The Shift
Hermione had always prided herself on her ability to compartmentalize. Emotions in one box, Hermione had always been adept at keeping things in their proper place—emotions in one corner, work in another. It was how she thrived. She lived by logic, precision, and focus, qualities that had guided her through war, academia, and now, the fast-paced world of magical research. She had spent years sharpening those skills like tools, constructing mental walls lined with thick tomes, tightly categorized spellwork, and structured reasoning. There was a comfort in knowing that the world could be parsed and understood if only you looked closely enough.
But lately… those lines she had so carefully drawn had started to blur.
It hadn’t happened all at once. No dramatic upheaval, no thunderclap of realization. Just small moments—fleeting and seemingly inconsequential—that began to chip away at the clarity she’d always relied on.
It began with a glance.
One afternoon, during a weekly team strategy meeting, Seamus had looked at her across the long mahogany table—not with the vague attention most people offered when someone was speaking, but with the kind of quiet intensity that made her skin warm. His gaze was steady, thoughtful, like he wasn’t just listening to what she said but seeing her—how her mind worked, how she processed the complexities of the project they were discussing. It had unsettled her. Not because it was inappropriate or overtly flirtatious, but because it felt… genuine. Intimate, even.
Then came the break room moments. Burnt toast. Over-steeped tea. The hum of the enchanted kettle that never quite boiled right. She had always approached her work breaks with quiet efficiency—five minutes to refuel, then back to the task at hand. But with Seamus around, things slowed. He had a way of making her laugh at the absurdity of things—the terrible biscuits the firm provided, the squeaky cabinet doors, the owl that kept delivering someone else's post. He didn’t make a show of it, didn’t try too hard. He just was, and somehow, that was enough to pull her from her head. They shared more laughs in that cramped little kitchenette than she had in her first three months at the firm.
Then there were the late nights.
When the rest of the team had gone home and the corridors of the Ministry had emptied, leaving only the faint echo of footsteps long since vanished, the atmosphere would shift. The constant hum of voices, shuffling papers, and clinking potion vials faded into a serene hush, broken only by the ticking of a forgotten wall clock or the occasional sigh of a shifting portrait. The magical sconces along the stone walls dimmed to a soft, honeyed glow—warm, intimate. The kind of light that blurred sharp edges, softened distractions, and made the long wooden tables feel less like places of work and more like sanctuaries of shared effort.
That was when Seamus would appear.
He never asked if she wanted company. He never offered platitudes about going home or insisted she was working too hard. He would simply return—often with two mugs of tea in hand, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, tie loosened, hair a mess from running his fingers through it all day—and take the seat beside her like he belonged there. No fanfare. No fuss. Just present.
And somehow, that presence grounded her more than she cared to admit.
They didn’t always speak. Sometimes they’d work in silence for hours, their quills scratching quietly across parchment, books open between them in scattered piles. Occasionally, one of them would murmur a question or pass along a relevant note, their voices low and steady in the late-night hush. But often, there was no need for words. The silence between them wasn’t awkward—it was comfortable, full of something unspoken but gently understood.
When they sat close—shoulder to shoulder, knees occasionally brushing beneath the table—Hermione found herself increasingly aware of the little things. The cadence of his breathing. The warmth radiating from him. The faint scent of smoke and cedar that lingered on his clothes. She told herself she didn’t notice. Or that it didn’t matter.
But it did.
It mattered more than she was willing to admit.
At first, she tried to reason it away. She was tired. Overworked. Her mind was cluttered with too many spells, theories, and rune translations to be thinking clearly. Maybe she was just mistaking camaraderie for something else. She’d always valued dedication in others, and Seamus had proven himself time and again to be loyal, smart, and far more insightful than most gave him credit for.
Still… the excuses began to falter.
Because it was during one of those quiet nights—deep into the third hour past midnight, the room lit only by the soft, flickering glow of a single enchanted lamp—that it happened.
Hermione was hunched over the edge of the long oak table, her eyes scanning the tightly packed script of the ancient Grimoire they’d recovered from the ruins in Northumberland just days earlier. The candlelight from the enchanted sconces cast warm, flickering shadows over the worn pages, and she moved her fingertip slowly along the edge of a faded line, as though the act of physical contact would somehow will the runes to reveal their secrets. The passage was densely written, its ink faded and protective enchantments still faintly pulsing across the parchment. The language itself was old—pre-Merlin era, by her guess—and laced with nuanced dialects she hadn’t seen since her fourth-year Ancient Runes seminar. Protective charms layered atop deliberate misdirection. It was a riddle wrapped in wards, and she was close—so close—to unraveling it.
