Enchant: A Dramione Tale

Two

She knew she was meant to keep their meeting brief, but she held up a hand and waived the waitress over to their shadowy table anyway. She ordered them each a drink, they were going to need them.

Hermione didn't bother with a mixer and downed the Muggle liquor in two gulps when it came.

"Things are ramping up, the magical trace is getting darker," she said quietly while rummaging around the bottom of her tiny purse. She gave the fragile-looking bag a little shake and it echoed like a cargo hold as a number of heavy objects rolled around inside it.

The Undetectable Extension Charm was perfectly executed which meant that Hermione had inevitably overpacked. She never did anything half way, even spells that were prohibited for personal use.

She felt around blindly until her fingers finally closed around a very small medicinal glass vial.

Every Friday night, like a well oiled machine, Not-Hermione passed a bottle of pills to Not-Lily.

At least that's what anyone paying attention would see. Not that anyone was paying attention.

They were in a seedy section of Muggle London at a dark pub off the beaten path and sitting in a dimly lit corner booth wearing full body disguises, which all would have been enough on its own. But of course Lily always cast a strong Muggle Repelling Charm once they began trading secrets, just in case there were wandering eyes or curious ears.

But if someone somehow looked past all of that, they'd only see what appeared from the outside to be a standard run of the mill drug deal.

She slid the bottle across the table. It was more than half full this week, around two dozen small white capsules piled high inside. Lily quickly palmed the pills and the vial disappeared into the man's suit pocket, replaced with £20 that she slid back across the table to Hermione.

Standard, run of the mill, drug deal.

Except that it wasn't. Lily knew that each capsule was actually a classified document that had been stolen this past week, transfigured into a miniature object that could pass out of the ministry undetected. And Hermione knew that when she looked very closely at the twenty pound note, she'd see the instructions the order had for her coming week magicked into the money's fine print.

They met this way for over two years.

Some weeks they requested she put herself in the right places at the right times to overhear certain conversations within the ministry. Sometimes her task was just to report back on relevant projects from her own department. But other orders were more direct, and her late night encounters with Lily had lately involved covert interrogations.

Her missions never looked the same but the objective was always clear: counterterrorism tactics and reconnaissance intel to help keep The Peace at all costs.

The information that she passed along was actually acted upon, unlike her day job where no one seemed to want to do anything about anything. The Order did the hard work, the real work, behind the scenes and outside of government oversight for the greater good.

"Don't be late next time," Not-Lily mumbled with two cigarettes perched between the man's lips, lighting both in a puff of smoke before passing one over to Not-Hermione.