pour myself a cup of ambition [hermione]

march 2003

Mary hadn’t particularly liked @Hermione Granger when she’d first shown up in the Department, liked her even less when Dominic had invited her into the fold of the Internal Corruption Unit -- well, aside from her providing an excuse for Mary to have an all-expenses paid lunch while she played ‘backup’ for Dom. The dumplings had been worth the risk of reprimand.

But Hermione Granger was winning her over, slowly but surely. She was still an insufferable know-it-all, but she worked hard -- and late. Mary had lost track of the time, had been catching up on her paperwork until everyone else had left, and was now catching up on her paperwork -- the documents she couldn’t be seen with during the day, or at home, where she now had a flatmate again. It was only her and Hermione left in the office, separated by a few desks and a sea of parchment.

They were working in silence and it was slowly driving Mary mad -- the constant scribble of quill-point on parchment, broken only when it was being dipped into fresh ink. Had she been alone, she’d have the wireless on by now, poured herself a glass of something. In fact, she would have done so with Joe, with Steve, even Alex, the other newbie, chatting idly to them between reports. Hermione seemed too stiff (Merlin forbid she find out that was Joseph and Mary’s nickname for her), but maybe...

The tall witch was starting to get cramp in her hand. She set her quill down and threaded her fingers together, pushing her palms away and stretching out her back before rolling her head side-to-side on her neck. Hermione hadn’t faltered. Mary got to her feet and surveyed her collection of coffee mugs (including one that had “#1 Dad” on it, bought as a joke for Dominic at some point), each drained with dark rings on the inside -- a timeline of caffeine consumption. She shouldn’t really have another or she wouldn’t sleep when she finally did make it home.

With all the subtlety of a dragon with hayfever, Mary cleared her throat and made her way over to Hermione’s desk, perching her plum-trousered backside on the edge of it. “Fancy a drink?” she asked, doing her best impression of a polite coworker -- well, not too polite or she wouldn’t have sat on her desk (and, subsequently, some of her files). She bit her lip softly, peering over. "What are you working on?"

Hermione assumed that Mary had the same idea she had -- wait until everyone was gone so she could get some genuine work done -- but Mary was taking a different approach, breaking Hermione’s concentration with her frequent trips to the canteen, accompanying her stretches with more than necessary, noises that considerate humans might be able to temper in such a quiet space. She glanced over at some new noises, nearly eager to see Mary packing up to head home, but she was moving too slow for that to be the case; another trip to the canteen, then. Hermione huffed -- quietly -- and looked back at her work, more research than report at this point. She was aiming for the fifty-fifty point before she put a pin in it until tomorrow, but if Mary was going to carry on like she was--

Her shoulder was on fire as she straightened up out of her I’m-working-don’t-bother-me hunch, looking over one more time to Mary. She didn’t have much chance to point out the obvious, that she was busy, before Mary had invited herself to sit on Hermione’s carefully organized desk. She swallowed, now looking at the files whose corners Mary was certainly creasing with her behind. “I have one,” she said, pulling on the still-accessible corners of said files and pulling them free, moving them to the other corner to be re-organized later.

After another second she set her quill down and motioned vaguely to her cup of tea, the same one she had been nursing for three hours, repeatedly reheating it with a tap of her wand just to continue neglecting it. She rolled her shoulders back, working out the cramp once Mary had made it pretty clear she wasn’t going to leave quickly. “It’s not much, really.” She was clipping articles from papers and magazines, The Daily Prophet and Witch Weekly mainly, trying to find enough supporting evidence for her first solo ICU inquiry.

“I escorted someone out a few days ago and noticed he wasn’t on the sign-in logs after I had signed him out, so..” She trailed off and waved her hand over her desk. It had started as self-preservation -- did she just let a notorious criminal out of the building -- but as she dug into it a little she thought it was a little more involved. “Looking into the who, figuring out the why.” She rolled her shoulders again, almost a shrug. “Why he was leaving, I mean.” Now that she had started talking about it, it was hard to stop; they didn’t get a lot of chances to discuss this work. “Fairly certain he was being arrested, or should have been arrested, something like that.” She shook her head a little, rubbed the tired out of her eye with her first two fingers.

