The Quiet Office

Kudos go to Madbrilliant and Alliean for the beta of this chapter.

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Chapter 28 - The Quiet Office

Weekends were always quiet at work, as fewer people would be coming in and out of the building for business.

Julia had once enjoyed days like these, where she could sit in the eerie silence and keep to herself quietly while working away on some new charms for breaking curses on cases and various other items found in tombs and caves. But those days were gone and past, and now she found that working on her own in the deadly quiet office was a little daunting, and she missed the noise. Sighing, she stood up from her workbench and went to the window, throwing it open wide and being instantly assailed with the smells and sounds of Diagon Alley below.

Glad to be breathing fresh air, as the room had been a little stuffy, she moved back to her bench and picked up the small puzzle box in front of her. The box was not an artifact at all. It was a gift she had been given by her grandfather before he had passed away, and she had not been able to find a way to open it in over eight years. Some days she would bring it in to work with her, hoping for some inspiration as what to do from the knowledge and experience she garnered there.

She pushed the box aside and put her head into her hands tiredly. She knew why she was unable to concentrate. The only problem was, she wished she wasn't thinking it. Bill Weasley, her best friend and the older brother of her ex-husband, was constantly on her mind these days. She was half glad that he was not at Gringotts that day, because when he was around, the idea of getting productive work done lately was a novelty. It had only been two months since she had divorced Ron, and while they had been having problems for a long while, she simply had not expected to move on quite so quickly and find herself noticing and falling for a man whom she had not thought of in a romantic way until just recently.

'Busy at work, I see,' murmured a familiar voice right into her ear.

Julia nearly fell off her stool from the fright she got. Thankfully, a pair of strong arms wrapped around her and righted her on the stool effortlessly before she was able to spin around and face the intruder. What she caught sight of was a casually dressed Bill, wearing a black t-shirt with a pair of casual jeans, his long hair untied and loose around his shoulders. He was stunning. It wasn't any wonder that half of the women in the building would swoon as he walked passed them, let alone smile at them with his dashing grin in the halls.

'I was having a little trouble concentrating,' she replied sheepishly with a shrug, being careful not to make too much eye contact. His eyes were lovely.

'You need to get away from this office, love,' he said in a friendly way, walking closer to her and putting an arm around her shoulders in a one-armed hug.

'I wanted to get some work done on the box today,' she protested weakly as he started to steer her towards the door to leave.

He shook his head at her and plucked the box and her bag from the table, taking everything with him as he coaxed her out. 'Let's go have some lunch,' he suggested with a beaming smile that left her a little breathless.

'Okay,' Julia found she was saying in reply.

Allowing herself to be led down the three flights of stairs, they left the building together with his arm wrapped carelessly around her shoulders and Julia clutching her bag to her chest like a safety blanket. She was getting a lot of strange looks from a fair number of the women, along with looks of both contempt and jealousy. She hadn't received looks like that before in her life, and being on the receiving end of them was a bit too daunting for her.

'Bill, they're glaring at me like I'm the devil,' she hissed under her breath in his general direction.

He laughed, tilting his head back in that way of his as he did, and pulled her closer to him before kissing the top of her head. 'Julia, I was hugging you like this when you were married to my brother, and I'm not going to stop hugging my best friend just because you divorced the little prat,' he said with a smile.

Julia smiled at that. She was relieved to know that, despite her divorcing Ron, Bill still considered her to be his best friend. She swallowed her fears of being ridiculed and relaxed, looping her bag onto her arm and shoulder and walking along beside him normally. They finally reached a small café in the middle of Diagon Alley, and Bill drew a chair out for her to sit before he assumed the seat opposite her. A waiter appeared, and they placed their orders before settling back comfortably to enjoy the summer sunshine and each other's company.

'How have you been?' he asked seriously, leaning forwards to rest his elbows on the table as he looked at her.

Julia nodded and offered him a small smile. 'I feel fine, honestly,' she answered, almost telling him the truth. 'It gets a little lonely and quiet at my flat, but other than that, I've been doing well.'

'Seen much of Hermione and Severus?' he queried.

'I saw Hermione just last week – the Hogwarts school year has just finished yesterday, I believe,' she replied, fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers on the table.

'Yes, Ginny was kind enough to inform me when she asked me to have dinner with her and Harry the other evening,' Bill said, smiling at the waitress who brought out their orders and thanking her politely. She was blushing by the time she walked back inside to resume her duties. When he looked back across the table at Julia, he saw that she had an eyebrow raised at him. 'What?'

'Why do you wait around like this, Bill? There are thousands of perfectly lovely, not to mention eligible, witches who would give their entire wardrobe of shoes away for the chance to have a conversation,' she said, partially out of exasperation and partly from jealousy. 'What are you waiting for?'

