but all the possibilities

There was nothing particularly strange or alarming about the woman standing at his front door other than the fact that she was standing there at all. No one had visited Hermes Granger’s front door for fifty years, which was exactly how he liked it.

But this woman was here now. He had never met her before, that was certain. There was no way he’d forget the brilliant red of her hair any time soon. Which either meant she didn’t know what he was and had mistakenly walked up to his house by pure coincidence, or she knew perfectly well and was about to do something about it.

He stared down at her from the blinds of his study on the second storey. She didn’t seem inclined to leave at all—in fact, she had just removed something from the fanny pack strapped across her waist. Hermes didn’t want to know what that was or if she was going to do something with it. Unfortunately, it was his problem anyway.

Hermes sighed, let the blinds snap back in place, and turned for the stairs. It was time to potentially be smote.

Just as he got halfway down, a loud rapping sounded from the front door. It evolved into harsh banging by the last step. Then he could vaguely hear a voice, but his sensitive hearing was overwhelmed by the banging, so he couldn’t actually hear what she said.

It was probably something like, “I’m going to bust down your goddamn door,” because that was precisely what happened.

With a forceful kick, the door went flying around its hinges, hitting the wall so hard the glass window shattered and scattered on the floor. Hermes flinched back. The woman stepped into his house like it belonged to her.

“Hello,” she said, brandishing the very large stake in her hand. “Let’s have a chat.”

There was a pause.

“That was rude of you,” was the first thing out of his mouth. The second, because he hadn’t had any social contact in years, was, “And you have dirt on your nose. Do you know that? I can’t imagine how you missed it.”

For a moment the woman didn’t seem to know how to react to that at all. Then she scowled, her irritation making her cheeks and ears flush a very obvious shade of red. Was that some vampire hunter tactic—because she could be nothing other than a vampire hunter—luring vampires in with a healthy blush? Or just happenstance? Hermes couldn’t stop looking at her face either way.

It was a rather nice face, so he didn’t mind.

“That’s what you’re fuckin’ opening with?” said the hunter. “No threats or wailing about demonic power or announcing you want to eat me, nothing? Just that I’m rude?”

“And the dirt,” he repeated. Her expression scrunched further. “I don’t see why I should be going on about eating you or anything, seeing as I don’t really want to do that. I eat cows, mostly. You’re being very presumptuous, you know.”

She lowered her stake rather reluctantly, loosening her stance.

“So, you’re one of those new blood, no-eating-humans types?” she said, looking like she couldn’t decide between being relieved or disappointed. “What d’you do instead, then?”

“Read, mostly,” Hermes told her. It was the truth.

Well, he also watched perhaps too many soap operas, but that was his own business. They were devilishly engrossing if you left them on for even a minute, and Hermes kept making that mistake. He didn’t want to care about Imelda and Thaddeus’ romance as much as he did, but such was life. Death. Whatever.

The woman frowned and pulled out a small, battered book from her fanny pack. She flipped it open to a fresh page, marked an odd symbol Hermes couldn’t quite make out, and ink flowed across the page to make a list that was incomprehensible to him.

“...well, I’ll be damned,” she sighed. “No innocent blood spilled at all. I mean, it’s good to know about you lot, but this is supposed to be my first go at hunting.”

Hermes didn’t care about her complaining. He stared at the book, a familiar wave of avarice swelling up inside of him. 

“What is that,” he demanded.

The woman cocked an eyebrow. “Right, new blood. Weasley family creation. The Ledger, makes sure we aren’t killing any vampires that don’t need to be killed. Tells me all sorts of things, any crimes, any killings, any subjugation of others, all that. Do have to be near you to use it, though, that’s the annoying bit.”

She said Weasley like it meant something. Hermes didn’t pay attention to that part.

“Can I have a look at it?” he said, already fascinated with the enchantments that it must be doused in.

A second eyebrow rose to match the first. “You want me, a vampire hunter, to hand over a priceless magical heirloom to you, a vampire, just because… you’d like to have it?”

It sounded very stupid when she phrased it like that.

Hermes was not the kind of man to back down. “Yes.”

“No. Obviously!”

Well, he tried. There was a brief moment where he thought about just taking it from her, but Hermes didn’t have any delusions of grandeur or power. She might have been a fresh-faced vampire hunter, but he was a very fresh-faced vampire, too. Also, she had a stake in one hand and a rosary wrapped around her wrist on the other that could easily become an improvised knuckle duster and probably very many other tools for hurting him to go alongside it.

“What was it you said your name was?” he asked abruptly. He was not very good with awkward silences.

The woman didn’t seem very impressed with him, but she still answered: “Rhiannon Weasley. You know, Weasley, vampire hunters?”

Hermes didn’t know. He had spent the last fifty years mainly concerned with all the book reading he could do rather than much vampire business, so maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. On the other hand, a lot of that book reading had been about vampires, so maybe it still was. 

Apparently the vampiric community wasn’t big on helpful explainers listing out all the families of vampire hunters. Thoughtless of them. Some vampires didn’t have in-roads to ancient knowledge passed on orally.

That was an old annoyance, though, so he got stuck on the other half of her name. Rhiannon, Hermes thought, was very pretty. It suited her well. Would be a bit odd to tell her that this very minute.

“I know the Harkers,” he said, mostly to save face. “Don’t know about you.”

“Of course you know the Harkers,” she said, exasperated. “Everyone knows the bleeding Harkers, they have a whole book and all.”

Weasley sighed. “Listen, my family has a whole legacy of hunting vampires—and other monsters, too—been doing it in the Isles for centuries. We don’t kill unprovoking vampires, so you’re in the clear for now, alright? Consider it an incentive to keep not murdering people, if you’d like.”

“Thank you?” Hermes said, because his mother had raised a polite man.

“Point is—” Weasley continued vaguely. “Point is, keep not being a knobhead, I guess. And I'll leave. Don’t be surprised if one of my siblings scopes you out later, though, I do have to report this.”

“As long as they have manners,” he said with a shrug.

“And don’t go bursting down your door like a madwoman? I’m sure they’ll try,” she said wryly.

Weasley shut her book and put it away, and then, with the air of a woman who truly didn’t know how to extract herself from this conversation, said, “Ta, then.”

She left. Hermes watched her go through the front door, stepping over the broken glass, honestly a little bemused by the whole thing.

He wasn’t any deader than usual, though.