It's Monday somewhere, right? Happiest of birthdays to LadyKenz347. You're an irreplaceable part of fandom, and I hope you have the best birthday.

Pairing: James Potter/Hermione Granger

Information: Lily died in the first war, saving Harry's life. James survived, and was present as Harry, Hermione, and Ron grew up. The second war still took place, and all the information that's vital to the story will be explained as it goes. James, Remus, and Sirius are all alive. This will either be five or six chapters, and four are written.

Tags/Warnings: Older Man/Younger Woman, Sexual Content, Some Violence (not graphic), Canon Divergence, HEA.

Beta read by mcal, one of the best cheerleaders around.

It started as nothing, a note here, or there. She got those often, though. Hermione had been forced to come to expect vile words stretching across parchment, or the vicious words spat by a Howler of how a filthy, Mudblood witch with no right to magic was on the fast track to Minister.

She wasn't really on the fast track, but it had been put that way several times by The Daily Prophet. Kingsley Shacklebolt said she'll hold the position in ten years, and had been quoted for saying he would personally outfit her for the position. It was a good feeling, Hermione thought, when her friends threw her a massive party combined as her birthday and a promotion with the Ministry to Deputy Department Head.

It was a big deal, she knew. At twenty-two, five years out of Hogwarts, and away from the war, Hermione realised there were wizards looking down their noses at her for holding on by nothing by her own tenacity and stubbornness. There were wizards, and a few witches, that are much older than her that are still Deputy Department Heads, and have never advanced.

So when the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, Hermione didn't stop to ponder it on the way home. Her flat was a short walk from the Apparition point, and she realised she ought to have used the Floo in her office to get home, but it was nothing. A chilly day that she could spend with her scarf blissfully wrapped around her neck and tucked over her chapped lips. It's not so enjoyable that her lip is cracked and snagged on the scarlet material, but Hermione carried on.

There was a footstep behind her, cracking through the ice of a puddle she'd stepped over a second before, and her blood ran cold. Her wand was in her hand in an instant—summoned without saying a word—but when she pivoted to the side and whirled, there was no one there.

Nothing but a breath left hanging in the frosty air to make her believe that someone had been there at all.

She strengthened her wards, and elected to not tell Harry or Ron. If it got worse, she assured herself, then she'd go to them. Both Aurors, both trigger happy, and overly protective of their third part, Harry and Ron would have whisked her away to their flat in a second before involving the brunt of the DMLE.

Thinking it was something simple enough to scare her, to get her out of the way, Hermione wanted to handle it alone. She was a capable witch, formidable even in her own right, though it was conceited to say. It was probably Davies who had been watching her from the outer office of the Minister, keeping his prejudices to himself when Kingsley was around, but then it still didn't make any sense.

There had been plenty of conspiracies in the Ministry over the course of history. There was the debacle of 1891, where deep rooted ties to powerful families nearly shredded the system entirely, but the long reached effects had never been fully explained, or uncovered. Each to try had mysteriously vanished, but dead with a doubt. Their names were listed on a plaque by the cleaning cupboard for maintenance, nothing but a footnote in history. There was Voldemort, Hermione thought bitterly, so there was no limit to how low one could steep.

But it felt like something else.

Hermione sat behind her desk, staring into the doorway of the Head's office. Rusty was just inside, and she should tell him her worries. How sometimes her wards rippled, jarring her out of a deep sleep. He might tell her that she was just worried however, a little witch who had been frightened.

He wouldn't. He trusts you explicitly and your judgement.

If it was nothing, though, it would seep through the grapevine, no matter how confidential it was promised to be. There were no secrets to be kept, and jumping to the conclusion that she had a stalker when it was nothing but a phantom it seemed, they would label her.

They always had, but she did what she could to prevent even more from being permanently slapped on her.

Nothing. It's nothing.

Constantly looking over her shoulder was exhausting, but after the fall of Voldemort, Hermione had never completely stopped. A therapist in the year after the war informed her of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and formerly diagnosed her. Like Harry, Ron, or she supposed any Auror, she knew the exits when she walked into a room.

The fastest ways to get out.