Mary lifted her backside just enough to allow Hermione to retrieve her files, pulling an ‘oops’ face. She looked at the lukewarm -- if it was even that -- cup of tea Hermione pointed out and grimaced.

As she snooped at the papers, Mary spied a familiar face on Hermione’s desk. Her thick eyebrows furrowed as she reached out to push at the neatly-stacked pile of clippings the younger witch had meticulously cut out, straight edges and all, to spread them across one side of the desk. For a brief moment, Mary assumed she had uncovered Hermione’s secret shrine to Charlie Baker. His face (and those of known associates) was staring back at her in varying states of sobriety -- paparazzi photos from countless nights on the tiles, the odd one where he was looking less dishevelled (obviously taken earlier in the piece).

“Hermione,” she grinned wickedly, as though this was the greatest scandal she’d ever had the pleasure of uncovering, “I didn’t know you were a Banshee fan.” Maybe they did have more in common than she’d originally thought -- though Hermione clearly had inferior taste if she preferred Charlie to Sam (she really ought to remember Liam was in the band too). Then again, Mary had seen Ron Weasley.

Merlin, she’d have to tell Perdita about this the next time they caught up for lunch in the cafeteria, Hermione Granger was hot for Charlie-- Mary blanched as she put two and two together; someone, a man, escorted out of the Ministry who wasn’t in the visitor logs; Hermione Granger -- veritable prude and all around workaholic -- with what looked like every story he’d ever featured in stacked on her desk. Bollocks.

The dark haired witch swallowed softly, moving to help gather the many Charlie’s back into a (decidedly more haphazard) pile. “Was it him?” she asked gently, pressing her lips together as she considered what the likelihood of Perdita bringing him into the Ministry for a late night private tour was. And if she had, why on earth had she left him to wander? No, she wasn’t that stupid. She wasn’t even seeing Charlie, she’d said. Mary would choose to believe her -- had to.

Being arrested? As if the chap didn’t have enough on his plate. “Well, wouldn’t surprise me,” Mary offered, trying to divert both her own thoughts and those of Hermione away from suspect number one -- not that Hermione knew who that was, hopefully. “He’s a perfect ass,” Mary said, somewhat bitterly, and she didn’t mean he had one (despite Perdy’s claims). If he had been here under arrest, what on earth had happened for him to slip out -- or, mostly -- before being charged? Knowing him, or what Mary knew of him through various sources (she’d never actually met the man unless you included brief encounters in school through sheer proximity), he’d probably slept with whoever it was arresting him -- which probably narrowed the pool down to the female employees of the Department. “What have you got so far?”

Hermione glanced up, reluctantly, at the sound of her name; Mary nearly always managed to sound like she knew something Hermione didn’t and she wasn’t eager to reach the day when that turned out to be true. “I’m not,” she said matter-of-factly. She was more of a Weird Sisters fan, and that was only because she’d seen them play live in her fourth year. Really, she preferred Nina Simone or Billie Holiday but she didn’t exactly have a lot of free time these days to sit and listen her way through her parents’ record collection.

She watched Mary figure out what she had already determined: she had found Charlie Baker -- singer, songwriter, apparent trainwreck (if the stories were to be believed) -- having a late night stroll round the Ministry. Mary moved to fix the pile of clippings and Hermione followed behind her to fix her attempt, gathering everything into a neat pile once more. She’d have to go through and make sure they were still in chronological order, but that was probably better left done until after Mary had stopped interfering, lest she shuffle them again.

“Yes.” It was him, definitely; the jacket, the hair, the blurry-from-what-she-assumed-was-drink expression, everything matched the photos. “It wouldn’t?” Hermione hadn’t pegged Mary as someone to pay attention to gossip but-- “Do you know him?” That would make more sense, she thought. She had found a little bio about him in an issue of Witch Weekly from a few years ago that placed him four years ahead of herself, and Mary had been two, so maybe? It’d be so much easier if she did know him.

