understand but you're choosing this bloody…spew stuff over me, again!"
Now it was Hermione's turn to be angry. She raised her voice for the first time since her arrival in the flat. "Spew stuff? Ron this is so much bigger than knitting hats at Hogwarts, this is changing a wizarding law as old as magic itself! I'm sorry that you think my work is trivial, and I'm sorry that I can't come to dinner, really, but I can't and that's that."
She turned back to face the fire and grabbed a handful of the green powder from the pot on the mantelpiece, before throwing it vigorously into the fireplace and returning to the ministry, leaving a furious-looking Ron behind.
She stormed angrily to the lift and pressed the button for the fourth floor harder than necessary. As the lift began its ascent to her office, Hermione contemplated her argument with Ron. Perhaps she had been a little harsh on him. After all, this wasn't the first time she had cancelled plans on him lately, and she had been so adamant that she would finish early enough to attend dinner at Molly and Arthur's house. She hadn't even had time to tell them herself that she wouldn't be able to make it, which would fall on Ron now, no doubt making him angrier.
Though, he had been far too blasé about her work, did he not realise how important it was to her? She had been working in International Law for three years now, having been offered a job there as soon as she completed her NEWTs at Hogwarts. She, Harry and Ron had been offered jobs at the ministry as Aurors almost immediately after the war. Ron and Harry had delightedly accepted but Hermione felt the job was undeserved without all of the proper qualifications.
Spending the best part of a year apart from her two best friends had not been easy, particularly as one of them was also her boyfriend. Ron met her in Hogsmeade at every visit, however, and she spent all of the holidays at the Burrow with him. Her parents, having had their memories restored, and being most displeased with Hermione initially after she had told them how it came to be that they were on the other side of the world, had decided to remain in Australia. As a result, Molly had offered Hermione a permanent bed at the Burrow, much to Ron's delight.
At the end of her year at Hogwarts, Hermione had decided that the Auror job wasn't for her; she'd had enough of Dark Wizards and fighting to last a lifetime. So she applied for a job in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and spent several months trying to improve the working conditions of house elves. After her pleas fell on deaf ears there, Hermione transferred to International Law, determined to get her wishes, and had become an irreplaceable addition to their team. This was proven by how close they now were to changing the laws regarding house elves, proposing a new 'Dobby's Law' in which house elves should be offered pay and holidays. Evidently, this was something which Ron Weasley just did not understand.
Her thoughts of Ron were pushed to one side upon her arrival at her office and the stack of parchment which greeted her that had not been there when she left. Hermione shared the large office with two of her staff, Lance Gregor, a short, balding man who always smiled and had a booming laugh that could be heard three offices away, and Melina Wiggins, a young enthusiastic girl who had only just left Hogwarts. Her desk sat directly opposite the door, under the false window which was currently showing a beautiful sunset, and was the largest of the three. The other two desks sat either side of the room. The only other furniture in the room was a muggle filing cabinet which Hermione herself had placed an undetectable extension charm on. Word had quickly spread about this particular item and now most of the offices within the Ministry held one, thanks to Hermione's spell work (though she avoided the questions regarding how she had learned such a complex spell at a young age, never mentioning the beaded bag).
Sighing, Hermione sat down at her desk and began to read the notes that had been compiled in preparation for the meeting the following Monday. It consisted of everything the International Law team knew about the new head of Department, Corrigan Riggs, the research they had spent the last year carrying out (since Hermione had been promoted and suggested the new law), and their proposal containing the recommended rate of pay and number of holidays per year for house elves. It was going to be a long night and Hermione prayed that Ron would be asleep by the time she did make it home.
It was evident the following morning that Ron was still angry with Hermione. It had been almost midnight by the time she arrived home and, as per her wishes, he was fast asleep and snoring loudly when she crawled exhaustedly into bed next to him. When she woke he was already up, the first sign that something was wrong, and when she joined him in the kitchen for breakfast he did not speak to her, he simply finished his breakfast and stormed out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him. Hermione was not alarmed by his behaviour; it was fairly normal in their relationship for them to be fighting, and she had done her fair share of stomping petulantly around their flat recently too.
As she sipped her coffee, she caught sight of the gold and diamond ring on her left hand. Ron had proposed to her almost a year ago, just after she had been promoted at work. He had stumbled over his words and dropped the ring in the grass at the Burrow where he had asked her after a family meal for her birthday. He'd spent five minutes crawling on the ground before he finally found it again and presented it to a teary-eyed Hermione who had accepted.
She smiled sadly at the memory. At that time everything in her life had been completely perfect; work was exciting, with the promotion she had started to feel as though she could truly make a difference, and things with Ron had never been better, they had been living together for a while and now they were engaged. From that point, it seemed as though everything was slowly going downhill. Now work was constantly busy, not that Hermione minded but it was having a huge impact on her relationship with Ron. They fought more than they ever had about the hours she worked, the little time they got to spend together, the amount of work she would bring home with her and mostly the fact that she wanted to hold off on planning the wedding until she had more time to do so.