Bill simply smiled at her while his brain was frantically screaming, 'You – I'm waiting for you!' He reached a hand out and stilled her fiddling hands on the table and gesturing at her food. 'I don't want anyone to sacrifice shoes for me. Those women – they're all the same. Before, when I was scarred by that werewolf before the Healer's at St. Mungo's fixed it, none of them would have looked at me twice.'

'You have a lot of depth to you, Bill Weasley,' she said, taking a bite of her sandwich. 'I can see why Fleur was like a godsend to you. She wanted you, scars and all.'

Bill nodded, surprised that he did not feel a tug in his chest at the mention of Fleur's name. At one point, it has hurt him so badly to think about Fleur, but now, she was like a pale memory in comparison to the woman across from him. After that, they ate together in silence, occasionally smiling at each other and often accidentally brushing knees beneath the table. Once they were done, Bill paid for it all, and together they went for a leisurely stroll down the Alley.

'I should get back home,' Julia said after a long while. She had been with him for the better part of four hours.

'I'll see you to your door then,' he offered chivalrously, with a smile that made her unable to resist him.

She nodded, and they walked to the nearest Apparation Point in the Alley, and Bill wrapped an arm tightly around her before Apparating them both into the sitting room of her flat. She dropped her bag onto her kitchen table, fishing out her wand and giving it a quick flick to open the blinds and the windows to allow fresh air and sunlight into her cozy apartment.

'Have a seat anywhere,' she told him as she went to the kitchen to put on the kettle to boil for making tea.

Instead of sitting, he wandered around her small sitting room, looking at the abundance of photos she had on the mantle of her fireplace, and the shelves that were not holding her precious book collection, and the various little china ornaments that he knew had once belonged to her great-grandmother. To be honest, since her divorce, Bill had never fully walked into her apartment at all and was rather surprised when he saw her decorating style. It was very tidy, but she liked to have a lot of photos of memorable things around the place, like ones of her family and friends, and things that she cherished. It was very different than her house with Ron.

While he was waiting and listening to her bustle around in the kitchen, his spotted something – a photo – that had immediately caught his eye as he looked more closely at the mantle. In one of the positions of honor, right beside the photo of her with her parents, was a lovely little picture of Julia and him. He was standing behind her in the photo and had his arms wrapped around her and over her shoulders. They were both smiling and wearing their beige work uniforms from the time they had spent working together in Egypt for Gringotts. It had been when he'd first met her.

It had been Bill that had introduced Ron to Julia in America when the two had gone over to watch Ron play a Quidditch match. They had clicked instantly, or so they had all thought, and Ron had once again been determined to make a Hermione out of her. Unfortunately for him, Julia was her own person, and their divorce had been a result of Ron's blindness. Bill would not be making the same mistake. He found that he was in love with his best friend, and he wasn't going to let her go.

'Would you like tea or coffee?' asked Julia from the kitchen doorway then. 'I'll only make a pot of either one, but not both.'

Bill smiled. 'Plunger of coffee would be lovely, thanks, Julia,' he replied, putting the photo of them together back on the mantle and going to join her in the kitchen.

He found her there, carefully spooning the exact amount of coffee into the bottom of a Muggle press percolator before adding water into it and sitting the lid on the top, setting her watch to time how long it should sit for. She saw him in the doorway and gifted him with one of her beautiful smiles – the kind that he had been missing ever since the problems began in the family with his mother and brother. He walked over to her and tucked some stray hair behind her ear, and just as her watch went off, he pressed the plunger down on the coffee slowly.

'Julia?' he asked a little hesitantly.

She looked up at his face curiously, wondering at his tone. 'Yes?' she answered.

'Would you... I don't want to seem insensitive by asking this, but I was wondering if you would like to accompany me for dinner sometime,' he asked, looking at the kitchen bench top nervously.

Julia felt her breath catch in her throat. Was he...? 'Are you asking me out on a date?' she asked quietly so not to sound like she was assuming too much.

He sucked in a deep breath audibly and nodded. 'I know this might be moving a little too fast, and I understand if you say no – after all – I did rather spring this on you.'

Julia caught his hand in her own and leaned forwards, pressing her lips to his cheek gently. 'I would love to go on a date with you, Bill,' she said sincerely, brushing his hair back from his face as it had fallen in front when he had been trying to hide behind it. She grinned at him and hugged him around the waist, prompting him to respond in kind, and he reached around her petite form in a fierce hug.

'Coffee now?' she asked with a laugh as she pulled back.

Bill nodded, feeling lightness in his step that had not been there before.