Not that she wanted Mary’s help, or anything.

She was torn between keeping things to herself -- she wanted to be sure about everything, it being her first solo investigation and all -- and the overwhelming desire to tell literally anyone. She settled on something near the middle, she thought. “Well, so far--” Hermione pulled out another folder, opening it and flipping a couple pages to find a hand drawn timeline, little (color-coded) arrows pointing to ideas she had yet to rule out.

She spread out the paper, running her finger down the crease to smooth it out. “He seemed surprised when we had to take the lift so I’m assuming he apparated in, and really, only Aurors should be able to do that so assuming he was brought here with one of them--” She hadn’t completely ruled out that someone had brought him in the building for personal reasons, but she had decided to start with the most egregious ethical violations and work her way down -- “I have time cards.” She pulled another file toward her, tapping it with her finger a few times instead of showing her the aurors’ time cards for that night, both from projects she coordinated as part of her day job (legally obtained) and from those she didn’t (questionable legality).

“Didn’t really find anything with them, though,” she added, almost disappointed she hadn’t unearthed corruption (yet). “So I thought I’d look into him--” she tapped the topmost Charlie-related article-- “See what I find.” She was looking to see if he was mentioned with known Ministry employees or if there was any indication that anyone who worked here owed him anything, for one reason or another; she still has some much left to comb through.

“It wouldn’t,” she repeated. “I’m honestly astounded he’s gone this long without being arrested for public indec--” Mary stopped abruptly when Hermione asked if she knew Charlie Baker. “Me? Heavens, no,” she said, perhaps a little too vehemently.

She waited a moment before continuing slowly and carefully; “I know of him.” Rather too much about him, for her liking. The tall witch pursed her lips, then pushed them out like a fish, then pulled them back in into a thin line. “Okay,” she relented, as if Hermione had placed her under duress, “I know people who know him,” she admitted, thinking it would be easier to skirt around the truth rather than lie outright to the other witch. “My best friend is his drummer’s sister.” And Liam, of course, but she didn’t need to bring him -- that -- up.

Mary turned her head to better view Hermione’s (rather excessive) timeline. “You have been busy,” she commented, dark eyes scanning over the many different coloured arrows. It was impressive, really, the level of organisation -- threatening, almost. Mary nodded, agreeing that Aurors made the most sense -- though that only served to confuse her more; her brow furrowed -- Perdy wasn’t an Auror, so maybe it hadn’t been her? Whatever reason would Perdita’s department have for giving her clearance to apparate into the Ministry? It didn’t fit at all, which was wonderful news.

“Well, you won’t find much more than a ridiculously long list of women he’s f--udged over,” she caught herself, glancing sidelong at Hermione. Mary cleared her throat.

“What time was all of this?” she asked, assuming it was afterhours if news of a Banshee (insert teenage girl squeal) within the Ministry hadn’t rippled through the office rumourmill. “The timecards,” Mary reached for them, found them just out of grasp and opened and closed her hand quickly as if to ask Hermione to pass them to her. “Did you check what they were on the clock for?” The Aurors, that was; what were they working on? “If we know how many teams were on duty that night, and what their assignments were, we can probably work out why he was brought back here and maybe by who.” Now that the possibility of Perdita being involved had been dramatically reduced (miniscule, really), Mary was onboard with helping.

Hermione pursed her lips -- Heavens, no -- but nodded all the same, as if she actually believed her; Mary seemed a little too emphatic that she didn’t know him. “Of course, yeah,” she nodded again, refolding the newspaper along its original creases. Everyone knew of him, she supposed. She glanced up from her folding-into-a-neat-square as Mary started again. “You do?” It was a small world but she wasn’t anticipating it being that small. “Wow, okay.” Hermione pulled a lined pad of paper toward her to make a note with her self-inking quill: MH knows drummer’s sister. FU? (The ‘FU’ was for Follow Up and nothing else).

