Hermione
After the battle of hogwarts everything was supposed to be back to normal. It wasnt though. The war wasnt something you could just brush under a rug and forget about, everyone lost someone. It didnt matter if that meant a distant friend or your whole family, it affected everyone. The traumas of the war was another thing that will probably always stay present in the back of everyones heads.
Hermione knew, she lost her family, her youth, her innocence. But that was not all, she had seen too much, been through too much. That day at Malfoy Manor, as that lunatic pressed her into the floor, the knife pressed into her arm and the effects of the crucio still pulsing through her body. How Draco Malfoy, her childhood bully watched. But he didnt laugh, not like his aunt, he didnt even smirk and tell her how she deserved it, didnt sneer at her blood spilling onto the carpet. No, he just stood there, face blank. His grey eyes closed off as he with his parents vitnessed one of the worst events to happen to her in her life.
She doesnt know why she noticed or why she would even care, doesnt know why she noticed the group of slytherins still alive battling the death eaters, how Malfoy threw Harry his wand, how Malfoy alone took out more than one fifth of the death eaters, how he protected a second year muggleborn hufflepuff who didnt make it away from the castle before the battle. Malfoy, the bully, the jerk, the prat, the reason Voldermort was defeated. It just doesent make sense, well it didnt.
At Lucius Malfoys trial it was revealed that the Malfoys had been spying for the order since right before Dumbledores death at the hands of Severus Snape. Hermione had always been wary when Kingsley Shaklebolt had had new information on the death eaters so she supposed it added up. But just because of that didnt mean she could forgive him, Draco Malfoy. He had made her cry countless of times and undermined her selfesteem to the point that she always sought approval in everything she did. Still, she knew she couldnt continue to see him and his family as enemies.
Because of them actually working for the order the Malfoys didnt get any kind of punishment aside from probation for a year for Lord and Lady Malfoy and 3 months for the Malfoy heir.
Hermiones whole life didnt revolve around the Malfoys though, she went to Australia to get her parents memories back just to be told they were permanently gone, she had a brief relationship with one Ronald Bilius Weasley but they just didnt work out and she couldnt trust him after he left her and Harry when they were horcrux hunting, she talked, a lot, to Harry, to Neville, to Ginny and to George, not to Ron as their relationship now was strained at best. It was good, talking, no one understood her, not really, but she could still feel relief in not being alone.
But mostly she read, all those years of looking after Harry, of running around defeating dark wizards and saving the wizarding world, she didnt really have that much time to just cuddle up with a good book and disapper into it. She stayed at the Burrow of course, even though she knew now that she would never be more than a honrary weasley it was still a second home to her. Well before it had been Hermione's third home, after home with her parents in London and Hogwarts. But it wasnt just her and Ron that hadnt worked out, Ginny and Harry hadnt either. That had been a shock to most of the wizarding society, but not to Hermione. She knew, knew that neither one of two of her best friends were happy in the relationship and they broke it off as friends. Even though neither Harry nor Ginny were unhappy in the slightest with their breakup, Ron was livid. He blamed Harry just as he had blamed Hermione for them not working out. This put even more of a strain into the friendship between Hermione and Harry, and the other third of the "Golden trio". It hurt, it really did. To lose one of your best friends since you were what, 13. They were still friends, kind of. They just didnt get each other anymore and that was fine.
Harry and Ron planned to exploit their privileges from being "war heroes" and were going into auror training in the fall. Of course the ministry had offered Hermione a spot too, the golden girl, brightest witch of her age and all that, but she wasnt interested in becoming an auror. She had had more than enough fighting for another dozen lifetimes in her opinion. No, Hermione didnt exactly know what she wanted to do but for now she was just going to relax for a while. It was not like she needed money as she had more than enough from her Order of Merlin and it wasnt like she was obligated to go to work or continue her education right away. She could just... Relax with Ginny, hang around the greenhouses with Neville- her first friend, talk to George about Fred since no one else seems to even be able to say his name and of course there is books and lots and lots of time.