Her head was going to explode from trying to prepare for anything and everything. When Ron asked her why she stopped going for walks along the Thames—he knew how she liked the view, how she romanticised the bridge despite all of the tourists—she swallowed her lunch and murmured that her knee had been aching.

He offered to bring her a pain potion from the stockroom for Aurors if she needed it, and she said she'd stop by an apothecary.

When Ron learned that she didn't go to an apothecary during a normal conversation where he asked about her knee, he started to eye her carefully until it came to a head weeks later. "Does your knee still hurt?" He asked, setting a potion on her desk.

Hermione looked up, her lie already prepared and at the tip of her tongue, but something about Ron tipped her off. "It was never hurting."

He nodded, and she was surprised when his nostrils didn't flare. "I know. You had your annual mandated physical not long ago. I pulled the record, and found there was nothing wrong with you at all, at least not physically."

Her eyes widened, and the parchment in her hands slipped away, floating to her desk. "That's a serious violation of ethics, Ron. If you were caught, you could be suspended. Or worse, terminated." The statement reminded her of something she'd said before, but the details were hazy. "Ron?"

He flipped the chair in front of him backward, and straddled it while folding his arms across the top. "You lied to me, and you never lie. Not without a good reason."

Only it wasn't a good reason, and she bloody well knew it. "You're going to lose your head."

"Do you think I'll be able to find it?"

Hermione sighed.

"So it's that bad. Come on, 'Mione. Spit it out." He tapped his fingers against the desk, nudging the plaque he'd gifted to her upon her promotion. "Hermione, you're worrying me."

She looked toward Rusty's office. The door was sealed shut, and considering how there was a meeting in place, she knew he wouldn't be out for some time. Brushing hair behind her ears, Hermione opened the middle drawer of her desk. "A few weeks ago," Hermione started nervously, flipping open a muggle legal pad. "I began receiving threatening letters. They all passed through Ministry protocol, and I was allowed to view them. They were… odd."

He arched a brow. "How so?"

"Normally, they're filled with rubbish about blood superiority. These weren't. In fact, they were classified as threats only because they're noting my movements throughout the day."

The colour drained from his face as his fist came down on the desk. "What?"

Gulping, she knew she was in the thick of it now. "It's true. I read them myself, and it catalogued my entire schedule. Um, here it is..." She thrust the parchment out. "It's only a copy since they tested the original for hexes and jinxes. The standard."

Ron nodded, his knee popping up and down as he skimmed the letter. "Lunch with Balfast—that guy is a right prick." Well, she didn't disagree. "Walked to Flourish and Blotts—Hermione, this is a written transcript of your conversation with the clerk!'

"I know."

"Did they throw this out? This is dangerous." His eyes flashed a shade darker, and she clasped her hands under the desk. "This is the beginning of a stalker, don't you realise that? Didn't they?"

No, they hadn't. She had expected to have a fight on her hands when she stepped off the lift so the DMLE wouldn't blow it out of proportion. But there hadn't been. The Head Auror took her at her word, and dismissed it, leaving it to be filed in the archives where all of the other threats toward Ministry officials were stored.

Clearing her throat, Hermione's voice was weak. "That's not all."

Ron's head snapped up, and the parchment crinkled in his grip. "What is it?"

"I think… it's possible I was followed home two weeks ago. I thought it was nothing, someone walking behind me without a sense of social boundaries, but then they were inches away from my back. I drew my wand, and they were gone. It didn't sound like Apparition, but that's all I know. Sometimes I sense my wards… flickering. That's the best way to describe it."

"And you never thought to file a report? Or to come to me? Harry? You're so much smarter than this." He said it gently, but his reassuring smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Why didn't you come to us?"

Since he was unlikely to let it go, there wasn't an option. "If this was nothing, as I thought it was, they would portray me as a scared, paranoid witch. Don't you remember when Skeeter saw me leaving my therapist's office? I worried it would affect my future aims."

He balled the paper up in his fist. "Better a scared witch than a dead witch."

The words knocked into her, rattling in her head as she stared at him. Ron was never serious. Ron with his soft blue eyes that lit up in amusement, and his sense of humor that only meshed with hers half of the time. Yet here he was, staring at her with a dark look that she'd only ever seen when there had been a robbery at the shop.

"I'm sorry."

