Hermione stared.

There was no other thing to do, really. Frankly, she was too shocked to do anything else.

What does one do when one's office is covered floor to ceiling in roses?

As if it wasn't enough to fill an office with expensive flowers, the mystery giver had bought magic roses, charmed to grow in colours not found in nature. Electric blue roses glowed in the centre of a bouquet of black roses. Wreaths of entwined purple and white were suspended from the ceiling. Looping trails of metallic silver criss-crossed the room. The floor was strewn with red and gold blooms. Yellow and pale orange were heaped upon her desk.

Who had the money to do this for her, let alone the inclination?

"Sara!" she shouted, her voice louder than intended in her agitation.

There was a clatter from the next room and her new secretary stumbled in. "Yes, Miss Granger? Is the office not to your liking? I can change up the colour scheme and ask for different carpeting and – oh."

Hermione massaged the bridge of her nose. This was the problem with new jobs and new offices – you never knew how to act, who to go to in order to manage certain aspects of the work. "Were these roses put in here as some kind of welcoming gift?"

"Certainly not," Sara said primly, sounding almost affronted. It was the first time all morning that Hermione had heard her sound anything but over-helpful.

"Then who brought them here?"

"I – I can't say, Ma'am."

Hermione studied the girl's face. It was an obvious lie. Sara trembled under Hermione's scrutiny.

Sighing, Hermione motioned for her to leave. No use in traumatising her secretary on the first day.

Conjuring up nine cartons, she began separating the roses by colour. White roses went into the first bin, purple in the next, and so on. All the while, she searched for a note of some sort amidst the floral debris, but found none.

As she was moving the yellow and orange blooms into their cartons, the discovered one final surprise on top of the paperwork she had to tackle that day. A final, super-sized rose with a silver stem and petals of a deep, sea-blue, her favourite colour. The flower was Spell-O-Taped to a bar of Honeydukes' finest Irish Whiskey chocolate. This one was charmed to stay alive and perfect, so she slid it into her bag. She would keep this one.

"Sara!" she shouted again, recognising a bad habit in the making as she did so.

A clatter. "Yes, Ma'am?"

"Donate these flowers to St Mungo's children's ward," Hermione said, waving her hand at the cartons lined up by the door. "And get me some coffee," she added as an afterthought. She grinned to herself. She'd always been very nice to her secretaries. She would allow herself one day of ordering Sara around and then it was back to square one.

Sighing, she sat back in her chair and opened the first folder.

New Ministry Legislation 1852

House Elves are no longer to wear the clothes of a human. Masters are required to provide living quarters, sustenance and some manner of clothing that does not involve purchase or reluctant donation of goods.

She sighed and flipped to the next page, the corrective document, signing her name carefully at the end of it before moving on to the next document. Sighing again at the amount of legal vocabulary involved, the began perusing it, resigning herself to a long day.

When the sun was beginning to dip over the horizon, Hermione sat back, stretching her aching hands.

"Sara!" she shouted.

A tired-sounding clatter from the other room. "Yes, Ma'am?"

Hermione grinned. "Sorry for pushing you around so much. I'm not like that, really." Sara looked unconvinced. "Really," Hermione insisted, tossing the girl a bag of Drooble's Best that she had picked up earlier. "I'm going home, you should too. But before we go, I want to know who brought the flowers in."

Sara immediately averted her eyes. "He – he warned me not to tell! He said he'd jinxed it so that if his name were even whispered in his room, I'd come up in some kind of skin disease."

Hermione ground her teeth, her affection for the rose-giver evaporating on the spot. How dare he bring her innocent secretary into this? "Whatever the jinx is, I promise I can undo it," she assured the girl, taking out her wand in preparation.

"Ma'am, I really don't feel comfortable - "

"Sara."

"Fred Weasley, ma'am."

As soon as the name was out of her mouth, Hermione leapt to her feet, anticipating some horrible WWW prank to go off. Instead, she found herself staring with something akin to amusement at the pimples making their way across Sara's face. She shrieked as she caught sight of herself in the mirror in a kind of horrified recognition.

