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Beneath Your Window by Crookshanks.x
 Books » Harry Potter Rated: T, English, Romance & Humor, Draco M., Hermione G., Words: 89k+, Favs: 1k+, Follows: 432, Published: Jun 10, 2007 Updated: Jun 6, 2008
 1,044 Chapter 24: The Beginning
Disclaimer: I'm not genious enough to be the owner of Harry Potter. I say that with regret.
A/N: Exams are OVER. My summerjob has started (ew), I'm back home and I finally got to settle down to actually finish the very last chapter of Beneath Your Window. I decided to wait until I had time to do it properly, because I didn't want to just slap something down for the very last chapter of the fic I've been working on for the better part of a year.
It's been a good run, everyone! I hope you like the last part too. :)
Chapter 24 / The Beginning
It was lunchtime and the workroom outside was almost unnervingly quiet. The silence would have caught her off guard if it hadn't been for all the overtime she had worked lately. She was quite used to being on her own in the Department after hours, so a quiet lunchtime wasn't enough to make her uneasy. A stray curl fell onto her parchment as she dotted the i's in Invigoration Draught. She had been slouching further and further down onto her desk as the hours passed, mountains of paperwork only marginally decreasing as she worked.
A soft knock on her door prompted her to straighten up and run her hands over the creases in her work robe. The door slid open and the breath hitched in her throat when her blondest co-worker stepped inside in silence.
"Um..." she croaked, coughing desperately to control her faltering voice. "Aren't you out to lunch with the rest?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he retorted after taking a moment's pause.
"Yeah, well." She shrugged and gestured towards her paperwork, which was torturously slow in its decrease.
He gave a wry smile as he raised his left hand and drew the attention towards a yellow piece of parchment in his hand. At her desperate groan, he let out a small laugh – seemingly involuntarily, judging by the way his lips pursed into a tight line.
"Just put it wherever you want. It'll be in good company," she commented with a roll of her eyes.
Still keeping his lips pursed, perhaps to keep the laughter in this time, he dropped the parchment on top of a medium sized pile. As he was about to turn a way, his eye caught the curse detector in its designed spot on her desk. Her cheeks burned as she noticed his gaze lingering on the birthday gift, and she immediately looked away as he quickly averted his eyes from the offending item.
He took several quick steps towards the door, slipping between the door and the frame before he turned his head.
"You have some ink on your chin," he said quietly before he was gone from her office.
"Thanks," she breathed unnecessarily to the empty office.
It was only his second day on the job and he was already proving to be a valuable workforce – and a royal pain in the arse. Every logical thought had the nasty habit of fleeing her mind as he entered the room, leaving her flustered and desperate to keep herself occupied so he wouldn't speak to her. She tried to ignore him as much as possible, letting the other employees work like a buffer between them. Though maybe not intentionally, she had started retreating to her office more and more, handling the administrative side of things as he spent most of his time in the workroom overseeing the activity.
She missed the practical side of her job. The actual making of the potions had always been her favourite part – perhaps surprisingly, considering her love for books and studying, but during her internship the hours spent over the cauldron with Snape had felt like the reward for hours and hours on end spent behind a book.