Coming round her desk, his hip bumping into the edge, he held his hand out to her. "It's alright. Come with me and I'll help you file a report. Only the best for you, 'Mione. And," he raised a hand as she scribbled a memo that zipped under her boss's door. "I don't want to hear a single complaint about using resources. They're yours to use, just as they would be for any other employee working here."

Ron sat across from her, and by the time she was halfway through her written statement, Harry barged into the room. His hair was windblown, and not in a good way, but she paid the most attention to how he glared at her. "Hermione…" He began, adjusting his uniform.

"Did you run all of the way here?" Ron snorted, covering his mouth. "Have a seat. Try not to scold Hermione. She's shaken up enough, and I think I've done enough when it comes to nagging her." it was a lie, and Hermione caught his wink from across the table. He hadn't nagged her at all through the walk to the lift, nor through the narrow, bleak corridors leading to the interrogation rooms.

Luckily, this wasn't an interrogation.

"Yes," Harry growled, ripping his robes from around his shoulders. "I did run all of the way here. I got your Patronus while brushing my teeth."

Hermione smirked while looking up from the table. "You've got toothpaste right here." She pointed to the side of his mouth.

Harry grumbled and stormed from the room.

"There wasn't any toothpaste." Ron grinned.

As she finished the statement, laying her quill down, she held her wand to the surface. Magic rippled across the surface, flashing through hues of blue and green before seeping into the parchment. The door closed quietly behind Harry and he crossed the room. "Done?"

She and Ron nodded. "What happens now?"

Harry rested his cheek on his knuckles. "I think you should stay with us for awhile. If you think you're wards are being tampered with while you're inside, then you already know it's not safe."

"I don't know that." Hermione argued. "That could be my paranoia. If you find they've been tampered with, I'll stay. If they're not, then I'm going to continue living at home."

Neither of them liked it. "Fine." Ron conceded. "We can't force you to relocate unless we've proven you're in immediate danger. There are some things we'll need your cooperation with though."

Hermione glared. "You wouldn't be enjoying the chance to tell me what to do, would you?"

"Of course not. I'm nothing if not a professional." Ron drawled.

Harry's foot nudged hers under the table.

She burst into laughter. "What are your demands?"

Rolling his eyes, Ron laid parchment in front of her, and she recognised the DMLE letterhead at the top. "Please Floo directly home via the one in your office. If you need to go anywhere, you're to have an Auror escort you. Harry and I will be available at most times. If at any time you feel that you are in immediate danger, please activate this." He laid a stone on the table, a small one that fit in the center of her palm. "If activated, every Auror available is going to swarm the location."

Hermione dropped it. "That is ridiculous."

Ron and Harry exchanged a look. "If you don't take it, Hermione, there will be two Aurors on you at all times. I realise you think this is going overboard—"

"It is."

He clicked his tongue. "I don't give a shite. You're a symbol for a lot of things, and whoever is following you may be after that, or just you in general. Either way, the DMLE is electing to not take any risks."

Harry reached across the table to wrap her hand in his. "What good is being able to protect people if we can't protect the ones we care about most?"

Defeated, Hermione closed her hand around the stone. "You win then."

When her wards were checked by an independent third party, neither Harry or Ron could deny that they were fine. They insisted on better security, and informed her that the DMLE took the security of employees seriously, so they would pay the bill. When she reared back, already poised for an argument, they told her if she paid the bill that she would be reimbursed with her biweekly wages.

It was quiet that week, no ripples in her wards. Even if she was still unsure whether she'd imagined them or not, Hermione felt that much better to fall asleep without wondering if she would wake to someone hovering over her. It was the image, concocted by swirling fears colliding in her mind, that had seen her to sleep for weeks until involving the proper channels.

It still sent her off into a dreamless sleep each night, and there was nothing to help that.

Ron checked up on her more than Harry did. While they had amicably decided early on—incredibly early, within a few days of the smoke settling over Hogwarts—that they weren't interested in exploring what it could be, Ron had steadfastly remained her closest friend. It was good, counting on him, easily looping either of her arms through Ron and Harry's while they ordered rounds at the Leaky.

However, it also meant that he was absurdly protective. He checked the wards during his daily patrols, or on his lunch break if there was no time to sneak away. His worry is justified. You're being stalked.

