Deliberation

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.

Again, I must thank Alliean for the beta of this chapter - she is a gem.

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Chapter 2: Deliberation

The picture on the front of the newspaper was overly large, to say the very least. It took up almost the entire page, save for the headline and the name of the newspaper. Hermione stared at the picture of herself raising her wand at the reporters and cameramen that had been standing outside the building on the day that the last of the divorce papers had been signed with Michael. It had been two weeks since that fateful day, and the papers were still alive with the gossip and conspiracies behind the divorce.

She sighed and tossed the paper across the table to Harry Potter, who was sitting there drinking his tea and taking a bite of his morning toast. Hermione had stayed overnight at his and Luna's house. The night before she had been practically pacing a hole into the floor, and after she had started muttering to herself, Luna had insisted that she stay and had led her up to one of the spare bedrooms and dosed her with Dreamless Sleep. Needless to say, she had been a tad ruffled in the morning because of it.

'Look at that, Harry,' she said with a hint of anger in her tone. 'It's in the paper yet again! I don't know how many times that picture has been recycled! I've lost bloody count! This is all getting rather absurd.'

Harry nodded. 'I don't know what to say, Hermione,' he replied slowly. 'I think that you should get someone to investigate this for you and find out who is behind all of the slandering in the papers.'

She nodded absently, examining her nails for a moment. 'I suppose that might be an idea,' she agreed. 'I've been getting all sorts of nasty mail at work and at home – I can't even recall how many times I have had to light a fire and burn it all.'

'You really should consider my suggestion then,' Harry said, just as Luna walked into the kitchen with a small smile on her face.

'How are you this morning, 'Mione?' she asked, sitting down on the chair between her husband and Hermione.

'I could be better,' she muttered, drinking down a mouthful of her tea that had gone mostly cold because the post had arrived and she had gotten distracted reading the latest gossip. 'I could be divorced and happy, but instead I am divorced and being hounded by Merlin only knows who.'

Luna patted her hand sympathetically. 'It will work out in the end. Bad people rarely ever get away with bad deeds,' she said in a soothing voice.

Hermione nodded, and after finishing her tea and taking the empty cup to the sink, she Summoned her cloak to her and pulled it on, preparing to leave. 'I have to get home and get ready for work – I have to start at noon today.'

Harry nodded, and both he and Luna stood and saw her to the door. 'I will look into the source of the articles and everything for you while I'm in at the office today,' Harry told her, referring to his office in the Auror's department in the Ministry.

Hermione nodded and Apparated once she was out the back door of their house. She reappeared in the sitting room of the house she had been sharing with her husband up until she had kicked him out over a year earlier. It was perfectly free of any remnants of his presence in the house, which was exactly the way she liked it. Her house was always the picture of perfection and was much lovelier without the rustic male touches of various items being strewn willy-nilly about the house.

Walking up the stairs, she entered the master bedroom and crossed into her bathroom, shedding her clothes and cloak from the day before and waving her hand in the direction of the shower to turn on the taps. She stepped under the spray when it was a reasonable temperature and let the water wash over her hair and body. After scrubbing her hair and soaping up her body, she rinsed off and got out after a few minutes, casting a drying charm on everything but her hair and tucking a towel around herself. She had no wish for her hair to dry out too much, and the drying charm did just that to it.

She sat down on the chair before her vanity and applied moisturizer to her long legs and calves, even rubbing some onto her arms to keep them smooth and supple. She combed her hair carefully before plaiting it into a long braid that hung down her back neatly. Then she finally dressed in her undergarments and went in search of what she would be wearing beneath her robes. She found a pair of black slacks and a white blouse, donning them both and putting on her Healer robes over the top.

Satisfied with her appearance, she slipped on her shoes and went to her study to grab her briefcase before Apparating to the main lobby as usual. She got into the elevator with a big group of people and managed to make her way to the back. Everyone else was headed to the third floor, and the last thing she wanted was to get pushed out by the crowd and end up waiting on that floor forever for the next elevator. The group took ages to scramble out, which tested her patience a little. However, she managed to smile the entire time and even wished them a pleasant day.

She got off on her floor and was immediately met by Sophia, who walked along next to her explaining an incident in her wing that had occurred an hour earlier that she had not been notified about. As if her day hadn't started off badly enough, and now she had someone that she needed to strangle because one of the Healers wasn't doing their job correctly. She frowned as she opened the door to her office and dropped her briefcase in, accepting the patient charts immediately and following Sophia down the corridor. She was supposed to be notified when there was an incident in her ward.

'Who told you that you were not to notify me?' she demanded of her apprentice as she walked down the hall, her shoes clicking sharply against the floor.

