Chapter 2
Hermione goes to the Ministry at 8, so she wakes up at 6:30.
Usually, she'd like to wake up three hours before going to work, so she can have breakfast and unwind. When she wakes that morning, she is bone tired, and it takes her ten minutes to drag herself out of bed.
The sun shines through her drawn curtains, making her eyes ache. Crookshanks is curled at the foot of the bed, his tail twitching when Hermione drags a hand down his back. She loves him, she thinks of him almost like a son. It makes her feel a bit quirky to admit, though.
The first thing she does every morning is make a sugary coffee, with so much milk it goes warm and soon after cold. She knows she has a sort of addiction, can't function without two coffees a day, but she hasn't had a proper break that doesn't require coffee. The two weeks she has off every December are always spent doing something. Always having to compile up work that never finishes, always having to go to dinners and coffee dates and seeing people, and she likes it... nowadays, she doesn't really have time to see Ron and Harry, and she does miss the Burrow. But those two weeks off always fill her with a type of anxiety she can't seem to escape.
She stirs her coffee with a small spoon, watching the milk lighten the coffee. It activates a Pavlovian reaction; the mere scent makes her feel better. Hermione turns from her small green kitchen to her brown living room. She likes to sort the rooms by colors, green for the kitchen, brown for the living room, pink for the bathroom, and yellow for her bedroom. It makes her feel organized; she'd like to think it keeps her separated into colors. Yellow makes her sleepy now, and brown relaxes her. She isn't sure if it works, though, but she only wears black and grey to work now, to not mix her spaces.
Hermione prefers a little light reading before heading into work, but while eating her toast in her pajamas, she watches the Muggle news. Sometimes her magical objects and books interfere with the technology, so the static every now and then isn't surprising.
Crookshanks comes out of the bedroom and fluffs as he wobbles over, greys mixed with his orange hair. When she first adopted him, he was a grown cat, a little older than a kitten. Hermione wasn't sure how much longer she had with him, and so she doesn't feel bad when she occasionally lets him out for the day. Today doesn't look like one of those days; her big tomcat, who used to chase down birds and sometimes bring her still twitching presents, was now flopping down heavily at her feet, his maw yawning wide as he stretched.
Hermione loves him deeply.
Most secretaries on her floor, where the high-ranking Aurors work when they're not in the field, wear knee-length skirts and blazers. Muted colors, with little charmed clips sometimes fluttering in their hair.
Hermione, walking out of a Floo on the ground floor amongst others, is wearing black slacks, a grey fitted sweater, and a plain dark grey long-sleeve shirt. She carries a leather saddlebag and ties her loose curls up in a bun that will escape by lunch. She is very beautiful, but most of the wizards that look at her look away again, only straying back if they recognize her from when she was a part of that trio. Harry's trio.
Sometimes Hermione feels like one of those child actors from the Muggle world when there's an anniversary piece in the Daily Prophet, and everyone suddenly knows who she is again. The other receptionists are a bit nicer to her then.
She doesn't mind, though, being mostly forgotten. She can walk down Diagon Alley every now and then; no one even turns heads anymore. What she wears on Harry's birthday isn't important anymore, and they don't care that she isn't sellable. The last big time she was in the papers had to be when her and Ron... broke up.
No, she doesn't miss it, or the hate mail.
The Ministry has rudimentary elevators now, years behind the Muggle counterparts, but still, they're always widely used. So much so that Hermione doesn't bother with going near them anymore, for there are always people huddled around the ornate gates waiting for the limited space to take them to their floors. Hermione is lucky; she works on the 3rd floor. She begins her walk down.
It takes her a while, nodding hello to passing workers as she goes deeper and deeper down into the Ministry, but Hermione has always been good at managing her time. She reaches her door at 7:58, according to her watch. The door, as they all are, is unremarkable. It's when the door registers her magic, and she pushes through into a long hall.
This is the floor for the top group of Aurors, though the head works in the end hall away from the others. The rest of them work on the sides, parallel. The hall is deep, the color of deep wood running through the walls and carpeted floor gives it a look of old luxury. Age.
There have always been Aurors a part of the Ministry of Magic, and with those Aurors, receptionists.
The Aurors get their own (albeit small) offices, with a desk and filing cabinets. The secretaries sit outside beside their numbered doors, in these indents in the wall that have little yellowing lights above their head. Hermione thinks the ladies at their tiny wooden desks all look like potted plants or jarred butterflies.
She would like to think that she is important enough to be the head Auror's receptionist, at the very least. Wasn't she alongside Harry Potter? There were 20 Aurors on this floor, starting from 2 and alternating from the door parallel. The head Auror, whose name hasn't been mentioned and won't, because Hermione doesn't care to know it, is of course number one. Hermione has never seen this man and doesn't care to. Hermione's seen Elenor cry enough to know that he is cruel, at the very least.
She walks past the other secretaries and smiles, reminding herself to hold her head high while she walks past their desks. Hermione tries not to feel too angry at them. Most of these women go home to awful husbands, or use almost all their salary to support their children, or are just trying to survive themselves. Of course, they become cliquey at work; this is the only place they're basically allowed friends. It's why they arrive half an hour before they start work, and why they're all (subconsciously or not) looking down their noses at her.
It's impossible not to grow a little red in the face. Hermione continues her walk down the hall, the lights above humming with the sound of artificial fireflies. Little fish bowls full of the bugs that are nothing but transfigured little buttons. Hermione feels like that now as she walks to her desk, number 11, feels trapped in a bowl with a million like her, all made into things they're not.
She's tired today, but different than usual. A pair of grey eyes flash before her mind, and she feels like she's putting up an act. Hermione Granger hates acting, but she puts that to the back of her mind as she reaches her desk and smiles.
Luna Lovegood, sitting behind Hermione's typewriter, smiles back.
Grey eyes.