The thought would enter her mind without warning, and that morning, Hermione mistakenly knocked over a jar of ink as air rushed from her lungs. Everything was upside down, and as much as she wished it wasn't happening, there was little to do about it. She considered seeking out either man to ask questions about the status of the investigation.

Except Ron was meeting Susan Bones for lunch, and Harry had been sent on a mission in Surrey with his father. Hermione dwelled on that for a moment, biting her lip. She'd heard of the mission, a supposed scouting mission that could quickly snowball into something else. There had been sightings of Amycus and Alecto Carrow.

The sightings could be wrong.

But if they were correct, Hermione realised that James had been assigned with Harry not only for his experience, but for the fact that out of all the Aurors, James Potter was firmly in the slot of number one when it came to catching Death Eaters and sympathisers.

Still, Hermione hoped it would be nothing. That if the sibling pair were going to be caught, as they should have been years ago, it would go without problem. WIthout injuries.

Without casualties.

As her day drew to a close, Hermione packed files into her satchel. She would review them with dinner, hopefully with a glass of red wine. Shouldering her bag, Hermione took one look at the Floo. She wasn't going directly home since she needed to stop by Flourish and Blotts to pick up an order. Drawing her lip between her teeth, Hermione decided she would find Ron and ask him to go with her. At least that way she would feel comfortable, and she also wouldn't be on the receiving end of an almost comical scolding. How the tables have turned.

Hurrying to the lift and shuffling to the right of Terry Boot, Hermione counted the floors they descended. She was the first out, eager to escape the enclosed space. As she looked around the atrium, her chest deflated. Ron had been found, but he was deep in a conversation with Susan, and there was a wide smile stretching his lips.

Hermione couldn't interrupt them, not as he looked so at ease when he had been terribly nervous about the 'relationship' as it wasn't quite a relationship yet. With her heels clicking against the tile, Hermione exited the Ministry before he could happen to see her.

The walk from the Ministry into Diagon Alley was short, but enjoyable. Despite the air that bit her cheeks, Hermione wrapped her wool coat tightly around her, and delighted in the warming charm cast on her tights. In one pocket, her fingers were fisted around her vine wand, twitching and eager to lash out at anyone that dared to touch her.

As she hurried past the entrance to Knockturn Alley, wishing it wasn't so close for another time, the fear of being followed started to fade. Still, she gripped her wand for extra precaution. It wasn't as if anyone was going to attack her in broad daylight, especially out in the open.

It was a mistake that left her with a split second to regret.

A hand shot out from a break in the stone wall leading into the seedier side of Diagon, and Hermione was ripped to the side by her collar. "Get off me." Hermione hissed, moving to pull her wand, to hex her attacker, to curse—something, anything.

"Don't turn around," he growled. Cruel fingers knotted in her hair before slamming her head forward, busting her lip while pain exploded across the bridge of her nose, and her knees crashed to the cobblestone.

There were voices, two that she could tell apart, and they belong to her best friends. The air reeked of antiseptic, which she had never understood. Whether it was a muggle or magical hospital, the smell was inescapable. She tried to say something, but her throat was dry, and her voice raw.

As if she'd been screaming, but she couldn't remember screaming.

"She's waking up." Fingers slid through hers, warm and squeezing while she opened her eyes. "Hey, sunshine." Harry's smile was weak. "Anything you need?"

"Water." Hermione managed in a ragged voice while pushing herself up against the pillows. "How long have I been here?"

There were bags under Ron's eyes, and she didn't think she would like the answer. "Just the night. Harry and James got back in after midnight. He came straight here."

She nodded, taking the glass Harry held out for her in both of her hands. "I was going to Flourish and Blotts."

Ron didn't snap at her like she expected him to. Rarely did he lose his temper anymore. The correct amount of potions and the therapist that Aurors regularly met with had done wonders for that. "I know you were." Disappointment coloured his tone, or it may have been plain fear.

She stared at her feet as she wiggled them below the itchy sheet. "I came to ask you to go with me. You and Susan were together in the atrium, so I decided not to bother you. I didn't—I had no idea this would happen."

He sat at the end of the bed. "I know, but you're okay. That's what is most important here. You were found in a small alley leading into Knockturn."