Hermione shook her head, trying not to dwell on her troubles with Ron, and telling herself that things would get better as soon as things calmed down at the Ministry. She carried her breakfast dishes to the sink, and washed them, and Ron's, by hand. When they first moved in together he would tease her about this, repeatedly asking why she didn't use magic, and never understanding her response that it reminded her that she came from a Muggle background. Often the discussion would always lead to Hermione smearing bubbles from the sink on Ron's face; he never learned to expect it. She missed that playful side to their relationship, now he just rolled his eyes at her when she would fill the sink.
She dressed quickly in a comfortable pair of jeans and one of her many Molly Weasley made jumpers and returned to the dining table with a pile of parchment that she had not managed to get through the night before. About six sheets into the stack, Ron stuck his head around the kitchen door and mumbled something about going to help George in the shop, something he often did on weekends when Hermione brought work home.
She managed another few pages of reading before a voice shouted from her living room.
"Hermione?" it called. She recognised it immediately as Harry and groaned as she remembered the plans she had made with him earlier in the week.
"Hi, Harry," she said as she exited the kitchen and saw him stepping out of her fireplace.
"You forgot didn't you?"
"No!" she protested feebly. "I didn't, honestly...How did you know?"
"You have a quill in your hair and ink on your nose. That means you're working from home again."
She smiled and waved her wand at her nose, casting a silent cleaning spell, then pulled the quill out from her ponytail and put it on the coffee table.
"You know me too well, let me just grab my coat and we'll go."
Minutes later the pair left the flat and apparated from the doorstep into the Leaky Cauldron. The old bar and inn was still owned by Tom but he now had help in running it since hiring Hannah Abbott, a friendly girl whom Harry and Hermione had gone to Hogwarts with. The main bar was still fairly dark and contained an eclectic mix of furniture and décor, but it was significantly cleaner and looked much brighter as a result.
Hannah waved at the pair as they crossed through the bar to the door that led to the courtyard and wall that would take them to Diagon Alley. Harry tapped the right brick with his wand and they stepped back as the small hole that appeared grew larger until the huge entrance arch was formed.
The wizarding street was as busy as it ever was. Four years had passed since the defeat of Voldemort and the street was returned to its former glory, most of the old shops had been restored and new ones stood in place of those whose owners had died or simply not returned.
On the left hand side of the street where Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlour once stood, there was now a coffee shop by the name of Cortessa's Café. Harry often chose to go to Cortessa's when he was in Diagon Alley, always telling Hermione that though he didn't think the desserts were half as good as Florean's sundaes (although that never stopped him ordering a banana split), the coffee was good and, unlike Madam Pudifoot's, there was no pink paint or furniture in sight. The small café was their first stop that morning, Harry had asked Hermione earlier in the week if she wanted to go with him and have a long overdue catch-up.
The weather was warm and the sun shone in a cloudless sky so Hermione and Harry chose a table outside, she sat down whilst he went inside to order their drinks and his usual desert. They chatted a little about work, Hermione more than Harry and he, like Ron, told her she was working too much and too hard.
"It's fine, Harry. I'm fine. Once this meeting on Monday is over and done with things will calm down, Loretta is just pushing us to make sure it goes well, and she's absolutely right to."
"I get that, but is it so important that you'll let it come between you and Ron?"
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "What has he been telling you?"
"Nothing, nothing," Harry stammered. "It's just you weren't there at dinner last night, and Ron looked really angry. I asked him was he alright and he mentioned you'd been fighting again…" he drifted off at the furious expression on Hermione's face.
"Ronald needs to learn to keep our private life to himself," she said indignantly.
"Don't be like that, I know for a fact you've complained to Ginny about him. He just needed to let off some steam that's all. He didn't say anything I didn't already know. I'm concerned about the two of you, everyone knows you like an argument but not this much."
"Ron and I will be fine, Harry. Please don't worry. As soon as this next week at work is done I'll have a lot more free time, and Ron will cheer up. Now enough of that, you seemed very insistent when you asked me to come for coffee today, so what did you want to talk about?"
"Is there anything you don't know?" Harry chuckled. "You're right, I did have another reason for dragging you away from work. I wanted your opinion on something."
He reached into the inner pocket of the grey jacket he was wearing and pulled out a small black box. Hermione gasped as she realised what it was.
"You're proposing?!" she squealed.
"Hermione! Keep it down," Harry hissed while looking around frantically to see if anyone had heard. "I don't want the Prophet telling everyone before I've even asked."
Hermione apologised and he slid the box across the table. Inside was a beautiful platinum band with a cluster of rubies and diamonds.
"Oh, Harry, it's perfect. Ginny's going to love it."
"Are you sure?" he asked nervously, taking the box back and putting it in his pocket.
"Absolutely. When will you ask her?"
"I'm not sure yet, it's taken me weeks just to pick the ring out. You and Ron will be the first to know when I ask though, I already told him I bought the ring. Ginny's practicing late tonight because the Harpies have a big match tomorrow, so I'm going to see Arthur tonight and ask his permission."
Hermione beamed. "That's so romantic. Arthur and Molly will be beside themselves with excitement. You'll finally be part of the family properly!"
"If she says yes," Harry said nervously.
"Harry James Potter that girl has been madly in love with you since she was ten years old, there's no way she'll turn you down."
Harry grinned and Hermione couldn't help but feel a little jealous of his and Ginny's relationship.
A/N-edited 9/11/14