Try as she might, Eleanor couldn’t help but roll her eyes at him, though her smile and soft chuckle took any hard edge out of it. “Well,” she sighed deeply. “In the past seven and a half years I’ve worked for you, Charlotte’s been… on me about you for the past seven, at least. No matter what we talk about, it gets turned to my job. If I turn down an invitation, it’s blamed on my job, and since we’re talking about my job, she brings up you and…”
And… what was this? Why did she suddenly feel like crying? Why couldn’t she just have held on to that nice warm feeling the memory of New Year’s Eve brought her? Staring off into nothing, her shoulders slumped and slowly she shook her head. “I wish,” she said quietly. “I wish I could say that we’ve been talking about you like sisters do, but it’s been… it’s been… why are you spending so much time with him? You’re spending too much time with him. He must want you as something other than an assistant, why else would he keep you around?” She looked at him as she nodded. “Yeah, please note that insult that’s been so casually slipped in there.” Before she continued. “Why are you spending so much time with him? Are you staying because you have feelings for him? What do you mean you don’t have feelings for him? Aren’t you the one always telling me to put myself out there? Over and over and over again. And it’s just push and pull and me defending myself or you and trying to make her see that I really do love my job, that… that it fulfills me to work with you. When she sees that?” She pointed to the Prophet. “She’ll know immediately, and she’ll see it as her doing. She’ll claim she was the reason you kissed me, when…” Eleanor shook her head. “It wasn’t her.” She seemed to very suddenly get upset and - to be honest - she was usually the one calming him down, not the other way around, but he moved to her and despite her lack of dress, took her arms and pushed/pulled her to the couch, where he sat them both down and put an arm around her. "You've been working for me for this long because I'm hopeless without you and somehow you take pity on an old fool." He turned her face to him gently by her chin. "You could be running the Ministry by now, or the Wireless, or whatever, you're that good. Anyone who can put up with me and keep me in line and everything else that you do could easily take over the world. Yes, I know exactly how difficult I am. Why do you think I avoided having an assistant for so long?" He sighed. "As for your sister being the reason I kissed you, well, you can tell her exactly why I did it: You are a beautiful, brilliant young woman and I wanted to and you let me." It really had been that simple, right?