Present
Her heart aches. Her head spins. Her eyes can not concentrate on what they see in front of them. Her throat is sore and dried out. She feels like the darkness is taking hold of her.
The effects of the dark charms cast upon her start eating her up from the inside.
While gasping for air and letting out whimpers of pain, she slides down a wall next to her. The strong arms, who were lifting her up just a second ago, slip away relentlessly.
But she still found comfort in the memory of the hold from just an instant before. Her fingers immediately find their way to cup a face in the pitch black room.
Her ally is now being hold by her, both returning the same heavy panting to each other. She could make out that they are facing each other straight ahead. Even though her body is at the end of its' theter, she can still feel her muscles relax and her forehead leaning into the one opposite of her's. This causes both of them to fall into a more diaphragmatic breathing.
"W-we have..to ke-hep go-hing." says a male voice, recognizably still shaken by the previous events. Foreheads pressing harder against each other, "We..we can't just stop no-hw."
His words are followed by a faint, but powerful whimper and eyes rolling back into the head. Leaving his counterpart unconscious.
11 months ago
The crackling fire coming from the chimney caused her mind and her body to ease, after a long day of work. She felt her upper spine letting go of all the tension and weight collected over the hours she was occupied earlier. Now all of her back was finding comfort in the armchair she sat in, sinking more and more into it.
She even allowed her eyes to close for a moment and her mind to wander somewhere else. Away from the everyday routine, job, responsibilities.
Hermione may have already reached the point in life, where she possed more than enough for her finances, but she still found herself thriving the most when she was working. All the passion and work ethic she acquired truly drove her.
While her workaholic living may have gone against the formation of an ordinary family life, she still managed to uphold one suited perfectly for their composition. And after all; they for sure were not ordinary.
Still, Hermione often found herself feeling like a piece of her heart is missing when she was separated from them for a longer time. Truthfully, she never was much of a family person, but over time she developed a dependency for their company.
That hole in her heart was now being filled with two things she also craved, but she did so since seemingly forever: a good book and wine.
There are also two characteristics that would always contribute to, at least a part of her personality: her workaholism and her being a bookworm. These two for sure did not fade over the years.
By that, Hermione was fully in her element. After having skimmed through thousands and thousands of papers in the course of the day, she continued with reading through thousands and thousands of book verses. Just so she could be interrupted by the sound of the door bell.
She tried to get up as quickly as possible, without causing more harm to her spine, by standing up too rapidly. Continuing with her gulping down the last drops of red wine as cautiously as possible, trying to prevent a gaging season from happening later on. Going on with a last second toss of the book to the coffee table, Hermione finally left the living room space.
During her sprint to the front door, she not only straightened her skirt, but started to speculate about the person on the other end.
Her husband was away on a business trip and would not return till the weekend. Her son is away at Hogwarts and would not visit anytime soon; The Christmas holidays just ended. Well, if she did not assume that something happend; resulting them to come home early.
She did not. Hermione was going through all of her friends, that she could have possibly opened to, in her mind, when she finally reached the door.
Her curiousity took over and she opened the door without hesitation, just so she could meet unfamiliar ice blue eyes.
She was about to form words, when the intruder abruptly started speaking: "Excuse me, hi, my name is Lorelai Kolgrimson."
Lorelai stretched her hand out while greeting her. Her counterpart was taken a bit aback, but still managed to make her hand return the gesture. "Hermione Granger. What can I do for you?"
Her eyes started to inspect the individual in front of her. Lorelai was a young woman of similar height with black hair tied up firmly. A remarkable detail was her dark red lipstick, which clashed with her slightly tanned complexion; as if she had gotten recently back from a vacation. She was dressed in, what seemed to be, work clothes: some dark dress pants were able to be seen under a big winter coat, combined with a shoulder bag she was trying to push up her right arm and an immense binder squeezed under her left one.
The young lady gave her a white smile. "I just joined the department recently and was told to give you these case files about a sighting of an unregistered dragon, as soon as possible. Someone told me to better deliver this to your home today, since I couldn't catch you in the office during work hours."
The other woman was growing suspicious. She appreciated the girls input, but was alarmed when she talked about the certain someone else. Office gossip days seemed to have been over and Hermione was not in the mood for another round of being portrayed as the worst by her colleagues. She asked gruffly: "Who exactly told you that?"
Lorelai looked jumpy after that, as if she thought she had done something wrong, and intimidated by Hermione and her eventual punishment.
"Ron..Weasley, Madam."
The oh so intimidating Mrs. Granger could not hold back her laugh and bursted out.
Ignoring the confused look directed at her, she proceeded to wipe off her arisen tears, from laughing, and tried to change back into a more serious posture again.
"I'm sorry...it's just..you shouldn't take him too serious the next time he tells you to take care of something for me." she reassured, "You should better listen to the actual staff in our department."
"Noted." Lorelai looked a bit more confident again and passed her the heavy binder, relieved.
"God, my manners." Hermione cried out, "Do you want to come in for some tea?"
The response "No worries. I'd love to." followed, and was ended by the ringtone of a phone, which came from Hermione's pocket. Just as she was about to lead her guest into her home.
"Ignore that, I'm sure it's not impor-" It rung again, "...tant." and again, as if it had been on repeat.
"You should take it, don't worry about me. I still have work to do back in the department." Lorelai stated while working her way down the stairs.
After grabbing her phone, mouthing "I'm sorry!", waving "Goodbye", closing the door with a struggle, since she had to manage the binder at the same time, she finally hold her phone to her ear.
"For God's sake, Hermione, I called you like a dozen times!" An angry voice shouted into her ear, followed by a sigh, "Anyway, come over to my place immediately. There's something important I want to show you."
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Congrats to whoever actually sacrificed some of their time to read this! You've reached the end!
No, seriously. Thank you to everyone who decided to give me and and my work a chance. This is my first serious fanfic and I'm trying really hard to get good at writing. So I appreciate any form of criticism. But please don't bash my grammar too harshly, I'm not a native English speaker.
Anyway, as you probably noticed while reading, this chapter was a character focused introduction and didn't really move the plot till the end. My idea was to firstly give you guys a small insight into Hermione's mindset and state, so it could be compared to the possible changes throughout the development of the story. I also didn't really address other characters and relationships, since I might want to use them as some sort of plottwists in the next few chapters. The only thing I absolutely wanted to arouse though, were questions. They definitely show me that the messages I wanted to convey were picked up or just that the reader is intrigued by the story and wants to know more.
I plan to upload the second chapter in a few days, but can't promise anything.
Till then, I hope you liked what you read so far and are willing to give me another shot at this!