She was so focused she didn’t notice the subtle shift at first.
But then it hit her. A ripple in the air, like a thread being tugged at the edge of her awareness. The kind of sensation that came not from magic, but something more primal. A presence. A gaze.
Her brow furrowed deeper, though not at the text this time. Slowly, she glanced up, pushing a few errant curls behind her ear as she did.
He was watching her.
Seamus.
Not flipping through notes. Not doodling on the margin of his parchment as he sometimes did when bored. He wasn’t distracted—he was wholly, undeniably focused. On her. His blue-green eyes were steady and calm, not filled with mischief or teasing like they usually were. This was something else entirely. Something quieter. More intentional.
A shiver ran down her spine, subtle but sharp, and she sat up a little straighter. “What?” she asked, her voice deliberately neutral. It was the kind of practiced tone she’d cultivated during years of study and work—a defense mechanism that cloaked emotion beneath intellectual distance. But her chest fluttered all the same, and she hated that it did.
Seamus blinked, caught mid-thought, but to his credit, he didn’t look away. If anything, he smiled, slow and warm, like sunshine creeping over the edge of a cloudy morning. The corners of his mouth curved in that familiar, maddening way that always made her chest feel tight.
“Nothing,” he said easily, his voice pitched low, more intimate in the quiet than it had any right to be. “You just… you do this thing when you’re thinking. With your eyebrows.”
Hermione blinked. “My… eyebrows?”
He chuckled softly, nodding as he leaned back in his chair. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing faint smudges of ink along his forearm, and he tapped his quill absently against his knuckle. “Yeah. You get this little crease right here.” He gestured between his own eyebrows, mirroring her expression. “Like you’re about to duel the book into submission with sheer willpower. It’s kind of intense.” His smile turned crooked. “And kind of brilliant.”
Hermione instinctively raised her fingers to the spot between her brows, feeling the slight wrinkle there with surprise. She scowled, and that made him laugh—an easy, genuine sound that filled the quiet room and made her stomach do something annoyingly fluttery.
“There it is,” he said, eyes dancing. “That exact look. Merlin, it’s like clockwork.”
She rolled her eyes, but the gesture lacked heat. “Very observant, Finnigan,” she said dryly, but there was a small tug at the corner of her lips that betrayed her. A smile—not wide, but real. One she didn’t even bother to hide.
He winked. “I have my moments.”
She should have brushed it off. Should’ve gone back to her reading, re-centered herself on the puzzle in front of her. But she didn’t. Couldn’t.
Because the moment stretched—not uncomfortably, but in a way that felt like something new was settling into the air between them. She realized with quiet certainty that this wasn’t just Seamus being his usual charming, cheeky self. His gaze held a softness, a sincerity that wasn’t there for the sake of a joke or a throwaway flirtation. It wasn’t performative.
It was real.
And the problem was—it wasn’t nothing.
It hadn’t been for a long time.
The moments began stacking, one after another, like loose threads being pulled tighter. At first, they were subtle—small flashes that Hermione could easily ignore, distractions she could chalk up to the long hours and the stress of the job. But as the days passed, those moments grew more frequent, and harder to dismiss. She found herself thinking about him at the strangest times—when she was in the middle of a complicated spell, her wand tracing the air in delicate arcs; or when she was immersed in ancient rune patterns, trying to decipher the meaning behind symbols that had lain dormant for centuries.
More and more, her thoughts seemed to stray toward Seamus. She’d catch herself watching the door, waiting for the familiar sound of his footsteps, just to see if he’d walk through it. And when he did, when he appeared, so often with his usual grin or some new joke to lighten the atmosphere, she’d feel a strange tightening in her chest.
It was the small moments that were the most insistent. The quiet brushes of their arms in the hallways, fleeting but electric, as if their proximity carried a static charge. The lingering heat of his touch when their hands accidentally met as they passed a file or shared a mug. It wasn’t just a physical reaction; it was deeper, as though every part of her was beginning to wake up to the truth she had been denying. This wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t just proximity, and it wasn’t a product of stress or overwork.
The realization settled in her chest like a weight. This wasn’t a fleeting crush or a moment of weakness. There was something deeper, something unspoken between them that Hermione couldn’t ignore any longer. She tried to bury it, of course, bury it beneath the deadlines, the magical theory, and the never-ending field reports. She told herself it was just an emotional misfire. She told herself it was nothing more than the simple result of working so closely with someone, of the long nights, the shared tasks, the camaraderie. But deep down, a part of her knew better. She knew it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.
