InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I'm a fully realized creation!"

Hermione Granger (cerebralwitch) wrote in wished,
@ 2010-06-26 10:13:00

Entry tags:

!2003: 06, !incomplete, hermione granger, ron weasley

Who: Hermione and Ron
What: Dinner Date
When: Friday night
Where: Ron's Apartment
Rating/Warning: TBA

Hermione looked at the clock in her office and cursed at herself, jumping up from her desk and leaving the report she hadn't finished yet lying open on it. She knew it would bother her all night that it wasn't finished, but she also knew that she had worked later than she meant to, only giving herself an hour to get groceries and get to Ron's flat on time. She'd be late - but he expected that now, she hoped. At least, he should expect it.

She popped home before anything and took a shower, taming her hair at least but still ending up in a pair of jeans and a blouse instead of anything fancier. Then it was round to the market by her own flat to pick things up, because you could never be sure that Ron, even when his idea was to stay in to cook, actually had things necessary for it.

In the end, she was only twenty minutes late when she appeared in the alley beside his flat and sidestepped the vagrants hanging about to go in and up to his door, which wasn't actually all that bad for her when it came to meeting after work during the week for something.

(Post a new comment)

geroffme
2010-06-26 06:17 pm UTC (link)

Ron was pretty sure he had everything he needed to feed two people. There were a couple of things missing - he didn't have any salt in the house, because the last thing the stuff he brought home to eat needed was extra salt, usually - but they weren't the important things. The substance was here, and surely Hermione wouldn't mind improvising if a few of the ancillary ingredients at the beginning of the recipe were nowhere to be found.

... On the other hand, it might have been better to step out for a quick shopping trip. But by the time he'd decided, it was nearly time to meet, and while he was ninety percent sure Hermione wouldn't be on time (which was funny, because he was pretty damned sure she was always on time for work, but - never mind it), he didn't know how late, and he did know she wouldn't want to stand out in the hall. So he stayed, confident at least in the bottle of wine and dessert he'd picked up. Every second he didn't have to spend in uniform was precious, and he usually spent them in jeans and a T-shirt, although tonight he'd dragged out something with buttons on. After a little last-minute cleaning, his flat looked about as respectable as he did. ... And then he waited.

"Hey," he said when he let her in, kissing her as he leaned down to take her bags. "What'd you bring? We're going to have too much food, you know." He'd have had time, too, to go out and get some things, if he had known when she'd arrive.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

cerebralwitch
2010-06-27 09:20 pm UTC (link)

"Hey too," She said as she came in, and she'd been tense, but even just those kisses hello seemd to sap some of the tension out of her, and even harried as she felt, she found herself smiling at him. "Sorry about the late," Which was what she always said on weeknights when they had plans, band he'd heard it a thousand times by now, but it wasn't that she tried to be late to meet him, exactly. She never tried to work late. It just always seemed to happen.

Always.

"I didn't know what you were in the mood for, but they had lamb chops that looked really tasty in the butcher, so I picked them up and some things to make marinade. And salad..." If they had too much, she'd leave them here. She only ever cooked at his flat anyway, when she went home to her own she was just as much a take-away addict as he was. Her's just tended to be a bit healtier.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-06-27 10:32 pm UTC (link)

"Yeah, it's all right," he said with a dismissive shrug, as had become his habit. Most of the time he managed to remember that it wasn't worth arguing about - well, some of the time. And he'd had half the day off, so he was in a frame of mind to let it go. He knew it was stupid, because it would just keep building up the way it always did, but it was pretty easy to forget when he was in a decent mood.

He turned to deposit the groceries in the kitchen, happily discarding his pasta plans for lamb chops. "I'll make the salad?" he offered hopefully, giving the chops a poke through the wrapping. He couldn't burn salad, overcook it or carve it up wrong. Once you set the lettuce to breaking itself up, it wasn't so hard at all. "And watch, and you can teach me how not to ruin marinade." Not bloody likely.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

cerebralwitch
2010-06-27 10:35 pm UTC (link)

"Ron, you can't ruin a marinade - " Hermione rolled her eyes, but started to take things out of the bags and put them away. Even if she was going to use them, she liked them put away properly before she started taking them out again.

"It's like a potion. You just mix the ingredients and then let the meat lie in it for a bit.... " Except, Ron could likely mess that up, and Hermione well knew it.

"We could still do a pasta, too. As a side, with the lamb chop?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-06-27 10:43 pm UTC (link)

"That's not where the spices go," Ron dead-panned as Hermione started putting things away into one of three almost entirely empty cupboards. "And if it's like a potion, I'd better not even watch. We'll both get zeros for collaborating."

He started some water boiling - he'd grown out of his nearly insatiable hunger, but was still loath to pass up more food - and leaned back against the counter to watch her, though the kitchen was cramped. "How's your day, anyway?" He was sure someday he'd have interesting stories to tell, but at the moment his stock answer to that question was 'full of rubber stamps.'

