Broadway Is Dark Tonight

Chapter Three: Things I'll Never Say

Draco sighed softly, trying to concentrate on his paperwork, but he could hear Hermione rustling about beside him, putting things in their places inside her new desk. He glanced over once every couple minutes, and that was stealing precious time for his work. Soon he got slightly irritated, and glanced at her.

"Excuse me, Miss Granger, I'd appreciate it if you could make just a tad less noise," he said to her in his most professional voice. It seemed Hermione was becoming less and less suspicious of his true identity.

"Oh, I'm so sorry Lucien; just trying to settle in, you know," she said with a slight apologetic grin.

"Don't think anything of it; I just ask you be a bit quieter with your 'settling in,'" he said with a trace of his old smirk dawning on his face. He looked away, back at the paperwork quickly, however.

"All right," she said, picking up a book and beginning to read it, leaning back in her chair, her hair cascading down the back of the chair as he glanced up. She looked stunning in the early afternoon glow coming from a small window near the ceiling of the small room. He ripped his eyes away, picking up a file and placing it on her desk.

"Here, let's start you with this one," he said. "It's a simple assignment. Lately we've been getting a lot of requests for help from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."

"Oh, is Arthur Weasley still working there, by any chance?" Hermione asked somewhat eagerly.

"Not at this very moment; he has been out of the office for quite some time looking for his youngest son," Draco said professionally.

"Ron..." Hermione whispered, sighing and taking the file. "So, what's this all about?" She tried to cover up her emotions by immersing herself in her work, as always. That was Hermione after all.

"Someone had bewitched something, as always," Draco said. "Probably just playing a joke or something. I think it said something about toilet paper."

"Why can't the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts take care of this?" Hermione asked curiously, scanning over the file.

"They're missing about six of their staff members and more and more of these reports keep coming in," Draco pointed out. "They're booked solid. Overbooked sometimes. That's why the boss gave some to us whenever we have some downtime, like today. We don't really have much more to do than this, unfortunately. You came at a very dead time."

Hermione looked crestfallen. Draco gave a slight upturn of the lips and shrugged.

"I thought we'd be going at You-Know-Who," she said, a sigh on her lips as she leaned back in the recliner chair.

"There has been no word of him for over a year, Miss Granger," he said, with a slight sigh himself.

"Please, call me Hermione," she said cordially, re-scanning the file. Draco looked slightly taken aback, but recovered quickly. "So, bewitched toilet paper? Sounds like something the twins would do..."

Draco looked down and fell back onto the chair. "There has been more and more of it. I believe it's the Death Eaters trying to keep us off You-Know-Who's trail. There -has- been an increased mortality rate, especially with Muggles."

"Sounds like him all right," she said softly, her voice hitched in her throat as she looked down, putting the file on the desk.

"Hermione, are you all right?" he asked, his brows furrowing together concernedly, and he leaned forward.

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you Lucien," she said, picking the file back up. "I'll take care of this right away," she said, once again putting herself inside her work to forget her troubled mind.

Oh, how Draco admired that ability.

She Disapparated from the office, and Draco was left by himself. He plopped down in his chair and began working on the file he'd been scanning.

Hermione popped up in Ottery St. Catchpole. This seemed eerily familiar, and it made a knot in her stomach.

She glanced up one of the hills, and a shock of pain ran through her heart. That was where Ron, Harry, Ginny and the twins used to play Quidditch, like there was nothing else in the world. The thought made her sad, but she kept going, until her eyes fell upon the Burrow. It looked mostly abandoned, only the gnomes were a sign of life in the dismal house, with its many stories climbing high into the sky. She began to remember the days and months she used to spend there. She began to cry; the tears streaming silently down her face.

She longed for her childhood again.

She turned away, down the cobblestone street, looking at the file again. It was just down the street. She'd never seen a Muggle house on this street, which she found odd that she got an assignment from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office.

She got a chill as she walked closer to the house that was specified. It looked dismal and empty, almost foreboding as she came closer to the darkened door. She knocked twice, and the door creaked open. She heard a muffled yelling from the back of the house. She rushed toward it.

Upon reaching the farthest room in the house, she came upon the oddest sight she'd ever seen in her life.

There was a poor Muggle man, completely wrapped in toilet paper, his mouth covered, hence the muffled screams.

"Diffindo!" Hermione shouted, and the paper fell away, as if severed by a very sharp knife. It began twitching on the floor. "Evanesco!" The tissue paper disappeared completely. She walked up to the Muggle man and tapped her wand to his temple. "Obliviate." The man got a dreamy look on his face, then glanced at her.

"Hello, who are you?" he asked.

"I'm just a figment of your imagination," she replied, turning around and walking toward the door.

"Bye, figment," she heard him shout to her retreating back. She giggled softly to herself and walked out the door, Apparating back to her office.

Draco had been reading when she popped back in. His eyebrows rose slightly as he looked at her.

"That was quick," he remarked.

"It wasn't hard, Lucien," she said with a slight trace of a small smile on her lips. "The paper had a Muggle man bound. I severed it, made it disappear, and used a Memory Charm on him." She merely shrugged. "Not hard at all. I'm sure you could have done it as easily as I did."

Draco chuckled. "Everyone will be quite impressed, Hermione. It's always good to make a good impression on your first day." Hermione gave him a friendly smile and sat back down in her chair.