“Not really.” She shrugged her shoulders and glanced over her timeline. ‘Busy’ wasn’t really the right word for it; ‘involved’, maybe. She’d dedicated her usual amount of time to it, she thought. Of course, it was a second job on top of her other more official one, which she also invested her usual amount of time into and last time she checked there were still only twenty-four hours in a day but-- no, she wasn’t that busy.

She nodded again as she looked at her topmost article. She’d already found a lot of information about his personal life -- and had a running list with names, tallies for repeat mentions -- so hearing Mary try to tell her she was wasting her time wasn’t exactly helpful. “You won’t know what you find until you look,” she said, with an edginess to her voice she hadn’t planned for.

“Half two on a Thursday morning.” She didn’t need to review her notes to know that, having been the one to escort him out and all. Hermione didn’t slide the folder of timecards over immediately, wanting to hold on to some things for herself. “I have, yes.” That had been one of the first things she had done, checking why they were on the clock. “Besides the usual, there was only one special project working that night and--” she frowned and leaned in closer so she could drop her voice. “Clarke and Wilkins don’t really fit the profile.” She straightened back up and finally handed the folder over to Mary. “That is why I’m looking for connections, anything.”

She frowned and stared down at her notes again, as if something new would jump out at her this time.

“I— Yes,” she admitted, peering over to see what Hermione wrote down about this bit of information. Mary tilted her head to read it from a slightly better angle, but Hermione was too fast and covered her notes with her arm as soon as she’d finished writing them. Mary sat back up straight.

“I suppose not,” she agreed, eyebrow raised at Hermione’s response (was that sincerity or snark?). It did beg the question why he was here, in the middle of the night no less, and from what Perdita had said he didn’t come across as particularly handy with a wand with which to facilitate his escape from the authorities. His charm offensive, however, must have been good because Mary refused to believe that Perdita was that eas—

Oh. Oh no. Mary swallowed. Perdita. Of course -- she had mentioned seeing him, how he’d ‘wooed’ her (gag). Merlin’s sake.

Hermione didn’t hand the (wordlessly, somewhat rudely) requested timecards to Mary. Mary drew her hand back in and pursed her lips, before rolling them in and then back out. Shit. There was a chance she could poke Hermione in the wrong direction and Mary would if only it wasn’t literally the opposite of what her job was. She was supposed to uncover things, not cover them up.

The other option, of course, was to plead ignorance. The best way to do so was to not get involved. She cleared her throat dramatically and got off of Hermione’s desk, shuffling papers with her backside as she did so. “Sorry,” she said, rather unenthusiastically. “I’m going to get that coffee,” she announced, picking up one of her many mugs and tapping the rim with her fingernail. “I’ll bring you one,” she added, as an afterthought, making a mental note to get decaf and hope Hermione fell asleep before she worked out the mystery of Charlie Baker.


[ out ]

Hermione held back from rolling her eyes as Mary reluctantly agreed with her, as if Hermione being right about something was just the lesser of two evils.

She didn’t seem keen to help, even after Hermione had hinted at wanting some. She backtracked to her earlier thought, that she was just there to impede her concentration; Hermione knew as well as she did that successfully figuring out a solo case would be good for her, for the ICU, for Dominic and she was willing to guess which one of those things bothered Mary the most.

Mary apologized as she crinkled one paper and shuffled a few others and Hermione shrugged as she watched her get up off the corner of her desk, announcing her intention to get a coffee. “Alright.” Hermione had pulled the most recently scattered papers toward her, thumbing through them to ensure they were all in order even though they hadn’t been scattered that badly.

She glanced up; “Oh, thanks.” She looked at her cold cup of tea, waiting until Mary’s back was turned to reheat it (again) with a tap of her wand and down it in a few swallows. She was keen to get (re)organized after Mary’s visit and continue picking through her amassed research, get to a good pause point, maybe make it home before Ron had gone to bed.

[thread]