Work Text:
Hermione Granger had made a habit of showing up during some of Harry and Ron’s breaks during Auror Training. The one that lined up with her lunch was only thirty minutes long, as opposed to her hour, so she would bring her packed lunch and sit with them to eat. Their schedules were so hectic these days that they had to take time together where they could get it.
As usual, she wrinkled her nose at her sweaty boys, but hugged them anyway before sitting at their usual bench and catching up.
Not so usual was the way that the instructor saw her, rolled his eyes, and marched over.
“Potter! Weasley! What is she doing here? Again? ” The instructor barked.
All three of them stared up at him, unimpressed.
“Eating lunch, sir.” Harry replied.
“Are you training to be an Auror, Granger?” The instructor demanded.
“No, I’m not.” Hermione answered, eyebrows raised in question.
“Then why do you keep showing up to Auror Training?”
Hermione stared at him with that expression she’d picked up from McGonagall at some point that gave the impression that she was trying to figure out if he was born an idiot or had to work at it. “To eat lunch. With Harry and Ron.”
“You can’t just show up at Auror Training!”
She looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, as if asking for strength.
“Is he new?” She asked her boys.
“Nope,” Ron replied, looking amused despite his trepidation at essentially stirring up shit with their instructor.
“So he has seen me sitting here with you every day for the last six months?”
“Yeah.” Harry said, suppressing a smirk.
“Is there a rule against my sitting here during a break?” She asked the instructor.
He sputtered out an answer that sounded an awful lot like “no.”
“So why is this an issue?” Hermione asked.
“It’s—it’s just not done! ”
“And yet here I am, doing it.” She tilted her head to one side and inspected him the way she had Rita Skeeter in a magically sealed jar once upon a time, with a cool mixture of slight disgust and academic curiosity.
The instructor was turning a rather unbecoming shade of puce. “If you are not becoming and Auror, you should not be present for Auror Training!”
Hermione sighed. “Tell you what.”
“Oh, no.” Harry muttered, but could no longer keep the corners of his mouth from ticking up in mischievous delight.
“Here we go,” Ron said, leaning his head back and knocking it back against the wall lightly in exasperation.
“If I,” Hermione began, “Manage to beat three of your trainees in a duel, I get to keep coming in here to eat lunch with Ron and Harry. If any of them beat me, I’ll eat elsewhere.”
The instructor seemed to consider this for a moment, then give a smug grin. “Alright. Potter, Weasley, Patil! You’re up!”
“No.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ha! No.”
“Excuse me?!” The instructor asked incredulously at their insubordination.
Parvati, who had been sat nearby, stood up. “Sir, you chose us because we’re your best duelists, yes?”
The man nodded.
“Who do you think taught me to duel?”
The man looked at her with an expression that said “ what the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
“Your DADA teacher at Hogwarts?”
Every trainee within a couple years of their year group snorted. Apparently he’d forgotten the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post.
“No,” Parvati told him. “It was those three. Harry Potter, with raw power, fantastic reflexes, and the ability to teach. Ron Weasley, best chess player to come out of Hogwarts since McGonagall and even better strategist. And Hermione bloody Granger, one of if not the most creative and ruthless fighter I saw the entire war!” Parvati told him.
“She’s probably got the widest repertoire of anyone in here, and makes up her own spells that we can’t counter.” Ron added.
“And she fights dirty .” Harry said fondly.
“Me fighting dirty kept your arse alive long enough to win the war, didn’t it, Potter.” Hermione asked.
“I wasn’t complaining, just remembering the time you set a teacher on fire in first year for jinxing me.” Harry said.
“Or the Skeeter thing.” Ron added.
“Edgecomb.” Parvati contributed.
“That time you cut Dolohov up with his own spell that almost killed you in fifth year.” Dean Thomas piped up.
“Umbridge.”
“What you did to Greyback…” Ron’s gaze went a bit distant.
The instructor had gone from angry to befuddled pretty quickly.
“Why aren’t you becoming an Auror then, if you’ve done all that?” He asked.
Hermione shrugged. “Working on my second Mastery while working my way up the DRMC has me a bit busy. I considered becoming a Hit Witch, but I’m a little too well known to be all that good at it.”
Then, not to be deterred from a train of thought, she referred back to the previous part of the conversation. “If your trainees are being cowards, why don’t I just fight you, then? Same deal as before.”
The man looked a little cornered. He wasn’t the sharpest tool, but he could take a hint, and an entire class of war-torn trainees refusing to duel someone was a bit of a red flag, but he had come on rather strong about her being there and, from the way the entire class was eyeing him, if he didn’t pick up this gauntlet, they would never let him forget it.
“Fine,” he ground out. “Come on, then, standard ten paces?”
Five minutes later found him lying on his back on the floor of the training room, breathing more heavily than he probably should be as one of the more physically fit wizards in the corps. Granger had at least been kind enough to cancel the transfigurations as soon as he yielded.
Goddess, he was regretting all of his life choices.
“Nice job, Sir,” Potter said from somewhere above him.
He glowered up at him. “I haven’t had my arse kicked that thoroughly since before Mad-Eye Moody retired.”
“Fitting,” Granger said, dropping his wand on his chest. “He and Tonks were the ones who taught me.”
“That may have been nice to know earlier,” He grumbled and shoved his wand back in its holster and went to stand, only to find himself being pulled up to his feet by the Golden Trio.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Weasley told him, patting him on the shoulder. “You lasted longer against her than most. I think the only person who’s beat her recently is Flitwick and he’s an international dueling champion.”
“They have tea every Saturday,” Harry said, “After a nice long practice session with McGonagall and Neville. It’s a great and terrible thing to witness.”
The instructor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright, you won your bet, Granger. Just try not to distract the trainees too much.”
The witch grinned at him. “I’ll do my best.”
(In the weeks after the duel, he noticed the trainees worked a little harder, fought a little less rigidly, trusted him more. The connection wasn’t a difficult one to make.
And if he invited Granger to put some of the senior Aurors through their paces every once in a while, none of the trainees said a word about it.)