'It was Healer Burgess,' Sophia explained. 'I was banned from the room after the patient was taken inside, and I have only seen a peek of him since.'

Fuming, she stormed her way over to the room door, opened without bothering to knock, and stared around at everyone with her hands on her hips. 'I apologise for being late. I will endeavor to come in earlier next time,' she stated in a hard voice, not bothering to hide her annoyance at her staff members.

'Ah, Healer Granger,' Burgess said, flicking his wand to draw the curtains around the bed to hide the patient from her view. 'Please, come with me just outside. There are a few things that we would like to talk to you about concerning the patient inside. I just didn't think it would be prudent for you to be alerted until the authorities were on their way over here.'

Hermione grudgingly followed Burgess from the room and down the hall to the staff lounge. There were a couple of apprentices in there, who cleared out the moment they were waved away. Standing stiffly with her hands on her hips, she waited for Burgess to tell her exactly what was going on with the new patient. He sat down on one of the chairs and crossed his legs, taking his time. Hermione felt as though he was just doing it to annoy her. She was the Senior Healer on that floor, and everyone else was supposed to be working under her, not going over her head.

'I demand an explanation, Burgess,' she said curtly, not bothering to sit.

'It appears to me that the – ah – patient who we received an hour ago was someone who was formerly associated with you, so we thought it would be best to leave you out of it until the Aurors arrive to investigate,' he replied greasily.

Hermione frowned. 'You thought wrong, and I will be ensuring to note this mistake on your record,' she snapped, walking briskly from the room with her robes whipping around her dramatically.

She opened the door to the patient's room once more, and this time waved her own hand to move the curtain that was blocking her view. To her shock, Michael was lying on the bed, his eyes open and unfocussed, and his breathing a little irregular and harsh. She noted that he was pale and sweaty, and that his veins were quite stark and almost green beneath his skin. And then she noticed the tattoo – one that had never been there while they had still been living together. It looked to be relatively new and was a scarab beetle with a very poisonous quality to it.

'Make sure you analyze that tattoo – you don't want to miss any traces of a possible dark spell,' she told Sophia, who nodded numbly at her.

Hermione walked down the hall, feeling a little uneasy. She had been so sure that her ex-husband had been one of the main sources behind all of the slander, and yet, he was there in the hospital, either having been poisoned or touched by a dark curse. He could have still been behind it. Just because he was in hospital now did not mean he wasn't behind it before. She sighed heavily and entered her office, dropping into her chair behind her desk heavily and leaning her head against her arms on the surface of the desk. Now that she could hear nothing beyond the door, she was painfully aware of the growing headache towards the back of her skull.

'Healer Granger?' piped Sophia from the small gap she created at the door.

'Come in,' she told her, waving her in and lifting her head from her arms. 'What do you have to tell me about why he is in here to begin with? Who found him and brought him, by the way?'

'A Miss Grey brought him in. She said she had found him in his kitchen passed out cold at the table,' the younger witch immediately replied. 'She said she had gone over there to finalize payments that he had not made to her, and that she thought he was dead – she's in the waiting room just outside the ward.'

'Ah, that does sound like Michael – not making payments on time, and then putting them off until I have to pull out my money and pay for it for him,' she said, before feeling a slight pang of guilt. He was in a bad way just down the hall from her, and she had the nerve to think like that?

She shook her head and dismissed Sophia, who was just opening the door to the office to leave, as Harry entered looking a little flustered, along with Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was the Head of the Auror's Department. Hermione indicated that they both be seated and signaled for Sophia to stay instead.

'How can I help you, Harry?' she asked.

'We were asked to come here by Healer Burgess to discuss the state of Michael Williamson,' Kingsley answered formally before Harry could reply. 'He seemed to be particularly insistent on it, and seeing as Williamson is one of my Aurors, it became something of a priority for our department. I hope you understand.'

'Of course,' she said simply. 'Now, I don't mean to be abrupt, but I have work to do, so please ask your questions, and I will answer as best I can.'

'Where were you between the hours of eight and ten this morning?' Kingsley asked seriously.

Hermione almost rolled her eyes. She knew she would become a suspect. 'I was at Harry and Luna Potter's house eating a late breakfast and reading the newspaper,' she answered plainly.

'Very well,' Kingsley said, writing in a notebook. 'Well, I suppose that is really all I had to ask. It seems like you have rather a busy day ahead of you.'

Hermione almost growled at him. He wasted her time just to ask her that? As he stood to leave, Harry gave her a smile and hugged her quickly before following his boss from the room. Sophia slipped out of the office without another word, leaving her to her own thoughts. She reached into the top drawer of her desk and withdrew a vial of headache potion, pulling out the stopper and downing it in one swallow.

'Fuck this,' she muttered under her breath, closing her eyes tight.