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

cerebralwitch
2010-06-27 10:58 pm UTC (link)

"It was long," Hermione admitted. "I would have been finished early but someone brought in a stack of paperwork over an elf abuse case I've been looking in to, and I ended up lost in the file again. You should see the photographs of what's been done to this family's elves throughout the years. That they even kept the photographs..."

Hermione shivered a bit, shaking her head but then trailing off. The last thing she needed to do was start their night by talking about her cases.

"How was yours?" She asked, then added quickly, "Apart fom the rubber stamps?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-06-27 11:13 pm UTC (link)

"Good thing they did, the bastards." He reached in front of her for the bottle of wine - no need to wait on the food, right? "At least it'll come back to bite them in the arse. My rubber stamps were fine, thank you. All the usual pranks-gone-wrong, those are the 'accepted' stamp. The idiot who keeps writing to say his stove is trying to kill him, that's the 'denied' stamp. I'd like a 'bloody batty' stamp, for the old bag who swears her budgerigar is a dark wizard." He pulled out a couple of glasses. "She's named it Merwyn. She's very proud."

He wondered what it would be like in a couple of years, when he was out on real case work - if they would both be trying to find something else to talk about, when they did get to see one another.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

cerebralwitch
2010-06-28 09:20 pm UTC (link)

"Well, that seems a good name for it anyway," Hermione bit back a smile, but not quite, and then shook her head at the both of them and picked up the glass he'd gotten out for her, holding it out to be filled.

"You won't have to put up with those things much longer though," She knew he was frustrated. Being an Auror wasn't nearly as exciting yet as she thought he'd hoped it would be.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-06-29 10:21 pm UTC (link)

Ron struggled with the cork for a few seconds before resorting to his wand, and tipped some wine into her glass. "Oh, just another year," he said, before pouring for himself. "Not that it's all bad," he added quickly. He had begun to learn that there were people, at the office at least, who seemed to think he was complaining when he ... well, when he complained. He didn't mean it, though; it was just what he did. "There's a lot to learn, and then it's nice to have a break from all the getting up before the sun to go chasing something." But it would be a shame to fill up his night off with work - so he hung his arm over her shoulder and look skeptically down at the counter. "How is this all working, then?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

cerebralwitch
2010-07-02 03:11 am UTC (link)

Everything properly put away, Hermione had started to take them out again to begin getting things ready. She'd already set the marinade ingredients to mixing themselves before she took a drink from her wine and shook her head. "Dismally," she answered, then smiled up at him to show she was teasing, and nudged him with her shoulder. "Bring me a pan for the lamb." If he didn't want to talk about work, she supposed she could stop herself for a few hours ....

Maybe.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-07-02 04:56 pm UTC (link)

"Well, like I said - I'm pretty sure half the kitchen's cursed." He let his hand slide across her shoulders as he went over to the opposite cabinet, rattling through a stack of pans that his mother had rather optimistically sent along with him when he'd set up here. "I'd have Mum over to show me what the hell I'm doing wrong, but ... well, then she'd see the rest of it." He considered it just barely clean enough for Hermione; he was pretty sure his mother would have gone through it all like some kind of reproachful whirlwind. He handed her a pan. "They really ought to have something about it during training. The way the second-years look when they finish up with their desk sentence kind of scares me."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	cerebralwitch 2010-07-07 03:57 am UTC (link)
	"What do you mean, the way they look?" Hermione took the pan and sat it on the stove, then turned to take the chops and begin dredging them in the marinate. "Feral to get out into the field? That sort of thing?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-07-19 03:09 am UTC (link)

"A little soft around the edges, rather," he said, watching the chops without a hint of irony. "The stuff they eat, and spending some twelve hours a day at a desk, maybe walking out in the field twice in a good week ... It's a shame, really. All that hard work, and then getting stuck in a chair." Not that there weren't feral ones. Ron was pretty well convinced that half the people he dealt with on a daily basis were certifiably insane in any case.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	cerebralwitch 2010-07-27 11:34 pm UTC (link)
	"Well, you won't be there forever," Hermione answered, giving him a smile that she hoped was somewhat comforting. It really did seem a bit silly, making them wait so long, but then again who wanted aurors out hunting for dark wizards when they weren't sure yet if they were cut out for the job. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geroffme
2010-07-28 12:27 am UTC (link)

"Not even if it seems like it," he agreed. "Anyway, it's not like it's any worse than trying to get through NEWTs. Better, probably. Only a slight increase in paper-cuts." Getting through that alone - almost - had brought him far closer to giving up than anything he'd tried afterward. As the years went by he'd just start having more and more exciting things to grouse about, and that was fine by him.

(Reply to this) (Parent)