Chapter 11: The Office Encounter
The stillness of Draco’s cottage had been a tangible thing, a blanket of enforced calm. The Ministry was a cacophony. The buzz of memo wings, the clipped footsteps on polished floors, the low hum of a hundred conversations—it was all noise. Hermione sat at her immaculate desk, a file on international portkey smuggling open before her, and found she could read the same paragraph three times without comprehension.
A week. It had been a week since she’d apparated from his doorstep, the silver chain a secret burn against her thigh in her pocket. She’d taken the stabilization potion religiously. The sharp, biological urgency had faded into the background, leaving behind a strange, resonant quiet inside her. It wasn’t peace. It was more like the ringing in your ears after a loud blast, a permanent alteration in your personal frequency.
Her office smelled of lavender from the sachet in her drawer and the crisp, clean ozone of her own protective wards. It was a smell she’d curated, a declaration of control. Today, it felt thin. Beneath it, if she breathed deeply, she could almost catch the phantom echo of cedar and old books and spiced whiskey.
She shook her head, annoyed with herself. Archaeological digs into poor life choices, he’d said. She was not going to dig.
A shadow fell across her desk. She looked up, expecting a memo or an intern.
Cormac McLaggen filled her doorway. He’d always been a large man, broad-shouldered and tall, but he carried it with a new, calculated awareness. An alpha’s awareness. He’d been in the Werewolf Capture Unit for a few years, and it showed in the easy, predatory way he leaned against her doorframe, blocking the light.
“Granger,” he said, his grin wide and unmistakably possessive. “Heard you were out sick. Everything… sorted?”
The emphasis on the last word was deliberate. The entire Ministry knew her designation; it was an unspoken, often gossiped-about fact. An omega in a position of power. It made some people uncomfortable. It made others, like Cormac, feel impertinently familiar.
“I’m fine, Cormac,” she said, her voice cool and professionally flat. She didn’t invite him in. “What do you need?”
“Can’t a bloke check on a colleague?” He pushed off the frame and stepped inside, his presence making the room feel smaller. His scent hit her—a musky, aggressive cedar, entirely different from Draco’s. This was cedar with no depth, cut with cheap aftershave and sweat. It was alpha scent as a blunt instrument. Her own omega instincts, usually so ruthlessly suppressed, bristled. Not with attraction. With a deep, visceral rejection.
“You’re checking. I’m working.” She looked back down at her file, a clear dismissal.
He didn’t take the hint. He came to stand directly in front of her desk, looking down at her. “You know, a lot of omegas in high-stress jobs find it helps to have a stabilizing influence. An anchor. Prevents these… unpredictable absences.”
Her head snapped up. Her eyes met his, and she let all the fury she’d been compartmentalizing for a week sharpen her gaze. “Are you offering your services as an anchor, McLaggen? How remarkably altruistic.”
He either missed the venom or chose to ignore it. He leaned forward, palms on her desk, invading her space. His smile turned condescending. “I’m just saying. It’s biological, Hermione. Fighting it just makes it harder. Someone with my standing, my family name… it would look good. For both of us. People talk, you know. They wonder how you manage all alone.”
The implication was as crude as his scent. That she was vulnerable. That she needed propping up. That her job, her life’s work, was a fragile performance soon to be undone by her own anatomy. Rage, clean and hot, flooded her system. It was the same rage she’d felt at fourteen when he’d pawed at her at the Slug Club party, assuming access.
But before she could eject him from her office with a hex she’d regret, a wave of dizziness washed over her. It was sudden and profound, a tilting of the world. The muffled Ministry noise swelled, then receded. A hot flush crawled up her neck, and for a split second, the musky cedar of Cormac’s scent was overpowered, not banished, but overwritten.
By cedar and spiced whiskey. By cold stone and burning peat. By a memory so vivid it was a physical punch.
Draco.
It was just a flash, a synaptic ghost triggered by stress and anger and another alpha’s aggressive posturing. But it was enough to short-circuit her fury into something more confusing.
Cormac saw the flush. He misinterpreted it entirely. His grin turned triumphant. “See? It’s not so bad to acknowledge it, is it?”
That broke the spell. The clarity returned, icy and precise. She stood up, slowly. She was shorter than him, but she drew herself up with a authority that had cowed seasoned aurors. “Get out of my office, McLaggen.”
“Now, Hermione—”
“Out.” The word was a whip-crack. Her wards, sensitive to her intent, gave a low, threatening hum. The photograph of her and Harry on her desk seemed to still, both faces turning to stare coldly at the intruder. “My biological cycles are not Ministry business, nor are they a subject for your unsolicited commentary. The next word you utter on this topic will be to your department head, following a formal complaint for harassment. Do you understand?”
His face hardened. The affable pretense dropped, revealing the entitled bully beneath. He didn’t like being denied. An alpha rejected by an omega, in his simplistic view, was a profound insult. “You’ll regret that tone, Granger.”
“I highly doubt it.” She didn’t blink. “Close the door on your way out.”
For a long moment, he held his ground, his scent flaring with aggression. She held his gaze, her hand drifting casually toward the wand in her robes. He saw the movement. With a final, ugly glare, he turned and stalked out, slamming the door hard enough to make the frames on her wall rattle.
Silence slammed back in, heavier than before.
Hermione sank into her chair, her hands trembling slightly. Not from fear of Cormac. From the residual adrenaline, and from that other thing. That brief, terrifying sensory hallucination.
She put a hand to her sternum, where the chill of the silver chain usually lay against her skin. She’d taken to wearing it under her blouses, a secret she refused to examine. It was cool. Grounding.
Her stomach twisted, a dull, familiar ache that had nothing to do with hunger. She looked at the clock. It was too early. Far too early. The stabilization potion was supposed to last another fortnight at least.
But as the echo of Cormac’s invasion faded, the other scent—the real one, the remembered one—didn’t entirely dissipate. It lingered in the back of her sinuses, a haunting.
And the cramp in her abdomen tightened, a faint, insistent pull.
It wasn’t the heat. Not yet.
It was a warning. A deep, biological acknowledgement that the temporary fix was failing. That the anchor she had just so viciously denied needing was, in fact, the only thing her body was wired to recognize.
And he was across the city in his silent cottage, a chain missing from his drawer, waiting for a storm he’d always known would return.