SNEAK, said the purple pustules.

"Creative, Mr Weasley," she murmured. "But you forget that it was my own invention. If anyone can undo this, it's me."

"It's your own charm?" Sara asked as the pimples vanished one by one.

"Indeed, yes," Hermione confirmed. "Why?"

"My aunt Marietta has the exact same jinx on her. The pimples won't go. Do you know anything about that?"

If there was one thing Hermione had learned from Mariette Edgecombe, it was knowing when to keep her mouth shut. "No, not at all," she told her secretary smoothly, hiding a smirk. The day had certainly been full of surprises, hadn't it?

"Fred Weasley," she mused as she prepared to Apparate. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I think you'll find that flowers don't have the slightest effect on me."

Fred was going to get what was coming to him one way or another, that was for sure. Ginny had cornered Hermione after work the previous day and bullied her into a shopping trip.

Now, looking at herself in the mirror, Hermione wondered if it had been a wise decision to agree.

Tight black denim shorts, stockings, shag-me black pumps, a halter top and what Ginny affectionately termed 'sex hair'. "You look beautiful!" Ginny enthused.

"I look like sex on a stick," Hermione grumbled. Snatching up her purse from a side table, she motioned grumpily to her friend. "Coming?"

"Definitely." Ginny latched on and spun on the spot, Apparating them both to Shaker, a new club that WWW was sponsoring. Hermione knew that Fred would be at the event to promote, but Ginny had confirmed it.

"Where is he?" Hermione asked anxiously, craning her neck to see over the crowd.

"Probably hasn't arrived yet. Drinks?"

"You're pregnant," Hermione accused with a glare. "No drinks for you."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Two Mohitos. One virgin, one normal," she told the bartender. He leered at Hermione but set about preparing the drinks without a word.

"On the house, love," he said with a wink that made Hermione's skin crawl.

"Yeah, I don't think so," another voice interrupted, shoving money down on the counter. "That should cover all their drinks tonight."

Hermione jerked sideways, hard-pressed not to let out a shriek.

"Merlin, Fred," Ginny snapped, "Haven't I told you before not to just appear like that?"

He ignored her. "You look lovely," he said to Hermione, his eyes raking over her in a way that made her tingle with desire. "Did you get my flowers?"

She scowled at him. Taken aback, he asked, "Did you not like them?"

"How dare you jinx my secretary?" Hermione demanded, poking him in the chest. "With my own jinx, that too! Fred Weasley, I told you countless times in Hogwarts not to test on innocent people. I might have liked the flowers had you attached a note and not sworn my secretary to secrecy." She surveyed him snootily. "I suppose you've lost your chance."

She strutted into the crowd and began dancing with a man Fred recognised as Draco Malfoy. Grinding his teeth, he smacked some more money onto the counter and poured himself a Firewhiskey.

"You're such an arse, Fred," Ginny groaned. "You should know by now that Hermione won't appreciate any collateral damage."

Too incensed to reply, he strode off into the crowd to find George.

"You'll have to do the speech, mate," he told his twin.

"Why?" George asked. "What will you be doing?"

"Locking myself in my room with Firewhiskey and without a wand," Fred replied, toasting his twin. "Good luck."

"Cheers, mate," George said worriedly. "Take care of yourself."

As he Apparated away, he caught one last glance of Hermione, and his throat went drier than the Sahara. Evil siren, she was dressed like that to tease him, wasn't she?

Groaning at the lasting images of her in his head, he tossed his wand across the room and shut himself in his bedroom, cracking open the bottle of Firewhiskey and taking a gulp. With luck, he'd get drunk fast and pass out.

Hermione, Hermione, Hermione, he thought angrily. Then, Malfoy. I'm going to kill him.

He took another swig of Firewhiskey. "It's not over, Miss Granger," he promised the air above him. "The roses were only the beginning."

Updates will (hopefully) be faster since I've finally got a definite idea of where this is going. Thanks for all the support! Love, hugs and cyber brownies to everyone.