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She was The Golden Girl. The brightest witch of her age. She was held to so many standards she could barely keep them all straight, let alone stand under the weight of them.
Everywhere she went, everywhere she looked there was another expectation. She was friends with the Harry Potter. She had helped with saving the wizarding world.
She was smart, intelligent, and could have any job she wanted. Some wanted her to run for ministry of magic. Some wanted her to replace McGonagall as head mistress one day.
She was walking down Diagon alley, head turned down hoping to avoid conversations with anyone and everyone. All anyone ever wanted to talk about was the war. They wanted to talk about Harry, about Ron. Wanted to talk about Voldemort and how he had been defeated. They wanted to rehash and let her know that something that tragic could never happen again.
They forgot she was child when it had started. She was a child when it had ended.
For a few years after the war, she worked helping the families that had been displaced. Homes that had been destroyed had been repaired, families that could be reunited were.
Then came the long and arduous battle with the ministry of magic, trying to get funds to help reestablish all the people that had their lives destroyed on the whims of a blood purist.
Now she was twenty-seven, and everyone looked to her, asking what she was going to do next, what she was going to accomplish next.
It took everything in her not to scream the question, “haven’t I don’t enough?!”
She kept that question deep inside of her, hidden by fake smiles and empty platitudes.
At the end of the war, Harry had split the money in his vault in three ways, a third going to Ron, a third going to her, and a third remaining with him. Even with divvying it up, they all had more than enough to live on for the rest of their lives.
It meant she did not have to work. She could relax, could follow her passions, her dreams.
If only she knew what those were anymore. She tried to recall her last happy memories, her last moments of peace, but she drew a blank.
After she made her way through Diagon Alley she made her way through the leaky cauldron out into the muggle world. When it all became too much for her in the wizarding world she escaped there, where there was a different kind of magic.
There had been many places she could have taken up residence in in the wizarding world, but she hadn’t wanted too. With her parents in Australia, their memories permanently altered to forget her, being in the muggle world made her feel closer to them, made the memories of them feel closer and not so faded.
Her apartment was small, mainly one large room that served as her kitchen, living room, and dining room. Then there was a small bedroom with a bathroom attached to it. She had managed to fit a queen size bed inside of the room, and rows and rows of shelving for her books.
The one thing she loved that hadn’t been tainted.
Today was a special day, one that had giddiness and excitement racing through her body. Because as she checked her mail before heading up to her apartment, she had a package.
Not just a package, but the package. The one she had been anticipating, the one she had been waiting for anxiously for days.
She barely closed the door behind herself before she was ripping the packaging open so she could hold the well packaged box inside.
The kindle e-reader had been announced only a few months prior and it had taken some interesting spell work to make sure she had been able to order one. Now it was here, she was holding it in her hands, and she could barely contain her excitement.
A small piece of her wished she had someone to share this moment with, someone that would appreciate it as much as her.
When she had met up with Ron and Harry earlier in the month she had told them about it, but neither had been genuinely interested in it. Just like most of the things she loved, they didn’t understand it enough to be excited.
The world around her was forgotten as she turned the kindle on, watched it set up, and then prompted her for her log in information.
In only a few minutes her Amazon account was linked to her kindle and hundreds of thousands of books were at her fingertips. She didn’t know where to start, only knew she couldn’t wait to read without a heavy book in her hand.
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She emerged from her reading cocoon hours later, and only because her stomach demanded attention. With a look at the close she saw it had been close to eight hours since she had laid down with her kindle, something that was already as important to her as her own wand was.
There were only a few ingredients in her apartment, grocery shopping falling low on the list of things she wanted to do, but there was enough to make a quick grilled cheese. The milk hadn’t spoiled so she had a glass of that as well.
Once she was done eating, she cleaned up, and sat back down, marveling at what she held in her hand.
The ad had boasted it could hold hundreds of books and the thought of having that much knowledge that much entertainment at her fingertips blew her mind.
She though about her six years at Hogwarts, thought about the heavy books she had carted around from one class to another, thought about the amount of bags she had broken through, the amount of repairos she had cast.
If her school books had been on this, she wouldn’t have had to worry about the weight of the books, the width of her bag, and she certainly wouldn’t have had as many bruises on the backs of her legs where the books had dug in.
With the kindle clutched in her hand she stared at her wall, zoning out, thinking deeply. This invention had helped change the muggle world, made carrying books, carrying knowledge, so much easier. She thought of the hundreds of books she had read in Hogwarts, in libraries, the amount of magical knowledge that only existed in a few places.
Not everyone in the wizarding world was a blood purist, not everyone shunned muggle technology. But many wizards that had never integrated into the muggle world didn’t know much about it.
How would this change herbology, change history lessons.
She couldn’t shake the idea of how beneficial it would be, how wonderful it would be.
Even if she was the only one that ever used it.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Hermione felt passion and longing thrumming in her blood. She thought about all of the books, the journals, the histories that most wizards never got the opportunity to read, and she made a decision.
Even if the entire wizarding world was against it, even if every single wizard was expecting something genuinely great and wonderful from her after all the good she had already done, she didn’t care
She wanted to digitize the books, the journals, the letters, everything she could get her hands on.
And then she wanted to lay on her couch, bundled up tight in a blanket, reading any singular book she was interested in with barely anymore effort (or weight) of turning a page.