"He left me there?" Hermione drained the glass, but wiped her thumbs across the condensation. "I wonder why that is."

Ron sighed. "We need to ask you if you remember anything before he knocked you out."

Focusing, Hermione tasted the metallic in her mouth, and realised she'd nearly bitten through her lip. It must have been when he threw me into the wall. "I didn't see him. He threatened to kill me if I turned around. I didn't look." But she remembered rancid breath crawling across her skin with each word.

Harry's hand was warm on her shoulder. "It's okay. Ron, do you want to tell her, or should I?"

She looked between them, catching Ron waving Harry off. "What is it? Did you catch him after he attacked me? If I get my hands on him—"

"He hasn't been caught," Harry cut her off. "The Ministry is assigning an Auror to protect you at all times. You'll be staying with them until we catch your stalker."

Hermione's voice caught in her throat as confusion washed over her. "What do you mean? It's not one of you?" At the shake of their heads, she asked, "Why not?"

Ron scratched the back of his neck. "They told us it's a conflict of interest, but it's also because they want a better Auror with you."

"But you're both…" Hermione trailed off. "Okay. Do you know who it is then at least?" When they responded that they didn't, Hermione's immediate thought was that she hoped it wasn't anyone she'd gone to Hogwarts with.

Hermione was discharged the next morning into the care of her friends, who didn't bother with the I told you so she was still expecting. They were due the meet the Auror that had been assigned to her at her flat while she packed anything she would need for the foreseeable future.

Harry sat at the foot of her bed, absently biting his nails while she shoved everything into a suitcase.

"I just can't believe they didn't bother to tell even one of you who I'd be with. What if it's someone I despise?" Hermione muttered, and then said, "Honestly, not liking someone is the least of my worries. But Evans would be more likely to murder me in my sleep than throw himself in front of me."

Ron agreed.

Clothes flew into her luggage, screwing her eyes shut as tears threatened to fall. She would not cry, not again. "Are you sure it's really a threat?" Hermione knew the answer to her question.

Harry sucked in a breath, the bed sipping below him as he helped her pack. Carefully folding her blouses, he drew his lower lip between his teeth. "'Mione,"

Ron cut him off, his voice harsher than she'd heard since they day she had come clean to him. "You were almost killed. Do you have any idea what it was like to find you—you were sprawled across the street like you were broken."

Dread coiled in her stomach as his voice wavered. "I just—yes, I understand."

Ron places a reassuring hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. "I'm sorry, I really am."

Her bedroom door creaked open, long—drawn out like someone meant for it to be.

"Dad?" Harry's voice was incredulous.

James Potter was the source of most of her childhood embarrassment. From an entirely inappropriate crush that spanned from the onset of puberty to well—there was no definitive end since her gaze still wandered to him. And it wasn't the time, because what she thought was happening was absolutely not happening.

James cleared his throat, leaning against the doorframe of her bedroom while kicking one leg over the other. His boot met the floor with a heavy thud. "Are your bringing your entire home to mine?" His voice was a constant raspy drawl, and fuck her if it was fair. "I have the room, but—"

Something was blocking her throat and she managed to squeak, "You're the Auror they're putting me with?"

"Oh, don't look so put out, love. It'll be fun, except for the stalker bit." His eyes dropped to her bed, and to the black knickers that were half out of her suitcase.

Black. Lacy. Embarrassing.

Hermione ripped the bag shut. She swallowed several times until her throat was so dry that she couldn't. "Oh, Merlin," she muttered under her breath.

"Dad, a word?" Harry hissed, crossing the room in two long strides.

James looked bored as he tapped his fingers against his chin, against the five o'clock shadow he had. "Sure, but just the one." His smile barely slipped as Harry yanked him into the hallway and the door swung shut.

Hermione looked at Ron, her eyes wide in shock. "No."

He snorted. "You still have a crush on him, don't you?" Of course he remembered, and of course he'd chosen then to bring it up, when James was on the other side of her bedroom door. When Ron wasn't very well known for his tactfulness or his inside voice.

She shook her head.

Ron smirked. "You're such a shite liar."

Please let me know what you think. I've really enjoyed writing James, at least this rendition of him that I've made.