And then, everything changed that afternoon—on that stormy day when the wind howled outside the windows, rattling the glass, and the air inside was thick with the scent of parchment, ink, and quiet magic. The team had scattered early, most of them eager to escape the brewing storm, but Hermione had stayed behind. There was always more work to do. Always another puzzle to solve. And despite the frustration and exhaustion she’d been feeling, there was a strange kind of comfort in the silence, in the solitude of the empty office, with only the occasional rumble of thunder to break it.
She had been hunched over her notes, reading through a particularly difficult section on the artifact’s energy signatures when Seamus had appeared at her side. She hadn’t heard him approach. She never did, not with him. He had this ability to slip in and out of spaces unnoticed, even with his usual exuberance. But today, he was quieter. Different.
He held two mugs in his hands, the steam from them curling lazily into the air. The moment she saw the mugs, a warm, unexpected feeling blossomed in her chest. The way he was holding them so casually—like this was something he had planned, something he knew she needed.
“Hot chocolate,” he said simply, offering one to her with an easy smile. “Figured we’ve earned it.”
Hermione blinked at the gesture, momentarily thrown off balance. It wasn’t unusual for Seamus to offer a drink or a snack during late-night sessions, but the quiet, almost contemplative way he’d appeared now—there was something about it that caught her off guard. She hesitated for only a second before reaching out to take the mug from his hand. Their fingers brushed as she did, and it was like a tiny spark ignited beneath her skin. She didn’t pull her hand away. Instead, she simply murmured a quiet “Thank you,” and took a sip. The chocolate was rich, thick, the warmth sliding down her throat in a way that felt comforting, but the tension—the strange pull between them—was still there, simmering beneath the surface.
For a while, they sat in silence, side by side at the long table. The only sounds in the room were the occasional rumble of thunder and the soft clink of ceramic as they set their mugs down. The peace of the moment should have been enough for Hermione to focus. To get back to work. But it wasn’t. Every time she tried to return to her notes, her mind would drift. Her gaze would shift toward him, drawn to the way he sat so quietly beside her, the way his eyes seemed to be fixed on the runes in front of them, but also on her. There was something different about him today.
It wasn’t just the stormy afternoon or the soft light spilling over the table from the enchanted sconces. It was him. His stillness. Seamus, who was always so full of energy, always so quick with a joke or a laugh, was quiet today. Thoughtful, even.
Then, without warning, he turned to her, his voice softer than usual, like the very air around them had shifted and the storm outside had somehow become a part of their space.
“Do you ever wonder,” he asked, his gaze steady as it met hers, “if we’re meant to find these things? The artifacts, the puzzles… like it’s not just about work. Like we’re being led somewhere.”
Hermione felt her heart stutter. She wasn’t sure why, but his words hit her like a wave. She wasn’t sure if he was speaking about the job, or something else. Something deeper.
She tilted her head, trying to steady her breath, to keep her voice neutral. “You think there’s a bigger purpose to it all?” she asked, the question carrying more weight than she intended.
Seamus shifted, watching her intently, the flickering candlelight catching in his eyes. “I think,” he said slowly, his tone low, contemplative, “that sometimes we get thrown together with people for a reason. Even if we don’t see it at first.”
Her breath caught in her throat. For a second, the world seemed to still around them. The storm outside faded. The air in the room thickened. His words hung in the space between them, impossible to ignore.
Hermione looked down at her mug quickly, hoping the warmth would help settle the sudden tightness in her chest. She busied herself with the steam rising from the hot chocolate, pretending to be lost in it. But the truth was, she was lost in his words. In the way he’d said them. In the way he was looking at her—like there was something in this moment that neither of them could quite explain.
Seamus didn’t press her. He never did. He simply waited, giving her the space she needed. But Hermione could feel it—feel the weight of what he’d said, and how it settled into her chest like an anchor, pulling her toward something she wasn’t ready to face.
She tried to brush it off, tried to bury it beneath the work again. Tried to pretend that nothing had changed, that this moment was just like all the others—just another casual conversation between colleagues. But it wasn’t. Everything had changed. The balance between them had shifted, and there was no unshifting it. Not now.
Because when she looked at him now, she didn’t just see a colleague. She didn’t just see a friend. She saw every moment they’d shared—the teasing, the laughter, the quiet support, the subtle gestures of care. She saw the way his eyes lit up when she spoke, the way he always seemed to stand just close enough for her to feel the heat of him, even in the busiest of rooms.
And now, every time their eyes met, she felt it. This.
Something was happening between them, something she couldn’t explain with logic or reason. Something she wasn’t ready to admit, but couldn’t ignore.
And Hermione Granger, ever the realist, was starting to understand that sometimes… just sometimes… some things couldn’t be explained by logic alone.